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Green Lantern: Shines Dimly Behind Reynold’s Charm

This suit is powered by sheer will (and a fanny pack of 9-volt batteries)

Rating: 5 out of 10

Every trend in the movies goes through the same motions. They come out of left field when no one thought it would be a viable idea, then instantly becoming the most watched genre in years, finally over-extending itself to the point of pure silver screen saturation and the profits nose dive off the celluloid cliff. You can usually mark the first movie going over the edge by how far it pushes the genre out beyond the norm. For fans of the comic book genre, even knowing that Iron Man 3, Captain America and The Avengers are still on their way, this weekends superhero offering gave many pause, wondering if this was one spandex’d crusader too many. Did the curtain begin to fall?

Nope. Not quite yet.

Green Lantern tells the story of Hal Jordan, a reckless flyboy who is chosen by a magical ring to protect his planet from destruction. Never one to follow through on anything, Jordan must struggle to discover the hero he never imagined was waiting inside.

I was going to start with some of the struggles and hardships that this story and script had to work through, but really, let’s get down to the green, glowing tacks here…Ryan Reynolds. He is not just playing a superhero, the man actually is one. No matter how bad the dialogue, no matter how convoluted the script, no matter what crazy situation you put him in, his charm and nearly flawless ease on screen allows him to raise that bar a little higher. I’m not saying that all these things were necessarily terrible here, but they could have been and Reynolds still would have found a way to make it work. Following his career since the Van Wilder days, Reynolds has never failed to enliven each and every project and provide at least one or two solid moments of wit and enjoyment on screen. For his generation of actors, I believe he is the closest they will get to George Clooney, a man who can truly balance comedy, action and drama all while looking like he was born to play that part.

Now that we have that out of the way, back to the problems. With all the comic book movies capturing the audiences recently, most are earth-bound or at least set mostly in an environment we can all easily recognize. Thor was the first in the new battalion of superhero flicks to test the waters of magical landscapes and far away universes and it succeeded fairly well. Without that preceding it, Green Lantern might have suffered more by spending so much time in outer space, but Thor built a bridge to that arena (and then busted it at the end of the movie…*in-joke*) so Green Lantern flew right over and pushed even farther out into the cosmos. Instead, the surrounding characters and subplots became the weakest links. Sadly the first half of the movie had to do so much of the heavy lifting: establishing the universe, literally, and giving some foundation for all these new and outlandish creatures, while still getting enough time to bring in their human counterparts back home. Peter Sarsgaard pulled out some decent angst and rage, but was never given enough time to really fuel the fire. Even worse was Blake Lively, who was given absolutely no room to breathe in a virtually lifeless character. Her introduction as a fellow fighter pilot was painfully unnecessary and forced her to try and work her way back into relevancy, which might have worked if given time, but she really wasn’t. As for the arch-villain CGI cloud creature, Parallax, the effects were impressive, but the story behind him felt flawed and unstable, so he never brought a whole lot of weight or tension to the scenes.

Overall, I still give this a five rating because it brings us back to those true summertime carefree flicks that didn’t try to give more than we bargained for. People who say this is a failure because it isn’t Dark Knight are making unfair and outlandish comparisons. Director Martin Campbell (who helmed two of the more successful recent Bond chapters, Goldeneye and Casino Royale) wasn’t going for grit and bones, he wanted light, fun and entertaining for the few moments he had you trapped in the theater. In that context, and with the effortless abilities of Ryan Reynolds, they achieved their goal, albeit one set far lower than what audiences may have envisioned.

The End of the Page recommendation: Green Lantern may hold a little more light for the comic book enthusiast, but for the mainstream moviegoer, this is only a mildly flickering flame, not a bright light of the summer.

Quantum of Solace: Big Bang, Little Else

Why did I park so far away on opening night. I’m gonna miss the previews!

Rating: 5 out of 10

There are characters out there so iconic, so ingrained into the hearts and minds of the viewing public, that when a new chapter in the series emerges we rush out opening weekend, our hands clutching popcorn and our eyes pasted wide. Only a chosen few have made it into this cherished realm of public trust, but none as long and as stylishly as James Bond. This weekend brought his newest episode, Quantum of Solace, and it marked the second in the reign of current Bond persona, Daniel Craig. He broke out the gates with extreme critical and public appeal in the remake of Casino Royale, but now it was time to see if he could keep up the excitement and appeal.

Excitement, yes. Appeal, less so.

Besides being incredibly well dressed at almost all times, Bond is known for action and this chapter goes for the gusto from the moment the cameras roll. The movie opens with an impressive car chase, which inevitably leads our hero from overcrowded roadways into a wonderfully photographed rock quarry. It was a bold choice to jump right into the action without any set up whatsoever, but for those out there who somehow avoided seeing Casino Royale, it definitely helps to understand where this scene fits in (approximately twenty minutes from the ending of the last film). Lots of gunplay, screeching tires and near misses bring the curtain up nicely, but having a strong opening does not guarantee audience support for the rest of the film. We need to be taken on a journey, not just shown an amazingly expensive episode of Fear Factor. There needs to be plot and story behind the action to raise it up, but Quantum had very little in the area of foundation.

The story jumps around incredibly fast, not enough to lose sense of what is going on, but just enough to not give us time to invest. The Bond movies seem almost addicted to making every scene take place in a different foreign country, which makes for some great camera shots, but terrible continuity of scenes. Also, much of this movie was sub-textually about James Bond mourning the loss of his love from the last film and barely controlling his rage while seeking revenge. We fully got the revenge motif, but the mourning was shown only in the thinnest of manners. A nicked photograph and an old necklace were the only links to his emotional center, but they were rarely used in the brief moments between gunfire and roof jumping.

On the adrenalin front, Bond delivers as usual. One of the nice changes I feel to the modern day Bond is the older films used to show him skillfully sliding from one place to another, jumping and landing perfectly on any surface and so forth, but Craig makes every leap seem based solely on guts and gusto, not tact and talent. Throughout the movie, he lands on balconies and terraces by crashing into some random piece of furniture. The only reason the bad guys don’t get away from him is the dogged determination which forms the core of who the Bond character is. I think the rougher, tougher Bond is an obvious reflection on society today and what we want to see in a hero. Not so much a person who can dodge a bullet, but one who can take two shots to the leg, one to the arm and an uppercut, yet still win the fight.

Surrounding Bond as always are a bevy of beautiful women and a cabal of agents, both on his side and against. Gemma Arterton was mentioned a while back, by myself and others, as a “Bond Girl”, yet in this episode she is actually not the top of that food chain. Olga Kurylenko is the alpha female here and is a much more complex character. In the beginning her and Bond are on completely different tracks, but over the course of ninety minutes of insanity their paths intertwine, both strategically and emotionally. While not being a complete knock out performance, she is steadily improving over her turns in the unfortunate back-to-back duo of Hitman and Max Payne. Gemma, definitely worth mentioning, does finally bring a little taste of the classic Bond, just enough for an homage to the old days of Connery and Moore. Her sultry style hearkens back to the female characters of the early films and makes us remember why we love to visit the world of Bond so much. Also, without revealing a blatant spoiler, her role brings up the most direct recall from one of the most well known Bond moments. Feel free to let me know if you see it (it’s hard to miss). Now Bond would be nothing without a dastardly villain to track down and capture and this time it’s provided to us by Mathieu Amalric. A very popular and well rewarded star in the French cinema, this marked the American debut of Mathieu, who played the corrupt CEO with the world’s creepiest stare, Dominic Greene. While I do understand not every Bond villain has to be one who can last a round with him in a fist fight, in fact many of them don’t fit that category, but something about the final confrontation between these two didn’t sit right. So much had to be stacked against Bond to make this even halfway feasible and even then I found myself wondering why it was lasting so long. In cases like this, I find it’s better to give the villain a skilled right hand man, who endures the final fight, and let the boss deliver a final speech before giving up or blowing up.

Orbiting around Bond are some other side characters, but the only ones worth mentioning are Judi Dench who returns to continue her role as M, Jeffery Wright as the CIA agent with a working conscience and Giancarlo Giannini as Mathis, the convict turned trusted friend of Bond. All of these actors did a fine job in their limited screen time, but even they couldn’t hold up the lack of plot or story connectivity.

Recommendation: Quantum of Solace is good for some action, but a lackluster follow-up to Casino Royale, the relaunch of the Bond franchise. The execs are going to have to wipe the drawing board clean once again and see if they can’t relight the spark they just had, because one more like this and the fickle crowd will start murmuring to fix the problem with yet another new actor as Bond, which is not the answer. Plus, in my humble opinion, Daniel Craig was born to play this part. So, catch the afternoon matinee if you are drawn to the tradition, but if not, try re-watching Casino Royale. Homemade popcorn is better anyway.

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