Hollywood Adventures (横冲直撞好莱坞)

For F*** Magazine

HOLLYWOOD ADVENTURES (横冲直撞好莱坞)

Director : Timothy Kendall

Cast : Zhao Wei, Huang Xiaoming, Tong Dawei, Sarah Li, Sung Kang, Rhys Coiro, Stephen Tobolowsky, Simon Helberg, Robert Patrick, Kat Dennings. Tyrese Gibson, Missi Pyle

Run Time : 115 mins

Opens : 9 July 2015

Rating : NC16 (Some Drug Use)

These tourists turn tinsel town topsy-turvy. Say that three times fast. In this action comedy, Huang Xiaoming stars as Beijing car salesman Xiaoming, who is about to propose to his girlfriend Yan Yan (Li) when she up and leaves him to become a production assistant in Hollywood. Xiaoming frantically grabs the last available ticket to L.A., inadvertently joining the “Hollywood Adventures” tour group with garrulous movie buff Dawei (Tong). They arrive in the City of Angels, meeting up with tour guide Wei Wei (Zhao). In the process of his quest to win back the love of his life, Xiaoming stumbles into a smuggling operation, running afoul of various colourful characters including shady motel proprietor Manny Love (Kang), irascible movie director Wronald Wright (Tobolowsky) and diva movie star Gary Buesheimer (Coiro).

            This China-U.S. co-production is half showbiz satire, half “idiots abroad” comedy. Helmed by small-time TV director Timothy Kendall and co-written and co-produced by Justin Lin of Fast and Furious fame, Hollywood Adventures is Lin’s attempt at breaking into the lucrative Chinese film market. The film plays into China’s growing consumption of and fascination with American popular culture, stuffed to the gills with references to movies and TV shows. The creative team, including Lin, Kendall and co-writers Brice Beckham and Philip W. Chung, are all American, casting three of China’s biggest stars in a bid to appeal to Chinese filmgoers. Unfortunately for Lin and company, the film raked in far less than expected upon its opening in China.

            There is the sense throughout the film that the filmmakers are eager to pander to their target audience’s larger-than-life perception of the United States in general and Hollywood in particular. Hollywood Adventures is filled with depictions of ludicrous film industry shenanigans and it portrays Americans as simpletons easily appeased by mindless violence – in-story, a reality TV show called “Punch Me” is sweeping the nation. There are also several surprise celebrity cameos – Dawei has a massive crush on Kat Dennings, whom he naturally runs into on a movie set, and The Big Bang Theory’s Simon Helberg shows up as a translator. The highlight of these is an appearance by a certain Terminator star, who leaves dignity at the door and skewers his most famous role with amusing aplomb.

While often unfocused and very, very broad in its comedic stylings, the film does have a fair number of laughs. The Dawei character is one of those guys who speaks exclusively in movie references and quotes and is the source of fourth-wall breaking meta-fictional humour – you’ll notice that all three protagonists share the names of the actors playing them. It’s often very on the nose – upon first seeing Manny, Dawei remarks that he “looks a lot like Han from the Fast and Furious movies” – both characters are played by Sung Kang. However, this type of winking self-awareness is rare in Chinese comedies and fits right in with the L.A. setting of the movie. The film trades in various well-worn formulas, but every time a familiar trope shows up, Dawei is there to remark on it. That doesn’t excuse its lack of originality but it does make it easier to go along with the romp.

The three leads are excellently cast – Huang Xiaoming plays the strait-laced straight man, Tong Dawei is the silly sidekick and Zhao Wei is the plucky, world-weary lass who has to guide the duo through the unfamiliarity of Hollywood. Tong in particular is admirably game for a variety of embarrassing/dumb scenarios – we somehow wind up witnessing him in drag astride a motorcycle during the film’s climactic action sequence. As is often the case, the de-facto main character is the least distinct, but Huang manages to make Xiaoming adequately appealing. Zhao showcases the comic timing she’s become known for and as she plays the only one of the three leads conversant in English, does most of the interacting with the other characters for the other two. On the other hand, Rhys Coiro is not even a tiny bit convincing as a big-shot movie star involved in some illegal business. We also find it puzzling that the character’s name is a play on “Gary Busey”, of all the “top movie stars” to lampoon.

Hollywood Adventures is stupid, but for the most part, it’s amiably so. As a send-up of typical Hollywood excesses, the film ends up partaking in those same excesses, taking a hard right in its third act into thriller territory. There are still gags, but these take a backseat to a kidnapping, a showdown at an exclusive shindig and lots of cars crashing into each other and flipping through the air. The three main characters also rather conveniently become expert sharpshooters, martial artists and stunt performers by the time the denouement rolls around. Even given all that, there’s a fair amount to enjoy and despite its various shortcomings, the movie has enough raucous energy for it to pass as a somewhat entertaining diversion.

Summary: This rampage through Hollywood is brash and very silly, but the strength of the three leads and a good dose of self-aware humour carry it to the finish line.

RATING: 3 out of 5 Stars

Jedd Jong 

Fast & Furious 6

Written for F*** Magazine, Singapore

FAST & FURIOUS 6

Director: Justin Lin
Cast: Vin Diesel, Paul Walker, Dwayne Johnson, Michelle Rodriguez, Luke Evans
Genre: Action, Thriller
Run Time: 130 mins
Opens: 23 May 2013
Rating: PG13 (Violence And Some Coarse Language)

Back in 2001, was there anybody who thought that a movie that was essentially “Point Break with underground street racing” would spawn a franchise consisting of six films and counting? Probably not. The series veered dangerously close to direct-to-DVD territory with Tokyo Drift, but its director Justin Lin set things back on the highway with the fourth and fifth films, proving the Fast and Furious name had legs – or wheels, rather – yet. And if this sixth flick is any indication, there’s no putting on the brakes.

Following their Rio heist from the previous movie, the members of Dominic Toretto’s (Diesel) crew have settled into retirement. Brian O’Conner (Walker) and Dom’s sister Mia (Jordana Brewster) now have an infant son. Re-enter Diplomatic Security Service Agent Luke Hobbs (Johnson), who pursued the team through Fast Five, calling upon Toretto and his gang to assist in the takedown of a new threat. His name? Owen Shaw (Evans), leader of a dangerous crew who has struck and made away with advanced weapons technology. Dom’s former flame Letty (Rodriguez), who appeared to die in the fourth movie, has resurfaced as a member of Shaw’s criminal posse, and Dom is determined to win her back to the side of good. This synopsis probably should mention that there are a bunch of car chases in there too.

The Fast and Furious series has been given a remodel, evolving from being primarily about car culture to a more accessible globe-hopping action/heist type of film. It’s done the series a world of good, and Justin Lin and company have offered up a rather satisfying summer actioner in this latest installment. Sequels always have to up the ante, and sometimes it’s noticeable when said ante fails to be upped. Fast & Furious 6 does feature bigger set pieces and even more action than its predecessor, so while it isn’t particularly fresh or innovative, it gives the people what they want.

Audiences will benefit from having seen the earlier films, since there are more than a few continuity nods so one might end up feeling a mite lost. The kinship between the various members of Dom’s crew has become an important theme and something of a glue to hold all the car crashes and gunfire together. Hobbs is no longer hot on Dom’s tail and seems to have overcome his grudge on our heroes. Instead, the dramatic tension is provided by Letty’s reappearance. She’s conveniently stricken by that trope of “laser-guided amnesia”, so she works for the villain with no clue who Dom, Brian or anyone else from her ‘former life’ is. There’s a street race scene included as a nod to the franchise’s roots which also functions as a bonding moment for Dom and Letty; a nice way to tie it all together somewhat. The characters are sketched out just enough so we can root for them not to become smears on the asphalt.

But who are we kidding, audiences don’t go to a Fast and Furious flick for “dramatic tension”. They go for the thrills and the spills and thankfully, those are in abundance here. There’s a good mix of heavy duty vehicular warfare-type ‘car’-nage and hand-to-hand martial arts scraps, sometimes happening simultaneously. MMA fighter Gina Carano and Joe Taslim of The Raid: Redemption fame both get to strut their stuff in well-choreographed combat sequences. This also one of those few times you’ll get to see two women (Carano and Rodriguez) violently go at it in the Waterloo tube station completely sober.

The car chases that rip through the streets of London, a tank chase on an elevated Spanish highway and the climactic cargo plane escape on a military airstrip are all exciting and entertaining. There’s a tactility to these scenes such that the scrapes, crunches and impacts don’t feel too artificial. This isn’t one of those films that’s two hours of pixels clanging against pixels. Sure, the computer-generated effects are noticeable, but it’s nowhere as egregious as in 2 Fast 2 Furious. This is, however, one of those films where the laws of physics are but theories. Human bodies take improbable amounts of punishment, soaring or falling through the air to have falls broken by the metal roofs of cars and airstrip runways stretch into infinity – but one should be willing to suspend disbelief enough to get swept along for the ride.

Luke Evans’ Owen Shaw is your typical hard-edged ex-military type villain, whose leadership approach of viewing his team members (essentially dark mirror images of our heroes) as game pieces merely fulfilling their functions stands in contrast to how Dom sees his crew as family. There really isn’t much depth to the character and Evans is a rather bland actor, but it is nice to see our heroes go up against a villain who actually gets behind the wheel of a car which flips other cars off its front, since the baddies of the series so far have mostly been corrupt businessmen or drug kingpins. A stinger during the end credits offers a tantalizing look at who the villain for the inevitable Fast 7 will be.

The film’s attempts at humour are a mixed bag. While Tej (Chris “Ludacris” Bridges) listing Hobbs as “Samoan Thor” on his phone is pretty funny, a bit involving a snooty, oh-so-British fancy car salesman is on the indulgent side. Still, it’s nice to see the well-oiled machine comprised of Dom, Brian, Roman (Tyrese Gibson), Tej, Gisele (Gal Gadot) and Hobbs at it again.

SUMMARY: The family that outraces tanks and military cargo planes together stays together – while never truly inventive or astounding, it’s good smash-bang escapist fun. If you liked Fast Five, odds are Fast & Furious 6 will rev your engine too.

RATING: 3.5 out of 5 STARS

Jedd Jong

Bullet to the head

For F*** Magazine, Singapore

BULLET TO THE HEAD

Director:	Walter Hill
Cast:	Sylvester Stallone, Sung Kang, Jason Momoa
Genre:	Action, Crime, Thriller
Run Time:	91 mins
Opens:	31 January 2013
Rating:	NC 16

“Revenge never gets old”, goes the tagline for this film. The soon-to-be-released The Last Stand, headlined by Stallone’s old rival Arnold Schwarzenegger, has the tagline “retirement is for sissies”. That’s right, the selling point for these action movie icons now is that they’re over the hill and proud of it – “badass grandpas”, but badass nonetheless. Fresh off the success of his Expendables franchise and proving he still has considerable pull in Hollywood, Stallone goes back to basics with Bullet to the Head. 

Based on a French graphic novel, the film stars Stallone as gun-for-hire James Bonomo, or “Jimmy Bobo” to those who know him. Jimmy and his and partner Louis Blanchard (Jon Seda) carry out a hit on a corrupt cop (Holt McCallany), but they end up double-crossed, with Blanchard brutally stabbed to death by mercenary Keegan (Momoa). Taylor Kwon (Sung), a young Washington DC cop, comes to town to investigate the murders. He ends up reluctantly teaming up with Jimmy as they become embroiled in a web of corrupt officials and crooked businessmen, assisted by an “associate” of Jimmy’s, tattoo artist Lisa (Sarah Shahi).

Bullet to the Head is as straightforward a genre piece as they come, an honest-to-goodness throwback to the brutal action flicks of the 80s and 90s. It’s all there: the overflowing testosterone, fisticuffs and gunplay and a sprinkling of gratuitous nudity. The plot is spelled out in black and white and the pace is kept brisk, the film coming in at a lean running time of 91 minutes. There are moments where the film can get a little too direct-to-DVD, the presence of Christian Slater not helping matters much – but it never feels too cheap or sloppy. 

This is the kind of role Stallone can play in his sleep, the tough, anti-heroic hitman-with-a-heart-of-gold archetype being right up his alley. He shoots, swaggers and mumbles his way through the story, looking in fighting-fit shape. Thomas Jane was originally supposed to play the cop who partners up with Jimmy, but producer Joel Silver recast Sung in the role, feeling a “more ethnic” actor would up the film’s mass appeal. The actor is passable in the role, but his chemistry with Stallone is a little wanting and the whole “we’re on different sides of the law”, old school vs. new school shtick does get old after a while.

Momoa, best known as Khal Drogo on TV’s Game of Thrones and as Conan the Barbarian in the remake cuts an intimidating figure as the stock muscle-bound henchman who is meant to be more than a physical match for our protagonist. The climactic action sequence in which Keegan and Jimmy do battle armed with axes is an adequately exciting note on which to end the film. Slater is probably grateful to finally be in a movie that is theatrically-released and Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje hobbles around as the criminal head honcho – though as far as villains go, it’s clearly Momoa’s show. 

Like its lead assassin character, Bullet to the Head gets the job done and will fit right in with the watchable-if-disposable entries from the bygone days of the genre. It doesn’t have the wink-and-nod self-awareness of theExpendables films, nor is it as much of a nostalgia trip, but at least it doesn’t take itself too seriously and is fun in parts.

SUMMARY: It’s nothing remarkable, but it’s what you’d expect of this kind of flick, and there are worse guys than Stallone to kill some time at the movies for you. 

RATING: 3 out of 5 STARS.

Jedd Jong