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

Short Review: Any film where the State Department is shown to be a gaggle of heartless, incomprehensibly inept baboons is cool with me.


Remarkably, this movie not overly political. Given that the film industry feels compelled to shoehorn pathetic political snipes in even films about middle-aged cookbook authors, the fact that this movie saves its lefty political jabs for the opening credits and the final moments of the film, is notable. When you toss in the fact that this film has U. S. agents scuttling around in the sand in the Middle East, the lack of a “blame America first and blame America often” haranguing is almost unbelievable.

While this film begins with a simplistic, and lopsided, but visually interesting history of how American intrusion into Saudi Arabia (for the purposes of obtaining oil) has lead to the modern Islamic terrorist, the movie overall refrains from finger pointing. This said, the opening historical review does somehow manage to only show Republican Presidents and their administrations adding flames to the Islamic fires. Democratic administrations are remarkably absent. The review also avoids holding the Saudi’s, or more importantly the Islamic terrorists, accountable for their own actions.

Overall, the film overall is a gripping thriller. Islamic terrorists conduct a horrific bombing of an American interest in Saudi Arabia and a team of FBI agents investigates the crime. During the process, the lead investigator. Special Agent Ronald Fleury (Jamie Foxx), has to contend with Saudis restricting his access, but also the American State Department hamstringing his efforts.

The script by Matthew Michael Carnahan is tight and intelligent. The investigation is smartly handled and doesn’t unfold too neatly. Carnahan does a great job of playing off of the disconnect between Fleury and his fellow investigators (Jennifer Garner, Chris Cooper and Jason Bateman) and their Saudi hosts. The agents are in a foreign land and they are not welcome guests. The continual threat of violence heightens the tension.

The biggest failure of the script is in character development. With a twisting plot, the multiple characters get lost in the shuffle and many lose dimension. In particular Jason Bateman’s character Adam. To be honest, I am not certain why he was brought along on the investigation. His character literally does nothing of note to assist in the investigation except interrupt with humorous lines about how much he doesn’t like being involved.

In addition to the aforementioned flaw in the script, director Peter Berg (Friday Night Lights) fails to deliver meaningful close. In the advertisements there is particular attention paid to the thrill of the final half-hour. The final segment of the film is indeed riveting. The final segment has some good pacing and it will guarantee to impact an audience. All of this good work devolves into a typical, and sadly predictable, Hollywood ending. It is a very safe resolution slathered in moral relativism. The terrorists are bad, but we’re no good too. No one is right because everyone is wrong. With the intelligent story that preceded it, the ending feels cheap and sanctimonious.

Despite the character issues and the troublesome ending, I think most audiences will enjoy the film. It's just a shame it could have been better.



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Labels: Ashraf Barhom, Chris Cooper, film, Jamie Foxx, Jason Bateman, Jennifer Garner, Jeremy Piven, movie review, Peter Berg, Tim McGraw

The gag that Hancock is a bum superhero lasts for a minute. Then the movie falls apart. The core of the film is bad. At the heart of the film is a detestable figure, Hancock, a broken down, drunken superhero. When he attempts to help others he ends up destroying everything around him. He's a self despising klutz with substance abuse problems. Who wants to watch that? Think of it this way, if this were a white character and not black, the lead would have been played by Larry the Cable Guy, not Will Smith. This is trashy stuff dressed up nice.

The film suffers because it can't decide if its serious, half-serious or a completely frivolous. In one of the early scenes Hancock is approached by a beautiful groupie. He takes her back to his trailer (told you this was meant for Larry the Cable Guy) and they have sex. The "joke" turns out that when he culminates his intimate efforts his semen shoots out like a bullet (told you this was trashy). This isn't funny, but this is the joke they decide to work with. Director Peter Berg (The Kingdom), like his audience, fails to find anything funny in the scene and lets it play itself out, the woman runs away in fear, with no humor or any deeper meaning. As crude as this scene is, I think it represents how the entire film is mishandled. Odd items or situations are broached and then played out but done so without an ounce of depth. This leaves Smith and the rest of the cast stumbling through scenes that do nothing but clumsily push the plot forward. By the end of the film the film has languished in toneless scenes for so long, so many times, the resolution is D.O.A. The final act seems more like a cleaning up than a resolution.

I like Berg's previous films, I think Smith is one of the better matinee stars working, but this film is an unfortunate misfire.


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Labels: Charlize Theron, film, Jason Bateman, movie trailer, Peter Berg, superhero, Will Smith

It is very slow and mopey but it still manages to hold some interest. This certainly isn’t Oscar material but it does much with its meek story about a gang of blue collar guys who have a frightening run in with a UFO. The final act of the film holds some unnerving scenes which pretty much make up for the low tone of the rest of the piece. D.B. Sweeney and Robert Patrick offer some good performances. If you see it on cable, its worth checking out.


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Labels: D.B. Sweeney, film, movie review, Peter Berg, Robert Patrick, science fiction, UFO

Releasing today, this Will Smith vehicle has him playing a down-and-out superhero. Peter Berg (The Kingdom) is directing the McMovie. I imagine this will be humorous, but not funny - entertaining, but not memorable. Check out the trailer below. Seems like its a one joke movie, but then again Smith has a knack for picking good projects for his image.

Labels: Charlize Theron, Jason Bateman, movie trailer, Peter Berg, superhero, Will Smith

Releasing on July 2nd, 2008, this Will Smith vehicle has him playing a down-and-out superhero who takes up with another man's wife. Peter Berg (The Kingdom) is directing the McMovie. I imagine this will be humorous, but not funny - entertaining, but not memorable. Check out the trailer below. Seems like its a one joke movie, but then again Smith has a knack for picking good projects for his image.

Labels: Charlize Theron, Jason Bateman, movie trailer, Peter Berg, superhero, Will Smith

Labels: Jamie Foxx, Jennifer Garner, movie trailer, Peter Berg, terrorism