Surprisingly good.

I can honestly say I have not to date really been a Dwayne Johnson fan.  Not that I dislike him by any means.  In action movies he has always delivered a solid action perfomance.  It’s just that in my mind he never stood out.  Until now I guess I thought of him as the carbon dioxide of action films; necessary on some level I’m sure (photosynthesis) but not nearly as interesting or fun as some of the other gases (oxygen or helium, for example).

The other thing about Dwayne Johnson is when you see him in a film you can pretty much put the movie into one of two categories: either an over the top action flick that stresses explosions over story or a dopey kids movie where he flies around on a giant bee or something.  I honestly expected to see the first type when I rolled into the theater to see Snitch.

I now have to revise my opinion of Mr. Johnson.  This film exceeds his normal boundaries in all ways by being well written, interesting, and founded on telling a story not showing car chases.  I must applaud Dwayne for choosing it, and then proceeding to deliver a very credible performance.  I was engaged with his character more than any other role I have seen him in and enjoyed his story very much.  There were little character things I really liked, like his character staying at the warehouse to replace a shot out signal light on his brand new big rig.

That’s not to say the movie was flawless.  There were a few issues, and you could occasionally see him revert to his super tough action guy persona.  However, like a butterfly emerging timidly from it’s chrysalis and needed to flap it’s wings in order to dry and strengthen them I am going to say this film is the start of a more serious acting career and am very interested in seeing what he does next.

The other thing I enjoyed about this film is they managed to keep the action exciting and yet very believable.  There were no monstrous explosions or gun fights where the good guy is effectively immune to bullets.  What action there was seemed very realistic and there was a very believable Road Warrior-esque truck chase scene at the end that I really enjoyed.  The truth is I’m getting sick of bigger explosions and car wrecks (just wait for my review of the new Die Hard film).  Given that it has been established that the CGI and special effects technology is going to be amazing for any big budget film these days going bigger and more “exciting” just makes a film look more childish.  This might be a positive symptom of a movie coming from a real life story (I remember thinking the same things about real life based movie Unstoppable) or it just might be a very smart and savvy decision made by the director to not gimmick his film up.

The story.  John Mathews (Dwayne Johnson-Fast Five, Race to Witch Mountain, Journey 2: the Mysterious Island) owns a successful construction business in Missouri.  His dopey 18 year old son (Rafi Gavron-the Cold Light of Day, Breaking and Entering, Mine Games) gets busted for receiving drugs in a way that has him being mostly innocent and due to draconian mandatory Federal sentencing laws gets 10 years.  John begs the DA (Susan Sarandon-the Rocky Horror Picture Show, Thelma and Louise, Dead Man Walking) to help but she says she won’t do anything unless the kid helps her bust other drug dealers.  John instead offers to help her himself and contacts a ex con working for him (Jon Bernthal-the Walking Dead, the Ghost Writer, Rampart.  Walking Dead image courtesy of the Zombie T Shirt category) to introduce him to a local drug dealer (Michael Kenneth Williams-the Road, Gone Baby Gone, Brooklyn’s Finest).  With the help of another DEA agent (Barry Pepper-Saving Private Ryan, True Grit, the Green Mile) they set up an operation where John uses one of his trucks to transport drugs.

The deal is soured when a rival drug cartel attacks them and John impresses the head guy with his coolness under fire.  At the drop off bust rather than get the local guy the DEA agent opts to go up the chain to the bigger fish.  John takes some convincing but in the end decides to help them out with a few twists of his own.

The stars.  Good story.  While it sounds like another drug action movie there were a lot of things going on, like a strong social commentary regarding the mandatory drug laws and the struggle of an ex con trying to get his life in order.  Lots of plates spinning that made the story really engaging.  Two stars.  Good acting from pretty much everyone, especially Jon Bernthal IMO.  One star.  The limited action felt realistic and also felt like a necessary part of the story.  In other words, the action facilitated the plot instead of the plot being a rickety rack to hang the action on.  There were no tacked on scenes that made the film seem stupider.  Two stars.  Overall an impressive and enjoyable film.  Two stars.  Total: seven stars.

The black holes.  While I understand the director was trying to say something about the unfairness of mandatory drug laws after a while I got a little tired of him beating it into our heads with the subtlety of a baseball bat with nails driven through it.  One black hole.  Once in a while you could see the old Dwayne Johnson acting style bleed through, setting him at odds with his characters main tone.  One black hole.  Total: two black holes.

Five stars total.  A decent film worth watching.  Date movie?  Maybe.  It’s not too action so she might get into the story but no real romance besides the fact that the two main dudes are married with kids and love their families.  While nothing in this film will offend or turn her off, there is nothing here to really aid in your campaign to get her clothes off.  Bathroom break?  That’s easy.  Any of the scenes where John goes to visit his son in prison.  There is a plot point established there but it is running over three scenes so you could easily miss one and lose nothing.

Thanks for reading.  Kind of a short review but honestly the ones I like end up getting the kid treatment.  I did see the new Die Hard yesterday as well and just might have a few more words to share on that train wreck later on.  Look for that review later today or tomorrow.  Follow me on Twitter @NerdKungFu.  Feel free to post comments on this film or my review at the bottom of this article.  Off topic questions or comments can be emailed to david@nerdkungfu.com.  Talk to you soon.

Dave

Definitely has a pulse.

Thousands of years from now when alien archeologists are sifting through the decayed ruins of our once mighty civilization some clever PhD student will write a thesis claiming that that the decline and fall of Western Civilization (if you know where that came from we should hang out and listen to music some time) started when the entertainment priests decreed that all forms of film need to appeal to to teenage girls. When you think about it, the film Interview with a Vampire turned vampires from horrible blood sucking monsters into teeny bopper dreamboats that goth girls swoon over, setting the stage for the inevitable worst case scenario, the entire Twilight series. We have recently seen the noble film role of brutal melee combat switched over with the Hunger Games, and now we see them make a stab at turning zombies into adolescent romance fulfillment.

First of all let me do a huge public service to any dumb teenage girls who think having a zombie boyfriend sounds like a good idea. The idea of zombies being so charmed by you and falling in love is ludicrous. No matter how much like a hipster dreamboat he may look like, when he gets close he will smell like death and try to eat your brains (new Caution sign courtesy of the Zombie T Shirt category). Of course, the same thing could be very well said about vampires (that they are evil blood suckers who only want your life essence and burst into flame in daylight, not pretty boy sparkle fairies) so I doubt any of you will listen.

On the drive home from this film I was worried that this, like Interview, would be patient zero for the deluge of zombie romance films but upon reflection I decided this is a seed not likely to take root. When you think about it Hollywood is fighting an uphill battle trying to convince us that zombies are sexy. They got away with in this film (more on that later) but the fact is they are animate rotting corpses and if there is anything remotely romantic about that for you do the world a favor and move to a pod at the bottom of the ocean please.

So this film was cute and I did indeed enjoy it. However, it could have been amazing and instead opted for trite and cute.  This is the only real issue I have with this film. You see, the idea of societal integration of zombies has been well explored in great movies like Fido and Shaun of the Dead. In those films zombies are still rotting corpses but uses are found for them. In this film the zombies are coming back to life, but we only see ones who do are fortunate enough to not be missing their lower jaw, or have half their face rotted away.

Think how shocking and cool the story could have been if the main zombie had not been a hipster pretty boy (by the way, in retrospect it is pretty amazing how well hipster guys play zombies. When you think about it there is something zombie-ish about all hipsters: bad hair, pale skin, poor posture, and clothing that looks like they crawled out of a shallow grave wearing it. Put a picture of a zombie next to a picture of a guy stumbling home from Zeitgeist in San Francisco and I defy you to accurately tell the difference) but instead been a gross, rotting zombie missing half of one cheek (classic image) and most of one arm who starts to recover his faculties and falls in love with a living human.  She then falls for him not because he looks like Elliot Smith but because he saves her life over and over again and shows that he cares for her.  That would be a great story.  Then imagine of all the zombies regained their facilities, even the Boneys, forcing humans to reintegrate with walking skeletons. But no, all the recovered zombies have to be more or less perfectly human and all the bad guys have to be horribly disfigured. Lazy.

By they way, for those of you who know me and believe me to be a zombie purist and are wondering why I am not incensed about the idea of zombies recovering their brains let me tell you that as a concept that one has been long established in books like The Omega Man and most of the Romero films. The idea is that as time goes by they learn more using what brains they have left. I don’t have an issue with it.

The story. It is eight years past the Zombie Apocalypse and power is still running in some airport. A zombie later named R (Nocholas Hoult-X-Men First Class, About a Boy, A Single Man) stumbles around with his friend M (Rob Corddry-Hot Tub Time Machine, Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay, What Happens in Vegas) running an inner monolog narrative that details the undead life. He collect things like vinyl records and knows how to play them (using batteries that have lasted eight years as well). Meanwhile in the last remaining human stronghold eight cool kids with no training or experience are sent out in the wild to recover drugs or something. Among them is Julie (Teresa Palmer-I am Number Four, Bedtime Stories, the Sorcerers Apprentice), the daughter of the local dictator (the great John Malkovich-Being John Malkovich, Burn After Reading, Con Air). They are in a hospital when R and a bunch of his cronies attack. The kids show how incompetent they are (one guy yells “Shoot the head!”.  Thanks Captain Obvious) and get pretty much all chomped. R eats the brains of Julie’s boyfriend Perry (Dave Franco-21 Jump Street, Superbad, Fright Night) and gains some of his memories. He has some kind of emotional reawakening and falls in love with Julie.  He rescues her from the group and hides her in his plane. At that point the film devolves into a goofy romantic survival movie, with R trying to keep Julie both alive and interested in him.

Meanwhile the “Boneys” (zombies who have degenerated to the point where they have no capacity for emotion at all and are walking skeletons) have a problem with all this newfound emotion. R’s reawakening spreads to M and then to all the others. The humans, zombies, and Boneys all scrum up in an epic battle. I don’t want to spoil the ending, but if you have any kind of deductive reasoning (and by any kind I mean if you can deduce that jumping into a swimming pool will get you wet) then literally no part of this film will surprise you.

The stars. Cute and fun. Two stars. Interesting twist on zombies. One star. Zombie movie. One star. John Malkovich. One star. The new creepy-old-man love of my life Analeigh Tipton (Crazy, Stupid Love, the Green Hornet, Damsel in Distress) was looking super cute in this, and Teresa Palmer is pretty easy on the eyes too. One star. Overall an enjoyable movies. Two stars.  Total: eight stars.

The black holes.  Trite, with missed opportunities to be awesome.  One black hole.  A four year old could have predicted how this film was going to end (and, for that matter, pretty much every scene in it).  I guess plot twists are passé.  One black hole.  Every kid in this film, human or zombie, reminded me of every super cool kid in high school that I wanted to murder.  Also the main kid might have been a zombie, but if hipster were a disease I know what he died of.  One black hole. Total: three black holes.

So five stars total. A good movie, and worth seeing. Definitely on the light side, so don’t expect too much. I think even a hard core zombie fan could enjoy this as long as he or she doesn’t take it too seriously. Date movie? If she is into zombies, vampires, or anything even remotely nerdy than absolutely. If this doesn’t get you laid I don’t know what will. If she is not into any of these things she will probably still like it as it is cute and romantic, but she might be grossed out by some of the undead stuff. Bathroom break? There is a scene where R and Julie shack up in a house for the night that is not really critical for the story. Most of this film is worth seeing and it’s only 97 minutes so I’d say try to hold it.

Thanks for reading. I have been really kind in my reviews lately.  I think I need to buckle down and see something awful so I can remember what is like to deliver righteous vengeance on to a deserving bad flick. Looks like Hansel & Gretal wins that honor. Follow me on Twitter @Nerdkungfu.  Feel free to post any comments on this film or my review at the bottom of the page (if you don’t see a review section click here).  Off topic questions or suggestions can be emailed to david@nerdkungfu.com.  Talk to you soon.

Dave

So a friend of mine sent me a link to a casting call for people who like to dress up as zombies to try out for an episode of the great show Mythbusters, filmed right here in the Bay Area (Reject Your Reality image courtesy of the TV Show T Shirts).  The notice is calling for people willing to show up in camera ready zombie attire with makeup.  They need to have full range of movement, including head and torso and need to be able to don helmets or torso padding.  Given how cool both zombies and this show are, my mind is spinning as to what zombie myth they plan to test.

When you think about it, due to the fact that they want you to show up in zombie drag they probably aren’t trying to create zombies out of people.  I doubt they want to test the whole shoot zombies in the head to kill them either, since that works pretty well for living humans too.  Could they be testing to see if a human can outrun a massive herd of shambling humans?  The helmet and torso padding mention is throwing me too.  Maybe they are training dogs to attach zombie heads?  I am totally confused.

If any of you try out and get in let me know what they are working on.  I am dying of curiosity.  If you can’t talk about it for press reasons I will keep it secret until the episode comes out, but I kind of have to know.  Given the massive font of creative cos play and zombie love that is here in the Bay Area they should be getting some of the best zombies this side of the Walking Dead.

If you are interested in participating check out their zombie application form.  Good luck, and if you do it I hope you have a blast.

Dave

Awesomely horrible.

I am in fact a fan of the whole Resident Evil series.  I played the games years ago, and enjoy the movies for the pure brain candy that they are.  They serve purely as a vehicle to give Mila Jovovich a chance to slow motion kick the hell out of zombies, mutants, and Umbrella Corporation employees (Umbrella logo shirt from the Zombie T Shirt category) and in that narrow category this one is dead on.

That being said, they are definitely the film equivalent of a Caesars salad made of lead paint chips, steadily eroding the average cinema IQ of the movie going audience.  The thing to remember is the movies view exactly like watching someone play the Resident Evil video games, and Capcom is not well know for crafting amazing (or even coherent) stories in their video games as well.

This is the point in any discussion of the relative cinema merits of a RE film that someone has to stand up and say “What the hell were you expecting?  It’s Resident Evil!“  This is an extremely valid point and one I wont belabor.  If you go to an RE film expecting anything worthwhile you should dedicate your life to finding the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, as I guarantee you will have more chance of success.

Resident Evil: Retribution is a particularly harsh example of great action and special effect glued to a script that would bring shame to the writers of 80′s porn movies.  The story seems embarrassed to show itself and for good reason.  It peaks around the corner of an action scene timorously, squeaks out a few lines of expository dialog, and then hides in the closet weeping quietly while Alice and her crew rush to the next set piece for slow motion action mayhem.  Keeping in line with the current ugly trend in movie making there is nothing really original here at all.  The film could be called Resident Evil: Regurgitation as every villain, monster, and supporting hero has been vomited up from past movies including the Red Queen and Rain from the first film, as well as pretty much all of Alice’s past boyfriends, Jill Valentine, and assassin Ada Wong.

The story actually defies description.  I was awake and alert and I honestly can’t tell you what the hell was going on.  Back in November I wrote a post about the Umbrella Corporation and what the hell their deal was, and never were my points more driven home.  How exactly does destroying the human race and turning them all into zombies or biological monsters generate profit?  I’ve also never seen a company more in love with it’s own logo.  Every door, gun, knife, vehicle, pencil, and pot holder in the movie has an Umbrella logo on it.  I am going to have to remember that trick when my company is on its way to world domination (I think I need a cool logo first).

Anyway, Alice (Mila Jovovich-the whole RE series, the Fifth Element, the Three Musketeers) and starts off with a reverse action scene on a cargo ship from the last movie that is really, really freaking cool.  Unfortunately that sequence has nothing to do with the rest of the film and vanishes into the nether.  Alice wakes up almost naked on a giant Umbrella logo (by the way, I know this was supposed to hearken back to the first film but the garment they cooked up to almost but not quite show her naked made the thermal wraps she wore in the Fifth Element actually look functional.  Basically two square towels front and back held on with Scotch tape) and is tortured and interrogated for no apparent reason by Jill Valentine, who is under control of a mechanical spider.  She gets busted out by Luthor West (Boris Kodjoe) with help from Ada Wong (Bingbing Li).  There was some weird sequence of Alice living as a suburban housewife who’s community gets overrun with zombies and she has to escape with her hearing impaired daughter.

The story goes in all kinds of weird directions.  Rain (Michelle Rodriguez) shows up both as another suburban housewife and later as a mercenary out to kill Alice.  West sends in an assault team comprised of a bunch of other old characters.  There is something about Alice having the key to human survival and they have to break her out of the Umbrella base, which is an abandoned Russian sub base except there are still some nuclear subs around.  Jill and Rain are after them, along with a legion of zombie soldiers and massive mutants.  They move from set piece to set piece (literally.  The base has reproductions of Tokyo, Moscow, etc and they have to fight through each one).  There is a big fight at the end, and eventually Alice escapes with her daughter into the prelude to the next sequel.

The stars.  If you like brainless action and hot women in skin tight S&M outfits this movie will work for you.  Two stars.  The CGI and filming were really, really good.  One star.  The fight choreography was brilliant and the complete opposite of the quick cut action that films have been using lately to avoid having to find actors who can actually fight.  One star.  All the monsters were gross and cool.  One star.  While I am of course a big Mila Jovovich fan I am actually giving a star for Bingbing Li.  Something about her with a gun strapped to her bare upper thigh exposed by the midriff slit in her hot red dress did things for me.  I can’t quite figure out what exactly but will think about it.  The only problem I would have dating her would be saying her name and not bursting into laughter (insensitive as hell, I know).  One star.  A movie that delivers exactly what the specific audience wants.  One star.  Total: seven stars.

The black holes.  If movie stories were babies, this one would not even qualify as afterbirth.  Two black holes.  This film borrowed so heavily from the previous movies that it’s debt must rival the national one.  One black hole.  In addition to being bad, the story left me really confused at points.  No one had a motivation they could articulate to do anything, leaving me without any kind of reason to even try to understand.  One black hole.  For a zombie movie I found this film really lacking in zombies.  One black hole.  The action, while good, bordered on the ridiculous at times.  It has always been pretty apparent that Alice is unbeatable, which tends to drain the tension from the scene.  One black hole.  Total: six black holes.

A grand total of one star.  Should you see it?  There really is only one reason to see this film, and that is if you are a fan of Resident Evil and have seen all the others previous to it.  If so you will enjoy the hell out of it.  The action is exactly what you want.  If you have not seen any of them or like to understand what the hell is going on don’t bother.  Date movie?  Hell no.  Bathroom break?  A bizarre side effect of having no real story in this movie is that none of the scenes are critical, but all of them are exciting and fun.  If you are enjoying the film I would say hold it for 95 minutes and if you are not go any time you like.

Thanks for reading.  More movies out this weekend, so look for something else soon.  Follow me on Twitter @Nerdkungfu.  Feel free to post any comment about this movie or my review here.  If you have an off topic question or suggestion feel free to email me at david@nerdkungfu.com.  Talk to you soon.

Dave

After Dave wrote his review for Hunger Games I went and checked it out.  I liked it.  Fun and entertaining.  But I was reading on line this morning that it looks like they are hiring the director who did I am Legend, a pretty lame movie.

The thing is, if you read the book I Am Legend (or Omega Man) was a pretty grim story about the end of humanity.  Francis Lawrence managed to miss the real point of both the book and Charlston Heston movie and instead made a dumb zombie survival movie.  The entire reason they called it I am Legend is the main guy is the legendary last human, bane of zombie culture.  In the movie Lawrence made there is no reason at all for the title.  Just another mediocre movie.

Lawrence also made Water for Elephants.  I didn’t see it, but Dave did and according to his review it sucked.  Other than there is no real reason why this guy should be working on he sequel to one of the biggest single movie openings in history.  Is it that hard to hire someone good?  Seriously, with enough money you could hire Scorsese.

That zombie shirt comes from Dave’s zombie t shirts, by the way.

Jason

So my best friend and I were discussing zombies this morning and came to the great debate of fast zombies versus slow zombies.  Like most things in life I have an opinion on this matter and have no problem sharing with all of you.

Proponents of slow zombies say that this is the classic mode for zombies, from the Romero days and beyond.  While capable of the occasional burst of speed when presented with a close victim, zombies have always moved with a slow, lumbering shamble and there is no reason to change that.  Slow zombies tend to be the ones who need to be shot in the head to kill and are otherwise impervious to most other damage.  They feel no pain or desire other than to eat the flesh (or brains) of the living.  They are literally animated rotting corpses and tend to show it (Zombie Target courtesy of the Zombie T-Shirt category).  Good slow zombie movies include any George Romero or Lugio Fulci films, Zombie Squad, Zombie Lake, the first two Resident Evil video games, the Walking Dead, Cemetery Man, Dead Snow, and Shaun of the Dead.

On the other hand, fans of fast zombies are quick to point out that the original zombie was not even a walking corpse but rather a drugged human in Haiti, and that the undead zombies are an evolution of zombiehood.  Why not then extend the evolution further and have faster and faster moving zombies?  Or, for that matter, why not have giant fast moving behemoths that are sort of related to zombies?  Most fast moving zombies actually tend to be infected humans and in a weird way are more closely related to the original Haitian zombies.  They therefore can be shot anywhere and be affected; however their total lack of fear or pain registration tends to make them pretty hard to put down.  They also tend to mutate and grow things like claws and super long tongues that can strangle you, which again calls the whole zombiedom into question.  Films that include fast zombies are 28 Days Later, Zombieland, Dawn of the Dead (the Zack Snyder remake), Return of the Living Dead, Dead Alive, and most modern video games like Left 4 Dead.

Honestly it boils down to tone, and for me slow zombies are what a zombie movie is all about.  If you give a zombie anything faster than a stumble you turn the movie from a zombie film to a horror film.  The zombies are just bad Freddy Kruggar clones sans sweater and claws, and fast motion belies the brainless nature that makes zombies less an active force bent on your destruction and more an unstoppable force of nature.  The menace of the zombies is not in one fast zombie sneaking in under your arc of fire and killing you.  It is in being overwhelmed by a stumbling horde of mindless eating machines.  True zombie movies are in truth survival movies, and the zombies themselves are just another obstacle to confront the protagonists, along with issues of shelter, food, and gas.

Like George Romero always implies in his films, the real danger in a zombie movie is other humans, not the zombies.  When you give zombies human-like abilities it degrades the zombie experience.

Thanks for reading.  As for movie reviews, this is one of the bleakest weekends ever for film releases.  Not only is there nothing I am excited to see, I can honestly say I am dreading most of them.  I will see something later tonight and write it up tomorrow, but I am not really gung ho for it.  Follow me on Twitter @Nerdkungfu or email me here with suggestions or ideas.  If you have an opinion on the fast zombie/slow zombie issue please post a comment here.  Talk to you soon.

Dave

So I just read online that Will Smith has agreed to do a sequel to I am Legend, the horrible remake of the really good Omega Man starring Charlton Heston.  Didn’t his character die at the end of I am Legend?  Unless they expect us to believe that he is such a bad ass he was able to fight off about 100 infected humans with a scalpel.  Also, didn’t he blow himself up with a grenade?

The really funny thing is the only thing they took from the book and movie was the title.  The reason it was called I am Legend was the one remaining human survivor wasn’t really a scientist.  He was a guy who would go out every day and kill the infected humans as they slept.  What he didn’t realize was that over time they were regaining control of their higher brain functions and were reforming society, just a sort of vampire/zombie can’t stand the light sort of way, and he was becoming a legend as a supernatural mass murderer.  Very cleverly done in my opinion.  This movie was total crap and the fact that it made serious money means the movie going audience is comprise of morons.

Dave doesn’t have any I Am Legend merchandise so I lifted this image from his zombie t shirts.  He says I should put in an image for each post.  It’s not really an infected human like in I am Legend.  More of a classic zombie.  You get the idea.

Jason

One thing it appears Dave and I agree on it’s that zombies rule and the Walking Dead is one of the greatest TV shows on right now.  Great story, great characters, and great zombies.  The good news is I just found out is that AMC has just ordered another 16 episodes is addition to the ones they are showing right now in season 2.  Excellent choice.  Of course it always makes me laugh when AMC does great original TV like the Walking Dead or Breaking Bad when their initials stand for American Movie Classics.  Shouldn’t they be showing Gone With the Wind all day or something?

Something that has always amused me about zombies is the guys who are huge fans and are hoping for the big zombie apocalypse (like Dave) are also the guys most likely to end up zombie chow in the first ten minutes.  Most of them seem to think hey are going to run around with a shotgun like on this zombie t shirt and be the hero of the wasteland, but based on what I have seen with regards to physical abilities things are going to go badly for them pretty quick.  I’m sure if zombie apocalypse took place in Warsong Gulch they would do fine, but anyone remember the scene in Zombieland when the main guy describes the reason cardio is so important?

Jason

Impossible to not enjoy it.

Another Tuesday, another $5 movie.  Thank you Regal.  Yes, as much as I enjoy dumping all over main stream movies, I have to say I quite enjoyed this film.  I think I can sum it up in three words: great chase scenes.  Director Brad Bird (the Iron Giant, the Incredibles, Up, Ratattoule) has revealed a hidden talent for really amazing chase scenes that make most other chase scenes look like three-legged races.  Furthermore, not only are they exciting and fun, but he manages to merge them into the story seamlessly.  They don’t at all feel forced into the screenplay in an attempt to showcase his ego.  Really well done.

Before any of you call to see if I contracted brain fever, yes there were issues with this movie and I will get into them shortly.  Just overall a fun time.

Also, what is up with Tom Cruise?  And for once I mean that question in a good way.  I don’t know if it’s makeup, CGI, Just For Men, healthy living and exercise, or the magic power of the Church of Scientology, but he looks like he hasn’t aged a day in the last ten years.  It’s bizarre.

Anyway, the movie.  Tom Cruise (Minority Report, Top Gun, Jerry McGuire) reprises his role as Ethan Hunt, IMF super spy.  He starts the movie with a really cool prison break scene where he and a disheveled guy bust out of a Russian gulag.  He has been rescued by two other IMF agents, the great Simon Pegg (Paul, Hot Fuzz, Shaun of the Dead.  Shaun image courtesy of the Zombie T Shirts catagory) and the hot Paula Patton (Precious, Deja Vu).  Their mission is to break into the Kremlin and gather intel on some guy who literally wants to blow up the world (more on that later).  Really cool high technology spy stuff happens.  They get betrayed and the President has to enable the Ghost Protocol and disavow them entirely.  The team is joined by disgraced agent Brandt (Jeremy Renner – the Hurt Locker, 28 Weeks Later) and have to save the world.

Literally.  The bad guy (Michael Nyqvist – the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Abduction) wants to start a nuclear war.  I don’t want to get too far into the story, as it is good and I expect you all to see it.  Spy hijinks ensue.  Stuff gets blown up, people get chased, cars get wrecked, there is a pretty cool cat fight (Paula Patton versus Lea Seydoux – Inglorious Bastards, Robin Hood, Midnight in Paris), and none of the action or technology suspended my disbelief so high that it hurt my brain.  There is a serious vertigo scene, so if that affects you maybe go to the restroom at that moment.  It won’t catch you by surprise.

The stars.  Great chase scenes.  One star.  Overall good story, with a level of complexity normally missing from mainstream movies. They also managed to avoid the burning need to explain everything to the audience, which I appreciate.  You could follow the story but you had to pay attention.  Two stars.  Simon Pegg.  One star.  The two women were hot.  One star.  Although it galls me like a hot poker you-know-where, Tom Cruise was pretty good.  One star.  Overall the action was really good, and they didn’t resort to the quick-cut fighting that bugs me.  One star for hiring a fight choreographer.  The movie delivered the rarest gift a jaded movie critic can receive: actual excitement.  There were a few scenes where I was literally gripping my armrests.  The vertigo scene in particular.  Two stars.  A PG-13 rating that felt appropriate and didn’t need to go up or down.  One star.  Pacing was awesome.  It was 133 minutes that felt like an hour in a good way.  One star.  Two bonus stars for overall great movie experience.  Total: thirteen stars.

The black holes.  The most obvious, glaringly stupid one has to be the motivation for the villain.  He plans to start a nuclear war because he thinks it would be fun or something.  That’s it?  There is no political or monetary motivation you could add in to make him more believable?  Two black holes.  This next one is kind of petty, but one of the things I have always enjoyed from the entire Mission Impossible franchise is the theme music.  From the TV show I think it really brought the whole thing home, and added a lot of excitement to any of the shows or movies.  In Ghost Protocol there is about a 20 second clip of a modified version of it and that’s it.  It’s like they were under contract to use it and did so grudgingly.  One black hole.  There were a number of tangential plot devices that I felt could have either been expanded upon or dropped entirely.  One black hole.  In particular there was a seduction scene involving an Indian billionaire that I felt was completely worthless.  One black hole for that.  Total: five black holes.

In the irksome but not black hole worthy category, I have one.  Before 9/11 whenever something catastrophically bad had to happen to an American city it was always New York.  After 9/11 New York became sacrosanct and now whenever something has to suck on an apocalyptic scale it always seems to be San Francisco, the city I live 20 minutes from.  San Francisco is about as far from the mainstream politics of America as a major city can get.  Have movie makers never heard of Chicago, Detroit, Miami, or Los Angeles?  Not that I wish ill on any of those cities, but when you really look at it’s value as a military or terror target San Francisco is kind of stupid.  I guess it has a distinctive skyline and that’s what Hollywood is looking for.

Final total of eight stars, a great score.  If you like fun and excitement see this movie.  Do it in a theater as I honestly believe there are a few scenes that would lose significant impact if watched at home.  Kind of weak as a date movie in my opinion, as Tom Cruise is still considered hot and a lot of women have been fantasizing about him for years.  If you do take a date to see this be sure to talk about how crazy Tom Cruise is.

Thanks for reading.  I am starting to work my my end of the year movie awards, and coming up with funny titles and categories like “The Who Brought This Guy Award” for the most unnecessary sequel of the year.  Please offer suggestions and comments.  I am always looking for input.  Follow me on Twitter @NerdKungFu.  Thanks again, and have a great Holiday.

Dave

So I haven’t seen anything new recently and am really too busy to compose one of my lists (as hard as it may be for you to believe, I actually do some research on my stuff), but last night while working on an inventory I came across this Resident Evil t shirt for the Umbrella Corporation and it reminded me of a question that has plagued me ever since I finished RE2: what exactly is the business plan and profit model for the Umbrella Corp?

Think about it for a minute.  Umbrella is a huge biotech firm.  That means they have investors and a board of directors, as well as auditors and so on.  Basically, people who make sure the company makes a profit.  However, there doesn’t seem to be any kind of plan to make any kind of money here.  As far as I can see, here is Umbrella’s plan:

Step 1: Create super virus that will kill most of the population of the planet and turn them into zombies.

Step 2: Kill all your own employees (this might actually be a cost savings maneuver, as you would save a fortune in unemployment and retirement payments.  Still, seems a little extreme)

Step 3: Release T Virus into the world and kill most of the population.  Then turn them into zombies so they can eat the survivors.

Step 4: (secret)

Step 5:  Profit.

So, I run my own company and while I am kind of a small amateur I have learned one very important lesson: zombies rarely buy things and give you money for your goods.  In fact, zombies are probably the worst customer demographic available.  They don’t have jobs and their only disposable income is whatever change is rattling around in the pockets of the rags they are wearing.  On the other hand, they have other use for money so theoretically could spend 100% of it on t shirts, but really even newborn babies are better customers as their parents will spend money on food and so on.  So how does killing off most of the planet turn into money?  What is the mysterious step 4?

So at some point there has to be a stockholder meeting or something.  Do the directors actually report what’s going on?  “We managed to turn 87% of the human population into zombies, so profits for this quarter are trending down.  However, our uncontrollable super soldier program is progressing nicely so if we can find a country with enough survivors to form an army we should see a nice profit from that.”

On the same note, what is up with creating super soldiers with the intellect and attitude of a raging bull on meth?  Is there some kind of plan to train Nemesis to not go berserk and kill everything in sight first time he is released, or is this some other aspect of the mysterious “death and destruction make profit” program?  Maybe some kind of apocalyptic death cult is paying them to destroy the world.  But then, even if they are paying you a ton of money, where are you going to go to spend it?  Do you really want to spend a week on vacation at Zombie Disney World?  Going to buy a palatial estate surrounded by the undead?

Anyway, these are the questions that keep me up at night.  By the way, I would like to mention that I started off playing RE2 first and was kind of freaked out by it.  Then I went back and played RE1.  In spite of worse graphics that game scared the bejesus out of me.  Story or sound effects, I guess.  Ever notice that modern games, in spite of more amazing graphics and details, then to be just plain shorter in content?  You could spend a week wandering around Raccoon City in RE2, but these days you only get a few hours at best.  I guess all those incredibly detailed graphics take up a lot of memory.  Either that or video game companies are trending towards the lazy.

By the way, those of you who are purist and want to yell at me for talking about a video game when for the last few months I have been purely on movies, let me remind you that Resident Evil is also a series of movies staring Milla Jovovich.  Also, while I personally focused on movies and love them, this blog started off with nerd dating advice and is really about whatever catches my nerd interest.  One of these days I am going to start a detailed discussion of army building and table tactics for Warhammer Fantasy Battle (something I know a lot about).  No way will that cost me readers.

Anyway, thanks for reading.  If you have any insight as to what Umbrella does for money be sure to post a comment here.  Follow and message me on Twitter @NerdKungFu.  Thanks again.  I should see something tonight and write up a good review tomorrow.  Talk to you soon.

Dave