Showing posts with label action. Show all posts
Showing posts with label action. Show all posts

Knight and Day Review

Posted by Should I See It on Saturday, July 31, 2010 , under , , , , , , , | comments (0)





Film: Knight and Day.
Director: James Mangold.
Starring: Tom Cruise, Cameron Diaz, Peter Sarsgaard and Viola Davis.
Plot: The life of a woman (Diaz) is turned upside down, when she accidently becomes involved with a rouge Federal Agent (Cruise).
Rating:


I really wonder what it is like to not be afraid of pain. When I watch action movies and the characters leap between cars or off buildings, I always wonder if they ever think, ‘if I miss that car/truck/building I will most certainly break every other bone in my body, sustain severe spinal and brain injuries and may never walk again…’ or do they think… ‘if I miss this car/truck/building, then ….. bring on the pain! I’m not afraid of pain.’

The reason I mention this, is because Tom Cruise’s character in Knight and Day leaps off an alarming number of buildings, cars trucks you name it, without a second thought. Granted he lands every time, MOSTLY sustaining nothing but a few minor injuries (unless of course, it is dramatically important for injuries to occur). But I had to wonder, do characters in action movies ever get scared? Or do they know they will be transformed into Computer Generated Images and thereby negating all fear?



Anyway, that’s all beside the point.

What is there to say about Knight and Day?

It delivers exactly what it promises. Explosions, car chases, gun fights, a bit of romance and a bit of comedy in there for good measure. If you can ignore the silliness of it all, it is actually quite a fun time. Expert film making: not really. Fun: well, yes.

The plot of Knight and Day is inherently ridiculous. For that reason, the film hinges on the performances of Cruise and Diaz more than you would expect, actually. Tom Cruise is funny. Who knew? Cameron Diaz delivers what she does in her usual rom- com fair, just with a gun and some explosions this time around. Not that it’s a bad thing. She is a good foil for Cruise.



Knight and Day boasts quite a few big names in the supporting cast: Peter Sarsgaard, Paul Dano, Viola Davis (her performance made me cringe) but the movie is really Cruise and Diaz doing what they do best: looking pretty for the camera.

Knight and Day is a date movie. Plenty of love-y bits for the girls, plenty of guns and explosions for the boys.


Should I See It?

Only if you’re in the mood for mindless fluff.



Knight and Day Official Site here.

Sherlock Holmes Review

Posted by Should I See It on Wednesday, June 23, 2010 , under , , , , , , , , | comments (0)





Film: Sherlock Holmes
Director: Guy Ritchie
Starring: Robert Downey Jr., Jude Law, Rachel McAdams and Mark Strong.
Plot: A remake of Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories. Sherlock Holmes struggles against a villain who has dreams of taking over London and the world.


There are two words I hate when talking about film adaptations of ‘classics,’ and they are modern re-telling. While the film itself is set in ‘Victorian London’ (and I use those words liberally) Sherlock Holmes, for all intensive purposes, is ‘modern’.

There’s no doubt that some elements of the Sherlock Holmes persona have become stereotyped: The deer stalker hat and ‘Elementary, my dear Watson’ never actually appear in the books, and thankfully don’t make an appearance in this film. But Robert Downey Jr.’s Sherlock Holmes who is a boxer, an explosives and chemical warfare expert and a stunt man who doesn’t hesitate jumping out of a window into the Thames, regardless of the diseases he would catch when doing so. This Sherlock Holmes feels even further from Arthur Conan Doyle’s original character.



While watching the film I wondered if the film makers have even read any of Arthur Conan Doyle’s stories. The plot is not so much a whodunit, but a whydunit, which removes any sort of suspense. And of course the why is not really very interesting: like all bad guys, he wants to take over the world.

The film breaks one of the cardinal rules of the detective story: “The reader must have equal opportunity with the detective for solving the mystery. All clues must be plainly stated and described.” The ‘big’ secret of the film, how bad guy (I can’t even remember his name, that’s how much I cared) manages to ‘rise from the dead,’ (seriously) rests in a super duper wonder drug developed from a flower only found in the Amazon Rainforest, or some such rubbish. The audience’s insight to this remarkable clue rests in a two second shot of the aforementioned flower in a midget’s laboratory (seriously, you can’t make this stuff up!).

The plot vaguely touches on Victorian England’s preoccupation with the supernatural. However, the introduction of the Temple of the Four Orders (read: Knight’s Templar) turns the film into a Victorian National Treasure.


 
There isn’t any air in this film; I know London air at this time would have been smelly at best, but let the picture breathe a little. The shots feel tight and enclosed. When we do get some sense of space is ruined by particularly bad CGI. Surely technology has come so far that doing CGI to buildings should be unnoticeable.

Robert Downey Jr.’s accent makes him unintelligible. Half of the time I could barely understand what he was saying. June Law as Watson is actually very good.

The film bored me. The film was so obsessed with getting as many (poorly done) special effects and fight scenes in as possible, it seemed to forget about the story.


Should I See It?

If you want real mystery, the real Sherlock Holmes, read the books.




All pictures courtesy of Warner Brothers.
Sherlock Holmes Official Site here.