2013 Recap: Further Up the Ladder (Part Two)

 Moving right along, we continue navigating the better (but not best) choices 2013 had to offer, warts and all. This actually brought up an interesting question the other day: is it fair to expect a movie to be perfect? One of the easiest caveats used to overlook a film's flaws is to say "well, it isn't perfect, but it's still _____" which begs the question: did you expect it to be perfect? It seems to me that there are two opposing positions to this one, based largely on what kinds of movies audiences / critics / scholars go to see. The answer most people are going to give is "no," usually accompanied by some variation on the phrase "well, it's not Shakespeare, but..." as though a film can't aspire to be great (and yes, I've heard the Shakespeare line repeatedly in reference to Michael Bay movies). But it's true, disappointment reigns supreme so often that many people brace themselves for something lesser and are happy when it meets or exceeds lowered expectations.

 The flipside of this argument, the one I heard from college professors for four years, is that "of course you should expect it to be perfect, because why would you watch anything less?" This is a more exclusionary position, one that posits that if it isn't already a classic, it's not worth bothering with. And while it is true that there are more classic films out there than I or many of you will ever have time to watch, making this argument excludes the possibility that there will ever be any more films considered "classic" made after whatever arbitrary cut-off date is selected. There is something to be said about the lack of timelessness of some modern films (off the top of your head, can you remember my favorite movies from last year, and have you seen any of them since?). It is hard to tell what will last and what will fade in thirty, fifty, even a hundred years, but I don't know that I buy the argument "if it's not already declared perfect, don't bother." I'd rather take a chance, go in not sure of what I'm going to get, and let the movie do its work.

 It's not always perfect (as we'll see a few times below), but it can be pretty damn good, and film history has plenty of "pretty damn good" movies, too. If you can be bothered to lower yourself to find them, that is.

 From Elysi-mrm to Riddick-ulous, Plus More Diesel, Ah-nuld and Sly.

 Unfortunately, Elysium is not "pretty damn good," which is a shame because it should be. All the right pieces are in place: Neill Blomkamp, the writer / director of District 9, follows up his first film with another high-minded dystopian science fiction story, drenched in social commentary. Returning with him is Sharlto Copley, and new to the party are Matt Damon, Jodie Foster, Alice Braga, Diego Luna, William Fichtner, and Faran Tahir as people on either side of the divide between a pollution ravaged Earth and the orbiting utopian community of Elysium. As he did with District 9, Blomkamp demonstrates an ability to blend visual effects with actual environments in such a way that they often appear seamless, with a lived in quality I haven't seen since the first Star Wars.

 But somehow, despite the wealth of riches in nearly every aspect of the film, Elysium falls flat. The early sections, where Damon's Max is just a down on his luck ex-con trying hard to to go straight, are the best. The system, with its robot police and automated parole officers make it impossible for him to get by (his bad attitude doesn't help), and when his boss forces him to put his health at risk, the ensuing radiation exposure is, well, toxic. That's where the meat of Elysium really is, where the cover art you've seen comes from. Max builds the same officers that give him so much grief, and when he's poisoned and the owner (Fichtner) tells his boss to fire him, there's no chance of surviving. On Earth, anyway. Of course he can try to strongarm his way up to Elysium, where the ultra-rich fled to live peaceful lives (except when they shoot down any ship trying to illegally land, that is).

 In order to do that, Max is going to need help, so Julio (Luna), leader of an underground movement trying to take down Elysium, agrees to turn him into a quasi-cyborg as long as he'll take a program up to the station that would allow anyone to use the medical pods that can heal anything. There's also a power struggle of sorts in Elysium, as Delacourt (Foster) is orchestrating a coup of sorts to take down President Patel (Tahir) with the help of John Carlyle (Fichtner). Throw in Max' childhood friend (Braga) and her dying daughter (Emma Tremblay) and Delacourt's Earthbound muscule Kruger (Copley) and things are in motion.

 For all of the thrilling action and visual spectacle, Elysium is a strangely flat movie. I'm not sure that Blomkamp really knew what he wanted to say other than "the 1% is bad," and that's not enough to sustain the narrative thrust of the film. It's a strangely unengaging film as it goes along, one with any number of questionable decisions made by characters who shouldn't know things they do but the script doesn't have any other way forward. I found myself less interested in Max taking down Elysium and more engaged in his back and forth with Kruger, a truly ruthless bastard. When it was over, it was clear that I was supposed to be happy that Elysium (and health care) was available for everyone, but the not even vaguely subtle political commentary arrives with all the depth of a stoned college dorm room conversation. Elysium is inert, despite all of the whiz-bang kinetic action, and that's a shame.

 I already mentioned Riddick in December, and watching the "Unrated Director's Cut" effectively reinforces my opinion that it's much better than The Chronicles of Riddick, but maybe not as good as Pitch Black (in fact, maybe a bit too much like Pitch Black). It's a welcome return to form for the series and I'm absolutely looking forward to the next film. Well, there's a slight reservation, and if you read the earlier review, you know that the one carryover from The Chronicles of Riddick I wasn't gaga about is the necessary inclusion of the (sigh...) Necromongers, including Karl Urban's Vaako. I write a lot of silly things on this blog, but Necromonger is such a ridiculous term that even I'm embarrassed to have to expose you to it. The most notable addition to the unrated cut of Riddick are extended prologue and epilogue scenes with more Monger-ing, including the set-up for a sequel where Vaako didn't betray Riddick (it was the other guy) and has, in fact, crossed over to the "Underverse." Look, David Twohy, I'm still mostly on board with the continuing adventures of Richard Riddick, but can we please not go into more of this stupid shit like in the second movie? Please?

 On the subject of Vin Diesel and stupid shit, I have to say how continually impressed I am at the Fast and the Furious franchise's ability to defy the law of diminishing returns. Six films in should be in Freddy's Dead territory by now, where the studio doesn't care and the creative team is getting weird and throwing in 3D, but director Justin Lin (who came in with the I assumed was DTV Tokyo Drift) is hellbent on keeping things onward and upward. I didn't watch the first three movies because I don't care about street racing culture or (as Clint Eastwood put it in Gran Torino) "faggy spoilers" and neon green paint jobs, but when Dwayne Johnson joined the cast for Fast Five, I tuned in. Reviews were surprisingly positive, and painted the film as something more like an Ocean's Eleven for meatheads than a movie about car drifting.

 So I watched Fast and Furious because Five begins where four ends, and it seemed to be an all right, high octane movie. I really liked Fast Five, which is exactly like an Ocean's Eleven for meatheads, and Johnson's Hobbs was a great counterpoint to Diesel's Dominic Toretto. The fights were tough, the racing was minimal, but the chase scenes were impressive and on a scale not seen since Bad Boys 2 (uh oh, Michael Bay comparison... not good...). So for the first time in the series, I was looking forward to a Fast and Furious movie. And let me tell you, Furious Six did not disappoint.

 I'm glad I went to see it with friends because the smell of testosterone and meathead cologne was thick in the theatre, but Furious Six had something for everybody. You had your action, your comedy, your stunts, two silly (but brief) street races, and everybody from Fast Five plus a few additions. Notable for me was the inclusion of Gina Carano (Haywire) as Hobbs' partner Riley, who has a knock-down, drag out fight with returning Michelle Rodriguez's Letty, juxtaposed with Han (Sun Kang) and Roman (Tyrese Gibson) getting their asses handed to them by one guy.

 Look, the Cap'n isn't going to pretend that Furious Six is for everybody, or even most people. It's the kind of goofball action movie where someone can crash into a guard rail, fly across a bridge, and catch someone who's been thrown from a tank and land safely on another car's windshield. That happens. It's borderline Commando-level dumb, and to be honest it was more engaging than any of the heavy-handed, muddled "thinking man's action" of Elysium. Sometimes the lizard brain deep down in the male psyche (not actually a penis joke, althouth it occurs to me some of you might read it that way - it's actually a weird reference to a religious studies class I took) needs to see big dumb fun, and Furious Six handles that with aplomb.

 The death of Paul Walker is going to seriously test the F&F franchise's ability to keep going up, but the addition of a mid-credits villain linked to Luke Evans' antagonist, the inclusion of Kurt Russell and incoming director James Wan (Death Sentence) has me hopeful for next year. We'll see, because I'm not watching Bad Boys 3 if and when that comes out (take that, Bay!).

 I'll close out this section with a few additional thoughts on The Last Stand and Escape Plan (already reviewed in the available links): while I really didn't like Bullet to the Head, I thought The Last Stand was a pretty good, straightforward action movie about Arnold Schwarzenegger learning to deal with being older. Sly has pretty much just continued to push forward and not really acknowledge age since Rocky Balboa (in fact, Rambo pretty much refuted the "older Stallone era" of Balboa), but Arnold does look older. He sounds older, and his body isn't chiseled out of marble the way it once was (or is it granite? I'm not sure on that one).

 The Last Stand was a good look at how Arnold ages onscreen (something he never really acknowledged prior to becoming the Governator), but I feel like Escape Plan uses the "aged wine" version of Schwarzenegger in a much better way. He's just a grizzled veteran who can still be a tough guy, but one old enough to know better than to pick every fight. Repeatedly in the film you see that he's happy to be the "muscule" for Sly's Ray Breslin, but it's almost always off-screen. There's a great (pun intended) punchline to Ray's request for one inmate's glasses to Arnold's Rottmayer when the camera cuts to the next day and the guy has a black eye and no glasses. I'm a little iffy to bringing Ah-nuld back as the Terminator, but it's what the people expect. Oh well, it's nice to know he can play the tough old bastard when he needs to.


The Wrath of Smaug and Other Sundry Tales of Elves Into Darkness.

 If you watch Star Trek: Into Darkness and never think about it, even for a second, you'll have a blast. It's an unfettered rollercoaster of thrills and chills, of action punctuated by chuckles, with great chemistry between cast members, and maybe even a thing or two to say about the way society responds to terrorism. However, if you start to think about the movie AT ALL, things start to fall apart, and compound into bigger problems that threaten to cripple your very ability to enjoy the movie in the first place. That is your warning, and while the original review will cover many of the reasons, I'm going to very quickly explain why I feel this is the case.

 I'm done giving Damon Lindelof, Alex Kurtzman, and Robert Orci grief over the screenplay. It's a dead horse and I'm tired of beating it. The same goes for JJ Abrams and lens flares and trying to turn Star Trek into Star Wars and any of the other arguments about why the rebooted Star Trek isn't really Star Trek. I get it. This is the internet and everything sucks now, etc. Okay. We got that out of our systems, and those tired old arguments aren't going to change what IS. And what Star Trek: Into Darkness IS is the little brother who grew up in the shadow of his more famous, more beloved older brother. The one who casts a shadow so long over fans and casual viewers that you can't even reboot the series and start fresh with a Star Trek 2 without at least considering the fact that it's going to be compared to The Wrath of Khan.

 It can't be helped, because even people who don't really know Star Trek that well know what it is. Other than The Voyage Home, it might be the only one they know. Star Trek fans know it because it kept them awake, unlike The Motion Picture (cue TMP defenders in five, four, three, two...), and the movie tied directly into the show. It was also very well written, acted, and directed, which at the time (and even in the wake of Star Trek V) is kind of surprising for a Star Trek movie. Most of the target audience for Star Trek: Into Darkness grew up with The Wrath of Khan, so you can't help but want to compare yourself to the older brother everybody loves. You can try to fight to be your own movie, to outdo your brother in ways, or to alter expectations, but it's still just going to be about "see? I can do that too!"

 And that's the problem in a nutshell. It didn't have to be, because the Admiral Marcus storyline in and of itself could have sustained the movie. I'm sticking with that one. Khan didn't have to be in Into Darkness at all and the story would still work. Hell, Benedict Cumberbatch could still be some kind of genetically engineered super soldier who wasn't named Khan - you could seriously just change him name and pull out the other scenes patently designed to remind people that "The Wrath of Khan is a Star Trek movie and you have already seen it"  and only need to make minor changes to the ending. There's a pretty solid nu-Trek movie already in Into Darkness, and I wish that the Khan nonsense hadn't been there, but it is, so be it. C'est la vie. We move forward.

 On to something I enjoyed Benedict Cumberbatch more in (at least in one of his roles, anyway), The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug. For better, for worse, Peter Jackson's middle entry into his second Middle Earth trilogy is an improvement over the uneven An Unexpected Journey. It may turn out to be the first time that an extended cut puts more of the book back into the movie, I suspect. It's clear at this point that Jackson is less concerned with adapting The Hobbit as a novel and more keen on more explicitly connecting the story of the One Ring all the way from The Hobbit to The Lord of the Rings, creating one unified story.

 I had wondered why, in so many reviews, Beorn's name never appeared, until I saw The Desolation of Smaug and realized that the entire sequence at his home had been reduced to what amounted to a cameo. I think we see Beorn (Mikael Persbrandt) more as a bear than we do speaking to Gandalf (Ian McKellan) and the dwarves, and there's certainly no sense of taking time to marvel at his home, let alone the way he's tricked into accepting Thorin's company for the night. The entire scene is reduced to an exposition dump, and we're off. Similarly condensed is Mirkwood and the captivity in Thranduil's kindgom, to the point that I was taken aback how quickly Jackson was breezing through long sections of the book. Considering how drawn out the first film was, it seemed strange to spend so little time with the spiders or lost in the woods.

 What does stand out in Mirkwood, however, is the first real indication of how Jackson is turning The Hobbit trilogy into The Lord of the Rings, the Prequel: Bilbo develops a strong attachment to the Ring that doesn't really exist in the novel, but is consistent with the way it's been presented in the earlier trilogy. For obvious reasons (Tolkien hadn't written The Lord of the Rings, for one), it's just a ring in The Hobbit, but in light of what audiences already know about the One Ring, it would be strange that it had no effect on Bilbo whatsoever. Jackson handles it well, and it's limited mostly to Mirkwood (aside from one reference by Smaug to a "precious" piece of gold entering his lair).

 The biggest additions come when the dwarves are captured, and instead of just Thranduil (Lee Pace), they meet Legolas (Orlando Bloom) and Tauriel (Evangeline Lily), neither of whom are in The Hobbit. In fact, Tauriel is wholly a creation of Jackson, Fran Walsh, Philippa Boyens, and whatever degree to which Guillermo del Toro was involved in The Desolation of Smaug. You might think I'd take umbrage with a completely invented character, especially one involved in a sort-of love triangle that turns out to have more than a little in common with Star Wars, but for what Jackson is doing, I'm actually fine with her. Make no bones about it, in The Desolation of Smaug, Tauriel exists to get Legolas out of Mirkwood and to urge him to be more involved in Middle Earth. It's part of a lot of set up for the Battle of the Five Armies in There and Back Again, but her presence is welcome and adds some dramatic heft to this wildly divergent take on the story.

 I was less impressed with Lake Town and for the moment am not certain what point separating the dwarves serves - there's certainly no tension in Kili (Aiden Turner), Oin (John Callen), Fili (Dean O'Gorman), and Bofur (James Nesbitt) being there when Smaug arrives because anybody who's read The Hobbit knows why Bard (Luke Evans) is so important. He's actually even more important now, with a back story that ties him to Dale and the arrival of Smaug and a significance to the black arrow he'll eventually use, but that is also left mostly for the next film. The normally reliable Stephen Fry is a more loathsome Master of Lake Town than I'd expected, with a stunning lack of depth that might be acceptable in a children's book but sticks out like a sore thumb when everybody else is given more depth.

 On the other hand, the sequence with Bilbo (Martin Freeman) and Smaug (Cumberbatch) in Erebor is a highlight of the film. Like "Riddles in the Dark" from An Unexpected Journey, Jackson sticks close to the book for their back-and-forth, choosing to slowly reveal the dragon as he taunts the "thief." The second part of the sequence in Erebor, like the "barrel" sequence earlier in the film, is expanded / altered, but not in a way that bothered me. Yes, it's another action sequence in the midst of two others (the heretofore nonexistent goblin assault on Lake Town and Gandalf's fight in Dol Guldur - more on that in a minute), but it gives the dwarves something to do other than stand outside of the Lonely Mountain and wait for Bilbo. Thorin (Richard Armitage), has the opportunity to demonstrate that he can lead his men into battle and puts together a reasonably good plan to incapacitate Smaug (even if it doesn't work). Coupled with his growing obsession over the Arkenstone (which, thanks to a prologue at the Prancing Pony in Bree, is also even more important), Thorin is a more involved character in the story.

 Now, on to Gandalf and Dol Guldur, with the briefest of appearances from Radagast the Brown (Sylvester McKoy). If anything in The Desolation of Smaug screamed "we'll get to this in the next one," it's this sequence. Yes, Jackson decided to directly link Azog and Bolg and the Goblin army to Sauron heading into There and Back Again. He doesn't even waste time pretending that The Necromancer (Cumberbatch) is anyone other than Sauron, and after a visually impressive battle of magic, gives us a visual link between the physical persona from the prologue in Fellowship of the Ring to the Eye we know from the rest of the film. And then Gandalf is imprisoned and "we'll totally cover this later!"  Like the end of the film, which can either be read as "what a cliffhanger!" or "wait, that's how they're ending this?" the entire subplot with Gandalf feels like a superfluous set up so we'll all be back next year. At least in An Unexpected Journey, there seemed to be a point to following Gandalf when he left Thorin's company, but this time it does feel tacked on.

 All things considered, and complaints aside, I really did enjoy The Desolation of Smaug more than An Unexpected Journey. A friend of mine agreed, saying "It was good. It wasn't The Hobbit, but it was good." I thought it was better than good, but it's definitely not The Hobbit yet. Other reviewers have insisted that the film doesn't need to be any longer than it is, but I strongly suspect the inevitable extended edition is going to reinstate a LOT of material condensed in the front end of the movie, and as a fan of the book, I'm looking forward to that.

 Speaking of extended editions, I did see the longer cut of An Unexpected Journey, which I guess would count as a 2013 movie. Like much of the film, there were things I liked (the longer White Council meeting, the conversation with Elrond and Gandalf about Thorin), and things I really didn't (the Goblin Town song, the dwarves song in Rivendell, and the fountain scene). I don't know that much of it helped the story in any way, although the White Council scene is more specifically tied to Sauron now, which is in keeping with what Jackson seems to be doing with the six film arc. More impressive than the movie are the appendices, which not only go in depth with the creation of the film, but which give you a much better idea of the characters of the dwarves than the films allow. I would definitely recommend fans of The Hobbit movies check it out.

 Before we abandon the subject of elves for the rest of this recap, I guess it's worth mentioning that Thor: The Dark World is also a movie with those. But of the "Dark" variety, which is more interesting because... well, just because I guess. One of them is Christopher Eccleston (Malekith) and another one (his right hand Elf) is Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, who plays the "Shredder" and "Super Shredder" variety of bad guy. They're after some Aether, which is dark matter or something of that nature, that is what the universe was made of back before time and before Odin (Anthony Hopkins)'s dad beat them up and hid the Aether. It's how they roll in Asgard.

 I think it's cool that Marvel stopped giving a shit about appealing to everybody after The Avengers, and they figure since releasing any movie is like writing their own meal ticket, why not have a movie about Dark Elves that's not on Earth very much and has a climax about jumping from one dimension to the other in order for Christ Hemsworth to beat up Christopher Eccleston? After Captain America: The Return of Bucky (sorry, SPOILER) next year, their big release before The Avengers 2 is Guardians of the Galaxy, based on a comic none of you have ever read because of a talking raccoon and also a tree played by Vin Diesel. It takes some chutzpah to get that nerdy that fast, but kudos to Kevin Feige and Marvel for saying "to hell with it, bring on the Ant Man movie!"

 (by the way, while I'm dubious about the whole Guardians of the Galaxy thing, I will watch Edgar Wright's Ant Man starring Paul Rudd)

 So it's either a sign of hubris or not caring or Marvel really believes that they can bring the reaaaaaallly nerdy comic book stuff to the mainstream and not get laughed out of the box office. If Thor: The Dark World is any indication, I guess they're doing a pretty good job of it, because despite the fact that it has Dark Elves and the McGuffin is called Aether and it's about the realms aligning, etc., it's not an especially goofy movie. It's definitely not as goofy as the first Thor, directed by Kenneth Branagh. Maybe it's that director Alan Taylor is best known for Game of Thrones, so there's a grittier aesthetic to The Dark World that's like Westeros, where all sorts of otherwise silly things seem perfectly reasonable (mostly that's because there's lots of sex in between the dragons and warlocks and zombies). There isn't really much sex in Thor: The Dark World, unless you count the Aether "entering" Jane Foster (Natalie Portman).

 That's pretty much the impetus for the movie - it's what wakes up Malekith and the other guy and the reason Thor returns to Earth and the only reason Natalie Portman is in the movie in the first place. They have to save Earth and blah blah blah Dark Elves. I'm starting to think they just really wanted to tie in Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. into a Thor movie (well, vice versa, but you get the idea), because they didn't really need to go to Earth at all. Most of the human characters (Portman, Stellan Skarsgård, Kat Dennings, the dude who plays Kat Dennings intern) are window dressing. They have a few perfunctory things to do and get most of the goofy scenes, but you could not have them at all and it would still be the same movie. Maybe we'd care less because Earth wasn't being destroyed, but we're already in for the Dark Elves at that point.

 The main draw of Thor: The Dark World, continues to be the interplay between Chris Hemsworth and Tom Hiddleston as Thor and Loki. Anthony Hopkins and Renee Russo are in there too, but the sibling rivalry between step (?) brothers was the foundation of the first film, carried through The Avengers, and is probably even better this time around. If Hiddleston is on screen, The Dark World immediately gets better, and I'd recommend it for him alone. On the downside, if you wanted more Idris Elba as Heimdall, I'm sorry to disappoint: he isn't in the movie much, but he does take down a Dark Elf ship by himself, which is pretty cool.

 If your tolerance for the words "Dark" and "Elves" or patience for subtitled dialogue is anything like mine for the word "Necromonger," then Thor: The Dark World might be too "lame" for your tastes. But if you liked Thor and The Avengers and maybe played Dungeons and Dragons or at least can think of it without snickering derisively, then you might like this movie. Or Man of Steel might be your thing. I don't know, because I didn't see Man of Steel, because Superman is lame. The Dark Elves won that battle.

 Well, I think this has eaten up enough internet real estate for one entry. In the next few entries (hey, I'm working on a lot of movies here) the Cap'n  will be covering horror, some documentaries, a few films of smaller scope, more science fiction (and sequels), a return to form for a few of my favorite directors, and a handful of movies that aren't based on any novel, but sometimes feel like they could be.

2013 Recap: The Bottom of the Barrel

 Folks, we've come around full circle again; 2013 has left us and 2014 began just a day ago. I'm not really sure where the year went, and there were a lot of things I meant to do that didn't happen, so hopefully the Cap'n can pick up where I left off. In the meantime, there's a year's worth of movies to recap, and as I do every year, we'll start at the bottom and work our way up.

 I lost count of how many new movies I saw in 2013 (it's somewhere north of 40, but the list I put together is eluding me, so we'll stick with that estimate), and thankfully most of them were very good to really good. Some even great, but we're not here to talk about those today. Nope. Today is about the small, but vocal minority of true garbage that assaulted my ears and eyes in 2013. Some I've already forgotten most everything about, some I regret even considering sitting down to watch. At the race to the bottom, First Place is an unenviable position, and I really struggled deciding which of the following nine films sucked the hardest. Every time I think "yeah, that's the one I hated the most," I see another one on the list and change my mind. So this year, there will be no numbering - they're all the worst.

 And I watched them So You Won't Have To.

 Movie 43 - There's an old adage that the more recognizable names you see on a movie you've never heard of, the worse the movie is. Most of the time this pertains to direct to video releases on already clogged shelves, and usually to indie dramas, but every now and again comedies. For something like Movie 43 to make it to theatres, even in the "dumping ground" time of the year, is a testament to the inexplicable star power willing to blemish their resumes with this shit.

 When either of the "haven't been funny in a decade and a half" Farrelly brothers are involved (Peter, in this case), that should set off alarm bells, but with so many talented people directing segments of this Kentucky Fried Movie wannabe, I remember that we rationalized it would at least have something worth seeing. We were clearly not paying attention to the warning signs, and nothing about the lazily titled Movie 43 was worth seeing. Not Hugh Jackman with testicles on his throat; not Chris Pratt shitting all over a taxi to impress Anna Faris; not Jason Sudekis and Justin Long as Batman and Robin at Superhero Speed Dating (spoiler - one of the women was a dude! Hilarity!). Let's not forget about the wacky game of Truth or Dare that turns Stephen Merchant into an Asian caricature with a penis tattooed on his cheek! Or Halle Berry making guacamole with her boob!

 I had to look some of these up because, to be perfectly honest with you, we'd already forgotten about most of Movie 43 by the next day. Looking at IMDB, I thought "oh yeah, that was in the movie, wasn't it?" and then I remembered that it wasn't funny and that's why I forgot about it. And before long, I'll forget about it again, and hopefully you will too. Don't let the list of names on the cover lure you into a blind rental or Netflix streaming - it's not worth it unless you desperately need to lose and hour and a half of your life. You'll remember as much of Movie 43 by not watching it as you will by enduring it, so why bother?

 Kick-Ass 2 - I'll keep this brief. I hated Kick-Ass when I saw it in 2010, and that position hasn't softened at all. I was vaguely curious about Jim Carrey as Colonel Stars and Stripes based on the trailer and it seemed like expanding the world of "real life" heroes and villains might maybe be worth looking into. And it wasn't. Kick-Ass 2 is more of the same stupid swill that I didn't like at all three years ago, and apparently not even fans of the first movie could choke this one down. I already didn't care about Hit Girl, but her adventures as "Mindy the normal girl in high school" that ended up as a stupid retread of Mean Girls really made me miss Nicolas Cage's Big Daddy. Nothing about Kick-Ass 2 is worth mentioning, so I'm just going to move on...

 R.I.P.D. - Speaking of movies with nothing worth mentioning, here's a transparent remake of Men in Black that substitutes ghosts for aliens and stars Ryan Reynolds from Blade Trinity and Rooster Cogburn from the Coen brothers' True Grit. Oh sure, it's Jeff Bridges, but he's playing Rooster Cogburn without the eye-patch. Also Mary Louise Parker and Kevin Bacon is the bad guy (SPOILER for the first three minutes of the movie) blah blah blah lousy special effects blah blah blah lazy jokes blah blah blah lots of shooting and yelling end of the world etc. R.I.P.D. is neither bad enough to hate nor good enough to give much more attention to. It simply limps along, reminding you of better movies that you could be watching instead of this. In fact, I watched a MUCH better movie before this (more on that when we get to the Best of 2013) and was so excited by it that I decided to use R.I.P.D. as a kind of "palette cleanser," which may be exactly what it's good for. If mediocre is your thing, this is the movie for you.

 Bullet to the Head - I don't really have anything to add to this beyond what I said in the original review. I only bothered to review three of the nine movies on this list, and in both instances I'll just include the links. There's a much better Stallone movie that came out in 2013 (Escape Plan) that you should see instead, because Walter Hill's un-buddy cop / revenge film is somebody's cup of tea, but not mine.

 Evil Dead - I get that people like that the remake of The Evil Dead is really violent. Like non-stop, unpleasant, close-up on the gore violent for most of the movie. Got it. I 100% don't believe the continued insistence that the effects are practical and that there's "almost no digital effects" in the movie. Sorry, I've seen it twice and you can see the digital effects, even during parts of the commentary where the director claims there aren't. But that is another argument for another day. The problem with Evil Dead isn't that it exists - there can and are good remakes of horror films out there, so I'm willing to put aside my affection for the original and let this exist in its own right.

 The problem with Evil Dead is that it's extremely violent, and nothing else. If you're looking for a movie where people are slowly, painfully mutilated, with long shots of the aftermath where they're half-crying and half in shock while removing needles or nails from their skin, good news - you'll find it in spades in Evil Dead. There's no humor, no characters, not much in the way of plot (that isn't abandoned, anyway), but lots of moments designed to remind you that this is a remake of The Evil Dead. Just one that's grittier and gorier and more hardcore. Because that's all horror fans care about, right? Oh, also just throwing Bruce Campbell onscreen after the credits to say "Groovy" in silhouette., because you gotta have Bruce, right?  It's no secret why the best and worst reviews of this film said the same thing: "It's REALLY violent." That's all there is to Evil Dead, and it's not enough.

 A Good Day to Die Hard - I like the theory that Red Letter Media has that each Die Hard sequel is designed to make the previous film look better by comparison. At the same time, it terrifies me to think how bad Die Hard 6 is going to have to be to make this piece of shit look good.

 G.I. Joe: Retaliation - I originally watched this as a planned week long segment called "The Rock Report," wherein I'd see every Dwayne Johnson movie released in 2013 and cover them for you. After G.I. Joe: Retaliation and another movie on this list, I decided it wasn't worth the effort to track down Snitch and Empire State. Going back to Movie 43, it's probably worth pointing out that I should have known better than to be interested in a movie with Dwayne Johnson, Ray Stevenson, Jonathan Pryce, Walton Goggins, RZA, and Channing Tatum (SPOILER briefly). Somehow (see above), it's only the second worst Bruce Willis movie I saw this year.

 True, I'd never seen the first movie and I don't plan on ever seeing it. True, it had gone extensive reshoots that delayed the film for half a year. True, it was the sequel to a G.I. Joe movie. But dammit, it had Dwayne Johnson and he made the Fast and Furious series better for two movies in a row (more on that in a later post). I now understand why Joseph Gordon Levitt and Christopher Eccleston didn't bother to come back for this (and it had nothing to do with Don Jon or Thor: The Dark World). It's a thoroughly average and mostly boring "action" movie that makes me glad I didn't watch the first one and pleased to know I don't need to see any more of them.

 Machete Kills - I'd love to believe that some day, Robert Rodriguez will start making real movies again. But with Sin City: A Dame to Kill for around the corner and the promise / threat of Machete Kills Again in Space looming, somehow that doesn't seem likely. That's too bad, but at least I know that this downward trajectory is something I can avoid from here on out, rather than risk being disappointed again.

 Pain & Gain - If there has to be a "worst of the worst," the absolute skidmark on the underpants of cinema for 2013 (that I was willing to watch), this is probably it. Machete Kills really sucks. A Good Day to Die Hard isn't even a Die Hard movie by the shaky standards of the fourth film Movie 43 barely deserves to be called a movie. But Pain & Gain not only reminded me why I stopped watching Michael Bay movies after The Island, it made me angry.

 I've been following a lot of the "controversy" surrounding Martin Scorsese's The Wolf of Wall Street from people who are boycotting the movie in principle because it "glorifies" Jordan Belfort. Having not seen The Wolf of Wall Street but having seen Goodfellas and Casino, both of which are also based on real people who did horrible things and benefited in some way from the films based on their story, I have a hard time with the "outrage." This is what Scorsese does. With the exception of Hugo and Kundun, almost all of his protagonists are morally compromised to varying degrees, and some are downright unlikeable. As a storyteller, he gets you invested in them, even if you don't like them, and yes, to some degree that helps people like Henry Hill and "Whitey" Bulger (who Jack Nicholson's character in The Departed is loosely based on).

 Why people weren't comparably outraged by the glorification of the pieces of human garbage in Michael Bay's Pain & Gain boggles my mind, because when you see pictures of the real criminals who kidnapped and killed people, it's abundantly clear that turning them into Anthony Mackie, Dwayne Johnson, and Mark Wahlberg is only making them look like a million bucks for the movie version. Bay also makes the film a comedy, specifically styled after the Coen brothers, even though it's abundantly clear that Michael Bay does not understand what makes a Coen brothers movie funny. He got the "dumb criminals" part and stopped there, content to include his usual bag of tricks: hot chicks, fancy cars, oiled muscles, and rampant homophobia.

 The worst part is that, in spite of all of this, Pain & Gain is still sometimes sporadically funny, in spite of itself. Most of that comes from the very talented cast, trying hard to sell what is inherently unfunny but so unbelievable it becomes ridiculous (when Bay has to include a title card to remind you that "This is STILL a True Story" when Johnson is burning severed hands on a grill, you should get some idea how crazy it gets). But then, at the very end, when they finally do get caught, the closing credits cuts to photos of the actual perpetrators who did the things we're seeing played for laughs, and it's hard to see Pain & Gain as anything other than a glamor shots version of their lives. Michael Bay wants us to enjoy these assholes for the things they did, and laugh because of how silly it sounds. So I think I'm good going back to not watching his movies again. We seem to get along better that way, and the rest of you can wonder why I haven't and won't see a Transformers movie.

 The good news is that from here on out, things only go uphill. The next section(s) will deal with the middle ground - movies I liked but didn't love, but would recommend nonetheless. Thanks for wallowing through the worst of it with the Cap'n.

Spoiler of the Day: Southland Tales

 Well... hmm... Two Stifflers are actually one person, and the Rock travels through time to ensure his own death... I don't know. You have to read the graphic novels or some crap like that to "understand" this movie. Movies that require homework - no wonder people don't talk about this like they do with Donnie Darko.


 Tomorrow's Spoiler of the Day: The Box

Spoiler of the Day: The Tooth Fairy

 Does the Rock play a hockey player who was kind of a jerk that is forced to become a tooth fairy and learn his lesson about being a jerk?

 Let's all guess. If you guessed "no," then you're absolutely wrong. This is Disney we're talking about.


Tomorrow's Spoiler of the Day: Southland Tales

Blogorium Review: Fast Five

 Will wonders never cease? It turns out that Fast Five is even better than Fast & Furious, a movie I was pleasantly surprised with. The racing shenanigans are further toned down, mostly replaced with some clever (if absurd) chase scenes, more action, and the structure of a heist film. Oh, and there's the ace up Fast Five's sleeve: Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, who injects an adrenaline rush into an already testosterone laden explosion fest.

 After breaking Dominic Toretto (Vin Diesel) out of prison, Brian O'Conner (Paul Walker) and Mia Toretto (Jordana Brewster) are on the run from the law. They meet up with Dom and old partner in crime Vince (Matt Schulze) in Rio de Janeiro, where Vince has an offer from some quick cash on a car heist. Things go wrong when Zizi (Michael Irby), an associate of Rio crime lord Hernan Reyes (Joaquim de Almeida) betrays them and kills federal agents aboard the train being robbed. Now Brian, Dom, and Mia have Reyes' men on their tail, as well as Rio officer Elena Neves (Elsa Pataky) and DSS Special Agent Luke Hobbs (Johnson). The clock is ticking, and they need to settle the score in Rio before Hobbs tracks them down - but they can't do it alone. To steal $100 million from Reyes, they'll need a team...

 If you somehow haven't heard anything about Fast Five, the most critically well received and highest grossing of the series to date, Dwayne Johnson isn't the only attraction for audiences. The team that Dom and Brian assemble includes cast members from every previous film in the series: Roman Pearce (Tyrese Gibson) and Tej Parker (Chris "Ludacris" Bridges) from 2 Fast 2 Furious; Han Lue (Sung Kang) from The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift; Gisele Harabo (Gal Gadot), Tego Leo (Tejo Calderon) and Don Omar (Don Omar) from Fast & Furious, and the aforementioned Vince (Schulze) from The Fast and the Furious. Each member of the team has a specific function in the heist, and their interaction provides a much needed comic relief between car chases and fight scenes. Brewster and Gadot, in particular, have more to do than be concerned window dressing for the manly men than they did in Fast & Furious.

  While Fast & Furious was very much Vin Diesel's show, rightfully so considering he was returning to the series, Fast Five's appeal belongs as much to Dwayne Johnson as it does to the original bad boy. Johnson has the better entrance, the better lines, and the better chase scene. His team is more lethal, better organized, and nearly take down the "heroes" on more than one occasion during the film, and they handle a late ambush without hesitation.

 Johnson is almost cartoonishly muscular in the film, just barely squeezing into the five-sizes-too-small t-shirts, a contrast to Diesel's loosely fitting t-shirts and wife-beaters. Their fight scene doesn't disappoint: from the moment that Hobbs destroys Dom's car and then slams his head into what's left of it, it's clear they're evenly matched and the ensuing brawl does justice to both larger-than-life action stars. It makes sense, considering that Diesel and Johnson of them have been away from the genre for a while (both, at times, with Disney, in The Pacifier and The Tooth Fairy respectively).

 As heists go, I'll give Fast Five credit for not trying to reinvent the wheel or out-think themselves. There's only one piece of misdirection, and I have to admit that because of where it happens in the climactic chase scene, I didn't catch it immediately. Most of the film is setting up a heist that never happens, as the heat comes down on our heroes too soon and they have no choice but to resort to brute force, leading to a wild (and probably impossible) pursuit between Reyes' crooked cops, Dom, Brian, and a bank safe through downtown Rio. The property damage and implied fatalities go by so quickly that all you can do is laugh at how ridiculous and audacious the set-piece is, one the closes with a bridge chase that puts Bad Boys 2 to shame.

 Returning director Justin Lin has another factor working for him: the ability to convey geography, spatial relationships, and a logical flow to action sequences. That shouldn't be so much to ask for, but so many "action" films are obsessed with rapid cuts and disjointed edits that make the flow of chases and fights impossible to keep up with. Even The Expendables wasted what should have been a great fight between Dolph Lundgren and Jet Li with incomprehensible cuts and tight closeups. While Lin's Fast Five showdown between Hobbs and Toretto has some of these problems, he handles all of the vehicular action with great aplomb, giving a sense of momentum while never sacrificing coherency to look "cool."

 The Cap'n may have been exaggerating the lack of racing in the film, although it's limited to one street racing scene involving stolen police cars and the final moment in the film, a Rocky III-ending-like culmination of Brian's obsession with beating Toretto in a one-on-one race. The cars themselves move into the background, less as objects of fascination for the guys (and gals), and become tools to pull of the kind of robbery no one should be able to organize. Combined with Fast & Furious, this appears to be the direction the series is headed in, where cars are the secondary factor in action set-pieces, which is fine with me. The post-credits setup for Fast Six (or whatever they call it) implies that Johnson will be back, along with a surprise cameo and another returning cast member. If Fast Five is any indication, I might actually enjoy where the series goes, if not where it originated.

Blogorium Review: Fast & Furious

 Well, color me surprised. For the last ten years, I'd given at best a disinterested gaze in the direction of The Fast and the Furious and its sequels; they seemed like stupid "street racing" movies with fast cars that had (as Clint Eastwood so eloquently put it in Gran Torino) "faggy spoilers" and stupid paint jobs. I was a Vin Diesel fan from Pitch Black (and later, xXx), but that wasn't enough to overcome the charisma vacuum that was Paul Walker, and I really could care less about neon green, nitro-injected, tricked out cars tearing down city streets.

 See, while I do play video games, racing games are my least favorite. I never play them - not even Spy Hunter. I don't like Gran Turismo, I don't like Need for Speed or Midnight Club, and I'm not even that big into Mario Kart. Burnout was the first racing game I could get into, and only until it stopped being important that you could be bad at racing. When I ran out of demolition derby challenges, I lost interest quickly.

 Street racing never really appealed to me in any form or fashion, and generally reminded me of the mouth breathers in high school that needed everybody to know how cool they were with their loud muffler kits and off the line peeling out. So yeah, you could say I didn't want to have anything to do with The Fast and the Furious, 2 Fast 2 Furious, or The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift. Hell, I didn't really care about Diesel's return to the series in Fast & Furious - so what?

 I mean, look at that poster: see the tagline? New Model. Original Parts? Are you kidding me with that garbage? Why would I want to watch these movies if it's all about macho car racing and jargon about kits and injection systems and everything else I just don't care about? Couldn't I just watch Bullitt or The French Connection, movies with actual stories? Or hell, if not, why not one of the Transporter films? Those have Jason Statham in them, and we all know that's a plus.

 But then something crazy happened: Fast Five. Normally, I wouldn't care about the fifth movie in a series I already wasn't going to see, but returning director Justin Lin and Universal had an ace up their sleeve: Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson. If you know Cap'n Howdy, then you know I've seen almost every Dwayne Johnson movie not aimed at children: The Scorpion King, The Rundown, Walking Tall, Doom, Gridiron Gang, Southland Tales, and his cameos in Reno 911!: Miami and The Other Guys. Hell, I even saw Faster, and hated it, but was happy to see Johnson in a movie not released by Walt Disney.

 When someone adds The Rock as Vin Diesel's adversary, I'll pay attention. It didn't hurt that Fast Five was getting better than I thought was possible word of mouth from critics, and that it was being likened less to a racing movie than to a testosterone laden Ocean's Eleven. So I decided that it would be a good idea to check it out. That just meant deciding whether I needed to watch the other four movies first.

 I settled on watching Fast & Furious instead, as it directly leads into Fast Five, and because I'd picked up enough from the internet to understand who the characters were and their relationships. Brian O'Conner (Walker) is an FBI agent on the trail of a mysterious drug lord named Braga. Dominic Toretto (Diesel) is a muscle car enthusiast and thief who has too much heat on him and needs to lay low. When Dom's girlfriend Letty (Michelle Rodriguez) is killed by Braga's sidekick Fenix (Laz Alonso), he comes looking for revenge, and crosses paths with O'Conner, who infiltrated his gang years ago but didn't arrest him. O'Conner also hooked up with Mia (Jordana Brewster), Toretto's sister, so that's a sore spot between the two. Brian's FBI team, led by Penning (Jack Conley), Trinh (Liza Lapira), and Stasiak (Shea Whigham) are trying to bring down Braga, but also want Toretto, and Brian is torn between his loyalty to the agency and his respect for Dom.

 There's only one "street racing" scene in Fast & Furious, and it actually serves the plot in such a way that I can't really complain about it. Dom and Brian are called in by Braga's right hand man Campos (John Ortiz) for a race to test their skills as drug runners, along with a few other soon-to-be dead guys with quickly sketched out personalities. The race, along with most of the other car chases and stunts in the film, are well shot and structured by Lin and editors Fred Raskin and Christian Wagner, and for the most part are practical instead of heavy on cgi trickery. The exception to that are a series of tunnel shots that I'm not sure would be possible practically, so I'll give that a pass. Overall I have to say I was much more impressed than I thought I would be - Fast & Furious may not be Bullitt or The French Connection as car chases go, but it's certainly up there with The Italian Job and probably better than the Transporter films.

 I guess it's easy to poke fun at overly macho films and say that two guys who respect each other are actually looking for a shot to jump the other one's bone, but I didn't get that vibe from Fast & Furious. If I understand it correctly, 2 Fast 2 Furious is ludicrously homoerotic, but Fast & Furious seems more about Brian and Dom trying to navigate their status as "cop and criminal" and which is which at times. I didn't ever get the impression that just because Brian is obsessed with beating Toretto in a race that he wanted to kiss him or anything, but I'm sure somebody will be happy to correct me for missing that subtext. Riggs and Murtaugh were hot for each other too, and Thunderbolt and Lightfoot I guess. Guys can't be friends any more, since Freudian analysis slithered its way out of classrooms and into "guy movie" breakdowns.

 Anyway, so Vin Diesel was the Vin Diesel I remember from Pitch Black - the stoic guy who doesn't need help and comes through in the clutch, and while I don't think I've ever seen a Paul Walker movie before*, I didn't find him to be a personality-less bore like the Sam Worthingtons or the Channing Tatum's of current action movie. He didn't exactly stand out or anything, but he's good at the "serious face while driving" kind of acting that this movie required, so that's cool. Jordana Brewster and Michelle Rodriguez don't really get to do a lot in this movie, but I guess they were fine for not having seen the first movie. I guess I should mention Sung Kang, who appears at the beginning of the film as Han, a character that died in The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift, making this a prequel. I mention this because he figures prominently into Fast Five, along with Ludacris and Tyrese Gibson (from 2 Fast 2 Furious).

 So I have to say that I was pleasantly surprised by Fast & Furious and am looking forward to seeing Fast Five now. I can't promise that I'm going to watch the first three movies (that's asking a little much if you ask me), but then again I didn't really picture myself seeing, let alone enjoying, Fast & Furious two years ago. I guess you can teach and old dog new tricks, unless the trick insists on interpreting every case of male bonding through a homoerotic lens - I'm looking at you, Frodo and Samwise. You're not fooling anybody...



Post-Script: For the point of clarification, I'm not trying to imply that there's no such thing as male bonding in film that does include sexual overtones, or that I really care when that is the case. By including a semi-anti-gay slur at the outset of the review (which is actually what Clint Eastwood uses to describe the spoilers he hates on cars) and voicing my frustration at this "if two guys are friends in a movie, they must be gay" trend that started out as a subversion of "guy movies," for reasons I'm not really sure need to exist (is it supposed to rattle the security of hyper-aggressive, macho guys? To push them out of their "comfort zone" and imply that their movies have an agenda contradictory to their own?). It's not that the notion isn't worth exploring, but to apply it to everything, including Back to the Future, doesn't actually help make the case - it undermines the concept by stretching the analysis to fit when it makes no sense. At a certain point it becomes almost as much fun as digging for Freudian overtones in every single horror movie, even when the evidence is flimsy at best. I do think that you can actually just be two guys (or two girls) that respect each other and work together to find a common goal without secretly being into each other, and ignoring that for the sake of making a point about "macho" movies undermines when it actually is the subtext. So yeah, that's about it. Please correct the Cap'n if you need to.


 * Strike that - I've seen Joy Ride, which I liked, and Pleasantville, which I guess I forgot he was in.

So You Won't Have To: Faster

Here's a general rule of thumb for action writers, directors, and editors: if you're going to have a revenge movie named Faster, it's best not to pace the film in such a lifeless, plodding manner. You might want to seriously re-consider the "Slow Justice is No Justice" tagline if your film takes place over the course of five days during which the police never consider putting an APB out on a 1970s Chevelle with a driver who looks suspiciously like WWE Superstar The Rock. It might not hurt to drop the totally unnecessary third protagonist who, as it turns out, exits the film with about as much impact as he does entering the film.

The protagonists are, for the record: Jake Collum (Dwayne Johnson), anti-hero heist driver seeking revenge on his brother's killers; Slade Humphries (Billy Bob Thornton), anti-hero cop with a heroin addiction and one week left until retirement; Killer (Oliver Jackson-Cohen), an anti-hero assassin who is willing to give up his murdering ways in order to be with Lily (Maggie Grace), his girlfriend. If you really feel like it, throw in Carla Gugino as Cicero, a detective investigating Collum's revenge killings.

(In almost every review, Johnson and Thornton are listed as "Driver" and "Cop", because of their respective job descriptions and, well, that's the name credited to them, but if you take the time to actually look at the screen, you'll notice print-outs with their actual names on them - Thornton's more than once)

Faster desperately wants to blend the aesthetics of the Crank films with the neo-noir storytelling of Point Blank, but fails on both counts. If writers Tony and Joe Gayton or director George Tillman, Jr. had stuck with the simple "revenge" story, then Faster may well have been a gritty, efficient thriller with some noir-ish overtones, but the film is over cluttered with main characters, all of whom are jockeying for the position of "person we're supposed to care about." After spending the first fifteen minutes with Johnson, setting up why he wants revenge and his no-frills style of murder, Faster abruptly jumps into introducing Gugino, Thornton, Jackson-Cohen, and Grace.

From that point on, the audience spends inordinate amounts of time watching Killer talk to his therapist over the phone, wax philosophic about "giving up the job" and marrying Lily, or with Humphries ("Cop") as he tries to win back his former Criminal Informant / Junkie wife Marina (Blogorium favorite Moon Bloodgood) and son Tommy (Aedin Mincks). So much of the film is spent with Thornton's Slade Humphries that I re-titled the film "Bad Santa: Port of Call Bakersfield," which is surprising appropriate considering how reminiscent his story is of other Thornton roles (specifically Bad Santa and The Bad News Bears) and my most recent favorite Nicolas Cage film.

Mind you, this is the movie without the central premise of Faster, the one they've been advertising, where Dwayne Johnson hunts down and kills the four (?) people responsible for his brother's death. It doesn't account for minor characters like Mike Epps' private investigator Roy Grone or Xander Berkeley's Sergeant Mallory, or Dexter's Jennifer Carpenter, who plays... well, I'm guessing "Driver"'s ex-girlfriend, or it might be Driver's Brother's (Matt Gerald) ex. We're already needlessly convoluted, and that's not even taking into account the "twists" of who hired Killer or what "Cop" has to do with any of this.

To cram all of this into a 98 minute movie seems like it should leave audiences breathless, or trying to keep up with the story, but Faster makes every effort to over-explain plot points, to the point where it becomes redundant. If you needed the "twist" to be explained to you (as it is, twice) before Faster gets to the end, I'm sorry, but movies might be a little too much for you to deal with. However, there's no excuse for showing a car-chase flashback that demonstrates Johnson's "driver" abilities, only to follow it with the line "they got away" by Cicero. It's embarrassing; there's no other way for me to describe it, and Faster is full of "no kidding!" lines.

After spending some self-imposed time in Disney purgatory, it was nice to see Dwayne Johnson return to the "tough guy" role he seemed primed for in The Rundown and Walking Tall. He has the build, the charisma, and yes, even the chops for it, but Faster does him a great disservice. Johnson becomes a second fiddle in his own movie for most of the second half of the film, and if Faster's writers or director had the discipline to focus the film to be something more like Point Blank (and yes, the echoes are apparent throughout), this review might be something else. I'm really not that hard to please with action films: give me something with a sense of momentum, some nice fight scenes, a charismatic lead, and a plausible story. Faster could have easily fulfilled that request, but it didn't: Faster is overwritten, cluttered, turgid, and lacks momentum that even its pluses feel neutered.

The only positive thing I came out of seeing Faster was to learn two of the three characters' names, something most critics can't seem to be bothered with.