Unleashed
There has been a real glut of good martial arts films getting releases in the west over the last few years. After the appearance of Jackie Chan in Hollywood, with his own brand of slapstick violent comedy, we’ve had the grandiose beauty of the likes of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and House of Flying Daggers, and the likes of Steven “Kung Fu Hustle” Chow have also begun to make their mark. But another kung fu superstar who has been knocking around in the background for a while now is Jet Li, a lithe, fast and brutally graceful master of the flying kick and karate chop.
Working in films for a quarter of a century now, Li has been a megastar in his native China for well over a decade, second only to Jackie Chan in terms of box office success thanks to a series of fast-paced actioners from the late 1980s and his still youthful good looks. Making his first Hollywood appearance in the passable fourth film in the Lethal Weapon series, his other English language outings haven’t fared too well, even when as well-produced as 2001’s fun sci-fi thriller The One. Instead, for most western audiences it was his central starring role in Hero which attracted notice – a much richer and more symbolic outing than his standard spectacular fare.
With Unleashed Li is back to his roots of gritty close combat and near-unbelievable physicality, but with a very much western attitude. Written by Luc Besson, the basic storyline has a fair few similarities to some of that director’s earlier works, notably La Femme Nikita and Leon, both of which saw highly trained assassins trying to learn to cope in a life without killing.
This time Li is a dehumanised killing machine, brainwashed by Bob Hoskins’ brutal gangster to kill on command, caged like a dog the rest of the time. When a deal goes awry, the wounded Li escapes to be nursed back to health by Morgan Freeman’s kindly blind piano player, the only thing stopping the former assassin from going on a murderous rampage being the collar whose removal triggers his programming. When Hoskins re-emerges, unsurprisingly Li’s none too keen to go back to his former life.
It’s a good set up with a good cast, Bob Hoskins in particular being on top form as a larger-than-life version of his vicious gangster character from the classic British flick The Long Good Friday, while the action sequences, largely choreographed by Li himself, are as grittily beautiful and painful-looking as anyone might wish. Directed by Louis Leterrier, to date known only for his entertaining but mediocre actioner The Transporter, all the parts come together for a very satisfying whole.
Assuming, of course, that you like this sort of thing. This is very much of the old school of martial arts movie – the 1970s/80s style basic set-up leading to as much violence as possible, with a little bit of characterisation chucked in. If you’re expecting another Hero you are likely to be sorely disappointed. If, however, you fancy the kind of film Bruce Lee would probably be making if he were around today (well, and still agile enough, obviously), look no further.
The Dukes of Hazzard
Based on the cult action TV series that ran from 1979-1895, the same period and same genre as the cheesy likes of The A-Team, Airwolf, CHIPS and Streethawk, it seems rather odd that this is the first of that glut of near-classics to make it to the big screen. Smart money would always have been on The A-Team, but the movie version of that old favourite has been stuck in development hell for years – one is still pegged for release next year, but as of yet no cast or director has been finalised, which is hardly very promising.
It seems doubly odd when you consider that the whole concept revolves around two buddies driving around very fast in a retro orange car, fighting crime and corruption while cracking jokes and having fun. Sounds awfully similar to last year’s big screen version of Starsky and Hutch, doesn’t it? The fact that they’ve got in low rent versions of Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson, in the shape of Johnny Knoxville and Seann William Scott, only further underscores the point.
The added problem with the Duke brothers, not just as played by Knoxville and Scott but also in their original television incarnations, is their redneck, deep south nature – a drawling good ol’ boy Americana today epitomised by George W Bush, but made slightly uncomfortable by the Confederate flag prominently emblazoned on the roof of their car. Thanks to the vaguaries of history, this is a symbol – albeit somewhat unfairly – associated with America’s dark days of slavery and racial repression. It becomes slightly uncomfortable to cheer for people who sport such a symbol and name their car after a Confederate general in much the same way it would be to cheer for a couple of guys with swastikas on their T-shirts who call their car Goebbels.
Yet the Duke brothers were always wonderfully likeable and entertaining, aided by the buxom charms of their hotpant-wearing cousin Daisy, played here by pop princess Jessica Simpson, and the devious corruption of local bigwig Boss Hogg, here portrayed with a piece of genius casting by that other early 80s TV hero Burt Reynolds. The southern drawl and apparent stupidity was all part of their charm, along with the insane stunts and massive explosions.
As such, it should be perfect blockbuster material – blending the inanity of the likes of Dude, Where’s My Car? with high-speed thrills. The only problem is that neither Knoxville nor Scott have, to date, demonstrated that they’ve really got the ability to carry a film. Both are fairly likeable and relatively amusing, but it seems painfully apparent that the producers really wanted the Stiller/Wilson team, yet lost them to Starsky and Hutch. The lack of an experienced director only adds to the worries that this isn’t quite the glossy blockbuster that it perhaps should have been.
Nonetheless, it remains relatively solid, mindless entertainment. Not up there with the best of the summer’s releases, but worth a look at least – if only to lend support to the concept of reviving of other cult shows from the period, which may finally see us get that long-awaited A-Team flick.
Primer
This ultra-low-budget indy flick, made for just $7,000, is one of those rare breakthrough movies from a first-time writer/director/actor which genuinely deserves the rave reviews and lavish praise. Like Darren Aronofski’s Pi or Christopher Nolan’s Memento, this is a wonderfully complex and intelligent film with a fascinating and – all too rare these days – original premise. It came out of nowhere last year to win the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival, yet thanks to its indy roots has taken a while to get distribution on this side of the pond. It’s well worth trying to catch.
Yet the praise has not been unanimous. Some critics have pointed to the lack of acting ability of the film’s mastermind, Shane Carruth, while others have attacked its sheer complexity. This is a little unfair, considering not only the glossy job he has managed to pull off with so few resources but also the fact that these same critics so often complain about the lack of intellectual stimulation in modern movies. This has intellect in spades.
The central premise – two friends accidentally invent a time machine and start working out ways to put it to their advantage – doesn’t sound anything special. There have been countless time travel movies, some more successful than others. The subject is an endlessly intriguing one, with so many potential paradoxes and pitfalls that rare is the movie that takes it on without a few trips along the way. Back to the Future may be great fun, and its sequels truly cunning in their interconnected backtracking, but in places the logic still fell down. Terry Gilliam’s Twelve Monkeys admirably managed to keep tabs on all the problems, but his Time Bandits – deliberately – was rather more nonsensical.
Does the interweaving plot here make sense? Do all the strands add up? It’s fairly tricky to tell after just one viewing, but Carruth has repeatedly insisted that, if you pay close enough attention, it does.
This is the major concern for some critics – Carruth has done such a good job of providing an intelligent, understated exploration of the ever-increasing pitfalls of time travel that it’s well-nigh impossible to keep tabs on all the various plot strands. With his background in mathematics and engineering it is entirely possible that Carruth has got all this worked out somewhere in a vast spider chart as the friendships splinter, the ability to travel back in time is misused, and the dangers of bumping into alternate versions of oneself become clear.
For an audience viewing for the first time, however, much of what is going on is – deliberately – baffling. You will need to see this film at least twice to work out what’s going on, and probably more if you really want to unravel the details and work out whether it genuinely makes sense. But despite the criticisms, despite the occasionally amateurish acting, the likelihood is you’ll want to.
Crash
Not a re-release of the controversial 1996 David Cronenberg movie about people turned on by car crashes, although a car crash does play a central part in this collection of inter-connected stories.
Written and directed by Paul Haggis, best known for his superb mid-1990s Canadian Mountie drama/comedy Due South but also Oscar-nominated for his script for Clint Eastwood’s gritty boxing drama Million Dollar Baby earlier this year, this is another of those ambitious multiple character, multiple storyline dramas in the mould of the master, Robert Altman. Setting it in LA also adds to the inevitable comparisons to one of the most recent of this type of film, Paul Thomas Anderson’s emotionally complex blend, Magnolia. Thankfully, Crash acquits itself admirably in such exalted company – not least because, unlike Magnolia, it manages to avoid being tediously self-righteous and overly long.
This is a wonderfully realised look at race relations in a city always bubbling with tension – black versus white versus Hispanic versus middle eastern, all deeply mistrustful of each other, all filled with unthinking hatred. There’s the black cop (Don Cheadle) and his Hispanic girlfriend (Jennifer Esposito), the white district attorney (Brendan Fraser) and his snobby wife (Sandra Bullock), the two black thugs who mug them (Ludacris and Laurence Tate), the rich black film director (Terrence Howard ) and his trophy wife (Thandie Newton) and the racist white cop who abuses his position (Matt Dillon). All are, in their own way, scared and unpleasant. All find their very separate worlds overlapping and colliding.
The whole thing could end up sounding excessively pretentious, but this danger is something of which Haggis seems fully aware. Unlike Anderson’s Magnolia, which was so obviously trying to be a truly great film that when it ended up being rather sub-par it was all the more galling, Crash never tries to do more than provide detailed character studies, sparkling dialogue and a blend of interconnected storylines with a simple message. In this it succeeds more than admirably, and more Oscar nominations must surely come Haggis’ way.
The actors, too, are all on top form, with Cheadle and Bullock especially notable, playing so heavily against type as they are. Cheadle, fresh from his raised profile thanks to the Oscar-nominations for Hotel Rwanda, was apparently the driving force behind this film, and his determination to make it work has shined through to be adopted by the rest of the cast with gusto.
Smooth, sleek and – despite the contrived story-telling technique – always utterly real, this is a disturbing yet near-masterly movie which shows that Hollywood can still, when it wants, provide ensemble pieces of intelligence and style. Come the Oscars, keep an eye out for this one.
The Island
Directed by the man responsible for Armageddon, Bad Boys, and Pearl Harbor, with Michael Bay in charge you know that you can expect a big, dumb, cheesy action movie with an overdose of popcorn-friendly stupidity and very little in the way of brains. Bay has, for many film buffs, become the embodiment of all that is bad in Hollywood filmmaking – glossy, superficial, entertainment by numbers. He is almost the anti-Speilberg, resolutely un-intellectual and constantly appealing to the lowest common denominator in his mass audiences. He has also, perhaps for these very reasons, been massively successful.
To Bay’s credit, his films are rarely truly terrible, with even Pearl Harbor having its redeeming features in spectacular action sequences and breathtaking special effects, but with perhaps the sole exception of The Rock, they have rarely been especially great either. They do, however, almost always achieve precisely what they set out to do – provide a couple of hours of mindless fun and action with a liberal dose of explosions, normally revolving around a fairly straightforward plot where some friends take on a powerful enemy with a bit of romantic interest chucked in for good measure.
This is, unsurprisingly, more of the same. Returning to the sci-fi genre in which he had so much success with Armageddon, Bay has turned his attention to the confusing morals of human cloning. It’s a subject which has been covered by the movies many times by the likes of the thoughtfully understated Gattica and even that classic look at identity crisis that is Blade Runner. But this time Bay’s taken it up a notch with the addition of rocket-powered motorbikes, massive explosions and breakneak chases.
Ewan McGregor and Scarlett Johannson live in a futuristic utopian world, a closed community of tracksuit-wearing beautiful young things most immediately reminiscent of the 1970s sci-fi classic Logan’s Run, but glossily Americanised almost beyond belief. As ever, all is not quite as perfect and wonderful as it appears, and as McGregor’s character begins to delve into the background of their little community – and of the near mythical island to which winners of the “lottery” are sent their true position becomes clear – and escape becomes the only option. In fact, it’s rather surprising they didn’t just call this Logan’s Run and get it over and done with, as the basic plot is almost identical.
Thankfully, however, with the escape the film soon shifts both gear and direction, with Bay regular Steve Buscemi adding some much-needed quirkiness and humour – amidst an impressive cast that also features Sean Bean, Djimon Hounsou and Michael Clarke Duncan – as the action and effects kick into overdrive. If there’s one thing Bay does well, it’s spectacle. Remember the rocket-powered motorbikes? Yep – that’ll do it. Utterly stupid, yet superb popcorn entertainment.
The Adventures of Shark Boy & Lava Girl
Yet another outing from the workaholic Robert Rodriguez, just a few months after his sprawlingly intriguing overdose of stylised violence that was Sin City, this sees the maverick auteur return to the world of kids’ films in which he had so much success with his Spy Kids franchise.
Taking the same basic premise as his other childrens’ action movies, the concept for this outing seems both obvious and logical. Where Spy Kids saw the childhood fantasy of kids being mini James Bonds, this latest outing gives them pint-sized superheroes following almost exactly the same format. It’s an almost insanely simple and obvious step – so perhaps it should come as no surprise that the original idea came from Rodriguez’s young son, who gains a “Story by” credit for his pains.
Just to add to the childhood wish-fulfilment premise, here the plot hinges on a boy, Max (Cayden Boyd), with a wild imagination, ridiculed for his insistence that his kid superhero friends, the eponymous Shark Boy and Lava Girl, are real. It’s a bit of a re-tread of the ground covered by the 1980s franchise The Neverending Story, only with better special effects and no giant flying snake/dog hybrids. Once again the ordinary kid has to help the extraordinary by going off to a weird world and battling the forces of evil.
In other words, it’s all fairly standard stuff, with the promise of good special effects, the lure of the “from the director of Spy Kids” strapline, and the gimmick, used by Rodriguez for the third film of that earlier franchise, of 3-D. But although a lot of kids’ films are, by the very nature of their target audience, rather unchallenging and lacking in originality – the same plots can be rotated every ten years or so thanks to the rapid turnaround of the potential customers – it’s rare for them to be quite this uninspired.
It’s a good, simple premise, but somehow manages to fail dismally. Whether this is thanks to the reliance on the child actor leads, none of whom are up to the job, or the almost painful garishness of the rather unimaginative special effects it is hard to say. But it is, shall we say, little surprise that this movie was dreamed up by someone yet to hit double figures.
Considering the whole point of the film is the power of the imagination, as Max has to use his daydreaming skills to help his superhero buddies battle an array of stock CGI villains, the lack of imagination on display is even more galling. In a standard children’s film such blandness would be expected and forgivable, but not when the whole point is to be inspirational and mindblowing.
When Rodriguez last turned out two films in one year, with Spy Kids 3-D and Once Upon a Time in Mexico back in 2003, both obviously suffered as a result of the pressures he had put himself under. This time he seems to have put all his effort into making Sin City something genuinely special and left nothing in reserve for this outing. It may be time for Mr Rodriguez to take stock, and realise that there’s a reason why people no longer make films as if on a factory production line. Here, the vision which served him so well in Sin City is utterly lacking.
Herbie
There have been four Herbie movies to date – if you include the 1997 TV movie remake – and a TV series, all derived from the 1968 Disney classic The Love Bug, in which a San Francisco racer car driver teamed up with an intelligent Volkswagen Beetle for a series of high-speed capers. For what is basically just a car, and a car designed in Nazi Germany no less, Herbie proved surprisingly lovable, and has become a children’s comedy classic.
This new outing thankfully, after the disappointing 1997 version, doesn’t try to remake the original. It is instead fairly firmly a sequel. Herbie has been sitting in a scrapyard for the last couple of decades, his powers untapped and unknown. Given to a teenage girl (Lindsay Lohan) as a college graduation present, the dormant love bug’s powers are soon awakened – with perhaps a few too many special effects for the tastes of fans of the original – before finding a rival in Matt Dillon’s evil champion racer.
In other words, bar the initial set-up where Herbie is re-activated and a few special effects, it’s taking the original formula and rolling with it. The only major difference – beyond having a young girl in the driving seat – is that rather than rally racing, this time it’s NASCAR. And a forty year old Beetle in that sort of race is even less believable than a car with a mind of its own – especially in this age of satellite-guided navigation systems and “intelligent” breaking.
But it’s not the originality that matters in this kind of film, but the stunts, the jokes and, considering the presence of Lindsay Lohan in the lead, the sweetness and tentative romance. On these fronts, it’s certainly a passable kids’ comedy – but of the old school, with few concessions to the poor adults dragged along. Parents will instead have to content themselves with wondering whatever happened to the once promising careers of Michael Keaton and Matt Dillon that they have to stoop to this kind of movie.
With a fairly bland script it’s nothing special, but hits all the marks competently enough for its purposes. A handy diversion for the kids, who should be more than happy to be introduced to the little car which has brought so much joy to so many. Not only that, but then you’ll have a good excuse to go out and buy the originals, watch them all again, and show the kids how this sort of movie was so much better in the good old days. At which point they’ll probably turn round and remind you of precisely how old you are. Which is never much fun.
Bewitched
The 1960s saw two sitcoms revolving around suburban couples where the wife had magical powers, the genie-based I Dream of Jeannie and witch-based Bewitched. Both had their moments, the former largely thanks to the presence of Larry “JR” Hagman as the long-suffering husband, the latter thanks to the wiggly-nosed charms of Elizabeth Montgomery.
Between them these two shows built up nearly 300 episodes – each and every one concerned with the need to prevent friends and relations of the central couple from finding out about the wife’s powers. That’s around 9,000 hours of comedy all hinging on one basic premise – is there anything left for a feature-length movie? Well, considering next year promises an I Dream of Jeannie flick as well, someone in Hollywood seems to think so.
Still, a straight update of the original sitcom premise seems to have been decided not to be quite interesting enough. Instead we get a slightly postmodern take on the thing – this is a film about updating the sitcom, with Will Ferrell as the star set to play the beleaguered husband and Nicole Kidman as the unknown cast to play his witchy wife. With this premise, the twist is predictable – Kidman’s character is a genuine witch. A witch pretending to be a regular human playing a witch pretending to be a regular human. It’s as much a magical version of the Julie Andrews classic Victor/Victoria, where the dancing Dame played a woman pretending to be a female impersonator, as it is a straight update of the sitcom from which the film takes its name.
It’s a moderately promising premise, if a tad odd to waste the rights to a remake on something that isn’t quite a remake, with a quality cast that includes Michael Caine and Shirley MacLaine, teaming up again as they did in 1966’s sub-par caper movie Gambit, as Kidman’s supernaturally-powered parents.
Sadly, however, neither the plot nor the characters really seem to sparkle. Co-written and directed by Norah Ephron, the woman responsible for, among others, classic romantic comedies Sleepless in Seattle and When Harry Met Sally, the emphasis on the frankly implausible blossoming relationship between the egotistical Ferrell and sweetly innocent Kidman never quite manages to engage, while the comedy set-ups are all fairly predictable and repetitive.
The cast try their best with the lacklustre material, but they really haven’t got much to work with, and Ephron’s unimaginative, visually uninteresting direction really doesn’t offer any help. It’s perhaps ironic that, in a movie revolving around witchcraft and the kindling of love, there is absolutely none of that Hollywood magic which lifts mediocre films to the level of something special. Considering it took them thirty years to get this sitcom onto the big screen, you think they would have tried a little harder to create something worthy of the name.
