The Expendables

September 3, 2010 by

Fans of 80’s classics Cobra, Commando, Rambo II, Above the Law, Bloodsport, and Missing in Action should be rejoicing over Sylvester Stallone’s pool of testosterone in The Expendables, his attempt at delivering the highest-caliber shoot-em-up/martial arts/men-on-a-mission thrill ride featuring a discounted menu of Senior action icons.  Why is it that perhaps the most promising film concept of the season turns out to be such a dud?

The answer: Sylvester Stallone, the writer/director.

I’ll give the man some credit as the lead star—at age 64, he’s bringing it, botox and all.  Ripped to shreds, and pumped up with steroids (there just can’t be any other way), Stallone returns to cinemas as Barney Ross, leader of a mercenary squad hired by Mr. Church (Bruce Willis) to take out a former CIA operative, Munroe (Eric Roberts) and his drug-trading South American general Garza (David Zayas).  Stallone wants a payment of $5 million for his team which includes a list of hand-me-down single-trait killers.

Among the line-up we have Jason Statham as Lee Christmas, a blade-wielding expert, believing wholeheartedly that knives travel faster than bullets.  Jet Li plays martial-artist Ying Yang, but his sole trait is that he’s made fun of for his height.  Why don’t they call him Short-Round?  UFC fighter Randy Couture really has no traits except for awkwardly explaining his cauliflower ear.  Terry Crews is only memorable for toting an AA-12 shotgun (much like Jesse Ventura being memorable for sporting a Gatling gun in Predator).  Finally, Dolph Lundgren plays Gunner, messed up on drugs and a thirst for blood, an uncontrollable rage that gets him tossed to the curb and wanting to exact revenge.

After Ross accepts the mission from Mr. Church, he and Christmas head out to their South American location to scope out their targets and who all is involved.  The two end up launching an attack on the entire base after nearly being captured along with their informant, Sandra (Giselle Itie), the daughter of Gen. Garza.  Upon the boys’ escape, Sandra refuses to leave and gets captured by her father’s army.  Ross returns to listen to the team’s mechanic, Tool (Mickey Rourke), tell a Vietnam story about a woman he failed to save that has haunted him ever since.  That story apparently shakes up Ross clogging his brain with guilt and remorse, and he decides to return to the island and rescue the woman, but his men refuse to let him go alone.  Meanwhile, former teammate Gunner has given up his old team to Munroe and has plans to stop the ‘expendables’ from succeeding.

The Expendables has only one good scene—where Rourke pours his heart out over his Vietnam regret.  As potentially forced as Stallone’s dramatic change of heart may be following Rourke’s speal, the scene still plays out very well, and it’s the only real ‘acting’ moment in the entire movie.  I know some will be questioning about the obligatory scene featuring Schwarzenegger and Willis hamming it up with Stallone.  Well, as much fun as the scene should be, it isn’t.  It’s forced.  It’s awkward.  It’s poorly written, if scripted at all—much like the rest of the film.  Schwarzenegger plays a competing mercenary leader that used to work with Stallone, but they went their separate ways.  He tells Willis, “Give this job to my friend, he loves playing in the jungle.”  Bruce says of Arnold, “What’s that guy’s problem?”  Stallone: “He wants to be president.”  So much for what could have been.  But that’s the problem with Stallone’s entire movie.

This had all the potential in the world, and the movie disappointingly feels like a cut-and-paste assignment thrown together so sloppily because of Stallone’s desire to cram a bunch of action stars together.  He delivers zero character development, the plot makes absolutely no sense, and I hardly believe Stallone’s sudden transition in wanting to rescue this younger woman (suggesting an awkward romance between her and the action star who is 30 years her senior).  Also be sure to watch out for any of the dialogue, as it hits you in the gut so hard with its stupidity that you’ll be puking within the first 20 minutes.  I’m not talking about funny camp-style 80s one-liners.  I’m talking about terribly-written dialogue meeting awful line readings, one after the other—particularly from Lundgren and Li.

Perhaps my biggest issue with the film isn’t the bad acting, or the horrible writing, or the lacking camradery among the Expendables, but it is Stallone’s way of filming most of the scenes.  Shot almost completely in close-up the entire time, Stallone zooms in on these stars’ individual faces, even in multi-character moments, and it is beyond awkward.  Trust me, he’s not doing these old-timers any favors.  Even in scenes showcasing the location of the island, the extras in the town are shot in close-up, and it becomes unbelievably distracting.

If that’s not enough, even the fight sequences have little creativity and energy.  Granted, the final action bout on the island featuring the entire mercenary squad against a hundred or so faceless enemy soldiers works about as best as it can, if you can tell what’s going on—which is a rare occasion.  The battles also feature hilariously cheesy CGI blood and sloppy special effects surrounding the mayhem as the film’s MPAA rating was never decided on until late in the game.  Since the movie could have ended up being PG-13, I guess no physical fake blood was used during filming, and it really shows.

In fact, all of the film’s flaws really show.  It seems to be an embarrassing exercise in rushed filmmaking with little substance to build on from the get-go.  I love the concept of The Expendables, and I really feel as though I wasn’t expecting top-notch quality here.  But Stallone, who actually put out a solid and gratuitous fourth Rambo installment just two years ago, ought to know how to write and direct at this point.  It feels as though he did neither here, having his film fare about the same as these Direct-to-DVD actioners we see Steven Seagal and Van Damme releasing five of a year.  For the inevitable sequel, I hope Sly stays in front of the camera and allows another filmmaker to take the reigns, perhaps Quentin Tarantino?  Hey, I can dream.

[Rating:1.5/5]

Filed Under: Action Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , ,

Revenge of the Nerds

August 31, 2010 by

Revenge of the NerdsI think watching this movie must be kind of like an inside joke, in that you had to be there to get it. In this case, you had to be a high schooler or college student in the 1980s to appreciate the humor…I guess. Maybe once upon a time this movie would have been funny, but I found it to be dull and tedious, with jokes as blunt as a cardboard knife and all the subtlety of a sledge hammer. The few bright spots seemed more accidental than anything, but again, something had to have worked or else Revenge of the Nerds would have probably died a quick death instead of spawning a series of sequels.

In theory the premise has promise: a bunch of socially awkward college nerds band together to fight the oppression of the big-time fraternity on campus. One imagines it might feature lots of jokes about outcasts turning the tables on the frat dudes, jocks receiving a well-deserved comeuppance, and a healthy dose of fish-out-of-water gags. But it’s all so contrived, so thinly-packaged, and so poorly executed that the whole thing collapses on itself.  The nerds are about as stereotypical as one could imagine: Lewis and Gilbert, best friends armed to the teeth with highwater slacks and pocket protectors, are the leaders of the motley pack of misfits who get kicked out of their dorm to make way for the dudes of Alpha Beta fraternity, who accidentally burn their own house down during a night of wild partying.  The nerds are forced to live in the school gym until they find their own house, and eventually band together to form the Adams College chapter of the Lambda Lambda Lambda fraternity.  But darn it, those mean Alpha Betas keep picking on them (just like in high school, which apparently no one in the movie has gotten over) and the nerds decide they have no choice but to fight back at those dumb old jocks who keep ruining their fun.

Revenge of the NerdsIt’s a setup that seems ripe for comedy, but the problem is that most of the humor just falls flat.  Every one of the nerds seems to have been borne from a checklist of stereotypes, which leaves little room for actual characterization.  In the gym, as the nerds are settling in to their new accommodations of army cots and basketball-induced study interruptions, the asian nerd Takashi (Brian Tochi) asks the slacker nerd Booger (Curtis Armstrong) “Excuse please, but why do they call you ‘booger’?”  And of course Booger simply replies “I don’t know” while he picks his nose.  Oh, I get it, says the viewer.  They call him booger because he picks his nose!  Har dee har.  Painfully obvious setups and fourth-grade-level punchlines permeate the entire film, and midway through I was honestly checking the clock to see just how long until the misery would be over.

Many scenes just reek of sheer laziness on the part of the writers, such as the party thrown by the Nerds to convince the ruling members of the Tri-Lambda council to accept their admittance into their fraternal order.  The party goes nowhere, and consists of a series of amusing awkward moments when the nerds attempt to be social, but it’s not until Booger produces a joint straight out of a Cheech and Chong movie that things start to liven up.  Really?  Is that the best they can do?  With all the ripe character potential at their disposal, the filmmakers take the cheap way out and instead play for the lowest common denominator: laughing at people under the influence making fools out of themselves.  Gee, how funny.

Like Caddyshack, Revenge of the Nerds was probably funnier in its time than it is now, and I fully admit that much of the comedy is probably lost on me–someone who came of age with movies like Ghostbusters, Ace Ventura: Pet Detective and later, Office Space.  And one day my children are probably going to watch them and wonder what the big deal was with those movies too.

Rating:[Rating:0.5/5]

Filed Under: Comedy Tagged With: , ,

Scott Pilgrim vs. The World

August 25, 2010 by

Scott Pilgrim vs. The WorldWatching an Edgar Wright movie is a bit of an experience in and of itself, and requires a certain amount of detachment from reality.  In the vein of hyper-kinetic filmmakers like Guy Ritchie and Tom Tykwer, Wright’s movies tend to be fast-paced and filled with quirky, incredibly flawed but ultimately lovable characters who are just trying to do the right thing.  His style is well-suited to a post-MTV generation weaned on ten-second YouTube clips and augmented-reality mobile applications that meld a virtual world with the real one.  Pairing this type of director with source material steeped in videogame references and indie music seems like it would be a match made in heaven.  And you know what?  It pretty much is.

Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, like Avatar, isn’t so much a movie to watch as it is a film to experience.  Michael Cera plays Michael Cera Scott Pilgrim, a 22-year-old socially awkward slacker who plays bass in a band (flaunting 80’s geek-cred with their name Sex Bob-omb) and is dating a high schooler named Knives Chau (Ellen Wong).  His life is going nowhere, and his friends are more interested in working the local music scene than going to college or getting real jobs.  With lives steeped in 8-bit video games and indie music, Scott and his friends are content to live their lives in Toronto, Canada, without too many worries outside of (what else?) winning the local Battle of the Bands competition and getting signed to a record label.

But since Scott Pilgrim is an Edgar Wright movie, even this bit of exposition near the beginning is far more interesting than it could be.  The opening Universal Pictures logo is re-done with pixellated graphics and music that could have been ripped from an original Nintendo game.  Visuals of Sex Bob-omb playing in their ramshackle apartment are augmented with anime-style lightning bolts and Batman-style words that pop out with each “one-two-three-four” screamed by drummer Kim Pine (Alison Pill).  Video game sound effects and music from permeate the onscreen action, even if it’s just two people talking to each other.  And yet the characters in the movie are entirely conscious of this hyper-realistic world around them, which invites the viewers to just sit back and enjoy the blissful escape from reality.

Scott Pilgrim: Ramona

Hey Scott, 1996 called. They want their Smashing Pumpkins shirt back.

Scott soon meets up with aloof emo chick Ramona Flowers at a party and immediately falls in lust love with her.  But in order to go out with her, he must defeat her seven evil exes.  Yeah, defeat.  As in, fight, even though Scott has no training in martial arts beyond a couple rounds of Street Fighter.  And so when her first evil ex Matthew Patel (Satya Bhabha) shows up during the first round of the Battle of the Bands, he and Scott immediately jump into a bout that could give Neo and Agent Smith a run for their money.  They fly through the air, landing punches with all the hyper-stylization of Japanese animation, and verbally spar with trite dialog to match.  When Scott lands the finishing blow, Patel literally disintegrates into a pile of coins, just like in a video game.

After this initial fight, the movie pretty much falls into a pattern.  Since Scott must defeat all seven of Ramona’s exes, the rest of the movie is somewhat of a foregone conclusion as we witness one round after the next, each one upping the ante in terms of outrageousness and nintendo-meets-anime-meets-live-action visual overload.  It’s something to behold, really, especially the fight with ex number two Lucas Lee (Chris Evans) who meets his demise in a fiery explosion as he skateboards at near-supersonic speeds down an icy outdoor handrail.  There’s also a nice joke at the expense of vegans when Scott fights Todd Ingram (Brandon Routh, continuing to rebuild his acting career after the disaster that was Superman Returns).  All of it is darkly whimsical and not to be taken with one iota of sincerity, and even though the plot of the movie is about as deep as Wayne’s World or Ace Ventura, it nonetheless contains the same type similar type of disenchanted charm and warm appeal as well.  There’s quite little in the way of actual plot, mind you, but like the Super Mario Bros. movie, the plot isn’t really the point.  Unlike the Super Mario Bros. movie, though, one could probably make a convincing argument for Scott Pilgrim vs. the World as the best video game movie of all time. (And the video game adaption of the movie looks to be pretty good too.)

Basically, if you like Michael Cera, or have ever played an original Nintendo, you will probably dig Scott Pilgrim.  It’s a movie that proudly wears 80’s and 90’s counterculture cred on its well-torn sleeve, but infuses it with a playful energy that feels altogether fresh and new.

Rating:[Rating:4/5]

Filed Under: Comedy Tagged With: , ,

Sorcerer’s Apprentice

August 18, 2010 by

Without Jay Baruchel’s incessant whining, The Sorcerer’s Apprentice would have been at least a mindlessly amusing thrill ride. Baruchel ripped the heart right out of this movie, and left pieces of it scattered all over the set. Baruchel plays Dave, this story’s Luke Skywalker; a young man, bored and discouraged with his average life, until centuries-old wizard Balthazar Blake (Nicolas Cage) bursts into his life, tells him he has special powers and he has to save the world, and starts training him. But he’s everything a Luke Skywalker character shouldn’t be. He’s whiney, he’s wishy-washy, he’s boring, he’s just plain annoying.

I was optimistic enough to hope that superstar Cage would prop up the movie where Baruchel let it drop, but I’m afraid Cage has passed his prime. What’s more, his costume seems a bit derivative. Take a look at him below,  next to a picture of Chicago wizard Harry Dresden and tell me you don’t see some resemblance.

The only cast member that carries his part particularly well is Alfred Molina as Maxim Horvath, the evil wizard bent on world domination. Horvath has adopted the modus operandi of a late 19th century British gentleman, complete with bowler hat and cane. Molina slips seamlessly into the role, infusing it with Horvath’s sinister nature.  He commands the respect that every great megalomaniac does. Toby Kebell rounds out the cast as his henchman, Drake Stone. Aside from Horvath, the only interesting character is a 17th century witch who gets a whopping ten seconds of screen time. Talk about disappointing.

Molina and Cage have some impressive fight sequences. Once again, Apprentice seems to be at its best, when it copies The Dresden Files. A good, visceral punch-out with a little magic thrown in is, in my opinion, the best thing a wizard story can have. Too much magic, and it starts to get ridiculous. This would have been a better movie with more of these and fewer over-the-top scenes.

Blake brings this statue to life and rides it early in the movie.

Apprentice is a bit too eager to show off its special effects budget. Right from the word go, we get an overbearing score crammed into our ears, in-your-face magic battles, and statuary turning into monsters that tear skyscrapers to pieces. The movie seldom pauses to build the plot or get to know the characters. It’s too bad, because the climactic battle is actually pretty intense, rather inventive, and very effective dramatically. It would have made the perfect bang to finish the movie with if it had been preceded by two hours of subtlety and development. Sadly, being preceded by a string of even bigger bangs, the relative pop at the end seems flat and empty.

Most of what happens is not only cliché, but painfully derivative, ripping off other movies and not adding anything original. When a clerk tells Horvath “I’m going to need to see your faculty identification,” Horvath waves his wand and says “You don’t need to see my faculty identification.” Drake then delivers the line “These aren’t the droids you’re looking for,” but it’s too late; half the audience has already said it. More annoying yet, when Dave is having a hard time cleaning up his lab space, he uses his new powers to make brooms and mops come alive. Guess what happens next. If you said “he can’t get them to stop and he nearly drowns, right before Balthazar saves the day,” you get a cookie. This scene copies the other Sorcerer’s Apprentice, to a tee, using the same music and even including a silhouette shot of Dave chopping up a broom with an ax. And it does nothing to advance the story. It’s just forced into the middle of the movie for its own sake – a classic big-lipped alligator moment.

Apprentice has a few things going for it. The special effects are cool, the action is cool, and the story, while bland, isn’t painful or preachy. It’s a pretty safe family film, and if you have kids, you could probably use Apprentice to shut them up for 90 minutes. You will be quite ready to leave before you see the credits, however. Ultimately, this is one more example of how the world’s biggest budget won’t guarantee a good movie. They couldn’t spend enough to hide the fact that Apprentice is simply one more re-hash of all the standard clichés clumsily thrown together, with none of them done well.

[Rating:2/5]

Filed Under: Action, Comedy, Drama Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Amelia

August 16, 2010 by

Amelia MovieI’m sure the story of Amelia Earhart is compelling. The tale of the first woman to fly across the atlantic, who paved the way for generations of women aviators, and who ultimately embarked on an ill-fated flight around the world, no doubt has to be interesting. The events that shaped her life, the people with whom she was involved, and the challenges she faced throughout her storied career as a pilot are probably thrilling, exciting, and thoroughly engaging. It’s just too bad the movie takes the life of this amazing woman and makes it about as interesting as a carpet warehouse.

Part biopic, part adventure tale, and part romance story, Amelia chronicles the adventures of Earhart from her days as a child on the Kansas prairie, seeing planes fly overhead and yearning to be at the helm of such a magnificent and graceful piece of machinery, to the final moments of her flight around the world. But a story is only as interesting as its people, and unlike other tragic adventure tales, Amelia unfortunately sacrifices characters and relationships for spectacle and scenery. It is like watching a live-action version of a fifth-grade report on Amelia Earhart, as the experiences she has and people she encounters over her years as a pilot play like a series of bullet points on a fact sheet. Even Earhart herself is poorly developed, and Hillary Swank does her gosh-darned best while suffering through lines of dialog so bad they could have come straight from the George Lucas School of Screenwriting. A free spirit and independent grrl, she eventually fall in love, we are told, with her publicist George Putnam. But again, the movie continually violates one of the first rules of storytelling: show, don’t tell. Two characters should not have to continually pontificate about their love for each other–it’s like hitting the audience with a frying pan and telling them explicitly that these people got something goin’ on.

Amelia: Earhart and Putnam

Earnart and Putnam, like, totally in love with each other.

Midway through the film Earhart, married to Putnam, falls for author Gene Vidal (Ewan McGregor phoning it in) even though the two barely have more than a small handful of lines of dialog together. A awkward tryst in a hotel elevator substitutes for any meaningful emotional connection, and from that moment on we are supposed to just accept the fact that Earhart and Vidal have fallen for each other. The film jumps from one stage of Earhart’s life to the next with little to carry things forward naturally, and the result is a choppy, uneven storyline that offers little in the way of character development. Not until the final act is any sense of an emotional connection established between the audience and Earhart, and then only because of the impending doom that is about to befall her and her navigator.

Throughout the two-hour run time we are treated to many scenes of sweeping vistas and gorgeous landscape panoramas as Earhart travels the globe, hopping from continent to continent and documenting her journeys on an 8mm camcorder like a giddy child. Hillary Swank fits the role well, as does the rest of the cast, but the source material is so poor it feels like the actors all gave up halfway through and showed up on filming days just to collect a paycheck. Even Gere, whose natural charm and infectious charisma can often gloss over a crappy role, gives a lifeless performance. Amelia feels like the shell of a great movie, which is a tragedy in and of itself. A hero like Earhart deserves much better.

Rating:[Rating:2/5]

Filed Under: Drama Tagged With: , , ,

Death at a Funeral (2010)

August 11, 2010 by

I sat through Neil LaBute’s attempt at reincarnating the British farce “Death at a Funeral” (which I hadn’t seen prior), and I can only imagine that fans of the original film are either outraged or easy to dismiss the Americanized version that has been tailored to fit the Tyler Perry crowd.  Overall, I have little to say about the movie.  It has a major ensemble cast, and not any one of the actors (including: Chris Rock, Martin Lawrence, Danny Glover, Luke Wilson, Zoe Saldana, Tracy Morgan, and James Mardsen) had a genuine moment in the entire film, and perhaps that is why about five minutes after it was over, it is hard to revisit any of the movie’s events.

The story centers on Chris Rock’s character, Aaron, preparing for the funeral of his father at his own home.  His entire family will be reunited for the ceremony, and Aaron is nervous about his prepared eulogy, as everyone expects his younger brother (Martin Lawrence) Ryan, the professional author, to do the honor.  The plot kicks into motion due to Zoe Saldana’s boyfriend character, Oscar (James Mardsen) , mistaking a cocaine/acid pill for Valium which causes him to hallucinate and make a scene throughout the afternoon, which includes him opening the father’s casket during the ceremony, and tipping it over—spilling his body onto the floor.  Eventually, Aaron finds more trouble in the form of Frank (Peter Dinklage, of the 2007 version as well), a dwarf on a mission to expose a shocking secret about Aaron’s father unless he receives a hefty payment.  Other chaotic events surround and multiply, putting Aaron at the center, including Ryan’s inability to pay his share of the funeral costs.  All the right elements for a great stage play farce are here, but the movie simply can’t deliver.

Perhaps I’m not exactly fond of any of the comedic talents here, but that shouldn’t matter.  Even if I’ve never found Rock, Lawrence, or Morgan to be all that hilarious, the movie should be about the farce, and the chaos of events that take place.  But I never found myself included in the mayhem.  I observed one-note characters and a handful of big-name actors going through the paces of tired situational comedy, and I didn’t buy any of it—especially once the final eulogy is delivered, the scene couldn’t be more forced and awkward.  Not one plot turn or gag had enough shock, surprise, or wit to fuel my interest, and so this remake left me feeling decidedly blah and unmoved to the core.

[Rating:1.5/5]

Filed Under: Comedy Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

Caddyshack

August 6, 2010 by

CaddyshackWhen someone mentions this film, some common scenes usually come to mind:  A crazy gopher being pursued by Bill Murray.  A golf bag with a TV and stereo.  Chevy Chase sinking a half-dozen impossible putts.  And of course the visual lesson on the perils of introducing a Baby Ruth candy bar into a swimming pool full of wild teenagers.  And these scenes are, without a doubt, hilarious in their own right.  But the problem with Caddyshack is that the movie as a whole just doesn’t work very well.  It’s more like a collection of short vignettes strung together with the barest of plots that exists to serve as a showcase for quirky stars like Rodney Dangerfield and Chevy Chase to chew some scenery.

I suppose that’s the appeal of this movie, though, and when every individual is a caricature, and the antagonist a wily gopher, it is incumbent on the viewer to not take any of the material too seriously.  But even with a hefty grain of salt, Caddyshack is still a strange amalgam of odd material that only loosely fits together, if at all.  Consider the plight of Carl Spackler, the dim-witted but indomitable country club groundskeeper charged with eliminating the gopher threat that has been plaguing the greens.  He embarks on a series of misguided attempts, much like a character in a Warner Brothers cartoon, to outsmart the gopher but is foiled at every turn.  His Final Solution is so outrageous, yet ultimately ineffective, that it’s hard to not laugh at the sheer spectacle of it all.

Caddyshack: Chevy Chase

Chevy Chase, proving that sometimes a blindfold is the best golf accessory.

It’s not the absurdity of the intertwining stories in Caddyshack that cripple the movie, it’s the way in which director Harold Ramis flips between Spackler and the rest of the movie without any apparent idea of where he’s going with all of it.  The plot wanders from country club to swimming pool to yacht club to suburban homes without any clear aim or goal other than to allow Dangerfield to spew forth a fountain of pithy one-liners or Chase to wax philosophical while hitting golf balls barefoot.  But before I get strung up as a soulless nincompoop who can’t just laugh at absurd comedy, rest assured that this movie certainly does have its funny bits.  It’s just that a couple bits of hilarity aren’t enough to concoct a solid comedy any more than a couple scoops of sugar are enough to bake a cake.

Perhaps my distaste for Caddyshack also comes from a dislike of Rodney Dangerfield, who commands a rather large amount of screen time for no discernible reason other than to showcase his unique brand of what some would consider comedy.  Hurling weak insults like someone with a mild case of tourrette’s is fine for a stand-up comic, but doesn’t work in a movie.  Literally every second that Dangerfield is on screen, his character Al Czervik is taunting, insulting, or dismissing everyone he lays eyes on.  The charm of such a character wears off almost immediately, and quickly turns into grating irritation.  Dangerfield’s character, removed by the barest margins from the man himself, is a one-trick pony who quickly wears out his welcome.

It’s been 30 years since Caddyshack made its way to theatres, and even though it has achieved cultlike status as a solid piece of comedy, I found it to be uneven and, at times, downright boring.  The cast is certainly having a good time.  I just wish it was a party the audience could enjoy too.

Rating:[Rating:2/5]

Filed Under: Comedy Tagged With: , , ,

Salt

August 1, 2010 by

Popcorn movies require a lot of hardware these days, but not a lot of firmware.  I can be very forgiving of cheeseball action movies that simply exist to be over-the-top trash (The A-Team, From Paris With Love).  These movies present a lot of impossible action sequences in the midst of generic plots.  When something like Salt comes along and throws a story at me that makes me scratch my head so hard it leaves a hole afterward, then my enjoyment-meter starts to fall no matter how many elaborate booms go off.

Angelina Jolie, the only A-list actress capable of carrying The Salt Identity, plays CIA agent Evelyn Salt.  Her character is introduced as a prisoner being held captive and tortured in North Korea where she is accused of being an American spy.  She continually denies the accusations until her team comes to negotiate her release.  Eventually she is restored to active duty and takes on an interrogation of a supposed Russian spy who elicits stories of a Russian camp under the former Soviet Union that trained young children to become American infiltrators that would learn U.S. culture and language and ultimately take positions in varying areas of the American government. According to him, the Russian president will be assassinated by one of these trained operatives, and soon the entire existence of the United States will be in jeopardy as this faction of assassins was designed specifically to eliminate the land of the free.  His detailed fairy tale comes to a halt when he accuses Evelyn Salt of being the infiltrator.  Immediately, Salt’s cohorts suspect her due to these allegations, and to protect her husband, she decides to run for her life and take on the CIA.

Further developments derail a lot of the initial setup here, but essentially the film tries to take a strong heroine and throw her into a Jason Bourne movie, and slowly turn her into an antihero.  And that’s all fine and good.  I can buy into it—in fact, the film works better as a female-led film, giving Tom Cruise a run for his money as he selected Knight and Day over Salt, and I think Jolie will only reap the benefits.

Salt does one thing particularly well: it moves… fast.  Once this baby sets up the premise for Jolie’s character to hit the skids, the movie essentially evolves into one lengthy action sequence that never slows down until the end credits.  The film only falls apart because of how absolutely preposterous the plot becomes.  The further I went with Salt, the more bologna it threw in my face.  Take note, the story isn’t exactly generic, it’s just too ludicrous for words.  Eventually I began to question the filmmakers’ intent with the storyline.  Does one take it seriously or disregard it altogether in favor of the action?  As gritty as the movie is, I can’t dismiss constant shifts in several characters and plot holes that parade through this thing like it’s Christmas Eve.  Once the mess gets ‘sorted out’ at the end, none of the movie makes much sense.  However, the stunts, pacing, and terrific editing were so impressive to me, and Jolie really keeps her head firmly above water in a man-movie genre, that I’m riding the fence on what I ultimately feel about the whole ordeal.  Can I deny that I was entertained throughout?  No.  Can I say I didn’t get increasingly frustrated with how dopey and slapped together the plot becomes? No.  Take it for what it’s worth.  If you want your brain to be engaged with your stunts, see Inception.  If you want a movie that doesn’t have a brain, but continually pushes you into overdrive as far as action goes, see Salt.  As for me, I’m stuck in neutral here.

[Rating:2.5/5]

Filed Under: Action Tagged With: , , , ,
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