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Last American Horror Show(2018)
Abysmal
Anthology of three extremely low-budget short films with the fourth serving as a framing device. It's one thing to make a B-movie that has limited resources such as not being afford to hire extras or only having one location for filming, but all of these shorts are the cheapest amateur garbage, looking like they were filmed entirely with the cheapest phone cameras and having abysmal editing, with audio being so out of place at times that I wondered if there's something wrong with my speakers.
The first short is the simplest most straightforward story about home invasion, completely forgettable and could've been 5 minutes long.
The second one is a dark comedy resembling Gremlins, but it's main problem is that despite revolving around a fantastical creature, the special effects are literally nonexistent. It mostly consists out of actors pretending to be haunted and killed by a scary off-screen creature, but it's just so badly filmed, it's obvious there's no creature whatsoever because the production couldn't even afford even a good prop, instead only showing a few glimpses of a plastic toy near the end.
The third short rips off Texas Chainsaw Massacre, but with way more cannibals. Again, everything is very amateurish, but what I found quite distracting is how a few shots were filmed with a camera that's of considerably higher quality than anything else used in this garbage anthology, so it's distracting how the image gets much clearer and better for just a few seconds here and there.
Finally, I think that the framing story actually had the most potential, since it's the only one that actually has an unpredictable plot twist. However, once again the special effects are nonexistent, and the surprise ending literally looks like just some rough raw footage that should have been heavily edited with some CGI added in, but it's obvious they couldn't afford any of that.
Escape Room: Tournament of Champions(2021)
Shorter and dumber than the first one
This is a direct sequel to the surprisingly successful 2019 movie (which I personally liked), so you should really watch that one first if you haven't already. However, the 2nd Escape Room is shorter and has a much faster pacing than the first one, but most importantly everything is just so chaotic and messy all around. The first Room in the original movie was one of the movie's best scenes, as it slowly built up the atmosphere and gave both the characters and the audience enough time to think, whereas the first "Room" in this one is just ridiculous, with everything happening way too quickly and all the characters screaming in such an annoying way. Also, all the deaths are absurdly elaborate, involving some fantastical contraptions that look like they came out of an unusually stupid episode of the original Star Trek series; but this was probably done because more realistic and explicit death scenes would restrict the film's access to younger audiences. Anyhow, the whole movie is pretty much just a set up for the final plot twist, and without spoiling anything I'll just say that the twist is just preposterously unexpected and will leave many viewers scratching their heads out of bafflement as it just raises many new questions. I would recommend the "Tournament" only to those fans of the original who don't have high expectations from the sequel.
Candyman(2021)
Candyman returns to Chicago to jump the shark
Unlike the two cheesy B slasher flicks from 1995 and 1999, the new Candyman is a direct sequel to the 1992 original, set at the same place and even featuring some of the same characters. It also serves as a prequel, since there are a few scenes taking place before the original film, with the purpose to expand the backstory of the titular villain. The new Candyman also takes on the political overtones from the original, though one could say that this aspect is controversial and greatly exaggerated, with too many "stick it to the Man" moments. Anyhow, the first Candyman movie of the 21st century is much more of a blunt social critique than a horror movie. The kill count is astronomically high, but most of the deaths are off-screen, and it's like the whole movie merely tries to be as exaggerated and over-the-top as possible while not being scary at all. In fact, there are some scenes that go beyond the normal suspension of belief by just how absurd they are, and near the ending it seems like the movie has "jumped the shark" due to how over-the-top the finale is. All of the characters are very forgettable, and most of them serve no other purpose other than to get killed. The thing I personally dislike the most are the annoying flashing lights featured heavily in one scene.
However, the flashback scenes done in shadow puppetry are excellent and mesmerizing. The last scene with shadow puppets accompanies the end credits, and it might even be the best scene of the whole movie.
The President's Man: A Line in the Sand(2002)
Underwhelming and Unoriginal
I vaguely remember seeing fragments of this movie in my childhood (the shot of Arabs holding the helmet of a downed American pilot and the scene when Chuck Norris kicks the villain so hard he flies off), but only recently did I watch the whole thing. The movie follows the frequently reused plot about an evil terrorist threatening the world who gets captured, only to escape his captivity soon afterwards, after which he and the hero have a showdown in the middle of a city (as seen in the Dark Knight, the Avengers, Skyfall etc). This may seem like the plot of an action-packed blockbuster, but this is actually a very underwhelming movie with limited resources that manifest in its boring and short fight scenes. In the beginning of the movie, the villains seem like they have a huge army and minions all over the world at their disposal, but when the protagonists finally start fighting them, they are reduced to a few hapless henchmen lead by an old man. As a counterweight to this, the US government is also depicted as a bunch of incompetent fools who can't do a single thing right, so the 3 main heroes constantly have to fix their mistakes.
There's a lot of boring filler scenes which lead nowhere, and the fight scenes are short and underwhelming, mostly consisting out of just a few kicks being exchanged and stuntmen jumping and falling randomly. To make matters worse, Chuck Norris has only 2 very short fight scenes in the whole movie, whereas Judson Mills has more screentime and is closer to a central protagonist. Jennifer Tung is wasted as she spends all the important scenes just sitting down and talking.
I would recommend this movie only to hardcore Chuck Norris fans, and only when there is nothing better to watch.
Tenet(2020)
Disasterously bad
This pretentious action blockbuster is by far the worst movie by Christopher Nolan, and if you remove all the (undeserving) hype surrounding it, you will find a disappointingly mediocre movie with bad directing, bad screenplay, bad pacing, bad editing and abysmal camerawork. The actual plot is paper-thin and predictable (about a group of secret agents who must prevent an evil terrorist from destroying the world etc), but what makes the movie incomprehensible is the annoying shaky-cam that is dominant in most action scenes and which becomes even more pronounced as the movie progresses. What also bothered me is how most scenes end way too abruptly, with the narration jumping from one continent to another so quickly that the viewer gets lost in all the jump-cuts. Furthermore, the characters are all one-dimensional and everybody speeks in a needlessly cryptic jargon that's full of codewords and abbreviations. It seems to me that the whole story aspect about time-travel and "reverse entropy" is just a cheap supperficial gimmick that's supposed to justify extravagant special effects and draw attention from the movie's numerous flaws. I don't think this movie deserves so much hype since it's really a complete wreck with flaws in every department.
Beyond the Law(2019)
Unwatchably bad
This B-film has a very misleading cover and actor billing, since DMX and the geriatric Seagull have just minor roles. Most of the movie is about Messner investigating the murder of his son, but it's very drawn-out, with lots of boring dialogues. This is bad enough on it's own, but then in the last 10 minutes the movie completely changes its plot and direction, ending with a badly edited action scene that focuses on the morbidly obese and slow Steven Seagal (who spends the rest of the movie sitting in an armchair with a cigar), full of shaky-cam and quick-cuts that are supposed to hide the fact that Seagal is 68 years old and can barely even stand up. This is probably one of the worst movies ever made, and Seagal's abysmal "fight scene" is the last nail in its coffin.
Contract to Kill(2016)
Boring and Incoherent
I watched this mess of a film because I had 80 minutes to spare and it was currently on TV, and even though I was even expecting it to be "so bad it's good", I was disappointed because this movie is "so bad it's just bad".
The plot is a needlessly convoluted mess about a team of 3 ex-secret agents (or something like that) played by the geriatric Steven Seagal, Russell Wong and Jemma Dallender, that get hired by the US government to prevent a meeting between Mexican drug cartels and Islamic terrorists (the 2 most frequent villains in Seagal's movies are now combined together) that's set to take place in Istanbul. Steven Seagal is known for repetative fight scenes in which he curbstomps hundreds of bad guys, but here he doesn't even do that (since he got too old for that) and instead spends almost all of his screentime either sitting behind a desk or sitting in cars. There is maybe 4 minutes max of fighting in the whole movie - brief scenes in which Seagal and Russell Wong beat up and shoot several henchmen, and it's filmed with so much shaky-cam and frame cuts that it's almost unwatchable. Also, the worst part about this movie is that, since it probably went through numerous re-edits in postproduction, there are several scenes which seem like they were made from various different footage that was re-edited and spliced together quite clumsily. This is most obvious in the epilogue, where after completing their mission, the heroes go on a new adventure, but this clearly consists out of just random shots seen in previous scenes shown again in a different context.
Also, even though all Steven Seagal does here is sit and talk, he can't even do that right because his voice sounds so unnatural and weird, like a child with a sore throath is trying to talk like a tough guy.
The Gallows(2015)
Boring and Plain Bad
When I first saw the trailer for this movie and read the plot summary, it did not seem very promising to me. However, some time later I decided to give The Gallows a chance and watch it on VOD. Turns out that this 2015 "found footage" horror is probably the worst wide theatrical release movie of 2015. Every minute of it is so badly thought-out, scripted, acted & shot, that I wonder why anyone went throught the trouble of making a marketing campaign and distributing it, and more importantly why so many people went to see it at the big screens (this mess apparently earned an astonishing 40 million USD at the box office).
So the film's premise is very simple and from the very start it's obvious it's going to be about a group of teenagers filming themselves being haunted in their high school by a ghost of a student who had died during a school play. However, this simple plot has a needlessly convoluted introduction as much of the movie is spent introducing numerous characters doing various activites, but that's all just filler because the whole movie follows just 4 characters which means that more than 90% of the film's cast is in it for no reason. When the horror starts (and it takes a lot of time for it to start) most scenes are filmed in such an annoyingly bad lighting (even for a found footage movie) and everything looks so unnatural and staged, that it's really hard to even follow the movie, let alone care about anything that happens in it. The scene with the girl in red lights from the film's poster is supposed to be the highlight of the movie, but the way it's filmed differs significantly from the rest of the movie. The acting is mediocre throughout the movie, but near the ending it worsens and becomes laughably bad. There are some moments when we get to see the ghost as a physical creature, and it looks so cheaply made that I could literally make a better costume with stuff from my wardrobe.
Also, I don't want to spoil anything (even for such a bad movie) but at the very end there is supposed to be a huge plot twist, but it's so unbelievable & illogical & badly executed, that it's impossible to care or be surprised by it.
All in all, the Gallows is an unusually bad and boring movie, even for its genre, and I would not recommend it to anyone.
Marauders(2016)
Crime action film with a ridiculously convoluted plot that's impossible to understand
When I first saw the poster for this film, I was expecting a rather straightforward action flick about criminals robing banks and policemen trying to stop them. Instead, what I got was a convoluted mess of a film in which some bank robberies do happen, but they are merely a part of an extremely complicated story that involves political conspiracies, dark secrets from the past, assassinations, betrayals, and plenty of other stuff that will almost certainly leave the viewer baffled and confused.
Basically, the plot summary is that a group of masked soldiers are robbing banks that all belong to a suspicious businessman called Hubert, who is played by Bruce Willis. However, these robbers don't want just the money, but instead they are performing these robberies in order to steal certain objects that Hubert personally left in his banks as well as kill certain bank employees that were employed by Hubert personally. The reason why they do that is because Hubert did some very bad things in the past, and now they want to exact vengeance upon him. Now, I'm not going to spoil anything, but let's just say that what Hubert did in his past was to organize some kind of political conspiracy in order to remain the owner of his banks, and that conspiracy resulted in the deaths of many innocent people. Therefore, the objects that the robbers steal are some kind of incriminating documents that helped Hubert organize the conspiracy, and the killed employees were involved in that conspiracy. Then a group of FBI agents lead by a frustrated Agent Montgomery, played by Christopher Meloni, starts investigating these robberies, but while doing so they also start uncovering this conspiracy. After reading all this, you may think that I'm explaining the story with too many details and revealing too much, but the thing is that all that is just the most basic starting plot which gets even more elaborate and convoluted through a series of plot twists, subplots and flashbacks. Halfway through the movie, the story becomes pretty much impossible to explain!
The worst thing is that many questions do not even get fully explained by the end of the movie, and the most notable one is: How did Hubert manage to organize such a complicated political conspiracy? The movie is made even more convoluted by some needless subplots. The most notable ones are the story about Montgomery's wife, who was also an agent that was killed while undercover, which has no influence on the main plot, as well as a strange subplot about a policeman who is also investigating the robberies and whose wife is suffering from cancer. I don't even know what the point of that character is, but that subplot is concluded in a very bizarre, if not ridiculous, way.
Other than the messy story, the movie also has some action scenes, but they're nothing special. I liked the first bank robbery scene, which was actually quite intense and well shot, but everything goes downhill from there. One of the later robberies involves some kind of a lengthy armed standoff between several characters that looks simply ridiculous.
As for the acting, Bruce Willis gives a rather routine-like and forgettable performance. Meloni plays the main character and he goes through various emotions throughout the movie, though I personally did not like his performance. There's also WWE superstar Dave Bautista playing Meloni's partner, but he does not do anything memorable in the movie other than spear-tackling a bad guy once. There are also many other supporting characters, if not too many, and it's kind of hard to keep track of all of them.
In the end, I kind of wish this had just been some kind of a "B movie" about heists that's easy to follow, and not this mess.
Homefront(2013)
Homefront Review
Homefront is an action flick written by Sylvester Stalone and based on some novel. The movie's poster did not seem promising, as it was badly designed with an American flag clumsily photoshopped over the lead's body, but I decided to give it a chance on Netflix. What I got to see was nothing awe-inspiring, but also nothing awful.
Stalone does not appear in this movie, and instead the main star is the former-athlete-turned-action-hero Jason Statham. He plays a DEA agent Phil Broker who, after a failed undercover mission that resulted in a bloodbath, decides to retire and live peacefully with his young daughter Maddy, played by Izabela Vidovic, in a small American town. However, this town happens to be the headquarters of a mad drug-lord known as Gator played by James Franco, who starts causing troubles to this small family. The actual reason why Gator hates the Brokers is very implausible and unclear, and has to do something with Maddy punching his nephew once in school. This small incident is apparently enough to motivate Gator to join forces with the remaining members of the gang that got busted in Phil's last mission and plan a violent revenge. I guess character motivations aren't the best part of this movie.
What ensues after this buildup are some modest action scenes during which Statham beats and shoots numerous thugs while protecting his daughter. Gary Fledel does a very terrible job at directing Homefront, so most intense moments are ruined by annoying shaky cam. Statham is a good wrecking havoc and still remembers to show a little bit of emotion, but the rest of the cast gives some mediocre performances, with the exception of Franco, who is extremely unconvincing and forgettable as the villain.
I liked how the movie is set in an ordinary Southern town where most of the citizens are just regular folks minding their own business and taking care of their land and families. However, that also makes me wonder why Statham is cast, since he is an Englishman and does not seem like somebody who'd enjoy riding a horse, although he does that a lot in the movie.
As a whole, Homefront is obviously nothing special, but fans of action flicks and/or Jason Statham will probably find this film entertaining.
Terminator Genisys(2015)
Terminator Genisys review
The recent Terminator craze greatly affected me, since I have always been a huge fan of Arnold Schwarzenegger and the first two Terminator movies. Several days before the release of the new Terminator film, I rewatched all the other installments in the franchise. I wanted very badly to watch Genisys, but my expectations about the movie were very low due to horrible trailers. The final result is a movie with a huge budget (unlike the first part) that has numerous problems, mostly related to its plot.
I do not want to spoil the story, although the trailers have already done that, but I must say that there is absolutely no explanation for most of the events in the movie. For example, it is never explained why and how the T-800 traveled back in time when Sarah Connor was a child or who sent him. Additionally, the whole "alternative timeline" thing makes no sense and is just used as a bad excuse to make this movie. T-800 says that this is due to some kind of "nexus", but that is clearly just some random word the writers made up.
The acting in this movie is quite mediocre, whereas Terminator 1 and 2 were praised for great performances. Jai Courtney, who plays Kyle Reese, is very bad in his role and shows no emotions. Emilia Clarke was adequate in Game of Thrones, but she is terrible as Sarah Connor and just watching her is very unpleasant. Arnold Schwarzenegger is alright as the legendary T-800, but he can't really achieve much with the bad script. Byung-hun Lee is the T-1000, but his part is relatively short and could have been better. Jason Clarke is rather unusual as John Connor, and it is interesting to see his behavior change throughout the movie. J. K. Simmons plays the character of an ordinary cop whom Sarah Connor accidentally saves from the T-1000, so he spends decades investigating this case. However, his role is very small and he has absolutely no effect on the events of the film, since he just runs around and shouts in a couple of scenes, so I wonder why anybody bothered even to put him in the movie.
Of course, I must mention one of the highlights of the film - the CGI version of young T- 800. It looks astonishing, with a face that completely resembles that of Arnold Schwarzenegger in 1984. Too bad other special effects in the movie are no better than those in Terminator 2, which came out more than 20 years ago. The movie is supposed to be happening during 3 time periods, but most of the scenes from 1984 take place in some old shabby building and not in public places. So the majority of the movie is set in 2017, which of course looks like present day.
The action scenes are very generic and forgettable, so there is not much to say about them. Everything is full of CGI explosions, but there is no blood or gore. During intense moments, characters often say memorable lines of other characters from previous movies. For example, T-800 falls on a moving police car and and tells the policeman to "Get out!" which is what T-1000 said to a police pilot in T2.
In the end, I must say that the original Terminator is a real masterpiece that James Cameron managed to make with limited resources. The new Terminator Genisys had a huge budget and numerous fans of the franchise, but it is inferior to the original in almost every way. Genisys is not completely unwatchable, but it's just a mediocre summer blockbuster with a story that's impossible to understand.
Centurion(2010)
Thrilling historic fiction movie with a disappointing end
Centurion by Neil Marshall is set in Ancient Britain during the Roman conquest and is very loosely based on some obscure historic facts. The movie follows the titular character, Quintus Dia (Michael Fassbender), who during one night in a camp gets captured by Picts, a vicious tribe that defiantly fights against Romans. However, he is soon rescued by a legion led by General Virilus (Dominic West). This victory does not lost long, because this legion soon gets ambushed by Picts. Most of the Romans are killed, the General gets captured, so a very small group of survivors has to fight its way through the harsh wilderness and evade a hunting party led by the ruthless mute Etain (Olga Kurylenko).
The movie lacks any large-scale proportions and instead focuses on several characters. Dia, Bothos (David Morrissey) and Brick (Liam Cunningham) are the main characters, and most other characters die quite easily. Arianne (Imogen Poots) was originally supposed to be an important character with an interesting back-story, but that was changed and she is just a minor character in the movie. Although the fight scenes are mostly small and with only a few participants, they are extremely violent and gritty. You rarely get to see so much gore and blood in similar movies, so Centurion is unusual with its superbly done gore effects. People often get graphically stabbed with spears, swords or arrows and they sure do bleed a lot, which looks amazing and quite realistic.
One of the best things in the movie is the beautiful scenery. The movie shows various landscapes of Britain, such as forests, plains, rivers, hills etc, which look breath-taking. There are even some scenes where the actors really run across some snowy mountains in the freezing weather. Filming all these landscapes must have been quite difficult and few film-makers would put so much effort in it.
The ending is something I dislike greatly about this movie, since it's very anticlimactic. There is no big battle between Romans and Picts; instead the plot changes and the last few minutes of the movie are spent portraying the Romans as the bad guys (but not the main characters). Personally, I find this extremely disappointing and badly executed, so it's probably the weakest part of the movie.
So, if you like gritty action scenes and movies about Ancient Rome, feel free to watch Centurion. Its ending is quite problematic and most of the scenes are relatively simple, but the movie does have many good moments.
Wolf Creek(2005)
Dull and boring!
After reading both the critics' and IMDb user's reviews, I expected an unusually gruesome horror movie full of controversial scenes. I did not get the slightest bit of that. Instead, I got to see a boring movie that mostly consists of filler scenes that show people doing ordinary holiday activities. The last third of the movie is somewhat exciting because it shows the main villain, who has a cool Australian accent, chase and kill very few people, but nothing is above average.
It is important to know that the entire first half of the movie is about 3 young people on a holiday in Australia doing trivial stuff. They have some fun at the pool, drive a car, get insulted by some thugs in a bar, visit the Wolf Creek Crater etc. Then their car mysteriously breaks down and they meet weird dirty loaner (played efficiently by John Jarrat) driving a truck. He drives them to a nearby abandoned settlement where they have a very long conservation by a bonfire. After this, the screen goes black for some time, and then the horror starts. Due to the low budget and small cast, there are only a few action scenes, but they are executed decently. A girl gets tortured by the mad Australian loaner, he gets wounded by her friend, several huge plot conveniences occur, some gore is shown, and that's about it. There is one exciting chase scene on a desert road that I liked, but nothing more.
On the whole, I do not recommend this movie. You may like it only if you are a huge slasher find and don't mind having to watch 50 minutes of pointless filler scenes before the actual movie starts. Additionally Wolf Creek could not have been based on a true story like it claims to be, because the movie does not contain any story. I actually wonder what all the fuss related to this movie is about.
Next of Kin(1989)
Several Big Stars, But Nothing Special
Next of Kin has a rather unusual story about hillbillies fighting against mafia in Chicago. It all starts when an ordinary hillbilly named Gerald Briar who moved to town in order to become a truck driver gets killed by mobsters while doing his job. The main villain is Joey (played by Adam Baldwin), a very brutal and relentless member of the Isabela crime family, who has to work with his boss' harmless son Lawrence (Ben Stiller). What he did not know is that the trucker had a huge family of highlanders, and his brother Truman Gates (Patrick Swayze) lives in Chicago and works as a detective. After Gerald's funeral, Gerald's second brother Briar (Liam Neeson), who is just an ordinary unsuccessful hillbilly, decides to travel to Chicago in order to investigate his brother's death. He occupies a room in a cheap motel, prepares some bullets, and starts beating or threatening anybody who gets in his way. Meanwhile, Truman, who has a beautiful violinist wife Jessie (Helen Hunt), also starts his own investigation but through peaceful means and more subtle threats.
The movie is quite slow-paced and the Briar brothers actually try to get the full picture of the 3rd brother's death before killing anybody. However, the movie's finale is just a dumb shootout scene where mobsters get brutally slaughtered with weapons including shotguns, bows, crossbows, throwing axes and even snakes! One must wonder why the movie is so long when in the end everything comes down to fighting and Truman's plan of lawful arrest fails, but that is probably due to "movie magic". The rest of the movie is forgettable, with several events that do not make any sense. There is one exciting scene where Briar is being chased by mobsters and has to jump on moving trains which is worth watching. The scenes showing the Gates family in the hills are also well-made and successfully capture the spirit of a big highlander clan.
All in all, Next of Kin does have some famous actors, most notably Liam Neeson and Patrick Swayze, but it's just an average crime action movie with several flaws.
Travelator(2014)
A Flawed But Thrilling Indie Action Film
Travellator tells the story of a young man called Slovene (a person from Slovenia, not Slav as other people have called him) who lives a hard life in Serbia mostly playing violent video games. He and his mother are refugees from the civil war who still live in a refugee shelter, and she is very ill and needs money for treatment. One day Slovene meets some mobsters, who claim to be Serbian patriots but speak a Scandinavian language among themselves. The mobsters hire him to travel to Las Vegas and kill one criminal from Serbia. This criminal was in Whitness Protection Program but got expelled from it due to reckless behavior, so now he spends his last days in the Sin City partying with 2 Serbian government officials before returning to his homeland. Slovene spent his whole life in great poverty, so he gets easily drawn to the luxurious life in Las Vegas, an amazing city that seems like an artificial paradise. He also meets a young stripper Weronika who quickly falls in love with him.
The scenes in the movie have a non-linear order, similar to Reservoir Dogs. Most of the scenes in Las Vegas were shot in guerrilla style, which means that the film crew filmed on the streets without any permissions next to crowds who were unaware of being filmed. The result is visually superb and efficiently captures the wanted atmosphere. The streets and casinos of Las Vegas look marvelous, full of surreal colors. These scenes contrast with those set in Serbia, a poor country full of dark and shabby locations. In the end of the movie, the real life violence starts to look like a first-person shooter game. All in all, the aesthetic side of the movie is excellent for an indie film.
However, the movie also has plenty of flaws. There are too many religious motives; most notably when the imitators of Elvis Presley, Michael Jackson and Tina Turner all quote the Book of Revelations. This is interesting at first, but becomes boring when they start just repeating the same verse for no special reason. Slovene's mother is also very religious, so she has a lot of unoriginal religious messages to share, which seems quite dull. Most of this is not really important, but there is one major plot hole that bothered me. The most important event of the movie, the actual assassination, is planned extremely badly and without any logic. The target, after all, is just a stupid old fool guarded by his equally stupid friends, so they spend all their time having careless fun in public places. Anybody could have just shot this fool from a car while he was clumsily walking down a street. But instead, Slovene just observes his target for many days and eventually chooses probably the worst possible place for a murder. I am not going to spoil the ending, but I will just say that Slovene gets attacked by some private security and a bunch of cops because of his horrible plan.
Finally, I must admit that I liked the movie. There may be some dull and slow-paced parts, but I've seen many high-budget action movies that are way more boring than Travelator. The movie has a lot of originality and interesting moments, especially those showing the "beauties" of decadent Las Vegas.
Safe(2012)
Way Too Much Violence!
Jason Statham is one of my favourite action heroes and my favourite movies featuring him are Crank 1 & 2, which are a couple of very original black humor comedies. I have seen Safe several days ago and I must admit it kind of shocked me!
The first few minutes of the movie seemed like the story would be a cool crime movie about revenge, which I always enjoy seeing. Suma sumarum, Jason Statham was a MMA fighter whose pregnant wife has been killed by the Russian mob, so a year later he is a hobo (because those mobsters also promised to kill anyone he befriends) contemplating suicide in a NYC subway station. Meanwhile, a genius little Chinese girl (Mei) had been brought to the USA by the nefarious triads so she would use her unusual intelligence to work as an accountant for their New York branch. However, the same Russian mob that killed Statham's wife kidnaps that little girl, and by a leap of faith Jason sees them in that subway station and decides to kill them saving the girl along the way. The story then gets more complicated and involves Jason and Mei running away from Russian mafia, Chinese triads and corrupt cops. It also turns out that Jason was a black ops agent who worked with these cops a long time ago, and some time later even the mayor of New York and Jason's ex-partner, who is an unstoppable assassin, get involved in this mess.
The story may be convoluted, but that's just the tip of the iceberg. The most amazing and at the same time shocking thing in the movie is the extreme violence with an insanely high bodycount. Literally even the smallest conflict in this movie turns into a mass murder and every problem is solved with violence. It's not just Statham who does the killing; every minor character kills at least a dozen of human beings throughout the movie.
A good example of what the film is like is the scene in the triad's headquarters. Before this scene, Jason and those dirty cops decide to temporarily join forces in order to steal something from those headquarters (I won't spoil what). However, the HQ is a nightclub that is guarded by an army of criminals, so the cops arm themselves and simply storm the building. During this raid, hell breaks loose as they fight their way through endless hordes of bad guys who all get quickly killed. So bullets are fired, blood is spilled, bones are broken, brains are blown to pieces, villains get killed, some of the cops also get shot, and even innocent civilians die. Worst of all, all these deaths occur so quickly that it's hard to tell what's going on. Although the scene only lasts a few minutes, there are more than 30 kills shown in it.
There are more scenes like this, some of them being even more violent; like the part in the hotel where a special team of triad members ends up slaughtering innocent bystanders and then getting themselves "blown to bits" by the police, but I don't have time to explain every particular scene. When I think about it, this is more of a war epic than a crime movie, since some of the shootouts turn into large-scale battles on the streets of NYC. I actually wonder why did the makers of this movie bother to hire all those extras and spend money on filming their deaths, when the entire movie could have been made with 75% less deaths. Safe somewhat reminds me of the GTA video-games (with all those extreme shootouts in urban environment), but it's even more over-the-top.
In the end, Safe is an OK film, but it could have been better. The directing, plot, cinematography and acting are all nice, but for some reason almost every scene in the movie ends with violence, and watching all those murders eventually gets tiresome.
Friday the 13th(2009)
A Routine Slasher Movie
I am a moderate fan of the Friday the 13th franchise. I still haven't seen the 3rd, 4th and 6th part, but I think that the first 2 movies and FvJ were quite good, whereas everything after the 5th part was plain stupid. Recently I have seen the 2009 remake and, honestly, it's nothing special.
The movie starts of with a prologue mixed with credits that shows the remade ending of the 1980 version (Mr Vorhees' death). This scene is well executed despite being short. Then the movie jumps forward to present day where of course grown up Jason Vorhees is killing anybody who comes near Crystal lake. There is no need to explain the entire story as that has already been done on IMDb, so it is enough to say that Jason wants to brutally murder everybody except one girl that he kidnaps because she looks like his mother (similiar to a subplot in part 2).
When it comes to deaths, I was surprised how easily people die in this movie. Jason uses his machete and other weapons; and most of the character get killed before they can even realize what's going on. Jason's murders are mostly violent, bloody and efficient. The special effects are superb and the violence looks very gruesome and convincing. In addition to gore, there is also a lot of (if not too much) nudity to "spice things up".
The main antihero in this movie is somewhat like a slightly stronger & bigger version of himself from part 2. That means he does not have any superpowers or the ability to turn into a parazyte like in some installments, but is rather a monstrous huge human. However, this contradicts with some parts of the movie where Jason can literally TELEPORT himself. Seriously, there is a scene where Jason kills a guy in a tooshed and then moments later appears on the roof of a big nearby house. Then some timr later, another guy furiously runs through the woods and finds the nearby road, but Jason is already there hiding. This is completely unrealistic and doesn't fit the way Jason is represented. There is also a scene where one of his victims rips off the sack he had been carrying as a mask, so he replaces it with the iconic hockey mask halfway through the film.
The biggest flaw of this movie is that it's not quite scary. The kills, although graphic and cool-looking, seem routinly done and the audience simply does not care whether a minor character dies now or later. There is absolutely no suspense; Jason just comes and mercilessly hacks somebody. The acting is average and the characters are all stereptypes, but it's clear that most of them are only in the movie so the bodycount would be 13 and there would be a lot of gore.
All in all, the movie isn't unwatchable, but it's just an average slasher movie with plenty of violence and not enough suspense or frights. I'd say that the 12th installment is not the worst Friday the 13th movie, but it is certainly not the best either.