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Unknown: Completely Known, Neeson Still Shines

Why do I keep eating at those damn sidewalk taco stands?

Rating: 7 out of 10

A new age is coming, or maybe just returning to its once proud form. The age of the action hero who isn’t ripping through his tank top in post-pubescent fury, but instead seething with a controlled rage only found in those with a few years to their name. Faces grizzled by battles both won and lost, voices scratched by the screams of sorrow and victory and hands that know the feeling of breaking a nose, not just the squeeze of a trigger. We had it once with John Wayne in the west, but then it moved into the city and we found our urban cowboys in Charles Bronson and Clint Eastwood. Now, a new maturity is reigns with one man sitting firmly on the throne, Liam Neeson, and he’s back on a somewhat familiar ride, but he makes it enjoyable nonetheless.

Unknown is the fractured story of Dr. Martin Harris (played by Neeson), on his way to a Biotechnology summit in Berlin when his car careens off the road and into the icy waters of a German river. Awakening four days later in a hospital, he embarks on a fervent attempt to reconnect with his wife, who not only doesn’t recognize him upon their reunion, but has another man next to her claiming to be the very same man. Trying to tie the loose ends of his spindling memory, our original Dr. Harris finds himself embroiled in a plot much larger than he could ever imagine, winding around a foreign prince, an immigrant taxi driver and a secret many people are willing to kill to control.

**PRE-SPOILER WARNING – PLOTS SECRETS REVEALED SOON**

Last time we saw Neeson running through the streets fighting with people it was in the freight-train momentum film, Taken. Neeson drove through the movie with an unwavering determination that in other cases might have made the character seem one-sided, but he was able to make the single-point laser focus still seem layered and interesting. Neeson didn’t miss a beat as he walked onto the set of Unknown, he still carries the mack truck mindset of barreling through anyone and everyone to get what he needs, but here the layering is more upfront since his character is dealing with fractured memories and a wife who won’t even acknowledge him anymore. On the writing front, the script is well done, but seems to miss out on some key moments that would have helped to deepen the motivations in a few scenes later in the film.

**ACTUAL SPOILER WARNING – HERE COMES THE GOOD STUFF**

I can’t really talk about the missing moments without mentioning the plot details surrounding those particular scenes. Once it is revealed that Neeson actually is a secret agent and the people trying to kill him are actually members of his old team, the story does ring a little close to the Bourne franchise, but that actually didn’t bother me too much. What falls a little flat is the emotional connections between Neeson and his old team, specifically with January Jones‘ character (who we originally believe to be his wife) and Aidan Quinn (who originally is touted as the “real” Martin Harris). There is an interesting layer that is never explored about how January Jones really feels about turning on her undercover partner and also how Aidan Quinn feels about stepping into his shoes. The final fight between Neeson and Quinn could’ve inserted some nice interplay, but just went for the action, while Jones never got to have a final meeting with Neeson because she went out in a somewhat unclimactic explosion. I’ve said it before, you can win or lose your audience in the last five minutes and this came dangerously close to losing me.

While those story points did leave the ending slightly under par, the rest of the film holds up the overall experience and Neeson just continues to prove his dominance in the action/thriller genre. Also, not to be forgotten, Bruno Ganz turns in an excellent performance as the old ex-German secret service friend who comes to Neeson’s aid. It culminates in a truly magnificent scene between Ganz and Frank Langella, who is in the film for a woefully short time.

The End of the Page recommendation: Unknown is an enjoyable romp through the spy-ridden streets of Berlin.

Salt: Meet Bourne’s Missing Sister

You said the popcorn had free refills, now you tell me that doesn’t include more butter? Would you like to reconsider that arrangement?

Rating: 6 out of 10

Right off the bat, I want to publicly denounce anyone heard using the joke, “So the sequel to this will be called Pepper, right?” or anything that resembles it. Those people should be terribly, terribly ashamed of themselves.

Thank you. Now I will move from that soapbox to my other soapbox.

Salt follows the dramatic chase, catch and escape of an American CIA agent named Evelyn Salt. A Russian defector gives up secret information which claims Salt is a deep undercover mole, thereby sending her into a cat-and-mouse game played throughout the halls and caverns of American secret agencies. She is forced to cleverly evade and attack her enemies, her friends, even her former boss in an effort to prove who and what she really is.

Salt blasts into action incredibly quickly, which works well for its rather small 100-minute time frame, but in their efforts to hit the ground running, they left out one incredibly important portion of the common hero/anti-hero story – we – the audience, need to care. Angelina Jolie brings the razor’s edge to her intensity and the constant use of her powerful stare, but she gets precious little time to try and makes us feel anything for her character. There are tiny flashbacks here and there to expose a loving relationship between her and her husband, who is kidnapped early in the film, but it never quite rings true and feels like it was dropped in only by necessity. As I noted in the title, there are glaring and obvious comparisons between this film and the Bourne franchise, but Matt Damon was given great opportunities to bring the audience into Jason Bourne’s dilemma and struggle through it with him. Also, the romantic aspect to that original movie was one we got to witness growing on screen, unlike the momentary recalls in Salt, which failed to generate any flutters of the heart.

Yet, for what Salt lacked in the emotions department, they valiantly tried to make up for in the action arena. Jolie gets chased through nearly every type of structure known to man (sewers, church bunkers, packed highways, etc…) and shows herself to be quite the athlete when it comes to jumping off of nearly every set piece in the film, moving and stationary. Brief glimpses of déjà vu attacked me through the screening as I recognized the same Jolie we all rallied around in her Tomb Raider days. There were also a couple Matrix-ish moments of her using the now popular “jump-push off the wall punch-kick” maneuver, which made me wonder what it would have been like if Jolie had donned the black pleather jumpsuit of Trinity (after a few moments I realized she probably would have overwhelmed any scene she was in, so Carrie-Anne Moss was indeed the better choice). There was an attempt to bring a little more weight and depth to the film by using continuously solid actors like Liev Schreiber and Chiwetel Ejiofor, but while Liev gets a bit more meat packed into his role, Chiwetel ends up very much on the short end of the stick, saddled with one of the only story-changing arcs in the story, but absolutely no time to bring it to a full and believable fruition.

The End of the Page Recommendation: Salt delivers high-paced action, but fails to combine it with real meaning.

What did you think? Does it end up on your list of ‘Top Female Action Flicks’?

Kick-Ass: Non-Stop Costumed Insanity

Say hello to my little friends, Laverne and Shirley.

Rating: 7 out of 10

It was only a matter of time until we reached this inevitable moment where the comic book stories started to move away from the radiation-powered heroes and villains  to the non-mutant kids that actually read them. Every kid who turned those colorful paneled pages had those moments where they gazed out the window and dreamed of a world where they could fly, burn holes through walls using only their eyes and actually help the good people in the world (or maybe just rob banks, depending on the kid). In the end it was all about wanting to be more than they were – something extraordinary. For some, gaining that elusive feeling meant putting their heads down and burying themselves in study, research and grunt work until they were recognized as experts in their chosen field. Others put on flashy tights. Tomato, tomahto.

Kick-Ass is a comic-book adaptation about a young boy who decides to make the transition from normal teenage wallflower into costumed vigilante justice. Ignoring the lack of any real powers or drive for vengeance, he plows forward only to find himself embroiled in a real-life crime ring, landing himself in the crosshairs of real criminals with real guns who really kill people. There is help though, from a costumed father/daughter pair who mentors him in what it really means to be a superhero.

[A quick disclaimer: I didn't read the original comic series, so this is a commentary on only the movie itself and not how well or not well the adaptation was made. If it was a wonderfully truthful adaptation, that's great, but that only really helps those people in the audience who have actually read it.]

While it starts out with a very Kevin Smith-style conversation, this movie quickly ascends into a level of ridiculousness that separates it solidly from the pack. It’s grows into something more akin to Unbreakable remade by high school kids, but I mean that in a positive way. The viewpoint throughout the film is not looking down or lording over these characters, but it looks from within, through the childlike eyes of what it would really feel like to try and become a superhero and transform yourself into the savior instead of the saved. It’s an old archetypal story — with a lot more spandex and pleather.

The lead character, Dave ‘aka Kick-Ass’ (played by Aaron Johnson), is the moral center of the story and he’s the audience’s window into this world. While his role is integral to the story, as a character he suffers a bit from being the launching pad for the more extreme and entertaining people. Quickly enough we are introduced to ‘Hit Girl’, played with unwavering intensity by Chloe Moretz, and her comically imbalanced dad, otherwise known as ‘Big Daddy’, played beautifully by the constantly working icon, Nicolas Cage. This dynamic duo are the comic book within the comic book, the fantasy within the reality of Dave’s world. Due to the level of violence and brutality these two characters generate throughout their screen time, it was fundamentally necessary to pick people who could play the ridiculous nature of their actions without allowing the characters themselves to seem or feel ridiculous. Cage was a godsend in this respect and there are few people better than him at accomplishing this kind of task. Cage may have become a joke to some, but I think they underplay this man’s range. Go back and watch Leaving Las Vegas, then immediately pop in Raising Arizona. He is supremely talented on both ends of the spectrum. While he might not be getting those prime roles lately, I think that has more to do with the fact he is working non-stop and those roles don’t come along as often versus proof of his decline in skill. Moretz, on the other hand, may be a relative newcomer by some standards, but in her six years of stealing scenes she’s already racked up a ton of voice-over credits and now seems quite poised to take over as the resident precocious, overly-intelligent little sister/neighbor/friend/what-have-you.

As for the man with the plan, Matthew Vaughn only has three directorial credits under his belt so far (Layer Cake, Stardust and this new addition), but all have been incredibly successful in their own right. He continues to do a beautiful job of creating the world of the story, both in front of the camera and behind it (he co-wrote the screenplays for Kick-Ass and Stardust). Yet, so far I think his best overall effort has been Layer Cake, the one script he didn’t touch (it was written for the screen by J.J. Connolly, the author of the original book). The only thing I believe this proves is the original author can be better with the cutting knife on their own story than someone else.

The End of the Page Recommendation: Kick-Ass doesn’t disappoint in the ass kicking department, but it borders on repetition by the closing credits. For comic book fans, it’s required viewing, just to relive the fantasies you know you had at that age. Oh, on a personal side note, National Treasure is popcorn genius! Viva la Cage!

The Book of Eli: Slick Style with Rough Substance

Somewhere out there, there is a snack shack waiting for me.

Rating: 4 out of 10

One type of movies has recently been building in the nationwide queue, Apocalypse films. We stared in wide-eyed wonder at the destruction imagined in 2012, felt the weight of despair in the bleak future of The Road and even the magical CGI-fueled paradise of Avatar can be classified as apocalyptic since that was the reason for the human expansion to Pandora. This week we bear witness to a little twist, a holy light in the gray darkness of the cold and dusty future, a film that suggests in the aftermath of what is to come you can only truly survive by pure and unadulterated faith. Nothing like a good dose of God to add spice to the end of the world.

The Book of Eli is a moral fable about a man, most commonly referred to as “The Walker”, who sets out on a journey west to find the one and only safe harbor left in the world for the precious book he is carrying. He crosses paths with the worst and the best (but mostly the worst) of what humanity has become in the wake of some type of nuclear holocaust. The extent of his survival skills is impressive, but it pales in comparison to his determination and resolve to reach the destination told to him only a voice in his head.  The road gets rougher as he passes through a town where the man in charge knows all too well the power of the book he is carrying and decides to claim it for his own.

Let’s start out with the nice things first, cause that is just the polite thing to do. As you can see from the picture above, there was a clear choice in visual tone to bring about this monochromatic, muted color palette to the world after the war. There was some incredibly stark imagery and compelling wide shots of our main traveler trekking across sheer emptiness and ruined wastelands. I was quietly pleased with that portion of the film, and only that portion, until I was reminded by the ending credits that this cross between Mad Max and The Road was directed by Albert and Allen Hughes, otherwise known as The Hughes Brothers. Looking back at their last film, From Hell, I suddenly put together all the pieces. The Book of Eli succeeded and suffered in the exact same way.

The Hughes Brothers have developed a style of powerful visuals and interesting color schemes, but they seem to forget about the rest of the recipe. The story lingers on in a menacingly slow fashion, broken up by frantic acts of violence, but a real ebb and flow is never truly achieved. Also, I will hold back all inclinations to what the third act twist is, but just know it left me extremely disappointed. I stand by the idea that films win or lose their audiences in the last five minutes and I was not only lost, but banging my head against the wall in order to develop short term amnesia. There were a good handful of ways the story could have ended, but they went with honestly the worst of the bunch.

In terms of acting, I actually thought Denzel Washington had a few really impressive scenes and it was nice to see him a little bit outside of the cocky, tough guy role that he was pigeonholed into over the last decade (like Man on Fire, Inside Man and his oscar-winning turn in Training Day.) Mila Kunis also stepped up for most of the film, yet I lost her when she started to become the rough and tumble chick again. She has a self-assuredness and confidence to her which works really well, but once she starts packing heat and sliding into some femme fatale position (ala Max Payne) she ends up a caricature instead of a character. Lastly there is Gary Oldman, who really has been playing parts like this for years. It’s not his best work by far, but even with that said, he still commands attention when on screen. His performance ended up making me imagine he was playing his same character from Leon, just many, many years older.

The End of the Page Recommendation: Honestly, I love religiously themed movies, especially if someone involved is carrying a crazy sharp machete, but this felt heavy-handed and preachy. A vain attempt was made at the end to balance that out, but it failed to remove the weight left by the previous hours. If you can get a copy of the actual 35mm film, find some of the really pretty shots, blow them up into posters and just be happy with that.

Street Fighter: 14 Years Evidently Not Long Enough

Should it be mentioned that neither of the fighters in the silhouette are in the movie? Nah…that’d be silly.

Rating: 3 out of 10

Video game adaptations have always had a hard and belabored road to the silver screen. The creative vision it takes to transform something from a playable game into a captivating and enjoyable story is chock full of pitfalls. First off, you find yourself dealing with the legions of video game fanatics who play these games religiously and feel the control on the joystick also issues them control over every facet of the character. So, pleasing them can be a particularly sticky task. Next you find out that many video games really don’t have a particularly interesting storyline, which means some writer clawing and scratching at the door to Hollywood has to earn his big break by taking on an adaptation, or re-imagining, that very few others would touch with a ten-foot fountain pen. Lastly, the studio has to try and balance the idea of making the movie enjoyable while still including enough reference to the game itself so they can use the title and character rights. Tack all that together and you’ve set yourself up for one hell of a struggle, and I didn’t even mention casting it! Yet, in the end the studios are happy to jump into the joystick-controlled quagmire because they are banking on the pre-made audience to show up and support their well-played games. Unfortunately, that only works when the game the movie is based on is still popular.

Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li is loosely, very loosely, based on the 1987 Capcom arcade fighting game. In the original game there were eight players you could choose from who resided in various countries and you fought your way around the world tournament style until everyone, including the final boss, was defeated. In this updated movie version, M. Bison (the original final boss) is a crime lord who runs a rapidly expanding syndicate taking over massive amounts of waterfront property in Bangkok. He kidnaps Chun-Li’s father to use his political connections and Chun-Li vows to take revenge and save him. Along the way she meets Gen, an old sage who once was a partner and fellow criminal alongside Bison, but has since turned his effort to helping people instead of hurting them. He teaches her to focus her energies and discover the secret to defeating Bison when the time comes. Running parallel to Chun-Li’s story is a rough and rugged Interpol agent who has been chasing Bison for most of his career and with the help of his new, vivacious partner in the Chinese gangland police force, he vows this is where the chase ends.

Now, brace yourselves, because this is where the niceties and political movie speak comes to a crashing halt.

Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li is terrible. It is a prime example of a studio and creative team reaching way beyond their abilities and trying to force the movie into a category it doesn’t belong (that being “good films”). They attempted to create a story out of a game where there really was none and build it into a possible franchise, but God help us if we get one of these for each character in the game. Other than the names the movie had virtually nothing to do with the game and only references it in the most trivial of ways. Street Fighter was a fighting game and for some insane reason they decided to make a movie with very few fight scenes, one of which, the highly anticipated battle between Chun-Li and Vega (barely acted by Taboo from the band Black Eyed Peas) only lasted thirty seconds and underwhelmed in an unimaginable fashion. Most of the first half is spent building up Chun-Li’s past and why her dad gets kidnapped, but all we needed to see was her kicking ass from the moment the lights go down. I never thought I would ever write these words, but here you go: this movie could have learned a lot from Dead or Alive (which didn’t even get a theatrical release). DoA never tried to be more than a video game movie and they respected the silliness and ridiculous nature of what they were trying to adapt. (Phew, I need a nap. Uttering that statement left me winded.)

On a lucky few occasions you might be able to power your way out of terrible writing and terrible directing with the power of strong actors, but Street Fighter chose in the realm of casting to continue its tradition with all things terrible. Kristen Kruek became an instant star and teenage fantasy of young and old men alike across the nation when she appeared in the TV show, Smallville. Capitalizing on her mixed heritage, she definitely has the look to pay Chun-Li in a Hollywood adaptation, but unfortunately all she has is the looks. In the time since she was a headliner on Smallville, where she is now mainly a cameo on random episodes, Kristen has not improved her skills to the level of headlining a feature film, even one as minimally dramatic as this. Right behind her in the sense of being cast on pure physicality is Neil McDonough, who plays the villainous crime lord M. Bison. He has been cashing checks based on his bad guy stare for years, but here it just felt overplayed, underwhelming and just, plain silly. Briefly showing a touch of inspired choices, Michael Clarke Duncan appears as Balrog and holds it down quite well, even if the Balrog in the game was nothing like him. Also, Moon Bloodgood, who briefly appeared last year in the short-lived TV show, Journeyman, plays the local gangland cop in charge of cleaning up the chaos Bison has brought to her city. Her character is completely unnecessary to the film and routinely just fodder for her partner’s bad pick-up lines, but she at seems to have the sense of the level of quality and tone the film was looking for. Last on the good side of things is Robin Shou, who plays the wise, mystical mentor, Gen. He is no stranger to the video game adaptation having starred as Liu Kang in the Mortal Kombat films, which are another pair of films the makers of Street Fighter could have taken some cues from. In all of this mess, this time I have gone against the grain and saved the worst for last, Chris Klein. Let me first say that I respect actors who know their type and play to it, while also holding respect for other actors who try to push their boundaries of skill. Chris Klein used to reside in the former group, playing the down home, clean-cut, high school quarterback type who just gosh darnit couldn’t seem to catch a break, but the mentally deficient casting agent somehow looked at him and thought he would be perfect as a grizzled Interpol agent with a penchant for bad one-liners and a total aversion to showering. Every scene with Chris reeked of a community theater impression of Colin Farrell ala Miami Vice (and even Farrell didn’t pull that off very well).

Recommendation: For the sake of clarifying why I gave this film any points at all; one point for Bloodgood, Duncan and Shou combined, one point for the film makers actually allowing people to die (which doesn’t often happen in these PG-13 versions), and one last point for giving me a big screen to watch Kristen Kruek on, who still remains quite cute, even after all this time. For those who might be wondering how this ranks up against the 1994 Street Fighter film starring Jean-Claude Van Damme, which was front-to-back a true black hole of quality, amazingly enough, they almost cancel each other out.

The International: Tension-Laced, but Underwhelming

I swear, just one more stop. Old Navy is having a fantastic sale.

Rating: 6 out of 10

There’s always something chuckle-worthy about particular movies and their release dates. Most people tend to forget the immense amount of time beforehand that goes into the creation of these films, so when something hits the theaters and happens to be particularly poignant to the current cultural climate, everyone thinks it’s just another hack writer or short-sighted studio executive greenlighting “hip” projects. Yet, most of these movies take years and years to make it to the big screen, so if they land at what many might see as “the right moment”, you can thank karma, your local psychic or just dumb luck. Now why would I start my review of this movie with such a particular topic? Good question, let me paint the picture for you.

The International is a suspense thriller about a dogged Interpol agent on the trail of one of the biggest banks in the world, the IBBC. At the heart of the investigation is allegations that the bank is using their deep pockets to fund third world wars in efforts to expand its global control and everyone who has tried to turn against them or gotten to close to the truth has disappeared or died. When the partner of our heroic Interpol agent is killed, he goes for broke and starts finding ways around the halls of justice. It becomes a tense game of cat and mouse as the agent tries to find ways in, while the bank tries to find ways to have him killed.

There you have it, a movie about someone trying to take down a huge international bank that is rank with corruption and the misusing the funds of its clientele. Sound familiar? It’s only mostly similar to the headlines in the financial section of every big newspaper over the last year. No, there might not be murders mentioned or third world guerrilla wars, but the idea that banks have become the villains in much of what is wrong with the financial markets today is incredibly easy for movie audiences to connect with. Toss in a gun-toting international agent who wants to show these banks they can’t just do whatever they want and you have something just ripe for the viewing market right now.

At the center of this whirlwind of money and deceit is Clive Owen, playing our agent with the tunnel vision of justice, Louis Salinger. Owen has been on a meteoric rise since his big break in a series of BMW mini-movies. He had been working for quite some time before that, but his audience grew exponentially from that advertising coup and now he is one of the top British imports to American films and solidly stands atop the list of male “bad ass” actors. He’s got the stare, he’s got the accent and he’s truly got the moral ambiguity to do play characters who do what needs to be done (aka his performances as Smith in Shoot ‘Em Up and Dwight in Sin City). He does a great job of playing people who play in the dirt and manage to stay clean. He doesn’t get as much leeway in The International, where Salinger is on a one track mission to bring down the IBBC, and there are only brief mentions of his past, but Owen still manages to create a compelling persona on screen. Opposite him on screen, also on the side of justice, is Naomi Watts, playing the American consulate agent Eleanor Whitman. Watts is usually a spectacular and powerful performer, but she fell a little short this time. The movie centered much more around Owen and gave Watts very little to work with and in the end it left her character feeling one-dimensional and emotionally forced. The biggest thrill as far as the acting goes is seeing the return of Armin Mueller-Stahl. Ever since his intensely acclaimed turn as the rigid father in Shine, he bounced around television and smaller films for many years, but in the last few he has landed bigger roles once again worthy of the weight and gravitas he brings. Here he plays an aging Communist relic trapped inside a capitalist world still trying to turn the tide in his own small way. He becomes the one character in the film who actually reaches a moral crisis and he plays the scene beautifully. After this we are lucky enough to be seeing him in the upcoming Angels & Demons, which if my dreams come true will be paced nothing like it’s predecessor, The DaVinci Code.

The International is a suspense thriller, not an action film, but nevertheless provides one of the most entertaining action sequences so far this year. With the construction of a picture perfect replica of the inside of the Guggenheim museum in New York, the filmmaker stages a highly charged, briskly paced gunfight which bears a sort of “reverse homage” to the legendary villain’s lair sequence in Bruce Lee’s Game of Death. In Lee’s version he has to fight his way up, floor by floor, through this mansion defeating a new boss on each floor. In The International, Owen has to shoot his way down a massive spiral walkway, dodging and dealing death around every spin, in order to walk out alive. They even built a completely fake exhibit to house in the museum just to have it destroyed, which provided that little extra kick of excitement.

Recommendation: A solid film, yet not mind blowing in any real sense. As most suspense thrillers go, it is better enjoyed with big sound and big picture, but theater viewing is not wholly necessary. Clive Owen continues to do what he does best and it will leave you buzzing with anticipation for what he has in store in Sin City 2 (which unfortunately is not due until 2010. Until then you’ll have to make due with Duplicity, due out later this year)

Push: Borrowed Style Replaces Substance

“Wait a sec,  she’s only thirteen?!”

“Wait one more sec, he was in Fantastic Four? I can’t be seen with him.”

Rating: 4 out of 10

Just over three years ago hordes of people sat in their living rooms and bore witness to the birth of a phenomenon (however short it may have lasted). Heroes debuted and quickly gained a worldwide following as people everywhere attached themselves to the notion of ordinary people suddenly becoming extraordinary. While being glued to the comic-book styled serial every week, we all silently asked ourselves what power we would want, what would we do with those powers and would we turn into a ‘hero’ or a ‘villain’. No matter what the end result of those internal polls was, we were hooked to the live-action X-Men update and the rest of Hollywood was quick to make a note of that. Cut to three years later, Heroes is fighting to regain its mass appeal and while the shine has worn off of our shiny new TV toy, Hollywood unleashed their response to the comic book craze, Push.

Push takes place in a world where descendants of human experiments conducted under the Nazi regime have evolved into modern-day test subjects for the U.S. Government. Powers are unveiled, but not controlled, so a group known as Division is created to hunt down and collect ‘special’ people. In all the various types of powerful people, one group  is called the Watchers, who see the future, and a young, inexperienced Watcher has a vision which she must change, because if she doesn’t, she and others will die. A ragtag group of mutant outcasts on the run is brought together to fight Division and take possession of the one object they need to bring the whole conspiracy down to its knees and finally find their freedom.

On paper you have everything you need for a youthful, superhero-laden smackdown between the forces of good and evil, but what Push delivers is a badly paced, clunky, big-brother-esque mess only working its way up to four points on my ratings scale due to a fantastic fight scene at the end. In truth, those points might be cancelled out since while gaining points for the badass action sequence, it lost equal points for proving it could make great action scene and just chose not to. I fully support the right to try and create something new in an over-worked genre, but there are particular criteria which remain steadfast and necessary, like a training montage (such a popular tool, the South Park fellas made a song about it). We were supposed to buy the transformation of a main character from barely being able to mentally tip over a pair of dice to yanking down entire building structures without any increased practice with his powers. Beyond the holes in the structure, the visuals also leave something to be desired since numerous times throughout the film it cuts to grainy, 16mm-looking stock in an effort to make it look cool and edgy, but while dazzling you with the flashy technique they hope you won’t notice the scene is either totally unnecessary or unmotivated. I celebrate stylistic choices, but using them purely to make up for a bad script is sacrilege. Another sacrilegious thing is using a cinematic style that is a poor representation of Danny Boyle. Slumdog Millionaire is not a fluke, he’s just that good.

Flexing their dramatic abilities in this colorful mess is a group of young actors with a couple seasoned vets tossed in for critical weight. First in the brat pack is Chris Evans, who is no stranger to the land of comic book inspired cinema. He lit it up as The Human Torch in the pair of Fantastic Four movies and I will give him a certain amount of credit for being one of the only things done right in those tragedies. Evans gets a touch lost in the current landscape of young male leads, but he has done a decent job in the roles he sneaks in. He actually gave a surprisingly good show in the dark sci-fi thriller, Sunshine (directed by none other than Danny Boyle, coincidence?). Evans plays Nick, our reticent hero with the ability to move things with his mind, but unfortunately for the audience he is unable to move them for most of the running time of the movie. Next in line, stepping out of her creepy adult-like doll phase, is Dakota Fanning, who plays Cassie, the inexperienced and willfull Watcher who sees bad things ahead for her band of misfits (does she possibly see the sequel?). Fanning is doing her best to remind people she is a teenage girl and growing like a chemically-laden flower. There are a few moments where I think they took her need to look more adult a touch too far, considering she was thirteen when she shot it in Tokyo, but then again, Fanning played a rape victim at twelve, so nothing is really going to push her too far at this point. She still proves her level of talent and in a few scenes manages to vault herself above her castmates, but in the end the project felt more like a choice to open her up to a broader audience instead of being base don the merit of the story. Camilla Belle rounds out the youthful runts of Push, playing Kira, the mind-controlling supersoldier escaped from government hands. Of course, she also has a few hidden plot twists up her sleeve, but those never seem to play out right or feel supported in any fashion. They mostly appear in moments where the writer was thinking, “I bet they think it is going to go this way. It should go that way. Logically hat way makes sense. So I’ll do something totally different and they’ll love it because it’s unexpected.” Such a simple and flawed argument. Bringing in a touch of critical weight, beyond Fanning, is Djimon Hounsou, who first burst onto the scene as the earnest and determined slave looking for human rights in Amistad, which won him a Golden Globe nomination as well. Hounsou plays Carter, a powerful mind-controller on the government’s side who is on the hunt for Kira and has no qualms about who or what gets in his way, even his own people. While there is no doubt Hounsou has the ability to be amazingly intimidating, his stone-like stares and deep intensity have no context in the movie and never really get the chance to grow. His smoothness is indisputable, but the audience never truly gets to see how he backs up all that confidence. Not to be left out, Ming Na and Cliff Curtis have side roles as a “sniffer” who can figure out google-levels of information from the scent of anything and a “shifter”, which is basically a fancy term for an illusionist, respectively. Both do a decent job, but I know their work is much more layered when given better environments to perform in.

My last issue with Push is it repeats one of the worst things about Jumper, which easily qualifies as one of the worst sci-fi flicks of last year. Both films fail to adequately resolve the main story and arrogantly tease a sequel they fully expect us to beg for. Although Push gets to walk a couple spaces ahead of Jumper in the line of quality, neither is deserving of a second go-around.

Recommendation: My review isn’t all doom and gloom. There is a kick-ass fight scene at the end, which hopefully will be properly emulated if the filmmakers use some sort of mutant power of their own and manage to create a sequel. Wait until this hits cable TV, unless you have never learned to properly cook a decent hot dog, then go to the Arclight for a matinee.
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Taken: Neeson Brings the Pain

This girl, she was on ‘Lost’. You’re going to tell me what the hell her character was really doing there. TELL ME!!!

Rating: 9 out of 10

Sometimes it’s good to take a breather after watching a film, really take some time to process what you thought about it. Strolling out of the darkness on Friday night, I was on an adrenaline high from the film I just witnessed. I was already writing the headline in my mind, “First Perfect Score!”, “10 out of 10!”, or “I Got Taken!”, but now that I’ve had a couple days to catch my breath and really mull over the difference between the movie itself and the movie experience, I regretfully say you are going to have to wait a little while longer to hear me rant and rave about my first perfect film. But take heart, Neeson and crew came achingly close and I’m thrilled to give it the credit it deserves.

Taken is a terrifyingly simple story: Overprotective Dad find out his young and virginal daughter has been kidnapped. Of course, most fathers are going to do everything they can to get their daughter back, but in this case, “everything he can” encompasses a lot more than the usual retiree father. Calling on skills from his previous job as a “preventer” for the government, the father races off to Paris to follow his daughter’s trail and pick apart anyone and everyone who either stands in his way or had anything to do with the crime. It’s a prime example of a man on a mission and nothing in the world is going to stop him.

Simple story, right? So what could possibly make it so good or so much better than all the other ‘action/spy/thriller’ films we’ve seen in recent years? First off, Liam Neeson, who plays the incredibly dangerous dad, Bryan Mills, already brings a level of talent and pathos to the character we would have lost with a less skilled actor. Neeson is no stranger to playing undeterred heroes, in such films as Michael Collins, Rob Roy and even Schindler’s List. These were all men who were willing to step way over the line in the fight for what they believed in. Now you mix that determination with the moral ambivalence of another of Neeson’s previous creations, Darkman, and you get our paternal savior from Taken. Neeson is an unstoppable juggernaut, once set in motion he is unswerving in his determination to achieve his goal. The hero’s code has no place in the world of this character and brings a fresh feel to what normally would have been a very standard role. Picture Jason Bourne without a conscience and you’ll be right on the money. The care and ethical treatment of others is void from his actions, even those who would be considered his friends. Another reason why I liked this character so much is it reminded me of an adult version of Brick, another film with a lead character who steamrolls over everyone in his path. (If I had been reviewing film back then, Brick would have undoubtedly received a perfect score. If you haven’t seen it yet, make it a priority.) Outside of Neeson’s stoic violence, the only other actor worth mentioning is Maggie Grace, who plays Kim, the kidnapped daughter. She amazingly looks the part, even though her real age is far above the seventeen she plays in the film, but there were a few moments where she regressed a little too far, playing closer to fifteen or even thirteen. I can’t be sure whether it was a bad choice on the director, actor or if they were trying for a subliminal critique of how sheltered the character was from the real world, but either way, it just came off odd.

Continuing it’s reasons for success, Taken is also written extremely well, with a solid sense of pace and a keen eye towards the importance of development when needed. Most spy movies jump right into the espionage and a gunfight will erupt within minutes of the opening credits, but the inciting incident, the kidnapping, doesn’t actually come for at least twenty minutes. This gives the audience plenty of time to get to know daddy Mills and his daughter Kim, what their relationship is like and by the time she disappears, Mills has already had one chance to show off his skills, so the audience has a logical basis for all the damage he is about to incur on the villains. That brings up another particularly interesting twist in screenwriting; there is no antagonist character here. No villain which we can all attach our hate and anger to, the antagonist of the film is the crime itself and the society that promotes it. Each time a face or a name is revealed to be the person Mills is after, he finds them and dispatches them before anyone gets a chance to really attach anything to them. Normally this would be a failure in the writing, but screenwriters Luc Besson and Robert Mark Kamen achieve a lofty switch by making this movie all about the crime itself, instead of a single person. This writing duo is not unfamiliar with the action/thriller landscape, having penned the Transporter series, along with The Fifth Element, Kiss of the Dragon and Leon (the last one was Besson alone), so it doesn’t come as a big surprise that Taken has such a rich underbelly of character and subtext usually unfound in this genre.

Recommendation: A pulse pounding thriller with a slow burn to begin, this is a rare find in the cinematic world. There are moments in this film you will definitely not see coming and those alone make it worth a viewing, whether in the theater or at home. Neeson truly succeeds in making your first meeting with your girlfriend’s dad scary once more.
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