28 Weeks Later
The Rage Virus is sweeping through Britain. One small group is holed up in a fortified cottage, scratching for survival when a young boy, panicked and in need of help brings the enraged Infected right to their doorstep. Don sees his wife dragged away and barely escapes with his life.
It's 28 weeks later and the virus has passed. All of the infected have died of starvation and the long task of rebuilding has started. Don is reunited with his children, who were abroad at the time of the original outbreak, and then with his wife. She carries the virus, but is not affected by it. When Don unwisely kisses her, he becomes infected and starts a whole new outbreak.
Fortunately, the military have a plan to deal with this. Unfortunately, it means the utter extermination of everyone inside the quarantine zone. The fight for survival is on again, but this time there are two dangers.
Britain in terminal decay seems to be the theme of the moment. In CHILDREN OF MEN if was from the lack of children, now it's from the lack of everyone. This bleak and dystopian future is realised with remarkable skill and proves to be utterly convincing as the shell-shocked and helpless, almost hopeless, survivors are shuttled back into the Isle of Dogs, the first stronghold of the rebuilding operation.
Some of the set up is a bit clunky. The fiesty medical officer lays it all out on the line in the explanatory board meeting where the commander in chief explains how the military have it all under control and she asks 'What if it comes back'. And, of course it does come back. In spades.
The problem with sequels is that they have to be bigger than the original and often the concepts don't stretch to that. This, though, is no quick knock off out to simply skim a few more quid out of the original idea. The setting makes sense and the manner in which the virus comes back into the population is credible. On top of that, the characters actually act in a manner that you can believe in, the doctor trying to save her two child wards because of what's in their blood rather than because they're kids, the sniper finally sickening of the pointless killing and leaving his post, the helicopter pilot refusing to take the civilians that are with his comrade. These are believable characters acting believably in a credible scenario that expands on the original without following its template. Also the film sets out its stall early on by infecting its one name star. With only no name actors in the cast there are no guarantees on who will survive.
Director Juan Carlos Fresnadillo does a fine job is keeping all of this together. He makes London look gorgeous and empty in the quieter moments, gets good performances out of his cast in the early sections where time is given to his characters to show they are real people before all the running and the killing. Ah, the running and the killing. Make no mistake, there is a lot of running and killing. The rage virus is a masterful creation and the depiction of its effects is shown through frenetic camerawork that moves so quickly and uncontrollably that you can barely register what is actually happening, but the sense of speed and violence is certainly rammed home. There is much blood, gore and tearing of flesh, but you register it without really seeing it, so fast is the action. Only the attack of the raging Don on his strapped down wife is shown in any detail and is all the worse for it.
This is a science fiction horror movie first and foremost and there are bravura scenes there to terrify. The stand out is walk through the blacked out Underground with only a sniper night scope to see what lies in wait, but the deadly gas creeping through the streets is eerily terrible and the fire-bombing of London streets is both terrible and beautiful.
28 WEEKS LATER is a kinetic science fiction horror that sets up its scenario and characters well enough to ensure that you will care, will be scared and will have a good time.
30 Days of Night
The most northerly town in the whole of the United States lies in the arctic circle and every year the sun sets for thirty days. Many people can't cope with this and leave. Those that remain find themselves in a strange twilight existence. Eban, the sheriff, finds the last day filled with strange events. A pile of mobile phones are burned beyond use on the edge of town. The local sled dog breeder finds all his animals slaughtered. The only helicopter in town is damaged beyond repair and the electricity just went out. A stranger in town announces that death is approaching. And then the screaming starts.
A place where the sun doesn't appear for thirty days has got to be a vampire's paradise and so it's a neat idea to do just that, put the town under siege from a small army of bloodsuckers, but whilst the concept is neat, the development of the story is undeniably messy. The lead vampire announces that they have worked for centuries to hide their presence so why should they attack and destroy a whole town, something that will draw worldwide attention? What is their basic motivation anyway? If it's simply to feed then what do they do the rest of 11 months of the year? If they've been around for centuries why didn't they twig onto this much sooner? It's apparently important that the victims' heads are taken off their bodies, but it's never apparent why.
The vampires are visually impressive, subtle changes to faces rather than wholesale makeovers, but they lack any real personality, being mainly portrayed as intelligent animals and the use of a subtitled language further distances the audience from them.
Beyond the problems with vampire motivation, the film gets on with doing what it's supposed to do. The small, but significant build up of strange happenings (it's a mystery how so many barking dogs just get ignored) is faintly creepy and introduces the cast of future fodder. Josh Hartnett lacks real credibility as the sheriff/hero, but the lack of other big star names means that nobody is safe. The acting, though, is of good enough quality for the sense of fear to be palpable without being overly forced through screaming hysterics.
Then the shadowy figures start to appear and the first few people die. This is doesn't raise the creepy factor as it should and the gore count remains low (although the later graphic axe beheadings make the 15 certificate a bit questionable).
When the assault on the town begins, the film picks up, but immediately stalls itself with the survivors hiding out and doing nothing much for long periods of time with only a few action sequences thrown in. These tend to be quite good when they happen. The aerial tracking shot over the town in full on battle mode is impressively different, the little girl in the grocery store is a great scene, you know someone's going to go into the masher and the sheriff's ultimate solution all play well.
In the end analysis, 30 DAYS OF NIGHT is a great idea with only average realisation. There are fine moments and periods of dullness. It's not scary enough for the lovers of frighteners and not bloody enough for the gorehounds. It has all been done before and better. You won't, however, be sleeping through it.
1408
Mike Enslin is a professional ghost sceptic. He writes books about supposedly haunted places, giving them ghoul ratings, without ever believing in the supernatural. In fact, since his daughter died, he's had a hard time believing in anything anymore. When he recieves a mysterious postcard picturing New York's Dolphin Hotel with the simple message 'Don't Enter 1408' (add up the numbers), he does some research and discovers that a lot of people have died in that room. He is further intrigued when the hotel refuses to let him book into the room. Invoking an old law, he compels them to do so, but not before the hotel manager attempts to talk him out of it, giving him the full history of the room. Determined, however, he enters the room and....ah, but that would be telling.
1408 is based on a short story by Stephen King. The operative word in that statement is 'short'. If King (never a man to use a word when a page and a half of flowery prose and several local colloquisms will do) can't stretch the concept out to more than a short story, how will it fare as a feature length film? Let's face it, Stephen King adaptations vary from the spectacularly good to the spectacularly awful. For every THE SHINING there's a MAXIMUM OVERDRIVE, for every MISERY a PET SEMATARY. Still, the man sells books and the allure of that built in audience can't be ignored.
1408 benefits from a very simple central concept. The set up reads very much like that of the similar THE SHINING. Admittedly, that's a full novel and the whole hotel is haunted rather than just one haunted hotel room, but the whole writer coming to the hotel to be met by the manager who explains the history of the place is very, very familiar. It is given a nice twist, though, by the very suave performance from Samuel L Jackson as the manager. His delivery of the room's backstory is vital in setting the scene and starting to crank up the dread atmosphere. He does it extremely well. By the time that Enslin is faced with the door of room 1408, the tension is already way up there.
Once inside the room, John Cusack carries the whole film on his shoulders. The creepy noises and strange happenings begin, low key at first, and he plays suitably cocky descending into impressed to unnerved and slowly starts to come unglued as the room starts to play increasingly wierd and harsh tricks with his mind. There are a lot of 'jump' moments, but these are particularly effective because of the slow build up creating a very real sense of unease. The first shock moment, for example, is as simple as the bed suddenly being turned down despite no maid having entered the room. A trip outside the window is also a knockout. The appearance of his daughter is particularly affecting.
It doesn't all work quite so well, however. The ghosts don't look particularly ghost-like, more like pictures from a malfunctioning TV and the window/hand interface is predictable from way off. Also the trip back to LA's beach is an obvious time-filler, jammed in there to expand on the lack of King stuff to make up the running time, and it robs the latter stages of some of their claustrophobic quality.
All of this, though, is reliant on John Cusack. Once inside the room, it's a one-man show and he is able to make. His character is a cocky arse at the start, but his descent into hell is a tour de force and makes everything seem that much more believable. Through him, this stuff is genuinely scary.
Not the greatest Stephen King adaptation in the world, then, but firmly in the top flight and guaranteed to make you think twice about booking into that next hotel room.
ALIEN vs PREDATOR 2:REQUIEM
In orbit around the Earth, a Predator alien ship gets into trouble when an alien parasite burst out of its chest. This creature grows quickly to adulthood and kills the rest of the crew, causing the ship to tumble out of control onto the planet near to a small earth city. The alien eggs on board hatch and release alien facehuggers that then proceed to impregnate hunters and tramps before the hybrid predator/alien finds a way of using pregnant women in the hospital to serve as nests for multiple alien births. On the home planet of the Predators, a single one gets the message as to what has happened and descends to Earth in order to stop the infestation no matter what the cost. A small group of humans are caught in the crossfire as they struggle to survive.
ALIEN vs PREDATOR was not hailed as a great acheivement when it appeared, pitting a small group of Aliens against a small group of Predators in the confined spaces of an ancient pyramid beneath the Antarctic ice cap. Despite this, it made a good deal of money. As a result we have ALIEN vs PREDATOR:REQUIEM (hereafter known as AvP2).
First the good news. If you like blood then there is plenty to be had in this new chapter of the franchise. The film is director by two brothers (credited as the Brothers Strause) who have been working on the special effects for Alien films from long before the Predator franchise moved in. As a result, they are familiar with their beasties and know how to throw the red stuff around. In fact, they seem to have an unending supply of the stuff. As a result we have arms dropping off, heads being splattered, people being impaled to walls and the aforementioned sequence in which the alien/predator hybrid uses the pregnancy ward as incubators for an army of warriors which is particularly sticky and squirm-inducing. Also, the cast is peopled with a couple of familiar faces, but no stars and so any can (and does) get killed. There is absolutely no telling who is going to survive.
Unfortunately, the characters are somewhat stereotyped and there is not enough introduction to them to make us care very much whether they live or die. Neither do we care very much about the Predator. It descends to Earth in order to sort out the problem and quite happily goes around killing everything that gets in its way, but never connects with the humans (other than using them as bait) and so never develops a personality that we can either appreciate of hate. The Alien/Predator hybrid at least has a plan of sorts. That plan involves an awful lot of soldier aliens and that is a problem with the story. There are eggs in the crashing spaceship to make the first two soldiers and the hybrid can make multiple ones using human females, but where the constant supply of unending warriors comes from is anyone's guess. They also grow with a speed that is inconsistent with the rest of the franchise. The hybrid alien bursts out the dead Predator on the Predator ship and yet is fully grown enough to take out the rest of the crew as a fully grown adult before anyone can even notice. There is no explanation as to how the aliens can grow so quickly, the problem being ignored to just get the screen full of them.
The action, and there is plenty of it, is gritty and realistic (with all that blood), but much of it happens in dark places or in the pouring rain and so half of the time it is difficult to see who is doing what to whom. It is, however, fast and frenetic and is likely to keep fans of the franchise happy. In the end, what we have is a small group of survivors battling their way through an army of monsters for survival. Replace the aliens with zombies and you have PLANET TERROR (without the bonkers humour) or vampires and you have 30 DAYS OF NIGHT and I'm not sure that this improves on either of those.
One thing is for sure, however, and that is that you won't be sleeping through it and it certainly does enough to make sure that ALIEN vs PREDATOR 3 cannot be far away.
ARTHUR AND THE INVISIBLES
Arthur has problems, or more precisely his grandmother has problems, but since Arthur lives with her that means he also has problems. Since his grandfather disappeared three years or so earlier, times have been hard on the farm and now the bank is going to foreclose. This is the depression after all. Then Arthur discovers a story about a race of tiny people called Minimoys that his grandfather encountered in Africa. They now live in the back garden and may hold the secret to a fortune in rubies. In order to find out where the rubies are, Arthur must transform into a minimoy himself and descend into their world. This is only possible on one night every few months and it just so happens that tonight is the night.
What's this - Luc Besson, creator of SUBWAY, LEON and NIKITA making a children's fantasy. Admittedly, he did make THE FIFTH ELEMENT which was more appreciated by children than adults, but a full blown kid's flick. Has he got the sensibility for it? The short answer is no.
There are a lot of problems with ARTHUR AND THE INVISIBLES, but the most damning one is a lack of charm. A children's film can be forgiven a lot of shortcomings if it has charm. This has very little and pretty much all of that occurs in the real world and is ascribable to Freddie Highmore as Arthur. Mia Farrow plays his grandmother and proves to be woefully miscast and woefully not funny. Just because it's a kid's film doesn't mean you can get away with gurning.
Once into the minimoy world, however, the charm leaks away. True, the animation is fine (though unstaggering) and there is always a lot going on, but it's hard to care very much. Madonna pops up voicing the minimoy princess who takes a dislike to Arthur when he turns out to be a true hero and steals her thunder by pulling a sword from the stone (oh yes, it's that derivative as well), but equally inevitably begins to fall for him as their adventure continues. At least the villain is suitably villainous and everything is wrapped up neatly by the end, but nothing here is charming.
The action is fluffed, consisting mainly of moves stolen from other films. In fact the whole fight in the Rasta bar (yes, you read that right) is a pastiche of famous fights we have seen before. It's all pretty soulless and by the numbers.
Then there's the small matter of the casting. Freddie Highmore is fine in the main role, but whose idea was it to cast a much older and sexually provocative pop star as his love interest? Even were her vocal performance that much better than it is there would still be a very serious ick factor. On top of that the rest of the cast is full of big names, but Robert DeNiro, Harvey Keitel, Chazz Palminteri and Emilio Estevez don't exactly rank high on the cute and fluffy scale.
The younger and less demanding members of the audience will enjoy ARTHUR AND THE INVISIBLES (it is colourful and full of movement after all), but the older children will get restive and the adults that are dragged along will find little to impress.
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AEON FLUX
99% of the world's population was killed off by the industrial disease. 400 years later, the last remnants of the human race live within a single walled city, an ordered civilisation holding back the ravages of the world outside which has returned to the wild. This civilisation is ruled over by the Goodchilde dynasty and peace has reigned. That peace is now threatened by a group of terrorist/freedom fighters who have seen that people are going missing and that all is not well in the perfect society. Their main weapon is Aeon Flux, the perfect assassin. The time has come to strike, but Aeon is about to find out that things are not quite as simple as they seemed and that the enemy might not be quite as evil as she has been led to believe.
AEON FLUX comes to us on a wave of box office failure and derision. There have been many reviews playing on the fact that the character's surname rhymes with "sucks" or even taking the "l" out, but can it really be as bad as all that?
The answer is, inevitably, no. This is not to say that AEON FLUX is a good film, because it isn't, but nor is it the train wreck it has been made out to be.
Negatives first. The film is a muddled mess on almost every level. The plot scattershots off in all kinds of directions and never really knows what it wants to be. Is it a sci-fi romp? Does it have something to say about modern life, science and cloning? Is it about the human spirit? The fact that it is based on a series of MTV short animations might account for this schizophrenia. The underlying science is also a bit dodgy. We are told that cloning takes place from stored DNA and then we are told that subsequent lives bring out the past identitites. Surely, if the original DNA is used then the condition could not be progressive?
The action doesn't work either. Clearly, director Karyn Kusama can't direct action and so the fights scenes are all edited to muddy the fight scenes to camouflage this fact. The saving grace that the fight scenes could have been are, therefore, wasted. Not to mention that the character's raison d'etre is violence and killing, so why isn't there any good violence and killing. For that matter, where did all these expendable soldiers come from. This is supposed to be the ultimate civilisation and yet the place is crawling with stormtroopers. It just doesn't hang together.
Positives then (and yes, there are some). Charlize Theron is just about the most beautiful woman on the planet and giving her a brunette makeover can't change that. She's in almost every shot, so there is plenty of time for the boys to drool over her.
The plot does have some things to say about the nature of evil, the nature of humanity and the the nature of greed and power. It is nice that the heroine has to struggle to understand what's going on and when the plot's cloning issues are actually revealed there is more depth than might have beene expected. And then the bullets start to fly.
In the final analysis, there is more wrong with AEON FLUX than is right with it, but switch off your brain and look at the eye candy that is Charlize Theron and it won't be time totally wasted.
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BABYLON AD
Toorop, ex-mercenary, ex-people trafficer, exile from the USA and all round hard nut takes on one last job for a huge wedge of cash. All he has to do is to sneak one girl and her chaperone out of Kazakhstan and into New York City. Simple enough, except for the various border guards and immigration teams that stand in their way. Not to mention the two armies of killers who seem to have their own, but opposing agendas. Keeping Toorop alive isn't one of them.
It's a dystopian future. Is there any other kind in science fiction these days. Everyone outside America is poor and life is cheap and the rule of law has broken down. It also snows a lot. As far as backgrounds go, we've been here, done that and probably bartered a goat for the T-shirt. It's a world borrowed from who knows how many other future movies and the background isn't all that's been borrowed.
The plot feels like a hand-me-down from, for example, CHILDREN OF MEN, but borrows ideas from all over. There's a little MAD MAX in the broken down future, most especially the cage-fighting settlement. Artificial animals get taken from BLADE RUNNER. The over advertised world of New York is informed by MINORITY REPORT. And so it goes on. This familiarity, however, doesn't make it any less muddled. There is so much that isn't explained (or we'd just given up the will to pay attention). Why, for example does the girl have powers - yes she's genetically modified, but only in brain power according to her doctor/creator. Why does the religious order that raised her need her as a symbol of their power? Who's going to believe in a new messiah in times like these anyway? If they're so powerful and rich, why can't they just fly the girl in on a commercial airliner? If she can withstand a missile attack why is labour so hard for her? What is the significance of the children?
The action, also, is muddy and difficult to follow. Each fight is edited with really fast cutting, but this just messes things up rather than energising them. Only in what is presumed to be the final fight does it reach anything worth paying attention to, but then it goes and adds on an extra twenty minutes and whole other fight that really just isn't needed, leaving the film with a real sense of anticlimax (which is surprising since there is no climax to speak of anyway.
There was a time, just after THE FAST AND THE FURIOUS and PITCH BLACK when Vin Diesel was touted as the new Arnold Schwarzenegger, heir to the action throne. Then it all went wrong with a series of poor choices and BABYLON AD certainly isn't going to buck that particular trend. Sure, it only requires him to growl and look mean, but he can't even do that convincingly. Michelle Yeoh manages to bring a sense of honour and heroism to her unconventional nun that it comes as a surprise when the character turns out to be a little more morally suspect than expected. And Melanie Thierry makes for a very unimpressive most important woman in the world. Cameos from Gerard Depardieu, Charlotte Rampling, Mark Strong and Lambert Wilson are hardly worth the effort.
BABYLON AD is not so much bad as just tired. There is nothing here that hasn't been done before, and better, elsewhere a dozen times. Even as a bit of mindless action entertainment, it falls short.
Written by Eric Besnard
Directed by Mathieu Kassovitz
Toorop.................................Vin Diesel
Sister Rebeka.......................Michelle Yeoh
Aurora...................................Melanie Thierry
Gorsky...................................Gerard Depardieu
High Priestess......................Charlotte Rampling
Finn........................................Mark Strong
Darquandier..........................Lambert Wilson
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BATMAN BEGINS
So BATMAN BEGINS, and how. The question is whether this is the best Batman film of them all or the best superhero film of them all. The franchise that most of us had thought was dead and gone is reborn gloriously here, banishing tarnished memories of BATMAN AND ROBIN forever.
This is Batman's origin story, the tale of how a bereaved child, the victim of an awful, random crime, is transformed into a masked vigilante patrolling the night and saving those unable to save themselves. It starts off with Bruce Wayne in a Chinese prison (say what?) taking on what seems to be the whole population. There he is challenged by Henri Ducard to really take on evil, to face the fears within himself and come out as a member of the League of Shadows. Unfortunately, the last step in the training is one that Wayne can't take and so he returns home to fight evil in his own way, and not a moment too soon. Someone is bringing drugs into Gotham city in huge quantities and only putting half of it on the streets. Someone has stolen a top secret microwave emitter capable of flashing huge amounts of water to steam and someone wants Wayne's crusading legal friends dead.
The look of BATMAN BEGINS is astonishing. Gone are the hard black shadows and gothic stylings of Tim Burton's originals. Mercifully, there is also not a hint of neon blues, greens or pinks. Here the colours are muted, faded, washed out, reflecting the city of Gotham and the characters that inhabit it. Gotham is New York ultra. The buildings are recognisably real, but heightened. The aerial view seen as Bruce Wayne comes home, could be an aerial shot of the Big Apple. So whilst the city towers broodingly over slum streets suspension of disbelief is challenged only by the railroad system and even that ends up looking like the New York metro of a million movies.
The gloomy, edgy look the place is echoed in the stylings of the action. The camera flashes around the punch-ups in a hyped-up version of THE BOURNE SUPREMACY's kinetic action to the point that you don't see the punches land or the kicks connect, but it looks more real and heightens the grittiness. No MATRIX bullet time games here.
The gizmos, too, are stuck in the real world. The Batmobile is a military prototype and looks like it. The Batsuit takes most of the film to perfect and the bat-shaped Ninja stars that Wayne produces on a workshop lathe are decidedly low-tech.
What really grips, though, and lifts BATMAN BEGINS above the pack are the plot and the characters. Plot and character in a comic book movie - what will they think of next? The characters here are complex and conflicted, just as they were in the Burton versions, but the writing is infinitely better and the players excel in their roles almost across the board. Christian Bale as the coming of age Batman is perfect. Angry, confused and lashing out at himself and the world, his taking on the mantle of the bat never seems anything less than convincing. He is the core of the film and carries it with an ease an naturalness that none of the previous wearers of the suit were ever able to manage.
Support across the board is excellent. Liam Neeson is a stand out as Henri Ducard, Wayne's tutor, though there is more than a whiff of Qui-Gonn Jinn from THE PHANTOM MENACE in his mentor character.Michael Caine also steps in as Alfred the Butler and provides a measure of heart, just as Michael Gough did before him. Cillian Murphy's Dr Crane (aka The Scarecrow) is a terrifyingly convincing, brilliantly-played villain whose drug-induced tortures of fear make him a surprisingly effective and original bad guy likely to cause a few nightmares. Morgan Freeman plays the supplier of all Batman's gadgets and is as dependable as ever, though he can do this sort of thing in his sleep. When is he going to get another role to stretch him even a little bit? Katie Holmes is the girlfriend who is also a district attorney and so finds herself in peril more often than the average citizen of Gotham and the part is as thankless as it sounds.Gary Oldman is thankfully reined in as the young Jim Gordon (one day to make Commissioner, I'm sure) and so gives one of his better performances. Ken Watanabe is Ra's Al Ghul, the leader of the sect that trains Wayne to become the Bat and does all that is required of him, which is precious little to be fair. In fact, the only bum note in the whole cast is the usually reliable Tom Wilkinson as a tough american gang lord. Perhaps it's just all those memories of THE FULL MONTY, but I just couldn't believe in him.
So, the summer has well and truly started. You can forget REVENGE OF THE SITH, blockbuster season starts here. Can any of the rest of this year's offerings match up? It's a tough ask, so come on Messrs Spielberg and Cruise, bring it on because the Bat is back and in style.
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BEOWULF
When King Hrothgar opens his new celebration hall, it is visited by Grendel, a huge deformed monster that kills most of his men and destroys everything inside. The call for help goes out and is answered by Beowulf, a hero who is not above embellishing his own triumphs. He defeats Grendel, but learns that there is another, greater evil in the hills, Grendel's mother, a demon who can ensnare men's minds and use their offspring to wreak great vengeance, as she did with Hrothgar's son Grendel. Can the flawed Beowulf escape her enchantment and destroy the evil for all time?
As nobody here at the SCI FI FREAK SITE has ever read the old english epic poem which is the origin of the enduring tale of Beowulf and Grendel, we will not be referring to it in this review. This is about the film alone.
BEOWULF uses the same technology as Bob Zemeckis's film THE POLAR EXPRESS in which the actors' performances are captured by computer and then used to animate the characters on screen. Whilst there might be great opportunities in the use of this technique (making Grendel more human for example) it seems very strange to performance capture and actor and then use them to animate a character that looks exactly like the actor. The results are never going to be completely accurate and it is distracting looking at a facsimile of, say Anthony Hopkins, doing a bad impersonation of him. This also goes for the characters of Unferth, Wiglaf and Grendel's mother, all of whom are instantly recognisable, but never quite right.
The central character of Beowulf is the exception, possibly because greater attention has been paid to his creation as he appears in the greater part of the movie. It also allows the director to have the character run around stark naked fighting the monster, when the actor would likely have baulked. This sequence is, actually, rather ridiculous as objects are constantly placed between the camera and the Beowulf's baby-making equipment like in the old breakfast cereal adverts. It's funny, but not in the way that the director intended.
Other aspects of the animation don't impress, especially the horses and dogs, which never move anything like real animals, and the need the director has to have his camera fly about over unfeasibly large landscapes, just to show that he can. Once is fine, but after that it doesn't serve the story. Also the bits that are put in so that the film can be shown in Imax 3D are as annoying as they always are when any 3D film is shown flat.
It's certainly not all bad though. Angelina Jolie as Grendel's mother, dripping strategically-placed gold liquid, is a stunning acheivement and certainly conveys why no man can resist her charms and the battle with the dragon that is Beowulf's son is epic, exciting and a rousing climax.
Queen Wealthow is a pleasingly down to earth character amongst all the testosterone pumped warriors and her relationship with Hrothgar and Beowulf is more complex than might have been expected. Beowulf's lieutenant Wiglaf is also a great character in his own right. The plotting isn't over-complicated, but it does have some sly digs in it, gives huge flaws to all of its male characters (lust, drunkenness, arrogance, cruelty) whilst also revelling in the morality-free atmosphere of their pleasures. It even gives substance and reason to Grendel's assaults on the drinking hall, although the noisy neighbour issue might have been more easily resolved with a phone call to the council.
As an animation, BEOWULF is caught between its twin personalites of wanting to be an adult take on the fantasy genre and needing to keep it clean enough and the violence limited enough for the 12A certificate and the younger audience it might attract. Deciding which audience it was after might have crafted a more certain and effective film.
You won't sleep through BEOWULF and there are moments where you will be thrilled, excited, impressed and titillated, but you will also likely leave feeling strangely underwhelmed.
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THE CLONE WARS
The Republic's war against the Separatist movement is not going well. Half of the Clone Trooper army has been cut off from their commanders by an annexation of the space lanes. In order to find a new way of getting around, the outer rim space lanes have become critical and the Separatists make a bid to close them to the Republic by kidnapping the son of Jabba the Hutt (whose clan control the outer rim routes), making it look like the Jedi were responsible and turning the Hutt against the Republic. Anakin Skywalker and his new apprentice (Ashoka) are sent to get the child back whilst Kenobi must negotiate a treaty with Jabba.
Whatever you think of George Lucas's second trilogy (which is actually the first trilogy speaking chronologically), there is no denying that the STAR WARS franchise changed the face of science fiction, of cinema and of popular culture irrevocably. Steven Spielberg may have invented the modern summer blockbuster with JAWS, but it was STAR WARS that cemented the concept in Hollywood, a legacy that is rumbling along to this day. Perhaps that's why Lucas can't leave STAR WARS alone. He doesn't need the money anymore, that's for sure.
Whatever the reason, here is THE CLONE WARS, set between ATTACK OF THE CLONES and REVENGE OF THE SITH (or Episode 2.5 if you prefer), this animated feature is to whet the appetite of those waiting for the forthcoming TV series and it manges to combine all that is both good and bad about the franchise.
Let's start with the spectacle, which is something that the film series has never skimped on. Opening with an extended battle between Republic forces commanded by Obi Wan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker and the droid armies of Separatists it sets out its stall from the start. A CG cartoon it might be, but it's a CG cartoon with a real sense of scale. Droids and clone troopers are perfect material for computer animation and so there are a lot of them blowing each other to kingdom come in a sequence that could have easily have graced the climax of other stories. Later on there's a battle up the sheer side of a cliff and lightsabre duels all over the place. When the action is flowing, this is STAR WARS doing what STAR WARS does well.
Unfortunately, it then stops pauses for the plot and, oh dear. The original STAR WARS was a simple enough pitch (Farm boy and rogue save princess from wizard and save the village from Wizard's monster revenge - with spaceships). Try putting the plot of the this film into such a simple pitch and you can't. You start getting bogged down with space routes and battle plans and... well you get the idea. It also doesn't make that much sense. How do the Hutt control the space lanes? Since ships travel through hyperspace, why do they need space lanes? How can you prevent a ship in hyperspace going wherever it wants to go? Why do the separatists come up with such a convoluted plan to discredit the Republic instead of simply blackmailing Jabba with the life of his kidnapped offspring?
Then there's the characters. Animating them and taking the actors out of the equation might be Lucas's idea of nirvana, but it doesn't make them any less stiff or any more likeable. The voice actors do passable impressions where they are not the originals (Samuel L Jackson, Christopher Lee and Anthony Daniels return whilst Ewan McGregor and Hayden Christiansen do not), but the dialogue is still stilted and occasionally dire and everyone is so po-faced and, well, dull. Only newcomer Ashoka, shows any sort of life at all. Of course, if you have seen REVENGE OF THE SITH then you already know who is going to be alive at the end of this film and so there is no real threat other than that to Ashoka and that's why she has such a large part over the established characters.
Apart from the question of why we needed this film (it advances none of the major plotlines of the franchise) other than it is set in the STAR WARS universe, it is possible to switch off your brain and enjoy the spectacular action sequences. When the shooting stops and the characters start talking, you'll want the shooting to start again.
Written by Henry Gilroy, Steven Melching and Scott Murphy
Directed by Dave Filoni
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CHILDREN OF MEN
It's 2027 and the world has gone to hell in a handbasket. For reasons as yet unknown, no baby has been born in 18 years and the human race has lost its hope, for what hope is there when there is no future? The human race dies out with this generation, so what's really the point in anything. As civilisation crumbles, Britain struggles on, helped by an almost totalitarian police state in which it is illegal to avoid fertility tests and illegal aliens are interned in huge concentration camps and then deported or killed without mercy. A lucky elite live in luxury whilst the rest suffer the ever downward spiral of despair.
In the midst of all this is Theo (Clive Owen), a man drifting along on his own wave of apathy. Then he is kidnapped by his old girlfriend (Julianne Moore), mother of the child they both lost to a flu pandemic and still the kind of radical fighter that he once was. Her fight is now with the Fishes, a group fighting for the rights of the illegal immigrants, but she has a greater task now, that of getting a young woman to a meeting with a boat off the south coast. This woman is the first in 18 years to get pregnant and that is such a powerful symbol of hope that many groups would do anything to get hold of it.
There's not a lot of fun to be had in CHILDREN OF MEN, but then it's not that kind of science fiction. It's well known that this genre can mirror the concerns of the time more openly than many others and this is the perfect example of that. Using the infertility as a catalyst, this film examines the breakdown of the family and society as a whole. Without families, without children, society cannot hold and anarchy is the result.
The big debate over illegal immigration is taken to its extreme with a depiction of a state in which to be an illegal immigrant is to be stripped of all rights, to be caged, treated like animals, imprisoned and even shot without any mercy. And yet it is the immigrant community that proves to be of significance in the film. The Fishes are fighting for their rights, they provide the most assistance and it is one of their number that bears the all-important child. None of this, though, is rammed down our throats. This is not propaganda, just an examination of the times through science fiction's distorting mirror.
There are problems with it, of course. There are no likeable characters at all (with the exception of Michael Caine's pantomime pothead hippy) and Clive Owen's lead character is so stripped of emotion and hope that his eventual redemption doesn't register on the emotional scale as it should. Julianne Moore (an actress that we really have time for here at the SCI FI FREAK SITE manages to make no impact at all in her role as his lover and captor. You are left wondering what it was, and is, that would make him risk everything for her. Other characters are, and remain, in the background, rendering the threat from the Fishes less overpowering and the fates of those that the heroes meet along their way less affecting.
Alfonso Cuaron's direction, is partly at fault for this. His depiction of the depressed, devastated future is impeccable and one of the film's greatest plus points, but the coldness of the colour scheme extends to his treatment of the characters and a couple of nostalgic speeches isn't enough to give them any depth for us.
There are also flashes of real power in the film as well. The moment when a full-scale battle is silenced by the cry of a new-born baby is undeniably full of resonance and almost succeeds in wiping out all the doubts about the film away in one moment.
CHILDREN OF MEN is a little too cerebral and cold to be completely successful, but it is easily the most thought-provoking and convincing portrayal of the future that the genre has seen in quite a long time.
CLOVERFIELD
A going away party is in full swing when something impacts in New York. The frightened partygoers suddenly find the severed head of the Statue of Liberty bouncing down their street and a giant monster on the rampage. Unable to escape from Manhattan, they struggle to rescue one of their girlfriends and find the evacuation point before the military go all out to destroy the monster without care for who might be within the zone of destruction.
CLOVERFIELD is the most eagerly awaited science fiction film since, well since THE PHANTOM MENACE (and we know what happened there) thanks to a very crafty marketing campaign based on saying nothing at all. At first it was only the leaked fact that JJ Abrams, the producer of LOST had a new film project and that it might be science fiction. Then the name CLOVERFIELD emerged, which, of course, revealed nothing. Finally there was the intriguing artwork (see above) with the headless Statue of Liberty and swathe of damage through the distant city skyline that sent the by now foaming at the mouth fanboys into overdrive. By the time that the inconclusive trailer emerged the film's success was utterly assured and, considering its (relatively) low $25 million budget, profit within days of release.
That level of hype, however, often leads to let down when the film is finally seen, so is that the case here? Frustratingly (and inkeeping with the whole nature of the project to date) the answer is inconclusive.
The story is not exactly a new one. New York has been being demolished by giant monsters since Hollywood began and CLOVERFIELD is simply THE BEAST FROM 20,000 FATHOMS told from the viewpoint of the residents of the city, armed with digital video cameras. Being unconnected in any way with the history of the beast or the attempts by the military to destroy it, they have no information at all about what it is, where it came from, what it wants or anything else for that matter. As a result, it brings a refreshing new slant to the story, but at the same time offers no solutions to the questions that even the characters give voice to. All we learn is that the monster is big, destructive and (in the words of one of the soldiers that the survivors run into) 'winning'.
The framing device of having the film made by one of characters on a video camera brings an immediacy to the action, but also means that half the time the camera is flashing around all over the place so much that there's no chance of following what's going on. The more effective moments are when the camera becomes a bit more still such as in a moment when the camera is switched over to low light conditions to reveal an impending threat. The resultant attack is just a whirl of images. It is also hard to believe throughout the film that the kid still has the camera and is filming as he runs for his life when he would have thrown it away to gain more speed.
The video camera idea also means that we are subjected to a running commentary by the character of Hud, constantly asking where people are going, what's happening and helpfully offering his view of what people must be feeling or thinking just in case the audience didn't manage to pick up on it. This is frequently distracting and annoying as hell. On the trek up a tower block's stairways, he wonders where the creature has come from only to be asked whether it matters. When he reacts angrily that is does it sounds like a fit of childish pique, when a shot of the character's face might have shown that it was all that he had to hold onto his sanity with. The same gritty feel that the film has acheived could have been maintained through the hand held technique without having the camera welded to a character's hand and giving some better stability to some of the shots. The first half hour of the film at the party also wouldn't look like an awful amateur home video and be as dull as an awful amateur home video.
Most monster movies live or die by their monster. The one in CLOVERFIELD is almost never shown in totality and never in a close shot for more than a few seconds. It is, however, wonderfully rendered into the footage of the camera and never looks fake. This is how CGI ought to be used. There is also the matter of the smaller creatures that come off the larger one and are just as deadly and much faster. Are they parasites, part of the main creature, its young? The matter is never really considered let alone resolved.
All of this sounds very negative, but there is a lot of good stuff in the film as well. The big set pieces (arrival of Liberty's head, appearance of the monster, rescue in a collapsing building, escape across the bridge, battle in the tunnels) are all pretty exciting and once the story gets going the audience is swept along with it. There is no guessing which way the story is going to go as it takes in a few side alleys along its way and there is no telling who is going to live or die as the cast is made up on unknowns, all of them equally expendable. They pretty much do a decent job of conveying the ordinariness, fear and confusion of their characters, but there aren't any standouts and it's hard to remember them as soon as the film ends.
It goes to show what can be acheived on a relatively tight budget if you have the idea and the story to go with it. It's not the revelation that the marketing campaign promised us, but it sets the bar for the blockbusters of the year to follow and they are going to find it a very hard target to reach.
CORALINE
Coraline is bored. Her parents are busy working on a writing project that might make them some money and so they don't have time for her. The circus performance who lives upstairs is training mice to dance and is clearly bonkers. The two aged actresses who live downstairs are as dotty as they come and the only person her own age is a really annoying boy with an even more annoying cat. When she finds a secret door, then, she doesn't hesitate to go through and finds herself in another place where she has another mother and another father, both of whom have time only for her. He writes songs and plants gardens in her honour whilst she cooks wonderful food and makes bright clothes.
The thing is that they have buttons for eyes. And that's not all. Whilst the alternative neighbours all try to win Coraline's favours, she becomes aware that something isn't quite right here, not everyone is as happy as they seem and there is a plan regarding her own eyes and a shiny pair of buttons.
CORALINE is a stop-motion animation work very much along the lines of THE NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS, THE CORPSE BRIDE and JAMES AND THE GIANT PEACH. This is no bad thing because this trio of films brim over with energy and life and invention and so does CORALINE. When you're dealing with a child's alternative fantasy world then it's going to look out of kilter and be full of imagination and this fantasy world is nothing if not out of kilter.
The button eyes, for example, are deeply disturbing, probably more so for the adults than for the kids in the audience, but be warned that some younger children might find this an altogether too frightening experience (some in the screening we saw were seriously wigged out) especially towards the end which has more excitement and carefully orchestrated action and tension than many a live action thriller out there.
The animation is stunning, state of the art for this sort of thing and you very quickly forget that you're watching models that have been moved a tiny step at a time and just get swept up in the story, even though some of the characters look very bizarre (the two old actresses wearing not very much is very bizarre, surreal and again very deeply disturbing).
The film is made in the 3D that is rapidly becoming de rigeur for fantasy, but there isn't too much stuff sticking out of the screen at you, especially after the first few minutes once it just gets on with telling the story.
Henry Selick (responsible for both THE NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS and JAMES AND THE GIANT PEACH) does a wondeful job of adapting Neil Gaiman's story for the screen and if the voice cast don't stand out specifically, that's because they're serving the characters rather than themselves. Coraline is a fine leading character, sparky, independant, but also loyal and determined. OK, she's also a bit spoiled but then what kid isn't?
For family entertainment quality, you're going to have to go a long way to beating this, at least for those slightly older kids.
Written by Henry Selick
Directed by Henry Selick
Coraline.............................Dakota Fanning
Mother(s)..............................Teri Hatcher
Miss Spink..............................Jennifer Saunders
Miss Forcible.............................Dawn French
Mr Bobinsky.............................Ian McShane
DANTE 01
On a distant spacestation orbiting a planet that is the very definition of Hell, a small team of doctors and security guards keep an eye on the worst mentally disturbed serial killers in existence. An arriving shuttle brings a new geneticist with a bag full of new treatments and a stranger whose time in suspended animation has left him disoritentated and confused. The stranger, labelled St Georges by the inmates, proves to have strange abilities, abilities that even he does not comprehend. Under his influence, the inmates start to lose their mental instabilities, but not before one of them sets the station on a collision course for the planet.
DANTE 01 is allegorical. It must be to have characters all named from mythology and to make so little sense. It's not a lack of ideas that is the problem, but rather a surfeit of them, all mangled together into a choppy narrative that is submerged under a tidal wave of visual tricks from the director Marc Caro. This is the same Marc Caro who helped make DELICATESSEN a bizarre comedy delight and THE CITY OF LOST CHILDREN a magical fable. Clearly visuals are Marc Caro's strong suit because DANTE 01 is full of stunning visuals, but they are not visuals that serve the story. In fact, the subjective camerawork has a way of pulling the audience out of the story. It's a director saying 'look how clever I can be'.
Clearly the script must have made sense because Caro has manged to gather himself a fine cast, headed by the always good Lambert Wilson, an excellent actor who is surprisingly shorn of dialogue as completely as he is shorn of hair. Dominique Pinon is makes up for his lack of stature to make a compelling head thug whilst Linh Dan Pham is an icy control freak who ought to be bedded down with the inmates rather than the doctors.
The prison setting, shaved head and yellowish palette puts one in mind of ALIEN 3, a useful shorthand as it sets up the scene nicely. The seemingly linear arrival of the new doctor lets us know where we are and what the set up is, but then St Georges is brought out of suspended animation, throws up and things go downhill. There's something about the evil within us being something like a tentacled monster that St Georges can see and devour bloodily. There's something about nanotechnology that injects something that looks just like this tentacled monster deep within individual cells. There's something about an oppressive regime, watching over every move. The films settles down for a few moments whilst inmates and doctors fight to save themselves from crashing into the planet, whilst the worst of both sides makes an abortive run for it in the shuttle. Finally everything is sort of resolved by St Georges pulling a 2001- A SPACE ODYSSEY acid trip to save the station and possibly create the Earth.
We say 'possibly' because nothing is clear. It is telling that the documentary maker has to ask both writer and director what the film is about and gets an answer something along the lines of 'it is up to each person's imagination'. Hmmm. We have nothing against films that make you think, love them in fact, but there is a very real difference between intelligence and incoherence and DANTE 01 is on the wrong side.
Written by Pierre Bordage and Marc Caro
Directed by Marc Caro
St Georges.........................Lambert Wilson
Elisa........................Linh Dan Pham
Cesar.........................Dominique Pinon
Charon................................Gerald Laroche
Persephone............................Simona Maicanescu
THE DARK KNIGHT
It's a year since Batman's reign of terror started to curb the operations of the gang lords that previously ran Gotham city. Now the last few major players have come together to find a way to maintain their dwindling money supplies. They are offered the solution by a man with a mangled face and even more mangled pysche who likes to hide his disfigurement underneath clown paint. He calls himself the Joker and he is going to make Gotham City burn until the populace themselves will cry out to hand Batman over to him.
When BATMAN BEGINS was released we thought that it was probably the best superhero film of all time. We were wrong because THE DARK KNIGHT raises the bar again - and not just by inches. Topping this is something that the directors slated for the upcoming slew of superhero movies will have sleepless nights about forever.
What is most remarkable about the film is that is so uncompromisingly its own animal. Whilst supplying all the action and pyrotechnics that we expect from our screen superheroes, the film is all about its twisted trio of heroes and villains.
What makes a hero a hero and a villain the bad guy is the core of the film. The Joker has no plan, has no grand scheme, has motivation other than rage. He is a creature that hates himself so much that he tears down anyone he perceives as being better than him (which is pretty much everyone in the city) to their basest level to reveal the monster that is within us all. Thus there are a series of 'games' in which he challenges the city's populace to turn upon itself for survival. Harvey Dent, the shining hero that Bruce Wayne hopes will make Batman no longer necessary, is turned into the psycho killer Two-Face whilst Bruce Wayne himself is tortured by what he will be forced to become in order to defeat a wounded beast like the Joker.
That is some serious kind of subtext and it needs a great script to carry it off. Fortunately, director Christopher Nolan and his brother Johnathan have written just such a script. It may play on the 'make a Sophie's Choice' idea a little too often, but that's a carp in an otherwise astonishingly bravura melding of comic book action and character deconstruction. To do it justice, there needs to be a great cast, but Christopher Nolan has that as well. Christian Bale is steady as a rock as Bruce Wayne/Batman, underplaying the pain that the hero is forced to endure by his nemesis except when...ah but that would be telling. His firm base allows the late Heath Ledger to take off and go stratospheric as the Joker. If you thought the Jack Nicholson version was disturbing then this performance is going to give you nightmares. The Joker's origin is never revealed (though he has some stories about himself) which leaves him an enigma, an enigma fuelled by rage and a desire for chaos, but backed up by a fierce intelligence. He is simply the scariest villain that a comic book hero has ever faced off against on screen. Aaron Eckhart completes the trio as Harvey Dent, a slightly stuffy, but very real hero who is dealt a terrible blow that turns him to rage and violence himself.
Gary Oldman, Morgan Freeman and Michael Caine all give their usual sterling support whilst Maggie Gyllenhaal takes on the thankless role of Rachel Dawes.
From the opening bank heist to the final confrontations by way of some devastating twists and stunning set pieces, THE DARK KNIGHT ignites a summer that has been lacklustre at best. This is the film of the year so far and it's in a different league to what's gone before it. The bar has been set so high it's hard to see how anyone's going to match it.
Written by Johnathan Nolan and Christopher Nolan
Directed by Christopher Nolan
Bruce Wayne/Batman.............Christian Bale
The Joker...................................Heath Ledger
Harvey Dent.............................Aaron Eckhart
Jim Gordon................................Gary Oldman
Alfred.........................................Michael Caine
Lucius Fox.................................Morgan Freeman
Rachel Dawes...........................Maggie Gyllenhaal
THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL
As she attempts to bond with her adoptive son, Helen Benson is whisked from her home to be part of a team to assist in the aftermath of a meteor smashing into downtown Manhattan. Except it's no meteor and it doesn't smash into anywhere, it lands and disgorges two passengers. Klaatu is a being born of human and alien dna whilst Gort is a giant robot capable of great destruction.
The military inevitably react by shooting Klaatu, capturing him, interrogating him and then losing him. Helen manages to pick up his trail and learns what his purpose is on Earth, a purpose that could have devastating, not to mention terminal, effects on mankind.
Robert Wise's THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL (1951) is a classic of the science fiction genre, enough so to be referenced in the opening line of THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW. It was intelligent, well-acted, original and certainly miles removed from the other Cold-War induced alien invasions of the time. The message was simple, stop fighting or die.
Now, in 2008, the concerns are different and so the message has changed to a more ecological one - play nice with the earth or die. Film-making has also changed and the sight of a young boy taking a man for a tour around Washington's monuments to show him that humans aren't so bad isn't enough any more, nor is the climax of a film being the simple delivering of a message. No, today's blockbusters need action, so Klaatu must be a fugitive being chased rather than casually hiding out. This allows for running and helicopters and all the hardware that a big-budget action movie needs. Which brings us to Gort.
Gort isn't a name - it's an acronym standing for Genetically Organised Robotic Technology and he's a lot bigger than he used to be. Unfortunately, he never looks like he came from anywhere other than a computer hard-drive. He also doesn't do very much in his humanoid form. In the original, he loomed large in the background as a threat, here he is a sidebar who only comes into his own towards the end and then it is as a swarm of humanity-eating locusts. It's a suitably biblical motif for the removal of mankind from the planet, but it lacks the fun value of a giant robot going head to head with all of earth's war machines.
This is the remake's big departure from the theme of the original. Klaatu is not here to warn us about our behaviour and the consequences, but to tell us that the consequences are already here and to set about the process of removing humanity and its works from the universe. There are too few planets that can sustain life and none can be lost just because of one species. Thus the species must be removed. It's a shift that actually works well and the film certainly zips through its 103 minutes running time, but you can't help pining for the measured slow build of the original. The opening sequences, as well, where the scientists are brought together for a crisis they don't know about has been done far too often before and invites yawns. Surely someone somewhere actually signed these people up for these things?
Keanu Reeves is a good choice to play Klaatu because his blank delivery suits the character of an alien not in touch with his human side, whilst Jennifer Connelly is along for the ride and not a lot else. Of the supporting cast only Kathy Bates as the Secretary for Defence makes an impact with John Cleese's cameo jolting us out of the film altogether as we expect him to do something funny.
If THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL had been released as an original piece of work, we would probably have been more impressed, but coming from such an illustrious source it was always going to fall short. In the future, it will the 1951 version that is referenced not this, fairly solid but nothing special, remake.
Written by David Scarpa
Directed by Scott Derrickson
Klaatu.............................Keanu Reeves
Helen Benson.................Jennifer Connelly
Regina Jackson...............Kathy Bates
Jacob Benson.................Jaden Smith
Professor Barnhardt.........John Cleese
DAYWATCH
There has been a truce between the forces of Light and Dark for a thousand years. The Nightwatch are beings with supernatural powers who monitor the activities of the beings who belong to the forces of Darkness, whilst the Daywatch do exactly the same to them. It's a delicate balance that has been brought into danger by the appearance of two new Great Others - beings whose powers are strong enough that were they ever to face each other down they would destroy all of Moscow.
Between these two powerful beings lies Anton, and agent of the Nightwatch tasked with training up the beautiful Sveta (with whom he is falling in love) who also happens to be the father of Yegor, the great hope of the forces of Darkness. Zavulon, the leader of the forces of darkness has grown tired of the truce and wishes to start up the war again, but is afraid of the Inquisitors and so is determined to make it seem as though it was the forces of Light that started hostilities. Anton is his weapon of choice and, as the apocalypse starts to descend, it is Anton who tracks down the Chalk of Fate, an object of power that could possibly save the day.
If Anton lives long enough to use it.
In 2004, Timur Bekmambetov's supernatural action film NIGHT WATCH (Nochnoy Dozor) exploded out of Russia onto screens all around the world. With a mythology as deep and complex as that of, say, UNDERWORLD, it threw everything, including the kitchen sink, into full blooded action and special effects sequences based around a plot that was probably bonkers before the directing and editing style managed to make it even less coherent. The combined effect, however, was stunning and a challenge shouted at the world of action films.
NIGHT WATCH was the first of a trilogy of books and so this is the inevitable sequel and, being a sequel, it has to be bigger. Bigger doesn't always mean better, but in this case it most certainly is. Firstly, the plot is more coherent, or I should say plots because there are several going on all at the same time and it is only in the suitably apocalyptic finale that they all come together.
The Chalk of Fate, which is the all-important supernatural artefact, is possibly the most bizarre McGuffin ever put on screen, allowing the user to literally rewrite their fates, but it somehow manages to work here. It also supplies the justification for the stunning opening sequence in which ancient warrior Tamerlane storms a city to gain it.
That, along with Anton's struggle to regain his son and the burgeoning romance with his trainee and the manouevring of the forces of Darkness certainly means that there's enough plot to cram into the film's just over two hour running time.
But this is a supernatural action film, so what about the action and the special effects? Both are flawless, stunning and as exciting as hell. There are barbarian hordes riding headlong through city walls, cars screeching across hotel walls, refuse trucks smashing through juggernauts, Moscow reduced to rubble by a child's toy and an inconveniently placed ferris wheel. The apocalypse it might not be, but apocalyptic it certainly is.
This was originally billed as a trilogy, but the wrap up of the story suggests that it could either stop here or continue again, probably dependant on the success of Bekmambetov's first english language directed film. If this is the end of the saga then it's one hell of a way to go.
DEATH RACE
In 2012, the US economy collapses and all hell breaks loose. The crime rate soars and prisons become privatised. The most commercialised of these, Terminal Island, invents Death Race in which inmates race armoured and armed vehicles around a wasteland circuit with only two aims, to get to the end first and to get there alive. The odds aren't high for either. Win five races and you win your freedom. Frankenstein has won four races, but is kind of dead. Enter Jensen Ames, hot shot driver once, but now a family man, or at least he was until his wife was murdered and he ended up in Terminal Island with an offer from the Warden, drive in the Death Race as Frankenstein, win and go free or see his daughter go to adoptive parents.
In 1975 DEATH RACE 2000 was made on a shoestring and so substituted pantomime and sly, subversive wit for all out action. It became a cult. In 2008, DEATH RACE is an identikit actioner starring the identikit action hero Jason Statham. More 'occasionally referencing' than 'based on' the original, Paul WS Anderson's remake jettisons any hint of subversion or wit for hi-octane thrills and spills. Cars are raced, cars are shot at (a lot) and cars are crashed. Anything else is pretty much surplus to requirements.
Which is not to say that DEATH RACE is bad, because it's certainly not that. What it is, though, is derivative. The 'sports star forced into the warden's game' is straight out of THE MEAN MACHINE. The reality TV 'cons fight to the death' set up is straight from THE RUNNING MAN. The destructo-tanker machine revealed halfway through is straight out of MAD MAX 2 (or THE ROAD WARRIOR if you're stateside). The script contains just about every cliche that you could imagine in such a story ('You can't kill me' is immediately followed by sudden death), but then again the script isn't what DEATH RACE is all about. Auto carnage is the order of the day.
The thing about heavily armoured vehicles racing around a track shooting the hell out of each other (and boy do they shoot a lot) is that it gets pretty repetitive pretty quickly. There are sequences where differences are introduced (the aforementioned destructo-tanker, Ames targeting his wife's murderer, the final race) that stave off boredom, but there are times when the cars are out there doing their thing when the mind begins to wander.
This isn't helped much by the fact that there isn't really anyone in the race to root for. Even the nominal hero Ames is a generally dislikeable man and Statham isn't the actor to make more of him than is there. As a master of action, Statham's the man of the moment and he can handle the hard nut better than anyone else around at the moment, but when a bit of humanity would have come in handy then it's just not there. Ian McShane is a loveable rogue called Coach and channels his TV Lovejoy persona through an ageing process to come up with a con with a heart of gold who is all cliche, but at least we can get on with. Female interest Natalie Martinez isn't on screen for long enough to do anything than look good in midriff-baring crop tops (which is fair enough since it is explained that the navigators are just there to look good to boost ratings), which means that it's ironically up to the villainess of the part, Joan Allen as the warden, to provide the spark of humanity. Whilst the others are all cyphers, at least she is someone that you can actually believe in, even if you can't like her much.
DEATH RACE destroys cars. For real. There is no (or at least very little) CGI involved here so that the cars look real and move like real vehicles with weight, momentum and substance. In making the film the old-fashioned way, Anderson has at least shown that car-crunching stunts are best done by human stunt teams and not computer pixels. If carmaggedon is what you're after then this and a six pack will do you quite nicely, but lovers of the original might just find themselves wishing for just a touch of the anarchic, subversive fun that came with the original Frankenstein, Machine Gun Joe et al.
Written by Paul WS Anderson
Directed by Paul WS Anderson
Jensen Ames.............................James Statham
Warden Hennessy......................Joan Allen
Coach........................................Ian McShane
Machine Gun Joe........................Tyrese Gibson
Case..........................................Natalie Martinez
DEJA VU
A massive explosion rips apart a ferry jammed with sailors newly arrived in New Orleans for Mardi Gras in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. Doug Carlin is an investigator with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives who finds himself with two cases that day. The other is a woman who was washed up downriver two hours before the explosion, but made to look like a victim. When an FBI agent introduces Doug to a new technology that allows them to view any events in the area four days before the current event, he chooses to follow the dead girl, falling in love with her along the way. The trail leads to the bomber, but that's not enough for Doug. If you can see into the past, why can't you go there? But if you go there, can you change what has already happened?
A film by Tony Scott and Jerry Bruckheimer immediately conjures up certain images. There will be action, there will be explosions, there will be more gloss than a a Dulux paint factory, all under clear blue skies with filter-assisted sunsets. Testosterone will rule.
Well, the gloss has gone, scraped away by a commercial film-making team that knows grainy, jittery visuals are the order of the day in the wake of THE BOURNE IDENTITY, but everything else is present and correct. The opening is a huge explosion, there is a car chase (though, in deference to the film's science fiction concepts it's a chase with a car in the past), shoot outs and a final race to avert the events that have already happened. The skies are mainly blue and all the principal characters are men. Even the female murder victim gets little to do that moves the story along, or even would explain why Doug would fall in love with her beyond looking good in the shower. The female scientist's role is restricted to complaining about the shower scene and trying to explain some of the scientific concepts involved.
Ah yes, the science. The idea so using wormholes to look at the past is pretty much accepted as a theory, nut the details are far too much for a film like this. The scenes in which the science crew try to explain the subtleties to the audience via Doug are a model of how to do this sort of thing in this sort of film. Have two or more characters shout at each other loudly, throw in some scientific terms and a couple of line diagrams and it will sound like you know what you're talking about without actually explaining anything. The more sci-fi literate amongst the audience will be well-versed in the determinism (you can't change what's already happened because it's already happened) versus alternate timeline (explained in identical fashion to BACK TO THE FUTURE PART 2), but there is a lot of mileage in seeing which theory is going to win through. In retrospect, it was always going to end one way.
All the time travel gubbins, though, is merely an excuse to hang the action to and the fact that the film is so entertaining is thanks to Tony Scott, who knows exactly how an action juggernaut like this is supposed to function, and a likeable cast headed by the always dependable Denzel Washington. His lovestruck investigator is initially full of his own supposed charm and occasionally an annoying smartass, but that soon gets jettisoned in favour of the all action hero type. Val Kilmer gets the thankless role of the FBI man whose only job is to introduce him to the science guys, whilst Adam Goldberg takes the lead scientist and turns him from the geeky mad scientist type he was written as into something a bit more rounded and believable, and certainly a lot more entertaining.
But in the final analysis, DEJA VU isn't about examining the science fiction. It is about a story that moves quickly enough to keep the plot holes from swallowing anyone up and providing two hours of classy entertainment. This it does with aplomb.
For a more in-depth examination of using wormholes as cameras on the past may we suggest the Arthur C Clarke novel The Light of Other Days.
