skip to main |
skip to sidebar
This fourth Die Hard movie is a pleasant surprise. Though they’ve taken the annoying tact of truncating the “f” word off the end of John McClane’s trademark catchphrase, otherwise the hard-hitting, beat to a bloody pulp edge that these movies have always had remains. Director Len Wiseman accomplishes that inside a PG-13 rating by taking the film right to the MPAA’s edge. He’s appeased the Fox executives desire to make it teen friendly by shaving inches (blood spatters only 4 inches instead of 11), and still leaves enough room for McClane to punch the shit out of all of that prime demo pandering crap.
Die Hard 4 fits together in much the same way Die Hard 3 did, with maybe a little bit of True Lies mixed in. Instead of being locked in a building or an airport the way he was in 1 and 2, McClane is sent roving across the countryside with a sidekick. In 3 that sidekick was Samuel L. Jackson. In this one it’s Justin Long as Matt Farrell, a computer hacker in over his head. The country’s computer infrastructure is under attack by high-tech terrorists, and McClane and Farrell end up being our last line of defense through a series of completely bogus, silly plot coincidences which you won’t care about since you’ll be too busy watching McClane fall down an elevator shaft.
The action is faced paced and hard hitting. Wiseman has done a meticulous job of editing the film, staying right with the action and the gore until the last possible second, when it might push the film over the R-rated edge, and then jumping away from it to something else. He does it so skillfully you probably won’t even notice the Hard that’s missing, by the time you walk out of the theater your brain will have automatically filled it all in. However, maybe he should have also edited out most of the movie’s driving scenes. It’s hard to believe when you consider how seamless the rest of the effects work in the movie is, but most of the film’s driving scenes look like something that fell out of 1957. It’s so bad it’s jarring. At times it’s almost laughably obvious that Willis and Long are sitting in a fake car in front of a green screen. You’d think they’d be able to do something that Hollywood has been doing right for decades. I guess they spent their effects budget on helicopters. Given the choice, I’d have gone with exploding whirlybirds too.
Willis is still great as McClane and I’m starting to think this is one character that’s only going to get better as he gets older. By the time Willis is 80, I’d be perfectly happy to see McClane wheeled in to take over for Bruce Campbell’s Elvis in some sort of nursing-home based Bubba Ho-Tep sequel. The older he gets, the crankier he gets, and the more fun there is to be had. It helps that he has such a good rapport with Justin Long. Long is sometimes hit or miss. He’s good in movies like Galaxy Quest and Idiocracy, but he’s sort of a waste of space in Accepted. In Live Free or Die Hard he’s at his best, and his chemistry with Willis works. Special thanks to the script, which doesn’t turn Long’s character into one of those boring hacker fountains of techno-babble. Instead that role is filled by Kevin Smith, in a cameo as the stereotypical, basement dwelling, computer nerd. Kevin’s a master communicator so he’s great on screen, but the films seems to treat him as if he’s twelve instead of thirty-seven. Something about that’s not right, and it’s no fault of Kevin’s.
If there’s any real criticism to be leveled at Live Free or Die Hard though, it’s that the movie never really shows us anything new. The action is big and fun, but it’s not exactly groundbreaking and for the most part it’s a bunch of riffs on action sequences we’ve seen before either in Die Hard movies or in other, inferior action films. It doesn’t help that the villains and their master plan are kind of a bore. Sure they’ve cooked up an intricate scheme, unfortunately it’s a lot like the one used by Simon Gruber in Die Hard: With a Vengeance except instead of dump trucks these bad guys are doing everything with computers. Dump trucks are a lot more interesting. Because the script is so intent on being hip with modern technology, a good portion of the film’s most evil moments are spent watching bad guys type furiously at computers. Luckily it’s not long before the not so technologically savvy McClane picks up a laptop and uses it to bash someone over the head.
The bottom line here is that Live Free or Die Hard will fit pretty comfortably on a shelf with the rest of the Die Hard movies. If you’re one of those people who thinks that the only good Die Hard movie was the first one, then this isn’t going to change your mind. On the other hand, if you’re like me and you think Die Hard: With a Vengeance was a blast, then you’re going to feel much the same way about this one. McClane is back!
The first complaint you're going to hear about Pathfinder from people is that it’s not historically accurate. Viking helmets have horns on them, they landed in the wrong part of the country, etc. That complaint is easily addressed. The subtitle of Pathfinder (although it appears nowhere in the movie) is “Legend of the Ghost Warrior.” It’s a legend – it doesn’t have to be historically accurate. Even though the subtitle is in name only, the opening of the movie specifically addresses that “the legend is what follows” in the movie. In fact, that “legend” business probably saves the story from a lot of potential problems, giving the filmmakers an instant excuse to address movie issues.
The story centers around a Viking child who is beaten and left for dead by his people for refusing to hurt an Indian child. The Indians find him and raise him as one of their own. Fifteen years later, the Vikings return and the boy, named Ghost, helps defend his people from their attackers, “the dragon people.”
So Karl Urban plays a character who was resistant to combat as a child, was raised among Indians, but still has excellent ability with sword, shield, and armor? Easy explanation – it’s the stuff of legends. Legendary figures have always had bigger than life skills, so the fact that a pacifistic child who is raised in a culture that doesn’t use these kinds of weapons is irrelevant. He’s a legend. This also can be used to excuse the fact that he still speaks the Viking language with ease and at no point exhibits the sound or feel for the language of the people who raised him. Legends can do that sort of stuff. Just look at Paul Bunyan or Pecos Bill. I may not like it, but at least it makes sense in the context of the “legend” idea.
What isn’t the stuff of legends, and isn’t written off as easily as the massive characterization problems, is the horrific filmmaking on display Pathfinder. This, ladies and gentlemen, is what happens when you give a feature film to a music video director who has no ability beyond the three-minute format. Director Marcus Nispel shows every trait of “MTV filmmaking” from a shaky camera during action sequences that moves so much it left me dizzy for twenty minutes after the movie, to quick editing to help build tension. One particular scene, featuring Ghost riding a shield down a snow covered mountain (again – legendary), held no shot for more than two-three seconds. I know. I counted.
The introduction calls the movie a legend, but Nispel’s visual approach is anything but. The film has a grainy, stark contrasted look that probably hides much in the way of mistakes, but also hides most details. While it has an interesting effect on the Viking warriors, making them huge, lumbering shadows of dread, it creates a tone to the movie typically reserved for realistic environments, further enhanced by a washed out color scheme. That tone completely contradicts the legendary theme behind the story. At the same time, it sets the viewer off. Why would either the Vikings or the Indians want to live in such a dreary world?
It’s not just the visual style Nispel approaches the film with, or the MTV filmmaking at work. There are basic tenants of filmmaking that are completely absent here. There are rarely any establishing shots, so the passage of time and place is completely lost on the audience. One scene has the Vikings chasing Ghost and his companions through caves, but there is never any idea given how close any of them are to each other. Typically you establish the scene, then play within it, but the movie is devoid of any of those basic principles.
Pathfinder is not just a bad movie, it’s the equivalent of a cinematic abortion. Some of the horrible ideas can be written off due to the tale’s status as a “legend” but that doesn’t excuse the technically poor work behind the movie. It’s safe to say that Karl Urban and Clancy Brown deserve better than a movie like this, and if this is the best Nispel can do he’s about to give Uwe Boll some competition in the Worst Director category. At least Boll can excuse away his work as a tax write off. There’s no excuse for Pathfinder.
There are probably hundreds of different ways people define a chick-flick, but I’ve discovered a movie that I would use as a new standard to which all such movies should be compared. Overbearing mothers…supportive sisters…worthless, runaway fathers... excessive furniture moving... an irrational need to have a phone conversation in the middle of a date... chocolate soufflé... it has everything I imagine such a movie would need and then some. The problem is that cramming all those chick-flick elements into a single film has pushed out a lot of the stuff that helps make a movie enjoyable to watch.
Daphne Wilder (Diane Keaton) is the kind of doting, interfering, emotionally addicted woman who would have crafted the ultimate momma’s boy. However, as fate would have it, she only produced three daughters before her husband fled the scene. The older daughters, level headed psychiatrist Maggie (Laura Graham) and fun loving Mae (Piper Perabo) both managed to find their perfect man and wind up happily married. The youngest, Milly (Mandy Moore), hasn’t had such good fortune, unwittingly stumbling into one deadbeat heartbreaker after another. Daphne is bound and determined to find the man she thinks would be best for Milly, even if it means taking out a personal ad and screening each individual applicant herself.
The manhunt turns up copious candidates, but only one passes muster: Jason (Tom Everett Scott), the financially successful but essentially soulless architect. Daphne makes the match, but much to her dismay Milly falls for another guy at the exact same time, the sweet, free spirited single father, Johnny (Gabriel Macht). Milly is pinned to both men, on the one side by her heart and on the other side by her mother. Both guys are painfully stereotypical, but that seems to be intentional. Heaven forbid anything take the spotlight off of the ladies.
Once the scene is set the movie wallows around in one-dimensional character interactions occasionally interrupted by over-the-top physical gags. For example, in one scene Daphne and her daughters discuss their underwear preferences and Milly’s man problems while changing clothes before heading into a spa. Moments later a Korean masseuse jumps up on Daphne’s back and, despite her flailing protestations, begins bending her like a pretzel in an effort to get her to loosen up.
Don’t even get me started on Daphne’s bad fortune of twice having her daughters call her on the phone just after her computer gets stuck on a porn site while she’s trying to find an online matchmaking service. And then there’s the fact that the family can’t make it through a wedding without someone sneaking off to have sex or the way in which the women all seem to relate to each other by exchanging pastries. The movie might just as well have been called Life As A Cake.
About two-thirds of the way through, Because I Said So takes a bizarre twist when Daphne has an all too convenient encounter with Johnny’s father, Joe (Stephen Collins). Swept off her feet, Daphne finally finds someone who can help her realize the error of her interfering ways. While cute in a “you can find love later in life” sort of way, it has the creepy side effect of making Milly and Johnny step-brother and sister. Of course, that doesn’t stand in their way. This is a chick-flick, and the ending is just as predictable as you’d expect.
For all the movie’s failings, you can’t fault the cast. The actors all have the ability to play the roles, but there’s little they can do to overcome the triteness of the script. Diane Keaton, who has made these sorts of extreme matriarchal roles a staple of her career, tries her best to breathe life into the flatly written Daphne. Mandy Moore proves yet again that she has the chops to play a solid leading character even if she can’t get through the movie without a musical number or two. Stephen Collins and Gabriel Macht are the perfect sensitive male father/son team, knowing how to tame their women’s wild hearts while not being afraid to get a little teary eyed in front of them. .
Too silly to be a romantic comedy, Because I Said So is a full blown comic estrogen-fest that gets so caught up in trying to be funny while identifying with the hazards of female familial interpersonal relationships that it almost forgets other important little details like plot and character development. Moment to moment the comedic bits and semi-dramatic scenes work well enough, but strung together into a single film they end up as a flimsy, pseudo-emotional mess.
It’d be very, very easy to write off Who’s Your Caddy? entirely. One of those comedies where black people smoke pot and direct rap videos while white people wear collared shirts and play golf, it’s little more than a vehicle for a lot of fart jokes, midget jokes and all kinds of slapstick humor. If you thought Caddyshack was too classy, this might be just what you were looking for.
So I can’t in good faith give Caddy a good review-- it feels overlong at 90 minutes, and is almost completely predictable-- but it’s not a total waste of time either. There’s some fun to be had, particularly in the early half of the film, both from entirely standard culture clash jokes-- rims on the golf cart!-- and some surprising, inspired nonsense. The groan-inducing pun in the title isn’t all there is to this ultimately well-meaning comedy.
Our hero here is C-Note, a.k.a. Christopher Hawkins (Outkast’s Big Boi, a.k..a Antwan Patton), a rap mogul who comes with his posse and two Range Rovers to the snooty Carolina Pines Golf & Polo Club seeking membership. The club’s president, Cummings (Jeffrey Jones, best known as the principal from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off), is horrified by the idea, and denies Hawkins membership on the spot. Hawkins responds in kind by buying property adjacent to the golf course and effectively bullying his way in.
Cummings hires a comely black lawyer (Tamala Jones) to try to settle with Hawkins, who spends the film seducing her and bringing her to the side of the good guys. In the meantime, Hawkins’ crew of oddball characters get into various sorts of trouble, from Big Large’s (Faizon Love) naked foray in the clubhouse bathroom to Lady G’s (Sherri Shepard) reunion with her paroled husband on a dance floor. A handful of white people get to join the fun, notably Cummings’ son Wilson (Andy Milonakis) and a talented caddy (Cam Gigandet) with big dreams.
The acting in the film is by far the best part, with Patton making a charismatic leading man, and the supporting characters earning all the laughs (Love and Shepard both shine). Jeffrey Jones is game to essentially reprise his Bueller role, and blusters through the film appropriately. There’s plenty of terrible acting going on too- Gigandet is a huge blank spot, and Milonakis is just about intolerable-- but everyone mostly seems to be having a good time, and it shows.
The trouble in Caddy, oddly enough, comes from the movie’s attempts at actual emotion, including Hawkins’ romance with lawyer Shannon and a back story about Hawkins’ father-- a caddy at the club-- and his tarnished legacy that his son seeks to restore. Those who came for a good-time comedy full of booty-shakin’ and pot-smoking will be bored, while those who came to see an actual story are clearly in the wrong theater. The film hints at moments of anarchic weirdness-- a man called “Reverend J.J. Jackson” emerges out of nowhere at a key moment to deliver a rousing sermon, though no one has any idea who he is-- but eventually drags itself into a standard redemption story that’s no fun for anyone.
The lackadaiscal plot, cheesy jokes and lack of originality make Caddy nothing more than a trashy comedy, but at least it’s occasionally an entertaining one. Full disclosure: I saw this movie primarily because it was filmed in my hometown of Aiken, South Carolina, and expected to spend the whole time scanning the crowd for extras I recognized. The fact that my attention stayed with the action is testament in the film’s favor-- but it still didn’t make me any less anxious to leave when its 90 minutes were up.
This fourth Die Hard movie is a pleasant surprise. Though they’ve taken the annoying tact of truncating the “f” word off the end of John McClane’s trademark catchphrase, otherwise the hard-hitting, beat to a bloody pulp edge that these movies have always had remains. Director Len Wiseman accomplishes that inside a PG-13 rating by taking the film right to the MPAA’s edge. He’s appeased the Fox executives desire to make it teen friendly by shaving inches (blood spatters only 4 inches instead of 11), and still leaves enough room for McClane to punch the shit out of all of that prime demo pandering crap.
