Death Race (2008)

Posted on May 18, 2011 by badblokebob

2011 #33
Paul W.S. Anderson | 98 mins* | TV (HD) | 15 / R

Sometimes, I wonder what I’m playing at. The list of films I haven’t seen but really should is quite extraordinary, from enduring classics like Lawrence of Arabia and Seven Samurai to recent praise-magnets like Scott Pilgrim and Black Swan (and those are just from some of the ones I actually own), yet I choose to spend my evening watching B-movie tosh like Death Race because it happens to be on telly.

There’s no denying that Death Race is B-movie tosh, I don’t think, but at least it’s an example of fairly entertaining B-movie tosh. The plot barely matters, but for what it’s worth it concerns a car race in a near-future prison where those who don’t die in the weapons-laden encounters stand a chance to earn their freedom. Jason Statham’s character is — of course — innocent, but once thrown into this world must escape by its rules. Yadda yadda yadda.

Basically, everything that happens is an excuse to get to some action sequences, in which cars race around a circuit and attempt to destroy each other in some moderately creative ways. It caters perfectly to its intended audience: there’s fast cars, sexy girls, lots of action, big explosions. It doesn’t always make sense — those sexy girls are really shoehorned in — but that doesn’t really matter. It’s Entertainment, for a certain type of person, and it surely hits all the points it should hit. And I expect it says something about that intended audience that the end credits begin with a “do not attempt this at home” notice.

Ian McShane is the most watchable out of an adequate cast. Who would’ve guessed Lovejoy would end up as a consistently entertaining presence in various US productions? Only the villains really get short shrift, being so readily defeated that there’s no real jeopardy, no sense they might not get their comeuppance. Their simultaneous best and worst moment comes in a dreadful, meaningless line about shitting on the sidewalk. Who doesn’t love a good “wtf?” bit of dialogue?

You can tell writer-director Anderson likes his computer games — as if the numerous films he’s made based on them weren’t enough, he brings their influence here too. For instance, the weapons are only activated by driving over special hotspots, which are only a big floating icon away from being like computer game power-ups. I’m surprised Anderson didn’t go the whole hog and have them be projected holograms.

Even if it’s all about the action, it could be worse: I’ve seen plenty of films featuring weaker dialogue, weaker acting and an even less relevant story. Death Race does everything it sets out to do competently, delivering a couple of decent action sequences and even a couple of laughs along the way. Not exceptional enough to be particularly memorable, but it is fun — if you like this kind of thing — while it lasts.

* I know it’s largely immaterial, but I’m not really sure how long the version I watched ran. It was definitely the theatrical version (as opposed to the extended version, which looks to contain several minutes of unnoticeable additions and tweaks), which IMDb say runs 98 minutes, but the BBFC place at 105. I’ve used IMDb’s answer purely because as I watched it on TV it would’ve been PAL, so this number is closer, whatever the truth.

Bolt (2008)

Posted on March 25, 2011 by badblokebob

2011 #11
Byron Howard & Chris Williams | 96 mins | Blu-ray | PG / PG

Bolt is the 48th film in Disney’s animated canon (whatever the official name for that is these days), from their CG-only era that filled most of the ’00s. It’s a period already remembered as When Disney Lost Its Way, after the second (or is it third? I forget) ‘golden era’ of the early ’90s; the time that produced flops like Treasure Planet, Home on the Range and Meet the Robinsons. Things are looking up — it’s been followed by The Princess and the Frog, where a return to 2D animation distinctly marked a more widespread change of direction, and the praised Tangled — but it may be Bolt that comes to be seen as the true turning point, because it’s actually rather good.

Let’s get the worst bit out of the way first: thankfully, Miley Cyrus’ part is quite small. She’s adequate, but one suspects she got roped in because a) Disney were already trying to find a way to continue making money out of her post-Hannah Montana, and b) she provided a surefire-selling song for the end credits. Chloë Moretz reportedly recorded all of Penny’s dialogue before Cyrus was brought in; one can’t help but feel that, age-wise (and probably acting-ability-wise too), she would’ve been a better fit for the character.

But it’s not about Penny, it’s about Bolt, and he is excellently realised. Bolt, if you don’t know, is a dog, and the animators have captured dogs’ behaviour perfectly. It’s not just the obvious things, as seen during the sequence where Mittens the cat trains him to be a ‘regular dog’, but all the little mannerisms throughout. The animals are anthropomorphised, of course, but they’re not just animal-shaped-humans; they’re what these animals would be like if they could talk. Crossed with humans, anyway.

Also noteworthy are the action sequences. Far from being perfunctory attempts at liveliness, these are properly exciting, making full use of 3D CGI to create exciting and dynamic sequences. I’m not just talking about the couple we get from the TV-series-within-the-film either, but also the ‘real world’ ones as Bolt, Mittens and Rhino jump onto trains, out of moving vans, escape from a pound, etc. Of course, the TV-series-within-the-film is completely implausible — like you could film a TV show with massive action sequences in such a way that you only ever do a single take, never mind achieve all those effects on a TV budget. But then this is a film where a talking dog, cat and hamster work together to travel from New York to Hollywood entirely of their own volition — I think it’s safe to say no one’s aiming for documentary levels of realism.

And it’s funny too, especially once Rhino the hamster turns up. It’s not the greatest comedy ever made (and the level of praise attributed to Rhino in some quarters may have taken it too far), but it’s genial enough and elicited a few decent laughs. It even had me getting a little emotional at the end, which isn’t something I ever expected to feel about a film starring Miley Cyrus and a dog made out of polygons.

Despite being computer-generated and 3D, there are attempts to add a painterly look to the film — brushstrokes, pastel colours, that kind of thing. It works rather well when seen in isolation in backgrounds, some of the big wide shots, etc; but the obviously-CG main elements jar against it, the painterly style not extending to the characters or main environments fully enough for it to gel. Especially when the apparently-flat paint-styled backgrounds begin to move in three dimensions (for instance, as the camera pushes into scenery, so that trees/buildings move relative to road/field/hills/streets), it becomes a little weird. An interesting experiment, but not a wholly successful one I think. Something like Ratatouille’s attempt at softening CG animation’s usual hard crispness was more effective.

It would be easy to dismiss Bolt as part of Disney’s CG folly, especially as it stars Miley Cyrus and is immediately followed by their return to 2D animation, but I think that would be a mistake. It’s a fast-paced and fun adventure, with accurately-captured animals meaning it’s especially likely to appeal to dog lovers. Disney’s next golden era just might begin here.

The Four Musketeers (1974)

Posted on March 6, 2011 by badblokebob

aka The Four Musketeers (The Revenge of Milady)

2011 #12
Richard Lester | 102 mins | TV | PG / PG

Richard Lester’s Four Musketeers was shot at the same time as the previous year’s Three Musketeers, because it was originally meant to be one film that was split in two when someone realised how darn long it was. This split led to a legal battle over actors’ fees and, eventually, a new standard clause in actors’ contracts to prevent such two-for-one ‘cheats’ by producers in future.

The longer-lasting advantage of this is it made The Three Musketeers the film it is, because having Four Musketeers as a second half would’ve dragged it down.

Put simply, this second effort has less action, which could be fine, but more importantly it’s less fun. In and of itself such a statement doesn’t make it bad, but it consequently fails to fulfil the promise of the first film. It’s also a little more ramshackle — a common feature of sequels these days I suppose, when they’re rushed into production and overstuffed with characters and storylines. Considering Three Musketeers has a kind of endearing scrappiness to it, that a similar factor becomes a negative point here either means they took it too far or there was a certain luck to the first film hanging together.

It’s a bit grim too — Athos’ backstory with Milady; the murder of the Queen’s lover; the murder of Constance; the cold-blooded execution of Milady; and ending up with Richelieu still in power too — none of it sits well with the jolly swashbuckling tone that still dominates. There are some good action sequences nonetheless — for instance, the ice-covered lake; breakfast/siege in the ruined fort; and the burning-building finale — which go some way to make up for the shortcomings.

(As an aside, the cast & crew (some of them at least) returned a couple of decades later to film The Return of the Musketeers, an adaptation of one of Dumas’ sequels, Twenty Years After. For filming Twenty Years After about twenty years later they must at least be commended, and I shall have to track it down sometime.)

A shame that it couldn’t live up to its predecessor, though it still has moments to recommend it.

The Three Musketeers (1973)

Posted on March 6, 2011 by badblokebob

aka The Three Musketeers (The Queen’s Diamonds)

2011 #10
Richard Lester | 103 mins | TV | U / PG

I like a good swashbuckler. I don’t know exactly what it is about sword fights, but they’re probably my most favourite kind of action sequence. The 1973 Three Musketeers, then, is a film I’m slightly amazed I’ve not seen before. Especially as I absolutely loved it.

Where to begin? The action, I suppose. It’s loaded with the stuff. It puts later movies — from eras when we’re more accustomed to non-stop, regularly-paced action than the ’70s — to shame with its barrage of sword fights. And if you think they’d all be the same and become repetitive, you’re dead wrong. Screenwriter George MacDonald Fraser (yes, he of the Flashman novels) and/or director Richard Lester (yes, he of A Hard Day’s Night, Help! and Superman II and III) and/or the stunt team are constantly inventive in sequence after sequence.

It helps that most have a comedic bent, to one degree or another. This is no po-faced history lesson, but instead pure entertainment. Every scene has a lightness of touch, from screenplay to performance to direction, that never allows anything to take itself too seriously. Spike Milligan may appear as comic relief as a landlord-cum-husband-cum-spy, but he’s more than equalled by… well, pretty much everyone else. The humour might not be subtle — it’s mostly slapstick, often with a bawdy bent — but it is entertaining.

Thanks to this most of the fights aren’t strictly sword fights, I suppose. Indeed, Oliver Reed seems to dispense with his blade at the earliest opportunity and turn instead to sticks, wet towels, whatever else happens to be at hand. It lends a certain kind of organised chaos to proceedings; the kind that elevates a technically proficient duel into a funny, exciting, memorable segment of cinema. I would list standouts, but instead may I recommend you watch the film and, every time an action sequence starts, count it as one I mentioned. But particularly the one in the laundry and d’Artagnan and Rochefort’s lightbox-lit nighttime duel. And also— Now, this is why I said I wasn’t going to list any.

The star-smattered cast are, as noted, more than up to the task. The titular musketeers — played by Reed, Richard Chamberlain and Frank Finlay — may fade into the background a little while Michael York’s young d’Artagnan and the villainous pairing of Charlton Heston and Christopher Lee drive the story, but each makes an impression even with their limited screentime. The same could be said of the women, Raquel Welch as d’Artagnan’s love interest Constance and Faye Dunaway as the conniving Milady de Winter. York earns his place as the lead amongst such company, though, making a d’Artagnan who is by turns athletic, clumsy, hot-headed, loyal, and funny. As I said, everyone pitches the lightness just right, but York perhaps most of all — he doesn’t send up the youngest musketeer, doesn’t make him a pun-dispensing action hero, but finds all the humour in his actions and dialogue.

This film was shot alongside the next year’s sequel, The Four Musketeers — originally intended to be one film, it turned out so long they decided to split it in two. This feels like a wise decision. For one thing, the story seems to wrap up very neatly at this point. The villains may still be free and in power, but the diamond storyline is thoroughly concluded. I don’t know if any major rejigging occurred in the edit, but assuming not, it would surely feel like a film of two halves were it to just continue at the end of this one; the final action sequence is suitably climactic, the following scenes suitably rounded off. Secondly, it means it doesn’t outstay its welcome — while it’s all thoroughly enjoyable, you can have too much of a good thing. It also means the film ends with a sort of “Next Time” trailer, which feels very bizarre indeed, but is also a tantalising glimpse of what’s still to come.

The Three Musketeers is proper swashbuckling entertainment, with emphasis on… well, both words. It’s certainly swashbuckling and, even more so, it’s entertaining in the truest sense of the word. I loved it.

The Three Musketeers merited an honourable mention on my list of The Best Films I Saw For the First Time in 2011, which can be read in full here.

Surrogates (2009)

Posted on January 21, 2011 by badblokebob

2010 #118
Jonathan Mostow | 89 mins | Blu-ray | 12 / PG-13

The near future: most of mankind now lives through ‘surrogates’ — robots that look like perfect versions of ourselves (generally), which we control from elaborate machines sat around in our homes. The anonymity of the online world brought into the real one, essentially.

It is, on the one hand, an intriguing premise. On the other, it’s thoroughly daft.

Part of the problem is that Surrogates exerts too much effort establishing this world. The opening montage covers 14 years of future history to take us from the world we know to the world of the story, but in the process is so crammed with improbabilities I wouldn’t know where to begin listing them. The premise is dreadfully implausible; this just serves to highlight it. The whole film might fare better if it just asked the audience to suspend their disbelief — to just accept this world, not try to imagine it developing from our own — because as it is, the very unlikelihood of this coming to pass colours a lot of what happens after (at least, it did for me).

What happens after is a murder mystery-cum-action/adventure, and one that fails to satisfy on either front. It’s mainly a thriller, so the action sequences are rather tacked in — “I suppose we could manage one there, and another here, and that’s a little bit action-y” — while almost every plot ‘twist’ is startlingly unsurprising (though it does manage one half decent one).

Someone involved clearly thought they were being Profound and that the story explored issues of “what it means to be human” and all that kind of stuff. The concept does invite such musing, but it’s not well executed here. Mostow is more at home in the handful of action sequences, even if they are quite cheaply realised as well as being tacked on, and struggles to bring anything to the screenplay’s heavy-handed cod-philosophising that dictates events in too many of the subplots.

Plus, at only just over 80 minutes (before credits), it feels much longer. That’s never a good thing.

It’s a shame it’s been so mucked up, because there might be a good idea or two squirrelled away inside Surrogates. Conversely, that might be the problem: it’s a neat concept, but difficult to develop into a movie. Certainly it would need more skilled hands than these; hands that could avoid the pitfalls of a plot so predictable it becomes hard to list other movies that have the same story — you just know it.

If you want to muse on what makes us human in a world of near-identical robotic replicas, watch Blade Runner. If you want a plot about a future world where we coexist with robots peacefully until Something That Can’t Happen Does Happen, watch (the slightly underrated) I, Robot. If you want to get a little frustrated and lament missed opportunities, with a few flashes of inspiration, then rent Surrogates.

And that completes the reviews for 2010!

Iron Eagle (1986)

Posted on January 13, 2011 by badblokebob

2010 #122
Sidney J. Furie | 112 mins | TV | 15 / PG-13

You know how sometimes you see a bit of a movie on TV and you end up watching just long enough to get caught up so much you’re in for the long haul, no matter what the quality? No? Maybe it’s just me (usually around this time of year, it seems). Iron Eagle is, naturally, my latest example of this phenomena.

Quite what drew me to Iron Eagle I’m not sure. Perhaps it was seeing a young David Suchet. Perhaps it was the ludicrous ease with which a bunch of teenagers pilfered a variety of highly sensitive materials from an airforce base in the sequence I happened to catch upon ending a recording I’d been watching. Whatever it was, after being suckered for ten minutes I had to rewind and give it a full go. (Sadly my digibox’s rewind didn’t quite get back to the beginning of the film, but I don’t think it’s likely to change my opinion.)

The whole of Iron Eagle is like the sequence I mentioned: daft and implausible. The plot, for those unaware of the film (which included me), is that an American pilot is captured by Qatar due to flying into their airspace, even though he was hundreds of miles outside it. When he’s sentenced to execution and the US Government refuses to do anything practical to get him back, his teenage son — who he’s been illicitly teaching to fly fighter jets — resolves to steal one and go get his dad. Hells yeah! Or something.

Like I said, daft and implausible. And that isn’t necessarily a problem, but as you watch Iron Eagle you can’t help but wonder if the filmmakers are trying to convince viewers it could be plausible. And it isn’t. Not in the slightest.

Suchet would make an excellent villain — the role he’s cast in — but he’s criminally underused. He’s even dispatched out of hand at the end. None of the other performances are really worth noting. Jason Gedrick, as the son, may look the part — in an ’80s kinda way — of the kid who’s actually a hot-shot pilot, but his acting chops are choppy. He went on to be in Boomtown, incidentally, a much underrated cop show that I really rather liked. I don’t really recall him in it.

Talking of Other Things People Have Done, did you recognise the director’s name? Furie helmed not only the risible Superman IV (I’m not sure I’ve seen all of that, but I’ve seen enough to know it’s risible) and… The Ipcress File. The Ipcress File! I’ve not seen that either, but I think we all know this is a serious step down. Poor man. His career went on to include Iron Eagle II and the direct-to-video Iron Eagle IV. Yes, there are four of them, and apparently they’re even worse and not in keeping with the spirit of this first. Poor man.

On the bright side, the son likes to listen to music while flying his fighter jet (as you can see, the plausibility just goes on and on), one of his choice tracks being Queen’s One Vision. Anything featuring a Queen song multiple times can’t be all bad.

The Hurt Locker (2008)

Posted on January 3, 2011 by badblokebob

2010 #100
Kathryn Bigelow | 131 mins | Blu-ray | 15 / R

With 2011 underway we’re immediately heading deep into Awards Season, the time of year when everyone in the film world goes a bit mental and all the movies likely to win anything reach UK cinemas. The American Academy may nominate from throughout the year more readily now the Oscars have ten Best Picture slots, but it’s still not going to be a summer movie, is it. Not before The Dark Knight Rises anyway.

Unless it’s Inception.

(I’m not predicting The Dark Knight Rises is definitely going to win Best Picture, by-the-by, just that the fuss over The Dark Knight’s lack of a nod was half (or all?) the reason they doubled the nominees. Look, we’re getting distracted.)

What better time, then, to (finally) post a review of the last Best Picture winner — and 2010’s #100 to boot…

If you’ve ever seen the miniseries Generation Kill — the makers of The Wire do the invasion of Iraq, based on a book by one of the embedded journalists — then it might mean something if I say The Hurt Locker plays like Generation Kill: The Movie. Or perhaps another episode of that fine series, because it’s relatively low-key and everyday… as much as one can be about a bomb disposal unit in a warzone, that is.

I don’t mean this comparison as a bad thing — Generation Kill was an excellent series, and The Hurt Locker matches up to it. I also don’t mean to make a comparison in terms of content — the series follows troops at the front of the initial invasion (Band of Brothers: Iraq, if you can stand another HBO-based comparison), while the film is specifically about explosives experts during the occupation. The similarities are more stylistic — hot, dry locations and washed-out, hand-held cinematography (hardly innovative of either series or film, to be honest) — and thematic — the bonds between men in this particular war. I say “men”, I mean “soldiers”, but they are all men (in both series and film). The “gender in depiction of modern military” debate is for another time (and place) though.

Also like Generation Kill, The Hurt Locker is episodic, moving from one bomb-based set-piece to the next. But this is surely a realistic depiction of the environment and this job: these guys are going to go from one unrelated bomb to the next; they’re not going to end up on the tail of some master bombmaker, or single-handedly end the war in Iraq, or anything else one might construct as a coherent throughline for a film. What it has instead are subplots, largely based around the characters and their relationships to each other, which initially seem to crop up as slice-of-life asides before suddenly coming to the fore, usually to pack some kind of emotional punch — and, in at least one case, an equally affecting kick later on, too.

Bigelow & co construct each ‘action’ sequence with care and attention. They’re not action sequences in the truest sense — suggestions from some that she’d be a great director for, say, Bond 23 on the strength of this film are unwarranted (not that she wouldn’t be good, but this film’s action does nothing in particular to demonstrate appropriate skills). Instead of the fast-paced bullets-flying adrenaline-pumping sequences you get from An Action Movie, The Hurt Locker offers up more realistic (at least, realistic-feeling) sequences of tension as characters approach bombs, watch increasingly suspicious crowds, try to defuse the situation before the timer runs out… It could be clichéd — we’ve all seen plenty of bomb defusing scenes in movies before now — but, again, there’s a sense of “this is how it is”, rather than “this is how movies portray it for dramatic effect”. Is it how it is? I don’t know. But it certainly still packs dramatic effect.

Films sometimes struggle to create tension in sequences like these, but Bigelow achieves it by killing off any star that turns up. “OK,” you might say, “if they’re famous they die, if I don’t recognise them they’ll be fine.” Well, it’s not that simple. I was exactly that cynical going in, but still found myself agonising over who would or wouldn’t make it through, especially as we’re offered frequent reminders of how many days are left of their rotation — and, as we know from horrendous news stories, having “just one day left” is no guarantee you’re going home safely.

Repetition is avoided by mixing up the specifics of a sequence. Yes, many are variations on a theme, but so are most action movie shoot-outs or car chases — or rom-com love stories, or slasher horror movies, or any other genre you care to mention. What this film shows us, aside from the tension, is how different characters behave and react: James’ recklessness, for instance, which is contrasted with the more considered approach of Guy Pearce’s ill-fated character. Completely different is the sniper battle, not only because of the complete change of circumstance, but also because it’s drawn-out — Bigelow makes us feel some of the surrounded soldiers’ pain, lying still for hours in the baking sun, running out of fluids, just staring through a sniper scope at a heat-hazy vision of a far-off potential enemy.

The opening quote and closing scenes make explicit the main theme — war is a drug, one James (Oscar nominee Jeremy Renner) is addicted to — but I’m not sure how present this is in the body of the story. Rather, the majority feels like an attempt to convey the experience of living as an explosives expert in a warzone, with James’ ‘addiction’ just a side effect of that. Perhaps, then, it’s making its point more subtly than by battering you round the head with cinematic cries of, “He’s addicted to war! It’s just a drug!”

It doesn’t matter if it has a point to make about addiction or not. The Hurt Locker is still a tense, insightful evocation of what it feels like to be a bomb disposal expert in an active conflict; a dangerous job where each day really could be your last. The action sequences may not be Action Sequences in the way we’ve become accustomed too, and the narrative may be more episodic than a well-unified whole, and it may be readily reminiscent of other war films or series, and there are surely various other little factors people might pick on to criticise… but regardless of these, I thought The Hurt Locker was, from first to last, exceptional.

Rambo III (1988)

Posted on December 20, 2010 by badblokebob

2010 #119
Peter MacDonald | 97 mins | TV (HD) | 18 / R

As I mentioned in my review of the preceding Rambo film, Rambo III is the one Hot Shots! Part Deux really took to task, and not without reason. Having seen that spoof several times since my youth, a few large chunks of this second sequel felt all too familiar…

Stallone — here serving as writer and star — does leave his character rather open for mockery. Rambo lives as a recluse in a monastery, helping them perform repairs on their temple. Except when he stick-fights for “a little extra money”, and then when he goes off to Afghanistan to defeat half the Russian army single-handed. He does all this showcasing the body of a plastic action figure coated in a year’s supply of Johnson’s Baby Oil, using weapons like explosive-tipped arrows, good for tasks like taking out helicopters. Or obliterating individual soldiers.

It’s thoroughly OTT at every turn, but unfortunately comes several decades before the Ironic Action Movie — unlike Shoot ‘Em Up or (what I’ve read about) The A-Team, it doesn’t know it’s ridiculous.

This is underscored by Stallone again attempting to pack heavy-duty political relevance into the plot. This time it’s Afghanistan, occupied by the Russians with American-supported rebels resisting. How times have changed. Indeed, the situation that area of the world finds itself in now does add a different colour to the film — some might argue the Americans now occupy almost the same position the Russians did back then, for instance — but I’ll leave the specifics of such things to reviewers more versed in the last 25 years of Western intervention in the Middle East.

And did you know, this was the most expensive movie ever made at the time of its release? I didn’t. So there you go.

Rambo III is surely entertaining for some action movie fans, but I can’t say I found it particularly satisfying. Attempts at making a serious political point are misplaced in such a ridiculously implausible action movie, while the action itself is passable rather than particularly enticing. If I were in a generous mood I might afford it an extra star, but I think I’d rather watch a Hot Shots.

~~Rambo III is showing on ITV4 and ITV4 HD tonight at 11pm.~~
Rambo III is on ITV4 tonight, Tuesday 11th February 2014, at 10pm.

Star Trek: Nemesis (2002)

Posted on December 18, 2010 by badblokebob

2010 #107
Stuart Baird | 112 mins | TV (HD) | 12 / PG-13

After the widespread disappointment with Insurrection, the ninth big screen outing for Star Trek, fans hoped the tenth, Nemesis, would mark a return to their old adage “even ones good, odd ones bad.” They had reasons to be hopeful: a new director, an Oscar-nominated screenwriter, and (potentially) the final outing for the beloved Next Generation crew. Surely they’d be given a fitting send-off?

Sadly, it wasn’t to be: Nemesis was a critical and commercial flop, the only Trek not to open at #1 in the US, the lowest-grossing of the entire franchise. And quite rightly, because it isn’t very good.

While Insurrection was accused of being dull because it was largely about a dispute over who got to live on a planet, the political side of that kept it engaging. Nemesis’s plot, on the other hand, just doesn’t go anywhere fast. Attempts to liven it up with some action sequences often come off as tacked-on asides, while discussions about just who Picard’s clone is and what he wants feel hollow — of course he’s a nasty piece of work, otherwise your film is completely villain-free!

Picard’s clone is played not by Patrick Stewart, but by a shaved Tom Hardy. Yes, that Tom Hardy. We should be glad Nemesis didn’t kill off his career, which at the time consisted of small roles in Band of Brothers and Black Hawk Down but has gone on to acclaimed leads (or other significant parts) in TV such as Stuart: A Life Backwards, Oliver Twist and Wuthering Heights, and on the big screen in Bronson, Inception and (soon) The Dark Knight Rises and Mad Max 4. He’s not got much to work with here, though the knowledge of better things to come means his presence somehow lifts his scenes a notch.

The film ends with the most pointless heroic sacrifice I’ve seen for a while. OK, the well-loved character’s dead, but that identical clone — you know, the one they downloaded all the character’s memories into — is still hanging around. Give me strength.

It’s a shame the Next Generation lot had to go out on such a duff note, their series of movies conforming more to the usual sequel pattern of diminishing returns (their first, First Contact, is highly praised, with the next two increasingly slated) than the original series crew’s good/bad alternation. Still, at least it cleared the way for what Trek probably needed more than anything: a good, clean, rebooting.

The Wolfman: Unrated Version (2010)

Posted on December 10, 2010 by badblokebob

2010 #117
Joe Johnston | 119 mins | Blu-ray | 15 / R

The “extended director’s cut” (as the Blu-ray blurb describes it) of The Wolfman begins with a new CG’d version of Universal’s classic ’30s/’40s logo, the one that I’m sure opened many/most/all of their beloved classic horror movies. As well as being a self consciously cool opening shot, it’s a succinct way for director Joe Johnston to signal his intentions: this is not your modern whizzbang horror movie, but something more classically inspired.

Aside from a murderous opening teaser, the film makes this clear pretty quickly — or rather, quite slowly. The plot and character are allowed to unfurl at a gradual rate, building up to bursts of action later on rather than trying to keep the audience’s adrenaline pumping with a constant barrage of set pieces. This rationale seems to be particularly true in the 16-minutes-longer extended version, which adds additional dialogue-centric scenes from the outset. It also adds flaws like blatant continuity errors: in the original cut, Gwen writes to Lawrence to persuade him to come; in the extended version, she visits him in person, rendering future references to her letter baffling.

An extensive illustrated list of the numerous changes can be found here. Despite the “unrated” branding implying “more gore” as per usual, there’s hardly any of that added. Instead it’s mainly character moments of varying degrees of relevance, plus an array of inconsequential tweaks. I appreciate the attempt to bring a slower, creepier style back to modern horror films, but Johnston over-eggs it at times. This becomes especially evident when the majority — perhaps even the totality — or plot developments and, particularly, twists are guessable far in advance. Trying to lose 16 minutes for the theatrical cut was probably a good idea, though some of my favourite moments lie amongst what was excised.

The other downside comes when Johnston tries to have his cake and eat it. The plot may retain its relatively leisurely pace throughout, but room is found for three or four CGI-packed action sequences. I think the film indulges too much in CGI. It’s a useful tool when used well and all that, and it’s undoubtedly found itself well employed in out-and-out blockbusters, but its obvious presence in even low-key scenes here — it’s used to realise a tame bear and sacrificial deer, for instance — feels incongruous; a sore thumb when so much of the script, plotting and pacing is old school.

There’s plenty of computer work on show in the transformations, fights and deaths too, of course, but I feel a similar sense of incongruity there: after the filmmakers went to publicised effort to make the Wolfman himself a creation of makeup rather than computers, it’s a shame they couldn’t extend the practical approach to more effects, particularly others involving the werewolves. As it stands, The Wolfman’s CGI is unoriginal, the same pretty-real-but-undoubtedly-computer-generated stuff we’ve seen in every blockbuster for the past five to ten years. Even Anthony Hopkins’ decapitated noggin feels like something I saw in some 12A blockbuster in the last half decade.

The gore all round, however, was rather good. I’m no gore fiend, but considering the subject matter and the film’s more adult bent, it was appropriately gruesome and, at points — such as the (brief) reveal of Ben Talbot’s mutilated body — scary and plausible; indeed, it was scarily plausible. The same can’t be said of the abundant jump scares though. Such artificial frights are widely considered the scourge of horror movies, and The Wolfman certainly has more than its fair share of cheap ones. Generally speaking, in most films I find such moments to be neutered by the events and signposts being so damned predictable; Johnston is frequently not guilty of this, at least, pulling off some genuinely surprising jolts. And some of them are even legitimate, if such a distinction is possible.

Despite the avowed interest in story, I nonetheless found the scary bits and action sequences to be The Wolfman’s most engaging. Leaving aside the predictability I already noted, the cast are at least partly to blame. I’ve never much rated Benicio del Toro as an actor (with exceptions) and here he does little to change my mind. Indeed none of the cast excel themselves — Hopkins, Blunt and Weaving may not be bad per se, but there’s little to endear them either. Hopkins stands out as either rather good or rather hammy, depending on your point of view; and either way, he’s distinctly Hopkins-y. Plus ça change.

Max Von Sydow’s cameo-sized role (only found in the extended cut) is possibly the film’s best bit. Aside from the fact he’s usually good value, the relevance of the scene itself is unclear. That might sound like a problem, but I choose to see it as making the sequence — and the character — rather intriguing. The rest of the supporting cast are largely British faces recognisable from TV and similarly-sized film roles, playing the parts you’d expect them to and existing primarily as monster ready-meals. Equally, Danny Elfman’s score is disappointingly generic and clichéd, particularly so whenever the film is being the same.

Considering Johnston’s background in family-friendly films, he always seemed an uncertain choice for an adult horror movie. In some respects there was nothing to fear — the adultness is clearly undiluted — but he’s nonetheless made an adequate movie, rather than the exceptional one a classically-styled horror revival deserved. On the bright side, it’s immeasurably better than Universal’s last foray into their horror back catalogue, Van Helsing. In fact, placed in such company, The Wolfman almost begins to look like a masterpiece.

The Wolfman begins on Sky Movies Premiere tonight at 10pm, and is on every day at various times until Thursday 16th December.

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