Movie Review Takers

Takers (2010) 

Directed by John Luessenhop 

Written by Gabriel Casseus, John Luessenhop, Avery Duff

Starring Idris Elba, Paul Walker, Hayden Christensen, Michael Ealy, Zoe Saldana

Release Date August 27th, 2010 

Published August 27th, 2010

Expectations for the action/heist flick “Takers” were so low they had to be scraped off of a sticky theater floor. There really was not much to be expected from a movie featuring the wooden talents of Idris Elba, Paul Walker and Hayden Christensen or the first time performance of troubled R & B star Chris Brown. Add to that a first time director and a screenplay credited to four different writers and really all the film has to be is in frame to surpass expectations.

So what a great surprise that “Takers” is more than merely in frame. Indeed this fast paced, quick witted caper flick is wildly entertaining in its mindless quick cut manner.

Gordon (Idris Elba), John (Paul Walker), A.J (Hayden Christensen), Jake (Michael Ealy) and Jesse (Chris Brown) are first glimpsed entering a high end Los Angeles bank. They will soon rob this bank with an efficient, violent flourish.

The celebration of this very successful, multi-million dollar heist is short lived as a former member of their crew, Ghost (T.I), arrives with a new opportunity. Ghost has a plan for robbing an armored car that could quadruple the amount of money they took from the bank. The plan involves complex timing and well placed violence, all right up this crew’s alley.

The biggest question is Ghost. Freshly released from prison after five years, no one can be certain whether he is motivated by greed or revenge. His plan is solid but after he finds his ex Rachel (Zoe Saldana) engaged to Jake it becomes relatively clear that he cannot be entirely trusted.

As the crew is making plans, the cops are closing in. Lead investigator Jack Welles (Matt Dillon) and his partner Eddie (Jay Hernandez) have stumbled onto a lead involving Russian gangsters linked to Ghost. The lead goes from Ghost to Gordon and from Gordon to the rest of the crew. Will the cops catch on to the plan before they can execute it? Will Ghost betray his former friends?

These questions don't really matter all that much but they lend enough context to “Takers” to give the action enough juice to be compelling. First time director John Luessenhoepp shrewdly limits the time spent with these actors talking and gets right into these actors doing the things that most other movies would spend time explaining.

”Takers” is keenly aware of the derivative nature of the heist picture and spends little time on the explanation in favor of action that rarely pauses. These actors are at their best when they are physically involved and “Takers” plays to that strength with scene after scene of action. When the movie needs any minor explanations they turn to the one actor in the cast with the chops to deliver, Matt Dillon. The veteran Dillon cleverly plays chief explainer and is only rarely bogged down with heavy exposition.

That's not to say that Dillon doesn't get physical himself. In fact, in easily the best scene in “Takers,” Dillon and Jay Hernandez give chase to a fleeing Chris Brown in an extra long chase that involves Parkour leaps and bounds, heavy hitting traffic and one well placed, unexpected bullet.

”Takers” is terrific genre entertainment, an action movie almost without pause. Clever, well employed violence combines with a super fast pace and juices “Takers” beyond its acting and story limitations. It also helps to have a guy like Matt Dillon around to do the minor heavy lifting.

Movie Review: Flags of Our Fathers

Flags of Our Fathers (2006)

Directed by Clint Eastwood

Written by William Broyles Jr, Paul Haggis

Starring Ryan Phillippe, Jesse Bradford, Adam Beach, Paul Walker, John Slattery, Barry Pepper

Release Date October 20th, 2006

Published October 18th, 2006

Clint Eastwood has always been one of our most beloved and respected artists. However, it wasn't until recently; with the release of Mystic River and Million Dollar Baby that Eastwood rose to the rank of auteur alongside men like Scorsese and Altman, directors whose work is awaited, debated and more often than not breathlessly praised.

Clint Eastwood's latest effort is the most ambitious of his career. A two part film series that takes on the extraordinary battle of Iwo Jim from the perspective of both the Americans, in Flags of Our Fathers and the Japanese, in Letters From Iwo Jima. First up is Flags of Our Fathers, an epic of heroism, sacrifice, sadness and war.

When his father passed away James Bradley -on whose book and real life experiences the movie is based-began searching thru his things and found that his father was one of the flag raisers at the battle of Iwo Jima. The artifacts lead James Bradley to seek out Iwo Jima veterans and tell his father, Doc Bradley's (Ryan Phillippe) story.

Ostensibly, Flags of Our Fathers is the story behind, arguably, the most famous photo ever taken; the raising of the flag atop mount suribachi during the battle of Iwo Jima. What many may not realize is that the flag raising was not a gesture of having won the battle. The flag was raised a mere five days into what would become a 35 day conflict.

The photo was not what it seems either. The first flag raising wasn't captured well and when a politician who saw the photo requested to have the original flag a col, played by Robert Patrick, asked to have the original flag brought to him and a new flag raised. That second flag raising is what Joe Rosenthal immortalized but that was not the story that was sold to the American people.

Of the men who raised the flag; only three survived the remaining battle. The fame of the photo leads the three survivors, Doc, Rene (Jesse Bradford) and Ira (Adam Beach) to a modicum of celebrity. Plucked from the pacific theater and plopped into the middle of the war machine ad campaign, the so called 'heroes of Iwo Jima' became a rallying point for renewed American support for the war.

In 1945 support for the war was flagging. The economy was reeling from the expense and the treasury needed to raise 13 billion dollars to fund the war or risk giving in to Japanese demands. That was when Joe Rosenthal's iconic photo landed on the front page of every newspaper and reassured a weary country that this war was being won.

Becoming spokesman for the war and being hailed as heroes wherever they went was not as easy for the flag raisers as it might seem. Each man is haunted in their own way by what they witnessed and what they did during the battle. Most troubled of all is Irv who slowly comes apart at the seams over the horrors he witnessed.

Adam Beach gives a heart rending performance in Flags of Our Fathers. In war he was brave but overwhelmed. On the tour to raise funds for the war the horrors, combined with heavy drinking, begin to catch up with him. He eventually is given the chance to return to what is left of his unit but nothing could ever relieve him of the nightmares and his life is a tragic one. Beach's performance is nuanced and heartbreaking and the stuff Academy awards are made of.

The rest of the cast struggles to be separated from one another. Ryan Phillippe does a credible job as Doc Bradley, however, during the battle scenes you struggle to tell doc from any of the other soldiers on the field. The same could be said of Jesse Bradford as Rene who never saw much in the way of action as he was more often kept to the rear of the battle as a runner.

Rounding out the cast are a few more recognizable faces. Jaime Bell gives another riff on the clueless but loyal manchild he played in King Kong as Doc's loyal pal Iggy. Paul Walker and Barry Pepper give effective performances simply for showing up and being so recognizable. Because the battle scenes are so chaotic there is no time to meet everyone. Our psychic connection to these men is sympathy for their basic humanity but it is deepened by these recognizable faces.

Structurally Flags of Our Fathers bounces around time periods from modern times, where veterans recall the battle, to scenes prior to and during the battle that are intercut with scenes from the heroes tour of America. The lurching about can be confounding but this is not fatal flaw. Clint Eastwood's work is far too extraordinary to be damaged by some minor editing choices.

The battle scenes in Flags of Our Fathers rival the carnage and heroics of Speilberg's Saving Private Ryan, and Speilberg is a producer on Flags. The carnage, the torn and tortured bodies of thousands of American soldiers who gave their lives for this sliver of land, no bigger than New York City, is exceptionally and stunningly rendered.

Clint Eastwood's calm and assured direction of Flags Of Our Fathers helps us settle in to an unsettling and violent experience. Brilliantly balancing honoring our heroes while not overly sentimentalizing them, Eastwood crafts a film that pays tribute without begging for your love and your sympathy. Never falling back on patriotic asides, Flags of Our Fathers earns your admiration by telling a true story in a most compelling and heartbreaking fashion.

Letters From Iwo Jima, Eastwood's Japanese based follow up to Flags of Our Fathers will be released in February. Ken Watanabe stars as the leader of Japanese forces in the battle. The verisimilitude of this venture only serves to deepen the stories being told. On it's own Flags of Our Fathers is a powerful, moving even heartbreaking story. Imagining what it will be like once we see it from the other side makes Flags of Our Fathers even more fascinating.

Flags of Our Fathers is a must see movie.

Movie Review Running Scared

Running Scared (2006) 

Directed by Wayne Kramer 

Written Wayne Kramer

Starring Paul Walker, Cameron Bright, Vera Farmiga, Michael Cudlitz

Release Date February 24th, 2006

Published February 24th, 2006 

Violence for the sake of violence is not necessarily a hallmark of the thriller genre, unless you're Quentin Tarentino. The thriller Running Scared shows why most thrillers begin with a plot and then introduce only the violence necessary to tell the story. Overwhelmed by its blood, guts and body count, Running Scared devolves quickly from a fast paced, Tony Scott inspired thriller into a nonsensical horror film.

Making matters worse is the fact that the film was directed by the terrific young auteur Wayne Kramer who made such a great splash with his debut feature The Cooler. Running Scared is a major step backward for a director with more talent than what this film demonstrates.

Paul Walker stars as Joey Gazelle, a low level mobster with the simple task of getting rid of dirty guns. After a drug deal goes bad and Joey's boss (Johnny Messner) kills a dirty cop, it's up to Joey to get rid of the piece, a pearl handled snub nosed revolver. Joey however has another idea. In covering his own backside he has been taking the hot guns he was supposed to be disposing of and hiding them in his basement in case he needs them for leverage.

Things go bad for Joey when one of his son's friends, Oleg (Cameron Bright) takes the pearl handle gun from his stash and uses it to try and kill his abusive father (John Noble). The kid fails to kill his dad, who also happens to have mob connections, and is now on the streets with the hot piece. Joey must find the kid and retrieve the gun before his partners or the cops find it first.

The plot to Running Scared is a correlative to Robert Altman's brilliant but short lived anthology series Gun which aired briefly on ABC in the mid-nineties. That show followed the path of a gun from one owner to the next and detailed the havoc wreaked in its wake. In the case of the gun in Running Scared it's the lives of mobsters, dirty cops, gang bangers and one small child.

Where Gun was a brilliant verbose little drama, Running Scared is a brutally violent and utterly meaningless mess of a film. Director Wayne Kramer, who made the far more interesting film The Cooler with William H. Macy, directs Running Scared as if he wished he had made a horror film instead of a gritty thriller. Amping up the body count to cover up his lack of a compelling plot, Kramer is forced to rely on his sleepy eyed star to provide the film's driving force and oh what a mistake that is.

Paul Walker with his slacker, frat boy, surfer demeanor is an actor I find insufferable. Though he was not bad in the doggy adventure flick Eight Below he was out acted by a group of huskies. He was okay in the Fast and Furious films but those movies aren't exactly challenging cinema. Running Scared wants to be something a little more than a cheap violent thriller but because Walker's only emotions are confused and sleepy the film falls short of exciting or even playful.

Kramer's love of over the top violence and seeing my sexuality are not merely reminiscent of Tony Scott they are, in Running Scared, an outright ripoff. The whip pan camera work and overlapping film stocks are direct lifts from Scott's last two features Domino and Man On Fire. The ridiculous violence and high body count a nod to Scott's True Romance.

The only originality to seep into this dark, dystopian thriller is a hockey torture scene that has received heavy rotation in the films ad campaign. The look of the scene is clever and the torture is something I had never seen before. The scene is bloody and a bit of a nail biter. Unfortunately this good scene is rare amidst the misguided plot.

Running Scared is a bizarre little film. Violent to the point of parody, the film could qualify as a horror flick for the amount of blood and guts that get spilled but it's all in service of nothing. There is nothing you can take away from the film. This film's many influences, Tony Scott and Quentin Tarentino among others, are each far superior. While Scott's last two films, Domino and Man On Fire were not great films, Scott's direction is amped and always in service of a compelling if flawed plot.

Tarentino is, of course, the master of screen violence. Kill Bill 1 & 2 are the only films outside the horror film genre that can favorably compare body counts with Running Scared. The difference is the violence in Tarentino's masterpieces plays like a blood and guts symphony. Each bullet fired, each slice of a samurai blade a note in a grand opera of eloquent violence. In Running Scared the violence is simply for the sake of being violent. The style of the film, the grit, the color scheme and the whip pans, are merely showing off and never part of a coherent vision of how to present screen violence.

Violence for violence sake is okay in the horror genre, but it gets old quickly in the thriller or noir genre if it is not clearly in service of a good plot. The plot to Running Scared is simply not compelling enough to justify the blood, guts and body count. Pure viscerality can only get a movie so far before you need to give the audience something to really chew on.

Running Scared is a step backward for a director who showed eclectic style in his debut feature. Wayne Kramer's The Cooler was a hard R-rated character piece with an excellent cast that was directed with a purpose. The violence and sexuality of The Cooler worked with its compelling characters and unique plot not against them. There was simply more to that film than the action and flesh displayed.

Running Scared never stops moving which works for maybe 45 minutes but without great characters and not much of a plot the wheels eventually come off and the film flies off the rails.

Movie Review: Eight Below

Eight Below (2006) 

Directed by Frank Marshall 

Written by David Digillio 

Starring Paul Walker, Bruce Greenwood, Jason Biggs, Moon Bloodgood

Release Date February 17th, 2006 

Published February 16th, 2006

Disney has a formula for every kind of film. That is how we end up with such junk as Glory Road or the wretched talking dog flick Snow Dogs. That also, however, is how we end up with such surprises as the monster hit Pirates of The Caribbean and the new animal adventure flick Eight Below. We know these two otherwise diverse films are of a particular brand name formula but both are so well accomplished we not only forgive the formula we like the film more for overcoming that formula.

Eight Below is 'inspired by' a true story of doggie survival in Antarctica in the 1950's. The story was first adapted by Japanese filmmakers in 1980 for a film called Nankoyoku Monogatari, unseen by me and well, unseen by most. In Eight Below the story of eight sled dogs abandoned in the arctic winter is directed by Frank Marshall and stars Paul "Sleep" Walker.

A science team in Antarctica sometime in the early nineties is welcoming a visiting UCLA science professor (Bruce Greenwood) who is on an expedition to find a meteorite he believes may be from Mars. With his hefty check in hand, and unbeknownst to the teams lead field explorer Gerry (Paul Walker), the teams boss has agreed to a dangerous excursion over the most treacherous sheets of ice in the arctic.

This means that instead of a simple snowmobile trip, Gerry and the professor will have to travel with the teams elite group of sled dogs. This is the human adventure portion of the film as Gerry and the professor make their way out to the most remote and dangerous mountain ranges in the arctic. Along the way they see dangerous leopard seals, and avoid treacherous thin ice. Of course it wouldn't be dramatic if the  the novice professor didn't fall through some thin ice and had to be rescued. On the plus side it's a chance for those amazing dogs to show off their talent.

From there a giant storm hits forcing the human inhabitants to flee. Gerry promises to return for the dogs but with the storm growing worse and the dangerous arctic winter setting in his imminent return seems unlikely. The dogs will have to fend for themselves for several months, that is if they can even escape their chains.

Frank Marshall is a director who works infrequently. In fact Eight Below is Marshall's first big screen effort since 1994's Congo. Still his work, including that aforementioned angry monkey movie, the plane crash horror film Alive and 1990's spider comedy Arachnophobia, has an indelible quality that has managed to become part of pop culture and cult phenomena. Eight Below is sadly very likely to be his least remembered film, in terms of pop culture cache, but it may in fact be his best. The films story of cross-species friendship, love and adventure is a terrific piece of work.

Especially strong are the scenes featuring the dogs. Alone in the arctic wilderness foraging for food, fighting for survival and remaining a family. The dogs become real characters with their own personalities. The rooting interest that Frank Marshall and screenwriter David Digillio instill in the dogs is remarkable and works even for those who may not consider themselves dog lovers.

Any film starring Paul 'Sleep' Walker that manages to be as exciting as Eight Below deserves some kind of award. Perhaps I am being a little hard on Walker, he rarely actually sleeps on screen. He's just a little slow is all. In Eight Below Walker is more than effective as the conscientious adventurer whose love of his sled dog team is as strong as any familial bond imaginable. Forget the sparkless romantic subplot with co-star Moon Bloodgood, Walker's love affair with the dogs works, giving him more than enough emotional depth for us to accept him.... no matter how slow he may be.

With all of the horrendous product aimed at kids at the movies, Eight Below is a revelation. The film never condescends to being a family drama. Frank Marshall simply tells his story to the best of his abilities and that it happens to be a family friendly adventure with strong values -friendship, family, love-  is really a bonus.

Unlike other Disney branded non-animation tripe -Shaggy Dog, Glory Road, Remember The Titans- Eight Below never gives you the sense you are being preached to or being sold something. This is a film of great integrity and in no way feels compromised like much of the product Disney shovels into theaters.

Yes the film is working from a particular formula and within genre strictures. The key to the film is how Frank Marshall and his team take the established formula and improve upon it with great skill and savvy. Eight Below defies formula by improving upon it.

From looking at Eight Below and Frank Marshall's resume of pop culture home runs, I wish he would work more frequently. However, if his long delays between projects means we can have more films of the quality and exciting nature of Eight Below, Frank Marshall should take as much time as he needs for his next picture.

Eight Below is a terrific film.

Movie Review Timeline

Timeline (2003)

Directed by Richard Donner 

Written by George Nolfi, Jeff Maguire

Starring Paul Walker, Frances O'Connor, Gerard Butler, Billy Connelly, David Thewlis, Anna Friel, Michael Sheen, Ethan Embry, Martin Csokas

Release Date November 26th, 2003 

Published November 26th, 2003 

It's been five years since director Richard Donner last stepped behind a camera. That was for the deathly Lethal Weapon 4, a creaky cash grab of an action movie that made even the indomitable Mel Gibson look bad. In fact, it has been nearly 10 years since Donner has directed a good movie, 1994's Maverick (also with Gibson.) In his comeback, adapting Michael Crichton's time traveling novel, Timeline, Donner continues the downward slide of his once great career.

Paul Walker stars as Chris, the son of archaeologist Professor Edward Johnston (Billy Connelly). When the professor disappears on a job, his son and his crew of archaeology students including Marek (Gerard Butler), David (Ethan Embry) and Kate (Frances O'Conner) must follow his clues to find him. The Professor's last job was working for a mysterious corporation called ITC. The corporation’s scientists have figured a way to send human beings back in time but only to one specific location: Castleberg, France in the 14th century on the eve of war between the French and British.

Well, wouldn't you these students just happen to be experts in that exact era? In fact they are excavating that very battlefield. What an amazing coincidence. ITC has sent the Professor back to the 14th century and now want to send Chris and company back there to find him and bring him back. Oh but if it were that easy, we wouldn't have a movie. Accompanied by a shady military guy played by Neal McDonough and his two soon-to-be-dead lackeys, the gang has six hours to find the professor and get back to the future.

For Donner, working entirely on autopilot, the time travel plot is merely a clothesline on which to hang one lame action sequence after another. The action has the period authenticity of a high school production of Shakespeare. When we aren't being annoyed with the lame action scene, we are treated to plot points that screenwriters Jeff Maguire and George Nolfi obviously thought were clever. The script ham-handedly sets up things in the present that will payoff in the past. When the supposed payoffs come, the actors practically scream, "see how this paid off, wow aren't we clever.”

Some of the plot points pay off so obviously you can't help but giggle at the goofiness of it all. The actors react like children who just discovered a light switch and want to explain to the audience how it works.

For his part, Walker turns in yet another young Keanu Reeves impression. All that is missing is the signature "Whoa." Walker looks about as comfortable in period garb as Dom Deluise would in a thong. The rest of the cast isn't much better, especially a slumming Frances O'Connor as Walker's love interest. O'Connor was so good in Spielberg's A.I that scripts like this should be easy to pass on but somehow, here she is.

Donner's best days are clearly behind him. The man who made Lethal Weapon and Lethal Weapon II, arguably the best buddy movie franchise ever, and the man who made arguably the best superhero movie of all time--Superman with Christopher Reeve--has now settled into a depressing groove of just simply picking up his check and turning out below-average action movies that make for great posters but not much else.