Movie Review On Sacred Ground

On Sacred Ground (2023) 

Directed by Josh Trickell, Rebecca Harrell Trickell

Written by Josh Trickell, Rebecca Harrell Trickell, William Mapother 

Starring William Mapother, Amy Smart, Frances Fisher 

Release Date January 13th, 2023 

Published January 6th, 2023 

On Sacred Ground tells a very unique story. Long time character actor William Mapother stars in On Sacred Ground as a reporter with a very specific right wing perspective. He's long been suspicious of environmental terrorists and his reporting on that subject catches the eye of a right wing news outlet. This right wing news outlet, working in league with oil company lobbyists, seeks to hire Mapother's Daniel McKinney to cover the story of an oil pipeline that is the subject of Native American protests. 

The story that news organization and the oil company are pushing is that the Native American activists are violent, eco-terrorists who are disrupting a safe and legal oil pipeline and causing the kind of environmental crisis that they claim to be protesting against. The propaganda has Daniel on the side of the oil company, a perspective furthered when he arrives at the site of the pipeline protest where he witnesses a particularly emotional and physical protest in progress. 

Access to the site is controlled by an oil company representative named Elliott (David Arquette). Elliott claims that the violence of the protests is not coming from the army of mercenaries hired as security by the oil company or the lines of Police Officers also on the side of the oil company. No, according to Elliott the supposedly non-violent, mostly Native American protesters are the ones throwing rocks, threatening Police and Security and doing damage to oil company property. 

What Elliott and Daniel's new newspaper boss, Ricky (Frances Fisher), did not expect was for Daniel to embed himself with the protesters. Thinking he can uncover the violence among the protesters, Daniel goes to their camp and finds himself drafted in as a volunteer in a very well organized and trained group of protesters. The protesters bring Daniel in, show him their training in non-violent protest and place him on the front line of that non-violent protest where he witnesses what has really been happening. 

The story of On Sacred Ground is based on the story of a group of military veterans who joined the ranks of Native American protesters Standing Rock in North Dakota. This group of veterans were brought together by a fellow veteran, Wesley Clark Jr., son of General Wesley Clark, a former Democrat Presidential candidate. He went to Standing Rock at the behest of a friend and found Native American protesters being brutalized by what he called a private army employed by the company behind the Dakota Access Pipeline. 

Find my full length review at Swamp.Media 

Movie Review: Crank 2 High Voltage

Crank 2 High Voltage (2009) 

Directed Neveldine and Taylor 

Written by Neveldine and Taylor

Starring Jason Statham, Amy Smart, Bai Ling, Dwight Yoakam

Release Date April 17th, 2009 

Published April 19th, 2009 

Warning: This review gives away the final image of the new movie Crank 2: High Voltage. If for some misguided reason you want to see this excremental awfulness in theaters, unspoiled, you may want to wait to read this review. I don't recommend you see this movie at all so keep reading.

The final image of the new action disaster Crank 2: High Voltage is star Jason Statham on fire flipping the middle finger to the audience. Standing with the skin burning and peeling away from his bullet like skull, Statham's Chev Chelios finds the strength to extend his middle finger and smile in one last salute to an audience that has already wasted more than 80 minutes of their precious lives and 8 to 12 of their precious dollars.

For co-directors Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor this is what passes for clever and or subversive. Just don't confuse it for entertaining boys. Then again, I am sure that was never your intention. The fact is Neveldine and Taylor, juvenile pranksters that they are, approach Crank 2 not unlike Tom Green approached Freddy Got Fingered, not as a privelege to be able to make a movie but as a licence to see how far the moneyed class will let them go in spreading filth all over film screens.

In that instance Neveldine and Taylor are heedless. They dive headlong into the idea of being allowed to do whatever they want onscreen. From disturbing violence, a man cuts off his own nipples, to outright pornography, Statham's Chev Chelios has sex with his girlfriend played by Amy Smart in graphic fashion on a horse racing track, in front of a cheering crowd. Amy Smart, I'm sure your parents are very proud of you today.

The naughty bits are pixellated during the sex scenes, the one likely nod to studio oversight. But the nipple thing, that was OK. Now, as I write this I can imagine Neveldine and Taylor giggling like school children. Why? Because this kind of puritanical reaction is just what they were hoping for. However, when even someone as liberal as myself is offended by a movie it says something.

So what is the value of making a movie with the intent to offend? Provocative for the sake of provocative is something akin to making a movie inside a vacuum. Like filming an inside joke. I am certain that Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor are somewhere laughing. The rest of us I gather got what we were intended to get from Crank 2 in that final image.

Movie Review The Butterfly Effect

The Butterfly Effect (2004) 

Directed by Eric Bress, J Mackye Gruber 

Written by Eric Bress, J Mackye Gruber 

Starring Ashton Kutcher, Amy Smart, Ethan Suplee, Logan Lerman, Melora Waters 

Release Date January 23rd, 2004 

Published January 22nd, 2004 

There is a classic Simpsons Halloween Special in which Homer attempts to fix the toaster and ends up turning it into a time machine. Every time Homer travels through time, he does something stupid that changes the future. I kept flashing back to this work of comic genius all throughout the new Ashton Kutcher sci-fi drama, The Butterfly Effect. The stories are similar but also, I had nothing better to do while the film kept repeating itself into oblivion.

Ashton Kutcher stars as Evan Treborn, a psych major at some nameless college. Evan has had an odd path to college involving a memory loaded with potholes he longs to fill. Evan gets his chance to restore his memories when he rediscovers his childhood journals. After a fainting spell brings back one of his lost memories, Evan is led back to his hometown and the girl he left behind, Kayleigh, played by Amy Smart.

Kayleigh and Evan were childhood sweethearts before Evan's mother (Melora Waters) moved the family away. Now Kayleigh is a waitress trapped in her hometown that has become a prison. When Evan shows up wanting to reminisce and Kayleigh is less than thrilled and the encounter unlocks a load of  bad memories for her. These memories are so bad in fact that Kayleigh takes her own life.

Shocked and saddened by Kayleigh’s death, Evan begins experimenting with his memories, eventually discovering that if he concentrates hard enough he can travel back in time and change his traumatic past. Using his childhood journals as his guide, Evan goes back and changes the past to save Kayleigh's life. When he awakens, things have indeed changed. Evan is now a popular frat guy and Kayleigh has joined him at college. The two are planning to be married. The odd thing is, Evan can remember everything that he changed.

As any number of Star Trek episodes can tell you, when you change the past you affect not just your future but everyone's future. So while Evan may have saved Kayleigh's life and seems to have set them both on an idyllic path, he neglected the futures of the other people in his past. They include Kayleigh's nutball brother Tommy and their friend Lenny (Elden Henson). Tommy tragically ends the perfect future Evan thought he wanted, forcing Evan to go back and change something else which also ends tragically and again and again and again until the audience wishes we could go back in time and get our money back.

There is no doubt that this is an interesting concept. Who doesn't have a small portion of their past they would like an opportunity to change? This is certainly not the first time this material has been attempted either. There’s the aforementioned Simpsons' episode, each of the Star Trek series, and most recently on the big screen in the latest adaptation of H.G Wells' The Time Machine. The problem with the device in The Butterfly Effect is that the film never establishes either likable characters or a scientific basis for Evan's abilities.

The character of Evan is essentially a selfish, amoral, whiner. His only concern is for himself and manipulating the past for his benefit until the end and that includes saving Kayleigh for himself. Evan's motivation was supposed to be his love for Kayleigh. Unfortunately, Kutcher and Smart have little to no chemistry.

The film’s themes don't make the film any easier to enjoy. The things that Evan, Kayleigh and their friends go through include, physical and emotional abuse, child porn, animal cruelty, and manslaughter. Not to mention the time that Evan's mentally deranged father tried to kill him. The film is meant to be dark, I get that, but this is really dark.

The saddest thing about The Butterfly Effect is the fact that the trailer was so terrific. Watching the trailer as it debuted back in December, I was ready to give the goofy Ashton Kutcher the benefit of the doubt in his first dramatic performance. Kutcher was not up to the challenge and The Butterfly Effect does not live up to the promise of the trailer. This is a sad, depressing, dark film.

Movie Review Mirrors

Mirrors (2008) 

Directed by Alexandre Aja 

Written by Alexandre Aja, Gregory Levasseure

Starring Kiefer Sutherland, Paula Patton, Amy Smart

Release Date August 15th, 2008 

Published August 14th, 2008 

The fact is, Kiefer Sutherland is forever his 24 character Jack Bauer. Blessing or curse? That is for Sutherland himself to decide. Regardless, Jack Bauer is a pop culture icon and sitting down to watch Kiefer Sutherland pretend not to be Jack Bauer in the new horror flick Mirrors, I got just what I expected, a Kiefer/Jack head down, eyes forward badass with a purpose This works for Jack Bauer, not so much for Ben Carter the protagonist of Mirrors whose Jackism prevents him from connecting emotionally in the ways necessary to deepen the puddle deep ambitions director Alexandre Aja brings to Mirrors.

Based on a 2003 Korean original, Mirrors stars Kiefer Sutherland as the new night watchman at a burnt out old department store where only the mirrors seem to have survived the blaze that killed 40 some people, some years earlier. It is not long after accepting the job that Ben begins to notice something strange about all of those oddly pristine mirrors

The mirrors in fact not only reflect reality but have a reality of their own for anyone looking at them. On one of his first nights in the store, Ben nearly burns to death as a mirror shows him covered in flames. There are no flames but the pain feels real. Of course it could have something to do with the pills Ben is taking to overcome a drinking problem. Is psychosis a side effect?

As all of this is happening at work, Ben is trying to win back the love of his wife Amy (Paula Patton) who threw him out of their home because of his drinking. The couple has two kids that Ben still see's but Amy is resistant to him returning, especially after he starts babbling about the mirrors coming to life and trying to kill him.

That is a determinedly vague description of the plot of Mirrors. Even though I didn't like the movie, I don't want to ruin it for those inclined to see it. The thing is, this isn't that bad a movie, just not very original and not even a good rendering of a formula. More derivative than dramatic, more pushy than thrilling, Mirrors is yet another of those horror movies where things leap and make noise off screen for effect.

Birds flap their wings at ear snapping volumes, doors creak and slam louder in this creepy department store than they do anywhere else. Then there is the score which builds to obvious and unoriginal orchestral spikes meant to quicken the pulse. They do, but the payoffs are more often cheap and irritating than edge of your seat exciting.

The main reason I didn't enjoy Mirrors has much to do with the skill-less direction of Alexandre Aja. This horror movie hack with a real taste for the ugly sides of humanity, directs Mirrors with little care for developing the plot beyond mirrors being bad and Kiefer Sutherland fights them. The director of The Hills Have Eyes remake and the trashy High Tension, directs Mirrors minus any plausible explanations, rules or guidelines for his killer of title.

Why do the Mirrors kill? Why do they kill who they kill? A movie doesn't need to explain everything, but Aja is so deliberately vague that it becomes obvious even the director has no idea what drives the evil of the plot. Instead, Aja sits back and waits for the plot to reveal itself. It never does. Mirrors, like The Grudge, The Ring, The Eye and Shutter before it; is just another lame teenagers in danger movie ripped from a likely superior Korean version. Even if you love Sutherland as badass Jack Bauer, you aren't likely to be moved by his listless head strong imitation Jack Bauer in Mirrors.

Movie Review: Crank

Crank (2006) 

Directed by Neveldine and Taylor

Written by Neveldine and Taylor

Starring Jason Statham, Amy Smart, Dwight Yoakam, Erfren Ramirez 

Release Date September 1st, 2006 

Published August 31st, 2006

Jason Statham is right up there with Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson in the competition to replace the old guard action hero's; Stallone, Van Damme and Schwarznegger. With his two Transporter flicks; Statham established his badass credentials. All that Statham lacks is the easy charisma and sense of humor that The Rock is gifted with. In his latest flick Crank, Statham delivers yet another badass performance but the highly adrenalized Crank also exposes Statham's weaknesses as much as his strengths.

Hitman Chev Chelios (Statham) is having a truly awful morning. He has awakened from one nightmare into another as he finds that he has been killed in his sleep. A rival hitman, Verona (Jose Pablo Cantillo), has dosed Chev with a poison called the Beijing cocktail. This poison will slowly snake through Chev's system until it shuts down his heart.

According to his doctor (Dwight Yoakam); Chev has maybe an hour to live unless he can keep his heart rate very high. What Chev needs are massive amounts of adrenaline in whatever way he can get it. Dying a slow death either way; Chev vows to stay alive long enough to say goodbye to his clueless girlfriend Eve (Amy Smart) and to kill Verona and all of his henchman.

Written and directed by the team of Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor, Crank is pure trash, B picture exploitation. Reminiscent of a pair of 2006 chase pictures with similarly lowbrow ambition, Tyrese's Waist Deep and Paul Walker's Running Scared, Crank gets a running start and pauses only for tacky sex scenes and overblown violence.

Crank sets itself apart from the others with a pair of humiliating sex scenes that take the career of poor Amy Smart an flush it down the B movie toilet. In the first of two scenes Smart is raped on the streets of L.A's Chinatown. I say raped, the scene begins as a rape but to make the scene more mortifying she begins to enjoy and participate willingly. Later as Chev's heart begins to slow during a chase scene, Smart's character performs oral sex while Statham drives and shoots bad guys.

Smart is not the only woman treated with little regard in Crank, merely the best known. All other women seen in Crank are dressed in next to nothing and placed in plastic cubes where they are ogled by bad guys. The film also takes time to rip gays and make stereotypical use of its few African American characters. Neveldine and Talyor, I'm sure, would say they are merely being politically incorrect, tweaking the conventions of the masses and other such justifications. That would be interesting if it served a metaphoric purpose; but Crank is just a violent, exploitation chase picture, it lacks the depth to defend its anti-PC attitude.

There is no denying the badass appeal of star Jason Statham. With his bullet shaped head and intense gaze, he is beyond intimidating. Unfortunately, when forced to get to the core of a character -beyond the act of simply killing a man- he is an empty vessel. He is all physicality and no mentality. Statham in Crank is an unstoppable killing machine who takes on an occasional bit of black humor and wit but mostly is just a machine pushed by the plot toward his next violent encounter.

Crank has a visceral power to it that comes from it's propellant plot. That power however, is dissipated by the directors need to be shocking and crude. The two high speed sex scenes in Crank are gratuitous and though the plot tries to makes them seem necessary that does not change their exploitative nature. Watching Amy Smart in these scenes should be titillating; she is a very attractive woman. Rather than titillating however, I felt nothing but pity for Smart who is made to look like an even less willing version of Chloe Sevigny in The Brown Bunny.

Is Jason Statham the next great action hero? The box office will determine that. Myself? I'll take The Rock whose combination of physicality and humor is the perfect combination of action hero violence and wit. Statham is not unappealing; he simply lacks range. Watching Crank you can barely make out any differences between Chev Chelios and the character Statham played in two The Transporter movies.