New Articles for the Week of March 15th: Sprang Cleanin' Edition

Spring is coming! The snow is melting, the sun is shining brighter and longer, geese are flying back North and Long Johns everywhere are heading into laundry machines for one last spin. Best to start the season fresh by catching up on all the stuff I was writing about while avoiding the worst winter had to offer:

The Monuments Men: Clooney! Damon! Nazis! General ambivalence! Neither the film-art community or the art-art community rushed to embrace this true story of cultural capering in World War II, which isn’t terribly surprising. If you’re a fan of seeing puff himself up about art and history like a Cornish game hen, then you’ll be well served. Otherwise, you’ll find not much here of educational, or entertainment value, which is not something I enjoy saying about a movie with both Bill Murray and John Goodman.

3 Days to Kill: I’m not a big believer in so-bad-it’s-good film viewing. Unless a terrible picture is being ripped on by experts, I’ll very rarely actively seek out terribad entertainment. A lot of it has to do with the schadenfreude that comes with seeing people earnestly try, and fail miserably to do their dream project (I would probably pull a Raiders if I ever had to watch The Room), and part of it has to do with feeling weird about the commodification and ironic adoption of intentionally awful entertainment (your Sharknados et al.).

Now, if a studio with professional actors, production values, and distribution, wants to make a bad movie, and then load that bad movie up with deliriously outdated gender politics and political awareness, I’m more likely to find flecks of gold in that particular turd. 3 Days to Kill is a film I felt myself falling more in more in love with the longer its boring star and story blended with its whackadoodle subtext, and I came out waaaaay more excited about it than any Kevin Costner-starring Taken-knockoff had any right to allow.

Nymphomaniac - Volume I: Not one for the squeamish, I found a lot in Lars van Trier’s latest that will keep your interest, and that also has nothing to do with sex, of which the film has plenty. I'll also be checking in on Volume II next month, but for now it seems like von Trier has half a great little stage play about art as sex, sex as art, and a whole lot in between.

Interview with the creators of The Americans: If you're not watching The Americans yet, you really should be. It's exciting, funny, and has plenty to say about personal and political relationships. It was my 8th favorite show of 2013 during its first season, and before the second started, I got to have a little phone chat with the show's creator, Joe Weisberg, its co-showrunner, Joel Fields, and its executive producer, Graham Yost (who's the showrunner behind my other favorite FX show from last year, Justified). This was my first phone interview and I've never talked with anyone from the TV world of this calibre, so this was a real treat to do. Hopefully the first of many, but if it's the only one, at least it was good practice for an even more high-profile I did a week later, but can't really talk about now, because I haven't written it up yet. Anywho, check out the show, then check out my interview.

Banshee: Much as I've been trying to get out of the weekly recapping game, they keep finding ways to pull me back in! The reason this time: screeners, the shoddily recorded, watermarked to hell little discs that let you watch and write about a show well in advance of its actual airing. Looking to see what the experience was like, I grabbed this assignment to review the second season of the Cinemax series having seen none of the first. After powering through those ten episodes in preparation of getting those that aired over the past ten weeks, I somewhat regretted the choice, as Banshee wasn't really my bag through its first year.

But as I found with Arrow last year, it can be an enlightening experience to spend so much time thinking and writing about a show that you otherwise wouldn't make time for. And as with Arrow, I grew to appreciate the rougher edges around Banshee that didn't appeal to me at first, and liked what it wound up becoming by the time it hit its season finale that aired last night. I'm glad to be off the weekly reviews beat again so that I might have time for features again, but the break may be brief: at the risk of jinxing it, there's a strong likelihood I'll be seeing some review screeners for Game of Thrones Season 4 coming my way any day now. Much as I'm worried about trying to review one of the most popular, densest shows on TV, come on, it's Game of Thrones -you get the chance to watch it early, you take it. And that's coming from someone who's already read the books.

That's all for now. Play me out, creepy James Franco!

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9etqyqgtHBc]

Review: The Expendables

Originally Posted August 25th, 2010 

Come on. We all knew this was how it was going to turn out. No matter how badly we wanted to believe they could do it, too much time has passed. When we all heard that Sylvester Stallone was going to unite the biggest action heroes of the last thirty years under one blood-soaked banner, the internet's collective jubilation was laced with a deep-seated fear that this would be an impossible feat to pull off. In trying to recapture the spirit of the 80’s action flick, The Expendables plays more like a relic, just with modern trimmings. Its aging stars and uninspired script, which must have been about twenty pages if one-liners were excluded, make you wonder if this was a genre that should have just stayed put in the more reptilian crevices of your memory. Even when trying to deliver the gratuitous explosions and gunfire that made the likes of First Blood and Commando genre classics, The Expendables can’t get a grip on the advances of special effects, and sacrifices authenticity for the sake of one-upmanship.

After a ponderously slow first few minutes, we meet the titular group of manly-men mercenaries, including Jet Li, Dolph Lundgren, Terry Crews, Randy “The Natural” Couture and the leader of the outfit, writer/director Sylvester Stone. The foreplay is brief, as it's mere moments after the introductions that a pirate is literally blown in half by a shotgun blast. You might say the dismemberment and copious CG blood are holdovers from Stone’s last directorial outing, Rambo, as it’s a good barometer for what the next hundred or so minutes are going to be like.

After successfully returning to their tattoo parlour/bar/all-around-man-cave run by Mickey Rourke, Sly accepts a suicide mission from a CIA handler played with deadly seriousness by Bruce Willis, in an overly advertised and far too brief scene featuring Stallone, Willis and Arnold Schwarzenegger in the same room. It’s hard not to bro-out a little during the scene, as Schwarzenegger’s entrance is punctuated by an inexplicable divine light, while the winks and nods between the three great apes are telegraphed with the finesse of a bat to the face.

Being the good soldier of fortune that he is, Barney signs up the crew to take down a military dictator in the sinisterly named island nation of Vilena, where there’s some scheme involving coke fields, an ex-CIA spook and Steve Austin. There are betrayals, unrequited loves and perfunctory speeches about the soulless life of a mercenary, none of which are handled with much subtlety, but subtlety isn’t what this movies about now is it? It’s about shit blowing up, bones being busted, SMASH-BAM-POW-GAAAR. Which isn’t so much The Expendables's only redeeming trait as it is pretty much its only trait period.

This is an action movie from start to finish, so it won’t confuse anyone who accidentally walked in thinking this was Eat Pray Love. To his credit, Stallone knows how to stage shoot-outs and fist-fights, and boy are there plenty. The number of baddies disposed of by Stallone’s motley crew borders on genocidal, and it’s a rare feat that an action scene can be so skilfully chaotic that a man’s head literally blowing up isn’t the centre of attention. The action is by no means flawless, as all the gunfire and exploding can be desensitizing by the time the film reaches its bombastic final twenty minutes, and a pair of car chases in the film’s first half may be some of the worst filmed in recent memory.

What really holds back blood-n-guts orgy are the attempts made to use newer special effects to beef up the skirmishes, the apparent aim being to make every other action movie obsolete. It was probably because of Rambo that Stallone decided you could get more blood for less by adding it in during post-processing. And hey, while we’re at it, why not get rid of the rigidity inherent in actual explosions and just code it for cheap? It’s understandable really, audiences just aren’t wowed by violence the way they once were and the solution is always just to add more and more. But in doing so, The Expendables betrays the very films it seeks to honour. Sure John McClane only blows away about a dozen dudes in Die Hard, but it looked real. When the roof of the Nakatomi Plaza blew up, you were watching a giant explosion consume a building and it felt real. With TheExpendables, the sheer overload of the set pieces combined with the CG effects, which range from passable to laughable, dissolves what little sense of reality the film wants to maintain.

This wouldn’t be quite so frustrating if the movie were good at anything besides action, but Stallone’s words don’t flow nearly as well as his fists. When your characters are a biker gang of Neanderthals, there’s no real room for character development, and attempts at being reflective about the whole killing business feel shoehorned in. The greater shame is that the film’s many, many one-liners, a staple of the genre, are almost entirely forgettable, and it doesn’t help that between various accents and Stallone’s growling that much of the line delivery can be tough to interpret. But again, brilliant writing isn’t one of the things The Expendables is aiming to achieve and it looks to supplement words with casting. Despite his noticeably aged face, Stallone’s giant everythings ensure he’s who you imagine leading a suicide squad of mercs, and Statham brings his trademark frame and charm to what few scenes he’s in that require actual acting. It’s a hell of a crew Stallone’s assembled, almost to a fault. Crews is under-utilized and it’s easy to forget that Couture is even in this movie, although he does once and for all finish the debate between the UFC and WWE fans.

Be wary of advertisements claiming that this will be the first and only time we’re going to see such a macho medley of beefheads join forces, as receipts have been strong and the film’s ending presents future jobs for The Expendables as a certainty (which also enforces how much of a misnomer their title is). But what could have been a testosterone fuelled tribute to filmmaking of years past turned out to be a retread that simply drags out a genre and cast that’s just not as youthful as it once was. You got me this time Stallone, but by invoking the hallowed images of your past works and actors like you, you set yourself up to sit in the shadows of the classics that defined the action movie. And no amount of CG blood can cover that up.

2 out of 5

Directed by Sylvester Stallone

2010, USA

Review: The Losers

Originally Posted July 23rd, 2010 

In 2010, a crack commando unit was accused of a crime they didn’t commit. Hunted by law enforcement, they promptly escaped to the underground. Today, still wanted by the government, they survive as soldiers of fortune. If you have a problem, if no one else can help, and if you can find them, maybe you can hire… The Losers!

Wait, that’s not right. That’s the set-up for the new A-Team movie. Stupid mistake. The A-Team was about an Army Ranger unit that was framed for a crime they didn't commit and had to seek out justice as fugitives from the law.The Losers is about a CIA Special Forces unit that gets framed for a crime they didn’t commit and has to get revenge while fugitives from the… huh. Well what about a van, do The Losers ever drive around in a van? …They do…Well what about an ending gun fight in a downtown harbour, I bet The Losers doesn’t have that! They do?…okay, now this is just spooky.

With The A-Team getting released barely two months after The Losers, comparisons of a Deep Impact-Armageddon variety seemed inevitable. Despite more than fifteen years separating each's source material, the set-up for both films is more or less identical, just with one elite army agency swapped out for another. Both films are sold as being flashy, brainless action romps with quasi-militaristic overtones. They both also feature cartoonishly evil bad guys, and a single female character whose sole job is to provide sexual tension. All these similarities are plenty evident, yet little mention was given when The A-Team rolled into town. That’s probably because The Losers, based on the Vertigo comic series of the same name, isn’t a particularly memorable film; it combines mediocre thrills with a mercifully short running time into a movie you’ll likely forget existed at all, let alone as a piece of parallel programming.

Starting out in the Bolivian jungle, The Losers wastes no time in acquainting you with the titular group of rough-and-tumbles. There’s the leader Clay, played by Jeffrey Dean Morgan (whose charisma is mostly owed to his tailor), the grizzled weapons man Roque, played with unflinching seriousness by an utterly wasted Idris Elba, and a surprisingly enjoyable Chris Evans, who gets plenty goofy as the techie Jensen. There’s also sniper/cowboy hat aficionado Cougar (Óscar Jaenada) and wheel man Pooch (Columbus Short). From the opening poker-game played with weapons instead of chips, it’s clear that no one could decide which character would get the title of “The Badass,” so they went ahead and gave it to everyone. After a bombing run on a drug lord is thrown off by the presence of a literal busload of children, the team, in gallant disregard for orders, intervenes, and winds up getting themselves framed by a mysterious villain known as Max. Just a tip for future reference: if mention is ever given of a change as to who’s going on the last helicopter out of dodge, get as far away from that chopper as is humanly possible. It’s not long before the gang is given means to exact their revenge thanks to the alluring Aisha (Zoe Saldana), who, despite having less meat on her than a starved gazelle, can break bones and chairs with the best of them.

That’s about all the set-up you’re going to get because once The Losers leaves the driveway, it doesn’t stop for anything. What follows is your typical checklist of action movie set pieces across some of the brightest, sweatiest places this side of the Atlantic. The amount of lens flare in some scenes made me feel physically tanner. There are flashes of excitement in most of the action sequences, but they're nothing wholly original. The meet/beat-cute between Clay and Aisha is pretty much right out of Mr. and Mrs. Smith, and is mostly enjoyable because of Zoe Saldana’s complete disregard for the safety and well-being of all pieces of furniture within her five foot radius. And for as built-up as some of the action sequences get, you’re usually just left wondering, "is that it"? If a movie's main selling point is leaving physics and rationality at the door, you need full-blown commitment to lunacy, and The Losers just feels like a series of half-measures. It’s unfortunate, but airlifting an armoured car with a magnet attached to a helicopter just isn't enough these days. Here all you get are a couple of pretty good explosions sandwiched between timid gun fights and some really unconvincing CG effects.

Then again, what aspects do go for broke still find a way to make The Losers a sub-optimal viewing experience. Breaking up the shootier bits are interludes where we check in on our villain, who seems incapable of elaborating on the next phase of his diabolical plan until he’s in a new time zone. This is where any energy that gets generated by the aforementioned shooting runs into the brick wall that is Jason Patric’s performance as Max. Now, The Losers is by no means a serious film, and everybody is clearly having fun with their parts, but Jason Patric wants you to know that he is having more fun than anyone, ever, ever. With a level of restraint that makes Jack Nicholson’s Joker look docile, Patric goes out of his way in every scene to try and be menacing, but it almost always comes off as buffoonish or just plain ridiculous. After reminding his head goon how badly he needs eighteen gunmen in twelve hours, you think that there’s no possible reason that he’d repeat himself it a third time; and then he does. And then in the next scene, he orders those gunmen to be killed. Why? Because he’s evil, that’s why! At one point he responds to a bullet in his shoulder not with, you know, signs of pain, but with a level of mild annoyance reserved for when someone hits you with a rubber band. Oh, and then he sticks his finger in the wound and has a taste of his own blood, which, I imagine tastes pretty good thanks to the Cost-co sized cans of energy drinks he must have been downing between scenes.

As certifiably insane as Patric is, he’s about the only thing that’s aggressively bad about The Losers. Sure there are a myriad of gapping plot holes and unexplained motivations but this is a movie about characters and action, not story. To their credit, everyone else in the cast is competent enough and it can be occasionally fun to revel in their brainless exploits. Chris Evans is the real standout, as he manages to make the most out of every scene thanks to a mix of crass humour and brazen self-awareness. His natural response to the absurdity of bringing a crossbow to a gunfight is simply to declare “that’s right bitches, I’ve got a crossbow.”

The screenplay, written by Zodiac scribe James Vanderbilt, is drenched in these sorts of immature one-liners and really the only word I can think of to properly describe The Losers is juvenile. Every yo momma and dick joke seems perfect for the PG-13 audience the film no doubt hoped would flood cinemas but didn’t. I mean for god sakes, the bad guy’s weapon of choice is called a SNUKE. Even the film’s romantic subplot, which consists of Zoe Saldana showing up with a bottle of tequila followed by immediate boning, is designed to target barely pubescent thirteen year-olds. Which pretty much sums up The Losers; it’s all action, no foreplay and completely forgettable.

2 out of 5

2009 USA

Directed by Sylvain White

Review: Salt

Originally Posted August 8th, 2010

You can tell a lot about the political climate of The United States based on who the preferred villains in the popular culture are. Regan era nationalism made the 80’s the decade of exceptional American heroes fending off foreign invaders, while the economic downturn and dragging war overseas probably contributed to the domestic cynicism of the mid-to-late Aughts. The new set of bad guys were more complicated, but not altogether more complex; the popular Bourne franchise, which was steeped in suspicion and mistrust of intelligence agencies, put most of the blame on a few bad apples up the chain of the command, rather than on the systems they operated within.

The appearance of a new president and a more optimistic market has left America feeling better about itself, and it's translated into a shift back towards an older antagonist, Soviet-era Russia. The most popular video game in years, Modern Warfare 2, is based on a classic 80’s nightmare scenario of Russia invading the USA. There’s a remake of Red Dawn due for release sometime later this year, as well as a new Jack Ryan movie in the works that’s tentatively titled Moscow. It’s pretty clear that America is done with looking for someone to blame internally, and is once again ready to get back to the “us against the world” mentality of the 80’s and 90’s.

Rekindling the old conflict with America’s favourite enemy is Salt, a distinctly cold war thriller with the trappings of a modern actioneer. Angelina Jolie stars as Evelyn Salt, a CIA covert operative who we first meet being tortured in a North Korean prison. It’s of no real relevance to the plot and feels mostly like a rehash of the opening from Die Another Die, but it serves to remind you that the enemies of the cold war are still assholes. As it turns out, Salt was in North Korea because her cover-marriage was to a “world-renowned” arachnologist who has access to the North-South border. I’ll leave it to you to figure out which is more baffling, the idea of a spider specialist reaching worldwide acclaim or the fact that such a title is enough to let you in and out of North Korea on a whim. Anyway, it’s a few years later and a now desk-bound Salt is accused of being a Soviet sleeper agent with orders to kill the visiting Russian president, as part of an appropriately doomsday-ish plot called Day X. An innocent Salt, fearing for the safety of her husband, goes rogue, and is soon on the run from the CIA.

Or is she? That’s the main question that the movie is trying to impress upon the viewer, as Salt’s motives are never made clear to the audience. Considering she's tying up valuable government resources by going on the lam, your left to think she has a low opinion of her agency's ability to safeguard her husband. What follows is a lot of Salt being chased from set piece to set piece, all the while laying the hurt on anyone who gets in her way. It’s somewhat bizarre that Jolie is being marketed as the main draw here, because as an actress, she has almost nothing to do.

There’s no narration, no internal monologue, just shot after shot of Salt preparing and then executing some unexplained plan. It’s an interesting concept, and it really does make you wonder whether Salt is who she says she is, but this tactic sets up the lead as little more than an ass-kicking cipher. There’s little to the character beyond a commitment to the mission, and personality is replaced by field skills, including the ability to MacGyver a fire extinguisher and an interrogation chemistry set into a homemade RPG. No scientific reason is given as to why such a concoction would create an explosive ordnance, nor is there any time given to think about it, because Salt waits for no one. At about 100 minutes, the film is as lean as they come, with a lack of flab being little compensation for general mediocrity.

If you could call Salt smart about anything, it’s that it knows to distract you with something big and flashy before you can properly comprehend the absurdity of the previous scene. On no less than two occasion does Salt leap five feet up in the air from a standing position in order to dispatch of someone. How is this possible? Who cares, look at what she’s doing now! There are also a handful of gritty fight scenes which are efficient enough to conceal the fact that Jolie is using all 120 pounds of her frame to beat the tar out of trained operatives twice her size. Salt’s only sign of weakness comes from dressing a wound the size of a walnut after using highway transport trucks as an obstacle course.

Such incredible feats of strength are pretty typical of the genre and the film should be given credit for how well it pulls of a female lead in a role originally written for Tom Cruise. Salt’s gender is of zero importance to the people in the film and whatever mediations on gender politics that could crop up are the viewer’s alone. Personally, I found there to be something very fresh about a wife going to the same extreme lengths to save her spouse that other genre films show only men being capable of. There’s a moment where Salt confesses her cover ID to her husband and gives the whole “we won’t be safe” speech. It’s one of the only scenes where Jolie is actually allowed to act, but she delivers it with as much conviction as any other super-spy trying to protect their significant other.

The amount of success that’s derived from Jolie headlining this picture really does put into sharp relief how incredibly boring the picture would have been with a male lead. The supporting cast has little to do here, consisting mostly of Chiwetel Ejiofor functioning as an exposition/expletive machine, while Liev Schreiber as Salt’s partner gets to oscillate between vouching for her innocence and just being a dick to every other intelligence agent.The PG-13 rating becomes increasingly problematic as the body count rises; at one point, Salt unloads an automatic rifle into a downed Russian terrorist at point blank range, with a mild seizure standing in for blood and bullet holes. The action goes for visceral thrills but is frequently too over the top to be wowing, and the plot itself is as ludicrous as it is full of holes (why does 99% of Soviet cold war strategy consist of nuking everything under the sun?). While Jolie does what she can with a limited role, Salt is, at its core, disposable summer entertainment that falls apart as soon as you take five minutes to think about it.

2 out of 5

Directed by Phillip Noyce

2010, USA

Review: Dinner for Schmucks

Originally Posted August 1st, 2010

There are few things worse than seeing a good premise squandered. Even worse is when a great premise can’t carry a movie with a stellar cast. You’ll rarely feel more robbed then when a trailer selling you a good idea and a strong cast doesn't make good on its obvious potential. Last year’s The Invention of Lying was one such film, having so much promise yet delivering on so little of it. You’d think a movie set in a world where everyone but Ricky Gervais has to tell the truth would be a laugh riot, but the final product didn’t live up to the pedigree. Dinner for Schmucks will probably go down as a film on par with Lying, because even with an A-list cast and a premise that seems golden, the end result is shockingly underwhelming.

Paul Rudd stars as Tim, a middle-of-the-pack business analyst trying to muscle his way into the upper echelons of his brokering firm, headed by a delightfully dickish Bruce Greenwood. In order to finally get the promotion and raise Tim desperately needs, he has to pass one final test: find a complete moron to be his plus one at a dinner party for the amusement of his co-workers. There, each employee’s dolt will compete for the prize of schmuck of the evening, an award which would surely grant Tim his promotion. Tim finds his idiot in Barry (Steve Carell), who he meets trying to save a dead mouse for his taxidermy creations, which he calls mouster-pieces. Barry’s various dioramas are a highlight of the film, especially his model recreating the invention of the BLT. Barry seems like a shoe-in for first place at the dinner, his intellect among the pantheon of Carell dimwits landing well below Michael Scott but only a hair above Brick Tamland.

What follows is the evening of buffoonery and wanton destruction that the trailers sold you on. But wait, first we need Tim and his curator girlfriend Julie (played by the lovely Stephanie Szostak) to get in a fight over Tim's willingness to subject some poor sap to humiliation so that he can get ahead. Also, Tim and Barry have to make sure Julie isn’t cheating on him by breaking into the house of Julie’s new client, the animalistic Kieran, played by up-and-comer Jermaine Clement, who's a variation on the Aldous Snow character Russell Brand popularized in Forgetting Sarah Marshall. And don’t forget, a psychotic stalker Tim had a one night stand with needs to show up courtesy of Barry’s bumbling interference. That covers only about half of the major subplots and characters in this film. If it isn’t apparent by now, then you should know that Dinner for Schmucks is not the quick chuckle fest about a bunch of bizarre characters at a fancy party the trailers would have you believe, but is instead an overstuffed comedy of mistaken identities and switched cellphones that feels every minute  as long as its nearly two hour runtime.

The movie works hard to set up the characters and situations for the crescendo, the results usually being pretty enjoyable. The titular dinner, which only makes up about the last fifteen minutes of the movie, is every bit as awkward and funny as the trailer would make you think, but getting to that point is a laborious process. The stalker subplot ends in great fashion but to get to that point you have to go through two or three scenes that are more frightening than funny, making you wonder if the character was necessary at all. The plot is motivated almost entirely by people mistaking something or someone for something else, such as the aforementioned cell phone switch, or Barry attracting the stalker online by pretending to be Tim. Such unlikely plot elements might have worked ten years ago when director Jay Roach made Meet the Parents, but by now it feels forced. I think most people today are aware enough to check which phone is there’s when an identical copy is sitting next to it.

The hit-or-miss gag's coast on the cast's delivery as opposed to witty writing, a shame considering the slew of incredibly talented comedic actors forced to make the most out of such a lukewarm script. Carell is the real nucleus here, and his ability to inject heart into even the most block-headed of characters shows why he’s so sought after. The supporting cast is equally exceptional, particularly Zach Galifianakis as a fellow idiot who specializes in “mind control.” Unfortunately though, the most disappointing performance comes from the man who is probably the best actor of the bunch, Rudd, who’s never been blander in a leading role. Now, Rudd has proven himself to be an immensely talented and funny actor over the better part of the last decade, but here, he has to play the straight-man to all of Barry’s wild antics, which leaves little room for his character to breath. He’s defined by his girlfriend and his job but little else, and he probably could have been replaced by any other actor, it’s just that Paul Rudd has come to personify the nice but unlucky guy in recent years.

Somewhere in Dinner for Schmucks, there’s an interesting commentary about the uncertainty of our current employment landscape and the tough choices you need to make when you’re living beyond your means. More importantly, there’s a funny comedy featuring a bunch of talented actors goofing it up at a fancy dinner party. But both are saddled with a mundane, bloated script, that leans heavily on overused plot elements, and runs at a length that completely sinks the laughs per minute ratio. It's a frustrating, borderline maddening little failure, because if this kind of talent can't make good, you start to wonder who can.

2 out of 5

Directed by Jay Roach

2010, USA

Review: The Sitter

Originally Posted December 12th, 2012 

Flashback to 2000: 26 year-old David Gordon Green gets distribution for his debut feature, George Washington, which cost less than $50,000 to make. The film is met with wide critical praise and makes an appearance on Roger Ebert's list of the year's ten best films. Peter Travers remarked that Green was, "a writer and director of rare grace and feeling."

Now flashforward to the release of The Sitter, andyou'd be forgiven for wondering what exactly became of the celluloid poet people talked so highly of. His second comedy this year, and the coda to a stoner-trilogy that started in 2006 with Pineapple Express, the drug of choice may have changed, but The Sitter is the same blend of ludicrous scenarios and foul-mouthing that you've seen from countless lesser directors, and it's just as anemic coming from Green.

Not that the film is lacking for a good hook to inspire all the "one crazy night" antics. Perpetual screw-up Noah (Jonah Hill) must get from the New York suburbs to Manhattan so as to fulfill his girlfriend's cocaine needs. He's willing to ignore the completely one-way nature of their relationship because of the promise of sex that comes with it, to the point that he's willing to drag the three kids he's in charge of babysitting along for the ride. And wouldn't you know it, when those kids include a club-obsessing would-be starlet, a preppy but panicky time bomb and a wander-lusting master of regular bombs, things don't go quite so smoothly for Noah. Comic misunderstandings involving police, potential sex partners, and psycho drug dealers, ensue.

Call it Adventures in Babysitting meets Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle. Adding kids to the mix offers mild freshness to the well-worn story of a simple task made obscenely difficult, and for the first half of the film the children mostly just steer Noah off course and start the plot element chain reactions. Those elements don't really go into any new territory mind you; the cokehead that Noah runs afoul of, Karl (Sam Rockwell), falls neatly in the ranks of other bug-eyed dealers with odd affectations and any unexpected turns are made that way through contrivance. When trying to desperately gin-up $10,000, Noah's plans seem to ignore the car he's already stolen that's worth five times that amount.

Events have a habit of playing out without much thought as to how things got there. Jump five minutes and the film goes from a restaurant, to a Bat Mitzvah, to a diamond heist, with the writers placing priority on creating the crazy situations first, and hoping the other elements develop in the execution. They rarely do, and while, yes, being trapped in your car by a roving gang of body-builders is pretty funny in concept, it would help if the possibilities of such a scenario were explored beyond just existing. It creates long stretches that register without laughter because the film doesn't have enough jokes, let alone good ones. First time writers Brian Gatewood and Alessandro Tanaka never take time for set-up, and let moments that should be punctuated by jokes instead be filled with looks of exasperation and more swearing.

Granted, when you need someone to act stressed and deliver stream-of-consciousness cursing, Jonah Hill's a fine choice. He's an affably uncommanding presence, as even his moments of success have a nervous quality to them, but he can play immature without resorting to petulance, which makes for a likeable lead. He's a solid anchor for the rest of the cast to play off of, particularly the kids, who make the surprisingly sweet heart-to-heart talks some of the film's better moments. A scene shared between Noah and his no-show of a father borders on poignant, and for a moment, it seems like we're seeing The Sitter intersect with another, more observant, movie from Green.

The rest of the cast is strong once given the opportunity to do more than just react wildly to the given situation, and standout moments give the impression of untapped potential (Method Man, as always, is a great addition). At only 81 minutes in length, it's questionable whether or not the film would have benefitted from additional footage. It certainly would have helped the haphazard editing that causes jokes to misfire and characters to appear at a moments notice, but barring a complete plot restructuring, there's really not much more to this premise than is present.

Wishing a film was funnier is a pretty vague complaint, but if you're giving people the same story they've seen a dozen times before, you need to justify it, and the jokes presented here simply don't. There's just not enough humor or intrigue making a case for the existence of The Sitter, and for a film all about living up to your expectations, it looks like Green is doing anything but.

2 out of 5

Directed by David Gordon Green

2011, USA

Review: Red Tails

Originally Posted January 21st 2012 

There’s a scene early in Red Tails where two American fighter pilots are tracking a sputtering enemy plane back to a Nazi airfield. With the element of surprise on their side, the men of the 332nd fighter group start raining hellfire down on the German men and equipment. Every combustible element within a square mile blossoms into flames, and the Americans head home with a decisive victory. One of the Nazis looks on in disgust as the planes make for the horizon, the burning copses of his comrades all around him. “My god,” he says, “Those pilots were African!”

It’s that hawk-eyed attention to skin colour that’s supposed to make Red Tails stand out. It dramatizes the story of the Tuskegee airmen, the first African American pilots to see active combat in World War II, and the inequality that would confront them daily. The institutional racism that was embedded in the war effort under the Jim Crow laws presented a challenge for these men; how do you establish your worth as an equal when the orders you receive are based on low expectations? The intricacies of that conflict are all but ignored by Red Tails, which uses the story of the Tuskegee airmen as paper thin table dressing for an over-stuffed and all too familiar WWII movie.

Things get off to a bumpy start thanks to an opening combat scenario that doubles as a showcase for some grossly distracting credits. Motives and characters aren’t clear beyond the historical context of Americans good, Nazis bad, so it’s mostly just an introduction to the film’s emphasis on the aerial combat. There’s no centre holding the film together early, and once we meet the pilots, listlessly bored from routine flybys in Italy, the volume of characters introduced is overwhelming in number, but not depth.

Each man is your stock WWII character type, referred to mostly by codename, and given a particular affect for distinguishing purposes. Marty “Easy” Julian (Nate Parker) leads the squad, named for an attitude that’s the result of drinking on the job. The minute he grabs his flasks for the first time, you can see his character arc printed on it. Then there’s Joe “Lightning” Little (David Oyelowo), the cocksure aerial ace of daring-do who can’t seem to follow orders, unless they’re given by his Italian-born sweetheart. The film thinks their romance is too cute to make you question how vapid a relationship must be if the two people in it can’t verbally communicate. It isn’t.

The rest of the cast can be boiled down to their archetypes, such as the put-upon mechanic, the eager young guy, the priest, etc. You can see the path each character will go down because the territory has been so well covered by a litany of other WWII films of the same vein, only now the colour of the men’s skin shoehorns racial conflict in place of character building. Terrence Howard playing the group’s Colonel gets many of the more interesting scenes because his character has to confront racism at a bureaucratic level, not just in random encounters with bigoted American soldiers (which it turns out, is most of them). It’s perhaps structurally consistent, if not enjoyable, that when the film tries to portray the ramifications of a segregated military, it’s often as cliché as the rest of the story.

Air combat makes up the majority of the setpieces, and it’s often just as baffling and sterile as other CGI-based flight movies are. Spatial context is rarely established and the planes just end up in situations that struck the writers as cool, requiring the pilots to make awkward declarative statements about what’s happening. And just because your character’s face is smothered by a flight mask, it doesn’t mean it’s okay to give half-hearted line readings. Everyone should hope that if they die in combat, their wingman will have more to say than just a muffled expletive.

George Lucas’ fingerprints as producer are unmistakable. The bright lighting and cramped sets make the pilots look like they’re G.I. Joes on a play set, and no amount of wipes and fadeouts can mask how many scenes end right after the bottom has fallen out. Oh, and there’s also the world’s fastest prison break plot thrown in for good measure, because why stick to one WWII subgenre when there are so many others to crib from?

Perhaps it’s hard to get too angry at Red Tails because it so completely sticks to convention. Following the established war movie playbook keeps it from becoming aggressively awful and some of the explosions look pretty decent. But by no means is Red Tails satisfying either; it’s far too safe in its storytelling, and at times, so eye-roll inducing, chances are you’ll spend more time looking towards the real sky than the virtual one.

2 out of 5

Directed by Anthony Hemingway

2012, USA

Review: This Means War

Originally Posted February 19th, 2012

Imagine, if you will, a man of mystery. He’s someone you hire, a mercenary of sorts, and he’s often employed by powerful and wealthy corporations. His job takes him around the world to fulfill contracts that usually involve gunfights, car chases and explosions. And he’s known only by a codename. I’m of course talking about McG, director of two Charlie’s Angels pictures, a mostly tolerable football melodrama, and the red-headed stepchild of the “Terminator”franchise, Terminator Salvation.

McG’s style, so to speak, emphasizes the kind of shallow and insubstantial gratification you often associate with another brand of mass consumption starting with "Mc". So it’s really not surprising that his latest film, This Means War, continues the tradition of all-encompassing vacuousness. The real shame is that even without the shackles of franchises and true stories, McG still decided to make This Means War play like a bland remake/sequel to an entire genre; specifically, bad romantic comedies designed for an insidiously strategic strike on those deflated by another unfulfilling Valentine’s Day.

The vitriol of that sentence might have some of you pumping the brakes on your evening plans but others might be a bit confused. Isn’t this that movie about the two spies who abuse their professional skills and gadgets in order to sabotage one another when they wind up dating the same girl? That statement is all true, but the spy element is so brutally squandered, it’s practically an afterthought. Prepare yourself for a film straight out of a parallel universe where Stephanie Meyer cribbed most her ideas from Ian Fleming instead of Anne Rice.

It’s the age old dilemma that targets two of the four quadrants of film marketing, while flipping off the other two: which ridiculously hunky guy do I want? The one posing that question is Lauren Scott, a well-off urbanite who just can’t seem to get her love life together, despite the fact that she has a stable job, good friends, and is played by the obscenely cute Reese Witherspoon. Looks alone aren’t an indicator of relationship potential, but remember, this is a McG production, so physical attractiveness is the only trait of interest.

The beau’s vying for Mrs. Scott’s affections are the equally stunning Tom Hardy and Chris Pine, best friends and co-workers, but polar opposites so as to cover as wide a swath of romantic tastes as possible. Pine is the libidinous playboy alpha male with a tragic past (think Capt. Kirk, minus the heroism), who lives under a literal glass ceiling that’s somehow more demeaning than the figurative one. Hardy is then tasked with playing the sweet but sensitive yin to Pine’s cock-sure yang, complete with an adorable son and an ex-wife that he still holds a flame for. Is it a spoiler when basic character descriptions practically scream out how the film’s big “quandary” will be resolved?

Now there’s actually something grimly funny about the CIA funding an expensive and clandestine pissing contest, supported perhaps by the film’s blithe disregard for the morality of misappropriated public funds, institutional use of torture, and the existence of a surveillance state. Intercepting every phone message and private conversation a woman has is really just a logical progression of Facebook stalking in the writer’s eyes. But make no mistake; the spy trappings are really just there to make the boys look dreamier by virtue of having the world’s sexiest job.

Granted, McG’s opening action sequence atop a Hong Kong hotel is such a blur of messy choreography and poor CGI that you understand why he’d opt to fill the movie with date scenes instead of shootouts. Lauren’s double trouble all but causes every scene to repeat itself, once with Hardy’s Tuck, and then again with Pine’s Frank. The dates are designed as eye candy, plain and simple, whether they’re set in one of those clubs that only exist in liquor commercials, an intimate warehouse filled with Gustav Klimt paintings, or at Lauren’s tooth-rottingly colourful office. It would remind you of a circus, were there not already a carnival date scene that proves clowns know how to paint using earth tones.

Obviousness is the film’s cardinal sin, the bad cologne pervading every clichéd romantic entanglement and cookie-cutter action sequence. When Lauren keeps a paintball gun levelled strictly at the crotch-ular region, is there any question as to the safety of Tuck’s genitals? Even the soundtrack is employed as a giant slap in the face; as if a montage of Frank and Tuck interfering with each other would leave audiences confused as to their intent, The Beastie Boys’ “Sabotage” grinds away in the background.

At least the leads look like they’re enjoying themselves, so if nothing else, This Means War avoids coming off as desperate. It’s certainly guilty of pandering at every comedic beat and never has the gall to pull the trigger on an idea that’s insightful or original, but then again, fast-food filmmaking like this is designed for ease of digestion. It’s perhaps because of its own bottom-feeding ambitions and disposability that This Means War can stay safely among other cinematic confectioner, as easily forgotten as it is consumed.

2 out of 5

Directed by McG

2012, USA

Review: The Campaign

Seeing as they've been the biggest names in comedy for the better part of a decade now, Will Ferrell and Zach Galifianakis had to star in the same movie at some point. So why not now, at at time when political sensitivity is just starting to percolate, and we could all use a break before the real polarizing insanity begins? Their comedic styles practically read like a president/vice presidential ticket: Ferrell quarterbacks as the big gun leading the ensemble, while Galifianakis is the loveable oddball who shows up to support the headliner, if not outright upstage them. Putting these two together is like getting a licence to print money, so if anything, waiting to do a project about a no holds barred congressional seat race at the prime of its relevancy should only make this meeting of comic titans even more of a success.

So why is The Campaign so much less than the sum of all those hallmarks of a sure-fire hit? It's not as if director Jay Roach is unqualified for this sort of material. When he's not shooting R-rated comedies, he's busy making made-for-TV political movies on HBO. And The Campaign does deliver on the brand of jokes you've come to expect from both its stars, with Ferrell playing another inexplicably successful but barely contained man-child, and Galifianakis doing a variation on the preciously optimistic dimwit archetype he does so well, this time with some heinous sweaters and a pair of chinese pugs to keep him company.

The dominant issue might be that the story is designed to keep the pair apart as much as possible. The film opens with Ferrell's Cam Brady campaigning for reelection as a North Carolinian congressmen, even though all he's had to do in the past is just show up, having previously run unopposed. His platform is simple: America, Jesus, and freedom. When a misdialled phone number and a particularly salacious voice-mail land Brady in hot water, his corporate backers (Dan Aykroyd and John Lithgow) start looking for a replacement, which they find in Galifianakis' Marty Huggins, a small town businessman whose eccentricities can be easily confused for folksy charm.

With an opening quote from Ross Perot reminding viewers that, "politics has no rules," plans for a clean campaign are abandoned almost immediately by both parties, as Cam and Marty pander shamelessly while on camera, and orchestrate increasingly ruthless attacks against one another when off. With Ferrell and Galifianakis only interacting during debates and public events, it's the supporting cast they have to bounce of off when out of the public eye, including  Brian Cox as the Huggins patriarch, and Jason Sudeikis as Brady's campaign manager. There's also Dylan McDermott as Sudeikis' Huggins-camp counter-part, though unless there's some secret inside joke at work here, giving his character the same name as the dentist from Seinfeld is just weird.

While the backup players do fine, The Campaign toooften feels like a series of missed opportunities. The breakouts for both leads (Anchorman and The Hangover) had stronger stories to tie together what were essentially sketch compilations featuring a very talented cast. Here though, the plot counts down to the all-important election without actually building toward it. It's practically one great big montage of scenarios and premises related to campaigning, interspersed with direct attacks and retaliations against one candidate or another, and the repetition grows more wearying every time The Campaign hits the same note of politicians doing anything to please voters.

Certain jokes in and of themselves work just fine. There's a kinda clever, kinda offensive take on the southern mammy stereotype that gets some good mileage. And accidentally punching a baby is just inherently funny, as is when they return to that gag, which is even funnier. But they're the few noteworthy jokes sprinkled into a script that relies too heavily on formula in the sketches: get some expletive-peppered exposition out of the way, then establish a gag where everyone can shout out escalating non sequiturs to see which one will be the scene ender. It's tiresome, and doesn't make the most of either the subject matter or the rating. Why bother getting an R when one of the biggest laugh lines comes from an insult that was safe enough to be used on 30 Rock years ago.

The hit or miss humour would be more acceptable if there were something else to fall back on, but as satire, The Campaign is mostly toothless. The only real political sentiment is the broad acknowledgement that big money has become the real source of electoral power, and the evil industrialists pulling everyone's strings are called the Motch brothers, so if you've seen Wisconsin in the news in the last year, you get the joke. Their villainous plan to construct a child labour factory in the heart of North Carolina is a little at odds with the frequent product placement for Apple, with the message becoming less like "child labour is bad," and more like "child labour is bad so long as we're aware of it."

Though amusing in spurts, The Campaign doesn't convert enough of its huge potential into a memorable return, floating by on the strengths of its cast when it had the potential to soar. For a film that wants to idolize the positive change elections can have, The Campaign's inability to deliver fully on its own promise seems all too sourly familiar.

2 out of 5

Directed by Jay Roach

2012, USA

Review: Wrath of the Titans

Originally Posted March 31st, 2012

Though a remake of the 1981 film, 2010’s Clash of the Titans had its roots trace back to the “peplum” fad of the 1960’s, where bodybuilder stars played Greek warriors and gods in campy stories full of cheap sets and unintentional hilarity. “Clash” was a revival of that trends worst aspects, bringing back the wooden acting and plot goofiness of its forbearers but wrapped up in $125 million dollars of CGI and post-conversion 3D. It was not a good movie, not even close, something that would have forced Warner to pump the brakes on their franchise plans had it not made scads and scads of money at the box-office. The newly released Wrath of the Titans shows clear signs that Warner was aware of their mistakes; bringing in new writers and a new director are certainly the best place to start when righting the course of a what could be a $1 billion dollar franchise.

It’s a shame then that, even with the fresh blood, “Wrath” is the same mix of familiar action and goofy mythology that characterized its first outing. Demigod Perseus (Sam Worthington) is enjoying life as saviour-turned-fisherman when apocalyptic parole for the imprisoned titan Kronos threatens to upend his seaside retirement. Deadbeat dad Zeus (Liam Neeson) getting captured by Hades (Ralph Fiennes) is the last straw before it’s time for Perseus to break out the ol’ sword and sandals for more monster slaying and mythological sightseeing.

As a study in Greek classics, “Wrath” takes an everything but the kitchen sink and blender approach, combining characters and creatures from across the Hellenic board and setting the mixture to puree. It’s as big a mess as ever but a noticeably more confident one. That’s partly due to a reworking of the established material that’s just shy of retconning. “The greatest stories are written in the stars” soothed demigoddess and love interest Io at the beginning of “Clash,” though she fails to mention that heavenly bodies are fans of rewrites. She’s absent this go around (read: dead), replaced by queen Andromeda (Rosamund Pike), who was the damsel in distress in part one, but is now a feisty warrior princess. The comic relief is shared between newcomers Hephaestus (a delightful Bill Nighy) and Agenor (Toby Kebbell), who should satisfy anyone wondering what Jack Sparrow would have been like if played by Russell Brand.

The rejiggering does, for the most part, make the gods and men at the centre of the story more watchable. Worthington as a lead still maintains the resonance of old porridge, but Neeson and Fiennes are both more enticing, with increased screen time for the former and less Voldemort-style rasping from the latter. The theme of family remains dominant, a challenge for any writer, considering the kind of cavorting Greek gods are known for. Still, even when dealing in legendary levels of familial vendettas, Perseus’ daddy issues don’t really hold much interest when the fate of the world is at risk.

But it’s hard to expect relationship advice from a series that’s most memorable for the memetic “release the Kraken,” especially when the ads feature plenty of swords a slashin’ and beasties howling. Director Jonathan Liebesman handles most of his action scenes well, using long takes and greater scope than his predecessor to make Worthington’s reaction shots to CG monsters more engaging, save for one noodle limp and incomprehensible Minotaur brawl. They’re a nice showcase for the pretty effects and set designs that assuredly comprised the majority of the film’s budget. Filmed in native 3D this time around, shots designed specifically to exploit the extra dimension are kept to a minimum, and the effect blends in almost unnoticed, for better or worse.

Yet it’s all as dramatically featherweight as ever because the mythology is a veritable Bat-utility belt of writing cop-outs. The powers of godhood are loosely defined so as to fit whatever purpose present circumstances call for (the one consistency seems to be Perseus’ ability to withstand repeated ass-kickings). The gods can now trace back mortal prayers to their origin (thanks Patriot Act!), without much reason for it beyond providing excuse for dramatic entrances. And how are you supposed to understand the stakes of a fight when you’re not sure who’s immortal to what, when and whom? When told that gods don’t die, Perseus replies that, “they do now.” It’s as though he inherited Zeus’ power to simply make something so by saying it.

There’s such a careless, make-it-up-as-you-go sensibility to the film that it becomes reminiscent of a game of Dungeons & Dragons; you can tell those involved had a lot of fun creating this fantasy but lord if it isn’t a dull affair when you’re watching it play out from the sidelines. Wrath of the Titans can hold its head a bit higher than its predecessor, but it’s a modest improvement for a franchise that needed a Herculean one.

2 out of 5

Review: Conan the Barbarian (2011)

To those outside its cult following, it would appear that 1982’s Conanthe Barbarian has earned a reverence seemingly leagues beyond its surface quality. Often credited as being the breakout role for Arnold Schwarzenegger, the swords and sandals epic follows the titular Cimmerian warrior from Robert E. Howard’s pulp novel series as he fights monsters, warlocks and a thick Austrian accent with equal measure. There’s a reason it’s a full twenty minutes into the film before we ever hear Conan speak. It’s unabashedly in love with Howard’s world, but dated visuals and an overabundance of camp make watching the film today an entirely different experience. Even James Earl Jones can only bring so much gravitas to a villain named Thulsa Doom.

What really endeared audiences and cemented Conan as one of the essential films of 1980’s, was director John Milius’ epic scope, which emphasized the larger than life aspects of the Conan character to make his story borderline legendary. Sure, watching Schwarzenegger and foes awkwardly throwing each other around like roided out Godzillas sans Tokyo is corny, but in the film’s mind these were battles of titanic proportions. The same sense of grandeur finds its way into the character’s sparse yet weighty dialogue, as though the struggle of Schwarzenegger to spit out his lines make them somehow more powerful. It’s what happens when a film masks budget constraints by distracting the audience with unbridled confidence and an infectious sense of adventure. Which might explains why a studio exec would look at the Conan franchise twenty years later and think it’s ripe for a reboot; if it’s a story and character that people love, why not repackage them for today’s audiences?

And a repackaging is exactly what horror-movie-rebooter Marcus Nispel has created in Conan the Barbarian, a film so focussed on aping the standards of modern action films that it completely abandons the spirit of the original film. While it maintains the major story beats of its namesake (child barbarian loses family, swears revenge, took his father’s sword etc.), the mythic aura of Conan’s tale is lost specifically because it’s been modernized. The update is so wedded to the idea of being a summer action flick that all traces of Milius’ grandiose scope are either buried or altogether absent from the film, as it instead adopts narrative practices that rely on kinetics over character and visuals over vision. Look no further than the sloppily applied 3D, a staple of recent popcorn films that try to substitute a narrative depth with a visual one in a wasted effort to add nuance and life to a world devoid of any. It’s telling when the commercial-baiting shot of an axe coming right at the camera gets more of a reaction out of the actors than it does the audience.

Considering his defining character trait is proficiency with a blade, it’s understandable why the screenwriters would throw a battle Conan’s way at every opportunity, but the direction is as chaotic and unfocused as every other contemporary take on swordplay, relying on quick cuts and CG blood to overemphasize the flashier aspects of combat. Say what you will of the original’s clumsy fight choreography, at least the sword swings of the ’82 version bore weight. Here, Conan’s battles with cannon-fodder baddies are nebulous affairs bereft of tension, no more so then when direct dagger slices from CG sand-monsters don’t draw so much as a pixel of fake blood. There are fleeting moments of inspiration mid-combat, usually in the form of a particularly gnarly death, but any built-up sense of grit or efficacy usually goes out the window when you realize that the villain’s weapon of choice are sword-chucks (you know, a sword that flips around, like nunchucks).

And despite having the good-sense to make Conan an R-rated adventure, the liberties granted to the filmmakers are largely squandered in juvenile fashion, mostly as an excuse for shots of dismemberment and boobs as opposed to exploring the darker amorality of Howard’s original stories. Schwarzenegger’s stoic portrayal had a moral ambiguity that was much closer to Howard’s vision of Conan as an anti-hero conqueror who was good by virtue of making enemies out of the bad guys. What we’re given instead is a carbon-copy of every milquetoast adventure hero from the last decade, complete with unfounded modern values and hints of light-hearted womanizing that’s supposed to endear the character, resulting in a Conan that is about as much of a barbarian as Jake Gyllenhaal was a Prince of Persia. If the character that your entire film is based around doesn’t live up to his title, what chance does your movie really have?

The shadow of Schwarzenegger’s original performance hangs heavy over Conan, which would make it easy to fault new star Jason Momoa had he not already demonstrated his charisma when playing a similarly savage war lord in HBO’s Game of Thrones. The real culprit here is a script that falls back heavily on tropes of the modern-day shoot ‘em up. Slo-mo projectiles, jumping off of sea-side cliffs, hell, even exploding barrels somehow find their way into a fantasy flick, which would stand-out more if the dialogue didn’t try so desperately to match the action cliché for cliché. When love interest/plot mechanic Tamara waxes philosophical about predestination and fate, the best response three screenwriters could come up with is “I live, I love, I slay and I am content,” a paraphrase of Howard that’s about as reductive a quote from Conan as you’ll find. And who’d have thought a film with so little plot would feel the need to give so much exposition, the nadir easily being villain Khalar Zym feeling the need to, out of nowhere, remind everyone that he’s trying to kill Conan using his own father’s sword, in case the twenty minutes used to establish this subplot had already escaped you.

The welcome upside of the film’s slavish adherence to modern convention is that it’s a mercifully quick affair, although fast pacing and modest runtime serve as yet another contrast to epic, sprawling scope of the original. And while it’s never offensively awful, everything about the film, from the flaccid script to the scatological editing, settles for the underwhelming bar set by the pantheon of bad action movies Conan seems so eager to join. Conan used to seek out the lamentations of his enemies, but now sadly, it’s his fans who will likely be the ones feeling crushed.

2 out of 5

Conan the Barbarian

2011, USA

Directed by Marcus Nispel