Criminal

For F*** Magazine

CRIMINAL 

Director : Ariel Vromen
Cast : Kevin Costner, Gary Oldman, Tommy Lee Jones, Ryan Reynolds, Gal Gadot, Alice Eve, Jordi Mollà, Antje Traue, Michael Pitt
Genre : Action/Thriller
Run Time : 107 mins
Opens : 21 April 2016
Rating : NC16 (Violence and Coarse Language)

Like most moviegoers after the release of Deadpool, this action thriller finds Kevin Costner with Ryan Reynolds on the brain. Costner plays Jericho Stewart, a hardened criminal who suffered a traumatic brain injury as a child, making him the ideal candidate for a top secret experimental procedure. When CIA agent Bill Pope (Reynolds) is incapacitated in London while tracking down hacker Jan Strook (Pitt), CIA station chief Quaker Wells (Oldman) enlists the help of neurosurgeon Dr. Franks (Jones). Dr. Franks has spent 18 years developing a way to implant the memories of a dead person into a living human being. Jericho is coerced into completing Bill’s mission, but things do not go according to plan. Jill (Gadot), Bill’s widow, has to come to terms with the fact that a complete stranger now possesses her husband’s memories. Even though he wants nothing to do with the mission, Jericho must prevent a flash drive that Strook has from falling into the hands of ambitious anarchist Xavier Heimdall (Mollà).

            Criminal plays a lot like a high-concept 90s action movie repackaged in a strait-laced, post-Bourne espionage thriller style. The sci-fi tinged concept of memory implants is akin to the face-swapping plot device in Face/Off, albeit slightly more plausible. There’s no eye-catching bombast, but the slightly overwrought names like “Jericho Stewart”, “Quaker Wells” and especially “Xavier Heimdall” seem like they belong in a Bond movie. Criminal boasts a cast that is more star-studded than one would expect for a thriller with a relatively low budget, estimated at a mere $31.5 million dollars. Even though there are many moments that reminded this reviewer of any number of direct-to-DVD action flicks, the production values are sufficiently high and there’s a visual effects sequence involving a submarine that looks surprisingly good. The shootouts and car chases are far from inventive, but the action keeps things chugging along.

            Even though it’s largely generic, Criminal does possess a unique trait: it’s protagonist is, well, a criminal, with completely disregard for human life. He’s not a charming rogue, he’s not a conflicted hero; he’s a heartless, emotionless brute. Naturally, some character development occurs as the personality of his “memory donor” intrudes into Jericho’s mind. Jericho is introduced chained up in a prison cell, sporting scraggly long hair and a beard, being recruited against his will for a clandestine mission – not unlike Sean Connery’s character in The Rock. Incidentally, the screenwriting team of David Weisberg and the late Douglas S. Cook also penned The Rock. Suffice it to say that Costner is no match for Connery in the charisma department, but the character’s resourcefulness and violent unpredictably help mitigate Costner’s blandness somewhat.

            The supporting players, Oldman and Jones in particular, definitely seem above this material and not very much is asked of them. Oldman’s Quaker Wells stands about the situation room fretting and gets to throw his signature yelling fits. Jones frowns and looks worried. Perhaps some viewers might find that their presence subconsciously lends this silly action movie some prestige. Reynolds is in this for a very brief amount of time since, well, his character’s death is the catalyst for the plot. It’s a little funny to see Reynolds in another mind swap flick so shortly after Self/Less. Gadot is called upon to emote and she does sell that sense of loss, anger and confusion with the little screen time she’s given. Mollà is basically being discount Javier Bardem here, with his character’s motivation outlined via an interview with Piers Morgan. Actor/stunt performer Scott Adkins shows up as the right hand man to Quaker, but alas, he doesn’t get to bust any of his famous martial arts moves.

            This reviewer derived an extra level of enjoyment because a large portion of the cast has been a part of movies based on DC Comics. Just imagine: Jonathan Kent is implanted with Hal Jordan’s memories thanks to a procedure invented by Dr. Two-Face, Hal Jordan’s widow is Wonder Woman, his boss is Commissioner Gordon and the henchwoman on Jonathan Kent’s tail is Faora. It’s evident that the plot, even with its sci-fi elements and ticking clock, wasn’t compelling enough to hold our full attention. There are attempts at being topical - Edward Snowden is name-dropped – but these are ham-fisted rather than helping make the movie seem relevant. It’s somewhat ironic that a film with the plot device of memory implants will not remain in anyone’s mind for long, but its competently directed by Ariel Vromen, it doesn’t look cheap or messy and the central character is (or at least starts out) fairly different from run-of-the-mill action heroes.

Summary: Criminal is about as generic as its title suggests, but the action is decent if unremarkable and the A-listers in the supporting cast help to prop it up. 

RATING: 3 out of 5 Stars

Jedd Jong 

Seventh Son

For F*** Magazine

SEVENTH SON

Director : Sergei Bodrov

Cast : Jeff Bridges, Julianne Moore, Ben Barnes, Djimon Hounsou, Alicia Vikander, Antje Traue, Olivia Williams, Kit Harington

Genre : Action/Fantasy

Run Time : 103 mins

Opens : 31 December 2014

Rating : PG13 (Some Violence And Brief Coarse Language)

Swords and sorcery, dragons and shape-shifting mages, a young apprentice destined for greatness studying under the wizened master – it never gets old – until it does. John Gregory (Bridges), a.k.a. The Spook, is the last of the ancient order of Falcon Knights. When his nemesis, the treacherous and powerful witch queen Mother Malkin (Moore) resurfaces, Gregory goes in search of an apprentice. Tom Ward (Barnes), supposedly possessing magical powers as he is the seventh son of a seventh son, is chosen by Gregory. Tom becomes besotted with the beautiful Alice (Vikander), who happens to be the niece of Mother Malkin, complicating things. Gregory and his pupil must defeat the cabal of supernaturally-gifted assassins sent after them by Mother Malkin to eventually storm her stronghold of Pendle Mountain and cease her imminent reign of terror.

            Adapted from John Delaney’s novel The Spook’s Apprentice, the first in his Wardstone Chronicles series, Seventh Son has had its release date pushed back several times after being originally set to open in February 2013. This is rarely a good omen and the result is a film that is profoundly middle-of-the-road. It’s not a flat-out train wreck, but there’s every chance it would’ve been more entertaining if it actually were one. “Remember, all you need is inside you. Just don’t be afraid to look,” Tom’s mother tells him with all the sincerity actress Olivia Williams can muster. It’s as “seen it a million times” as it gets.

Past the story, the film offers precious little in the way of genuine visual spectacle. Sure, the requisite battles with otherworldly creatures, chases through forests and leaps off sheer cliff-faces are all in place and there are even several effective, entertaining 3D effects, but it all just feels so perfunctory. By now, you’re probably tired of hearing critics and fanboys alike knocking computer-generated imagery, so allow us to say that we do acknowledge the effort that goes into creating the many CGI sequences in movies like Seventh Son. Industry giant John Dykstra is the visual effects designer here and Rhythm and Hues, the effects house behind Life of Pi, did most of the animation. However, it is clear that director Sergei Bodrov is desperately trying to recapture the magic of the fantastical stop-motion animated monsters created by Ray Harryhausen in the fantasy flicks of yore. Though considered quaint and dated by now, they possessed a real soul-stirring charm that masses of pixels just do not have.

Jeff Bridges is the surly old master whose glory days are behind him. Naturally, the character is at its most entertaining when glimmers of the Dude surface (such as when Gregory takes swigs from his trusty flask), but for most of the film Gregory is stern and grim. Ben Barnes, who has experience with fantasy flicks from playing Prince Caspian in the second and third Narnia movies, is handsome and bland like so many leading men are these days. Tom knows he is destined for greater things and doesn’t want to be stuck on a farm feeding pigs for the rest of his life. It’s so familiar that one almost expects him to break out in song, arms outstretched, declaring “I want adventure in the great wide somewhere!”

Julianne Moore, currently receiving Oscar buzz for Still Alice, is evidently not above revelling in the other end of the spectrum, chewing the scenery with expected relish while her retractable CGI tail swishes for all it’s worth. The thing is though, there appears to be only one way to play a witch in these fantasy action flicks and a long line of actresses including Susan Sarandon, Meryl Streep, Angelina Jolie, Charlize Theron, Michelle Pfeiffer and Famke Janssen have delivered just about the same performance in movies past. Antje Traue, who memorably went toe-to-toe with Superman in Man of Steel, has little to do here as Mother Malkin’s sister Bony Lizzie, her major action scene involving the shape-shifted dragon version of her instead. Alicia Vikander and Ben Barnes seem to share little chemistry, with the “forbidden romance” coming off as little more than tacked-on.

Perfectly content with being nothing special, Seventh Son will likely hold special resonance if you’re a kid who’s never seen a fantasy film before (and who isn’t attached to the book series). For everyone else however, it will hardly register, drifting away in a cloud of its own mediocrity.

Summary: Late on the Harry Potter/Lord of the Rings bandwagon by over a decade, even the likes of Jeff Bridges and Julianne Moore can’t make this also-rans fantasy flick worthwhile.

RATING: 2 out of 5 Stars

Jedd Jong

Man of Steel

For F*** Magazine, Singapore

MAN OF STEEL

Director: Zack Snyder

Cast: Henry Cavill, Amy Adams, Laurence Fishburne, Diane Lane, Kevin Costner, Michael Shannon, Antje Traue, Ayelet Zurer, Russell Crowe

Genre: Superhero, Action

Run Time: 143 mins

Opens: 13 June 2013

Rating: PG13 (Some Violence)

Truth, justice and the American way – it never gets old. When Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster’s creation first lifted a car off the ground on the cover of Action Comics #1 in 1938, it was a very different time. Yet, Superman has endured as a pop culture icon for 75 years and counting; it’s even been said that the “S” crest is the second most recognizable symbol in the world, just behind the Christian cross. The Last Son of Krypton swoops back onto movie screens in Zack Snyder’s long-awaited reboot. So, has this Man of Steel proven his mettle? 

It’s a familiar tale that has deservedly become modern myth: Kryptonian scientist Jor-El (Crowe) and his wife Lara (Ayelet Zurer) decide to send their newborn son Kal-El away from their dying world to ours, Earth. Krypton’s military leader, the ruthless General Zod, has staged a coup but is eventually imprisoned with his cohorts, as he vows to find Kal-El and enact his revenge.

On Earth, this space-age Moses in his “basket” is found by Jonathan (Costner) and Martha (Lane) Kent, who raise him on a farm in Smallville, Kansas as their son Clark. As a child, Clark struggles to come to terms with the truth of his alien origins as he tries to fit in with his peers. An adult Clark (Cavill) goes off to “find himself”, coming to the attention of intrepid reporter Lois Lane (Adams). Meanwhile, General Zod and his cohorts arrive on earth, demanding that Kal-El be handed to him. Clark/Kal-El takes on the mantle of Superman and defends his adopted homeworld from the treachery of the Kryptonian warlord.

Is Man of Steel a better film than the earlier reboot attempt Superman Returns? Thankfully, it is. Superman Returns suffered from a slavish worshipfulness of the earlier film series, with director Bryan Singer being so caught up in homages and iconography that the franchise wasn’t moved forward. Chief of the complaints levelled against Superman Returns was that there was little to no actual action in it. Rest assured that that’s been rectified – Man of Steel’s action sequences involve earth-shattering melees between superpowered beings, including the obligatory climactic sequence in which a metropolis (well, the Metropolis) is laid to waste.

Director Zack Snyder, by now somewhat infamous for his penchant for dramatic and highly stylized slow-motion sequences, attempts to rein his style in. Man of Steel has a desaturated colour palette and doesn’t look as slick or artificially polished as some of his other work – this is most likely an effort to evoke the style of Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy. Snyder’s fingerprint is most evident in scenes like the one in which a “reconstruction” of Jor-El gives his son a crash course in Kryptonian history by way of an animated sequence. On the whole, while it might look a little drab, it doesn’t feel like the “dark and depressing” formula has been forced on the Superman character. The sometimes-jerky camera movements aren’t helped by the 3D, so see this flat.

This reviewer’s favourite parts of the film weren’t the big fight scenes but rather the flashbacks to Clark’s childhood. Cooper Timberline portrays Clark Kent at age 9, and there is a very powerful scene which conveys how Superman’s special abilities are a double-edged sword and how he had to slowly master control over things like his super hearing. Dylan Sprayberry plays the 13 year-old Clark, and we see how Clark’s innate desire to do good takes precedence over protecting his secret. Both Kevin Costner and Diane Lane bring a humanity to their portrayals of Ma and Pa Kent, characters who have generally been perceived as good-hearted, kindly folk and not much more. This film shows just how important they were to Clark in his formative years; it’s comparable to Martin Sheen and Sally Field’s turns as Ben and May Parker respectively in last year’s The Amazing Spider-Man.

The film opens on Krypton, which is no longer a crystalline world populated by shimmering, white-clad senior citizens. This is a Krypton that looks majestic and alien, as well as lived-in. The audience is dropped right into the middle of a civil war on a planet on the brink of annihilation, and Russell Crowe even gets some action beats in scenes with Jor-El outrunning General Zod’s troops. The design elements are fascinating, from baby Kal-El’s rocket ship to the helmets worn by Zod and his underlings to the redesign of that iconic blue suit. Yes, this one doesn’t have the underwear on the outside (which was apparently meant to be reminiscent of Victorian strongmen), so we can all stop with the jokes.

It is good to see Henry Cavill get his big break after having been passed over for roles such as James Bond, Edward Cullen, Batman and yes, Superman before. In addition to looking the part, the actor is able to convey Superman’s inherent nobility, chivalry and moral compunction without coming off as a corny goody-two-shoes. The military is understandably wary of Superman when he first shows up, and scenes in which Superman communicates with them, attempting to allay their fears and establish that he’s one of the good guys are all played very well.

General Zod was portrayed by Terence Stamp in Superman II as an over-the-top tyrant who liked to yell “KNEEL!” Michael Shannon has proven he can play a scary villain before and is at it again with this compelling portrayal. Yes, he gives in to hysterics every so often, but he also comes off as a capable and truly dangerous military leader. Zod’s evil scheme is well-defined and logical, his motivations easy to accept and he and his troops (including Antje Traue’s Commander Faora) do make for formidable opponents. Sure is better than another round against Lex Luthor.

It’s been accepted that Lois Lane’s main purpose seems to getting into trouble so Superman can save her, the “Woman of Kleenex”. What’s great about Amy Adams’ portrayal of the character is yes, she is the damsel in a degree of distress, but she’s proactive and plays a very important role in the plot, doing her part to set events in motion. She’s definitely a step or more up from Kate Bosworth’s younger, blander Lois.

Man of Steel is a return to form for one of pop culture’s most significant icons. Yes, it does stray into run of the mill wham-bam territory, particularly during the final battle in which a mostly digital Metropolis bears the brunt of Zod and Superman’s tussle. On the whole though, it is a more than satisfying revamp that hopefully will pave the way to a fully-fledged DC cinematic universe.

Summary: You don’t have to be a comic book aficionado to enjoy this new, mostly very good take on Superman. Things get a little too noisy and a little overblown towards the end, but it’s better than no action at all and there are some moments of sincere emotion that do justice to the character. 

RATING: 4 out of 5 Stars

Jedd Jong