Movie Review Father Figures

Father Figures (2017) 

Directed by Lawrence Sher

Written by Justin Malen 

Starring Owen Wilson, Ed Helms, J.K Simmons, Katt Williams, Terry Bradshaw, Ving Rhames, Glenn Close, Christopher Walken

Release Date December 22nd, 2017

Was there a gun to someone’s head forcing them to make the movie Father Figures? I am struggling to understand how this movie exists. Father Figures stars Ed Helms and Owen Wilson as twins, we’ll get to that, who go on a road trip to visit men who may or may not be their biological father. The film seems to have been slapped together without much thought or care or with any semblance of humor.

Father Figures stars Owen Wilson as Kyle and Ed Helms as Peter. Kyle is a surfer bum who did some modeling as a younger man and lucked into a long-term gig as a beer spokesman. Life has always come quite easily to Kyle but not so much to his brother, Peter. Though he was always a good student, he was also geeky and shy and instead of pursuing the life he wanted he settled for becoming a proctologist. To give you an idea of the humor of Father Figures, apparently just saying the word proctologist counts as a joke.

So, Peter is jealous of Kyle, Kyle’s life isn’t the paradise he makes it out to be, lather, rinse, repeat. You’ve seen these characters in a dozen other similar comedies. The brothers don’t get along so their mother, Helen (Glen Close), concocts a scheme to bring them closer together. On the day she is getting married she tells her sons that she doesn’t know who their biological father is.

This angers both men causing them to rent a car and investigate mom’s sexual history to figure out who their biological father might be. Naturally, this is a very sensitive subject that can be very emotional and lead to many questions about personal identity and the makers of Father Figures just want to use it is as a poor excuse for a raunchy road comedy.

Find my full length review in the Geeks Community on Vocal. 

Movie Review Mission Impossible Dead Reckoning Part 1

Mission Impossible Dead Reckoning Part 1 (2023) 

Directed by Christopher McQuarrie 

Written by Christopher McQuarrie, Erik Jendresen 

Starring Tom Cruise, Hayley Atwell, Simon Pegg, Ving Rhames, Rebecca Ferguson, Esai Morales, Cary Elwes, Vanessa Kirby, Pom Klementieff, Shea Whigham, Henry Czerny 

Release Date July 12th, 2023 

Published July 13th, 2023 

I'd never heard the term Dead Reckoning before. In the opening minutes of the new Mission Impossible franchise entry, titled Mission Impossible Dead Reckoning Part 1, they explain the term in the most efficient fashion and it dawns on you just what a perfect title this is for this adventure. It's a little thing, but I absolutely love that level of attention to detail and I appreciated that the movie gave us this information not with a windy info dump but with an offhand comment that explains the context of the term. On a colloquial level, it very simply means to navigate based on limited information on your own location. 

That's a perfect metaphor for where the Impossible Mission Force, headed up by Tom Cruise's super-spy, Ethan Hunt, find themselves. They are navigating a world saving adventure plot with very little knowledge or where they are going next. Every little twist and turn of the plot, every development surrounding the McGuffin, is delivered with precision and in a way that only gives us and these wonderful characters, just enough info to take us the next step. That the McGuffin happens to be a literal Key is quite a fun and clever detail that, again, I absolutely love. 

Mission Impossible Dead Reckoning opens on a Russian Submarine navigating back to Russia after a very successful mission. This mission involved fooling the entire world's worth of submarines and military intelligence. The sub commander explains that his new sub was able to get within mere meters of the most advanced submarines and military ports in the world, completely undetected. It's a game changing piece of technology that would give Russia a grave advantage in any world conflict. I say that it would, if this sub didn't soon wind up at the bottom of the ocean. 

How it got there is the world altering mystery at the heart of Mission Impossible Dead Reckoning Part 1. Ethan Hunt has been given the mission of recovering to halves of a very special key. It's a key that unlocks control of a world altering A.I that may itself be the villain of this movie. With his newly reunited team, including Rebecca Ferguson as Ilsa, Simon Pegg as Benji, and Ving Rhames as Luther, Cruise's Ethan Hunt must recover a key but he doesn't know what this key unlocks or where the lock actually is. 

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media 

Classic Movie Review Dave

Dave (1993) 

Directed by Ivan Reitman

Written by Gary Ross

Starring Kevin Kline, Sigourney Weaver, Frank Langella, Kevin Dunn, Ving Rhames, Ben Kingsley 

Release Date May 7th, 1993 

Published June 7th, 2023 

Dave is one of the nicest movies ever made. This is such a good hearted, sweet, sincere movie that it feels entirely anachronistic a mere 30 years after its release. Politics in America has gotten so much uglier, nastier, and mean over the last 3 decades that Dave feels like a throwback to the 1930s rather than the 1990s. In Dave, politics is still filled with pit vipers and vile men with self-interested aims, but good is seemingly on an equal footing with the bad guy and more than capable of defeating the bad. 

That feels quaint today where it's nearly impossible to believe in or remotely trust anyone in an elected office. In 1993 director Ivan Reitman and writer Gary Ross were able to get away with making a political movie that never once mentions a party affiliation. The film is about the United States President and yet we never learn if he is a Republican or Democrat. The politics are able to somehow be so fuzzy that it could be either party in charge. This would be considered cowardice in this day and age and Reitman and Ross would be castigated by both sides. 

Dave is perhaps one of the last signposts of a pre-internet era of politics, a time where the lack of a constant need to feed the beast that is social media, allowed for the kind of political crossroads that seem impossible today. In the pre-internet era, parties crossed over party lines to vote what they believed in. Today, party lines are so strict, members are rumored to be leaving their party if they even consider voting against the party line agenda. The politics of Dave are, of course, secondary to the humorous conceit and central romance of the movie but it's still quite a notable indicator of just how far things have changed for the worse in Washington D.C. 

Dave stars Kevin Kline as Dave, the friendliest man in his neighborhood. When he isn't finding a job for everyone he's ever met via his temp business, Dave is opening restaurants and car dealerships portraying the President of the United States, President William Harrison Mitchell (also played by Kline), with whom he shares a striking resemblance. That resemblance is soon noticed by the White House who draft Dave to portray a Presidential double to protect the President as he leaves for a secret meeting. What Dave doesn't know, but we do, is that this meeting is actually an affair with his secretary, played by a young Laura Linney. 

Full length review at Geeks.Media

Movie Review Mission Impossible Rogue Nation and Ghost Protocol

Mission Impossible Ghost Protocol (2011) 

Directed by Brad Bird

Written by Josh Applebaum, Andre Nemec

Starring Tom Cruise, Jeremy Renner, Simon Pegg, Ving Rhames, Paula Patton 

Release Date December 16th, 2011 

Mission Impossible Rogue Nation (2015) 

Directed by Christopher McQuarrie

Written by Christopher McQuarrie

Starring Tom Cruise, Jeremy Renner, Simon Pegg, Ving Rhames, Rebecca Ferguson

Release Date July 31st, 2015 

Published July 25th, 2018 

Mission Impossible 3 made an indelible mark in my mind as the most entertaining and accomplished take on the entire Mission Impossible franchise. After seeing both Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol and Mission Impossible Rogue Nation, I can now say with certainty that the series peaked with number 3. J.J Abrams' kinetic direction was artful and exciting with an eye toward drama, action and suspense all in the same package.

That’s not to say that Ghost Protocol and Rogue Nation are bad, they just lack the same clarity, focus and skill of MI3. Neither directors, Brad Bird or Christopher McQuarrie, appear capable of imposing their vision on the franchise, or at least, they didn’t impose it as well as Abrams did as each seems far more at the mercy of stunt coordinators and the daredevil antics of star Tom Cruise than Abrams was.

Ghost Protocol picks up the action of the MI story some five years after the action of MI3. Ethan Hunt is behind bars in a foreign country, accused of having murdered 6 Serbian nationals. We will eventually be told that his wife, Jules (Michelle Monaghan), a prominent part of the action in MI3, was killed, but death in a spy movie doesn’t always mean death. The big bad this time out is a man code named Cobalt (Michael Nykvist), an arms dealer with the aim of ending the world with a nuclear missile.

It will be up to Agent Hunt and his new IMF team, including Field Agent Benji Dunn (Simon Pegg) and Jane Carter (Paula Patton). Carter is still reeling from the murder of her partner, Agent Hanaway (Josh Holloway, Lost) who was murdered by a killer for hire employed by Cobalt. They are joined by Analyst William Brandt (Jeremy Renner) who gets added to the team after his boss, the Secretary of the IMF (Tom Wilkinson) is murdered and the team is disavowed.

Brad Bird is a competent and highly capable director who keeps the pace up and the action well managed. Unfortunately, the film is little more than set-pieces strung together by a thin plot and a less than compelling villain. Ghost Protocol is remembered for the controversial CGI destruction of the Kremlin and a death-defying sequence in which Cruise appears to scale the outside of the world’s tallest building, Dubai’s Burj Khalifa.

Both sequences are solid and well captured with the Burj Khalifa climb coming the closest to evoking the best of the franchise. That said, they appeared to have the stunts before they had a script and wound up tailoring the story to the stunts. This was seemingly confirmed when writer Christopher McQuarrie was brought on half way into production for an uncredited rewrite of the script by Andre Nemec and Josh Applebaum.

Does this make Mission Impossible Ghost Protocol bad? No, it means that it comes up short of the legacy crafted by Mission Impossible 3. That film had big stunts and a big story to tell along with it. Ghost Protocol has ambition stunts but lacks the story to lift it to what I had hoped the series would be after MI3. Still, the movie is good enough, entertaining enough, and has just enough appeal that I don’t dislike it, but I don’t love it either.

Mission Impossible Rogue Nation, at the very least, improved upon Ghost Protocol. Here, Ethan Hunt opens the movie by being captured by the big bad, this time played by Sean Harris. Harris’ Solomon Lane has been eluding Ethan for two years since Ethan began to track him down. Lane has remained 2 steps ahead of Ethan while creating a series of tragedies intended to have a drastic effect on world markets.

Ethan is in so much hot water that the CIA, seen here in the form of a blustering Alec Baldwin, believes he is responsible for the terrorist acts caused by Lane’s outfit called, The Syndicate. In attempting to stop The Syndicate, Ethan recruits Benji to join him on the run from the CIA and they are joined by a British double agent named Ilsa Faust (Rebecca Ferguson) who has infiltrated The Syndicate and is the key to getting to Lane.

Director Christopher McQuarrie both wrote and directed Mission Impossible Rogue Nation and that fact does lend some clarity to the storytelling. The conspiracy in play is a wild one and rather clever and well executed. The film is still defined by one big stunt, in which Cruise legendarily clung to the side of a plane as it was taking off, but the stunt doesn’t completely overshadow the movie as the Burj Khalifa sequence in Ghost Protocol certainly did.

McQuarrie marries the slick, shallow thrills of MI2 with a little of the grit of the original with the craftsmanship of MI3 and creates easily the second best of the then 5 film franchise. I especially enjoyed the use of Rebecca Ferguson whose lithe physicality matches that of co-star Tom Cruise. The way she floats about fluidly in major fight scenes is really cool and in keeping with the action style of most of the Mission movies. She’s a really solid addition.

Sadly, the villain of Rogue Nation is once again the weakest part of the film. Who’s Sean Harris? He’s not a bad actor but I have no reference point for who he is as an actor. He’s not remotely on the star level of the rest of the cast, even Ferguson who makes her debut in this film. Harris’s lack of a profile makes him forgettable and when compared to the best villain in the franchise, Phillip Seymour Hoffman’s exceptional, Owen Davian, he comes up well short.

The character of Solomon Lane is not all that compelling. His aims are clear but the character is a shell and a full-fledged villain should be. He has no life, no personality, he’s not tough and while he’s portrayed as super-smart, our first time seeing him, he immediately chooses not to kill Ethan Hunt even though he easily could. The sequence makes the character look silly, especially when the script gives him zero reason to keep alive the one man he’s aware could stop his agenda.

The lack of care in the details of the script of Rogue One is part of what keeps the film far from greatness. It’s still solid and has terrific stunt work and top-notch action scenes, but sadly I was hoping for more of a brain. Instead, we get yet another Tom Cruise running chase scene and another Tom Cruise motorcycle chase scene, obligatory action beats that likely existed before a script ever did.

McQuarrie is also the writer-director of Mission Impossible Fallout which hits theaters this weekend. I believe Fallout will be good but my expectations have dimmed for the franchise. I had hoped Ethan Hunt would usurp James Bond as the top movie spy of all time. Sadly, Bond’s legacy is kept safe by a star too eager for stunts and directors unable to make the stunts into a fully compelling story beyond the mere presentation of spectacle that just happens to be part of a story.

Movie Review Surrogates

Surrogates (2009) 

Directed by Jonathan Mostow

Written by John Brancato, Michael Ferris 

Starring Bruce Willis, Radha Mitchell, Rosamund, Boris Kodjoe, Ving Rhames

Release Date September 25th, 2009

Published September 25th, 2009

Bruce Willis is the last of his kind it would seem, a real star. People go to the movies to see Bruce Willis. His plots don't really matter. The stories he tells and characters he plays have grown more and more outrageous and ludicrous and yet fans still turn out. The latest example is the likely number one movie of this late September weekend, Surrogates.

This derivative story of a murder in a world where sentient robots carry out the daily lives of real humans never rises to anything more than an exercise in genre and thus carries no real interest on its own merits. And yet, people turn out. Willis is a star and the only reason to spend money on Surrogates.

Set just over a decade from our own time, Bruce Willis stars in Surrogates as FBI Special Agent Greer. With his partner Peters (Radha Mitchell) Greer investigates the first murder in over a decade. Violence has grown almost non-existent in the last decade as more and more humans replaced themselves with sentient robots called Surrogates.

These Surrogates, or surrys as some call them, can't grow old, get sick and if one is damaged it is simply repaired or replaced. All the while humans control the surrey with their minds from the comfort and safety of their homes. I am told that this technology is not merely the stuff of science fiction but a real possibility.

Things are all hunky dory until Greer and Peters are called to the scene of an assault and are shocked when a pair of surrogates are linked to a pair of dead users. Somehow, the weapon employed by the assailant managed to kill the robot and its controller. The implications are staggering to the characters in the movie but anyone with a degree in plot dynamics already has the gist of the lame conspiracy thriller soon to unfold.

The plotting is obvious, especially after we are subjected to the shady corporate villains and equally shady military types who emerge as early suspects. All are going to be involved in some way and in some fashion punished per the plot requirements of such simpleminded storytelling devices.

On the bright side, all of the mediocre story is told through the always compelling presence of Mr. Willis and the capable, if predictable, direction of Jonathon Mostow (Terminator 3). Willis on his worst day is more compelling and charismatic than most of the men in his line of work. His cocksure walk, bullet head and ferocious spirit give him an unpredictable quality that brings life to even the most predictable of plots.

Willis is our tour guide through the lame plot and while he is engaged, so are we. You have to be a fan of his brand of brusque charisma to enjoy Surrogates. If not, don't bother because it is really all that this movie has going for it.

Movie Review I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry

I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry (2007) 

Directed by Dennis Dugan 

Written by Barry Fanaro, Alexander Payne, Jim Taylor 

Starring Adam Sandler, Kevin James, Jessica Biel, Ving Rhames, Steve Buscemi, Dan Akroyd

Release Date July 20th, 2007

Published July 20th, 2007

For every little bit of progress Adam Sandler makes as an actor; he seems to take one step back. His performance earlier this year in the 9/11 drama Reign Over Me was a tremendous step forward for Sandler as an actor, if a bit of a step down from his usual box office stature. Like his very impressive turn in P.T Anderson's Punch Drunk Love which Sandler followed with the juvenile animated effort 8 Crazy Nights and the dull, unfunny rage of Anger Management, Sandler chooses to follow Reign Over Me with the childish attempt at P.C laughs in stereotypical clothes, I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry.

Larry Valentine has a big problem. As a firefighter who rushes into the blaze to save lives, his life is often on the line. His work is very dangerous and with two kids at home to take care of, Larry wants to make sure they get his pension should something happen to him. Unfortunately, a paperwork snafu, in the wake of his wife's untimely death, has left Larry in a real bind. Should he be killed in action, his kids won't get his pension unless he gets married.

Unfortunately for Larry, there is only one person he would trust enough to make sure his kids were taken care of. his lifelong pal, Chuck Levine. This is where Larry crafts a real hairbrained scheme. Seeing a story in the paper about how the city of New York has legalized domestic partnerships for gay couples, Larry gets the idea to marry his pal Chuck.

Chuck is not exactly the ideal choice for this scam. He has a rather legendary reputation as a ladies man. In fact, when we first meet Chuck a pair of sexy twin sisters are fighting over him after he slept with both of them. Later, when Larry goes to tell Chuck his plan, he interrupts him while he is romancing several women at the same time.

Nevertheless, Chuck owes Larry his life after a fire call went bad, so he agrees and the two head for Canada to make it legal. Things get complicated when the city challenges the authenticity of their relationship and Larry hires a sexy lawyer named Alex (Jessica Biel) who immediately strikes a chord with Chuck and puts the whole scheme on thin ice.

This being a typical, brainless Adam Sandler effort you expect and get just about every stereotype known to man thrown in as comic asides. However, surprisingly enough, the biggest problem with I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry is not insensitivity, the film actually offers a pro gay agenda. Rather, the problem is much simpler than that. It's just not a very well made movie.

Directed by Adam Sandler's pet director Dennis Dugan (Big Daddy, Happy Gilmore), I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry never establishes a solid tone or any kind of charm. The film is crude and resorts more often to dull slapstick than to anything organically plot driven. The plot should be the focus, it's a big broad topic with many opportunities for satire. That, sadly, is well beyond the intellectual scope of Dugan and Sandler.

While there will be many who will be offended by the many stereotypes at use in I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry, you will be surprised how fairminded and pro gay the film really is. Though the support is shallow because of the gutless direction of Dennis Dugan and the strip mined script by Sandler and Barry Fanaro, the film's heart is in the right place.

What really stinks is that you can see the potential for something a little more thoughtful, deeper and more satisfying. Jim Taylor and Alexander Payne, the team behind Election, About Schmidt and Sideways, delivered a version of this script that, those who have read it, say is sharper and more pointed in its humor and perspective. That version was flamed in favor of a more Sandler friendly version with all of the slapstick and self serving ego indulgences that are Sandler's hallmarks.

My biggest fear was that I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry would be a series of stereotypical jokes with a liberal use of the word f****t. Watching it, that is what we get. However, a heavy dose of positivity manages to balance things out in a very surprising way. That positive feeling however, is not enough to make the film funnier than it is or more believable than it is.

I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry suffers the ego of its star Adam Sandler who compromises much of what might have worked in the film in favor of fellating his own ego. What a shame, there was a good deal of potential here.

Movie Review Mission Impossible Fallout

Mission Impossible Fallout (2018) 

Directed by Christopher McQuarrie

Written by Christopher McQuarrie 

Staring Tom Cruise, Henry Cavill, Ving Rhames, Simon Pegg, Rebecca Ferguson, Michelle Monaghan 

Release Date July 27th, 2018 

Published July 25th, 2018 

The Mission Impossible series has been a rollercoaster of quality since its inception 22 years ago. The first film wasn’t great but it did begin the slow, upward crawl of the series. Then, the series picked up speed by embracing the slick, shallow style of director John Woo for Mission Impossible 2. Finally, in Mission Impossible 3, the series peaked with the J.J Abrams directed thriller that was brimming with suspense and bursting with action while telling the best story the series has told thus far.

It was back down the quality coaster after that with Ghost Protocol but Rogue Nation began the climb back upwards and now Mission Impossible Fallout has arrived to provide another, somewhat smaller peak for the franchise. Filled with smart twists and turns and a strong payoff, Mission Impossible Fallout is perhaps the best blend yet of Fast and Furious style goofy fun with the stylish grit of the Bourne franchise, the true sweet spot of the Mission Impossible franchise.

Mission Impossible Fallout finds Ethan Hunt on the trail of nuclear warheads that are on the black market. The spy ring known as The Syndicate, is without its leader, Solomon Lane (Sean Harris), whom Ethan and his team captured in Rogue Nation, and they’ve been making up for his absence with even more terror attacks around the globe. The nukes however, are their final big play and Ethan needs to get to them before The Syndicate does.

Unfortunately, after missing out on the nukes in Berlin, Ethan is forced to take along a C.I.A Agent to watch over him and his team. Agent Walker (Henry Cavill) is a hard-headed, cold-hearted, efficient spy who specializes in killing whoever needs to be killed to accomplish his mission. Naturally, Walker’s approach clashes with Ethan’s more nuanced take on spycraft, the kind that doesn’t get a whole lot of other people killed.

Fallout brings the return of Rebecca Ferguson in the role of Ilsa Faust. When last we saw Ilsa she was getting out of the spy business, leaving behind her career at London’s MI6. Sadly, the spy game is not so easy to walk away from. This time, Ilsa’s aims are in direct conflict with Ethan’s and the two will come close to killing each other on more than one occasion during Mission Impossible Fallout.

Fallout was written and directed by Christopher McQuarrie, the screenwriter who tried to save Ghost Protocol with some script doctoring before taking the full reins of the series for Rogue Nation.

McQuarrie may be just the right creative force for the series. His style combines the slick and stylish visuals that are a hallmark of the series but he’s also not blind to the details of good storytelling and doesn’t let the stunts get in the way of telling a good story. Stunts are, of course, the bread and butter of the Mission Impossible franchise but, throughout the series, the necessity of Tom Cruise to put his life on the line for some adrenaline rush and a good public relations have come at the expense of the story. Ghost Protocol for instance had a pair of big action set pieces set in stone before the film even had a script. The writers had to write the stunt rather than coming up with stunts to go with the story.

Any screenwriter would likely admit that having to write to the action rather than forming an organic storyline is less than an ideal way to write a script. That problem plagued Ghost Protocol and to a lesser extent, Rogue Nation where McQuarrie merely had to write in Cruise hanging from the side of a plane as it took off. Fallout has some big action but none of it feels sewn on to the story, it all feels as if it proceeds from the story.

Perhaps the biggest stunt in the movie, if not the most talked about, is a helicopter battle where Cruise has to nearly fall off of the helicopter and save himself by the skin of his teeth. It’s a spectacular sequence and part of a kinetic closing act that is intense and rarely lets up on the excitement and suspense all the way to the end. The most talked about stunt in Fallout is a foot chase in which Cruise parkours his way across London rooftops in pursuit of the enemy.

Cruise was injured in the chase, breaking his ankle attempting to jump from one building to the next in a gnarly jump that rumor has it, is in the final cut of Fallout, though the scene proceeds at a pace where you may not notice it. Cruise’s injury shutdown production for eight weeks and ballooned the film’s budget to reportedly more than $250 million dollars. It probably was not worth it for this particular stunt but studios aren’t inclined to tell a star like Cruise not to do his own stunts.

Mission Impossible Fallout has the best traits of the lesser parts of the Mission Impossible franchise. Slick, stylish and occasionally shallow, the film could have been just another stunt-fest. Thankfully, the story picks up with a couple of great twists, especially a rare call back to the first film in the franchise, and by the end the story and the pace are feeding each other and the thrills coming at you at a frenetic pace.

I really enjoyed how Fallout combines the goofy thrills of a Fast and Furious movie with the gritty seriousness of the Bourne franchise. That’s right where this franchise should be, serious but not too serious, outlandish but not over the top. The first Mission Impossible showed what would happen if you took this material too seriously, the second film showed what happened if you didn’t take things seriously enough. MI3 nailed the formula with great story and great action and Ghost Protocol, Rogue Nation and now Fallout have tried with varying success to match what Abrams did in MI3 to little avail.

Fallout is the closest the series has come to its creative peak and for that it is definitely worth checking out in theaters this weekend.

Movie Review Mission Impossible 2

Mission Impossible 2 (2000) 

Directed by John Woo

Written by Robert Towne

Starring Tom Cruise, Dougray Scott, Thandie Newton, Ving Rhames

Release Date May 24th, 2000 

Published May 20th, 2020 

The second installment of the Mission Impossible franchise is really where the series found its feet. After the first film, though financially successful, failed by forcing director Brian DePalma to make a standard, mainstream action movie, the makers of MI2 picked the right director to deliver a slick, stylish, fast paced action movie that didn’t have to do anything other than just be cool looking to succeed.

Director John Woo, the inventor of the cool style of action adventure cinema, was the perfect choice to direct Mission Impossible 2. Woo favors visual dynamism over story and that style over substance approach works for the mindless sort of fun that was missing from the first film which ached to be both taken seriously as a movie and be enjoyed as an action adventure movie, and nearly failed on both accounts.

We picked up the action of Mission Impossible 2 by introducing our ‘MacGuffin.’ For those that aren’t aware of classic movie tropes, the macguffin is a term coined by the legendary filmmaker Alfred Hitchcock to describe a plot device that all the characters in the movie are seeking. It can be any kind of nebulous concept as long as everyone is chasing it, that’s what propels the story along. The Maltese Falcon is arguably the most famous example of a MacGuffin, a thing everyone in the movie wanted for whatever reason the plot decided.

The Macguffin in MI2 is a virus and a cure known as Chimera and Bellerophon. A doctor friend of our hero, IMF Agent Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) has created both the worst virus in history and its cure and is attempting to escape with them both as the movie opens. Unfortunately, the doctor falls into the hands of a turncoat IMF Agent, Sean Ambrose (Dougray Scott), impersonating Ethan. Ambrose murders the doctor and absconds with the MacGuffin and the chase is on.

To find Ambrose, Ethan must enlist Ambrose’s former flame, a thief named Nyah (Thandie Newton). It will be her job to get back into Ambrose’s life and get Ethan and his team, including his old buddy Luther (Ving Rhames) and a newcomer Aussie pilot named Billy (Jon Polson), close enough to retrieve the virus and cure before Ambrose can sell them to the highest bidder or unleash them on the world out of spite for the IMF.

The plot of Mission Impossible 2 isn’t important, we’re here for the cinema of cool, the cinema of John Woo and the style over substance master does not disappoint. Slow-motion cameras capture spectacular chases and stylish cinematography brings out the sexy fight over the affections of Newton’s Nyah between Ethan and Ambrose. Sure, saving the world and all is important or whatever, but looking good is the point of MI2 and everyone and everything looks incredible.

Every Mission Impossible is known for the stunt that nearly got Tom Cruise crippled or killed and MI2 is no different. Our first glimpse of Ethan Hunt in MI2 is him free-climbing a craggy rock in the middle of the Utah desert with no one around for miles. Naturally, Cruise insisted on doing the stunt himself and watching him narrowly cling to the side of a nearly flat cliff face is honestly still as breathtaking today as it was in 2000 when the film was released.

Screenwriter Robert Towne, back from having over-written the first Mission Impossible film crafted the screenplay with a much leaner and clearer narrative. Towne claims that he had to fit a pair of stunts into the movie even before the plot of the film had been devised and had to write the scenes into the movie as he created the screenplay. This, naturally, includes Ethan’s introductory scene and a scene near the end involving a motorcycle fight.

The motorcycle ballet at the end of Mission Impossible 2 is wildly silly and implausible but wonderfully so. Director Woo delivers the scene in his classic, slick-slo-mo style and it works for the slick, empty spectacle of MI2. Also great is the closing fight scene between Cruise and Scott where Cruise’s lithe physicality is framed beautifully within Woo’s perfectly seamless and crisp scene-setting that, of course, includes his trademark fight-scene doves.

Tom Cruise appears a great deal more comfortable in this empty-headed sequel. The first film featured him being cocky yet calculated and when you could see Ethan’s wheels turning it often slowed the film to a halt with overwrought flashbacks and other such nonsense. Thankfully, MI2 does not burden the actor or character with too much to think about and just gets on with the business at hand, super cool fight and chase scenes.

Mission Impossible 2 is as shallow as a drying puddle but it looks and feels spectacular. It’s like a great looking car that gets no gas mileage, completely impractical for use, but it looks amazing. Every frame of Mission Impossible 2 is a gorgeous fantasy of the action spy genre. The awesome locations, the world travelogue cinematography and the spectacular action makes the movie insanely watchable if not all that rewarding for your attention-span.

Movie Review Idlewild

Idlewild (2006) 

Directed by Bryan Barber

Written by Bryan Barber

Starring Andre Benjamin, Big Boi, Terrence Howard, Faizon Love, Paula Patton, Ving Rhames

Release Date August 25th, 2006 

Published August 26th, 2006 

I've seen bad movies and I've seen disappointing movies but I have never had a movie leave me with the kind of disappointment and frustration as Idlewild. After a sensational trailer that made the film look like an epic musical from hip hop's reigning duo, Idlewild turns out to be a wildly eclectic misfire of both filmic and musical proportions.

Idlewild tells two stories at once. Two pals, Rooster (Big Boi) and Percival (Andre 3000) are living their lives in Idlewild Georgia circa 1935, give or take a year. Rooster is a nightclub performer and part time thug who helps a mobster (Ving Rhames) move booze. Percival is Rooster's piano player but most of his time is spent working as an undertaker in his father's (Ben Vereen) mortuary.

Both Rooster and Percival have dreams well beyond the juke joints and southern climes of Idlewild. Rooster is a family man who longs for the days when there won't be a bullet with his name on it. Percival is a talented musician; who writes terrific songs that no one has ever heard. He dreams of one day leaving Idlewild for the big city's up north to perform his songs.

The two friends' lives are changed in a matter of days when a rival gangster named Trumpy (Terrence Howard) kills his way to the top of the liquor trade by killing Rooster's boss Ace (Faizon Love). This leaves the club in Rooster's hands and the ruthless mobster at his back.

Percival meanwhile is hit with a bolt of lightning in the form of Angel (Paula Patton); the feature act that Ace hired before he met his untimely end. Angel takes an immediate liking to the piano player and the two make beautiful music together on stage and off. Angel encourages Percival to leave Idlewild with her for a shot at stardom in Chicago, this despite a secret that threatens to cost both of them their lives.

These two plots compete for attention in a picture crowded with colorful characters whom director Brian Barber cannot find time for. Consider for a moment the supporting cast that includes Ving Rhames, Ben Vereen, Terrence Howard and makes little room for Patti LaBelle -in a blink and you miss it cameo-, Macy Gray, Paula Jai Parker (Hustle and Flow), and Bill Nunn. Characters are introduced very briefly, often unnamed because there is simply no time.

Barber simply has too many balls in the air, from his sprawling cast, to his lavish musical numbers to the love story and the gangster story and finally trying to coalesce all of this into a coherent conclusion. That he does manage to reign it all in at the end to give the film at least a sensible finale is quite a feat.

The story experience of Idlewild runs a distant second to the music of Idlewild which is seemingly the purpose of it all. Idlewild plays like an overlong concept music video collection. The competing storylines, gangsters and booze vs art and love story, play not unlike the last Outkast project, the dueling albums Speakerboxx/The Love Below.

Like that 2 disc collection, Andre 3000 and Big Boi in Idlewild are essentially working on different projects in which each makes a cameo in the other's story. The only differences are that this is a movie, not just a CD and it all comes together under one title instead of two.

Of course, the star of Idlewild is the music and again drawing parallels with Speakerboxx/The Love Below, Andre 3000's music is more daring, unique and entertaining than Big Boi's, only lacking Big Boi's showmanship which he uses to sell his best contribution to Idlewild, the song "Bowtie" a rousing introduction of his slickster character Rooster.

Andre 3000's musical contributions to Idlewild are a wildly eclectic mixture of hip hop and old school rhythm and blues piano arrangements. His musical repertoire, as he demonstrated on The Love Below and previous Outkast records, is seemingly limitless and he shows that once again in Idlewild. And Andre is as unique with his lyrics as with his music in Idlewild. Check the song "Chronomentrophobia" and don't bother looking up that title in the dictionary.

Idlewild as a movie is a jumbled, messy enterprise. As a collection of music videos, this a good, not great concept soundtrack. Andre 3000's work on Idlewild, much like on Speakerboxx/The Love Below, is superior to his partner Big Boi's but neither really reaches the heights of their previous works.

For Outkast fans, Idlewild is an easy recommendation, the music is by no means sub-par, just not as good as what came before. For non-fans Idlewild is an okay introduction to the work of Outkast, but you are better off grabbing a copy of Stankonia or Speakerboxx/The Love Below to get a real idea of the genius of Outkast.

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.

Movie Review: Dawn of the Dead (2004)

Dawn of the Dead (2004) 

Directed by Zack Snyder

Written by James Gunn 

Starring Sarah Polley, Ving Rhames, Jake Webber, Mekhi Pfifer

Release Date March 19th, 2004

Published March 18th, 2004

Top 5 Lessons for Surviving A Zombie Attack from Max Brooks' The Zombie Survival Guide (Three Rivers Press $12.95)

1. Organize Before they rise

2. They feel no fear, Why should you?

3. Use Your Heads: Cut off theirs

4. Blades don't need reloading.

5. No Place is Safe, Only Safer

Sage advice for the cast of the movie Dawn of The Dead, the "reimagining" of director George A. Romero's schlock classic by first time director Zach Tyler and writer James Gunn.

Indie staple Sarah Polley stars in the new Dawn as Ana, a nurse on the run after watching her husband turned into a zombie by a ten-year-old neighbor girl. Ana at first doesn't know they are zombies but after hooking up with a ragtag group of fellow living souls, she soon comes to realize that the dead have indeed risen. Ana is joined by a taciturn cop Kenny (Ving Rhames), a studious businessman Michael (Jake Weber) and a couple with a baby on the way (Mekhi Phifer and Inna Korakoba).

There are others but they are mostly zombie food. Other than Michael Kelly as mall security guard CJ, none of the remaining supporting cast makes much of an impression. Not that they needed to, they just have to run, scream, look scared and be eaten and each does a terrific job with that. Otherwise, the core cast members, Rhames, Polley et. Al, actually infuse a little life into their stock horror characters.

The action is centered in a suburban mall near Milwaukee, Wisconsin (Toronto and Ontario Canada stand in for Milwaukee). This is where our band of heroes hole up and bond over the shared experience of nearly being eaten by zombies. The actors do a terrific job of letting the audience share in the frightened excitement and confusion of this surreal life and death situation.

So how do the zombies come to be zombies? The film never bothers to explain. Like Romero's original, the zombies simply spring up out of nowhere one day and suddenly neighbors are chewing on neighbors and chaos reigns. The film’s teaser says something about there being no more room in hell, and indeed you should book your plans early if you want to get in, but really there is no explanation. Only the most nitpicky viewer will care how the zombies were conceived and nitpickers never make good horror fans anyway.

Director Zach Tyler and schlock veteran James Gunn, a former writer for Troma films, have a terrific sense of classic zombie farce. Though there zombies are the sped up new generation zombies that don't trip at opportune moments or shuffle slow enough to allow easy escapes, they are still a great source of both scares and humor. In one scene, Rhames and company on the roof of the mall play a unique time-killing game with a gun shop owner on a neighboring rooftop, challenging the marksmen to pick off zombies resembling celebrities.

There are also moments of good drama sprinkled between the gore and the humor. Keep an eye on Phifer and Korakoba. Also, the film’s ending, which some may find unsatisfactory, I found it to be fitting regardless of how well it hues to the original film.

This "reimagining" of Dawn of The Dead doesn't have Romero's cockeyed undercurrent of consumerism allegory. Where Romero used the mall setting for his 1979 film as a platform for social satire, this new film is more action oriented and the humor comes from different sources.

I never expected to like Dawn. On general principle, I oppose most, if not all remakes. Even I must admit when they get one right and they get this one right. Scary, funny, gory and surprisingly well-acted, Dawn Of The Dead is one terrific horror movie.

Movie Review: Dark Blue

Dark Blue (2003) 

Directed by Ron Shelton

Written by David Ayer

Starring Kurt Russell, Ving Rhames, Scott Speedman, Michael Michele, Brendan Gleeson 

Release Date February 21st, 2003

Published February 20th, 2003

The corrupt cop movie has become a genre all it's own and a surprisingly compelling one. Two of the genres most recent entries are Joe Carnahan's Narc and Antoine Fuqua's Training Day, two well-acted and well-written films. However, the genre is also a convenient backdrop for straight to video exploitation films starring Baldwin brothers. So to which extreme does the Kurt Russell-Ron Shelton teaming Dark Blue lean? Sadly a little bit of both.

Set in Los Angeles in 1992, one year after the Rodney King beating and just four days before the acquittal of the four officers involved in the beating, Dark Blue stars Russell as LAPD detective Elden Perry. A member of LA's feared S.I.S unit, Perry and his young partner Bobby Keogh (Felicity's Scott Speedman) have a “play by their own rules” style that flies in the face of legality but does get things done.

As we join the story, Keough is in front of an investigative board to determine whether his use of deadly force in a recent bust was justified. The investigators seem to be willing to accept that the shooting was justified, all of them accept Deputy Chief Arthur Holland (Ving Rhames) who has been suspicious of S.I.S tactics for a very long time. As we soon find out the shooting wasn't clean and Keough wasn't the one who actually pulled the trigger. Indeed, it's questionable whether the guy they shot was even the right criminal.

The S.I.S is headed up by a corrupt lifetime cop Jack Van Meter (Brenden Gleeson), who served with Elden's father and taught Perry the tactics of planting evidence and closing cases regardless of the evidence.

The ambitious Arthur Holland sees the S.I.S for the criminals they are but also as an opportunity. Take down the S.I.S, clean up the department’s most corrupt cops and make a run at becoming LA's first black police chief. With the help of his assistant, SGT. Beth Williamson (Michael Michele), Holland begins an investigation into the S.I.S and Williamson discovers that the cop she has been dating anonymously is Bobby Keough.

The odd thing about Dark Blue is how little screentime Ving Rhames actually has. The films ad campaign plays up the rivalry between Rhames' and Russell's characters. However, most of that war is off screen and what we see more often is the interaction between Russell and Scott Speedman as they investigate a crime they have been instructed not to solve.

The film is based on a story by James Ellroy, best known for LA Confidential. Dark Blue was actually written with the Watts riots of the 1960's as the backdrop. The time shift from then to the 90's and the LA riots touched off by the Rodney King verdict doesn't hurt the story. In addition, the 1992 riots are a good touchstone for modern audiences who still haven't forgotten the riots themselves even if not much was learned from their brutality.

A lot has been made of Russell's performance, which some have said is the best of his career. I disagree. I found Russell's performance to be mostly on the surface. He is the anti-hero, at first he is a bad guy because he plants evidence and believes that cops who beat Rodney King were right to have done it. But he is also conflicted about his work and drinks heavily to cover his emotions. Whether he gets the right bad guy or not, he always busts criminals. Still, Russell never seems to believe the things he says or does. I'm sure the character is supposed to believe them but Russell's laid-back line delivery betrays that.

As for Scott Speedman, there is a reason why his character has little face-time in the film’s marketing. It’s because in every scene he communicates how over-matched he is by the material. Russell and Michael Michele do what they can to carry Speedman but his performance never comes together. Ving Rhames,  meanwhile, really gets abused in Dark Blue. He gets star billing and little screen time. The screen time he does get is mostly silent brooding and pious speechifying. This amazing powerful actor deserves far better than this underused and underwritten character.

Dark Blue isn't a bad film and indeed once it begins dramatizing the beginning of the LA riots, it takes on a visceral excitement that puts the film’s many problems in the background if only momentarily. It's only moments later that we get to Russell's big scene where he gives a rather long-winded speech as the city burns to the ground.

Director Ron Shelton is a technician who knows how to frame the film’s action. Problem is, the script spends too much time painting its characters motivations and not enough time dealing with it's politics about race and corruption in the LAPD. That is the story the film wants to tell but disregards in favor of a more action-centered plot involving a pair of criminals bankrolled by Gleeson's corrupt cop.

There is a film to be made about the racial politics of the LAPD leading from the Rodney King case to the LA riots but Dark Blue is not that film.

Movie Review: Undisputed

Undisputed (2002) 

Directed by Walter Hill 

Written by David Giler, Walter Hill

Starring Ving Rhames, Wesley Snipes, Peter Falk, Michael Rooker, Jon Seda, Master P, Wes Studi 

Release Date August 23rd, 2002

Published December 2nd, 2002 

Of all the film genres that have become slaves to the cliches that made them, none is more trapped in cliche than the sports movie. Ever since Rocky, the sports movie has been doomed to the cliches of the big game, big fight, big moment. If it's a team game like baseball or football the team will be stocked with overused characters. 

Characters like the star, the jerk, the fat guy, the foreigner and the joker, and of course the troubled rookie who doesn't think he can make it but ends up winning the game. If it's a one-on-one sport like boxing then the film is doomed to repeat the cliches Rocky bred, i.e. the underdog overcoming great odds to succeed. It is these cliches that make Walter Hill's Undisputed stand out from most other sports movies. Hill's film breaks from genre cliches which makes Undisputed a surprisingly entertaining sports movie.

The film stars Wesley Snipes as Monroe Hutchins, the heavyweight champion boxer of the California State penal system. Hutchens is in prison for life for murdering a man who was sleeping with his wife. In his time in prison Monroe has spent ten years in the prison-boxing program and has won 68 consecutive fights. 

Enter the man who is THE world heavyweight champion, George "The Iceman" Chambers (Ving Rhames). Having just been convicted of rape, a charge that he vehemently denies, Chambers is sent to the same prison where Hutchins has become champion. To avoid problems, Hutchins is placed in solitary confinement where he remains for a month until an ex-mobster named Mendy Ripstein (Peter Falk) pulls some strings to set up a fight between Hutchins and The Iceman.

What is most surprising about Undisputed is that director Walter Hill is actually able to raise a solid level of suspense. The audience honestly has no idea who will win the fight. To achieve this Hill strips away both fighters’ likability, leaving the audience little rooting interest and yet there remains actual suspense thanks to Hill's exceptional direction. In a genre where the outcomes are usually tipped off well ahead of time, it's a rather remarkable feat to inject real, honest to goodness, suspense and unpredictability. 

Ignore the cover box of the Undisputed video and DVD with it's helicopters and fire. This is not an action movie, there are no daring escapes, no explosions, not even any fire. The only thing explosive about Undisputed is it's punches which Walter Hill choreographs well. By shucking traditional boxing rules and putting into the script that the fight is non traditional boxing, Hill frees the two stars from having to fake their way through boxing technique. In this fight they simply throw punches and fall down.

There are flaws in Undisputed. Such as the fact that I highly doubt, or at least hope, that prisons are not spending tax dollars on elaborate boxing cages with pay per view quality lighting rigs and an announcer played by former MTV personality Ed Lover. But that is a minor quibble. In the end when you combine Snipes’ and Rhames’ quality performances and Walter Hill's sure handed direction you get a quality entertaining sports movie. A very rare commodity.

Movie Review Piranha 3D

Piranha 3D (2010) 

Directed by Alexandre Aja 

Written by Peter Goldfinger, Josh Stolberg 

Starring Elisabeth Shue, Ving Rhames, Adam Scott, Jessica Szohr, Jerry O'Connell 

Release Date August 20th, 2010 

Published August 20th, 2010 

I don't understand the appeal of a 3D penis destroyed by flesh chomping fish. Call me a buzzkill if you wish but I cannot understand why this is funny. As for it being frightening, it's certainly frighteningly poor taste but not frightening as presented in “Piranha 3D” which is, I'm assuming, supposed to be some kind of comic send up.

I assume this is comedy because the audience I watched it with were laughing far more than they were covering their eyes or ducking their heads to the shoulder of their dates. This audience cackled at the penis eating scene and roared approval during the underwater, nude, lesbian synchronized swimming scene. They roared again during the centerpiece gore-athon in the lake when the Piranha's swarmed the spring breakers leaving behind boney carcasses. I was left perplexed and a little depressed.

A lake that is home to a Sodom and Gomorrah of Spring Break debauchery is hit with a massive earthquake just before the partygoers arrive. The quake opens a crevasse that had been sealed for millions of years. Inside is a fully evolved and deadly species of Piranha seeking to quench a million years worth of bloodlust.

On land Sheriff Julie Forrester (Elisabeth Shue) and her top deputy Fallon (Ving Rhames) are readying for the arrival of drunken revelers when they get a call about a missing fisherman (Richard Dreyfuss). As we have seen in the film's opening minutes, the fisherman was the first victim of the piranhas and when the cops find him well, they catch on quicker than your usual movie cops.

Opting to try and close the lake, they also call in a team of scientists lead by Novak (Adam Scott). The scientists are the ones who find the piranhas, but not before two of them are turned into piranha food. The closing of the lake meanwhile isn't happening as the tiny police force are no match for the drunken partiers about to become Piranha meat.

Meanwhile, Sheriff Julie's son Jake (Steven R. McQueen) takes a job as an assistant to Derrick Jones (Jerry O'Connell) the creator of Wild Wild Girls. Derrick plans on filming girls taking their tops off and even tries to recruit Jake's crush Kelly (Jessica Szohr) to star alongside his protégé Danni (Kelly Brook) in his latest video, much to Jake's consternation. Naturally, all will end up face to face with piranhas, who survives and who has their penis torn off I will leave you to discover.

It's supposed to be camp right? Kitschy, over the top, Herschel Gordon Lewis, Roger Corman stuff right? I get that, I do. But, as directed by Alexandre Aja with a surprising amount of skill and directorial touch, I found “Piranha 3D” more in poor taste than campy and fun. I know, it's supposed to be in poor taste and I understand that appeals to some but I have a hard time enjoying this type of bad taste.

There is something nihilistic about the approach to the gore of “Piranha 3D.” Directors like Alexandre Aja and his protégé Eli Roth, who has a cameo in “Piranha 3D” as a wet T-shirt contest host, enjoy their violence and gore so much that the humans lose their value. Aja has the wrong kind of rooting interest at heart in each of his films. Rather than placing a good person in peril and asking the audience to root for their survival, Aja crafts awful human beings for the purpose of watching them be comically destroyed. It's ugly and brutal and I fear for those who find this kind of thing appeal. 

This is an ugly, inhuman perspective that I find impossible to get behind. I find the approach depressing and the enjoyment that so many seem to take in the destruction of their fellow man, no matter how fake or outsized it may be, just makes me sad. Say what you will about the quality of movies like “Halloween” or the original “Nightmare on Elm Street,” the characters mattered in each of those films, especially those played by Jamie Lee Curtis and Heather Langenkamp who always had our sympathies and were held above the evil they faced. 

When those films became hits and “Friday the 13th” started showing off Jason, things began to turn. When Freddy, Michael Myers and Jason became the stars, horror began to change and the rooting interests turned ugly. That leads us to where we are today with people cheering for human suffering, rooting for the gore and delighting in the degradation.

Yes, it's just an over the top horror film. Yes, it's not at all realistic. If that’s enough excuse for you to delight in watching people shredded limb from limb then enjoy. Just don’t ask me to join you. I’m going to find a movie where characters are held above their use as gory props and sex toys. By the way, if this is your kind of movie, I don’t think you and I should hang out. Just saying.