Wanted (***)

Slick action is the draw in this first big-budget American effort from director Timur Bekmambetov, whose Night Watch and Day Watch became Russia’s all-time highest-grossing movies. (A third film in the vampire/sci-fi series may be filmed in English.) Those movies showed he had a way with visually arresting action sequences and special effects, if not necessarily in crafting a coherent story. Here he adapts a script from Derek Haas and Michael Brandt (3:10 to Yuma, Catch That Kid, 2 Fast 2 Furious) with elements familiar from movies like The Matrix and V for Vendetta, only with fewer pretentions to significance, and less of a sci-fi angle. In other words, it’s a solid action movie with a ridiculous yet intriguing plot in which a regular person (James McAvoy) turns into an action hero via the time-honored technique of having the crap beat of him.

McAvoy plays an office drone who learns that his absentee father was an assassin for a secret “Fraternity” who go around killing people so the world will all be balanced or some such nonsense. He doesn’t know it, but he’s inherited his dad’s physical gifts, which explains why they want him to help finger the traitor in their midst. These gifts include the art of shooting bullets around corners, slowing time, and other such things that make no sense but make for cool effects. Angelina Jolie plays the bad-ass chick who gets to train him in this unfamiliar skill set, mostly by, like I said, beating the crap out of him. Morgan Freeman also shows up as—guess what—the all-powerful head of the organization. Because the first ten minutes of the movie have deeply impressed on us what an unhappy loser our hero currently is (complete with quick-cut snippets of his girlfriend getting pounded on the kitchen table by his best pal), the idea is that he now feels alive for the first time. (See also Fight Club.) Whatever. The chase sequence where the Jolie character does a controlled flip of her vehicle will almost be worth the price of admission for action junkies. Bekmambetov’s ostentatious, slam-bam quick-cut style makes literal believability beside the point. Visual panache is what he’s going for, and a video-game momentum. Ultimately, it’s an empty exercise, and the plot twist is basically familiar, but for what it is, Wanted is exactly that.

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viewed 6/28/05 and 7/5/08 at Moorestown; reviewed 8/9/08

The Covenant (**1/2)

 ? Descendents of those persecuted in the Massachusetts witch trials possess nearly unlimited supernatural powers that they must keep secret and use wisely. Four high school friends called the “Sons of Ipswich” are the present-day carriers of the powers, and the secret. A villain is able to both appear as a ghostly presence and make insects appear on young women’s bodies.

+ There’s one great idea in the movie. The more the young men use their powers, the more they’re eventually weakened and prematurely aged. The insect stuff is creepy.

- Rather than explore how each of the young men struggles to use his power wisely, the script is content to set up a predictable showdown between a noble hero and an evil villain. The plot isn’t too bad, but the individual scenes seemed more designed to show off the admittedly impressive torsos of its male stars than explore the theme in an interesting way. Overall, there are too many stock elements, with loud music and barroom brawls substituting for excitement. As usual, the high schoolers look too old to be high school students. From a horror standpoint, the scares are infrequent.

= **1/2 I think people who like the mythological aspect of vampire movies, for example, may find some appeal in the idea of a secret society.

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A Scanner Darkly (**1/2)

The talkiness of writer-director Richard Linklater and the paranoid vision of the late Philip K. Dick combine in this realistically animated thriller that seems to promise a more complex entertainment than it ultimately delivers.

The latest but not the last adaptation of the fiction of more-popular-than-ever dead guy Philip K. Dick is also the latest-not-last from ever-versatile writer-director Richard Linklater. (His fiction version of Fast Food Nation is already in the can.) Linklater’s films have ranged from the sweetly romantic Before Sunrise/Before Sunset to the Jack Black comedy School of Rock, but seem to have talkiness in common. Of the eight PKD-inspired feature films (all posthumously released), starting with 1982’s Blade Runner and including Minority Report and Paycheck, this is possibly the least action-oriented. In its paranoid vision of the near future, it recalls Total Recall (another PKD film) as well as the Matrix. That last is partly because it stars Keanu Reeves, or at least an animated version of him. Like Linklater’s Waking Life, the movie is digitally rotoscoped (filmed with actors, then turned into animation), though in a more realistic style. Reeves is an undercover drug agent who (in the cleverest use of the animation) wears a disguise that randomizes his face into a digital mélange. Even his boss, in the same disguise, doesn’t know who he is. We first see him in this costume giving a pep talk to a vice squad tackling the insidious substance D. Meanwhile, we see Keanu underneath, trying to ignore a whispering voice that tells him that what he’s saying is all bullshit. It’s a great setup with layers of possibilities. By the 15-minute mark I was getting nervous that I was missing something, especially when Robert Downey Jr. came on babbling like whitewater. Like a junkie, actually. We spend an unfortunate amount of time hanging out with junkies. Another one is played by Woody Harrelson, channeling his inner Gary Busey. No fault of either actor, but these are somewhat irritating characters. The girlfriend character (Winona Ryder) is a little better. The movie’s early energy dissipates by the last half hour; the inevitable twist ending delivers too little, too late. Another Dick adaptation followed this. Appropriately, it’s called Next.

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Superman Returns (***)

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X-Men director Bryan Singer’s long-in-the-making screen revival restores the luster of the world’s best-known superhero, loosely following the framework of the first two Christopher Reeve movies while giving the character a patina of angst.

This aptly titled fantasy comes 28 years after Superman made a star of Christopher Reeve and started the still-continuing wave of modern superhero movies. Director Bryan Singer’s revival of the series (scripted by his X2 partners Michael Dougherty and Don Harris) doesn’t retell the whole origin story, the way Batman Begins did for that series, but follows loosely on the first two Reeve films and regains the serious tone lost in the last two. Where 1987’s Superman IV showed the Kent family farm as abandoned, Returns starts with Superman (Brendan Routh) crash-landing and finding his widowed mother (Eva-Marie Saint) worried sick. Seems Krypton’s last son had left home five years earlier to check out the remains of his home planet. He never called, he never wrote. Nothing. More angry than concerned is his old flame Lois Lane, who has aged even less than him and looks just like Kate Bosworth with dark hair. Still writing for the Daily Planet, she’s gotten herself an award for an article called “Why the World Doesn’t Need Superman.” No doubt she’d seen the last two Reeve movies. A lot of this earlier part of the movie is setup. Family farm, check. Daily Planet, yep. Photographer Jimmy Olsen still worshipful, certainly. Lois Lane an unwed mother with an asthmatic kid and a boyfriend? Hmm, that’s new. Archenemy Lex Luthor (Kevin Spacey) still scheming, definitely. Some needed excitement arrives with the film’s first major action sequence, in which Superman rescues Lois from a space-shuttle accident, apparently Luthor’s doing.

Luthor is the only villain, so it’s good that Spacey is a worthy replacement for Gene Hackman, making lines that seem flat on the page sound like dryly evil wit. (Parker Posey as his bubble-headed sidekick, a new character, brings some minor comic relief.) Star Routh won’t win any awards, but he looks right in the part, particularly in the scenes where he plays nerdy Clark Kent. (Even though Kent’s returned to the Planet right at the same time as his faster-than-a-speeding-bullet alter ego, ace investigative reporter Lois still can’t tell they’re the same person.) For the most part, Singer gives the series the old-fashioned yet timeless feel superhero fans are likely to favor while utilizing convincingly updated special effects. Returns also incorporates some of John Williams’s 1978 score, an old-style credit sequence, and even a digitally resurrected Marlon Brando as Jor-El, the Man of Steel’s wise biological dad. There’s also, however, a patina of angst about this resurrected demigod of Metropolis. The film itself is frequently literally dark. It’s long and slightly ponderous, with Superman often seen looking pensive as he flies about. Is he bummed out about wasting five years checked out the destroyed Krypton? Or about the people he failed to save when he was gone? His lost innocence, as a flashback boyhood scene may suggest? Does he feel guilty for allowing Luthor to get out of prison? (He wasn’t around to testify.) Hard to tell. All the cinematic superheroes lately—Spider-Man, Batman, and certainly Singer’s X-Men—seem like they could do with a few sessions with a therapist. Surely the Man of Tomorrow could have resurrected the more optimistic brand of heroism I remember from the original series, or even a movie like the underrated Rocketeer. Luthor’s outright brutality in one scene is another thing that gives the movie a somber feel. But I quibble. The plot (involving Luthor’s use of stolen Krypton technology) is absorbing (though not more), the effects terrific, and the conclusion fairly satisfying (while leaving enough open for a sequel). Overall, a welcome Returns.

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Mission Impossible III (**3/4)

Employing acrobatics, stealth, and firepower, agent Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) aces three impossible missions and learns not to hide the truth from his new fiancée. Good for action fans.

This was a weird movie to see after the ultra-realistic Flight 93. Here, “IMF” [Impossible Mission Force] agent Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) concocts in an hour or two a series of break-and-enter missions that al-qaeda might have rejected as too complex. I guess the collective Islamofascist mind just can’t compete with good-old American know-how. Three such set pieces, and another sequence in which a barrage of artillery is unleashed against Hunt on a bridge, comprise the bulk of the action scenes, set on three continents. They’re pretty good, but not spectacular, and certainly not believable. At least two of them result in many dead bodies and explosions, though. The ever-versatile Philip Seymour Hoffman is the villain, who, as the movie begins, is threatening to kill Ethan and his beloved if he doesn’t get something called the Rabbit’s Foot. Also impressive is Laurence Fishburne as Hunt’s superior, who gets the best dialogue. (“I will bleed on the flag to make sure the stripes stay red.”) Directed by J.J. Abrams of Lost and Alias fame, this installment offers less character development than either of those TV series, but should satisfy action fans.

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posted 8/20/13

Big Momma’s House 2 (**1/2)

Martin Lawrence puts on a fat suit and goes undercover again, this time as caretaker to three rich kids. Nothing brilliant here, but it's no worse than the original Momma and funnier than either recent Martin Lawrence comedies or the sorry batch of last year’s family comedies.

The nice thing about the two Momma movies are that you don’t really see much of their star, Martin Lawrence. If you’re a fan of movies like National Security and Black Knight, you probably want to discount this review. I’m not, but Martin is a pretty good mimic. For this sequel, he once again dons a fat suit to solve a crime undercover. In this case Momma finagles a job as nanny to three children of neglectful parents. Thus the hallmarks of Martin’s usual comic persona, race-baiting and misogyny, are, if not absent, then subdued. Certainly, watching an elderly woman attempt to contain her lust for half-dressed woman is funnier than watching Martin openly leer at them. Calling it subtle would be going much too far. After all, the movie’s centerpiece is an on-the-beach chase scene meant to highlight the realistic rolls of fat enveloping Martin’s legs. Surely, the Academy cannot snub the make-up and effects artists again. Momma 2 has the same setup as The Pacifier, which isn’t a good thing, but there’s less toilet humor, and at least Martin/Momma doesn’t make the kids go through military drills like Vin Diesel (or Dennis Quaid in Yours Mine and Ours). Each of the kids has a problem. The youngest, for example, doesn’t speak and likes to take flying leaps from high places. (This last part garnered some of the louder laughs from the large audience I saw this with.) The oldest is a surly clone of the teenage girl from The Pacifier. Naturally, Momma has fixed the kids, taught the parents a lesson or two, and (spoiler alert!) solved the crime by the time he returns to his own family, whom he’s been lying to. Now if only Momma could straighten Martin out.

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posted 9/17/13