Well, ladies and gents, writer, and now director, Guillermo Arriaga has hit on a formula. Take a banal plot centred around a single tragic event, present it in non-chronological order, set it against a desolate landscape, chuck in some big name actors, and add some bleak guitar over the top. Critical gold!
The Director
I enjoyed Guillermo Arriaga's first film, Amores Perros, on which he served as a writer. It had a vitality and energy that was attractive, and showed me a world that I had never seen before. It presented a series of sub-plots, all examining the reprercussions of a single tragic event (in that case a car crash).
All his subsequent films have done essentially the same thing. But he's stepped behind the camera this time, after a split from his former film-making partner Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu (which I would imagine came about over a disagreement about which tragic inciting incident to include in the next film - perhaps Arriaga pitched the burning caravan that features in the Burning Plain, but Inarritu insisted it had to be mongoloid infant rape).
In The Burning Plain, he's at it again, but in this one he's added a twist. Instead of showing a series of related sub-plots that centre around a tragic event, he's had the masterstroke to make the subplots SEEM unrelated for two thirds of the film! Eventually he doles out enough information to the viewer to reveal his structure is exactly the same as his previous efforts, but for a while he lets you think that he's completely gone off the rails and presented you with two completely disconnected story threads.
This, of course, gets in the intellectuals and the critics. Oh you don't like the film? Yes, yes, yes, it's really a thinking person's film, isn't it? Oh you found it confusing? Yes, you really do need to engage your brain, I see. Challenging stuff.
The Story
Fact is, that despite the chronologically jumbled plot line, the pretty landscapes and the sombre music, the story is actually devoid of any real complexity. It consists of about 5 major plot points, mind-numbingly interspersed with long, drawn out shots of people looking sad or having unenjoyable sex in order to fill the two hour running time to qualify for serious drama.
Allow me to summarize, should you wish to save yourself a couple of hours of slow push-ins. Sylvia discovers her mother is having an affair with some Mexican dude. So naturally she sabotages the gas lines and sets fire to their caravan where they are shagging. She is mortified to learn that this frivolous and harmless prank actually leads to the caravan exploding in a ball of flames, killing both lovers. Of course, this leads her to become a slut, so she shags the son of the man her mother was shagging, gets pregnant, gives up the baby, then becomes even more slutty before wanting to see her daughter again and eventually sorta kinda start working things out with her.
At least it wasn't another car crash, but still, you can see how it might not quite justify the running time.
The Acting
Theron gets her tits out right at the start, so you know it's one of her serious films and not... well... Aeon Flux or some garbage like that.
If you like people acting depressed, you'll love this film -- and the stoic, emotionally scarred portrayals themselves are actually quite convincing.
Theron handles our hero Sylvia with impressive competence. She never cracks up in the middle of looking depressed, erroneously raises an comic eyebrow or rips a fart during a serious dramatic scene.
The young version of Sylvia - who is called Mariana at that point in order to hide the conceit that she is the younger version of Sylvia until the end -- is played well by newcomer Jennifer Lawrence. I'll put aside the fact that an American kid is called Mariana, just because Arriaga likes to have his kid's names in every film he makes. She's probably too young for me to say she's hot, so I'll say she's engaging or something like that.
Kim Basinger does another standard rendition of the dysfunctional, broken mother. She also lets us see her riding a dude from behind again, but we don't get to see her tits because the character lost them to breast cancer and I assume they couldn't afford the prosthetics.
But lets be honest here, people. You could have got wax statues to stand in for most of the cast, as the script rarely requires them to move or speak.
The Verdict
Well, I got through it, which is more than I can say for the utterly shithouse Babel. I look forward to discovering the next tragic inciting incident from Arriaga. How about a young girl gets her pet goldfish flushed down the toilet by a school bully, so she kills him with a blunt pick-axe and is emotionally scarred enough to become a slut later in life?
And, come on Arriaga, how about a joke? Just one little joke? No?
1 star, for the sluttiness.
I would have thought a Street Fighter movie would be a no brainer. For instance, without knowing anything about the video game, one could surmise that one of the primary draws of the film would involve some actual street fighting.However, this outing, starring the beautiful Kristen Kreuk (of Smallville fame) as Chun Li, seems to have forgotten that part of the recipe, like forgetting the eggs in your omlet. The result is a mish-mash of failed dramatic beats, bland cultural learnings, and a nonsensical story, all tied together with condescending voice-over narration that sounds like it was pitched at 4 year olds.
But in fact it's difficult to determine what audience this movie is pitched at. If it's for youngsters, then why does it contain the scene showing a bunch of dead crime bosses sitting at a table, with their decapitated heads on plates like a ghoulish last supper? Or the scene where M Bison strings up a woman and repeatedly punches her in the face until he is specled with droplets of blood? And don't get me started on the scene where M Bison decides to use the dark arts to free himself from conscience, so takes his wife to a cave, rips the baby from her womb (with the obligatory droplets of blood coating his face), and then somehow transfers the goodness of his soul to his embryonic daughter.
If it's for adults, then why the nursery-rhyme-level narration? Why the cartoon violence? Why the pandering story-telling (I think The Legend of Chun Li is the only movie I've ever seen that includes a black and white flashback to something you saw only 90 seconds earlier)?
Story
The main story follows Chun Li on a journey of revenge against M Bison for the supposed murder of her father, all the while building her fighting skills in preparation for the final battle. On the way she learns her father is not really dead, but kept in a room on a computer to perform whatever evil hacking M Bison requires of him, transforming the story into more of a rescue mission.
In parallel, we are treated to an inside glance at two random cops investigating M Bison and his criminal activities. The girl is a sexy-talking, leather-wearing, motorcycle-riding rebel. Her male counterpart is... er... well... he is Chris Klein, Oz from the American Pie movies, desperately trying to act tough despite his whiny voice and boyish looks. He really has become the poor-man's Keaneu Reeves. The chemistry between the two is forced and awkward, making for one of the most banal and uncomfortable love stories ever to be jammed into an action film.
Various references are made to the video game, yet nothing is particularly faithful. I recall one of the vague pleasures of the first Street Fighter movie was watching each character evolve to resemble their digital equivalents. No such pleasure here, as everyone is portrayed realistically, as plain old normal everyday people. Well, normal everyday people who can jump 12 feet in the air, fly horizontally across a room, and create what appear to be giant translucent gum balls to hurl at each other.
Fight Scenes
So what about the big draw card of this movie: the fight scenes? Well, the few fight scenes that are included in the movie are unforgivably ridiculous. The mystical aspects of the fights are so random and inexplicable that they become laughable, and completely undermine some fairly noble attempts at creating realistic versions of the special moves from the video game.
For instance, during an early fight scene, Chun Li's father deliberately sets his hand on fire in order to make his punches more punishing, then somehow manages to shoot the fire along a metal chain to turn the bad guy into a screaming fireball.
Every character seems to be able to jump in the air, and then change direction and fly across a room toward their assailant. The mind-boggling physics are never explained or even excused, they are just portrayed as if this is what people can do.
Now before anyone gets upset, I understand this is based on a video game where magical moves are the main feature. I played Street Fighter 2 when I was a kid, and realise that at some point Chun Li would have to create a fireball or perform a spinning bird kick. It's just that the movie can't decide whether it's a balls-out magic-fest, or whether it wants to portray semi-realistic approximations of the outlandish video game moves. The mix of the two just doesn't sit right, making it feel a little ridiculous when master Gen and Chun Li are casually hanging out together on a roof top, each of them meditating and nursing a giant glowing gum ball in their lap
There's the obligatory training-while-blindfolded scene, where Chun Li must attempt to catch ovesized ball bearings as her master, Gen, perfectly ricoches them off a series of bells. Of course trickster Gen soon gets bored with such an un-challenging training exercise and piffs one directly into the back of Chun Li's head, throwing her forward into a buzzing circular saw. She manages to stop her face from being split in two, so, naturally, he attempts to cut her in half with a blue glowing sword. She catches it between her hands just before it enters her skull, removes her blindfold, and her training is pretty much complete.
Script
Believe it or not, the ball bearing training scene is not even the most ridiculous scene in the movie. No, friends, that award goes to the scene where Chun Li seduces a lesbian crime lord in a night club and lures her into the bathroom for sex before slamming her face into a cubicle door and then viciously breaking her arm. With the generous helping of classic bitch-fight upskirts, this scene is one of those, I-can't-believe-I'm-really-watching-this moments that makes you wonder if you've been invited to a private screening of dirty uncle Larry's latest home movie in his basement.
I think I can sum up the quality of the script by quoting some dialogue that occurs during Chun Li's first training session. Gen beats the crap out of our hero, including, if the sound effects are any indication, breaking several fingers, dislocating an elbow, and kicking her knee hard enough to put her on the waiting list for a full reconstruction.
Gen: "Why are you mad right now?"
Chun Li: "Because you're hurting me."
Gen: "No... [wise pause]... you're hurting yourself."
The writing on this movie is, quite simply, an abomination. If it had kept my attention well enough to make me actually listen to it, I'm sure it would have made my ears bleed.
There's more, but I'm sure you've got this gist of it by now.
The Verdict
1 star - for Kristen Kreuk's previous work, when she was cute enough to get away with her drab acting.
Well it's been a week since I saw "Public Enemies", and it has almost completely faded from my memory, like a bad nightmare. Unfortunately, it hasn't faded enough to make a nice venting review unnecessary, so here we go.Michael Mann, who directed the awesome opus "Heat" in 1995, and the fantastic "The Insider" as a folow up, has been going downhill for a while now. And if it hadn't been for the utterly shithouse "Miami Vice" in 2006, I would say he'd hit rock bottom with "Public Enemies".
Sure, it slightly beats having Jamie Foxx standing around in the background of every shot, wearing sunglasses and trying to act cool, but unfortunately this flick fails on almost every level.
Acting
It had potential. Johnnie Depp is usually awesome in everything he does. In fact, he's truthfully not bad at all here, either. It's just that he's playing a character that's completely uninteresting, shot by a digital-camera-addicted has-been with roughly the vision and enthusiasm of a sack of odourless turds.
And of course, the ever-reliable Christian Bale is usually... ever-reliable. Not here, and in fact his character is so banal that I'd forgotten he was in the movie until I really thought about it for this review.
Story
Mann seems to have been so distracted with getting the details of the period correct, he forgot he was making a movie. Although, judging by the "goofs" list on IMDB, he didn't even do that properly!
Considering he got so many historical facts wrong, I don't see why he couldn't have altered John Dillinger's life to be more eventful. All he really does in this movie is wander around, pull a few jobs, virtually kidnap a woman for his girlfriend, and then get shot. Yes he gets shot at the end, and I don't even feel bad about spoiling it, because there is only one way a movie like this can end.
Honestly, the only real entertainment value of this movie is the shooting itself. It is captured vividly, with the unexpected addition of a special effect that lovingly renders the bullet going through the back of Dillinger's head and through his cheek. After being with this annoying, unlikeable and worst of all boring character for so long, it is quite pleasurable and satisfying to see his face explode in a spray of red.
Cinematography
My biggest beef? The goddamned digital cameras. It makes everything look unprofessional and cheap. And yes, Michael Mann, we CAN notice the difference. All your reasons for using digital cameras, like them being lightweight, easy to edit, more cost effective than film - NONE of those things have anything to do with good film-making! Lose the digital until you can work out how to make it look as good as film. Your movies cost the same to watch as all the others, so stop being a lazy cheapskate and spend some money on celluloid!
And if you must, just pick one or the other. Don't keep switching from one to the other. If you pick digital, pick a style and a topic that suits the medium. Don't try to make a glossy biopic with consumer-grade digital cams.
The verdict
Boring boring boring!
2 stars - one for Depp and one for Bale... NONE for Mann until he pulls his head out of his ass.
I loved transformers when I was a kid. LOVED them. Collected them all, even saved up for two months to buy my own Optimus Prime toy. I still remember the day I picked it up from the store after having it reserved on lay-by for so many weeks. It was probably the best day of my life up till that point.
What was NOT the best day of my life, was the day I rocked up to go see Transformers II. I didn't need to save up for it or anything, not like I did for Optimus Prime all those years ago. I saw it in Indonesia, so it was cheap as hell. Almost free. But even at this bargain basement rate, I still felt cheated and betrayed. I think I actually glimpsed a particular brand of intense rage that is usually reserved for unstable individuals who feel driven towards terrorist acts.
I saw it alone the first time and then had to see it with a girlfriend almost immediately after, so I feel qualified to hate it doubly.
Where do I start? I'd start at the beginning, but the disjointed storytelling in this shithouse waste of celluloid makes it hard to determine where the start was.
The Story
Well I saw it twice and I still don't know what happened. I think Shia LaBeouf's character goes to college at some point; I got that. Megan Fox's character is a slut but she loves him. I think. At some point she wiggles into a white dress and holds some flowers for him, because, you know, that what all guys really want deep down.
They find a conveniently leftover piece of that stupid box that made no sense in the first film and all hell brakes loose. Somehow the bad robots find out about the magic shard of shit eventhough Shia himself never knew it was in his clothes.
Then somehow they end up in Egypt because Michael Bay thought it would be cool to blow up some pyramids.
Umm... there are some robots that talk like black people. There's another one that seems to create black holes somehow. Neither are common things for a robot to do, but there you go.
Then its just chase after chase after chase, each one of which was a blurry mess of bad effects, choppy editing and inane one-liners. Half the scenes are too dark to see, the other half are so banal you wish it was darker.
I can't think of any part of it I didn't hate, except maybe the bit where you could see Megan Fox's ass cheeks poking out the bottom of her shorts as she sat on a motorbike. Oh yeah, and when she ran in slow motion with a low cut top. But to be honest it could have included full on Megan Fox XXX porn and it wouldn't have saved the film.
Special Effects
The special effects, despite the director's claim that it took like 7 years to render a single frame, are abysmal. They are blurry, badly framed, and rarely look even remotely integrated into the live action. Most of the time, the robots are moving too fast and too close to camera to be anything but colorful flashes of metal. I still don't understand why the robots need to move their mouths to talk, or blink and move eyebrows they don't really have.
And as for the transformations, which had potential to be cool to the Optimus-Prime-buying child inside me, we even worse in this film than the last. I actually laughed out loud when they grandly introduce the first transformation. A truck rolls up and proceeds to transform into Ironhide the robot over a period of roughtly 45 seconds. Joints move, then move back, panels slide open then close again, things bend and twist randomly, while, all the while, the camera spins around him in a dizzying display of grandeur gone wrong. I reckon that truck had to make about a dozen major moves to transform into the robot with half a truck as his upper body, but Bay makes sure things keep moving for an excruciating length of time, all in the name of spectacle. Then the bloody thing talks with a British accent for some reason only Michael Bay's evidently-alzheimer's-ridden brain could conceive.
Oh Michael Bay, you retarded hack! It could have been so easy. A few cool transformations that actually looked slightly realistic. A few cool action scenes that weren't more akin to repeatedly beating the audience over the head with a metal mallet. A simple story that makes sense and was more than just a poor excuse to transport the characters from one random locale to another. It could have been popcorn blockbuster gold.
If I had to see it again, I would pluck my eyeballs out with fish hooks, soak them in a vat of acid, feed them to a wild pirhana, and then eat the pirhana in case it didn't fully digest my eyeball properly.
Verdict
-1 stars.
I'm deducting one star from Michael Bay's next movie as a penalty for the traversty that is Transformers II.