Tag Archives: thriller

Salt (2010)

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I saw Salt on Wednesday, but between my punishing workload and the unexpected discovery of lots of new spam here, I have been too busy to actually talk about it. Which is sad, as it was a pretty entertaining film that seems to have flown under everyone’s radar. See, there’s this CIA agent, Veruca Salt, and she is interrogating a Russian walk-in when he names her as the lynchpin of an unlikely plot to assassinate a visiting foreign dignitary. This sets off an action-filled sequence of events designed primarily to keep the audience guessing about what’s actually going on and who is on what side. I’m not ashamed to admit that my early guesses about who was for sure a bad guy, based mostly on the company he kept, were not accurate. Because the plot was convoluted enough to keep secrets from start to finish, without ever being entirely ridiculous.[1]

There was, I should note, one particularly bad scene. I wasn’t looking for a Bechdel moment, because, action movie, right? So when Ms. Salt climbs through a window into an apartment occupied by a school-aged girl (during some escape or other, you understand) and they have a brief conversation, I was duly impressed, above and beyond Angelina Jolie[2]’s asskickery in general. Up until the substance of that conversation turned out to be about the girl’s homework and Salt’s response of “I hate math.” At which point I cringed way, way more than if the test had not been passed in the first place. Or, for that matter, if she had not otherwise been such a strong, self-reliant character.

But gender politics aside, awesome movie!

[1] I mean, there was one coincidence that stretched the bounds of likelihood, but the flick moved fast enough to keep me from thinking about it at the time.
[2] She plays Salt, you see.

Law Abiding Citizen

Law Abiding Citizen is, in addition to being a frequently good movie, kind of a comparative sociology experiment. So there’s this guy, and his family gets killed in a home invasion. Then later, DA Jamie Foxx cuts a deal with one of[1] the two invaders because he doesn’t think the case is strong enough to get both of them. Later still, the guy whose family got killed puts together the best revenge package imaginable.

Anyway, sociology, right? This is true in a few ways. Firstly, it marks a clear divide from what I’m going to call a generation ago, in the ’70s. Back in those days, when Charles Bronson’s wife and daughter were raped and/or murdered, he would never have even let the law get involved in the first place, and the audience would have been with him the whole time, no matter what he did. Of course, Chuck would never have gone after innocent people, so that’s an important possible distinction. Also, though, I learned something important about audience dynamics. It seemed to me that the moment when people finally turned against the guy, saying his revenge had gone too far, was when he killed the cute blonde chick. I know that the media has already demonstrated this sociological tidbit, but seeing it in live action and furthermore knowing the writers had planned to evoke the audience turn? Little bit weird to realize it this fully.

By and large, it’s a decent flick. Marred by some unfortunate (and worse, wholly out of place) sexism, but if you leave that scene out of it, you’ve got a pretty great combination revenge flick and tension thriller. If I knew how I’d feel about it without having actually experienced the plot, I’d watch it again.

[1] The worse one, though in fairness he probably could not pick who would make the deal?

A Perfect Getaway

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I had a fundamental misunderstanding about this movie that completely changed its makeup for me. Luckily, I would say the change was for the better. A Perfect Getaway chronicles the fates of three couples on vacation in Hawaii who, while hiking in the largely unpopulated wilds of Kauai, are constantly dogged by rumors of a man and woman who gruesomely murdered a pair of newlyweds in Honolulu just days before. So, what I thought I went to see was a horror movie, in which the couples face a gradually hopeless game of cat and mouse against the killers. Instead, the movie is a suspense thriller in which each couple suspects the next of being the harbinger of their doom.

I think that’s the most I can safely say, suspense thrillers being what they are. I will add that our main characters shine pretty brightly, Steve Zahn continuing his [largely successful] quest to transform a supporting actor’s looks and general air into a leading actor’s success using nothing but his talent, and Milla Jovovich successfully portraying a bubbly, vivacious, and merely moderately attractive leading actress with talent you would not suspect her knockout looks to be capable of. (If you found that sentence nauseating and impossible to get through: they were good!)

Lost and Delirious

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MV5BMjYzMDk0NDEzNl5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTgwNzQzNTcxMTE@._V1__SX1217_SY887_My latest Netflix movie is Lost and Delirious. And I’ve watched it, which was a positive experience. Yet I have been staring at this mostly blank screen for the majority of the day. I think it’s that my opinions are too many and too contradictory. In short, the chick from The O.C. is sent to an all-female boarding school, where she becomes roommate with a pair of seniors, one hard-nosed and feminist, the other vivaciously popular. At first, it looks like one of those coming-out-of-the-shell stories in which Mischa Barton would have been the main character embarking on her journey toward personhood. Then, at the end of the first act, it veers sharply into one of those obsession thrillers in which our purported main character mostly serves as the audience’s window on the action when it is revealed that her roommates are engaged in a sexual relationship.

And I think it could have made a fine obsession thriller too, except that it couldn’t make up its mind to commit to that. For every scene in which a new boyfriend is about to die in a sword fight and simply isn’t taking it seriously enough yet, there are three in which someone screams and runs out of a room / across the school lawn. And it’s not like that’s unrealistic high school obsessive behavior; it’s that the swords and the pet falcon are, and after it was hinted that I might get that movie, it became the one I wanted. Still, what was left behind was good stuff. Surprisingly good acting from a variety of very young actresses, modernly relevant sociosexual politics, not terribly many overwrought or thematically pushy scenes. And, y’know, sword fights.

Taken (2008)

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MV5BMTM4NzQ0OTYyOF5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTcwMDkyNjQyMg@@._V1__SX1859_SY847_So, you know how in Europe, there are all these unscrupulous Albanians and Serbians and other Iron Curtainers running around kidnapping people, for the purpose of letting them be tortured to death or else sold into sexual slavery? Here’s a thing that I maintain would be a bad idea: being one of those people, and kidnapping Jedi Master Qui-Gon Jinn’s daughter. I mean, if he were allowed to be angry and have thoughts of revenge. So, Sith Master Qui-Gon Jinn, I guess is what I mean. Also, he and Jack Bauer probably hang out over beers, sometimes.

I predict this is enough information to tell you whether you’ll like Taken. In case you’re on the fence, don’t forget that Liam Neeson cannot help but lend pathos and gravitas to every role he plays. It drips off of him like sweat off some guy named Keith.

The Brøken

Horrorfest III, day 2 opened with The Brøken, starring modern Sarah Connor as the daughter of an American embassy worker in London who wanders the city in a cloud of foreboding and dramatic strings instrumentation. Things happen, for sure. Like, there are doubles climbing out of mirrors to wander around confusing people about one person being in two places at once. And there’s a mysterious car crash where nobody seems interested in the other victim. And most important for our purposes, Lena Headey is pretty sure that her boyfriend has been replaced by a duplicate. Which, considering the mirror-people, is a bit more plausible than anyone around her thinks.

Mostly, though, we have foreboding thoughts, weird flashbacks, dramatic strings, and ominous London backdrops. Let me throw out an example that is representative of what I’m talking about: Lena is going somewhere on the Underground, only she gets scared by an ominous bag lady who is saying foreboding things about the other passengers right before staring at Lena in ominous confusion. So, Lena gets off at the stop, only to discover it’s closed at the surface, the only notice being a handwritten sign at the locked gate. So she wanders around the hallways, easily getting lost despite claims from people I know that the London Underground is easier to navigate than John Doe’s family tree, because that would be the ominous thing to happen. Except for the bag lady perhaps giving a clue about the mirror people, nothing else of plot- or character-advancing status occurs in this entire three-to-four-minute scene. I’d never watch it again, but there’s something very compelling about waiting and waiting and waiting to determine whether there’s a movie buried under all the ominous, strings-laden foreboding.

Quantum of Solace

So, new James Bond movie, which is almost by definition cool and only really needs to be compared to other Bond movies. I liked it enough to have seen it twice, and yet I’ve been stuck on the review for a while now. I think it wasn’t until I realized that and thought about why that I was able to come up with something, but it does all kind of make sense now.

What I liked about Quantum of Solace is what they’ve done with the franchise. Not only was was it a direct sequel to Casino Royale[1], but there are strong implications that an underlying arc will continue through at least the next film, if not several more. I’m also pretty okay still with the lack of gadgetry in favor of more direct badassery, though I think I maybe want there to be a few more gadgets than approximately none. The plot: in which a shadowy organization has various irons in the fire whose goals are the acquisition of more power and resources with which to acquire more power still. Or, okay, to be specific, they are propping up a Bolivian dictator in exchange for control of certain resources. Or okay, to be more specific still, the water supply. Which is possibly silly, but appropriately grandiose for the archetype. It fits, anyhow, so I like it well enough to not worry about it.

What I didn’t like was the lack of an iconic villain. Casino Royale had a guy who wept blood, for crying out loud! This only has a guy with a bowl haircut, which, y’know: enh. And he’s just the villain’s cousin! And, okay, yeah, I’m coming around on the gadgets thing. Awesome car chases are necessary, but they are not sufficient. These are largely quibbles in the face of my joy over a Bond with both a plot and a character arc. But I’m pretty confident it’s possible to have and eat my spycake, so I’ll look forward to that in 2010.

[1] I’m pretty sure they’ve only ever done that once before, and the time they did it, it was just a few minutes at the beginning that had no bearing on the rest of the flick.

Eagle Eye

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Last week, I watched a show in which a self-aware computer AI spread ominous shadows over a dystopian future. Later, after the Sarah Connor Chronicles was over, I also watched Eagle Eye. No, I’m kidding, Eagle Eye was pretty good, and it knew better than to trod the thematic ground so well covered by the Terminator series. Instead, it split time between tension-filled thriller/action and Big Brother dystopianism, which is subtly different in that Big Brother only craves control, not humanity’s demise.

Into this scenario leaps Shia the Beef, 20-something slacker twin of a talented military intelligence officer who has died in a car crash just days ahead of massive infusions of cash and terrorist paraphernalia, all of which is mistakenly sent to the living twin. And just seconds ahead of the feds, a woman’s voice on the phone starts giving Mr. the Beef instructions that he had best follow, lest he face certain death. Throw in an equally frantic chick under similar constraints, and then: rollercoaster engaged. And honestly, it was pretty darn good. Sure, I had to turn my brain down a little bit and enjoy the ride, but there was only one major plot hole, which is fewer than most action/thrillers, so. If candy is your thing, this will be better than most such offerings.

Lakeview Terrace

The only serious problem with LakeviewMV5BMTI0MzI0NDI4Ml5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTcwOTk4ODk3MQ@@._V1__SX1859_SY847_ Terrace was the advertising campaign. It went from Hey, cool preview! to Why didn’t that movie ever come out? to I am so tired of these previews, hooray that the movie finally being out means I’ll never have to see them again! Maybe there was a delay in the release? Dunno. Anyhow, I’d pretty much written it off, but last Wednesday I found myself with some time to kill, and it was the best fit for my schedule and interest level. Which is good; I would have needed closure.

Surprisingly, and to the film’s benefit, it’s not really the boilerplate thriller it appeared to be. Sure, all that ratchety tension stuff is in there, and played quite well on all sides. But mostly, it’s a character study about two people who simply don’t like each other. There are all kinds of proximate causes: racism features heavily, but jealousy, loneliness, power imbalances, and family values differences all play their roles. But I really think the underlying issue is that some people just can’t stand each other, and these two had the misfortune of living next to each other. (Well, and the misfortune of Samuel L. Jackson being just enough off-kilter to turn it from the typical coldly polite avoidance into a constantly escalating conflict. But make no mistake, the other guy[1] was carrying around plenty of his own contributory macho bullshit.)

I think what really impressed me, though, was that despite all of that, SLJ was frequently sympathetic. Not, y’know, a lot, but more than enough to take him out of the caricature territory one expects from his boilerplate thriller character type. To balance that, the travails of Not SLJ and his wife were mostly disinteresting; real and depth-creating, just like SLJ’s sympathetitude, but it just never fit the tone of everything else that was going on, at least to me. Still, minor quibble in an otherwise above-average experience.

[1] Not Samuel L. Jackson, I think, is what his name is?

The Happening (2008)

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Yesterday, I said to myself, hey, let’s go see a movie! And then I looked up times, but the dollar movie I want to see (even though I found a second dollar theater, and right across the highway, not far away like that other one (where “far” in this case equals about 1/3 of my daily commute. Help.)) was only showing in the evening, and I already had evening plans. So then I poked around at what was out in general, and settled on The Happening. And then I saw it, which just goes to show you the value of a plan.

The movie itself was an odd mix of satisfying and cheeseball. I went in knowing nothing beyond what I’d seen in a couple of previews, which as it happens is sufficiently little to make the thing work; I have to assume that without the mysteriousness pulling you in, the satisfaction would have been nowhere to be found. The premise is straightforward: one day in Central Park, people start acting mentally and physically confused, and then they start dying. And those scenes which open the movie? Creepy as all get out, I tell you. Next thing, a teacher and his wife and some friends are headed out of town because of their concern over the TV-reported terrorist attacks that have just occurred, and the film turns into about one-third mysterious deadly event and two-thirds marital drama. Or maybe fifty-fifty? I was never annoyed that the scary mystery part had vanished, and the drama part was pretty decently done.

Unfortunately, this was billed as M. Night Shyamalan’s first R-rated movie. I call this unfortunate because, aside from a ridiculous chase scene about which I cannot divulge more that would otherwise assist me in mocking its ridiculousness, the biggest problem the flick had was its focus on gore. It just wasn’t the right kind of movie, in mood, to be concerned with over-the-top death scenes; and there were a few. It’s like M. was just trying too hard, to no good effect. Well, the acting was a little iffy, too, which is odd, because I’ve seen both leads do far better jobs elsewhere. All in all, though, it was a decent, scary movie. It was not the best movie I saw yesterday, which is kind of funny when you consider I had only planned to see the one. But anyway, just don’t go in expecting Shyamalan’s previous brilliance, and you should be fine.