Movie Review Lock Out

Lock Out (2012) 

Directed by Steven Saint Leger, James Mather

Written by Luc Besson, Steven Saint Leger, James Mather

Starring Guy Pearce, Maggie Grace, Peter Stormare 

Release Date April 13th, 2012 

I’ve been somewhat obsessed with the TV ad for “Lockout” that praised the Guy Pearce starring action film as “Diehard Meets Blade Runner.” There are so many things wrong with this particular piece of praise that it’s difficult to narrow them all down. Most glaringly wrong is the disservice this overwhelming bit of critical puffery does to “Lockout.”

Comparing the fun, modestly entertaining, far from terrible “Lockout” to the awesomeness of either “Blade Runner” or “Diehard” puts far too much weight on the shoulders of what is a good but far from great sci-fi action movie. Comparing “Lockout” to both of those films combined is just outright cruelty; there is simply no way that any movie, especially “Lockout,” can live up to that standard.

Former CIA Operative Snow (Guy Pearce) was apparently in the wrong place at the wrong time when a powerful friend was murdered. Suspected of the killing himself, Snow is staring down a trip to the new multi-billion dollar space prison where madness from the station’s cryo-stasis whatnot machines awaits most, if not all who are sentenced there.

It would take, oh I don’t know, the President’s daughter Emily (Maggie Grace, “Lost”) getting kidnapped aboard that space prison for Snow to get out of this predicament. And whaddaya know, the President’s daughter is kidnapped aboard the space prison and only Snow can brave the newly unfrozen, madness addled prison population to rescue her before her dad is forced to blow the space prison out of space.

As my description demonstrates “Lockout” has a classically goofball sci-fi set up filled with enough stock villains and henchmen to fill 20 seasons of the old “Batman” TV series. The one thing that keeps “Lockout” from devolving into camp is star Guy Pearce who plays a slight variation on the wisecracking anti-hero we’ve come to know and be bored by in countless action films past.

It helps that Pearce is such an unexpected action star. In his best work, “L.A Confidential,” “Memento,” and “The Proposition,” Pearce used his thin frame and actorly flourish to sell audiences that he could survive just about any punishment. In “Lockout” however, Pearce is muscled up, heavily armed and wearing the standard issue stubble required of all modern anti-heroes.

The transformation is surprising and yet Pearce maintains some of the steeliness that made his earlier roles so memorable. His wisecracks have a little extra juice in them as if they weren’t just par for the action movie script course. Pearce twists his lines and tweaks the punches in a way that is similar to how Johnny Depp takes everyday dialogue and makes it sound like something no one has ever said before.

Pearce alone is worth the price of a ticket for “Lockout;” without him the film would likely be a droning bore of clichés. Maggie Grace is an attractive girl but saddled with the role of damsel in distress who occasionally gets to look tough, she’s as stuck as any other actress would be. The role is so standard at this point that even Meryl Streep with a complex accent couldn’t distinguish it.

In the end, the critic who claimed that “Lockout” was “Diehard meets Blade Runner” has done more to aggrandize his or her self than to praise the movie they seem to greatly admire. No film could live up to that standard and claiming the movie does rise to that standard is a disservice to the film’s true merits. A very fun, charismatic performance by Guy Pearce is thus lost as fans focus on the lack of “Blade Runner” and or “Diehard” qualities.

Classic Movie Review The Fifth Element

The Fifth Element (1997) 

Directed by Luc Besson

Written by Luc Besson, Robert Mark Kamen

Starring Bruce Willis, Milla Jovovich, Gary Oldman, Chris Tucker

Release Date May 7th, 1997 

I love the way Luc Besson views the universe. Besson sees the universe in bright bold colors. It’s the way I would like to view the universe. While my mind is often clouded by the often sad and tragic state of humanity, and especially man’s inhumanity to man, Besson manages to look beyond and see the beauty beyond our planet and into the stars.

The best example of how Luc Besson sees the universe, aside from his dazzling yet somewhat empty new film Valerian and the Planet of A Thousand Cities, is the 1997 film The Fifth Element, this week’s classic on the I Hate Critics movie review podcast.

The Fifth Element was well ahead of its time, a sci-fi movie filled with vibrant color, extraordinary costumes, and remarkable, often mind-blowing, special effects and production design.

If only that same vibrancy extended to the characters. You see, for as much as I am dazzled by the spectacle, the visual dynamism of Luc Besson and The Fifth Element, he’s not a director who is particularly interested in characters. Besson, though thoroughly detailed in costumes and set design and special effects, is not a director of actors.

Read my full length review at Geeks.Media 

Movie Review Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets

Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets (2017)

Directed by Luc Besson 

Written by Luc Besson

Starring Cara Delavigne, Dane DeHaan, Clive Owen, Rihanna, Ethan Hawke 

Release Date July 21st, 2017 

I cannot decide which is the more difficult type of review: positive without fawning, negative without being mean-spirited or ambivalent. The last type of review is where I find myself with the new movie Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets:; utter and complete ambivalence. There is much to admire about the latest from director Luc Besson (The Fifth Element, Leon: The Professional, among others) but there is also plenty of empty, sci-fi spectacle.

Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets stars Dane Dahaan (The Amazing Spider-Man 2, Chronicle) as Agent Valerian who, alongside his partner Sgt. Laureline (Cara Delavingne), are investigating a monstrous and ever growing space station that is home to some form of every species in the universe. Our agents are on hand, however, to investigate a threat to the so-called city of a thousand planets.

Read my full length review at Geeks.Media 

Movie Review: Transporter 3

Transporter 3 (2008) 

Directed by Olivier Megaton

Written by Luc Besson, Robert Mark Kamen 

Starring Jason Statham, Natalya Rudakova 

Release Date November 26th, 2008

Published November 27th, 2008

Memo to the producers of the upcoming Cannonball Run remake (I know you're out there): if you haven't already made Jason Statham an exorbitant offer to appear in your movie, don't bother making it. No, The Transporter is not exactly an iconic character on which makes such great demands. But, the Transporter movies having made a few hundred million combined at the worldwide box office, the character has earned enough cultural cache to deserve to be a one off punchline in a throwaway remake. It's the least you could do.

Yes Transporter fans (I know your out there, put down the Grand Theft Auto for a moment) Frank Martin is back. Who the hell is Frank Martin? He's the Transporter. Nevermind. He's Jason Statham in the Transporter movies. Nevermind. He's the bullet headed guy who beats people up and drives fast. You're really making this too difficult.

Back behind the wheel of his newest edition Audi, Frank Martin has a new 'package' to deliver. Her name is Valentina (Natalya Rudakova) and she is the daughter of the head of the Russian equivalent of the EPA. The russkie dad doesn't want to let some American industrialist park nuclear waste in his back yard so the industrialist has thugs kidnap the russkies' daughter and give her to Frank.

Why Frank? Who knows. She is a hostage? Yes. Why don't they just hold on to her until they get what they want? Because then we couldn't have cool car chases and scenes where Jason Statham beats people up for asking such questions about this ludicrous plot.

Anyway, before I so rudely interrupted myself with unwelcome logic, Frank will drive the girl across Europe to Asia. If he doesn't do as he is told he will blow up. He was drugged and had a bracelet attached that will go boom if he gets 75 feet away from his car. No points for guessing that that whole 75 feet from the car thing will come back in the final face off with the bad guys.

The Transporter 1,2 and now 3 are not about logic. If they were then Frank wouldn't have been so surprised to find his package is a beautiful woman, as has been the case in each of the other Transporter movies. Logically? Pattern recognition might kick in and Frank would consider moving somewhere where people don't know where he lives and thus can't drug him and place exploding bracelets on him.

Logically.

But this isn't about logic, coherence or even a movie. It's about stunts and lots of them. Frank jumps a car off of a bridge and uses James Bond's classic underwater tire breathing trick. Later, Frank drives that water logged car off an over pass and on to the top of a moving train. Later, still on the train, he jumps the car from one car through the roof of another one.

Who needs logic when you don't give a rats ass for even the basics of physics.

It reads as if I hated Transporter 3. I didn't. It's not bad as far as cheap thrills go. I'm generally not a 'turn off your brain' kind of guy. However, catch me in the right mood and I can be forgiving of even the most illogic of leaps. Transporter caught me in just one of those moods and I found myself smiling my way through much of the blasted ludicrousness.

I particularly enjoyed the work of French actor Francois Berleand as Frank's French cop pal. As the only character who seems to remember having been through this before his nonchalant attitude toward Frank's astonishing acts is charming. He is either bored or simply unimpressed with his old friend's antics and his manner is quite amusing in the brief glimpses of him we get in between the driving and the beatings.

Transporter 3 was directed by someone  named Olivier Megaton. The explosive name is a fake, for those you with zero cognitive activity. He bestowed the moniker on himself to describe his audacious style. He may well have only got this gig based on that name. That he delivered big explosions is only him living up to the promise of his name. His next film should just be called 'Explosion'. As demonstrated in Transporter 3, he needs not a plot, just pyrotechnics and he can dazzle the willing masses.

Again, I implore you Cannonball Run producers, a cameo or even a starring role. Either works. Just make sure he drives an Audi A1 and gets to beat on someone. It's comic gold. You'll thank me later.

Movie Review Taken

Taken (2009) 

Directed by Pierre Morel 

Written by Luc Besson, Robert Mark Kamen

Starring Liam Neeson, Famke Janssen, Maggie Grace

Release Date January 30th, 2009 

Published January 30th, 2009 

You have to judge movies for what they are and not for what you think they should be. That's not an easy standard when you see as many movies as I do. Many movies have such great ideas that fail to be realize and you can't help but dream of what that movie might look like. That's often to the discredit of the movie you are watching. Taken for instance is a trashy movie but it has so much more potential to not be complete trash. But, if I am to be fair, I have to judge it as the trash it is. By the standard of trash, Taken is okay trash. 

In Taken Liam Neeson stars as a nondescript former CIA operative Brian Mills. Brian has recently retired to Los Angeles to be near his daughter Kim (Maggie Grace). His time in the agency estranged him from his daughter, and her mother Lenore (Famke Janssen), and now he is attempting to make amends. Meanwhile, Brian makes money on the side working as a security guard for a major pop star. This scene exists so that Brian can offer exposition regarding his talents and resume 

For her birthday, Kim tells her dad that she wants to go on a sightseeing tour in Paris with her best friend.  In reality, Kim and her friends are going to blow off the site seeing and are planning to head across Europe on her stepdad's dime to follow U2 around on tour. Brian is against the idea of such a trip, even without knowing about the concert tour, but under the pressure from mom and daughter he agrees.

When Kim arrives in Paris we quickly find out why dad was so worried this trip. The girls immediately meet a suspiciously friendly stranger at the airport. He calls some friends and the girls are soon kidnapped. In a scene that has become iconic from the film's trailer, Kim calls her dad as the kidnapping is in progress and Neeson as Brian delivers an admittedly quite good monologue about his 'set of skills.' Vowing revenge, and to retrieve his daughter unharmed, Brian travels to Paris and uses his specialized skills to track down the kidnappers.

Taken then quickly devolves into a series of ever more ludicrous car chases and fisticuffs but that isn't such a bad thing. Under the direction of Parisian director, Pierre Morel, the action and stunts of Taken are top notch stuff. Blessed with the intense and broody Liam Neeson as lead badass, Morel sets up the action and watches Neeson knock it cold.

The trashy story of Taken and the unending violence are entirely ludicrous. Genuinely, the action and plot of Taken make Jack Bauer on 24 look like a logical masterpiece. That said, the action is big, loud and daring in many ways and it works if you are into big, loud, daring action minus all of that  tricky, plot stuff.

Keeping it simple, perhaps too simple if you prefer your movie to have characters and intelligence, Morel and company set out to make a trashy French action movie with wild car chases and a high body count and they succeeded. On its own terms, Taken is trashy but it is entertaining trash. If you're willing to overlook a lot of silliness, and pretend that it all makes sense and is totally possible, you might just enjoy this kind of trash. 

Movie Review: The Transporter

The Transporter (2002) 

Directed by Cory Yuen 

Written by Luc Besson, Robert Mark Kamen

Starring Jason Statham, Shu Qui, Ric Young 

Release Date October 11th, 2002 

Published October 10th, 2002 

It is rumored that Die Another Day will be the last Bond film for Pierce Brosnan. Many names have come up as possible replacements. Superstars like Mel Gibson and Matt Damon, lesser knowns such as Clive Owen and Colin Farrell, and some actors are even doing films that seem calculated to make them a candidate for this most coveted role. Such seems the case for Jason Statham in The Transporter. Whether this blithe, quick-paced action picture is meant as a Bond audition is just speculation, but it does raise some eyebrows.

Statham plays Frank, known to his employers only as the transporter, a professional deliverer of packages with extreme circumstances. In the opening scene, we see Frank performing his services for a group of bank robbers. When the robbers attempt to change the deal Frank explains the rules and refuses to move until the deal is met as originally negotiated. The opening scene is a perfect introduction to Frank as a straight-ahead businessman, coldly professional and precise. On Frank’s next job, he transports another package but on his way to the drop-off, Frank breaks one of his rules. He opens the package, which happens to be an Asian girl named Lai (Qiu Shu).

Though troubled by his delivery he follows through, but his employers are upset because he opened the package and they try to kill him. From there, it’s obvious where the film is going. How the film gets where it’s going is more important than where.

Director Corey Yuen sharply films his action scenes, giving Statham every opportunity look cool and kickass. My favorite scene is a fight in a bus depot involving Frank, a group of highly dispensable henchman and a couple barrels of motor oil. Yuen even plays up the James Bond style action with scene that obviously crib from the 007 legend.

The Transporter has it’s share of faults. The score is a horrible techno mélange, the dialogue is typically dumbheaded and plodding and the supporting cast, particularly the bad guys, are poorly drawn and faceless. As I searched IMDB for the name of the main bad guy, I couldn’t even remember the name of the character and thus I don’t know the actor’s name.

So is The Transporter a good screen test for Statham as Bond? Well it couldn’t hurt. No one candidate has emerged so taking a part in a film with many Bond elements is a good introduction to show producers. Though some may say Statham isn’t good looking enough (balding and scruffy), marketers would say he’s “ruggedly handsome.” If anything, The Transporter should be enough to get him on the list.

Movie Review: Transporter 2

Transporter 2 (2005) 

Directed by Louis Letterier

Written by Luc Besson, Robert Mark Kamen 

Starring Jason Statham, Amber Valletta, Keith David, Matthew Modine, Jason Flemying 

Release Date September 2nd, 2005 

Published September 2nd, 2005 

The first Transporter movie was a rather innocuous exercise in combining American style action movies with Asian style violence and European locales. Memorable only for its rising star Jason Statham, The Transporter made little box office noise before being shuffled off to DVD. It is in this fast growing market that a small cult formed. For some reason people started buying the DVD and an underground of Frank Martin fans managed to turn the DVD into a big enough hit that a sequel was necessary. Four years after the original made its minor box office impact, Transporter 2 hits the screen with a fury that box office hits are made of.

Jason Statham returns as Frank Martin, a character he created for a stylish car commercial some four years ago. That lead to The Transporter in which ace getaway driver Frank Martin is hired to deliver a package that he finds out is actually a human being, a really sexy Asian woman to be precise. Violating his rules of non-involvement in his clients' business Frank set about releasing the girl and protecting her from his thug clients.

Four years later, the sexy Asian woman is a memory as is Frank's dangerous past. Now living in Florida, Frank has taken a gig as driver and bodyguard for the 8 year old son of a high profile government executive named Billings (Matthew Modine). Frank was hired at the behest of Mrs. Billings (Amber Valleta) who was concerned that her son might be the target of kidnappers because of her husband's high profile job.

Oh how right she was. On a routine trip to a doctor's office Frank and the boy are attacked by a group of thugs lead by the super sexy and psychotic Lola (model, Kate Nauta). After a massive action sequence culminating as they often do in this film with a giant fireball, the boy is eventually taken and only Frank Martin can save him.

The plot is far more complicated then that however.  Eventually it involves a hired hitman played by Alessandro Gassman, and a deadly virus spread through breathing that has only a limited amount of antidote. The plot is dopey and convoluted but who cares.  The action surrounding the goofy plot is what makes Transporter 2 the kind of enjoyable action junk not seen since the heyday of Jean Claude Van Damme.

Jason Statham, auditioning for the James Bond gig, has his stone-faced intensity and agile fighting stance in full effect in Transporter 2. Even in the film's most outrageous contrivances Statham's taciturn charisma and dangerous demeanor draws you in and helps you forget about the number of times he outruns giant, physics defying fireballs and survives ridiculous explosions, car wrecks and a plane crash.

Even more durable than Statham is his 2006 Lexus which is scratch proof, bullet proof and nearly bomb proof. The driving stunts are, as they were in the first film, exciting and well executed but really nothing more than a commercial for the car itself. In fairness, it's a gorgeous vehicle and the makers of Transporter 2 do a wonderful job of showing it off. It's basically Statham's top supporting cast member and as silly as that sounds, it works for this ultimately silly action movie. 

Director Louis Leterrier is no stranger to popcorn action junk. Earlier this year he delivered the awesomely entertaining actioner Unleashed with Jet Li. In Transporter 2 he brings that same sense of action and fun. Fight scenes choreographed by Cory Yuen, who performed the same task in the first film, have the feel of Jackie Chan's comedic approach to combat, combined with Jet Li's power. Watch out for a scene in which Frank employs a fire hose ala Jackie Chan and an awesomely coordinated scene with a pair of handcuffs similar to a scene in Jet Li's The One.

That is not to say that Transporter 2 is derivative but that it's a movie with keen awareness of its influences. Leterrier, a French Director and protégée of Luc Besson (who wrote both Transporter films), is developing a reputation for his love for and emulation of Asian style action and acrobatics. His love for this material showed greatly in Unleashed and continues remarkably well here.

Another well-acknowledged influence is American style action junk ala Van Damme or Seagal. Transporter 2 lifts heavily from the conventions and clichés of 80's and 90's action movies but with a slightly more stylish execution and a sly knowing wink to break the spell of earnestness that makes so many of those oh-so -serious action vehicles so campy in retrospect.

Transporter 2 is just wall to wall goofiness grounded, somewhat, by the sly but serious performance of star Jason Statham. Regardless of how outlandish the film's stunts and plot are you cannot help but enjoy watching Statham walk through it all with stoic dignity. This is the kind of movie star presence that made Mel Gibson a superstar in Lethal Weapon or at the very least made Steven Seagal a lot of money in a short period of time.

Whether this will be enough to land Statham his dream role as 007 is questionable but the producers would be smart to take a long look at both Statham and director Louis Leterrier, both of whom could bring some lively action to the moribund spy series.