Plot summary (story synopsis): Xia Fei Fei (singer Joi Chua in her movie debut) is a 38-year-old meter maid who lives with her aged father (Michael Tan). Her father worked as a Rediffusion salesman and is now beginning to show signs of dementia. He regularly wanders off on his own, trying to sell subscriptions of the defunct wired radio system.
At work, Fei Fei doesn't get along with her team leader Jenny (Rahimah Rahim). But their rivalry is overshadowed by the arrival of an automatic car park payment system which threatens their jobs.
Fei Fei has loved to sing since she was in school, especially the songs of Taiwanese singer Fong Fei Fei. She stumbles across a local singing contest and decides to join.
***
3688 is an enjoyable, sentimental comedy. While the trailer plays up the singing competition in the movie, the competition only appears in the last third of the movie. It's actually the least effective part of the movie.
The two main threads are Fei Fei's mini adventures as a meter maid (saman auntie in local slang) and her father's gradual mental deterioration.
Both work because writer/director Royston Tan (881, 15: The Movie) and rookie writer Fong Wei Lim spend the time to develop these subplots. The situations and characters feel natural unlike with some other local filmmakers (coughjackneocough).
The meter maid shenanigans plays out with a kampong-style feel, where everyone in the neighbourhood knows everybody. It's an Amelie-style parochial fairy-tale that works.
Equally compelling is Fei Fei's father's descent into dementia. It is played out over multiple small scenes, each slowly worming its way into your sympathies. Jack Neo's heavy hand of a few over-the-top dramatic scenes couldn't be further away in terms of style.
The ending of the movie is also done in a tasteful low-key style (stay behind for the post-credits scene).
The use of old Rediffusion radio sets is beautifully nostalgic. It's an example of effective and unobtrusive product placement (the Rediffusion name lives on as an Internet broadcaster). Again unlike Jack Neo.
I'm sorry to keep on comparing with Jack Neo, but the differences are glaring. Another example? Liu Ling Ling as Seafood Auntie is charmingly brash without being annoying. Unlike Irene Ang in Jack Neo's Ah Boys to Men.
There is some singing, especially covers of Fong Fei Fei's classic hits. There's a lone song-and-dance number at the start with the meter maids but strangely enough, this is the only dance number in the movie. So the tone of the movie is a bit uneven.
Another uneven bit of filmmaking is the inclusion of Fei Fei's old school friend, recently returned from New York. He doesn't seem to serve any purpose.
There are a few local details such as a mention of Stomp - the local online citizen-journalism website. There's also a recreation of a real-life local publicity stunt involving two female sunbathers in a car park. Local rapper Shiga Shay makes an appearance and spouts off some delightfully fast raps.
3688 is a way better movie than most other local offerings. Let's see if the public gives it their support. To paraphrase a local opposition politician, The public gets the movies they deserve, so I don't want to hear any more complaints.
2015-09-18
2015-09-14
The Assassin (2015)
Plot summary (story synopsis): It is China during the Tang Dynasty. Young assassin Yinniang (Shu Qi) doesn't have the heart to kill a target in front of his son. To teach her a lesson, she is sent back to her home province of Weibo to assassinate her cousin Tian Ji'an (Chen Chang) who is now the Lord of Weibo.
Tian Ji-an's court is already in turmoil. There is disagreement over how to handle their relationship with the distant Tang Dynasty. There is also some political intrigue within the court.
***
The Assassin is an arthouse movie. Don't expect anything like Hero or House of Flying Daggers. It won the Best Director prize at Cannes for director Hsiao-hsien Hou.
There's lots of show-don't-tell, so the pace will be slow for some audiences. Fights are few, fast, short, and realistic. Shu Qi isn't made into some kind of superhero, just a skilled fighter.
There are long takes and few close-ups. Many scenes are shot with a single wide-angle take. This is Kurosawa style.
Standard editing advice is to enter the scene late and get out early. Keep scenes short, don't bore the audience. The Assassin does the opposite. Combined with the wide-angle long takes, this gives an effective voyeuristic feel to the movie. You feel like an observer watching from a distance, not some omniscient god floating everywhere like in conventional movies with their close-ups, quick cuts and dolly moves.
The director's voyeuristic intention is confirmed in some indoor scenes. The camera is positioned behind thin veil-like curtains, so the audience feels like they are hiding from the people in the scene.
So this movie is not for everyone. There are reports of some audience members walking out during the screenings at Cannes and at the Toronto International Film Festival.
While the unconventional camerawork is effective to a certain extent, it's also distracting. We are used to today's camerawork and done well, it is invisible to the audience. The Assassin's minimalist camerawork calls attention to itself, throwing the audience out of the movie.
There is high contrast in some scenes - bits of sunlight in a dim interior. This would be considered a mistake in an amateur movie.
Another quirk: the movie is shot in 4:3 aspect ratio, the old PAL and NTSC analog TV format. The decision to not use 16:9, 2.4:1 or some other widescreen format is especially perverse considering the gorgeous scenery in some of the shots.
Perennially youthful Shu Qi plays the twenty-something Yinniang well. But we don't see much of Shu Qi. She's on screen maybe 25% to 50% of the time, and usually not in close-up.
The plot is interesting enough but there are too many characters and the various subplots are difficult to follow (who is the lady who tried to hide her pregnancy? I had to look her up after I watched the movie). The thing with the lady in the gold mask? Very Pink Pantherish - Clouseau versus Cato.
The Assassin gets an A for effort but overall it could have been better.
Tian Ji-an's court is already in turmoil. There is disagreement over how to handle their relationship with the distant Tang Dynasty. There is also some political intrigue within the court.
***
The Assassin is an arthouse movie. Don't expect anything like Hero or House of Flying Daggers. It won the Best Director prize at Cannes for director Hsiao-hsien Hou.
There's lots of show-don't-tell, so the pace will be slow for some audiences. Fights are few, fast, short, and realistic. Shu Qi isn't made into some kind of superhero, just a skilled fighter.
There are long takes and few close-ups. Many scenes are shot with a single wide-angle take. This is Kurosawa style.
Standard editing advice is to enter the scene late and get out early. Keep scenes short, don't bore the audience. The Assassin does the opposite. Combined with the wide-angle long takes, this gives an effective voyeuristic feel to the movie. You feel like an observer watching from a distance, not some omniscient god floating everywhere like in conventional movies with their close-ups, quick cuts and dolly moves.
The director's voyeuristic intention is confirmed in some indoor scenes. The camera is positioned behind thin veil-like curtains, so the audience feels like they are hiding from the people in the scene.
So this movie is not for everyone. There are reports of some audience members walking out during the screenings at Cannes and at the Toronto International Film Festival.
While the unconventional camerawork is effective to a certain extent, it's also distracting. We are used to today's camerawork and done well, it is invisible to the audience. The Assassin's minimalist camerawork calls attention to itself, throwing the audience out of the movie.
There is high contrast in some scenes - bits of sunlight in a dim interior. This would be considered a mistake in an amateur movie.
Another quirk: the movie is shot in 4:3 aspect ratio, the old PAL and NTSC analog TV format. The decision to not use 16:9, 2.4:1 or some other widescreen format is especially perverse considering the gorgeous scenery in some of the shots.
Perennially youthful Shu Qi plays the twenty-something Yinniang well. But we don't see much of Shu Qi. She's on screen maybe 25% to 50% of the time, and usually not in close-up.
The plot is interesting enough but there are too many characters and the various subplots are difficult to follow (who is the lady who tried to hide her pregnancy? I had to look her up after I watched the movie). The thing with the lady in the gold mask? Very Pink Pantherish - Clouseau versus Cato.
The Assassin gets an A for effort but overall it could have been better.
2015-09-10
Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials (2015)
Plot summary (story synopsis): Thomas (Dylan O'Brien) and his pals have been rescued from the glade/maze by men in helicopters, led by Janson (Aidan Gillen - Little Finger in Game of Thrones).
They are taken to Janson's headquarters with promises of a better life. But Thomas discovers a sinister secret about Janson. He and his friends break out into a hostile world where they face scorching heat and zombies, with Janson hot on their trail.
***
Scorch Trials is the second movie in the Maze Runner series. It's a repetitive mix of people running and getting into gunfights. There are maybe 5 separate incidents such as this.
We've seen it before. Zombies (three percent of the movies released in the past decade), ruthless scientists experimenting on an immune hero to find a cure for an epidemic (Resident Evil), a collapsed skyscraper leaning over (Transformers, Cloverfield), teenagers being drugged to stop them from their quest (Labyrinth), people crawling in air ducts (twelve percent of all thrillers), teens sleeping together in barracks (Divergent, Kingsman), a captive population being fooled that they will be chosen to go to a better place (The Island).
But the fundamental problem with the Maze Runner series is that we don't care about the characters. There are too many secondary characters. So much so that we don't care if any of them get killed.
There is no sense of danger or urgency. But it's not just the supporting cast. We don't even care about Thomas. We know that he's the hero and therefore in no physical danger. The Hunger Games gets around this problem by putting Katniss in psychological danger. There is no equivalent for Thomas.
Its basic scenario also sucks. Like Resident Evil, the movie naively assumes that the ruined and depopulated world can maintain its fancy equipment - helicopters, computers, medical equipment, long distance video links.
The time and resources poured into building the massive movable maze. All for what? How does that help them find a cure for the virus?
This lack of realism extends to the details of the plot. Instead of creatively extrapolating a believable plot from its basic premise (no matter how dumb it might be), action cliches are dreamed up and a plot is made to accommodate the cliches.
The pacing is fast though. There's never a dull moment. If only we had something worth cheering for.
They are taken to Janson's headquarters with promises of a better life. But Thomas discovers a sinister secret about Janson. He and his friends break out into a hostile world where they face scorching heat and zombies, with Janson hot on their trail.
***
Scorch Trials is the second movie in the Maze Runner series. It's a repetitive mix of people running and getting into gunfights. There are maybe 5 separate incidents such as this.
We've seen it before. Zombies (three percent of the movies released in the past decade), ruthless scientists experimenting on an immune hero to find a cure for an epidemic (Resident Evil), a collapsed skyscraper leaning over (Transformers, Cloverfield), teenagers being drugged to stop them from their quest (Labyrinth), people crawling in air ducts (twelve percent of all thrillers), teens sleeping together in barracks (Divergent, Kingsman), a captive population being fooled that they will be chosen to go to a better place (The Island).
But the fundamental problem with the Maze Runner series is that we don't care about the characters. There are too many secondary characters. So much so that we don't care if any of them get killed.
There is no sense of danger or urgency. But it's not just the supporting cast. We don't even care about Thomas. We know that he's the hero and therefore in no physical danger. The Hunger Games gets around this problem by putting Katniss in psychological danger. There is no equivalent for Thomas.
Its basic scenario also sucks. Like Resident Evil, the movie naively assumes that the ruined and depopulated world can maintain its fancy equipment - helicopters, computers, medical equipment, long distance video links.
The time and resources poured into building the massive movable maze. All for what? How does that help them find a cure for the virus?
This lack of realism extends to the details of the plot. Instead of creatively extrapolating a believable plot from its basic premise (no matter how dumb it might be), action cliches are dreamed up and a plot is made to accommodate the cliches.
The pacing is fast though. There's never a dull moment. If only we had something worth cheering for.
2015-08-21
Wild City (2015)
Plot summary (story synopsis):
T-Man (Louis Koo) is an ex-cop turned bartender, forced to resign from the force for protecting his step-brother Chung (Shawn Yue). Chung is now a taxi driver. They cross paths with Yan (Tong Liya), a pretty young woman with a briefcase full of dirty money.
Yan is on the run from her ex-boyfriend George (Michael Tse), a crooked lawyer who unleashes a 5-man gang of ruthless Taiwanese killers on her. Yan, T-Man and Chung have to run for their lives, as they argue over what to do with the money.
***
Wild City is a rather low-key actioneer that manages to work. While there are the normal fights and chases, in the end it's the characters that stay in your mind.
Its rather meandering plot moves the three leads from place to place and succeeds in getting us to know them better. Through their arguments and interactions, the characters come alive. So despite what it looks like, Wild City is actually a character movie. At least it's the closest that a Hong Kong action movie can get.
Even the bad guys are more developed than in your standard Hong Kong cops and robbers flick. When one of the Taiwanese killers gets killed by a boat's propellers, there's an uncommon gravity to his death. Part of the reason is that writer/director Ringo Lam eases up on the melodrama, so the audience doesn't feel manipulated (though it's still a Hong Kong movie, so some melodrama is unavoidable).
Some scenes don't ring true. T-Man's ex boss camps out at the gun range with 10 other cops, waiting for T-Man to collect his gun (he arrived on the scene within a minute of T-Man being apprehended)? And sliding a gun to a bad guy is probably a criminal action.
There's also a confusingly unnecessary flashback to a scene that just happened, where the five killers attack the three heroes in a car park. Another gripe - the police seem to position themselves on opposite sides instead of at 90 degrees, so they are shooting past the bad guys at each other (but of course they never hit each other).
But Ringo Lam has done his work and had already made us voluntarily suspend our disbelief. So these imperfections aren't fatal flaws but do chip away at our enjoyment.
Missing is the thematic richness of Heat or Miami Vice, not to mention Michael Mann's attention to detail. But for a Hong Kong crime movie, this is good stuff.
T-Man (Louis Koo) is an ex-cop turned bartender, forced to resign from the force for protecting his step-brother Chung (Shawn Yue). Chung is now a taxi driver. They cross paths with Yan (Tong Liya), a pretty young woman with a briefcase full of dirty money.
Yan is on the run from her ex-boyfriend George (Michael Tse), a crooked lawyer who unleashes a 5-man gang of ruthless Taiwanese killers on her. Yan, T-Man and Chung have to run for their lives, as they argue over what to do with the money.
***
Wild City is a rather low-key actioneer that manages to work. While there are the normal fights and chases, in the end it's the characters that stay in your mind.
Its rather meandering plot moves the three leads from place to place and succeeds in getting us to know them better. Through their arguments and interactions, the characters come alive. So despite what it looks like, Wild City is actually a character movie. At least it's the closest that a Hong Kong action movie can get.
Even the bad guys are more developed than in your standard Hong Kong cops and robbers flick. When one of the Taiwanese killers gets killed by a boat's propellers, there's an uncommon gravity to his death. Part of the reason is that writer/director Ringo Lam eases up on the melodrama, so the audience doesn't feel manipulated (though it's still a Hong Kong movie, so some melodrama is unavoidable).
Some scenes don't ring true. T-Man's ex boss camps out at the gun range with 10 other cops, waiting for T-Man to collect his gun (he arrived on the scene within a minute of T-Man being apprehended)? And sliding a gun to a bad guy is probably a criminal action.
There's also a confusingly unnecessary flashback to a scene that just happened, where the five killers attack the three heroes in a car park. Another gripe - the police seem to position themselves on opposite sides instead of at 90 degrees, so they are shooting past the bad guys at each other (but of course they never hit each other).
But Ringo Lam has done his work and had already made us voluntarily suspend our disbelief. So these imperfections aren't fatal flaws but do chip away at our enjoyment.
Missing is the thematic richness of Heat or Miami Vice, not to mention Michael Mann's attention to detail. But for a Hong Kong crime movie, this is good stuff.
2015-08-20
Hitman: Agent 47 (2015)
Plot summary (story synopsis):
Katia (Hannah Ware) is looking for her long lost father (Ciaran Hinds). Genetically-engineered hitman Agent 47 (Rupert Friend) is on her trail, under orders from Diana (Angelababy). John Smith (Zachary Quinto - Spock in the new Star Trek) saves her from Agent 47, but he isn't what he seems to be.
The cat-and-mouse game between Agent 47 and John Smith moves from Germany to Singapore, where Katia tracks down her father.
***
Hitman is a strangely cold-blooded action adventure. There's lots of gunplay, stunts, car crashes, and explosions. But you're left unmoved by all the sound and fury. John Wick this is not.
The plot has a few interesting twists but overall feels generic and contrived. Rupert Friend and Hannah Ware lack charisma. Zachary Quinto, looking like a young Peter Gallagher, definitely outshines them both. Unfortunately, he's in a supporting role. Rookie director Aleksander Bach (Hitman is his first credit) even manages to make Ciaran Hinds look unremarkable.
Based on a video game, Hitman doesn't come close to the slickness of Resident Evil. I'm not even sure that it's better than Battleship. There's a pervasive B-movie feel to everything - plot, acting, action. Unfortunately I can't put my finger on why.
I wish I could analyze it further but there's just not much there to analyze.
For Singaporeans, the novelty will be about watching a relatively major Hollywood action movie, being shot in Singapore. As you might expect, there are some incongruities that would bother locals but not anyone else. Why on Earth is Diana driving a car inside the Marina Barrage?
More disappointingly, Hitman uses cliched tourist spots such as Marina Bay and Gardens by the Bay, and only as exotic backdrop. Like the rest of the movie, Singapore comes across as generic. No local flavor or quirkiness comes across. Heck, there is barely any interaction with the local people. (I don't think Diana is supposed to be local. Angelababy is a mainland China/Hong Kong actress, who is obviously there only to draw in the mainland audience. Besides, she has a small role and just talks to Agent 47 over the phone.)
Katia (Hannah Ware) is looking for her long lost father (Ciaran Hinds). Genetically-engineered hitman Agent 47 (Rupert Friend) is on her trail, under orders from Diana (Angelababy). John Smith (Zachary Quinto - Spock in the new Star Trek) saves her from Agent 47, but he isn't what he seems to be.
The cat-and-mouse game between Agent 47 and John Smith moves from Germany to Singapore, where Katia tracks down her father.
***
Hitman is a strangely cold-blooded action adventure. There's lots of gunplay, stunts, car crashes, and explosions. But you're left unmoved by all the sound and fury. John Wick this is not.
The plot has a few interesting twists but overall feels generic and contrived. Rupert Friend and Hannah Ware lack charisma. Zachary Quinto, looking like a young Peter Gallagher, definitely outshines them both. Unfortunately, he's in a supporting role. Rookie director Aleksander Bach (Hitman is his first credit) even manages to make Ciaran Hinds look unremarkable.
Based on a video game, Hitman doesn't come close to the slickness of Resident Evil. I'm not even sure that it's better than Battleship. There's a pervasive B-movie feel to everything - plot, acting, action. Unfortunately I can't put my finger on why.
I wish I could analyze it further but there's just not much there to analyze.
For Singaporeans, the novelty will be about watching a relatively major Hollywood action movie, being shot in Singapore. As you might expect, there are some incongruities that would bother locals but not anyone else. Why on Earth is Diana driving a car inside the Marina Barrage?
More disappointingly, Hitman uses cliched tourist spots such as Marina Bay and Gardens by the Bay, and only as exotic backdrop. Like the rest of the movie, Singapore comes across as generic. No local flavor or quirkiness comes across. Heck, there is barely any interaction with the local people. (I don't think Diana is supposed to be local. Angelababy is a mainland China/Hong Kong actress, who is obviously there only to draw in the mainland audience. Besides, she has a small role and just talks to Agent 47 over the phone.)
2015-08-07
To the Fore (2015)
Plot summary (story synopsis):
Ming (Eddie Peng) and Tian (Shawn Dou) are rookie professional race cyclists. They join the Radiant team where Ji-won (Si Won Choi) is the lead racer. Ming and Tian fall for the same girl - fellow cyclist Shiyao (Wang Luodan). Shiyao chooses Ming but Ming is unfaithful to her and Tian steps in to pick up the slack. But Tian has problems of his own.
After various successes and defeats, Ming and Tian end up as rivals on different teams and suffer career setbacks. Finally, Ming and Tian team up again and race against Ji-won.
***
To the Fore is a crowd-pleaser. Following the Simpson-Bruckheimer blockbuster formula of action (racing) for the guys and romance for the girls, To the Fore delivers as a date movie. It is 70 percent hardcore cycling pseudo-documentary and 30 percent drama/love triangle.
Writer/director Dante Lam (with co-writers Silver Hau and Fung Lam) shows good judgment by starting off the movie with a quick series of exciting bicycle races, slowly easing in the relationship drama later on. The beautifully-filmed races grab our attention within the first few minutes and helps to establish the authenticity of the movie's world and its characters.
The races aren't just fancy camerawork either. The tactics, training and equipment are shown in detail, lending interest and believability to the proceedings. The race settings are stunning - mountain roads, desert, city streets, indoor and outdoor velodromes. This is the kind of movie you can rewatch in the background on your second PC monitor with the sound turned down low, while you work on your main monitor.
Even when the drama gets started, the scenes are kept short and are inserted in between even more bicycle races, so the movie never bogs down. An example of good storytelling judgment - there's a cute scene where Ming and Tian compete by balancing on bicycles without moving. They bet dinner over who falls first, then the movie cuts away to the next scene and doesn't bother to show who won. Quick and to the point - the point is their friendly but still real rivalry, not who won.
There's also some good-natured (not mean) slapstick humor, which works. The crowd in my theater was happily chuckling along.
I almost gave this movie a miss but was persuaded by the cycling scenes in the movie trailer. The trailer doesn't lie. The movie really does look this good. Given today's improved camera mounts, it actually looks better than director Peter Yates's (Bullitt) classic Breaking Away from 1979. To the Fore's script is more formulaic than Steve Tesich's quirky coming-of-age script for Breaking Away, but it still entertains.
Ming (Eddie Peng) and Tian (Shawn Dou) are rookie professional race cyclists. They join the Radiant team where Ji-won (Si Won Choi) is the lead racer. Ming and Tian fall for the same girl - fellow cyclist Shiyao (Wang Luodan). Shiyao chooses Ming but Ming is unfaithful to her and Tian steps in to pick up the slack. But Tian has problems of his own.
After various successes and defeats, Ming and Tian end up as rivals on different teams and suffer career setbacks. Finally, Ming and Tian team up again and race against Ji-won.
***
To the Fore is a crowd-pleaser. Following the Simpson-Bruckheimer blockbuster formula of action (racing) for the guys and romance for the girls, To the Fore delivers as a date movie. It is 70 percent hardcore cycling pseudo-documentary and 30 percent drama/love triangle.
Writer/director Dante Lam (with co-writers Silver Hau and Fung Lam) shows good judgment by starting off the movie with a quick series of exciting bicycle races, slowly easing in the relationship drama later on. The beautifully-filmed races grab our attention within the first few minutes and helps to establish the authenticity of the movie's world and its characters.
The races aren't just fancy camerawork either. The tactics, training and equipment are shown in detail, lending interest and believability to the proceedings. The race settings are stunning - mountain roads, desert, city streets, indoor and outdoor velodromes. This is the kind of movie you can rewatch in the background on your second PC monitor with the sound turned down low, while you work on your main monitor.
Even when the drama gets started, the scenes are kept short and are inserted in between even more bicycle races, so the movie never bogs down. An example of good storytelling judgment - there's a cute scene where Ming and Tian compete by balancing on bicycles without moving. They bet dinner over who falls first, then the movie cuts away to the next scene and doesn't bother to show who won. Quick and to the point - the point is their friendly but still real rivalry, not who won.
There's also some good-natured (not mean) slapstick humor, which works. The crowd in my theater was happily chuckling along.
I almost gave this movie a miss but was persuaded by the cycling scenes in the movie trailer. The trailer doesn't lie. The movie really does look this good. Given today's improved camera mounts, it actually looks better than director Peter Yates's (Bullitt) classic Breaking Away from 1979. To the Fore's script is more formulaic than Steve Tesich's quirky coming-of-age script for Breaking Away, but it still entertains.
2015-07-20
Monk Comes Down the Mountain (2015)
Plot summary (story synopsis): It is early 20th century China. A time when primitive motorcars and guns coexist with kung fu. Apprentice monk He Anxia's (Baoqiang Wang) mountain monastery falls upon hard times and is unable to support so many monks. He is asked to leave and fend for himself in the big city.
Luckily for him, the sheltered and innocent Anxia ends up as assistant to kindly doctor Cui Daoning (Fan Wei). However his happy new life doesn't last long. The doctor's wife Yuzhen (Lin Chiling) is having an affair with his brother Daorong (Vanness Wu). Daorong poisons the doctor and Anxia kills the two illicit lovers to avenge his master.
He then apprentices himself to kung fu master Zhou Xiyu (Aaron Kwok) who is an enemy of the evil father-son team of Peng Qianwu (Yuen Wah) and Qizi (Jaycee Chan, Jackie's son). Qizi shoots and kills Zhou. Anxia now finds himself paired with Zhou's old friend Boss Zha (Chang Chen) against Peng, Qizi and a mobster (Lam Suet).
***
I'll have to admit that I haven't seen many Chen Kaige movies, but Monk seems rather crude story-wise for a director of his reputation.
Monk is an odd kung fu movie that against all odds, ends up working. It seems haphazard at first, Anxia getting a new master every 30 minutes. But the characters and individual stories work, probably thanks to Xu Haofeng’s source novel. At the end of the movie it's all nicely summed up - Anxia needed to experience human follies in order to become a better monk. So it's not about the plot, but the richness and bitterness of human experience.
The beautiful period sets (especially the doctor's house) and generally good acting help to support the movie.
Baoqiang's Anxia is an unrelatable simpleton with an annoying laugh. But Aaron Kwok and Chang Chen are convincing and sympathetic as serious, mature kung fu masters. Aaron Kwok is detached and enlightened, Chang Chen is passionate and vengeful. As a bonus, Lin Chiling looks absolutely stunning as the doctor's wife. Yuen Wah and Jaycee Chan are deliciously hateful.
Cinematography by Geoffrey Simpson is unremarkable. The fights are many, as is the wirework for the flying kung fu. I'm not a fan of wire fu but in certain cases such as in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon it works as a Fantasy element. It kind of works here. The problem with flying kung fu is that it is so removed from real fighting, that it's closer to dancing than martial arts. So it's all fluff, with no meaning or reality behind each move, nothing you can sink your teeth into.
Speaking of Crouching Tiger, Monk seems to be consciously trying to create a similar epic mythology. It fails because come on, Crouching Tiger is a unique one-off masterpiece. Monk succeeds as decent entertainment, and that's not too shabby.
Luckily for him, the sheltered and innocent Anxia ends up as assistant to kindly doctor Cui Daoning (Fan Wei). However his happy new life doesn't last long. The doctor's wife Yuzhen (Lin Chiling) is having an affair with his brother Daorong (Vanness Wu). Daorong poisons the doctor and Anxia kills the two illicit lovers to avenge his master.
He then apprentices himself to kung fu master Zhou Xiyu (Aaron Kwok) who is an enemy of the evil father-son team of Peng Qianwu (Yuen Wah) and Qizi (Jaycee Chan, Jackie's son). Qizi shoots and kills Zhou. Anxia now finds himself paired with Zhou's old friend Boss Zha (Chang Chen) against Peng, Qizi and a mobster (Lam Suet).
***
I'll have to admit that I haven't seen many Chen Kaige movies, but Monk seems rather crude story-wise for a director of his reputation.
Monk is an odd kung fu movie that against all odds, ends up working. It seems haphazard at first, Anxia getting a new master every 30 minutes. But the characters and individual stories work, probably thanks to Xu Haofeng’s source novel. At the end of the movie it's all nicely summed up - Anxia needed to experience human follies in order to become a better monk. So it's not about the plot, but the richness and bitterness of human experience.
The beautiful period sets (especially the doctor's house) and generally good acting help to support the movie.
Baoqiang's Anxia is an unrelatable simpleton with an annoying laugh. But Aaron Kwok and Chang Chen are convincing and sympathetic as serious, mature kung fu masters. Aaron Kwok is detached and enlightened, Chang Chen is passionate and vengeful. As a bonus, Lin Chiling looks absolutely stunning as the doctor's wife. Yuen Wah and Jaycee Chan are deliciously hateful.
Cinematography by Geoffrey Simpson is unremarkable. The fights are many, as is the wirework for the flying kung fu. I'm not a fan of wire fu but in certain cases such as in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon it works as a Fantasy element. It kind of works here. The problem with flying kung fu is that it is so removed from real fighting, that it's closer to dancing than martial arts. So it's all fluff, with no meaning or reality behind each move, nothing you can sink your teeth into.
Speaking of Crouching Tiger, Monk seems to be consciously trying to create a similar epic mythology. It fails because come on, Crouching Tiger is a unique one-off masterpiece. Monk succeeds as decent entertainment, and that's not too shabby.
2015-07-17
Our Sister Mambo (2015)
Plot summary (story synopsis): Cinema executive Mr. Wong (Moses Lim) is a mild-mannered father of 4 daughters, and husband to a loud-voiced property agent (Audrey Luo).
We follow their misadventures such as Wong coming to terms with the public not caring about Singapore's movie past, Mrs. Wong not getting along with a colleague, Mambo (Michelle Chong) quitting her job as a lawyer and becoming an apprentice chef, Grace (Ethel Yap) dealing with a divorced suitor from China, Rose (Oon Shun An) dating a series of jerks, June (Joey Leong) dating an Indian.
***
Our Sister Mambo is one of the best Singapore films I've seen. Everything works.
The script by Michael Chiang (Army Daze) is tight, flows well and never devolves into melodrama. We get a light-hearted, good-natured peek into the life of the Wong family through the details of their daily life, family squabbles, love life, and professional struggles. Marketed as a rom-com, it's more a comedy/drama. And despite its title, it's not really about Mambo. Equal emphasis is placed on all family members.
There are no boring dead spots. The scenes are short, smart and full of energy. Its all done in Ilo Ilo's show-don't-tell style, but in a more fun and accessible way. However the general public might have the same complaint as they did with Ilo Ilo - But nothing happens!
Cathay's 80th anniversary celebrations (Cathay produced the film) are nicely integrated into the storyline and don't come across as forced or crass (Jack Neo could learn something from this). The same goes for corporate supporters such as DWG (where Mrs. Wong works) and chef Willin Low (Mambo's boss).
Cameos by celebrity blogger Xiaxue, black-and-white movie stars Grace Chang and Dato Maria Manado Abdullah, and the obligatory muhibbah multi-racial supporting characters (Siti Khalijah, Rani Singam), also fit together naturally.
Michelle Chong puts in a nicely restrained performance and doesn't try to steal the show. (Everyone knows that she could have if she had wanted to.) Ethel Yap, Oon Shun An and Joey Leong handle themselves well. Coming across as distinct, realistic, likable personalities.
Moses Lim also gives a nicely toned-down performance compared to his Under One Roof days. Audrey Luo expertly balances her character's brash persona, pushing her to the edge of being unlikable but never quite going over the line.
Lighting by cinematographer Yoke Weng Ho (supported by top-notch color grading) is stunning, better than most Hong Kong and even Hollywood films. It's even more impressive considering that OSM is an urban comedy/drama that has everyday locations for its scenes.
It's almost too pretty. I found myself being distracted by how well each scene was lit.
Outdoors, high-rise office backlit against window, bedroom, kitchen, home garden at night, lift (elevator), moving car interior, indoor car park, night club. It doesn't matter. Yoke Weng Ho exercises total control over each environment.
There's lots of soft light. Everything is clearly seen. There are no blown highlights or muddy shadows. Skin tones are good and light sources look natural (not obviously from off-camera studio light).
There's no ugly greenish tint from fluorescent bulbs, and it looks better than a color grading fix - the colors are rich. Makes me wonder whether they replaced the ceiling lights with high CRI lights. (Even for a short scene in an indoor car park? That's a high level of perfectionism.). All this was shot on an Arri Alexa - the camera that a lot of the big Hollywood movies use.
Camera movements are kept minimal and don't call attention to themselves. One rare miss-step being an extended Steadicam shot at the end. It was unnecessary and distracting.
If there's one weak spot in the movie, it's the use of the classic song Jajambo. It's one of those annoyingly brash songs that gets stuck in your head.
For everything else, director Wi Ding Ho and the rest of the crew and cast, should take a bow.
We follow their misadventures such as Wong coming to terms with the public not caring about Singapore's movie past, Mrs. Wong not getting along with a colleague, Mambo (Michelle Chong) quitting her job as a lawyer and becoming an apprentice chef, Grace (Ethel Yap) dealing with a divorced suitor from China, Rose (Oon Shun An) dating a series of jerks, June (Joey Leong) dating an Indian.
***
Our Sister Mambo is one of the best Singapore films I've seen. Everything works.
The script by Michael Chiang (Army Daze) is tight, flows well and never devolves into melodrama. We get a light-hearted, good-natured peek into the life of the Wong family through the details of their daily life, family squabbles, love life, and professional struggles. Marketed as a rom-com, it's more a comedy/drama. And despite its title, it's not really about Mambo. Equal emphasis is placed on all family members.
There are no boring dead spots. The scenes are short, smart and full of energy. Its all done in Ilo Ilo's show-don't-tell style, but in a more fun and accessible way. However the general public might have the same complaint as they did with Ilo Ilo - But nothing happens!
Cathay's 80th anniversary celebrations (Cathay produced the film) are nicely integrated into the storyline and don't come across as forced or crass (Jack Neo could learn something from this). The same goes for corporate supporters such as DWG (where Mrs. Wong works) and chef Willin Low (Mambo's boss).
Cameos by celebrity blogger Xiaxue, black-and-white movie stars Grace Chang and Dato Maria Manado Abdullah, and the obligatory muhibbah multi-racial supporting characters (Siti Khalijah, Rani Singam), also fit together naturally.
Michelle Chong puts in a nicely restrained performance and doesn't try to steal the show. (Everyone knows that she could have if she had wanted to.) Ethel Yap, Oon Shun An and Joey Leong handle themselves well. Coming across as distinct, realistic, likable personalities.
Moses Lim also gives a nicely toned-down performance compared to his Under One Roof days. Audrey Luo expertly balances her character's brash persona, pushing her to the edge of being unlikable but never quite going over the line.
Lighting by cinematographer Yoke Weng Ho (supported by top-notch color grading) is stunning, better than most Hong Kong and even Hollywood films. It's even more impressive considering that OSM is an urban comedy/drama that has everyday locations for its scenes.
It's almost too pretty. I found myself being distracted by how well each scene was lit.
Outdoors, high-rise office backlit against window, bedroom, kitchen, home garden at night, lift (elevator), moving car interior, indoor car park, night club. It doesn't matter. Yoke Weng Ho exercises total control over each environment.
There's lots of soft light. Everything is clearly seen. There are no blown highlights or muddy shadows. Skin tones are good and light sources look natural (not obviously from off-camera studio light).
There's no ugly greenish tint from fluorescent bulbs, and it looks better than a color grading fix - the colors are rich. Makes me wonder whether they replaced the ceiling lights with high CRI lights. (Even for a short scene in an indoor car park? That's a high level of perfectionism.). All this was shot on an Arri Alexa - the camera that a lot of the big Hollywood movies use.
Camera movements are kept minimal and don't call attention to themselves. One rare miss-step being an extended Steadicam shot at the end. It was unnecessary and distracting.
If there's one weak spot in the movie, it's the use of the classic song Jajambo. It's one of those annoyingly brash songs that gets stuck in your head.
For everything else, director Wi Ding Ho and the rest of the crew and cast, should take a bow.
2015-07-03
SPL 2: A Time for Consequences (2015)
Plot summary (story synopsis): Undercover Hong Kong cop Kit (Jacky Wu Jing) has his cover blown and is illegally held at a Thai prison in retribution.
The prison is run by crooked warden Ko (Max Zhang Jin) who is beholden to bad guy Hung (Louis Koo). Coincidentally, honest prison guard Chai (Tony Jaa) has a sick daughter Sa (Unda Kunteera Thordchanng) whose only hope is a bone marrow transplant from Kit. Chai tries and fails to contact Kit, not realizing that Kit is right under his nose.
Hung has a weak heart and his only possible donor is his own brother Bill (Jun Hung). Hung kidnaps Bill to forcibly get a heart transplant.
Meanwhile, Kit briefly manages to telephone his uncle and fellow cop Wah (Simon Yam). Wah goes alone to Thailand to rescue Kit.
***
SPL 2 is your stereotypical melodramatic Hong Kong kung fu movie. Its plot is more complicated than normal but its melodrama is standard Hong Kong industrial strength.
Thankfully, the fight choreography by Li Chung-Chi is excellent and saves the movie. The fights are in classic Hong Kong style - way drawn out. But this is one of the rare movies where the long action sequences don't become boring. The fights are also never repetitive. There's speed and skill to the moves, not just simple punches and blocks. Tony Jaa fans will be pleased to see him fight more in SPL 2 than he did in Dolph Lundgren's Skin Trade.
And it's not just hand-to-hand. There's also a thrilling shootout at Hong Kong's cruise terminal. It takes some imagination to work out an exciting shootout scene and Li Chung-Chi manages to do it. Movie gunfights are as common as car chases so you can't just have some perfunctory bang bang action and expect to impress the audience. Another standout action scene is a large-scale prison riot, where it's not just the stars but also the dozens of extras that are fighting their hearts out.
However my favorite is a smaller scale duel between Kit and a nameless assassin (Zhang Chi) who is a knife expert. (An earlier scene where nameless assassin takes out a staircase full of cops is also excellent). Kit uses a tonfa (one of my favorite weapons, and one that is too rarely seen on screen) against the nameless assassin, but unfortunately only in reverse grip and like a club. Okay, maybe reverse grip makes sense against a knife because you want to increase your reach, but at least use the handle fork for some blocks or hooks.
Less forgivably, after dispatching the nameless assassin, he leaves his tonfa on the floor and goes on to fight the other bad guys. Not only are we deprived of more tonfa action, why would he leave such an effective weapon behind and proceed bare-handed? This is a symptom of the pervasive lack of smoothness in the storytelling.
The coincidence of Kit landing in a jail where the guard's daughter just happens to need his bone marrow transplant, is laughable. And not just the coincidence. Why would Kit even have himself tested to be a donor, especially when he is a drug-addict undercover cop?
And of course, the biggest kung fu movie trope of all - why so many skilled kung fu fighters? Especially Chai. He's just a prison guard. The movie doesn't even try to justify this.
So it's another wasted opportunity. With a more believable plot, SPL 2 could have been a great action movie. Instead, what we have is a bunch of cool fight scenes that are emotionally empty, because we don't really care for the characters, because we know that we are being manipulated by the movie and therefore refuse to suspend our disbelief. You want to do melodrama? Do it like John Wick. Keep it simple.
PS Another plus is the Thailand locations, which look beautifully gritty and authentic, especially the prison.
The prison is run by crooked warden Ko (Max Zhang Jin) who is beholden to bad guy Hung (Louis Koo). Coincidentally, honest prison guard Chai (Tony Jaa) has a sick daughter Sa (Unda Kunteera Thordchanng) whose only hope is a bone marrow transplant from Kit. Chai tries and fails to contact Kit, not realizing that Kit is right under his nose.
Hung has a weak heart and his only possible donor is his own brother Bill (Jun Hung). Hung kidnaps Bill to forcibly get a heart transplant.
Meanwhile, Kit briefly manages to telephone his uncle and fellow cop Wah (Simon Yam). Wah goes alone to Thailand to rescue Kit.
***
SPL 2 is your stereotypical melodramatic Hong Kong kung fu movie. Its plot is more complicated than normal but its melodrama is standard Hong Kong industrial strength.
Thankfully, the fight choreography by Li Chung-Chi is excellent and saves the movie. The fights are in classic Hong Kong style - way drawn out. But this is one of the rare movies where the long action sequences don't become boring. The fights are also never repetitive. There's speed and skill to the moves, not just simple punches and blocks. Tony Jaa fans will be pleased to see him fight more in SPL 2 than he did in Dolph Lundgren's Skin Trade.
And it's not just hand-to-hand. There's also a thrilling shootout at Hong Kong's cruise terminal. It takes some imagination to work out an exciting shootout scene and Li Chung-Chi manages to do it. Movie gunfights are as common as car chases so you can't just have some perfunctory bang bang action and expect to impress the audience. Another standout action scene is a large-scale prison riot, where it's not just the stars but also the dozens of extras that are fighting their hearts out.
However my favorite is a smaller scale duel between Kit and a nameless assassin (Zhang Chi) who is a knife expert. (An earlier scene where nameless assassin takes out a staircase full of cops is also excellent). Kit uses a tonfa (one of my favorite weapons, and one that is too rarely seen on screen) against the nameless assassin, but unfortunately only in reverse grip and like a club. Okay, maybe reverse grip makes sense against a knife because you want to increase your reach, but at least use the handle fork for some blocks or hooks.
Less forgivably, after dispatching the nameless assassin, he leaves his tonfa on the floor and goes on to fight the other bad guys. Not only are we deprived of more tonfa action, why would he leave such an effective weapon behind and proceed bare-handed? This is a symptom of the pervasive lack of smoothness in the storytelling.
The coincidence of Kit landing in a jail where the guard's daughter just happens to need his bone marrow transplant, is laughable. And not just the coincidence. Why would Kit even have himself tested to be a donor, especially when he is a drug-addict undercover cop?
And of course, the biggest kung fu movie trope of all - why so many skilled kung fu fighters? Especially Chai. He's just a prison guard. The movie doesn't even try to justify this.
So it's another wasted opportunity. With a more believable plot, SPL 2 could have been a great action movie. Instead, what we have is a bunch of cool fight scenes that are emotionally empty, because we don't really care for the characters, because we know that we are being manipulated by the movie and therefore refuse to suspend our disbelief. You want to do melodrama? Do it like John Wick. Keep it simple.
PS Another plus is the Thailand locations, which look beautifully gritty and authentic, especially the prison.
2015-06-25
Terminator Genisys (2015)
Plot summary (story synopsis): Kyle Reese (Jai Courtney - A Good Day to Die Hard) is sent back to 1984 by resistance leader John Connor (Jason Clarke) to save John's mother Sarah (Emilia Clarke - Daenerys in Game of Thrones) from a T-800 Terminator. Kyle arrives in 1984 and finds that it is not the 1984 that John told him to expect. Sarah knows that he is coming, and has an aging T-800 Terminator (Arnold Schwarzenegger) that she calls Pops, protecting her. The three of them have to fight off a T-1000 liquid metal Terminator (Byung-hun Lee) but that's just the start of their problems.
***
It's instructive to compare Genisys (T5) with Jurassic World (JP4). Both are blockbuster sequels, with a good number of years since the last movie in the franchise. TLDR version - Genisys is the better sequel.
Jurassic World succeeded by evoking the nostalgia of the first movie. There were references to the first movie (the cartoon DNA character, the motorized binocular helmets, the field of flocking dinosaurs) as well as franchise-specific tropes (such as a dinosaur trying to eat people in a car, the T-Rex saving the day). Adding to the nostalgia was the fact that 14 years had passed since the last Jurassic Park movie (JP3).
Unfortunately there was little continuity with the characters. The main or only repeat was a minor character - chief scientist Dr. Henry Wu (BD Wong). Even worse, the plot was a repeat. Perhaps there's only so much that you can do with a franchise about a dinosaur theme park. Jurassic Park's storytelling DNA is an evolutionary dead end. Jurassic World is a fun movie, a heckuva ride, but not much more. I'm guessing that it was the nostalgia factor that pushed Jurassic World's box office gross to over $1 billion.
In contrast, Genisys ticks off all the items on the sequel checklist, and then some.
On the nostalgia front, the last Terminator movie (T4 - the awful Terminator Salvation) was 6 years ago but Arnold wasn't really in it. For a real Arnold Terminator movie, you have to go back 12 years to T3 (Rise of the Machines), close to the 14 years between JP3 and Jurassic World. If you want to look at the first movie in the franchise, JP1 was 22 years ago, T1 was 31 years ago. So going in, Genisys has a slight edge in nostalgia.
But wait, there's more. Like Back to the Future II, in Genisys we get to see some events of the first movie, but from an alternate viewpoint. (In Back to the Future II, the events are the same. In Genisys, the events are slightly altered.) So that ups Genisys's nostalgia factor.
Add to that Schwarzenegger providing a sense of continuity that Jurassic World lacked (as mentioned earlier, only BD Wong), and it's easily hello $1 billion dollars too.
Schwarzenegger plays the aging Terminator with slightly more expressiveness and humanity, than in the previous movies. For example when an exasperated Sarah tells him to "bite me," he doesn't take it literally. He understands that it is a figure of speech and chides her for being immature.
It makes sense because in the Genisys timeline, the Terminator has been protecting Sarah since she was 9 years-old, giving her years to humanize him (compared to John having days in T2 and T3). Adding to the emotional punch is our realization that Schwarzenegger now really is that old. It's like watching Stallone grow old in the Rocky series, Bruce Willis in the Die Hard series.
Thematically, the Terminator movies are richer than the Jurassic Parks. T1, the first movie asked, Can the future be changed? T2, the second movie said, Yes it can. The third movie said, You can change some things but other things - such as Judgment Day - are inevitable. T5, Genisys says, You can change things, and it's even possible for one person to remember two different timelines.
T4, the fourth movie? It didn't say anything except that John doesn't grow up to be a great military leader. He becomes a selfish, arrogant glory-hound. It's a horrible aberration that Genisys has thankfully ignored. Genisys treats T3 with more reverence. The ICBM launches of Judgment Day, the scene of the future John making a speech to his soldiers, look the same in Genisys as they did in T3. The scars on John's face? That's from T3.
There's even something for fans of the Sarah Connor Chronicles TV series. The scene where a naked Kyle and Sarah appear at night in the middle of a busy highway, is an obvious nod to it.
But it is with T2 that Genisys's heart really lies. The details of the liquid metal T-1000 are lovingly recreated (the bullet hole through the eye, the blob dropping off and then being reabsorbed, the transformation of arms into metal spikes, walking out unscathed from a fire, hiding as part of a room).
In Genisys, Sarah's relationship with the Terminator is a mirror image of John's relationship with the Terminator in T2. Genisys has an interesting development of Sarah and Kyle's relationship. They are realistically awkward about their predestined fate as the parents of John (and like in T3 with John and Kate, the Terminator makes funny boneheaded remarks about it), even though they have just met. But Sarah's father-daughter relationship with the Terminator is the emotional core of Genisys.
In terms of character development, T1 was about Sarah coming to terms with the unbelievable idea that her unborn son was going to be the savior of the human race. T2 had the most interesting extrapolation - the pressure turns Sarah into a psycho bitch, and John realizes that his mother wasn't totally crazy after all. T3 was about John refusing his destiny because the path to his heroic destiny was paved with billions of dead bodies. T5 doesn't have as strong a take on Sarah or Kyle's character but does show Sarah as accepting her fate, and convincing Kyle to accept his.
Plot-wise, there's enough going on in Genisys to keep you interested. You can't always guess what is going to happen next. After T1, copycat time travel movies explored all kinds of scenarios and paradoxes, until time travel became a cliche. Genisys still manages to keep it fresh (even if it means stealing from 12 Monkeys).
So in this box-office battle of the blockbuster sequels, of dinosaurs versus Terminators, I see it as special effects versus storytelling. Sure, there are special effects in Genisys too, but they are there to support the story. In Jurassic World, the special effects - the dinosaurs - are the main attraction.
I hope the robots win.
2015-06-10
Good Kill (2015)
Plot summary (story synopsis): It is 2010. Major Thomas Egan (Ethan Hawke) is an experienced F-16 fighter pilot. He has finished multiple overseas combat tours of duty in America's war on terror. He is now a drone pilot, surrealistically killing Taliban halfway across the globe from the safety of his control station in Nevada, then going home at the end of the day to his suburban home and his wife Molly (January Jones) and kids.
He misses the joy and danger of flying for real and begins to feel guilty over the civilian casualties his missile strikes create. He drinks and his marriage begins to suffer even more than when he was overseas, away from his family for months, flying an F-16.
His boss Lieutenant Colonel Jack Jones (Bruce Greenwood, doing the wise and compassionate leader shtick he did in Star Trek) has no such qualms and handles Egan's drone team with a steady hand. The team includes Zimmer (the hunky Jake Abel) and new pilot Suarez (Zoe Kravitz - Lenny's daughter, who has been getting a lot of plum supporting roles recently - Divergent, Mad Max).
Things become worse when the team works with the CIA to kill suspected Taliban, working based on the CIA's new and looser Rules of Engagement. Their only CIA contact is the mysterious Langley (voiced by Peter Coyote, who sounds deliciously like the late John Forsythe as Charlie) who they only hear over the speaker phone. Morale plummets as the team is forced by Langley to carry out what Suarez considers to be illegal, war crime, strikes.
***
Writer/director Andrew Niccol does mainly SF (Gattaca, In Time, The Host - underrated movie based on Stephenie Meyer's novel with a beautiful performance by Saoirse Ronan) and military (Lord of War) movies, though not military SF. He also wrote but did not direct The Terminal (Tom Hanks is a stateless man stuck in an airport), S1mOne (Pacino in a comedy is a fail) and The Truman Show. Whatever the subject material, he's good at pushing your buttons.
Good Kill is similar to Lord of War (Nicolas Cage is a freelance arms dealer after the collapse of the Soviet Union). Andrew Niccol did a lot of research for Lord of War and wrote a technically accurate and dramatic script (with some over-the-top visuals that work).
He does the same for Good Kill, this time on the US drone war. In Time showed him to be an economics-illiterate bleeding-heart liberal, probably because he didn't feel the need to research economics and just went with his gut. From what little I know about real drone warfare, he has painted a relatively accurate picture (super accurate by Hollywood standards) in Good Kill.
He has obviously researched drone warfare and like Lord of War, Good Kill is technically believable and has a good storyline. Unlike In Time, his handling of the issues is quite balanced, though still left of center.
I do have some complaints. For one thing, no lawyers are shown. I'm pretty sure lawyers are heavily involved in drone operations, and the movie does address legal issues (which the soldiers amateurishly try to figure out on their own).
But overall Andrew Niccol succeeds in pushing his agenda because he plays it cool and almost neutral, not overtly propagandistic. Which is how effective propaganda works. And is probably why the media hasn't made a big fuss over the movie. It's too neutral for them. Both sides of the argument are shown (though I feel there are strong arguments for drone warfare that were not presented).
And like with Lord of War, Andrew Niccol definitely has an agenda. Unfortunately for him, Good Kill has been overtaken by events. Specifically ISIS. After ISIS, you can't convincingly argue that drone strikes are a significant cause of militant Islam (cycle-of-violence theory).
Andrew Niccol uses music well, almost as well as Michael Mann. Gattaca and The Host had effective, evocative and memorable soundtracks. Good Kill is mainly soundtrackless, and that works too. It's an interesting choice.
And like Michael Mann, he also has a strong visual style. Halfway through The Host (I went in not knowing who the director was), I thought, Hey this looks like an Andrew Niccol movie! Like the soundtrack, he has also dialed back the visuals on Good Kill.
He lets the strong New Mexico (standing in for Nevada) desert sunlight dictate most of the look. No fancy Lord of War time-lapses here. Again, it works. A few strong images do stand out. In The Host it was the aliens' mirror-skinned vehicles and elegant white clothes, in Gattaca it was the Art Deco architecture.
In Good Kill, it is the geometric rows of wheeled shipping containers that serve as drone control stations. It's a simple but strangely powerful image that you will not forget.
It's good to see Ethan Hawke in an Andrew Niccol movie again. Bruce Greenwood does his Star Trek fatherly shtick well. January Jones and Zoe Kravitz also handle their roles well, and look pretty while doing so. Jake Abel (who to my surprise has less of a following than Channing Tatum, but then I'm not a teen girl) has a small role as a callous, racist, gung-ho member of Egan's team and is suitably hateful.
The acting is good but it is Andrew Niccol's script that makes the characters come alive.
Langley is the silver-tongued devil with his polished justifications for his morally questionable orders, Suarez is the team's conscience (superego), Zimmer is the ugly American who delights in killing (id), Jones is the adult (ego). Egan is all three - ego, superego, id - rolled into one, the classic Ethan Hawke sensitive new-age hero.
Pay attention to the ending. On the surface it's a feel-good ending. I found it very disturbing. I wonder if Andrew Niccol meant it to be. Other Hollywood directors, I would have assumed that they missed the implications. Not this guy.
He misses the joy and danger of flying for real and begins to feel guilty over the civilian casualties his missile strikes create. He drinks and his marriage begins to suffer even more than when he was overseas, away from his family for months, flying an F-16.
His boss Lieutenant Colonel Jack Jones (Bruce Greenwood, doing the wise and compassionate leader shtick he did in Star Trek) has no such qualms and handles Egan's drone team with a steady hand. The team includes Zimmer (the hunky Jake Abel) and new pilot Suarez (Zoe Kravitz - Lenny's daughter, who has been getting a lot of plum supporting roles recently - Divergent, Mad Max).
Things become worse when the team works with the CIA to kill suspected Taliban, working based on the CIA's new and looser Rules of Engagement. Their only CIA contact is the mysterious Langley (voiced by Peter Coyote, who sounds deliciously like the late John Forsythe as Charlie) who they only hear over the speaker phone. Morale plummets as the team is forced by Langley to carry out what Suarez considers to be illegal, war crime, strikes.
***
Writer/director Andrew Niccol does mainly SF (Gattaca, In Time, The Host - underrated movie based on Stephenie Meyer's novel with a beautiful performance by Saoirse Ronan) and military (Lord of War) movies, though not military SF. He also wrote but did not direct The Terminal (Tom Hanks is a stateless man stuck in an airport), S1mOne (Pacino in a comedy is a fail) and The Truman Show. Whatever the subject material, he's good at pushing your buttons.
Good Kill is similar to Lord of War (Nicolas Cage is a freelance arms dealer after the collapse of the Soviet Union). Andrew Niccol did a lot of research for Lord of War and wrote a technically accurate and dramatic script (with some over-the-top visuals that work).
He does the same for Good Kill, this time on the US drone war. In Time showed him to be an economics-illiterate bleeding-heart liberal, probably because he didn't feel the need to research economics and just went with his gut. From what little I know about real drone warfare, he has painted a relatively accurate picture (super accurate by Hollywood standards) in Good Kill.
He has obviously researched drone warfare and like Lord of War, Good Kill is technically believable and has a good storyline. Unlike In Time, his handling of the issues is quite balanced, though still left of center.
I do have some complaints. For one thing, no lawyers are shown. I'm pretty sure lawyers are heavily involved in drone operations, and the movie does address legal issues (which the soldiers amateurishly try to figure out on their own).
But overall Andrew Niccol succeeds in pushing his agenda because he plays it cool and almost neutral, not overtly propagandistic. Which is how effective propaganda works. And is probably why the media hasn't made a big fuss over the movie. It's too neutral for them. Both sides of the argument are shown (though I feel there are strong arguments for drone warfare that were not presented).
And like with Lord of War, Andrew Niccol definitely has an agenda. Unfortunately for him, Good Kill has been overtaken by events. Specifically ISIS. After ISIS, you can't convincingly argue that drone strikes are a significant cause of militant Islam (cycle-of-violence theory).
Andrew Niccol uses music well, almost as well as Michael Mann. Gattaca and The Host had effective, evocative and memorable soundtracks. Good Kill is mainly soundtrackless, and that works too. It's an interesting choice.
And like Michael Mann, he also has a strong visual style. Halfway through The Host (I went in not knowing who the director was), I thought, Hey this looks like an Andrew Niccol movie! Like the soundtrack, he has also dialed back the visuals on Good Kill.
He lets the strong New Mexico (standing in for Nevada) desert sunlight dictate most of the look. No fancy Lord of War time-lapses here. Again, it works. A few strong images do stand out. In The Host it was the aliens' mirror-skinned vehicles and elegant white clothes, in Gattaca it was the Art Deco architecture.
In Good Kill, it is the geometric rows of wheeled shipping containers that serve as drone control stations. It's a simple but strangely powerful image that you will not forget.
It's good to see Ethan Hawke in an Andrew Niccol movie again. Bruce Greenwood does his Star Trek fatherly shtick well. January Jones and Zoe Kravitz also handle their roles well, and look pretty while doing so. Jake Abel (who to my surprise has less of a following than Channing Tatum, but then I'm not a teen girl) has a small role as a callous, racist, gung-ho member of Egan's team and is suitably hateful.
The acting is good but it is Andrew Niccol's script that makes the characters come alive.
Langley is the silver-tongued devil with his polished justifications for his morally questionable orders, Suarez is the team's conscience (superego), Zimmer is the ugly American who delights in killing (id), Jones is the adult (ego). Egan is all three - ego, superego, id - rolled into one, the classic Ethan Hawke sensitive new-age hero.
Pay attention to the ending. On the surface it's a feel-good ending. I found it very disturbing. I wonder if Andrew Niccol meant it to be. Other Hollywood directors, I would have assumed that they missed the implications. Not this guy.
2015-05-21
Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)
Plot summary (story synopsis): Mad Max (Tom Hardy) is kidnapped by Immortan Joe's (Hugh Keays-Byrne) band of crazy war boys. He is taken back to their rock fortress in the middle of the desert and used as a living blood bag to provide nourishment to their warriors.
Immortan Joe's trusted lieutenant Furiosa (Charlize Theron) leads a routine raid to steal petrol but has other plans. Hidden in her empty tanker are Immortan Joe's slave wives. Furiosa plans to save them, and their unborn children from becoming Immortan Joe's future war boys.
Immortan Joe goes all out to catch Furiosa, leading the chase vehicles himself. Nux (Nicholas Hoult), one of the war boys, aims to catch Furiosa and claim glory and immortal life from Immortan Joe.
Nux takes Max as his blood bag and chains him to the front of his car. The ridiculous convoy of scrap-yard Frankenstein vehicles chases Furiosa down Fury Road.
***
Fury Road looks like a shallow action movie but it's much more than that. The schoolboy-glee with which writer/director George Miller lovingly plays with the crazy souped-up vehicles, their medieval contraptions, and the crazy action stunts, hides a more serious intent.
Fury road is a millieu movie, not a plot or character movie. The star is its post-apocalyptic world, the various quirky bands of people (and their quirkier vehicles) living out in the desert in a fallen world. Especially Immortan Joe's militarized dictatorship and the religion he created around the old Norse legend of Valhalla, to keep his war boys loyal to him.
After the second Mad Max movie (the first wasn't a big hit, the one with Tina Turner is the third movie), the term Mad Max (or Road Warrior) was used to describe a specific type of post-apocalyptic scenario, so much did the movies define our vision of violent gangs taking over after civilizational collapse.
And what a millieu it is. The wacky warriors and their vehicles are fleshed out in loving detail. And they don't just look good, they work well too. The movie is maybe 60 percent running battles between the war boys and Furiosa and Max. We see how their medieval punk weaponry works in glorious state-of-the-art stunt live-action.
We do get numb to all the flat-out action after a while. The action sequences should have been edited down more ruthlessly. But overall they are a raging success.
Hidden amongst all the action is a subtle show-don't-tell exploration of Immortan Joe's Valhalla religion through the exploits of Nux. The movie is more about him than about Max or Furiosa. Though he looks like a comedic sidekick, he actually has the best character arc in the whole movie.
Furiosa and Max are the heroes but they don't change much. They are only there to drive the action. Max's flashbacks about not saving the kids, are an obviously contrived device to give his character some depth.
Max disappears at the end of the movie. In victory, he leaves Furiosa and goes on alone to his next adventure in the next episode of the Mad Max franchise. He is the enigmatic reluctant hero, the faceless man. The Mad Max movies are not about Mad Max. As explained earlier, the term Mad Max in popular culture refers to Max's post-apocalyptic world, not Max. This is world-building at its finest.
Witness!
Immortan Joe's trusted lieutenant Furiosa (Charlize Theron) leads a routine raid to steal petrol but has other plans. Hidden in her empty tanker are Immortan Joe's slave wives. Furiosa plans to save them, and their unborn children from becoming Immortan Joe's future war boys.
Immortan Joe goes all out to catch Furiosa, leading the chase vehicles himself. Nux (Nicholas Hoult), one of the war boys, aims to catch Furiosa and claim glory and immortal life from Immortan Joe.
Nux takes Max as his blood bag and chains him to the front of his car. The ridiculous convoy of scrap-yard Frankenstein vehicles chases Furiosa down Fury Road.
***
Fury Road looks like a shallow action movie but it's much more than that. The schoolboy-glee with which writer/director George Miller lovingly plays with the crazy souped-up vehicles, their medieval contraptions, and the crazy action stunts, hides a more serious intent.
Fury road is a millieu movie, not a plot or character movie. The star is its post-apocalyptic world, the various quirky bands of people (and their quirkier vehicles) living out in the desert in a fallen world. Especially Immortan Joe's militarized dictatorship and the religion he created around the old Norse legend of Valhalla, to keep his war boys loyal to him.
After the second Mad Max movie (the first wasn't a big hit, the one with Tina Turner is the third movie), the term Mad Max (or Road Warrior) was used to describe a specific type of post-apocalyptic scenario, so much did the movies define our vision of violent gangs taking over after civilizational collapse.
And what a millieu it is. The wacky warriors and their vehicles are fleshed out in loving detail. And they don't just look good, they work well too. The movie is maybe 60 percent running battles between the war boys and Furiosa and Max. We see how their medieval punk weaponry works in glorious state-of-the-art stunt live-action.
We do get numb to all the flat-out action after a while. The action sequences should have been edited down more ruthlessly. But overall they are a raging success.
Hidden amongst all the action is a subtle show-don't-tell exploration of Immortan Joe's Valhalla religion through the exploits of Nux. The movie is more about him than about Max or Furiosa. Though he looks like a comedic sidekick, he actually has the best character arc in the whole movie.
Furiosa and Max are the heroes but they don't change much. They are only there to drive the action. Max's flashbacks about not saving the kids, are an obviously contrived device to give his character some depth.
Max disappears at the end of the movie. In victory, he leaves Furiosa and goes on alone to his next adventure in the next episode of the Mad Max franchise. He is the enigmatic reluctant hero, the faceless man. The Mad Max movies are not about Mad Max. As explained earlier, the term Mad Max in popular culture refers to Max's post-apocalyptic world, not Max. This is world-building at its finest.
Witness!
2015-04-28
Skin Trade (2015)
With the police on his trail, Nick follows Viktor to Thailand but is framed for killing a Thai policeman by crooked American cop Reed (Michael Jai White). Thai policeman Tony Vitayakul (Tony Jaa) is now after Viktor, even as Viktor tracks down Viktor and singe-handedly dismantles his human-smuggling business.
***
Skin Trade is a decent but unremarkable revenge B-movie. It's better than your average B-movie but with Dolph Lundgren starring in it, I was hoping for more. Fans of Tony Jaa who expect to see a lot of their hero will be disappointed. He has more of a supporting role here.
I'm a fan of Dolph Lundgren, who deserves more success than he has achieved. Like Jason Patric, he chooses good scripts that unfortunately don't become successful movies. I thought Joshua Tree/Army of One was good. I totally loved Silent Trigger (directed by Russell Mulcahy), a criminally-underrated action thriller.
Unfortunately, like Jason Patric, he also has his duds. Jason Patric has The Prince, Lundgren has The Minion.
Skin Trade isn't a dud, but I won't be buying the DVD. There is an interesting angle which makes it different from your normal buddy-buddy cop movie - Nick and Tony are on opposite sides for most of the movie. But there's nothing new here, nothing surprising (the motorcycle chase seems tired, cliched, obligatory), and quite a few leaps in logic.
The framing of Nick by Reed seems unnecessary. And how did Nick even know that the Thai police thought that he had killed the Thai cop? The police couldn't count the number of dead bodies in the fire? If the ship's captain knew that the container on his ship carried sex slaves, why didn't he do anything to make sure that they were kept alive? You keep people locked up in containers when the captain doesn't know what is going on. And you can't hear a conversation through a door, when your side of the door happens to be a noisy night club.
All of this chips at your voluntary suspension of disbelief, and soon you just want to see Tony Jaa and Lundgren fight each other. They do, and guess what? Tony Jaa doesn't whip Lundgren's ass. It's more of an equal fight. That's right. In this movie, Tony Jaa is not some martial arts superhero, just a cop with above-average fighting skills.
He does have some spectacular moves but most of the time he keeps things simple and believable. It's a good choice. I'm not a fan of too-fancy martial arts but I'm thinking that his fans will be disappointed.
2015-03-12
Run All Night (2015)
Plot summary (story synopsis): Jimmy Conlon (Liam Neeson) is a drunk has-been mob killer who is estranged from his son Mike (Joel Kinnaman). Mob boss Shawn Maguire (Ed Harris) is Jimmy's boss and childhood friend.
Shawn's no-good son Danny (Boyd Holbrook) gets into trouble and Mike witnesses him killing a man. Danny tries to kill Mike, and Jimmy kills Danny to protect his son.
Shawn swears revenge on Jimmy and Mike. He sets his whole gang on them, including ace hired gun Price (rapper Common), and frames them for multiple murders. The entire New York police force is now after them, including Jimmy's old nemesis, detective Harding (Vincent D'Onofrio, looking more and more like Brian Dennehy).
***
Run All Night is a mix of Road to Perdition, John Wick, and 16 Blocks (underrated Bruce Willis movie). However it's an old-fashioned, macho crime thriller that lacks the stylishness of John Wick or the quotable quotes of Taken.
Story-telling is conventional and effective. You get the character build-ups and arcs (Jimmy begs Danny for money at the start of the movie), with interlocking plot points (for example - the crooked cops are nicely foreshadowed at the start) all neatly tied-up in the end (Jimmy's confession list of his past kills, Mike keeping out of his father's world).
This makes for an engrossing but not enthralling experience. It's no blockbuster but it's certainly worth your time. It doesn't break any new ground (the characters are cliches) but its basics are good. It's as much a character movie as it is an action movie. Jimmy's relationships with Shawn and with his son are believable and don't degenerate into melodrama.
Ed Harris is, as expected, solid as the kind friend and honorable mob boss but vengeful father. Liam Neeson is just as good as the washed-up-and-underestimated-but-still-tough killer with a conscience. Liam Neeson is probably one of today's premier movie tough guys, surpassing even Bruce Willis. Run All Night will add to, but not greatly enhance, his studly superstar image.
On a technical note I found the image quality to be poor. The shadow detail was murky, which is annoying considering that most of the movie takes place at night. Guys, it's 2015. You have no excuse for this.
Ridley Scott fans will want to look out for Bruce McGill as Pat Mullen, Shawn's right-hand man.
2015-03-03
Tracers (2015)
Plot summary (story synopsis): New York bicycle messenger Cam (Taylor Lautner - Jacob in the Twilight Saga) can't pay back his loan from Chinese gangsters. He bumps into pretty young parkour exponent Nikki (Marie Avgeropoulos) and is attracted to her, and to parkour.
He pursues her and is eventually accepted into her parkour gang which includes her brother Dylan (Rafi Gavron) and their adult leader Miller (Adam Rayner). Desperate for money, he joins the gang in various criminal activities, who make use of their parkour skills to enter buildings and escape.
The gang's crimes escalate to armed robbery, and Cam finds himself in over his head.
***
Tracers is an entertaining action-adventure/romance that will please Team Jacob fans. The plot is serviceable and the acting is good, with believable chemistry between Lautner and Avgeropoulos. Rayner is almost as fun to watch as the ruthless gang leader.
However the main reason to watch would be the parkour. Tracers gets it right. The parkour (sometimes computer enhanced) looks believable and thrilling. The gang runs across rooftops, leap cars and jump between buildings. Good use is made of the seedier side of New York City - abandoned ships and buildings, alleyways.
The action is beautifully covered by cinematographer Nelson Cragg's (he worked on the Claire Danes TV series Homeland) moving camera. The color grading is less impressive, looking like cheap video. Probably a deliberate artistic choice, but one that I did not enjoy.
Tracers is a solid movie from director Daniel Benmayor and writers Leslie Bohem, Matt Johnson, Kevin Lund and T.J. Scott. It's like a better version of the first Fast and Furious movie, and with parkour!
He pursues her and is eventually accepted into her parkour gang which includes her brother Dylan (Rafi Gavron) and their adult leader Miller (Adam Rayner). Desperate for money, he joins the gang in various criminal activities, who make use of their parkour skills to enter buildings and escape.
The gang's crimes escalate to armed robbery, and Cam finds himself in over his head.
***
Tracers is an entertaining action-adventure/romance that will please Team Jacob fans. The plot is serviceable and the acting is good, with believable chemistry between Lautner and Avgeropoulos. Rayner is almost as fun to watch as the ruthless gang leader.
However the main reason to watch would be the parkour. Tracers gets it right. The parkour (sometimes computer enhanced) looks believable and thrilling. The gang runs across rooftops, leap cars and jump between buildings. Good use is made of the seedier side of New York City - abandoned ships and buildings, alleyways.
The action is beautifully covered by cinematographer Nelson Cragg's (he worked on the Claire Danes TV series Homeland) moving camera. The color grading is less impressive, looking like cheap video. Probably a deliberate artistic choice, but one that I did not enjoy.
Tracers is a solid movie from director Daniel Benmayor and writers Leslie Bohem, Matt Johnson, Kevin Lund and T.J. Scott. It's like a better version of the first Fast and Furious movie, and with parkour!
2015-02-22
Ah Boys to Men 3: Frogmen (2015)
Plot summary (story synopsis): In an alternate timeline (seriously, this is explained in a voiceover in the movie), the army conscripts in the movie Ah Boys to Men are sent to the Singapore navy's elite Naval Diving Unit (NDU, US Navy SEALs equivalent) instead of the army.
There, they have to survive the tough training, personal conflicts, family problems back home, and finally the dreaded 5-day Hell Week qualification.
***
Writer/director Jack Neo's popular folksy, low-brow, social-commentary, comedy-sketch-based, melodramatic, tell-don't-show, lovable-local-stereotypes, crowd-pleasing style is well known. You either love it or you don't. I won't waste your time criticizing his style in Frogmen except to point out that it is toned down (and therefore less annoying) compared to Ah Boys to Men. Yes, that includes Ken Chow's (Joshua Tan) mother, played by Irene Ang.
What I will do instead is look at Frogmen from a storytelling viewpoint. One fatal flaw in the conception of Frogmen, is the wholesale transfer of the average army conscripts into the elite NDU. It doesn't work.
The "lovable" every-man gang of misfits made sense as generic army conscripts. However it is difficult to believe that such screw-ups are accepted into an elite navy unit. This completely destroys your voluntary suspension of disbelief. Even worse, it gives a false view of the type of men who do join the NDU.
From a dramatic viewpoint, you lose the chance to see the military training of highly-motivated volunteers, instead of your reluctant conscript (if Ken Chow is a skiver, why would he volunteer for a siong special forces unit?). So Frogmen becomes a rehash of the first movie.
Jack Neo should have taken a chance and written in entirely new characters for Frogmen. Instead, he took the easy and safe route by re-using the proven, popular cast from the first movie. (There is one new character in Hei Long (Wesley Wong), a gangster who was brought up in Hong Kong.)
Having made this artistic choice, Jack Neo fails to exploit the audience's familiarity with the characters. Screen time is saved by not having to introduce the characters to the audience. But Jack Neo squanders the saved time by not using it to develop the characters much, except for feeble attempts with Ken Chow, Lobang (Wang Wei Liang) and Hei Long - all in his standard Korean drama style.
Rich-kid Ken Chow's sub plot seems out of place. Lobang's family problems are melodramatic. Hei Long's street gang and parent problems are ridiculous. Aloysius (Maxi Lim) has a satisfying confrontation with bully Hei Long, but the groundwork for it was not properly prepared (Aloysius's surprising reaction is not foreshadowed) and the confrontation therefore feels contrived.
Aside from having misfits enter the NDU, Frogmen further compounds this technical error by having their entire group of 80 men survive and graduate Hell Week. A quick Google search shows that the real pass rate is 30 percent. So instead of showing how tough and elite the NDU is, Jack Neo undersells its selectiveness. It's another missed dramatic opportunity - such a low pass rate would dominate the thoughts and actions of all the men.
Frogmen also doesn't show much about NDU training aside from a first-aid CPR session and a boat-capsize drill. The rest is mainly physical training. While you might not want to publicize any secret techniques, Frogmen doesn't even show the conscripts undergoing scuba diving training (a diving exercise is shown, one that doesn't use scuba equipment). Instead, we only see them as already fully-capable divers at their underwater graduation ceremony. Weapons training? Zero. Communications, navigation, tactics, demolition, escape and evasion, hand-to-hand combat, sky diving, rappelling? Nope.
Bonus gripe: In the action-packed flash-forward at the start of the movie, the terrorists that hijacked a commercial ship and took its crew hostage, are an unnamed group of "international terrorists" whose leader is an American. Nice cop-out to political correctness, Jack.
There, they have to survive the tough training, personal conflicts, family problems back home, and finally the dreaded 5-day Hell Week qualification.
***
Writer/director Jack Neo's popular folksy, low-brow, social-commentary, comedy-sketch-based, melodramatic, tell-don't-show, lovable-local-stereotypes, crowd-pleasing style is well known. You either love it or you don't. I won't waste your time criticizing his style in Frogmen except to point out that it is toned down (and therefore less annoying) compared to Ah Boys to Men. Yes, that includes Ken Chow's (Joshua Tan) mother, played by Irene Ang.
What I will do instead is look at Frogmen from a storytelling viewpoint. One fatal flaw in the conception of Frogmen, is the wholesale transfer of the average army conscripts into the elite NDU. It doesn't work.
The "lovable" every-man gang of misfits made sense as generic army conscripts. However it is difficult to believe that such screw-ups are accepted into an elite navy unit. This completely destroys your voluntary suspension of disbelief. Even worse, it gives a false view of the type of men who do join the NDU.
From a dramatic viewpoint, you lose the chance to see the military training of highly-motivated volunteers, instead of your reluctant conscript (if Ken Chow is a skiver, why would he volunteer for a siong special forces unit?). So Frogmen becomes a rehash of the first movie.
Jack Neo should have taken a chance and written in entirely new characters for Frogmen. Instead, he took the easy and safe route by re-using the proven, popular cast from the first movie. (There is one new character in Hei Long (Wesley Wong), a gangster who was brought up in Hong Kong.)
Having made this artistic choice, Jack Neo fails to exploit the audience's familiarity with the characters. Screen time is saved by not having to introduce the characters to the audience. But Jack Neo squanders the saved time by not using it to develop the characters much, except for feeble attempts with Ken Chow, Lobang (Wang Wei Liang) and Hei Long - all in his standard Korean drama style.
Rich-kid Ken Chow's sub plot seems out of place. Lobang's family problems are melodramatic. Hei Long's street gang and parent problems are ridiculous. Aloysius (Maxi Lim) has a satisfying confrontation with bully Hei Long, but the groundwork for it was not properly prepared (Aloysius's surprising reaction is not foreshadowed) and the confrontation therefore feels contrived.
Aside from having misfits enter the NDU, Frogmen further compounds this technical error by having their entire group of 80 men survive and graduate Hell Week. A quick Google search shows that the real pass rate is 30 percent. So instead of showing how tough and elite the NDU is, Jack Neo undersells its selectiveness. It's another missed dramatic opportunity - such a low pass rate would dominate the thoughts and actions of all the men.
Frogmen also doesn't show much about NDU training aside from a first-aid CPR session and a boat-capsize drill. The rest is mainly physical training. While you might not want to publicize any secret techniques, Frogmen doesn't even show the conscripts undergoing scuba diving training (a diving exercise is shown, one that doesn't use scuba equipment). Instead, we only see them as already fully-capable divers at their underwater graduation ceremony. Weapons training? Zero. Communications, navigation, tactics, demolition, escape and evasion, hand-to-hand combat, sky diving, rappelling? Nope.
Bonus gripe: In the action-packed flash-forward at the start of the movie, the terrorists that hijacked a commercial ship and took its crew hostage, are an unnamed group of "international terrorists" whose leader is an American. Nice cop-out to political correctness, Jack.
Triumph in the Skies (2015)
Entrepreneur/pilot Branson (Louis Koo) has just taken over Skylette Airlines. (Unbelievably) he has the time to fly one of its regular commercial routes, where he bumps into old flame Cassie (Charmaine Sheh) who is a flight attendant on his flight. They continue to bump into each other on subsequent flights and they rekindle their old romance. But will Cassie be able to trust him after he had dumped her in the past?
Meanwhile, Branson tasks his trusted pilot friend, Captain Samuel Tong (Francis Ng), to be the technical consultant for a music video advertising Skylette. The music video stars pop-star TM (real-life pop-star and experienced actress Sammi Cheng). The odd couple find themselves slowly falling for each other.
There's also former Skylette pilot Captain Jayden Koo (Julian Cheung), who now flies private business jets. He meets the lively, care-free, slutty Kika (Amber Kuo) who is hiding a dark secret.
***
Triumph in the Skies is a visually gorgeous but lightweight romance/drama. It's a good way to pass your time but it carries little emotional punch. It's like watching a series of beautiful music videos with adult-oriented pop songs.
It's based on a TVB Hong Kong TV series, which I haven't watched, so I won't be drawing any comparisons with the TV series.
In the movie, nothing much happens. Unlike real show-don't-tell movies like Lost in Translation, Triumph's laid-back style isn't engaging because it's mainly repetition. The three couples go through the same motions over and over again, so we don't learn anything new with each interaction.
The movie is basically an anthology of three short films, only loosely linked together by the Skylette Airline backstory. So you have one third the screen time for each couple, compared to a normal feature. Add the repetitive interactions and you inevitably get a shallow understanding of the characters.
Still, it's one of the most beautiful movies I've seen in a while. Jason Kwan's (The Last Tycoon) cinematography is world-class. A mixture of prime-lens blurred-out-backgrounds, saturated colors and even old-school tobacco graduated filters for the outdoor scenery. Jackie Chan needs to grab this guy for his next movie. The songs aren't too bad either and the six leads look good on screen. If that's good enough for you (and it is for me), by all means go enjoy yourself.
Aside from the visuals, what struck me was how at ease director Wilson Yip (Ip Man) and writer/director Matt Chow were with the England setting of the movie. Instead of showing cliched English landmarks (one exception being the White Cliffs of Dover); they chose quirky, bohemian, hipster locations.
Maybe I'm reading too much into this but I think that shows an insider's cosmopolitan familiarity with England. Sure, they probably used local English location scouts, but the decision to avoid tourist staples must have come from them. They aren't The Jeffersons, needing to show off Chinese wealth ("look ma, we're shooting a movie in front of Buckingham Palace!"). They are comfortable in their own skin, not needing any external validation or token White actors (cough, Jackie Chan, cough). Just like Taiwan's "Cafe. Waiting. Love," this makes me feel that Triumph shows how much some Hong Kong filmmakers grok Western/global culture, consider it their own. They aren't swa koos.
No matter how rich or well-traveled Jackie Chan is, he'll always be a working class hero, his movies lacking the effortless yuppie sensibility of movies such as this.
2015-02-18
Dragon Blade (2015)
He and his men are framed for gold smuggling and are banished to hard labor, repairing the remote Wild Geese Gate walled city in the middle of the desert. Wild Geese Gate is attacked by a large detachment of renegade Roman legionnaires, led by Lucius (John Cusack). The Romans are low on food and water and need medicine for their sickly young prince Publius (Jozef Waite).
Lucius attempts to take Wild Geese Gate by force but a huge sandstorm interrupts his duel with Huo An. Huo An offers Lucius and his men a truce and shelter inside Wild Geese Gate. The next day brings new orders - Wild Geese Gate is to be finished within 15 days or else everyone will be executed.
Lucius helps them meet the deadline with his knowledge of Roman engineering, while Huo An binds the prison hard-labor gang from 36 nations, into a single motivated team.
Their victory is short-lived because Publius's evil brother Tiberius (Adrien Brody) catches up with Lucius, bringing 100 thousand Roman soldiers with him.
***
Dragon Blade is darker than the normal Jackie Chan movie (closer to Police Story than Who Am I?) but has his normal multiracial muhibbah shtick (I'd swear he was brought up in Malaysia).
Jackie Chan's trademark comedic kung fu and acrobatics are minimal, mostly seen in the fight at the start of the movie with Cold Moon (Peng Lin) where he accidentally grabs her bewbs.
What you do get lots of is goodie-two-shoes Huo An rallying the troops, turning foes into friends, and sacrificing himself for the sake of others. Which doesn't have to be too bad, only Jackie Chan pours on his normal treacly moralizing on top of it.
So yeah, standard Hong Kong melodrama, Jackie version.
The two Hollywood stars are pulled down to Jackie Chan's level. John Cusack gets the corniest lines and almost manages to sell them. Adrien Brody gets better lines but turns in an awful performance. It's not something you would expect from an Academy Award winner.
On the positive side of the ledger, Jackie Chan swordfights John Cusack and Adrien Brody, but not at the same time. Okay, you've seen Adrien Brody fight Predators but have you seen Cusack do any hand-to-hand?
Come on, just for the curiosity factor, you know you want to watch this one. Decades from now, you will be able to tell your grandchildren - I was there when Adrien Brody and John Cusack destroyed their career.
2015-02-05
Jupiter Ascending (2015)
Plot summary (story synopsis): Chamber maid Jupiter Jone's (Mila Kunis) ordinary life is thrown into chaos when space aliens come to kill her. Hired gun Caine Wise (Channing Tatum) saves her and continues to protect her as she journeys to claim her inheritance as owner of Earth, fighting off her evil relatives Balem (Eddie Redmayne) and Titus (Douglas Booth) along the way.
***
Jupiter Ascending is an odd mix of gorgeous visuals (production design, lighting and special effects are pretty), conventional space opera (decadent, incestuous galactic empire royalty) and kiddie cartoon. With Mila Kunis and Channing Tatum in the lead roles, I was expecting the filmmakers to target the same audience as Hunger Games and Divergent. I gave the Hollywood MBAs too much credit.
Yes, the movie's main failing is that its story is written for 12-year-olds. It's a mismatch. Older teens will not be impressed while kids will not be interested in the Jupiter-Caine romance. Hardcore Star Wars fans (Star Wars is space opera) will look down on its consistently kiddie feel.
Think I'm exaggerating? Sean Bean doesn't die in this movie (he plays Stinger, Caine's friend). This conclusively proves that this is a kiddie movie.
It's possible for a kiddie movie to interest adults too. Just look at Frozen. But Jupiter Ascending has the cliched plot of a Saturday morning cartoon episode. No original ideas, no satire or jokes for the adults.
There are bits of Terminator (you almost expect Caine to tell Jupiter, Come with me if you want to live), Men in Black (aliens secretly on Earth), V (aliens harvesting humans), Brazil (bureaucracy) and maybe Stargate. But these don't come off as fun tributes, just lazy copycatting.
And ugh, there's the politics too. Jupiter Jones is an illegal immigrant. Way to bang the amnesty drum, guys.
Written and directed by the Wachowski siblings (who used to be brothers but are now brother and sister), this is in no way close to the quality of their The Matrix. The action sequences here are muddled and too long. The first gun fight involving Caine is confused - it's hard to know who is doing what to whom.
Some of the other fights are better (there's a beautiful aerial dogfight over Chicago) but still lack impact.
Like Michael Mann's Blackhat, Jupiter Ascending is a reminder that all directors are fallible. I wish I didn't care so much about movies.
***
Jupiter Ascending is an odd mix of gorgeous visuals (production design, lighting and special effects are pretty), conventional space opera (decadent, incestuous galactic empire royalty) and kiddie cartoon. With Mila Kunis and Channing Tatum in the lead roles, I was expecting the filmmakers to target the same audience as Hunger Games and Divergent. I gave the Hollywood MBAs too much credit.
Yes, the movie's main failing is that its story is written for 12-year-olds. It's a mismatch. Older teens will not be impressed while kids will not be interested in the Jupiter-Caine romance. Hardcore Star Wars fans (Star Wars is space opera) will look down on its consistently kiddie feel.
Think I'm exaggerating? Sean Bean doesn't die in this movie (he plays Stinger, Caine's friend). This conclusively proves that this is a kiddie movie.
It's possible for a kiddie movie to interest adults too. Just look at Frozen. But Jupiter Ascending has the cliched plot of a Saturday morning cartoon episode. No original ideas, no satire or jokes for the adults.
There are bits of Terminator (you almost expect Caine to tell Jupiter, Come with me if you want to live), Men in Black (aliens secretly on Earth), V (aliens harvesting humans), Brazil (bureaucracy) and maybe Stargate. But these don't come off as fun tributes, just lazy copycatting.
And ugh, there's the politics too. Jupiter Jones is an illegal immigrant. Way to bang the amnesty drum, guys.
Written and directed by the Wachowski siblings (who used to be brothers but are now brother and sister), this is in no way close to the quality of their The Matrix. The action sequences here are muddled and too long. The first gun fight involving Caine is confused - it's hard to know who is doing what to whom.
Some of the other fights are better (there's a beautiful aerial dogfight over Chicago) but still lack impact.
Like Michael Mann's Blackhat, Jupiter Ascending is a reminder that all directors are fallible. I wish I didn't care so much about movies.
2015-01-09
Vengeance of an Assassin (2014)
One day, Thee's uncle catches him looking through confidential documents that had been locked away. Thee had disobeyed his uncle and was looking for clues as to how his parents had died. His uncle throws him out and Thee heads to the big city to continue his investigations.
Thee hooks up with one of his father's old colleagues and becomes a freelance assassin. One day, he is hired to kill Ploy (Nisachon Tuamsungnoen), the daughter of a powerful man.
He decides to not kill her, which is fortunate because he was being set up for her murder. Ploy and Thee go on the run, pursued by various hired killers including femme fatale Nui (Kessarin Ektawatkul).
Nui seriously injures Thee in a fight. Ploy takes him to her family doctor (Ooi Teik Huat) and then back to his uncle to recuperate. The bad guys track them down and Thee's brother and uncle are now drawn into the fight.
***
Like too many martial arts movies, Vengeance of an Assassin is all fight and no sense. I'm not going to give a movie a pass just because it's Asian (Thai, in this case). If it stinks, it stinks.
Sure, there are lots of fights, most of them pretty good. And sure, I'm not expecting much of a story, even though one would be good. What pisses me off about Vengeance is the stupid, cliched, melodramatic story.
If you want to make a fight movie, go ahead. Lay on some simple, stupid story as an excuse to string fights together. I won't complain too much. But make me suffer through some melodramatic nonsense? I didn't sign up for a Korean drama.
The brothers' arguments with their uncle are overwrought. We don't really know who they are - the characters don't get much introduction - and are forced to watch virtual strangers squabble. It makes you uncomfortable. And for no reason - there's no message, no moral. It's just an excuse to set up some fights.
I know a guy who writes scripts for short films. When he needs some drama, his immediate reaction is to throw in some hard luck story - the character is dying of cancer or something. For martial arts movies, the cliched trope is vengeance for a murdered family member. That's lazy and boring. We've seen it before.
Then Thee suddenly becomes a cold-blooded killer-for-hire? And skilled too? Where did he learn to fight and shoot? His brother learns from watching his uncle's VHS videotapes (which look like terrorist training videos). Maybe Thee did too. Only you can't learn how to fight and shoot just from watching TV.
Okay, enough about the story. The fights are good. A nice blend of realism and too-fancy-to-be-true athleticism and no obvious wire work. The Shaolin Soccer fantasy football match at the start is especially fun.
But keep it short, guys. Look at Kick-Ass. Heck, look at Jurassic Park. There are only 14 minutes of dinosaur special effects in Jurassic Park, but look at their impact. Less is more. Trust me, don't trust the Hong Kong guys.
There's a fancy long-take (no cuts) fight sequence that is shot entirely from knee level, I kid you not. Why knee level? It's just the director showing off how creative he is (my apologies to the late Panna Rittikrai). The problem with this is that it distracts the audience, throws them out of the movie. You don't want the audience to think, Wow isn't the director good? You want them to think, Wow isn't the hero awesome? Of course I was thinking, What a showoff asshole the director is.
The Thai martial artists and stuntmen are good. They deserve better scripts than this.
Bonus gripes:
- You do not survive a metal pipe through your stomach without immediate hospital care, let alone recover enough to fight within a day or two.
- Twisted train tracks will not launch a speeding train into the air. The train fill flatten the tracks.
- If you shoot someone with a rifle at close range (maybe 20 meters), the bullet will go through him and kill the pretty girl behind him.
2015-01-08
Taken 3 (2015)
Plot summary (story synopsis): Bryan Mills (Liam Neeson) finds his ex-wife Lenore (Famke Janssen) dead in his house. The police are after him for the murder and he goes on the run. He tries to evade the police who are led by Franck Dotzler (Forest Whitaker), find out who really killed Lenore, all the while keeping his daughter Kim (Maggie Grace) safe from the killers.
***
Taken 3's problem is that it has no theme, or what William Goldman called the story's spine. The Fugitive was about hard-nosed policeman Tommy Lee Jones doing his job, versus nice guy Harrison Ford saving lives even as he was on the run. Tommy Lee Jones's determined "I don't care" reply to Harrison Ford's "I didn't kill my wife" was powerful because it was believable, consistent with his behavior.
The first Taken was a straight out rescue - Liam Neeson as the one-man Die Hard cavalry. Taken 2 was less compelling but at least there was an overall consistency with its focus on MacGyver gimmicks.
Taken 3 has bits of The Fugitive but there's no real connection, antagonistic or otherwise, between Liam Neeson and Forest Whitaker. There's no "I don't care" moment. Oh there's something like that in their dialog, but there's no impact. There's another Fugitive moment when Forest Whitaker finds out that Liam Neeson took a policeman's gun, but didn't use it. But absent The Fugitive's consistent effort to portray Harrison Ford as the selfless good samaritan, it's a wasted effort because there is no follow up.
There's also an attempt to give Liam Neeson an overriding priority to his actions - keeping his daughter safe, versus Forest Whitaker's "doing my job" but it doesn't really work. His daughter's reciprocal absolute trust in him is a nice touch, but somehow also fails to achieve liftoff.
The pacing of the movie is off. It doesn't have The Fugitive's or Taken's sense of urgency. Taken impressed with Liam Neeson's cold-blooded determination to do whatever it took to rescue his daughter - torture, kill, shoot his old friend's innocent wife. In Taken 3 the stakes are not as high. His daughter is sometimes in danger but most of the time he is "only" trying to figure out who killed his wife. His violent means to this relatively not urgent end, seem excessive and he loses our sympathy.
Action movies require a certain level of forgiveness in terms of taking liberties with reality. But there are limits. Liam Neeson goes around killing people when no lives are in immediate danger (like when he storms the bad guy's penthouse - he's not rescuing anyone). His friends pull guns on policemen. And in the end, the only thing Forest Whitaker complains about is him accessing the police computer database without authorization.
Liam Neeson doesn't have any memorable lines and his character just seems to be coasting instead of convincing us of what a bad ass he is. There's a cool twist where he says "good luck" to Forest Whitaker, a line the bad guy said to him in the first movie. But this little gem is already revealed in the movie's trailer, so there's less impact when we see it.
Forest Whitaker never really had any tough guy or edgy persona. But he at least used to have some crazy, quirky energy about him. In Taken 3 he's just totally bland. He's playing the same role as he did in Schwarzenegger's The Last Stand, and doing it with less energy and attitude.
Writers Luc Besson and Robert Mark Kamen did a good job with the first Taken, making a permanent addition to popular culture and internet memes. Their attempts at sequels have fallen flat. With such a weak and confused script, there's little that director Olivier Megaton can do. Not that he's any kind of genius - Taken 3's action sequences are confusing, confusing enough to throw you out of the movie.
The frustrating thing is that you can see Luc Besson trying to put a fresh spin on things and failing. Just as he tried and failed with Colombiana and Lucy. You can see the effort he puts in, trying to come up with original ideas and avoiding cliches. He hasn't sold out or anything. He's just out of gas.
***
Taken 3's problem is that it has no theme, or what William Goldman called the story's spine. The Fugitive was about hard-nosed policeman Tommy Lee Jones doing his job, versus nice guy Harrison Ford saving lives even as he was on the run. Tommy Lee Jones's determined "I don't care" reply to Harrison Ford's "I didn't kill my wife" was powerful because it was believable, consistent with his behavior.
The first Taken was a straight out rescue - Liam Neeson as the one-man Die Hard cavalry. Taken 2 was less compelling but at least there was an overall consistency with its focus on MacGyver gimmicks.
Taken 3 has bits of The Fugitive but there's no real connection, antagonistic or otherwise, between Liam Neeson and Forest Whitaker. There's no "I don't care" moment. Oh there's something like that in their dialog, but there's no impact. There's another Fugitive moment when Forest Whitaker finds out that Liam Neeson took a policeman's gun, but didn't use it. But absent The Fugitive's consistent effort to portray Harrison Ford as the selfless good samaritan, it's a wasted effort because there is no follow up.
There's also an attempt to give Liam Neeson an overriding priority to his actions - keeping his daughter safe, versus Forest Whitaker's "doing my job" but it doesn't really work. His daughter's reciprocal absolute trust in him is a nice touch, but somehow also fails to achieve liftoff.
The pacing of the movie is off. It doesn't have The Fugitive's or Taken's sense of urgency. Taken impressed with Liam Neeson's cold-blooded determination to do whatever it took to rescue his daughter - torture, kill, shoot his old friend's innocent wife. In Taken 3 the stakes are not as high. His daughter is sometimes in danger but most of the time he is "only" trying to figure out who killed his wife. His violent means to this relatively not urgent end, seem excessive and he loses our sympathy.
Action movies require a certain level of forgiveness in terms of taking liberties with reality. But there are limits. Liam Neeson goes around killing people when no lives are in immediate danger (like when he storms the bad guy's penthouse - he's not rescuing anyone). His friends pull guns on policemen. And in the end, the only thing Forest Whitaker complains about is him accessing the police computer database without authorization.
Liam Neeson doesn't have any memorable lines and his character just seems to be coasting instead of convincing us of what a bad ass he is. There's a cool twist where he says "good luck" to Forest Whitaker, a line the bad guy said to him in the first movie. But this little gem is already revealed in the movie's trailer, so there's less impact when we see it.
Forest Whitaker never really had any tough guy or edgy persona. But he at least used to have some crazy, quirky energy about him. In Taken 3 he's just totally bland. He's playing the same role as he did in Schwarzenegger's The Last Stand, and doing it with less energy and attitude.
Writers Luc Besson and Robert Mark Kamen did a good job with the first Taken, making a permanent addition to popular culture and internet memes. Their attempts at sequels have fallen flat. With such a weak and confused script, there's little that director Olivier Megaton can do. Not that he's any kind of genius - Taken 3's action sequences are confusing, confusing enough to throw you out of the movie.
The frustrating thing is that you can see Luc Besson trying to put a fresh spin on things and failing. Just as he tried and failed with Colombiana and Lucy. You can see the effort he puts in, trying to come up with original ideas and avoiding cliches. He hasn't sold out or anything. He's just out of gas.
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