Jason Statham plays a cop turned cage-fighter turned vagrant, who rescues a young girl and finds himself amidst a three-way brawl between the Triad, the Russians, and corrupt cops. They want the child for a number she’s memorised, but what is its significance?
Those are the basics of a surprisingly complex plot, albeit one sprinkled with well-handled (if unexceptional) action sequences. It at least manages some surprises, including a climax that exchanges the usual Big Fight for plot resolution, plus a nice double meaning for the title.
Intricate storyline aside, this is standard Statham fare — not bad, but not exceptional.
Safe is on 5* tonight at 9pm.
In the interests of completing my ever-growing backlog, I decided to post ‘drabble reviews’ of some films. For those unfamiliar with the concept, a drabble is a complete piece of writing exactly 100 words long. You’ve just read one.
* The PAL time listed by the BBFC is 90 minutes. It must have a lot of credits or something, because on TV it runs just over 84½. ^
Although John Wilkes Booth is famous as the man who assassinated Abraham Lincoln, he was merely the person who pulled the trigger: eight people were tried for conspiracy to kill America’s 16th President; this is the story of what happened to the only woman among them.
or rather, like an actress versed in playing modern characters struggling gamely with a period one, and coming up short.
2014 Academy Awards
When someone says “100-million-dollar epic”, you probably don’t imagine a film about a swindling stockbroker; but, with a three-hour running time and a nine-figure budget, that’s exactly what Martin Scorsese’s black comedy biopic is.
and the closing shot clearly shows how many people have already judged them to represent something desirable, regardless of what position the film might take. Some people want this lifestyle, in spite of all the problems it wrought, and even if the film had clearly condemned it that wouldn’t change. In the end, to say Scorsese approves of it purely because he doesn’t lambast it is too simplistic a reading.
but almost every supporting character gets a memorable line or scene, a moment where they shine brighter than everyone else; and even when the smaller roles aren’t dominating a scene, they’re part of a first-rate ensemble that functions like a well-oiled machine. My personal favourite was P.J. Byrne’s ‘Rugrat’, but yours may well be someone else.
As one of 
Heartwarming crowdfunded documentary about the power of Batman — not to beat supervillains, but his positive influence on real people.
Conceived by movie star Will Smith primarily as a vehicle for his wannabe-movie-star son, and helmed by auteur-apparently-turned-director-for-hire M. Night Shyamalan, After Earth is a far-future sci-fi actioner about a militaristic father and son who crash land on a long-abandoned Earth, which has evolved into a hostile environment from which they must try to escape, while also being hunted by an alien super-predator.
I want to spot the neat callbacks and gradual character development for myself, not have the screenplay or direction screaming “look at the subtle thing we did! Wasn’t it subtle!”; I’d also quite like the film to set up some of its developments better, rather than charge ahead with “now he needs to fly — by-the-way, did we mention he can fly? No? Well, now he is.”
Even with these faults, however, I mostly quite enjoyed After Earth. For all the complaints levelled at it, primarily centred around it being a vanity project for the Smiths, there’s actually good stuff buried here — given more intelligent development and a different cast, perhaps it could even have been a genre classic. It certainly isn’t that, but it’s not as bad as some say. And it’s definitely M. Night Shyamalan’s best film for years. Sadly, that’s not saying much, is it?
You might not think superheroes lend themselves to the ultra-low-budget indie treatment, but where there’s a will there’s a way, and clearly writer-director Jordan Galland had a will.
Personally, I rather liked it. It’s a little cheap, talky, and not laugh-out-loud hilarious, but it has some charm, a healthy-enough dose of professional filmmaking (I’ve seen plenty of efforts that are more amateurish), and a brisk running time that makes for a pleasant diversion. If you think you might find yourself in the sweet spot of the aforementioned diagram, it’s worth a go.
“Don’t put metal in the science oven!”
I never connected with the characters, so consequently never felt their predicaments, either romantic or professional. A halting chronologically-challenged start gives way to a middle that ultimately drags, before a “gotcha!” ending whose straightforwardness means it lacks the memorable punch of the best con movies.
Best known for the trailer that showed its hero pissing fire, Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance is a semi-reboot of the Marvel comics franchise about a demon-possessed vengeance-seeking motorbike rider.
where adults have east European accents but kids sound American, and Idris Elba pretends to be French.
Director Tim Burton’s most recent live-action movie is an adaptation of a 1960s soap opera… albeit one featuring vampires, witches, ghosts and sundry other supernatural goings-on. You wouldn’t get that on 
Early on, it works. The first 20 to 30 minutes offer a serviceable prologue and an engaging introduction to most of the characters. It’s funny, it’s occasionally spooky, there’s a good deal of promise for a marginally-more-serious 
It’s a tonal grab bag: at times it seems to be a knowing spoof of daytime soaps, at others pushing for drama almost with a straight face; it’s sometimes deliberately and successfully comedic, at others straining too hard for a desperate laugh; it has a strain of bizarre sexuality that may be aiming at comic but is frequently just uncomfortable. This scrappiness leads to the most cardinal sin of any entertainment: it ends up a bit boring; and, in its out-of-the-blue big-battle climax, crushingly derivative.
It would seem there’s a market in Sweden for series of feature-length crime dramas that begin with a first episode released in cinemas before continuing in regular direct-to-DVD/TV instalments. It’s what happened with the Krister Henriksson 
The specifics of the plot see young university lecturer Puck (Tuva Novotny) invited to spend midsummer on the island home of her supervisor, who’s really asking on behalf of attractive history lecturer Eje (Linus Wahlgren), who Puck has been to a café with three times. A whole gaggle of old chums of Rutger and Eje are also there, including a couple of uninvited guests who arrive out of the blue — and before you know it, Puck finds one of them dead. Eje calls in his chum, detective Christer Wijk (Ola Rapace), and, after the island is cut off from the mainland in a more permanent fashion, the three set about getting to the bottom of things. Cue suspicious actions spied through trees, suspicious conversations partially overheard, suspicious evasion of perfectly reasonable questions, and all the usual suspiciousness you’d expect from a Christie narrative — only subtitled.
Novotny makes for a likeable lead, though the attempted love triangle between her, Wahlgren and Rapace feels like a non-starter. The biggest surprise is Rapace: previously seen as troubled young copper Stefan Lindman in Wallander and, most famously, as shaven-headed silent assassin Patrice in 
100Films.co.uk 