Fear And Anger (Death Wish, 2018)

The seventies were a time of unrest and in some parts of America, high crime. Tough Guy Charles Bronson brought to live an everyman pushed to the edge by criminals who attack his wife and daughter. The original Death Wish spawned four sequels. Architect Paul Kersey journeyed through crime ridden neighborhoods to do what police could…or would not…do.

In Eli Roth’s remake, America’s favorite tough guy, Bruce Willis, plays Paul Kersey. In the original franchise he was a mild mannered architect. Here, we find Paul Kersey to be a skilled surgeon in the emergency room. The film shows Kersey to be a decent guy, but also one who backs down in confrontation. It also makes a point in one scene to show that Paul does not own any guns. But when his wife and daughter are attacked, the police start to seem a lot less effective. It eats at Paul and he becomes drawn to a local gun store.

After a couple false starts, Paul manages to foil a car jacking and soon follows it up by killing a noted drug dealer. The media erupts and Paul is nicknamed the Grim Reaper.

Many have noted that it is practically an ad for the NRA. But really, this film is more of a promotion of the fear that certain politicians foist upon us. Fears of rampant crime, violent drug dealers, foreign invaders and so on. And it is not that these things do not exist. But the film overhypes them.

Eli Roth uses his trademark subtlety with this one. The core of the film is revenge because “You touched my stuff!” This may seem harsh, but the daughter spends almost the entire film in a coma and her mother is dead. The women in his life are reduced to being stuff to drive his anger, fear and resentment.

The way the film ties up it’s story is just overly neat and tidy. Implausibly so. Roth plays lip service to the idea that maybe Kersey is in the wrong…but it is set dressing. It is painfully clear that we are to identify with and thrill over his violence and cruelty.

When I took the disk from the player…I really found the movie pretty unremarkable, fading from my memory. It follows the required rules of action movies…but it fails to make the character interesting or complex. This is not John McClane taking on terrorists whose plot he stumbled into. This is a predator going on the hunt, which is a lot harder to root for.

June 26, 2018 0

All Stand Together Pt 5 (The Magnificent Seven, 2016)

While there had been a two season TV series in the late 90’s, the Seven Samurai inspired franchise had remained quiet. Certainly, plenty of films have used the “group of gunslingers or outlaws step up to help people in need. It is one of the most popular western motifs. But it took until 2016 for it to come back to life.

Set in 1879, Tycoon Bartholomew Bogue has overtaken the town of Rose Creek. He owns the Sheriff and has had his men deputized. Forcing the people into labor, they are living in misery. After he has some of the towns people killed to “lay down the law”, they seek the help of Sam Chisolm, a U.S. Marshall. Chisolm starts recruiting people, starting with gambler Joshua Faraday, who is trying to get his horse back, but lacks funds. As they work their way back, they reach out to various individuals…a Mexican Outlaw named Vasquez, an old trapper named Jack Home. He also brings in former Confederate officer named Goodnight Robicheaux and his partner Billy Rocks. Finally, they bring in exiled Comanche Warrior Red Harvest.

This film has a very conscious eye towards diversity. Billy Rocks is a Korean immigrant skilled both with knives and guns. Chisolm is a black man. And even the Confederate is explicitly portrayed as “not the racist kind”. He clearly has a longstanding friendship with Chisolm and his relationship with Rocks is an equal partnership.

But this works in the favor of the film. These characters all come from desperately different backgrounds, but come together to form a solid unit that trusts each other. I found myself genuinely liking these characters. Granted, a certain amount of this is due specifically to the cast. Denzel Washington tends to bring a sense of authority to every role. Chris Pratt of course has a likeable sweet boyishness that tends to run through his roles. Byung-Hun Lee is just kind of a dashing hero type. You can always depend on D’Onofrio and Hawke to deliver terrific character performances.

And Peter Sarsgaard’s Bogue? He is a clear cut, unambiguous bad guy. He does not even see himself as the hero of his story. He just believes in “might makes right”. When we are introduced to him, he steps into a church and shows no sense of respect for the faith of the parishioners.

Overall, this film is quite exiting and smartly chose to create an entirely new set of “Seven”. It is also a bit darker and grittier. That is not to say it is not fun, it definitely has it’s moments of levity. I feel like the addition of a revenge element for one of the Seven was unnecessary, and even kind of undermines the idea of the willingness of these guys to sacrifice themselves for the town.

But director Antoine Fuqua (Training Day, Shooter and the Equalizer) delivers a pretty solid energetic modern western with the Magnificent Seven.

March 13, 2018 0

…And Dip (Chips, 2017)

Chips was an action/drama from 1977 about motorcycle cops Ponch and Jon. I know I watched it as a kid, but beyond Erik Estrada and the other guy? Don’t remember much. But when it was announced that they were making a comedy movie based on the show, it seemed like an odd choice.

Written and directed by Dax Shepard, the update begins with Ponch as an FBI Agent who is sent undercover to bust a drug ring suspected to involve crooked motorcycle cops. He is teamed up with the highly inept Jon, who is trying to save a marriage he does not get is over. Ponch and Jon are constantly at odds to an annoying degree. In what I suspect was intended as a “positive” message, Jon criticizes Ponch of being homophobic which leads to, unsurprisingly, a whole lot of “Eeeew! NOT GAY” type of jokes.

The jokes don’t land and the characters lack chemistry. By the time Ponch and Jon are a team, it feels entirely unearned. The jokes are forced as well. This is a shame, as the cast is the one high point of the film. Michael Peña has great comic timing. And Vincent D’Onofrio is the villain. And yet, neither get to bring their skills to the rather uninspired script. Dax’s Jon is particularly flat. His real life wife, Kristen Bell just has a sweet persona and it is hard to buy she is this terrible marriage destroying wife.

Chips obviously aimed to fall into the same company of 21 Jump Street…but it misses that mark by a great distance.

September 7, 2017 0

He’s Gonna Be So Mad(Sinister 2, 2015)

A couple things.

Firstly, I really liked Scott Derrickson and C. Robert Cargill’s 2012 Sinister. It was eerie and ended strongly (with real tragedy). It was a challenge to the pursuit of selfish glory and especially at the expense of the needs of your loved ones.

Secondly, I have been spelling Bughuul wrong for the past three years. I am so embarrassed.

Sinister 2 appears to pick up a couple years after the original film. Deputy So & So (James Ransone) is now Ex-Deputy So & So (EDS&S from here on out). He is actively working to stop the spread of Bughuul’s evil, though he clearly is missing some of the information that Ellison Oswalt (Ethan Hawke) and Professor Jonas (Vincent D’Onofrio) discovered in the first film. Conveniently for the story, Jonas is now missing.

EDS&S has tracked the last Bughuul styled murder (all cases feature a horribly murdered family, a missing child and mysterious painted symbols) to a remote farmhouse with an old church. He goes to burn it down before anyone else can move in and continue the cycle. But he arrives to late and discovers there is a mother (Shannyn Sossamon) hiding with her two young sons Dylan and Zach. She is trying to keep her sons from the hands of her abusive husband, Unfortunately, Bughuul has reached out to her quiet and youngest (Dylan, played with gentleness by Robert Daniel Sloan).

The film has amped up the presence of the ghost children. In the first film, they quietly haunted Ellison, but we did not see them speaking much. Here they are very talkative, mostly appearing only to the young boys until the end when they become active poltergeists.

It also has changed the film projector from the first film a bit, inexplicably adding a turntable to play creepy music as the boys watch the films. The creepy snuff films are back. While the audience knows Bughuul’s goals and the way he works, EDS&S has to figure it out all over again, which includes a ham radio. I appreciate the attempt to show how Bughuul has used various forms of media (both films show an idea that art and mediums used for art allow him to move through the world)…but the first film suggested that Bughuul now was released into the internet. It is a bit of a shame that this was not really followed up on.

Honestly, the focus on EDS&S trying to figure out how Bughuul does it slows things down. The film does have some well done moments. EDS&S has a good connection with Dylan. And the idea that Dylan has a history of abuse becomes interesting as you see Bughuul’s ghost children try and use that to fire up a desire for cruelty. When one of the children mention his mother, Dylan snaps back that his mother did not do anything. The Ghost child coldly replies, “Exactly.”

There is a nice twist. And the film tries a very different ending, but it does not work on multiple levels. Parts convenience (getting certain characters out of the way) and parts troubling (making the central villain to take out a young boy is fairly problematic). It is hard to root for EDS&S to aggressively stop a child with physical violence (especially when you have involved themes of child and spousal abuse into the story). The creators kind of wrote themselves in a corner and are left finding another way to end the villainous kid while avoid having EDS&S be a killer of children.

The film has a final “horror movie” moment that felt like the creators were at a loss of how to end it and wanted a scare. So they repeat the same gag from the first film.

I feel Sinister 2 is better than some critics have said, but it still fails to deliver on what we got from it’s predecessor.

August 30, 2015 0

No Way This Will Go Wrong (Jurassic World, 2015)

It has been 14 years since we saw a Jurassic Park movie. And they opted to bring us one thing we had not seen. A fully operational space station. Wait, that is not it. I meant a fully functional theme park. Considering the last two film trod similar ground (small group of people stuck on the island running from dinosaurs) it makes sense that they went bigger this time around.

It is years later and the Dinosaur Theme Park has been running for at least a few years, successfully. Claire (Bryce Dallas Howard) is preparing the most daring exhibit yet. A genetically modified dinosaur, a creature that has never walked the earth before. Nothing could go wrong, except that her nephews are visiting the park this weekend. So Mayhem will ensue.

The plot is not really the point here (there are some big plot points that just disappear from the film entirely), it is cool dinosaur scares. And the film delivers there. There is a lot of fan service to the previous films (One I really liked was the return of BD Wong as Dr. Henry Wu, given a much bigger presence than the original film).

The characters seem all over the place, early on Chris Pratt’s Owen comes off as the stereotype of the charming misogynist. I find this trope absurd. Never have known a charming misogynist in the real world. But this personality trait drops pretty early, and does not resurface the rest of the film. Claire is introduced as the “Woman Who Is Sacrificing a Family To Have a Career”, but it is pretty clear when she realizes her nephews are in danger she considers them important, risking her life to save them.

From the minute characters are introduced, I started trying to figure out who was going to get eaten, and it is not to hard to tell. Faceless guys with guns, random park attendees and a couple big names because they are over confident or greedy. You can play this game in most Jurassic Park films, but the first film still invested in all the dinosaur food. We knew a lot about those people who got chomped. Little to no depth is provided here.

It probably sounds like I hated this film. But I didn’t. I actually enjoyed it. It has a very likeable cast, solid effects, cool dinosaurs and plenty of adventure. It kept me into the story, even when Claire ran super fast in high heels. It is a fun adventure, but not a deep one.

July 12, 2015 0