Reviews

I was ten years old when the GI Joe cartoon came on back in the 80s and I thought it was great back then. When I watched this reboot, my first reaction was that it has no respect for plausibility or physics. There are many examples but one of the worst was the ballistic missiles. Marlon Wayans steals some kind of SR-71 knockoff Cobra plane and proceeds to chase and shoot down two ICBMs.

Stupid, right? Ridiculous in several different ways? That's what I thought until I happened to rewatch one of the 1985 cartoons: "Red Rocket's Glare." In the cartoon, a ballistic missile is about to launch from California to Washington, DC. Roadblock, one of the GI Joes jumps onto the missile to disarm it. The Crimson Twins are in hot pursuit and they also jump on. The missile launches with three guys on top of it and they hang on.

Flint and Lady Jay are in an F-14 flying around. Someone radios to them that this particular rocket has launched. So they say "On our way" and the afterburners light up, naturally allowing the jet to catch the ballistic missile.

The missile has apparently gone up as high as it's going to go and come down again with Roadblock and the two Cobra guys hanging onto it, still fist fighting and exchanging quips. Flint then shoots a sidewinder at the flying missile and somehow it knocks the missile warhead off, instead of exploding itself. Then the missile luckily lands in the Potomac and everyone is OK.

My point is, the dumbest and most unbelievable stuff from the movie pales in comparison to how stupid everything was on the TV show. Actually they cleaned it up a lot in terms of plausibility. You think nanomites are dumb? In that particular show I discussed, Destro has invented something called a photon disintegrator that fits in a backpack and makes a whole city disappear. And he is going to use them to destroy every capital city unless every country surrenders their nation to Cobra. That's it! No further explanation! When this is the source material, it's impossible to criticize the movie for being implausible. It might help to watch some of the old cartoons to recalibrate your sense of what is just too stupid.

I can't believe I didn't see this terrific slapstick comedy decades ago. It holds up remarkably well. Since the story takes place in some alternate reality inspired by several different film genres, it still does not feel stale three decades later. Anyone from age ten and up would enjoy it today.

Reviewers who criticized the lack of logic are seriously missing the joke. This sort of joyful craziness is usually only found today in the worlds of sketch comedy and animation. The audience for this picture needs to stay loose and accept that the film is about being funny and nothing more--and it's hugely successful.

I appreciated the fact that gross-out jokes in the Farrelly brothers vein are kept to a minimum. There is some low humor but it doesn't dominate. Absurd sight gags and wordplay are the most common type of joke.

I needed to see Frankenheimer's final film. I was crushed. I have great difficulty understanding how the director of the subtle, lyrical thriller Ronin could have created and put his name to this mindless and miscast sequence of irrational plot twists and dull, meaningless physical beatings and chases. Plot twist is too nice a word for the unmotivated interminable reversals and red herrings. Viewers who don't always follow plot closely may easily lose track since it makes no sense.

It tries and fails to be several things at once. It is primarily plot driven, but the plot is so ridiculous and full of holes and arbitrary reverses that one quickly ceases to bother predicting what will happen next. It's never surreal (might have helped) but it is so illogical. There is extensive brutality and gun play, but it is mostly of little consequence and seems more played for laughs. The entire climactic casino shootout seemed more comic than dramatic. Gary Sinese and his men's interminable beatings of Affleck have little dramatic impact after the initial one. The gun choreography is lazy with little sense of care or threat. There are moments meant to be comic, mostly Ben Affleck mugging, but virtually none of them work. There are multiple love affairs but these are just more red herrings to keep the plot tottering along--not one of them is convincing or deep.

We're left with what I guess I'd call a dumb guy's popcorn heist movie along the lines of ; something that keeps us lurching forward with gunfire, the pounding score and the moving camera and letting us know that if we don't care about the current scene, something disconnected and brutal will be along in five minutes. CGI is missing; instead we get overacting. I cannot fathom how a script development process arrives at this conclusion. Nonstop unmotivated physical abuse is not interesting to most audiences. The lovers of cinematic mayhem will be so much happier with any Tarantino film or "The Raid" or even "Jack Reacher" where every fight means something and has a consequence. Here the violence just continues on repeat, with no one changing or learning or even dying for most of the picture.

Hollywood makes two kinds of movies about drug users: morality tales and stoner comedies. The gritty stories escalate into disaster or death for the users. The stoner films are escapist and absurd. Network and cable TV makes its contributions with documentaries primarily focused on law enforcement and grim images of the 10% of users on the edge of death. Even a show like Intervention obsesses on pathology. Down to the Bone is something entirely different.

The film is so naturalistic in its acting and writing that it resembles a documentary or stage play more than a theatrical feature. Plotting is minimal and devoid of red herrings or dramatic heightening. There is just one arc, a woman's effort to navigate getting clean. This is a long look at a real struggle to cope with a real set of problems. Many of those problems stem not from her use but from the complications of trying to be clean. She just can't deal with the mood and energy problems and her attempts to cope don't work. Relationships deteriorate in specific realistic ways. So many details are right. That complexity is practically unique in a script though it is fundamental to the complexity of addiction.

It also happens to be shot like a no budget documentary, using basic video cameras, minimal sound design, available light and seemingly not even a color timing adjustment. Unfortunately in 2004 this was what this filmmaker on an ultra low budget could manage. In 2014 this project would have been shot in HD and digitally tweaked to visually support the story and compensate for the color balance and contrast issues. That was Hollywood technology then; it's film student technology now.

So the viewer must decide to make the trade off. Because almost no funding was needed, the director was free to create a story that ignores the standard clichés and genre conventions. In return, we get all the eye candy of a small town local news broadcast. The audience for this type of film is tiny but I am grateful it exists. See it on its own terms and you'll love it.

I enjoyed the film thoroughly. It is plot driven and still finds an emotional reality for almost all characters. The action choreography is believable and engaging. But something I have always admired about Mamet's scripts is their plausibility. My favorites, like "Glengarry Glen Ross", could be taken directly from life. It was pretty enough to not shock the mainstream public but stayed true to Mamet's world. The number of people involved is small and this supports character development as well as the inevitable deceptions and twists. Even a criminal crew might perpetrate a careful plan as in "Heist".

Here, as on his TV show "The Unit", Mamet steps into Jason Bourne or 24 size conspiracies and cover ups that don't pass my smell test. Don't get me wrong, conspiracies and secret murders are real, but I couldn't swallow this one in contemporary America. Although every detail is not spelled out, it seems that in the story, a gigantic rogue element of the US Secret Service decides that the politically expedient thing is to fake the accidental death of the President's teenage daughter while at the same time arranging for her to disappear overseas as a sex slave. Not completely clear is whether some of these events were unplanned. It is felt that since the daughter hates her father, she must vanish for him to be reelected. Then why not simply kill her in an apparent accident or suicide? And the plan goes off seamlessly, if not for one incorruptible super soldier plus a couple of short-lived idealistic assistants. This is wacko stuff like the Clinton murder theories and 9/11 conspiracies. It takes me out of immersion. The mere clear definition of bad and good guys ruins some of the Mamet magic. Your opinion may vary.

By Hollywood spy action standards, it's still relatively realistic. It doesn't insult the viewer like a Mission Impossible or James Bond. That's a good thing. And maybe Mamet felt he had to up the ante in order to get the kind of budget that an action movie requires.

Unfortunately it was no box office hit. I suspect that Kilmer's name didn't help even though it's one of his very best performances. And this was very much a film for adult men, limiting its marketability. It maybe broke even after DVD sales.

I was so much more convinced and therefore engaged by Mamet's next film, Redbelt. Check that out by all means. Chiwetel Ejiofor was mesmerizing before his breakthrough "12 Years A Slave" turn. Sadly Redbelt also failed to find an audience and lost a lot of money. Maybe Mamet, like some of my other favorite directors Todd Solondz and the Duplass brothers, does best with ultra low budget outings that can turn a profit while grossing less than $5M domestic box office. I would hate to see Mamet unable to get projects made due to financial performance. His earlier work like House of Games and Spanish Prisoner looked cheap but they are mesmerizing and bear repeat viewing. I have to think they stand up better in the back catalog.

When I searched for some unfamiliar terms from the Bourne Legacy script, I was surprised to find them mentioned in an article about the Naruto series of anime and manga stories at http://narutofanon.wikia.com/wiki/REIKON

During the flashback sequence starting at 00:40:15, Ed Norton explains to Jeremy Renner the morality of the program in terms of "Sin Eaters," saying "We are morally indefensible and absolutely necessary." This is an exact line said by Genyo, the leader in Naruto of the Reikon military force which creates a group of genetically enhanced warriors named "Project Invincible."

At 01:15:10, discussing the failed assassination of Rachel Weisz, Stacy Keach says "That was a D-Track team we sent in there." There's nothing called a D-Track team in the American military, but in the Naruto world there are A-Track, B-Track, C-Track and D-Track teams of assassins with D-Track being the most elite.

I suspect that the Bourne books and the Naruto stories developed entirely independently but during the writing of the Bourne Legacy screenplay, someone learned about the parallel idea of genetically enhanced super spies in both works and proceeded to mine Naruto for a few bits of story and language. I haven't been able to find any acknowledgement of this connection though.

I have never seen an IMDb rating that made me as suspicious as this film's has. I believe someone like the film's owner created tens of thousands of fake 10-rating votes. It's the most economical explanation for the large number of votes that this straight to video, genre effort has collected, and the very high average of those votes, especially considering how much lower is the average of the votes accompanied by written reviews. If you're thinking of paying to see this because of the high rating, please be very suspicious.

The movie is just awful. It's really bad SF on a really low budget but it does meet some basic standards of competence. Some people do go for any SF and they are welcome to enjoy it. It looks like a soap opera or an infomercial, shot on old video equipment. There's just one set, with just one big key light in each scene for quick camera setups without needing to relight. There's almost no sound engineering or music.

I can only suggest that anyone who appreciates this film should try reading some good SF instead. It's a better vehicle than a low budget film for an author to explore an idea.

The script is toilet paper in my opinion. The philosophical ideas are painfully simple. The religious ideas are idiotic, on the level of Erich Von Däniken, Dan Brown or other New Age heretical nonsense. I'm an atheist myself but I can at least listen thoughtfully to some serious thinkers in the Catholic, Unitarian, Episcopalian or Reconstructionist Jewish traditions. I have a special lack of respect for people like L. Ron Hubbard who cook up their own synthetic invention and present it as revealed truth. When this film suggests that Christ was neither human nor supernatural but rather a Buddhist with a natural lifespan of hundreds of years I file it under "kooky nonsense".

What a pointless waste of money and talent this film is! According to Box Office Mojo it was budgeted at $58M, grossed $90M domestically and yielded a successful sequel. This is evidence of the vapid taste of the today's moviegoer.

The picture is intended to be a comedy and also an action adventure. But the screenwriters have failed to understand the distinct requirements of these two genres. A comic scene does not require realism; surreal comedy is fine. Action, on the other hand, works only when there is a strict internal logic to support genuine menace. The action here does not respect any internal consistency. It ranges from serious to absurd for no apparent reason. The result is that the audience cannot feel a sense of danger at any point.

What is worse, the ideas and events here are very serious. The story eventually arrives at a US Vice President who was once a blood soaked black ops killer, and who during the film orders the death of a dozen or more innocent people to cover up his past. Yet this is played for laughs. Comedy should have some meaning even if just poking fun at things that don't make sense; it should ultimately be a sincere comment if it is to be honest art. What possible comment is this script making?

The comic book that the film is loosely based on certainly makes a real comment. There is no joking around in the comic. It tells the story of a retired CIA assassin who is disgusted by the new generation's lack of stomach for the awful things that sometimes must be done in the interest of the nation. How this evolved into the aimless farce on screen I do not know.

Somehow a fantastic cast was rounded up and put into the service of realizing this script, and I suppose that the audience showed up to see those famous names. Malkovich's Marvin delivered the funniest moments. But I wish all of them had found a better project to attach themselves to.

Most of our sci-fi movies and shows use an imaginary world to explore aspects of our present reality like Star Trek (1996, TV), or just as an exciting fantasy, like Star Wars (1977). In print this kind of story is soft sci-fi. Hard sci-fi looks at what could happen in a realistic future after new scientific discoveries, like 2001 (1968). Travelling Salesman is a hard sci-fi story that adds one new discovery to our world and imagines the consequences for the discoverers.

In the movie, four mathematicians confront the US government official who has just overseen their successful breakthrough in math that will enable code breaking of every communication code. The four hope that their work will be made public in order to be applied to many important problems, but the spook makes it clear that their work is top secret and there's to be no negotiation.

One of the four, Dr. Horton, has found a further extension of the work which would allow automated reasoning with virtually no limit, something akin to strong AI. He hasn't included this in the published work perhaps out of fear that the applications would be too dangerous. Horton demands that the work be made public. His fellow nerds don't back him.

Then after an hour of very stimulating thrust and parry, we get a really unfortunate twist ending. You can stop the DVD at 1:10 with 10 minutes left and get a better movie. The spook tells Horton that his whole family will die if he reveals the work. So Horton goes home and reads over the letter from the President. The watermark is an Illuminati pyramid! Realizing... something... he runs a super-virus program that apparently breaks all the computers in the world. The end.

I rate the first hour a 10/10 for those like me who love hard science fiction stories and treasure those few that come along as films. Many audiences won't like it at all. It's not rigorous as far as all the math and terminology (I noticed "SCI classified" and "PSPACE" are not used properly) and a few people who might otherwise be fans will hate that. I studied the real math that the story refers to and that probably helped with my interest in its implications. Viewers should be aware that the film's premise is true, that our current codes could in principle be broken by a scientific breakthrough. The script is all about the ideas and has little interest in characters. It's almost a one-act play as far as staging goes. The final twist is a cheap way to wrap things up.

In 2013 we've learned from Edward Snowden that the US NSA has done much more to crack codes worldwide in the past decade than we had known. The NSA has a history of hiring about half of US mathematicians. If they thought there was a chance of making a breakthrough like the one in the film, they would indeed keep it a secret. We now know that in the 70s the NSA discovered differential cryptography, an attack on the DES crypto system that was not rediscovered in the open literature for 20 years. In short the breakthrough and cover-up in the film is plausible politically and perhaps mathematically.

Those who enjoyed Travelling Salesman should check out Primer (2004). It is a low budget time travel movie with a similar talk-heavy hard sci-fi orientation.

Check the Dr Strangelove homage at 13:20!

I saw the Hollywood remake Contraband starring Marky Mark first. That film borrows every major plot point from this one, in slightly altered forms. And yet, the remake is a cartoon where nothing ever is at stake, whereas this film exhibits better logic of the characters and plot points. The dumb plot points (like the salt) are here too.

That's not to say it is a realistic story. More like a lower key Guy Ritchie picture, a heist film with a heightened reality, some comedy and some improbable escapes for the protagonists. The main romantic relationship between Kristofer and Iris is given more time to feel real here but the script is fundamentally plot driven. Kristofer is far more in jeopardy here than in the remake with his active parole and money problems.

I'm not sure this picture deserved its Oscar for Best Foreign Film but it was certainly a good foreign film for American audiences. So long as you aren't bothered by subtitles, anyone who likes a typical Hollywood crime movie will enjoy this one. Those after great foreign cinema with a very different tone should look elsewhere.

The Bourne Identity is a reasonable starting point for a comparison. Both films are smart action thrillers about assassination. Both downplay the violence a bit and instead use substantial characters and an intelligent script to provide much of the menace instead of set piece fights. But the Bourne franchise, the best of its kind today, looks cartoonishly simple in comparison to this masterpiece. It is a top 100 movie of all time and a demonstration of what can happen when a Hollywood level of budget and craftsmanship is combined with an Indie or Brit sensibility and a limitless supply of good taste and sophistication in movie-making.

Pakula shows great respect for the intelligence of the audience and never over explains what is happening. This is a fine line to walk and the decisions here show mastery of that touchy subject. The closing scene is the closest we get to a wrap-up and it doesn't go too far, I thought.

Governments, including the US government, really do practice assassination on a grand scale at times, and they cover up assassinations and manipulate mass media and bomb airplanes and do all the extreme things that happen in this film. That is a historical fact and it is what makes this script so scary: the movie bad guy is real and he has blood on his hands. This isn't a supernatural story or one that takes place in a simpler reality. The story happens in our world and does a good job of being plausible in broad outlines.

I don't think this film would be made today. In the era of corporate control of the studios, no one would spend this kind of money on a movie with a cynical perspective that does so little to pander to the audience. If a project like this one were being developed today, it would be softened and sweetened and would lose what made it wonderful. Something like Inception is the closest we have gotten recently.

During the 38 years of the Motion Picture Production Code, Hollywood writers and directors were forbidden to openly show homosexuality, adultery or drug use. This artificial constraint resulted in some fascinating work as the creative minds of Hollywood found clever ways to make coded references to these forbidden subjects. A superficial reading makes the work produced look innocent and banal, but a closer inspection reveals subversive messages that slipped right past the censors.

We are now in an era when corporate control over every major studio has imposed a stifling level of control similar to that of the Code. In the post-9/11 era, the corporate audience research experts believe that only patriotic movies will sell, and so they no longer green-light subversive war stories. The overt story of Battle: Los Angeles is a simple war movie. But look beneath the surface and a mind-blowing double meaning inverts practically every surface idea.

The alien invasion is an allegory for the US invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan. The alien bad guys (US military) have come to steal our water (oil). The heroes are simply trying to defend their homeland against the plundering invaders. And the heroes must not use their radios, because this would result in immediate tracking and attacks by drone aircraft (no need to decipher that one!). The alien fighting troops are heavily armed and armored, but their weakness is that they have no self-determination. The command ship (corporate interests, Halliburton/Exxon/Blackwater) is in complete control. In order to stop the invasion, it is pointless to directly oppose the alien military force, which has overwhelming air and infantry power. Instead a decisive blow must be struck against the command ship. Then the military machine will halt in its tracks. In the script, the small band of both veteran war heroes and civilians (al Qaeda and its loosely knit associated organizations) must direct missile strikes (jet planes) to crash into the command ship (American businesses).

The film is a call to arms to engage in more WTC type attacks against the corporations that pull the strings of America's imperial wars. It is amazing that this film not only got a wide release but actually went to #1 at the box office in its opening week. Not since The Matrix has such a blistering critique of American culture connected so successfully with the filmgoing public. I guess the American people are ready to face the truth about our adventures in the Middle East. I took off one star because Liebesman missed the opportunity to connect the Zionist entity to his story.

The original was great. I was glad I saw it. But when I read the reviews, I could see that this would not be anything close. So rather than hand over my $13 this time, I downloaded a camcorder version.

It is appalling: more like a faithful remake than a sequel. Beyond the same broad structure, we have the same same character accidentally drugging the same other characters, causing an amnesia hazed time shift at the same moment in the story, the same character beating up the same other characters after being similarly imprisoned, the same kidnapped character being subject to mistaken identity, the same character having sex with a near identical replacement character, and even the same type of funny a Capella song being sung at the same moment, to give us the same little pause and mood shift. Then a near-identical resolution to the central problem. How goddamn lazy can one screenwriter be? Why did these talented actors all sign on for this crap? Was it a requirement in order to get them the parts in the first movie?

And yet, it worked out great for the studio in the short term. Just 12 days after the release it is the US #10 grossing R rated film of all time in non-adjusted dollars. Word of mouth must be awful since the second weekend gross was down 65% from the first, but that's not a problem for the producers. The film has made its money and it will go on to make lots more on DVD.

But audiences will not be satisfied with the DVD any more than they were with the theatrical release. They will part with their money and feel ripped off when they realize how predictable the jokes are. Hollywood is poisoning the well with its never ending parade of cash-in sequels that are all about a big opening weekend.

This kind of crap is why theater attendance numbers are shrinking even though ticket price hikes keep grosses afloat.

This is a masterful demonstration of how a $3.5M film today can look beautiful, like it cost ten times as much. And the low budget meant that the writing, acting and editing heart of the film were not dictated by the timid cookie-cutter approach that is imposed on almost every big budget release. The hero dies, which I thought was the right choice but must have bothered some audiences. I'll gladly pay to see whatever writer-director Peter Stebbings does in the future. I enjoyed this more than 90% of the last 10 years of superhero movies, with exceptions being The Dark Knight and Watchmen to give you an idea of what I like.

Defendor applies an indie sensibility in terms of the performances and story. The scale is small. The emphasis is on giving the cast time in each scene to find the truth and nuance in the characters. There were no obvious special effects. The production design and cinematography supported the story effectively while being subtle. Woody Harrelson and Sandra Oh stood out, but there was not one mistake in the casting, which I find amazing. Even the grand slam indie production The Wrestler made a poor choice in Evan Rachel Wood. The casting directors deserved an award.

Defendor's tempo is relaxed but I never lost interest. There is not an artificial effort to pump up the story's conflicts. The story arc reaches an effective climax but does so in a way that feels natural. It's hard to believe this was the writer-director's first picture. I wonder who else on the project made a major impact. The producer Nicholas Tabarrok is best known for Christian rapture movies like Left Behind, that do not show the same sensibility.

Themes of prostitution, hard drug use, corruption and violence are handled in a way that makes dramatic use of these ideas without glorifying them, moralizing about them or trivializing them. They are part of the reality of these characters' lives. I was reminded of Sling Blade, another beautiful indie film where the brief violence has a major impact, although there's much more humor at work here.

Woody Harrelson's character is more perceptive and confident than I would expect from a guy whose mother drank during pregnancy and who is said to have an IQ of 80, but there's quite a bit of suspension of disbelief in this story and it didn't bother me.

I think it's ridiculous that the MPAA rated this film R when it is well suited for a young teenage audience. There is a clear moral direction. Evil is punished. I guess the MPAA just doesn't like the sight of a crack stem or the word "fuck".

And I am annoyed that Sony Pictures didn't make a theatrical release. Woody Harrelson has enough of a fan base to justify at least a minor release. At least we have Blu Ray today and I could see and hear something close to a 35mm theatrical experience at home.

This is the best Scientology feature film I have seen. Much better than Battlefield Earth (Travolta and Whitaker again, hmm). Not as funny as Tom Cruise addressing his fellow Church Of Scientology initiates.

It's subtle but evident if you know the messages the CoS wants to put out there. George is what the CoS would call a "clear," right down to the telekinesis. A couple of his speeches include lines that echo CoS language. (to Doc) "Lately I've been seeing things so clearly, you know?" (to the evil doctor) "What I'm talking about is the human spirit. That's the challenge. That's the voyage." L Ron Hubbard loved to go on about the human spirit and freeing it, through his program of large donations.

There's the extraterrestrial factor, although this script leaves it to the viewer to decide whether aliens are the real explanation for George's powers. There's the demonization of psychiatric medicine and the US government. There's the one-dimensional goodness of the hero characters, nice and simple like in L Ron's pulp stories.

I'm happy the CoS can't get away with stuff like this as much now, due to greater public awareness of their efforts. I wonder if it's true that they use Travolta's closeted homosexuality to compel him to do their projects.