Easy Money / Snabba Cash (2010) 12/100

Posted on July 20, 2013 by The Red Dragon

Rating : 12/100 124 Min

A Swedish fictional thriller telling an all too familiar tale of rival criminal organisations, this time those of the Stockholm underground. The story focuses on the character of JW, a talented young student who is drawn deeper and deeper into one of the group’s employ, played well here by Joel Kinnaman. The problem is that it’s interminably dull, and there is absolutely nothing about any of the characters that is likely to be of interest to the audience, with the only exception those that are shown to have innocent family members that they care about, that being the case it feels like an entirely false inclusion and is far from an original hook in a film that otherwise substitutes violence for plot, and has little to no humanity. It’s filmed in an ultra modern style, showcasing how it’s possible to use many of the habits trending the world right now to bad effect – the insistence on using orange, blue and green lighting/colouring, the fast and out of sequence editing for no real reason, the unsteady camera, and indeed music that is badly misused and at one point noticeably seems to be stealing ideas from ‘The Dark Knight’ (08).

There are more than a couple of similarities with Tarantino’s work here too, with the kind of irrelevant stories the characters tell and the way we are inserted into them as a voyeur, and, one of the worst parts of the film, a plot device toward the end which is effectively straight from the pages of ‘Pulp Fiction’ (94). It’s from director Daniel Espinosa (‘Safe House’ 2012) and is based on the novel by Jens Lapidus, which became the first part of his ‘Stockholm Noir’ trilogy, and indeed the sequel to this will already be familiar to Swedish audiences, with part three due out later this year. Zac Effron is slated to appear in Hollywood’s upcoming remake. I’m sure it will be great.

The World’s End (2013) 51/100

Posted on July 19, 2013 by The Red Dragon

Rating : 51/100 109 Min

This is a film that people will really want to like, forming as it does the final act in Simon Pegg, Nick Frost and director/writer Edgar Wright’s Three Flavours Cornetto Trilogy (which riffs on Kieslowski’s Three Colours Blue trilogy and reputedly came about after a reporter pointed out the ice cream connection to Wright, whilst interviewing him to promote ‘Hot Fuzz’) that began with the seminal ‘Shaun of the Dead’ (strawberry) back in 2004, noticeably ran out of gas with 2007’s ‘Hot Fuzz’ (original), and here (mint chocolate chip) all but splutters to a grinding halt, offering but a few sparse gasps of comedy to last us through to the end. It’s a similar set up to before, with the protagonists in mortal peril from bad guys who are superior in numbers – in this case an army of robots that have overrun the small town of Newton Haven and threaten not only the heroes’ lives, but also to interrupt their pub crawl, supposed to end at The World’s End pub which the five friends failed to reach on a similar venture in their youth, two decades earlier.

The popularity of the cast, and that of ‘Shaun of the Dead’, will ensure a lot of grace for this outing, and overall it is easy enough to simply watch, but even the super keen midnight preview audience I was a part of only managed perhaps six or seven laughs throughout, and there’s a feeling of obviousness, a significant drag factor, and a contrived undertow that gives the sense that by trying to mirror the central aspects of their trilogy they have actually crossed the line into becoming a cliché of their own work. Plus they seem to be fighting against the squishiest mechanised monsters in cinema history, that appear to have been assembled out of nothing more than Styrofoam and Silly Putty. Some of the better gags come from their decision to carry on drinking despite the slight snag to their Dionysian plans, but it could really have been milked for a lot more than it is.

Pegg and Frost star, alongside Paddy Considine, Eddie Marsan, Martin Freeman, Rosamund Pike and a host of familiar faces in support. Probably best enjoyed after a pub crawl of your own (if you can stay awake until the good bits that is).

Pacific Rim (2013) 55/100

Posted on July 12, 2013 by The Red Dragon

Rating : 55/100 132 Min

Despite the low rating, the action in this film is pretty darn good, it’s just that the story is both ridiculous and predictable, and the characters and acting largely follow suit. Set in the immediate future, humanity finds itself under constant threat of attack from alien invaders (the Kaiju), alas not from space above, but from the depths of the Pacific Ocean, wherein lies a previously dormant portal to another dimension. Every six months or so an aquatic behemoth comes through the portal and attacks, Godzilla style, a seemingly random coastal city. Our most obvious solution to this crises is to build enormous robotic warriors to fight the beasties with, each one controlled from within its head by two mentally linked humans whose consciences merge, which allows the story to digress down various emotional tangents.

There are multiple immediate problems with this of course, such as any real explanation as to why our current military capabilities aren’t enough to take down the enemy, or why since we know their point of origin it isn’t mined to high heaven. The robots themselves, or Jaegers as they call them (German for hunters), despite having huge plasma guns and an array of missile explosives, seemed to favour running up and smacking the aliens in the face as their weapon of choice, which naturally allows for the possibility for them to be, well, eaten. The chain of command in their outfit is at best flimsy, and at several times it’s easier to be against the protagonists than behind them.

An oddity that manages to be quite enjoyable and yet at the same time determinedly difficult to really like, it’s from director Guillermo del Toro and has very much the same feel and pace to it as his 2008 film ‘Hellboy II’. This, and del Toro’s continued determination to stick to real sets and props as much as possible, together with the visual effects, are the films strongest assets. It’s a real shame that, as is often the case, a money laden blockbuster is critically let down by basic conceptual errors and a hackneyed screenplay. If you like the look of the trailer, then this might still be worth a go on the big screen – watch out for the Optimus Prime lookalike truck that is no doubt deliberately crushed at one point, and there is a very brief post credits scene too.

World War Z (2013) 67/100

Posted on June 22, 2013 by The Red Dragon

Rating : 67/100 116 Min

This is a reasonably good zombie film, but one massively hindered by a director who hasn’t learned from previous mistakes. The man in question, Marc Forster, was criticised on a grand scale for his ultra fast editing of the action sequences on the Bond film ‘Quantum of Solace’, and here the same problem all but ruins the opening section of the film, where we are granted our first visual treatment of the zombie hordes (they are effectively the same as the zombies infected with the rage virus in 2002’s ‘28 Days Later’) and everything is so completely frenetic we can’t make out what on Earth is going on. The idea was to put the audience in the situation as much as possible, but ironically it has the very opposite effect, deadening our perception of events, in much the same way as watching a tense scene in fast forward would do.

It’s based on the novel by Max Brooks (the son of Mel Brooks), and after the first half an hour or so things start to pick up, and the story gets going. Brad Pitt does a good job of playing the central character, Gerry Lane, employed to investigate the source of the outbreak due to his military connections with the U.N. At one point he awakens to find himself tied to a stretcher and facing none other than Malcolm Tucker (well, Peter Capaldi) from ‘The Thick of it’, which is potentially far scarier than any of the zombie attacks. Decent, but never as tense as it should be.

The film is already famous throughout Scotland for being partly filmed in Glasgow, doubling up as Philadelphia, most notably in the city centre for the aforementioned starting attack. It is great to see the city on the big screen, and it’s obvious not just because of its architecture, but also because it looks decidedly coooooold and dreich (for anyone not familiar with Scots, this word is almost always used in connection with the weather and means dreary and miserable, we use it a lot) and I wonder if local business won’t be able to milk that to some degree, a zombie cafe perhaps, or the occasional zombie flash dance on unsuspecting tourists would be interesting …

The film is planned as part one of a trilogy, so the studios may return to Scotland’s largest city in the future. On a similar vein, Neil Marshall’s ‘Doomsday’ (08) revolved around a deadly killer virus which, naturally, began with one person coughing on the streets of Glasgow city centre. England’s response to the outbreak is to build another wall to keep us out, much like the Romans did, and the rest of the world pretty much leaves Scotland to die. Being a hardy bunch we don’t, of course, but we do degenerate into cannibalism and tribal warfare. All, that is, except for Dundee, which essentially carries on as normal.

Man of Steel (2013) 51/100

Posted on June 15, 2013 by The Red Dragon

Rating : 51/100 143 Min

This is a pretty major disappointment for what was hoped to be the reboot to the Superman franchise. Helmed by Zack Snyder, whose previous films are often much more notable for their special effects than their ability to engage the audience with the story or characters {‘Watchmen’ (09) and ‘Sucker Punch’ (11), for example}, his Superman suffers from this same central problem – it feels like we’re watching a series of storyboards put together without any thought whatsoever as to what goes between them, or even why some of them are there in the first place, other than as excuses for more explosions. This is a big surprise, given the screenplay is from David S. Goyer, based on a story from himself and Christopher Nolan, both hot off the success of their Dark Knight trilogy, though it is certainly fair to say plot holes abounded in the escapades of their Batman, but Nolan’s skill behind the camera made them much more palatable than Snyder is able to do here.

Even the director’s normal artistic and stylistic flair looks here to be very much aping the work of others – in particular J.J.Abrams’ success with the recent Star Trek films, including his trademark lens flares and the way the camera will hover above the action and then zoom in or out abruptly before a cut, particularly noticeable with ‘Man of Steel’s intro section where we see the birth of Superman, or Kal-El, on his home planet of Krypton. With ‘Star Trek – Into Darkness’ released just a few weeks ago, featuring the line ‘Looks like we have a superman onboard’ at one point, one wonders if this was an acknowledgment of the fact – perhaps the two directors are good friends? Although these same visuals are one of the film’s redeeming features, their unoriginality is a little disappointing from Snyder, indeed the story itself has shades of many recent blockbusters that have gone before it – the changes to the backstory of Clark Kent’s foster parents echoes Spiderman’s relationship with uncle Ben, the present threat of alien invasion mirrors the one that raked in millions at the box office for last year’s ‘Avengers Assemble’, and so on.

Storywise, the biggest let down is that precious little of it makes any sense at all. They try to explain Clark’s powers using physics, and the fact that our sun’s radiation and the gravity on Earth is different from those experienced on Krypton. Nonsense. He can FLY for goodness sake. At one point his foster father Jonathan, played by Kevin Costner {still reeling from ‘Waterworld’ almost twenty years ago now}, suggests he perhaps should have let a bunch of children die rather than risk revealing his identity. There just seems to be no real thought or intelligence in the script at all, to the point where come the end you’re thinking, ‘O, of course that character shows up here out of the blue miraculously in time for the kissy kissy drama shot’. Are Goyer and Nolan trying to sabotage a rival superhero outfit to their own?

The acting is generally fine, and leading man Henry Cavill does well and could easily reprise the role if they find a different team to work on it (I believe Snyder has been given the tentative go ahead for the next one – he may have to reboot his reboot), though to be fair he doesn’t really have to do a tremendous amount of acting. The fight sequences do start to make the film a bit more interesting, but it’s not long before they begin to drag, degenerating into the same super-powered stunt repeated again and again, ultimately leaving the movie bland, flat, silly, and completely devoid of any real character. Amy Adams, Diane Lane, Michael Shannon and Laurence Fishburne appear in support. {Look out for the name on some of the chemical trucks toward the end – also, perhaps the most promising aspect of the entire film is that this is planned as a prelude to a ‘Justice League’ team up of several of DC Comics’ super heroes (again, no doubt spurred on by the success of rivals Marvel, with their ‘Avenger’s Assemble’ box office smash). It will be very interesting indeed to see who makes it into the League (Batman is a DC character, in case you didn’t know, but usually only dabbled infrequently with the League)}

After Earth (2013) 20/100

Posted on June 8, 2013 by The Red Dragon

Rating : 20/100 100 Min

A ridiculous story matched by ridiculous acting. Planned as a trilogy that will now most certainly not be happening, this film never really gets past the main problem of knowing that Will Smith has cast his real life fourteen year old son to play the son of his central character onscreen and, although I do feel a degree of pity for Jaden Smith’s situation here, his son’s acting ability simply isn’t where it needs to be for a huge blockbuster like this. This issue is compounded by Will Smith himself actually having come up with the story (though not the screenplay), and it’s hopelessly contrived to allow the character his son plays to conquer his fears and in effect become a man. His heart was likely in the right place, and it has the feel of Mr Smith senior trying to pass the acting gauntlet onto Mr Smith junior, but it absolutely needed a better script.

Set in the future after we’ve destroyed our planet by abusing its resources, although this is actually nonsense as the two central characters end up on a crash landed ship (wherein the entirety of the ship’s crew have conveniently otherwise perished) that warps back to Earth (this is not a spoiler by the way), and it is displayed as abundantly full of vegetation and megafauna. There’s a volcano, if that is supposed to denote global warming, but we do actually have volcanoes at the moment Mr Smith (admittedly, it is set one thousand years after we left for pastures new, but hardly enough time for every species on Earth to more than double in size, especially in their supposedly resources limited environment).

Anyway, Will’s legs are also conveniently broken, or as his character puts it ‘Both my legs are broken. One of them really badly.’, hmm yes, which thus forces his young mini me to go on a trip through the perilous forest to find the tail of the crashed vessel with the emergency distress beacon. And therein an enormous problem with the story rears its ugly head – since there are only two of them it is abundantly obvious that young Mr Smith is in fact not going to be annihilated by the several things that he encounters which will, of course, try to annihilate him. Though he does pretty much ask for it by smacking a baboon in the face with a rock for no apparent reason. Fortunately, he is so super fit, despite Earth’s gravity being stronger than on his home planet, he is able to outrun an entire pack of angry baboons in their native forest. Did. Not. See. That. Coming. Sarcasm.

O there’s an alien bad guy that may or may not have survived the crash too, see the above line, all that being said, some of the visuals and cinematography are quite good. Indeed, the production design on the spaceship is interesting, with an aesthetic that appears to be a hybrid of an old sailing ship and a beehive/organic structure on the interior, and a more Star Trek esque hull on the outside. With the start of the final credits and the revelation that the director is M. Night Shyamalan (his name was removed from trailers after they performed badly) there was a moment of, ‘O, of course, it all makes sense now’, as there was one part when our young hero looked as if he were going to try to outrun the weather as well as the baboons, and one couldn’t help but think of Shyamalan’s ‘The Happening’ (08) when Mark Wahlberg and co did actually try to outrun the wind and the airborne evil that came with it, and here we find similar veins of trashy nonsense throughout the story. There are a lot of good films out at the moment, don’t waste your time and money on this.

Fast & Furious 6 (2013) 60/100

Posted on May 22, 2013 by The Red Dragon

Rating : 60/100 130 Min

For a quick recap, this is the latest in The Fast and the Furious franchise, following on from ‘The Fast and the Furious’ (01), ‘2 Fast 2 Furious’ (03), ‘The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift’ (06), ‘Fast and Furious’ (09), and ‘Fast Five’ in 2011, all of which possibly makes this the worst named film franchise in history, so much so the marketing campaign for this instalment included a fan based vote on what to actually name the new one, and it seems the fans have a bit more common sense than the previous lot’s producers.

It’s primarily set in London, with the film imagined as a sort of bridge between the series focusing on underground racers and becoming an action platform that simply has fast cars, hot girls (including the quite stunning Gal Gadot, Miss Israel 2004, and Gina Carano, the mixed martial artist that went on an ass kicking rampage in Steven Soderbergh’s ‘Haywire’ two years ago) and many, many cheesy one-liners – most often courtesy of Dwayne Johnson’s returning character, Luke Hobbs. Here we see a team up between Hobbs and Vin Diesel’s Dominic Toretto, as their combined forces are required to take down a highly skilled team of heist drivers led by Welshman Luke Evans (who played Zeus in ‘Immortals’, and will appear as the hero Bard in the forthcoming Hobbit films) and just maybe save an old colleague they had previously given up for dead in the process.

It starts off promisingly, with tight action from director Justin Lin (who helmed no’s 3,4 & 5), but eventually it just becomes too far fetched, and with a lot of the sequences taking place at night it’s visually a little tiresome and repetitive to watch. It also suffers massively from predictability in terms of dialogue, story, and what will happen to most of the characters, and has been to no mean degree ruined by advertising a huge ten minute or so segment of the film with the trailers shown before other previous big name releases – certain screenings of ‘Star Trek – Into Darkness’ and I think ‘Iron Man Three’. I’d already seen the same footage three times prior to seeing it in the actual film, and other frequent film goers will doubtless have the same reaction of ‘Argh not this bit again!’, especially as it comes toward the climax of the film, a climax also featured in some of the film’s normal trailers.

One of the best bits actually appears at the very end – after a screenshot of text warning people not to try any of the stunts they’ve seen at home, a tad unnecessary really, the story continues and sets up the next film, tentatively entitled ‘Fast & Furious 7’, with a surprise appearance from someone you might just recognise… Some of the shoots took place in Glasgow doubling as London (though filming took place there too whilst the Olympics were on) something which prompted Vin Diesel to state his claim to Scottish heritage and that one of his ancestors, he won’t say who, is in fact buried at the mysterious Rosslyn Chapel (the one from ‘The Da Vinci Code’). An interesting bit of trivia, but, whether or not it’s accurate, what isn’t in doubt is that he has been confirmed as the person to play Kojak in the planned big screen adaptation of the titular detective’s crime stopping antics, ironic as he used to watch Telly Savalas (the original Kojak) coming in and out of the building he grew up in whilst they were filming the tv series in his neighbourhood of New York City.

Star Trek – Into Darkness (2013) 79/100

Posted on May 17, 2013 by The Red Dragon

Rating : 79/100 132 Min

The follow up to J.J.Abrams’ bold forage into the Star Trek universe continues where the first film (‘Star Trek’ 09) left off, with the crew of the Enterprise a couple of years farther down their alternative timeline to the original series, and The Federation trying to come to terms with the rather brutal and abrupt events of the last film. It bears a lot in common with its successful predecessor, and it fulfils its mission statement perfectly: remaining true to the essence of Gene Roddenberry’s creation (replete with the music from the sixties playing at the end, mention of Tribbles, Mudd, and Christine Chapel – a.k.a. Nurse Chapel, one of the most commonly recurring secondary members of the original crew) whilst still standing on its own two feet as something creative in its own right and encapsulating the blockbuster outlook the new films have been conceived with.

It’s immensely entertaining, looks fantastic, and is filled with the prerequisite spirit of camaraderie that all great adventure films have in common. Indeed, it is certainly one film to see on the big-screen, and the bigger the better (some scenes were shot on IMAX), and there are relatively few sci-fi films nowadays that display the ‘final frontier’ of space in such an awe inspiring cinematic way, in fact I’d like to see more time spent on this in the third instalment which must surely follow on from the immediate success of this one, and there are a lot of appreciable nice touches, like the flair added to the warp trail effect from the Enterprise. Michael Giacchino returns once more for the score, his music fitting perfectly into the list of memorable and atmospheric Star Trek themes, as does Leonard Nimoy for another brief cameo, his character surely busily preparing New Vulcan and her allies for the arrival of a certain none too friendly cybernetic race in circa one hundred years or so….

The story is captivating, but is also one given to debate afterwards as to whether or not several plot elements hold up under scrutiny. This is exactly the same as ‘Star Trek’ which seen bad guy Nero witness his home planet being destroyed and then going back in time, which would have allowed him to forewarn said planet and possibly prevent its annihilation, or at least evacuate everyone, but instead he decided to go on a mass genocidal killing spree with his advanced ship, for no logical purpose other than to create drama on a suitable scale. The story here riffs very heavily off several elements from its canon of Star Trek source material, and also fits in a sizeable nod to The Godfather part III in the process.

It would perhaps be wise to have Abram’s flair for action and entertainment combined with a bit more of the Star Trek ethos in the next one, but there is no doubt he has injected new life back into the wonderful characters that helped create one of the most enduring legacies in the history of the big and small screen, and the future for this incarnation is wide open, in fact it was a stroke of unfettering genius to break the timeline and take us back to where it all began. Performances are good all round, including from new cast members Alice Eve, Benedict Cumberbatch and Peter Weller (most famous previously for playing Robocop), Simon Pegg has also largely improved his Scottish accent. If you enjoy this, most certainly watch the second of the original series of films, which was arguably the best of the bunch.

Dead Man Down (2013) 60/100

Posted on May 4, 2013 by The Red Dragon

Rating : 60/100 118 Min

There is a lot of promise shown throughout this film, almost like a shadow haunting it as it fights to try and conform to humdrum banality, a fight that it disappointingly wins. Colin Farrell is a member of Terrence Howard’s gang of miscreants, but someone is out to sever the leader’s head, someone who keeps sending clues to his identity, mysterious notes, and a trail of criminal corpses. Enter the girl, not quite next door, but across the chasm between their high rise buildings, played by Noomi Rapace, who has evidently been checking out Farrell through the window in unguarded moments and eventually plucks up the courage to introduce herself, but she has a story of her own too.

The central focus of this film is revenge, and it almost deals with it in a serious manner, but it winds unerringly down into pointless cliché. Rapace gives a strongly believable performance – we are told her character has had part of her face rebuilt after a car crash, and there is certainly a very visible scar, only it’s really not that extreme for the sort of surgery she’s describing, she still looks good really, and one can’t help but feel that it could possibly be concealed with make-up if she so chose. A more original, tougher treatment with the same cast could have been something more worthwhile watching.

Iron Man 3 (2013) 75/100

Posted on April 29, 2013 by The Red Dragon

Rating : 75/100 130 Min

Despite ropey beginnings, this proves to be quite possibly the most enjoyable of the Iron Man series thus far. Written by Shane Black and Drew Pearce, and directed by Black in the stead of Jon Favreau who helmed the previous two, the third instalment finds our hero Tony Stark dealing with the psychological aftermath of the events of ‘Avengers Assemble’ (or ‘The Avengers’ for everyone outside of Britain) whilst once again donning his not so alter-ego of Iron Man to deal with the threat of a terrorist calling himself The Mandarin, played most wonderfully here by Sir Ben Kinglsey. The Mandarin was one of the most frequent villains to appear in the comics, and one of the advantages of writing about a universe which has just been visited by demigods and hordes of war waging aliens, is that the term ‘far fetched’ can no longer be applied.

The story is a lot of fun, and what makes it really work is the injection of comedy which fits both the personality of Stark and the actor portraying him, Robert Downey Jr. At one point he encounters a fan in the guise of a schoolboy, which normally means we are about to be bombarded by irritating cliché, but it actually turns out to be one of the best things about the film. Don Cheadle and Gwyneth Paltrow reprise their roles, and both Guy Pearce and the enchanting Rebecca Hall manifest themselves as talented scientists. Ironically Hall’s character has a rant about being called a mere botanist, but websites about the film also seem to enjoy referring to her in the same manner. There’s a nice improvised ‘Assassin’s Creed’ moment, and at the end there’s a series of slightly retro credits with stills from all three films, but no expected extra scene following. However, I do believe there is one if you stay for the entire credits after the retrospective. I shall just have to go and see it again…. (I can now confirm that this is indeed the case, it’s a lengthy wait though)

Apparently some scenes were shot in China purely for the Chinese version of the film, something which is becoming more popular with the Chinese market now being second only to the American one in terms of film revenue, and something which The Red Dragon doesn’t agree with since it’s done purely for commercial reasons, but probably the other footage will appear on the DVD release anyway.

Below is the London press release for the film with some of the cast and crew, seemingly a small cauldron of emotions, from nerves to repressed giggles….

The Red Dragon

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