Movie Review: Balls of Fury

Balls of Fury (2007) 

Directed by Robert Ben Garant

Written by Thomas Lennon, Robert Ben Garant

Starring Dan Fogler, Christopher Walken, George Lopez, Maggie Q, Robert Patrick

Release Date August 29th, 2007

Published August 30th, 2007

Who is Dan Fogler? That is the question many who see the movie Balls of Fury will ask. Of course, most won't see Balls of Fury because they don't know who Dan Fogler is. Quite a conundrum. Nevertheless, Fogler is an acclaimed actor. He won a Tony award, Broadway's highest honor, for his work in the musical "The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee ''.How one goes from Broadway star to the star of a movie about ping pong is one of those curious quirks of Hollywood. Something linked Fogler to the guys from Reno 911, Ben Garant and Thomas Lennon, and thus they came to cast Fogler in their latest unfunny comedy Balls of Fury.

Ben Garant and Thomas Lennon are two of the creators of the often quite funny cops spoof Reno 911. However, their film work has been utterly atrocious. I've rundown the litany of their sins more than a few times and here they are again. The Pacifier, Taxi, Reno 911 Miami and Herbie Fully Loaded. Blech! Balls of Fury is as inept and misguided as any of those features.

The story begins at the 1988 olympics. 12 year old Randy Daytona (Dan Fogler) is America's hope for the gold in Ping Pong. Unfortunately, Randy gets beaten badly and embarrasses himself by knocking himself cold and proclaiming he was going to Disney World. Nearly 20 years later Randy is still playing ping pong, as a performer in a low class Vegas casino lunch room populated by the soon to the grave crowd.

There, Randy is approached by an FBI agent, Rodriguez (George Lopez), who explains that Randy is America's best chance to capture a legendary Chinese mafia figure known as Feng (Christopher Walken). Feng, it seems, is a ping pong aficionado and is holding an underground tournament for the best players in the world. Randy must get back in shape and with the help of ping pong guru (James Hong) and his smoking hot daughter Maggie (Maggie Q), prepare to play ping pong to the death.

Thomas Lennon and Ben Garant come from the world of sketch comedy and improv and you can see the influence of that in Balls of Fury. Sudden death ping pong is a good sketch comedy premise. Unfortunately, when stretched to the length of a feature film it wears thin quickly. You can see throughout Balls of Fury a number of unformed ideas that begin with the potential to be funny but peter out as the actors search for the punchline.

Dan Fogler is not a well known actor unless of course you are a fan of Broadway. The comic actor won a Tony Award for his work in "The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee". Of course few actors, even one with a Tony on his resume, could make this material work. Fogler's co-stars Maggie Q and George Lopez are only slightly more entertaining than Fogler, each struggling with the bad material and unformed ideas. Then there is poor James Hong. As Fogler's ping pong guru this longtime character actor is repeatedly humiliated in the filmmaker's attempt to find something funny.

The only actor to survive and even grasp this horrible concept is Christopher Walken. The legendary Mr. Walken finds what little funny there is in Balls of Fury by simply doing his own thing. Walken crafts his wacked out bad guy character, commits to every detail and belts it to the back of the room. Walken's seemingly method approach to this bizarre character, an American pretending to be a Chinese gangster, is at times utterly sublime simply for Walken's dedication to playing it straight.

Balls of Fury is a bad movie. Poorly crafted, poorly conceived and stunningly sloppy for a mainstream Hollywood release. Thomas Lennon and Ben Garant have once again failed miserably in attempting to translate their unique brand of sketch and improv comedy to the big screen. And yet, Christoper Walken is so classically Walken-esque, there is almost a reason to subject yourself to this piece of junk. I'm far from willing to recommend Balls of Fury, but fans of Christopher Walken with a lot of time to spare may find something oddly entertaining.

Movie Review Live Free or Die Hard

Live Free or Die Hard (2007) 

Directed by Len Wiseman

Written by Mark Bomback

Starring Bruce Willis, Justin Long, Timothy Olyphant, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Maggie Q, Kevin Smith

Release Date June 27th, 2007

Published June 26th, 2007 

It's official, the Die Hard series has jumped the shark, to appropriate a TV term. Or maybe it's a literal term, there may have been an actual shark jumped in Live Free Or Die Hard. Lord knows director Len Wiseman has every other type of mayhem imaginable crammed into this over the top Tom and Jerry meets Wile E. Coyote concoction of cartoon action hero histrionics.

And yet, how cool is Bruce Willis that no matter how brainless the action, he never fails to entertain.

If there is one character in our cultural stew who can relate to 24's Jack Bauer; it's John McClane. This New York City cop has seen dangerous situations that only Kiefer Sutherland's CTU agent could relate to. In his latest entanglement, detective McClane finds himself smack dab in the middle of a cyber terrorism attack by a group formed inside our own government.

Gabriel (Timothy Olyphant) was once the go to guy in Washington when it came to cyber terrorism. However, when the government refused to listen to all of his warnings, he went rogue and decided to demostrate the possibilities of a cyber terror attack on America's infrastructure, and if he can get paid big bucks along the way, so be it.

Employing some of the greatest hackers in the country to help him carry off his attack, Gabriel sets in motion a plan that eventually leads to detective McClane getting stuck with a young hacker named Matthew Farrell (Justin Long) who unwittingly contributed some important info to the bad guys. McClane is tasked with getting the kid to Homeland Security in Washington but along the way the bad guys try to kill him. Let's just say, John McClane does not take kindly to being targeted for death.

Bruce Willis has an endless supply of cool and charisma that he can tap with a curl of his lip and a snarling curse word and he makes a good solid living off those characteristics in Live Free Or Die Hard. The rare working parts of this otherwise execrable piece of action trash is Willis' charm and his comic chemistry with the talented comic Long.

Live Free Or Die Hard plays like Michael Bay by way of Ed Wood. Director Len Wiseman, he of the Underworld movies, you know those vampire flicks about Kate Beckinsale's butt in tight black spandex; those Underworld movies, Len Wiseman directs Live Free Or Die Hard with a callous disregard for the brains of his audience. And, by the way, there is yet another hot babe in tight spandex, martial arts master Maggie Q, for good measure.

Like the old Dave Thomas-John Candy characters on SCTV, Wiseman's only joy comes from watching stuff blow up, blow up good. Early on it's Willis shooting a fire extinguisher with the precision of a military marksman; leading to the kind of explosion only McGyver could recreate. Later the film abandons even a television level of reality as John McClane drives up an embankment in a tunnel and dives out as the car flies directly into a helicopter.

Later, John drives a semi-truck that is attacked and destroyed by rockets and bullets from a harrier jet. McClane survives, as does some portion of the driving part of the semi which drives up a crumbling portion of overpass, also destroyed by the jet. Eventually John must abandon the truck and when does, he ends up landing on top of the soon to crash jet and then out running the jet as a giant fireball.

It's all so ludicrous that indeed it does take on a camp quality that makes it all goofily entertaining.

Live Free or Die Hard is high camp. With mind numbing explosions and mind blowing mindlessness, the film surpasses some of the greats of the high action, low brain power genre. A most recent comparison, Mr. and Mrs Smith starring Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, a film that fired more bullets than your average war and featured more evil henchmen than a James Bond villain convention, is really the only film in the last decade that can match Live Free or Die Hard explosion for explosion.

Both films are equally entertaining and that is because of pure starpower. Bruce Willis is such a force of personality that no matter how ludicrous the film becomes we in the audience are still emotionally involved and even compelled because we love this guy and this character so much. Whether it's years of earned loyalty from four movies in the series or simply the force of Willis' charisma, there is no denying the awesome star wattage of Bruce Willis.

Even as the film is a sieve in the brain department, the screenplay by committee does manage a few good chuckles at the expense of other film franchises. References to Spiderman and Transformers are just a couple of the meta moments from this otherwise brain free movie. Other inside moments include numerous references to the original Diehard.

Final Destination star Mary Elizabeth Winstead appears in Live Free or Die Hard as Lucy McClane, John's now grown daughter. Her inclusion here is really only as plot addendum to be used to refer to the first film. Yes, she does become involved in the climax of the film but that really is the lesser part of her purpose here.

And the final joke of Live Free or Die Hard is the use of director Kevin Smith in the role of Warlock, a hacker who lives in his mom's basement. Smith is legendary online for his love of all things movies, including the Die Hard series. His inclusion is one of many nods to and knocks on the internet community that has been a Live Free or Die Hard constituency since the film was rumored years ago with Bruce starring alongside Britney Spears as Lucy McClane. Sadly, screenwriters couldn't find a meta way to work a Britney joke into the script.

Live Free or Die Hard would be unforgivably dimwitted if it were not for Bruce Willis whose star persona is so powerful you can almost forgive all of the deplorable excess of his latest film. The Diehard franchise has likely run its course and there is certainly no need nor want for more of the tortured life of John McClane. So, if Live Free or Die Hard is in fact the final installment, let us remember John McClane as the most charismatic of our action heroes, an everyman superhero in street clothes who goes above and beyond the call of duty and the bounds of logic for our entertainment.

Bless you John McClane, and here's to what we hope will be a long and fruitful retirement.

Movie Review Mission Impossible 3

Mission Impossible 3 (2006) 

Directed by J.J Abrams 

Written by Alex Kurtzman, Roberto Orci 

Starring Tom Cruise, Michelle Moynihan, Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Ving Rhames, Maggie Q

Release Date May 5th, 2006 

Published May 4th, 2006 

If Mission Impossible 2 was the height of slick and shallow action fantasy, Mission Impossible 3 is the height of the series becoming something more than just slick fantasy. Mission Impossible 3 is completely awesome with more genuine suspense and thrills than either of the two previous Mission Impossible movies. Director J.J Abrams, before he manned the Star Trek and Star Wars franchises, grabbed the reins of the Mission Impossible franchise and transformed it from thinly plotted, style over substance action into a full fledged movie that also happens to be a great action movie.

Mission Impossible 3 picks up the story of Impossible Mission Force Agent Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) five years after the action of MI2. Now, Hunt is in semi-retirement, busily training the next generation of IMF Agents. Hunt is also soon to be married to Jules (Michelle Monaghan), who has no idea what Ethan did or currently does for a living. Her appeal to him is that she is completely outside the espionage sphere.

That’s unfortunately about to change as Ethan is drawn back into the field and his new bride is soon to be drawn in as well. Ethan is brought out of retirement by a friend and agent named Musgrave (Billy Crudup) who wants Ethan to go to Germany and rescue one of the agents he trained. Agent Lindsey Farris (Keri Russell) had been tracking an arms dealer named Owen Davian (Phillip Seymour Hoffman) when she was captured.

The rescue sequence, featuring Hunt’s latest Impossible Mission team, Luther Stickell (Ving Rhames, in his third Mission appearance), Declan Gormley (Jonathan Rhys Meyers), and Zhen Lei (Maggie Q), is an incredibly tense, fast paced and exceptionally well shot sequence. It’s a nail-biting series of scenes with Keri Russell getting a moment to shine next to Cruise and show the chops that would take her to Emmy leading lady status as another kind of spy on The Americans.

Here, Russell was not long from the fluffy television series Felicity but the gun battle here put any questions about her range as an action hero and actress to rest for good. Russell is every bit the badass Cruise is in this scene and J.J Abrams captures the scene brilliantly with remarkable camera work, editing and scene setting. The tension in this scene is almost unbearable as the perfectly timed events play out., I can’t praise this scene enough, and I haven’t even mentioned the gut-punch payoff to this sequence.

From there we move the plot on to Phillip Seymour Hoffman’s big bad, Owen Davian. The Academy Award nominated Hoffman is not playing around with the role of action movie bad guy, he’s deeply invested in this dangerous character. Davian is maniacal but it’s Hoffman’s measured tones and invective that make him scary and not the kind of blustering we get from so many other action movie bad guys.

A sequence in which Cruise and his team invade The Vatican to capture Davian is another stand out series of scenes filled with the kinds of things we’ve come to love about the series, the speculative technology, the expert timing and the thrilling last minute saves. Director Abrams could teach a master class in action movie suspense and just show people this sequence with its expert timing and clever twists and turns.

After the disappointment of the first Mission Impossible and the shallow but exceptionally fun Mission Impossible 2, I was once again surprised by the Mission Impossible franchise with Mission Impossible 3. Instead of adopting the shallow, thrill a minute style of the modern action movie, J.J Abrams set out and made an action movie with a brain, a careful thriller that uses strong cinematic technique to build suspense in a plot that is the perfect mix of action movie thrills and genuine, edge of your seat suspense.

With all of the negativity aimed at Tom Cruise these days I wonder if I am the last Cruise fan left. For me, Tom is one of the golden gods of movie stardom. The man can do no wrong... on the big screen. His charisma, magnetism and that pulsing vein in the middle of his forehead simply hold me at rapt attention.

Call it a heterosexual man crush if you wish, I prefer to think of it in the classic Hollywood star parlance. The classic Hollywood idiom about great stars, Women want to be with him and men, like me, want to be him.

It is that quality that drives his blockbuster flicks to stratospheric heights at the box office and it is that quality that often rescues some questionable films from flopping like a dead fish. His latest film, the third in the mindlessly entertaining Mission Impossible series M.I:3, succeeds solely because of Cruise's star magnetism.

M.I:3 returns Tom Cruise to the role of IMF agent Ethan Hunt, newly retired and soon to be married to the lovely Julia (Michelle Monaghan). She knows nothing of his past or of his current job as a part time trainer of new IMF agents, he told her works for the D.O.T on traffic patterns, a job just boring enough that no one asks for details.

Ethan is pulled back into the IMF fold when one of his trainees, his star student Lindsey (Keri Russell), is captured in Berlin while on the trail of an arms dealer named Owen Davian (Phillip Seymour Hoffman).To get her back Ethan hooks up with his old pal Luther Stickell (Ving Rhames) and a new crew of IMF'ers including Declan (Jonathan Rhys Meyers) and Zhen (Maggie Q) and a new pair of bosses Brassell (Laurence Fishburne) and Musgrave (Billy Crudup).

Together they infiltrate one of those classic action movie mileu's, the factory that produces sparks and steam, and fight through several hundred nameless henchman.The raid is successful or seemed to be but unfortunately the bad guys inserted a timebomb in Lindsey's brain which detonates killing only her. These scenes sound as cheeseball as they truly are, and yet, through sheer hardcore adrenalin, they work.

Indeed the entire movie, as directed by TV genius J.J Abrams, is a series of over the top action scenes that dangle Cruise precariously from varying heights, fires gazillions of bullets, destroys millions of dollars worth of property and never stops entertaining.

The remaining plot involves Ethan and his team catching Davian, being double crossed in classic Mission Impossible fashion and, of course, along the way poor Julia will be kidnapped and have a near death experience with the big bad Davian.

I will freely admit that M.I:3 is a brainless action flick. Utterly mindless, with a plot that falls apart with too much scrutiny. However if you can forget the plot for awhile and just get into the spectacle and bathe in the star powered charisma you will be entertained thoroughly by M.I:3.

This film is just pure adrenalized joy. J.J Abrams and Tom Cruise revel in upping the ante on the action spectacle with every passing scene. They turn the experience into something akin to the X-Games crossed with James Bond and a little David Blaine magic, awe inspiring at times and cheesy as all get out.

I absolutely loved Mission Impossible 3 and I recommend it completely as a must see for people who love the classic Hollywood blockbuster. If you want your mind expanded I recommend Akeelah and The Bee. If you want your pulse to race and heart to pound then see M:I3 and leave your brain in the car.