Short Review: Odd that they would name a movie after the production's target audience.



This is a calorie-ridden, cellulose gum stuffed, FD&C Yellow 5 soaked Twinkie of a movie - but not in a good way.

Action movies are action movies - they are big, loud, stupid and violent. This movie has all of those characteristics. It also has all of the now, sadly traditional action film events - the slow-motion group walk where everyone wears sunglasses and looks oh so, cool. The heroic slow-motion entry with two automatic weapons in each hand ready for a fight, the slow-motion fight sequence than suddenly speeds up to normal pace...


Now that I think about it, this film could have halved its running time if they removed the slow motion sequences.

The movie is about a group of snappy dialog prone spies/soliders/assassins/psychopaths/fashion dolls who get burned by a boss during a job in Bolivia. The crew is targeted for death during a search and destroy mission. The assassination fails and the crew disbands. They regroup when a Zoe Saldana shows up. Zoe knows who tried to kill the killers and the killers set out to kill the man who tried to kill them.

A quick side note, have you noticed that in nearly every movie Zoe Saldana has been in she is covered in a glistening oil so she looks sweaty and always romps with the white guy?

So, the team heads out and hunts down the big bad guy Max (Jason Patric). Since there is no way to make Jason Patric ominous, apparently the plan was to make his character unbelievably obnoxious. Max is perhaps the most unlikeable bad guy, not because he's violent, evil and cruel - but because he spouts pea-brained dialog and is hyper sensitive. At one point he murders a woman who is holding an umbrella over his head, because she slipped. I've pointed this out in other reviews - if you are writing a bad guy, it serves no purpose showing him being so trigger happy with his minions that he will kill one over literally nothing. The minions, out of survival, will kill the bad guy the first chance they have. The dismissive murder of an underling to show a villain's psychosis also reveals their lack of leadership skills. It breaks natural logic and heightens the stupidity of a movie. Stop doing it.

Ok, so there is a team of killers who almost get killed. They identify the guy who wanted them dead and head out kill him. I assume you can write the next sentence in this sequence. This is paint by the numbers, see it a thousand times film making - and since you've already seen this a thousand times, there is no reason to make it one thousand one. Skip this.


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Other Critic's Reviews:
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Labels: Chris Evans, Columbus Short, film, Holt McCallany, Idris Elba, Jason Patric, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, movie review, Peter Berg, Zoe Saldana

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Labels: film, Hayden Christensen, Idris Elba, Matt Dillon, Michael Ealy, movie trailer, Paul Walker, Zoe Saldana

My one year old daughter will make a face or say something that gets a laugh from her mother and me. Flushed with the attention she receives, she will do the shtick again in hopes of getting the same reaction. Sometimes it works out for her. If so, she will then do a third, fourth and sometimes a fifth time. The longer the trick goes on the less effective it is. Unlike Guy Ritchie, my one year old daughter has the sense to stop her routine when it fails to get results.

This is the same old same old hyper-stylized, popping paced, snap edited "ain't we too cool for the room" dribble we've seen before. When writer/director hit the scene with Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels his style was exciting and new. He make a statement and his fresh voice was heard. When he broke and took the next step with his follow up Snatch he seemed like he was a notable rising power in cinema. A film maker with a talent for crime flicks. Like a British Tarantino but without the massive cranium and he didn't come across as someone desperately making up for his missing dad. Then Richie stagnated and hasn't grown one bit. If you have seen his first two films you've seen this one.

The thing that strikes me about this film is how immensely controlled it feels. Every shot is obviously carefully planned, the design work is obvious and the characterizations are calculated. I never felt as if I were doing anything but watching a very elaborate movie. This is not a good quality since it means I was never able to "get lost" in the movie. Ritchie's governing hand is seen the whole time, he may as well be heard yelling out direction in the background of all of his scenes.

The performances by the likes of Tom Wilkinson, Gerald Butler, Mark Strong, Idris Elba and Thandie Newton are passable. They all strut across the screen with appropriate confidence and toughness but it is all hollow. Their lines are contrived and sound like dialog not actual people talking. They may have done admirable jobs delivering their roles but the combined end product is completely soulless. This drains their efforts of any value.

Ritchie opens his film with a fat knot of facts, motivations and plot all delivered in a kinetic package. The opening five minutes is more flashy and distracting that most children's cereal commercials. One would expect the film to settle a bit as it moves forward so the audience can register the ideas presented in the flurry but Ritchie chooses to keep the flashiness up. We're given more characters, all are oh, so cool and posed, more conniving and more deliberate camera work. This continues throughout the film until Ritchie has devised a Rube Goldberg contraption for a plot that all fires off at once only to provide the uninspiring result of a lighter being snapped on. The problem with creating multi-layered, complicated narratives is that you had better make it worth people's time. This film doesn't meet that criterion.


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Labels: British Cinema, film, Gerald Butler, Guy Ritchie, Idris Elba, Mark Strong, movie review, Thandie Newton, Tom Wilkinson

Screenwriter: David Loughery (Lakeview Terrace)
Director: Steve Shill
Actors: Beyoncé Knowles (Dreamgirls), Idris Elba (28 Weeks Later), Ali Larter (Final Destination), Bruce McGill (Animal House) and Jerry O'Connell (Stand by Me)

Labels: Ali Larter, Beyonce Knowles, film, Idris Elba, movie trailer