Blogorium Review: The Expendables - The Third One

 Here we go again. Again. There are a few factors weighing heavily against the third Expendables movie, a series ostensibly devoted to being throwbacks to action flicks of the 1980s. You know, the kind we don't see anymore because all action today is terrible, etc. It has a PG-13 rating, so that means less blood spraying everywhere (digital blood, for the record). That also means only one "F" bomb (strategically placed, we can hope), which, in the minds of action fans of the 1980s, means the film has been "neutered" and will therefore suck.

 Furthermore, rumors abound that the film underwent some serious changes between shooting and release, altering one character's arc and removing at least one subplot / character. There's also the always problematic issue of including Mel Gibson as the villain, as Gibson has (mostly by his own doing) become a lightning rod for controversy and many people won't see anything he's involved with. That's not an opinion so much as it is a fact - did you see The Beaver, Get the Gringo, or Machete Kills? I did, but I know a lot of people who didn't and won't purely on principle. Also, one of them really sucked.

  Also, there's the little matter of the entire movie leaking online three weeks ago in the form of a screener, allowing people who don't mind pirating a movie the ability to see a movie they weren't sure they wanted to pay for. These things do not bode well for The Expendables 3.

 With that in mind, I should probably go ahead and tell you that if you liked The Expendables and The Expendables 2, then you're going to like most of The Expendables 3, even if the narrative is totally unbalanced. The new additions to the cast are, for the most part, welcome and in many cases improve the overall genial spirit of the films. Regardless of how you feel about Gibson (and believe me, I'm not disagreeing with anyone who hates him - I get it), he makes a great villain as Stonebanks, a founding Expendable, and very quickly demonstrates that he's even more dangerous than Jean-Claude Van Damme was in the last film. I'm not sure how much of the film is director Patrick Hughes (Red Hill)'s and how much is the influence of Sylvester Stallone, but the action is a little easier to follow most of the time. If anything, the only thing missing for most of The Expendables 3 is a sense of camaraderie between returning cast members.

 By this point, I really hope that people who claim to be fans of 80s Action Movies are done complaining that The Expendables movies aren't like Commando, which seems to be their frame of reference for the entire subgenre* (that, or the first four Steven Seagal films), but if it helps, a lot of the third movie is more cartoonish at the outset. It begins with a prison train transporting a high value asset back to a fortified hellhole, until Barney Ross (Stallone), Lee Christmas (Jason Statham), Toll Road (Randy Couture) and Gunnar Jensen (Dolph Lundgren) fly up in the Expendecopter. They're here to make a high speed rescue, even if it means dodging fire from a ludicrously sized gun hiding inside one of the compartments. As it was in the opening of The Expendables 2, they make it inside with relatively little effort and rescue Doctor Death (Wesley Snipes), another original Expendable who's been doing time. If you're looking for a "tax evasion" joke, you'll get it. But only one, thankfully.

 It turns out Ross needs the Doc to help him with an assassination of a high value target on Church's list (Bruce Willis isn't in the movie, but they refer to him a few times early on). They arrive to find Hale Caesar (Terry Crews) doing recon, and everything looks good until the target appears. It's not just some arms dealer, as Ross had been told - it's Conrad Stonebanks, the man who betrayed the Expendables and who Barney was certain he killed years ago. Stonebanks doesn't take kindly to their presence and (SPOILERS BEGIN HERE) puts two bullets into Caesar before dropping a bomb on the team from his helicopter.

 This, by the way, is the first major deviation that I've read from shooting to release: originally, one of the actual Expendables died (not the "introduce the kid and then kill him" like in the last movie). The scene sure plays out like Caesar is dying - Stonebanks shoots him in the leg and then puts one through his chest, and the exit wound is a big hole. Then they're blown into the water of a shipping port by the explosion, and Henry cuts to the team desperately trying to stop the blood. There are rumors that Caesar did die in the original conception, but the moment I saw him in the plane, I knew he would be back at the end. When Barney leaves his skull ring at the hospital, I realized that "nope, nobody's 'expendable' once again." Don't get me wrong - I love me some Terry Crews, but it really diminishes the threat of Stonebanks if his "kill" isn't really fatal. Also, it renders the entire speech about why Ross keeps the dogtags of fallen expendables on the plane kind of moot. We haven't seen one expendable character yet, and you're not going to in this movie.

 It does cause Barney to dissolve the existing team and go to his buddy Bonaparte (Kelsey Grammer) to recruit younger, hipper, blood to go after Stonebanks. In a probably too long section of the film, Grammer and Stallone travel around the country to find Mars (Victor Ortiz), Luna (Ronda Rousey), Smiley (Kellan Lutz), and Thorn (Glen Powell). They're young and have attitude and skills that reflect the more "modern" approach to action films (hacking, basejumping, drones, smart rifles, MMA training) so while they do help Barney capture Stonebanks, they're also all immediately captured when inevitably the bad guy escapes. Barney gets away and makes it to the rendezvous point where Trench (Arnold Schwarzenegger) is waiting.

 (For the record, I was happy to see that the guy buying weapons from Stonebanks in the art museum was none other than Robert Davi. I had no idea he was in the movie, so it was a pleasant surprise)

 Since Barney is stubborn and won't ask Lee, Toll, or Gunnar for help, he tells Trench to leave and decides he'll take Stonebanks up on his "you want them, come and get them" offer alone. One of Bonaparte's rejects, Galgo (Antonio Banderas) shows up and begs Ross to let him come - "I NEED action!" Despite the fact that his entire unit abandoned him and the fact that he just won't shut up, Ross agrees to bring him along. And then the other Expendables arrive, because why wouldn't they? Time for the big showdown!

 I'm wondering if the complaints about The Expendables 3 being "boring" are coming from the mid-section, which is the bulk of the movie and deals with introducing four new characters, only two of which we every really learn anything about. Stallone and Grammer actually have great chemistry together, so it's fun watching them bullshit between picking up new Expendables, but only MMA fighter Rousey and Kellan Lutz have the slightest amount of character development. Lutz plays the "guy who doesn't like authority but learns to respect the team" and Rousey's Luna is the "woman everyone thinks is hot but can mix it up with the boys." That's about it, although Rousey has a great chance to shine late in the film with the scene stealing Banderas, who it turns out is really, really good a killing people.

 Part of the problem of The Expendables 3 in execution is that we're constantly being introduced to characters as the cast swells. We might like some of them individually, but the aggregate effect is that the film feels bloated well before the big action sequence that closes things out. IMDB lists a character playing Gunnar's daughter, which is nowhere to be seen in the finished film, so apparently there were even more characters in the film. Meanwhile, Jet Li is in the film for arguably even less screen time than he was in The Expendables 2, and most of Arnold's scenes are near the end. Mickey Rourke still isn't back, Charisma Carpenter sat this one out, and forget any rumors about Milla Jovovich, Jackie Chan, Steven Seagal or Nicolas Cage cameos: they really aren't in the movie. Hell, most of the regulars aren't in the movie very much - it's Stallone most of the way.

 I would like to mention someone who is in the movie for a lot longer than I expected, and it's actually a very welcome addition. When Bruce Willis priced himself out of The Expendables 3, Stallone brought in Harrison Ford, who I assumed would be some minimal cameo where he'd be gruff and grouchy for a few minutes and then peace out. Instead, Ford's Drummer is the CIA representative who "took care of Church" and is the one who helps Ross find Stonebanks. He's in a lot more of the movie than I thought, is more central to the story than I expected, and is clearly having a very good time with the action stars. He's mostly onscreen with Stallone, Schwarzenegger, and Li, but Ford seems to genuinely enjoy the over-the-top action at the end of the film instead of just phoning it in. He also gets the distinction of delivering the PG-13 mandated "one F-Bomb," which at this point is almost as weird as when Harrison Ford said "tits" in Patriot Games.

 Wesley Snipes also goes a long way towards reminding us why he deserves a place in the action star pantheon. Doc gets sidelined for a lot of the movie, but when he's onscreen it's a welcome addition to the cast. He gets paired with Statham frequently, which makes for an amusing subplot involving their mutual love of knives (and competition to outdo the other). Statham is good but barely registers, Lundgren finds a better balance between comedy and action than in the last movie, and Couture and Crews are once again not given much to do. At least Couture is with the team during the climax of the film, but other than stealing a tank with Gunnar, I can't remember a single thing he does.

 Tank, you say? Yes, Stonebanks leads them to a mostly abandoned city that looks a lot like the one from The Expendables 2 to rescue the "kids," and then uses his connections with the local dictator to throw an army at the team. Also the building is wired with C4, and Smilee can only block the signal for so long, so there's a ticking clock to escape in Drummer's helicopter. There's a long and loud and intermittently fun action scene that involves dirt bikes, tanks, grenades, lots of shooting, and then Rousey and Banderas steal the entire show in what may be my favorite sequence of any of the scenes in the movie. Statham's "big fight" with the heavy felt a little undercooked because you don't really get a sense of who Stonebanks's "muscle" is, and also because Hughes keeps cutting away to Snipes taking out people nearby.

 Meanwhile, Drummer, Trench, and Yin Yang (I had to look, because I forgot) are flying around in the copter, avoiding fire and shooting at anything that moves until they can safely evacuate more people than could possibly fit. And finally, there's the showdown between Ross and Stonebanks, which is, to be blunt, a total disappointment. The entire movie is built around Barney Ross wanting to take out Conrad Stonebanks, up to and including a great monologue by Gibson after he's been captured about the essence of being "expendable," and Hughes and Stallone can't stick the landing. Mel Gibson gives Van Damme a run for his money for the villain you most want to see Stallone brutally murder, but their respective final "fight"s are so lopsided, there's no competition.

 Not only is the fight shot in such a way that you can't really see both of the faces in the frame 90% of the time, the unnecessarily padded nature of having so many characters trying to do so much in so little time means that Stallone and Gibson's "showdown" maybe lasts for five minutes of screen time. It's over so quickly and in such and underwhelming fashion that I can't imagine anyone being satisfied that The Expendables 3 builds to "that". It's a total let down, a waste of casting Gibson, and a failure to live up to the menace instilled in the bad guy. Not since Stone Cold Steve Austin caught fire and Eric Roberts caught a knife to the heart has a bad guy been given such a limp death scene. So if you decide to see this movie just to see Mel Gibson being murdered, don't get your hopes too high - it happens, but very quickly. Remember, explosions!

 For the record, if you were annoyed by the constant referencing of "greatest hits" by the cast in The Expendables 2, I have good news and bad news. The good news is that it's toned down considerably in the first part of the film. Other than the "tax evasion" joke and a Demolition Man reference, I didn't catch anything that really made me groan. However, late in the movie there's a litany of one-liner reference jokes that will drive you nuts, including "Get to the Choppah," "I Lied," and a variation on "I Am the Law." I didn't catch a specific Harrison Ford joke, but I'm pretty sure there's either an Air Force One or Indiana Jones reference during the helicopter scene. There's also another Predator joke involving Caesar, Gunnar, and a mini-gun early in the film. I've forgotten some of the others, but they tend to pile up on each other towards the end of the movie, and not in a good way.

 Once again, I'm looking at an Expendables movie that I mostly liked, but which loses its luster the more I think about it. There's probably enough good to counter the bad, but not enough to outweigh it, and the only reason it's over two hours long is because the addition of nearly a dozen new characters, many of which have extensive introductions, only to not do much later. Ford, Snipes, Banderas, and Rousey rise above the clutter, and Grammer makes a nice impression as a side character, but these films are getting too crowded. There simply isn't enough for everybody to do, and when the element that gets sacrificed is the hero and the villain's showdown, you're doing something wrong.

 What's funny is that immediately after I finished the movie, I was in a good mood and I liked it. But the more I think about it, the more apparent its problems are and I have a hard time remember what it was I enjoyed about The Expendables 3. I'm almost positive that's not the intended reaction to the movie, but it's kind of the same way I felt about the first one. Less so The Expendables 2, but to date not one of these movies really "holds up" like it ought to, and I'm talking the bare minimum requirements of "holds up."

 In fits and spurts, I expect you'll find The Expendables 3 to be entertaining, and you'll probably have fun, but in retrospect, the seams start showing and threaten to fall apart. I'm not sure this series can sustain itself much longer, but there's always the hope that "next time they'll get it right." I'm not asking for Commando, because there aren't actually many movies from the 1980s like Commando (maybe Rambo: First Blood Part II), but Stallone hasn't quite put together an Expendables film that does justice to the films that made him a household name. Yet. There's always hope that like Rocky Balboa or Rambo, he's got one killer Expendables movie in him, and, uh, we'll end on that hopeful, if naive note. In closing, see Escape Plan, available now on home video.



 * Commando is the perfect storm of "no, that could never happen" with respect to continuity, machismo, one-liners, extreme violence, impossible coincidences, economy of story, and ridiculous fight scenes. Arnold takes out the entire army of Val Verde in the back yard of a mansion BY HIMSELF using a machine gun and garden implements. His nemesis is the henchman from The Road Warrior, he throws a pipe through his chest! I'm sorry, but if you expect every action movie to be like Commando, then only Road House is going to meet your expectations Or maybe Exit Wounds - Seagal blows up a helicopter with a handgun.

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.

Cap'n Howdy's (Back)Log: Escape Plan

  Escape Plan is a surprisingly good theatrically released DTV movie. Wait, let me take that back. That's a mean way to start the review, and since Escape Plan is actually a (lot) better than either Bullet to the Head or The Last Stand, I shouldn't be diminishing your expectations already by suggesting that it's a non-direct to video DTV entry. Not that you'd be mistaken for thinking that when I get to the cast, a who's who of once-upon-a-time "they're in this?" but now probably more like "oh, that's what they're up to"-ers. Again, I feel I'm being mean already, and I really liked Escape Plan. Maybe DTV is just better than what you'd expect it to be these days (except the ones starring Bruce Willis). Or maybe the average action movie just isn't (A Good Day to Die Hard, I'm looking at you...)

 So if you're ignoring The Expendables, and for the moment let's do that, Escape Plan is the first film co-headlined by Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger. This is definitely still a Stallone movie, but Arnold has a crucial supporting part and drives most of the narrative. More importantly, unlike his one-liner joke machine cameos in The Expendables movies, Schwarzenegger is actually playing a character that doesn't rely on the fact we know he's Ah-nuld. It's pretty cool to see him no be quite as larger than life but just be a grizzled criminal who needs Sly's help. Stallone is basically playing any of his non-Rocky / Rambo-types, but that's a good thing. The "man of few words" works for what amounts to a pretty linear plot.

 Ray Breslin (Stallone) is a former prosecutor turned profession jailbreak-er. He works for a consulting firm that helps the Department of Prison Services determine how safe their institutions are from escapes, and as he demonstrates in the first ten minutes, Ray is very good at observing routines, memorizing layouts, and discovering weaknesses in prison security. He's so good, in fact, that Ray literally wrote the book on prison design (we see it several times in the movie). CIA representative Jessica Miller (Caitriona Balfe) comes to Breslin's boss Lester Clark (Vincent D'Onofrio) with a proposition: a secret, non-government sanction super prison is being tested for the worst of the worst, and in order to make sure that it's really as state-of-the-art as they hope it is, they want Ray to try to get out. Despite the clandestine details surrounding his arrival to "The Tomb," Breslin reluctantly agrees, but quickly discovers that someone with an axe to grind intends for him to stay there permanently.

 Now this is already a pretty good "wrong man" setup before we're introduced to Emil Rottmayer (Schwarzenegger), who's in "The Tomb" for refusing to cooperate with authorities in locating his boss, an international thief / hacker. Rottmayer turns out to be the only friend Breslin has, even when Ray isn't interested in forging alliances. This prison is, well, different: the cells are plexiglass and elevated, the guards are all masked to hide their identities and use random schedules, and warden Hobbes (Jim Caveziel) built the facility using Breslin's book as a blueprint. Hobbes doesn't know Ray's actual identity at first, but he's bound and determined to keep every "asset" under his thumb, and his number one "guard," Drake (Vinnie Jones) is the muscle that backs that up.

 While Escape Plan doesn't necessarily rewrite the "prison escape movie" playbook (come in, turn enemies into friends, work out the prison, etc.), I will give it credit for little touches that you don't see often enough. For example, there's probably a really good reason most of the people in this high tech prison (one that has a barcode scanner for uniforms) were captured in the first place, but you never think twice when Ray includes some of them in his plan that they too should escape. Partly this is because of how cruel Hobbes is, but also the nature of this "black site" prison - which, speaking of nice touches, is in a novel location - we're already iffy that it should exist when the CIA pitches it to Ray. It doesn't get better when Breslin wakes up from being drugged to see Drake stabbing a prisoner and throwing him out of a helicopter. (To be fair, Hobbes does dock him the cost of the "asset" for doing that).

 This also might be the first American action movie since True Lies and definitely since the year 2001 that I can think of where a character is a practicing Muslim (Javed, played by the President of Elysium, Faran Tahir) and not portrayed as a cartoonish villain but as a man of faith who speaks openly about it. In fact, his prayer becomes a central plot point late in the film, as do his doubts about whether this would offend Allah. Hobbes gets to be even more of a jerk when he replies to Javed's "God is great" by saying "Yeah, whatever" and (SPOILER) shooting him.

 I also appreciated that while it plays out pretty much like you'd expect it to, there are initially some questions about allegiances and who Breslin can and can't trust, mostly due to a twist near the end of the film I must admit I'd forgotten about. This isn't tied to the twist, but to get back to the quasi-DTV casting nature of this, the prison doctor Kyrie is performed by In the Mouth of Madness's Sam Neill, and what I was expecting (or, I should say, dreading) was the long speech about how he ended up in these dubious circumstances. You know the speech, we've heard it a million times. It happens right before he decides to help the hero out, but in Escape Plan, it never happens. Instead of being told, we see it in the look on Neill's face when he tells Ray anesthetic is forbidden by Hobbes, or in a simple shot of Dr. Kyrie reading the Hippocratic oath with a bottle of liquor next to him. It explains the shaky hands when he tried to stitch up Ray. In a movie that could just go the expected route, I'm happy when it doesn't.

 So we've got Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jim Caveziel, Sam Neill, Vincent D'Onofrio, and Vinnie Jones so far, but this alone does not a non-DTV DTV roster make. We need at least two more cast members with name recognition, and luckily, I haven't even mentioned Ray's team. For starters, there's Hush, the ex-con who would go back into prison to help Ray get out if he needed help, and is the computer expert. How about 50 Cent? Done! And what about Abigail, the conscience of the team and hard-to-tell if she's hot for Ray or not (seriously, it's not clear). Let's go with Academy Award nominee for Gone Baby Gone's Amy Ryan. Ladies and gentlemen, let's slap those names on some photoshopped artwork and get this sucker onto Target shelves!

 Or they could not do that and release it in theatres with just Stallone and Schwarzenegger and people don't go see it, just like they didn't see The Last Stand or Bullet to the Head. It's a shame, because Escape Plan is a) really good and b) surprises you with the cast because unless you hit up IMDB first, you probably didn't know anybody else was in this movie. Not literally, of course, but I suspect you wouldn't know there were that many recognizable names / faces in Escape Plan. You probably just thought it was another stupid action movie that nobody wanted to see, thusly making Escape Plan's failure a self-fulfilling prophecy. And that's too bad, because while I enjoyed Furious 6 quite a bit, it doesn't need to be the only high water mark of action movies while we put up with garbage like G.I. Joe: Retaliation. From what I've seen of Olympus Has Fallen, it is arguably more preposterous but not as well constructed as Escape Plan.

 Speaking of which, I was very surprised to find that Mikael Håfström, he who made 1408, directed Escape Plan. Truth be told, this was an improvement in just about every way over that movie, with the exception of no John Cusack, who was probably busy making his own quasi-DTV joint. But anyway, Escape Plan. Rent it when it comes out. Watch it with your buddies. Sly's good. Arnold's good. The rest of the cast is good too. Some nice twists. An interesting setting. Arnold gives an entire monologue in German which is the first time I can think of that happening in a very long time (if at all). Gratuitous sequence in New Orleans because it's cheap to film action movies in Louisiana (seriously, even the Jason Statham / James Franco movie, Homefront*, was filmed there). It's a better movie than a lot of people will give it credit for, and definitely a better action movie than anything other than Furious 6 that I mentioned in this review. If you have to, pretend it's DTV and it'll be even better, but that's not really being fair to the movie is all I'm saying.


 * Written by Sylvester Stallone.

Summer Fest 5 (Day Two): Treevenge, American Juggalo, ThanksKilling 3, and Demolition Man

 Before the Ninja III: The Domination experience, we watched Jason Eisener's Treevenge, but I didn't feel it would be fair to let that be overshadowed by including it with the previous review. Ninja III stands alone. That said, Treevenge is no slouch. Blogorium regulars will no doubt recognize that Eisener tends to pop up here now and then, both for his film Hobo with a Shotgun and for his short films and entries into anthologies like The ABCs of Death and V/H/S 2. I like this man's short films. I like them a lot.

 Treevenge is the kind of subject that would make Blogorium Holiday Hijacker Douglas Fir squeal about - it's the story of Christmas as told from the perspective of the trees, from cutting down the forest to living room fixture. As blasphemous as this is going to sound (and no doubt by design of the director), the short is designed to feel like a combination of "slave narrative" and "Holocaust survival" story. No, really. It's horrifying, and made even more so by the fact that the trees speak to each other in their own language (it sounds a little bit like Ewoks) and are subtitled so we know what they're saying.

 So after a horrifying set up of families being torn apart and herded in the back of trucks to unscrupulous tree dealers (the ones that are too scrawny go to the "wreath" pile), we get to the degrading "decorating" in the home, and um... how would one even put this? Inter-species man-on-tree sex? Maybe? Yeah, Eisener goes there, or at least shows us the lubed-up stump. But don't worry, because the title is certainly no misnomer. And what glorious Treevenge it is! I'll put this up on the Blogorium in December, because it's definitely going to benefit more than it would in the middle of July. Still, a quality Summer Fest entry.

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 After Ninja III: The Domination, when most of the audience went outside for the customary "too long" smoke break, I gave the folks inside a real dose of the scary by putting on American Juggalo. If you haven't heard of this already, American Juggalo is a documentary filmed at The Gathering of the Juggalos which consists of nothing but interviews with fans of The Insane Clown Posse. While the title is appropriate, I feel you could also call the short documentary "Faces of Meth" and that would also be totally fitting.

 Behold the naked pregnant Juggalo posing for pictures while her boyfriend talks about how being a Juggalo is great. Or the girl that's so high she can't get out of her car. Or maybe the guy throwing M-80s into the middle of a field and manages even to scare himself. Or the guy who has his friend spray paint his face. As these Juggalos desperately try to explain to you that this is an inviting, friendly atmosphere of true fans looking to share in an experience while also doing whip-its. Sometimes they forget where they are in mid-sentence. One guy tries to convince you that he met a brain surgeon who was a Juggalo. Many of them gleefully explain how they quit their job because they couldn't get the weekend of the Gathering off. I wonder how Arby's got by.

 While it's true that there may be no more reliable punching bag than a Juggalo these days, none of the many subjects of this documentary even come close to making the case that they're misrepresented. The girl who insists she's not high, she's just "like this all the time" or the truly terrified looks on the children who were dragged along by their parents tell you that yes, this is a frightening place to be. Unless you like to have Faygo sprayed on you from people riding in the back of a bus with the top cut off, or maybe if you just like to get REALLY high and listen to ear-splitting "music" for the weekend. Apparently I traumatized the mother of two young children by showing her American Juggalo that night, but the upside is that we now have two less social disasters to worry about.

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 So what on earth could I follow American Juggalo with? Well, how about an aborted attempt to watch the sequel to ThanksKilling? You guys remember ThanksKilling right? The "killer turkey" movie so amazing that I watched it twice in one day during Summer Fest III? It was crude, short, and really violent, with a warped sense of humor and everybody loved it. The premise of ThanksKilling 3 seemed like it would be a worthy sequel: ThanksKilling 2: In Space (the sequel promised at the end of the first film) was so terrible that nearly every copy in existence was destroyed. Turkey sets out to find the last surviving DVD of the film and take his revenge!

 I don't know if I ever mentioned this during the Summer Fest recaps, but at the end of ThanksKilling, when the "In Space" sequel was teased, I remarked that I would "happily donate some money to make that happen," which is apparently how ThanksKilling 3 came to be (via Kickstarter). I'm glad I didn't make good on that promise, because while the idea of bypassing your own sequel is a clever idea, the execution is terrible. ThanksKilling 3 is just terrible.

 ThanksKilling worked largely because of Turkey, the foul mouthed killer, but also because of the charming ineptitude of most of the cast and the absurdity of the story. For example, why the kids would ever believe that Turkey was the girl's father just because he's wearing the dead dad's face is hilarious. Even Turkey can't believe how stupid they are. It's a low-fi horror flick with an amusing hook, violence, and a little gratudity. The fake opening of ThanksKilling 3, which shows some of ThanksKilling 2: In Space, seems promising: for a moment it looks like a really dumb knock-off of the game Starfox, with Turkey flying around in space with a talking pumpkin pie as his wingman. But things quickly fall apart.

 Instead of keeping it simple, ThanksKilling 3 expands the scope in unnecessary ways, removing the best part of the first film (Turkey) from the story for long stretches. Instead, it focuses on overlapping stories of a TV turkey roaster salesman, an intergalactic bounty hunter robot with worm sidekick, and a puppet with amnesia. In fact, there are FAR too many puppets in ThanksKilling 3, to the point that the novelty of Turkey disappears almost as much as he does. Other than a Natural Born Killers-esque "sitcom" set-up, the only character we were remotely interested in is missing from the first thirty minutes of the movie, which was as long as people were willing to sit through.

 So out of courtesy, I did something that I haven't done since Horror Fest III: I turned the movie off. It didn't stop people from deciding it was time to call it a night, but for the few that stuck around, I felt like I had to make amends.

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 How do you make amends for something so disappointing? Well, there's always Demolition Man.

 I can't imagine that anyone reading this blog doesn't already know what Demolition Man is, but if you somehow missed the entirety of the 1990s or just assumed that Sly Stallone topped out at Rocky IV, allow me to suggest you check out a very silly action movie that happens to be twenty years old this year. Sylvester Stallone vs. Wesley Snipes in a Utopian future where nobody is allowed to curse of be violent and where all restaurants are Taco Bell.

 Stallone is super cop John Spartan, and Snipes is maniacal supper-baddie Simon Phoenix. When Spartan's arrest of Phoenix goes horribly wrong and hostages are killed, BOTH of them end up going to the same ultra-futuristic prison, where inmates are cryogenically frozen. Phoenix is awakened in 2032 and finds the peaceful society totally incapable to dealing with his brand of psycho-mischief. With no idea how to stop him, the San Angeles police department thaw out Spartan, and our futuristic smack-down begins. Also Denis Leary gets to reuse most of his MTV bumper promo rants again while playing the leader of an underground resistance to the "Utopia" above.

 Demolition Man is a goofy movie, to be sure, but one with its fair share of fun action sequences (the fight in the museum is a standout) and succeeds in being intentionally and unintentionally funny in equal measure. It was definitely the action / sci-fi "comfort food" we desperately needed after ThanksKilling 3 arrived dead on arrival, and with the added benefit of watching it with someone who had never seen it before, which was quite amusing. So we couldn't match the highs of Ninja III: The Domination; at least I was able to level out the low of ThanksKilling 3. I'll settle for that as we head into the final stretch tomorrow...

"B" is for Bullet to the Head

 On paper, there's no way that Bullet to the Head should be as disappointing as it is - Sylvester Stallone has been on a mostly successful run since returning to big screens with Rocky Balboa, and while you can debate the relative merits of The Expendables films, I'd venture to say that they're getting better as they go along. Teaming Stallone with Walter Hill (48 Hours, The Warriors, Red Heat, oh, and one of the writers of Alien) for a gritty revenge film just seems right. And then, for good measure, throw in Sung Kang (who I enjoyed in the last two Fast and the Furious movies), Christian Slater and Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje as the bad guys, and what the hell, Jason Momoa as the heavy.

 Like I said, on paper it sounds like a winner; so what the hell happened? Well, Bullet to the Head isn't a total disaster, let me mention that right up front. It's a thoroughly average action movie unnecessarily saddled with a "buddy cop" template when it really needs to be about getting Stallone and Momoa on-screen together. That happens twice in the movie, and when it does, Bullet to the Head comes to life. Otherwise, it's a drawn-out bore.

  I hate to say it, but most of the problem is Kang's character, Detective Taylor Kwon. While Kang has an easygoing chemistry with Vin Diesel the rest of the F&F gang, he sucks the life out of Bullet to the Head. It's hard to tell if he just didn't get a handle on the character or if Kwan is just horribly written, because he comes off (at best) as incompetent at his job. When Kwon's partner is killed, he travels from Washington, D.C. to New Orleans to track down the killer, and ends up forming an uneasy alliance with Jimmy "Bobo" Bonobo, a hitman whose partner was also killed by the same shady figures.

 Normally, you'd think they'd not get along and then find some common ground, but instead Kwon never gets past the first stage, where he's constantly threatening to arrest Jimmy on principle despite the fact that the criminal is much better at tracking these guys down than the cop is. Kwon's "detective" work consists of using his smartphone to call the station, have them look up a name, and then listen to someone give him exposition which he then relays to Stallone. This happens repeatedly in Bullet to the Head, usually while they're driving and almost always before or after an argument.

 My takeaway here is that in order to be good at following leads, all you need to be is literally anybody with a smart phone. Early in the film the NOPD makes him give up his gun (because this isn't his jurisdiction) but apparently the DCPD are perfectly willing to help him with a rogue investigation.

 Kwon is such a shitty detective that he can't figure out that the corrupt New Orleans police chief and detective working for African crime boss Morel (Akinnuoye-Agbaje) are tracking him and Jimmy with the GPS in his phone. Nope, he just keeps using it to advance us to the next lowlife that Jimmy needs to kill so that Kwon can get indignant. Mind you, this is after "Bobo" saves his life and helps him remove a bullet from a failed assassination attempt.

 Speaking of which, in the one touch I liked (until the movie ruined it), Kwon mistakes Lisa (Sarah Shahi), the tattoo artist who helps remove said bullet from his shoulder for Jimmy's girlfriend, when she is, in fact, his estranged daughter. Had the character relationship been limited to that, I'd be happy, but in the "cop / criminal" twist logic of this film, Lisa and Kwon have to get together., despite having no chemistry whatsoever.

 In fact, Kang and Stallone have no chemistry either, which really grinds everything down to a halt during the movie. When Stallone is on his own, or with Slater (as Morel's sleazeball attorney) and especially with Momoa, Bullet to the Head gets much better, but unfortunately those are but brief glimpses of a finer action film.

 Since I haven't really mentioned Jason Momoa, who is the best part of the ridiculous Conan the Barbarian, let's get back to the positives of Bullet to the Head and talk about him for a moment. So Momoa plays Keegan, a mercenary / hitman hired by Morel to take out anybody associated with a conspiracy the war criminal is trying to cover up. He's the one who kills Louis Blanchard (John Seda), Jimmy's partner. He also tries to kill Bonomo, but that doesn't quite work out.

 Unlike Kwon, we actually see Keegan develop a bit in the film from just being "the heavy." It turns out that he's respected by other mercenaries because he has a code of honor and he sticks to it, so when Morel screws him over from a moral standpoint, Keegan (SPOILER) kills the bad guys and leaves their warehouse hideout. That's right, our heroes don't kill the big bad guy, the bad guy's henchman does, and I don't even mind. Yes, it's a story flaw, but Momoa's Keegan is a much more interesting character, and it's clear all he really wants to do is finish the fight he started with Jimmy.

 And boy, do they ever. The only reason I'm even recommending Bullet to the Head is because the axe fight between Momoa and Stallone ("What are we, vikings?" quips Jimmy) is the high point of the movie. Keegan is so impressed that Jimmy can put up a fight that he starts smiling and at one point starts clapping. This is a show of respect between two tough motherfuckers that refuse to be the loser in this battle. Hell, Jimmy stabs Keegan in the throat with Louis' knife and THAT doesn't stop him from trying to score the killing blow. Nope - that would be Kwon shooting Keegan from across the room, breaking his "rule" about not killing "bad guys" when he can arrest them.

 It's the Die Hard / Lethal Weapon moment where Al / Murtaugh shoots the bad guy as they lunge forward which ties back to something they said earlier but in this instance because Kwon is such dead weight I was just pissed off that he killed the only interesting character not played by Stallone. Conversely, I didn't mind when Stallone killed Slater (SPOILER) after an interrogation scene because there was a least a joke there.

 So as not to sound like a sourpuss, here are a few more things I liked about Bullet to the Head:

 - I really enjoyed the set up and pay off of Kwon unloading Jimmy's gun while he was talking his daughter into helping remove the bullet. Later in the film, Jimmy goes into a bath house to confront another hitman who had a hand in getting his partner killed, and when the conversation leads to the inevitable "pull out the gun and shoot" moment, the look on Stallone's face when he hears "click" is priceless. It also allows for a protracted fight scene that is also pretty good.

 - The use of photos of Stallone throughout his career as mugshots (one of which looks like it's from First Blood) is actually a really nice touch in establishing his back story without having to spend too much time on it. Jimmy Bonomo is a career criminal, and with a few brief glimpses of Stallone as a younger man, we buy that a life on the wrong side of the law would result in the hardened asshole he plays in the movie.

 - Also, the opening "hit" that sets up what Jimmy and Louis do is short but effective. It's unexpected when they shoot the guy (who, by the way, is one of Kwon's former associates) in the chest but he doesn't die immediately but instead gets pissed off and tries to take them out, leading to the first (of many) instances of the title coming into play in the movie.

 One final note on the use of New Orleans as the backdrop for the story - it's not a major issue for me that Louisiana is offering credit to film crews in order to get them to shoot there, but having almost every action movie in the last five years in the Big Easy is starting to get a little repetitious. There's an assault on Jimmy's house (which is on a river) that ends in almost exactly the same way that the Jason Statham version of The Mechanic did, and that's not the movie you want to remind me of. Were it not clear to me that it couldn't be the same house (because, well, it had been blown up in The Mechanic), I might have assumed they used the same location. So it's cool that you can use New Orleans on the cheap, but let's try to vary it a bit, huh? If Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call Nicolas Cage could switch it up a little bit, I'd like to think Walter Hill could find different places to film.

 So yeah, this is a pretty average action movie that should have been better. There's no excuse for it not to be better, and the glimpses of a pretty great movie in there only compound the issue. If I were channeling my inner Rex Reed, I'd say "B is for Bullet to the Head? More like a C minus!" but that's beneath all of us. No wonder they killed Sung Kang in Tokyo Drift...

Blogorium Review: The Expendables 2

 Around this time two years ago, the Cap'n was way out west and The Expendables was in theatrical release. There was a bit of a kerfuffle on the internet* because The Expendables opened against Scott Pilgrim vs. the World and Scott Pilgrim lost. I may have had a thing or two to say about that, because they selectively chose to denigrate The Expendables even though Scott Pilgrim also came in behind Eat Pray Love, Inception, and The Other Guys as well. But The Expendables weathered the storm, even with some shaky hand-held action chicanery and over-earnest monologue-ing from Mickey Rourke.

 It was a throwback to action movies that managed to upset action movie (no pun intended) die-hards for its adherence to new action movie techniques (see: hand-held camerawork during fight scenes) and also upset the kind of people who pretend to be action movie fans but actually just assume that it means every "action" movie is exactly like Commando or YouTube compilations of Steven Seagal kicking people through windows. I saw both kinds of reactions, and both camps seemed to say "boo hoo, it didn't meet my expectations so it sucks." And okay, it wasn't the movie it could have been, but to expect The Expendables to be the last twenty minutes of Rambo for two hours is absurd.

 To expect any action movie to consistently be as ridiculous as Commando is asking too much. People tend to forget that Commando has a few (not many, but a few) scenes where Arnold isn't punning or brutally murdering people. Predator has a LOT of those moments, and so does Die Hard and First Blood. Even Bloodsport has a story, threadbare though it may be. I know, you're shocked, but it's more than a 90 minute string of explosions and arterial spray, and other than maybe Bloodsport, I think you'd consider those to be some of the best films the action genre has to offer.

 But anyway, so we got past The Expendables and the people who didn't automatically feel "disappointed" it were pleasantly entertained, even if it wasn't great. And now, without the burden of political careers or Scott Pilgrims, there's a sequel. So how was The Expendables 2?

 Basically, it's exactly what it needs to be. Not a whole lot more, and certainly with things that improve on the first film but also some changes that I wouldn't really call "improvements." Still, overall I have to say that it delivers on the action, has a few good laughs (and a lot of chuckles / groaners) and is going to provide the "popcorn entertainment" quota for late summer action. It doesn't feel bloated like a Battleship or unnecessarily convoluted like a Bourne Legacy, and for the most part West and the cast get things right about where they need to be.

 This time, since they killed off "Stone Cold" Steve Austin and Eric Roberts, there was a need for new villains, so Stallone and director Simon West (Con Air, The Mechanic) brought in Scott Adkins (Undisputed II, The Bourne Ultimatum) and Jean-Claude Van Damme (JCVD, Universal Soldier) to give Barney Ross and his crew some real trouble.

  The first thing The Expendables 2 does better than The Expendables is streamline the plot: instead of some kind of rogue-CIA agent funding a military coup / dictatorship in a fictional South American country that our team are vaguely invested in, Van Damme's Villane / Villain (it depends on what site you check) makes good on the promise implied by the name "expendables" by kicking Barney (Stallone)'s knife into the chest of a team member. (SPOILER ALERT) To be fair, it's kind of a cheat because a) it's the new "Expendable" Billy (Liam Hemsworth), the sniper who announces two scenes earlier that he wants to leave the team to be with his girlfriend, and b) because Liam Hemsworth is mostly in the movie so they could use his last name in the trailer to trick you into thinking it was his older brother Chris, prompting guys to say "Oh shit! Thor is in The Expendables 2" when in reality it's just the dude from The Hunger Games. In fairness, he does blow a guy's head off with his sniper rifle and holds his own for a while.

 Anyway, Villane and his crew the Sangs (who have goat tattoos on their necks for a reason Van Damme sort-of explains) steal the layout of a Russian mine where weapons grade plutonium is stored from our heroes, so the movie becomes a combination of "stop them from selling the plutonium" and "get revenge on this asshole" that invests the audience in the story. I'd be lying if I said we get to know more about the individual members on the Expendables - Jet Li leaves after the first action sequence, providing a waffling "maybe I'll be back, maybe I won't. Maybe I'll start a new life." and then parachuting out of the plane.

 Randy Couture and Terry Crews don't get much more to do than they did in the first one, Jason Statham only gets two scenes to really show off (one in a church and the other fighting Adkins at the end), but I guess it's nice that Dolph Lundgren has a few defining character quirks introduced this time around. Stallone (who co-wrote the screenplay with Richard Wenk) incorporates some of Lundgren's actual life into Gunner's character by making him a former chemical engineer (and Fulbright Scholar) who worked at a nightclub "to impress a girl" (all true, although I'm not sure if he was working at the club to impress a girl or because he was a 3rd degree black belt.) It makes up for the notable absence of Mickey Rourke, even if that means we're spared another monologue about the value of human life.

 Most of the focus in the film is on Stallone or the new / returning characters. In addition to Hemsworth's Billy, when Jet Li takes off before the title screen, Church (Bruce Willis) tells Barney that Maggie (Nan Yu from Speed Racer and Lundgren's Diamond Dogs) is going to join them on the mission to retrieve that map Villane steals. Maggie can hold her own, and is in a lot of ways more interesting than most of the guys on the team. She also gives Stallone the opportunity to be funnier because Barney Ross is so uncomfortable around women that he just can't understand why she keeps flirting with him. Van Damme is also good to see, although if you've seen Universal Soldier: Regeneration or JCVD, you know he's more than capable of putting his weathered face to use as an imposing adversary. He's a bad guy out for the money, but the Sangs have a code built around respect, so he's very particular about how he deals with the Expendables.

 Oh, and then there's the other driving force of the film, which provides for some of the best (and also worst) adjustments between the last movie and this one: Bruce Willis, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Chuck Norris. Of the three, only Willis really seems to be playing a character, as Norris and Schwarzenegger are basically playing their personas. Case in point: Chuck Norris, introduced after killing an entire Sang team and blowing up a tank, walks into frame to the theme from The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (?), is identified (repeatedly) as a "Lone Wolf," and proceeds to provide a "Chuck Norris Fact" in the span of three minutes.

 And look, it's kind of funny at first, until he leaves shortly thereafter and it's clear that when (and if) he shows up again that's all he's going to be used for. He's a walking reference to the fact that people mythologized Chuck Norris. But then we get to Arnold, reprising his cameo from the last film as Trench, who is a walking "one-liner": he says "I'm back" or "I'll be back" repeatedly, and when Chuck Norris walks up next to him, I kid you not Schwarzenegger says "Who is next? Rambo?" It's like Arnold wrote all of his dialogue for the film and delivers it in the worst possible way (seriously, when he has things to say relevant to the plot, the delivery is much better).

 Oh, and then there's this exchange between Church and Trent:

 Trent: I'm almost out. Stay here - I'll be back.
 Church: No, you've been back enough. I'LL BE BACK.
 Trent: Yippie-ky-yay.

  The walking, talking reference to your more famous movies is a little groan-worthy, but it is mostly contained near the end, where Statham was a pretty good knife fight with the largely unused Adkins (seriously, check out some of his movies), Stallone has a better fight with Van Damme (even if they re-use footage of one of JCVD's high kicks right after he did it the first time), and I have to say that I laughed at Arnold and Bruce in the Smart Car and Chuck Norris' use of an airport scanner. That said, it's not exactly the direction I was hoping to see these movie go in. We're seeing them because we know who these action stars are, not because we want to be reminded of their "greatest hits." That just reinforces the assumption that The Expendables as a series is a glorified YouTube compilation of action tropes.

 But overall it's a fun time at the movies. I really enjoyed Van Damme and Statham's "I now pronounce you man and knife" and Dolph Lundgren being a part of the team (and failing miserably to impress Maggie) and let's be honest here: there's something cool about seeing Sylvester Stallone, Bruce Willis, and Arnold Schwarzenegger standing side by side and shooting at Jean-Claude Van Damme and assorted goons. I still wish that Randy Couture and Terry Crews had more time to shine, but I guess the third movie is an inevitability, so there's always next time, right?

 Oh, one final note: so Simon West made Con Air (which I liked) and The Mechanic (which was a serviceable but not great Jason Statham vehicle) and also a few other things I didn't see or didn't like (The General's Daughter and Lara Croft: Tomb Raider respectively), so I didn't really know what to expect here. The Mechanic was competently shot but the action scenes were few and far between, so it was hard to say what we'd get here. I'm happy to say it's mostly an improvement over the impossible to watch fight scenes in The Expendables (I'm looking at you, Lundgren / Li fight), so that's an improvement over Stallone. The pre-title sequence was good and easy to follow other than awkward framing in the Jet Li "knives vs frying pan" scene. Still, I don't think the series has quite found a director that can convey the action in a way that does it justice. So that's something to think about for next time, if you ask me. And by that I don't mean the movie leaves itself blatantly open-ended - it has a beginning, middle, and an end, but it's clear there can (and more than likely will) be more Expendables adventures. I mean, the producer has to make good on promising Wesley Snipes, Harrison Ford, Nicolas Cage, and Clint Eastwood for part 3**!


 So yeah, if you didn't like the last one I'm sure you'll find lots of things not to like about The Expendables 2. And to be fair, it's not like they knocked it out of the park. It's more like a "ground rule double" of action films, which is probably less than what you expected with this kind of lineup but it's getting them in place for a grand slam. I hope, anyway.


 * Interesting tidbit: Auto-Correct didn't even blink when I typed the word "kerfuffle" even though I'm positive I've never used that term before on the Blogorium and I'm honestly surprised to think that it might qualify as an actual word with a working definition.
** Two of the four names will be in that movie, and I bet you can guess which ones.

Happy Crom Day to You!

 Interesting tidbit: thirty years ago today (May 14th), Conan the Barbarian opened in theatres (and, I can hope, Drive-Ins) across the country. The Cap'n was a little too young to see Conan the Barbarian (being three years and exactly one month old), so I missed out on that and the rest of the "Class of '82," what has become a semi-legendary year for geek cinema. That's how geeks characterize it now, because I don't remember it being a big point in pop culture during the 80s or 90s, but it's all good. Starting in 2007, when the "Class of '82" turned twenty five, retrospectives kicked in, and now we're at the thirty year mark, which is right around the age of people who pay attention to things like this. Like me.

 Well, that got away from where I wanted it to go. Anyway, so if you aren't in the mood to check it out, here are some of the movies released in 1982:

 The Boogens
 Annie
 Death Wish II
 Victor / Victoria
 Rocky 3
 Six Pack
 The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas
 Zapped!
 Yes, Giorgio
 Halloween III: Season of the Witch
 Tootsie
 Gandhi
 48 Hours
 The Verdict
 The Toy
 Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid
 One from the Heart
 Visiting Hours
 Airplane 2: The Sequel


 Wait... what do you mean "that's the wrong list"? What the hell is wrong with that list? I like those movies. Geeks like The Boogens, right? What do you mean "they haven't seen The Boogens?" That's not my problem! They love Rocky 3 and Death Wish II and 48 Hours! Hell, some of them will even defend the indefensible, like Zapped! and the misguided but I guess not unwatchable Halloween III...

 Okay, fine. It's true that the list above is an "alternate" list I compiled while I was trying to get the "canonized" releases right. Honestly, I'm standing by the assertion that about half of them still fit in just fine with the actual "Class of '82" which includes:

 Conan the Barbarian
 E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial
 Blade Runner
 John Carpenter's The Thing
 First Blood
 Das Boot
 Friday the 13th Part III (in 3D)
 Porky's
 Cat People
 The Sword and the Sorcerer
 Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
 Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior
 Poltergeist
 The Secret of Nimh
 Tron
 Pink Floyd: The Wall
 Fast Times at Ridgemont High
 Class of 1984
 The Beastmaster
 Eating Raoul
 Creepshow
 Q: The Winged Serpent
 The Last Unicorn
 The Dark Crystal

 I included movies like Das Boot and cult films like Eating Raoul and Q in this list because they're frequently mentioned, but like Halloween III I suppose they could go on either list. It's a shame more of you haven't seen The Boogens though...

 Now, that is an impressive lineup. It comprises the list of movies that many people my age watched on home video along with the likes of Ghostbusters, The Goonies, and Back to the Future all the way through adolescence. I can only imagine what it must have been like to see Conan the Barbarian one week and then to see The Road Warrior the next. To be old enough to really take in a summer filled with that many cherished entries into "geek" cinema is something I can only envy from afar. I wasn't old enough to even be cognizant that Ridley Scott was adapting Philip K. Dick and John Milius would set the bar for "sword and sorcery" films that hasn't ever really been matched in the 80s, 90s, or 21st century. And it was the second of three "sword and sorcery" films just that year!

 To wonder what the guy who made Halloween, The Fog, and Escape from New York was going to do with The Thing from Another World or how Paul Schrader was going to reinvent Cat People. Most of all, to see it with fresh eyes, in a world devoid of the internet and where cable television didn't have the range of coverage it does now. By the time I'd heard of most of these movies, it was through people who had already seen them or through movie guides. By the time I knew what Season of the Witch was, I had been warned that it didn't continue the Laurie Strode / Michael Meyers story and was therefore a "mistake." On the other hand, Blade Runner's failure and stature as something of a "cult" phenomenon allowed me to approach the 1992 "Director's Cut" with intrigue.

So looking back at the way these films were released, it's understandable how Tron, Blade Runner, and The Thing were all swept aside by the "summer of E.T." Steven Spielberg had a massive hit on his hands, and Scott's narrative-ly dense dystopia and Carpenter's misanthropic and nihilistic alien invasion film weren't exactly going to fit in with a friendly extra terrestrial eating Reese's Pieces. Tron? Well, it took twenty eight years for Disney to even consider making a sequel to its "world inside a computer" film, and it fared about as well. I happen to like Tron, partly because of its place in my childhood but also because as I grew up more of it made sense and it's really not a "one sitting" kind of movie. E.T., on the other hand, has a little something for everybody, and in one go-round.

 There are so many different things you could talk about here, like Star Trek II getting everything fans wanted right where The Motion Picture didn't (again, this is based mostly on what I understand, as I was introduced to Star Trek films through Wrath of Khan and not The Motion Picture) or the way that the otherwise formulaic sequel Friday the 13th Part III introduced the iconic image for the series (Jason's hockey mask) while also having just about every "point something at the camera" 3D gimmick you can think of. You had the first John Rambo film, Sylvester Stallone fighting Mr. T, the first Mad Max film most Americans had seen (and without dubbing), the movie that launched Arnold Schwarzenegger as an action star, two legendary comedies, and George Romero and Stephen King's homage to EC Comics.

 Okay, so I poked a little fun at the beginning, but it is clear why 1982 was such a rich year for revisiting. Most of those films were regulars at the Howdy household, at least during age-appropriate periods. Some of them were discoveries in high school and in college because of their release in proximity to the rise of home video. It was hard not to know they existed because whether I'd seen them or not, the box covers were at both video stores in town. Filling in the context came later, and being nostalgic for a period that I lived through but couldn't participate in after that. I get why so many geeks of my generation fixate on this particular year.

  But the real takeaway here - other than wishing Conan the Barbarian a happy 30th birthday / anniversary - is that you should see The Boogens. Seriously - it's a pretty good slasher movie with kinda goofy monsters but you don't see them until the very end. It's one of those under represented horror films that deserves its day. And if you're not the horror type - and honestly, if you're reading this blog I don't know how that's possible - there's always Six Pack. Kenny Rogers, Diane Lane, Anthony Michael Hall, Erin Gray, an RV full of orphans and a grizzled stock car racer. Or something like that. It clearly doesn't suck is what I'm saying here.