Run All Night

For F*** Magazine

RUN ALL NIGHT

Director : Jaume Collet-Serra

Cast : Liam Neeson, Joel Kinnaman, Ed Harris, Vincent D'Onofrio, Boyd Holbrook, Genesis Rodriguez, Common, Bruce McGill, Holt McCallany

Genre : Action/Crime

Run Time : 114 mins

Opens : 12 March 2015

Rating : NC16 (Violence and Coarse Language)

Liam Neeson goes from training the Dark Knight to running all night in this crime thriller. Neeson plays Jimmy Conlon, an aging hitman who used to work for crime boss Shawn Maguire (Harris). Shawn has supposedly reformed, and refuses to do business with drug dealers who are brought to him by his son Danny (Holbrook). It just so happens that Jimmy’s son Mike (Kinnaman), a limousine driver, is hired by Danny and witnesses a deal go horribly awry. Jimmy ends up killing Danny to save Mike, which leads to Shawn ordering that both father and son be killed in retaliation. Mike resents his father for the strain that being a hitman put on their relationship, but the duo have to stick together if they want to survive this long, brutal night.  

            Run All Night marks the third collaboration between Liam Neeson and director Jaume Collet-Serra, who also helmed Unknown and Non-Stop. Neeson claims that this will be his last action-centric leading role in a while. As cool as the actor always is, he is very much in danger of being a caricature of himself, if the Taken memes still all over the internet are anything to go by. Unfortunately, even though it’s meant to be more dramatic and character-driven than the Taken movies, Run All Night is still a let-down. Collet-Serra intends for it to be a gritty 70s-style crime flick, set in a grimy, misty New York City during the Christmas season over 16 hours. However, the scene transitions are Google Maps-style CGI camera moves, swooping out of one street, up over the city, and right into another. This comes off as nothing more than a jarring stylistic flourish, supposedly to disguise how surprisingly boring the film ends up being.

            The story is a predictable one – an ex-hitman must wade back into the muddy waters of his former life when things get personal. That logline can also be used to describe last year’s John Wick. Where that movie was surprisingly inventive, original and stylish, Run All Night is, well, a more run of the mill affair. The two relationships at its core are the personal connection between an enforcer and his old boss/long-time friend and between said enforcer and his estranged son. Brad Ingelsby’s screenplay strains to make this more than your typical father-son action movie team-up – the relationship isn’t amusingly dysfunctional, it’s downright toxic. And yet, it’s just not sufficiently compelling, some moments unintentionally funny rather than dark and dramatic. During the first half of the film, when Jimmy and Shawn wistfully reminisce about their youth, it’s meant to set up this deep bond that will inevitably be shattered over the course of the film, but it feels more like filler than anything else.

                Liam Neeson grimaces, wields a gun and talks tough through gritted teeth - daring, uncharted territory for the actor. We all love Liam Neeson but especially coming on the heels of the dismal Taken 3, it’s very easy to see why audiences are getting tired of this character type. Joel Kinnaman is good here as a clean-cut family man who wants nothing to do with the dangerous, seedy world which his father was a part of. He’s certainly less annoying than Jai Courtney’s Jack McClane in A Good Day to Die Hard. Alas, the clash of titans that is Liam Neeson vs. Ed Harris is something of a let-down. When all is said and done, it feels like Harris hasn’t really done all that much throughout the film, even though he has a substantial role. Harris is an unsung old-school cinematic badass, so seeing him go toe to toe with the old-school cinematic badass du jour should be more of an event. The macho friends-turned-enemies plot is undercut by what can be interpreted as homoerotic undertones between the two characters. Common shows up as an ice-cold bespectacled assassin; his night-vision eyepiece and high-powered pistol equipped with a laser sight likely referencing the first Terminator movie. He provides the best thrills of the film.  

            Run All Night is too predictable and contrived to work as an engrossing crime drama but also lacks the over-the-top action spectacle required to make it successful as a piece of escapist entertainment, falling into an uncomfortable no man’s land. It’s sturdily-constructed, shot well and solidly acted all around, but it has nothing to distinguish it from every other New York-set crime thriller out there.

Summary: Nowhere near as exciting as its title makes it sound, Run All Night never goes off the beaten crime thriller path. Its central trio do turn in strong performances, but even then the film can’t outrun the realm of the generic.

RATING: 2.5 out of 5 Stars

Jedd Jong 

Taken 3

For F*** Magazine

TAKEN 3

Director : Olivier Megaton

Cast : Liam Neeson, Famke Janssen, Maggie Grace, Forest Whitaker, Dougray Scott

Genre : Action/Thriller

Run Time : 1 hr 46 mins

Opens : 8 January 2015

Rating : PG13 (Violence and Brief Coarse Language)

Bryan Mills (Neeson) or, as we like to call him, “MC Millz with da Skillz”, is back for a third take. This time, he finds himself framed for the murder of his ex-wife Lenore (Janssen) and on the lam from Inspector Frank Dotzler (Whitaker) of the LAPD. It seems Stuart St. John (Scott), whom Lenore married after her divorce with Bryan, might have played a hand in her murder. In addition to evading capture by the authorities, Bryan has to protect his beloved daughter Kim (Grace) and luckily enough has his old pals from his CIA days on his side.

            “It ends here”, the tagline on the poster proclaims. If this really is the conclusion to the Taken series, then it ends with a whimper rather than a bang. Taken 3 – or Tak3n, if you prefer - is a rote, derivative affair. This is essentially The Fugitive, with a pursued protagonist who has to prove to the determined cop in charge that he did not kill his wife. The first Taken film drew comparisons to the TV series 24, right down to the names of both protagonists’ daughters being “Kim”. The Los Angeles setting of Taken 3 does not help matters and even in its weaker seasons, the Kiefer Sutherland-starring show managed to be more exciting than this. At least the second film had the setting of Istanbul (following up from Paris in the first one) to set it apart from the action-thriller pack. Olivier Megaton, who helmed the second film and who is probably the most ho-hum director among all of Luc Besson’s disciples, ensures the action is as jumbled and incoherent as ever, packing in the shaky-cam and the whiplash editing.

            Taken 3’s greatest asset is its always-capable leading man. While Liam Neeson most likely agreed to this just for the paycheck, he looks nowhere near as disinterested and lackadaisical as, say, Bruce Willis in his later-period action films. He’s still believably tough and badass, and that’s got to count for something. Unfortunately, the novelty of seeing the Oscar-calibre actor punching and shooting his way through scores of bad guys has more or less worn off. Forest Whitaker is not good in this; apparently tics like fiddling with a chess piece and an elastic band are acceptable substitutes for any actual characterisation. His Inspector Dotzler is clearly meant to be in the same vein as Tommy Lee Jones’ Samuel Gerard from the afore-mentioned The Fugitive, but Whitaker fails to be even half as compelling.

            Oddly enough, Dougray Scott replaces Xander Berkeley as Lenore’s estranged husband Stuart – they look nothing alike and this reviewer had to double-check to make sure Stuart was in fact the same character as in the first film. While depicted as merely a milquetoast rich guy in Taken, Taken 3 sees Stuart turn into more of a badass, which is a head-scratch-inducing turn. Sam Spruell, who seems to have become the go-to guy when a Hollywood flick needs someone to play a real creep, is unconvincing as ex-Spetsnaz Russian mob boss Malankov. His lackeys in the film seem to have been found at the bottom of the “generic action movie villain” discount bin.

            Something this reviewer wanted to see more of from the first two movies was the old CIA pals Bryan hung out at barbecues with. In this film, they do have a larger part to play in the plot, helping Bryan lie low as he is pursued by the long arm of the law. Alas, we don’t exactly get to see them kick ass alongside their former colleague in a “reliving the glory days” kind of team-up action sequence. Writers Luc Besson and Robert Mark Kamen also visibly struggle to figure out what to do with the Kim character, the scenes of supposedly-emotional father-daughter interaction instead almost unbearably awkward. The action scenes are non-descript, it’s middling and uninspired and while it isn’t like the first Taken was some kind of masterpiece, it was at least exhilarating entertainment.

Summary: On the bright side, it looks like we won’t be getting T4ken after this dry re-tread of an action flick.

RATING: 2 out of 5 Stars

Jedd Jong

A Walk Among the Tombstones

For F*** Magazine

A WALK AMONG THE TOMBSTONES

Director : Scott Frank
Cast : Liam Neeson, Dan Stevens, Ruth Wilson, Olafur Darri Olafsson, Sebastian Roche, David Harbour, Mark Consuelos, Astro
Genre : Crime/Thriller
Opens : 18 September 2014
Rating : NC-16
Running time: 114 mins

Pierce Brosnan strutted his “older man of action” stuff recently in The November Man and now Liam Neeson, the definitive “older man of action” of the moment, is at it again in A Walk Among the Tombstones. Neeson plays Matt Scudder, a former NYPD cop, now an unlicensed private detective and a recovering alcoholic. Drug dealer Kenny Kristo (Stevens) engages Scudder’s services when his wife is kidnapped and killed even after he’s paid the ransom. While doing research in the library, Scudder befriends homeless teenager TJ (Bradley), whom he takes under his wing. Scudder discovers that the psychopaths responsible are targeting young women related to figures in the drug world, knowing they would be unable to go to the police for help. Working outside the law, Scudder must prevent the serial killers from striking again.

            

A Walk Among the Tombstones is adapted from the 10th book in Lawrence Block’s long-running Matt Scudder series (there are 17 books now). Jeff Bridges played Scudder in 1986’s heavily panned and largely forgotten 8 Million Ways to Die and this film has been in the works for quite a while, with Joe Carnahan attached to direct and Harrison Ford to star at one point. Writer-director Scott Frank’s realisation of A Walk Among the Tombstones is slick, stylish and foreboding, lean and effectively chilling. At times, it seems reminiscent of David Fincher’s work, if more pedestrian. A slow-motion sequence in which the killers leer at a young girl walking her dog, set to Donovan’s “Atlantis”, is a very darkly comic touch. The book was published in 1992, but Frank chooses to set it in 1999, hinting at Y2K paranoia with the symbolism of people being “afraid of all the wrong things”, as the tagline goes. This doesn’t seem to add a lot to the story but it is an interesting textural detail.

           

          However, beyond the look and feel of the film, the story is a pretty conventional one. Yes, the serial killer antagonists are very creepy, but it’s nothing you haven’t seen before in dozens of police procedural or detective TV shows. They drive around in a van, kidnapping women to torture and kill and they’re unbalanced and evil – not exactly a unique or compelling situation for our hero to be up against. It’s a good thing then that our hero is Liam Neeson, a master at the art of being quietly intimidating. He’s effortlessly cool throughout the film and you’ll want to cheer when he snarls “are you listening, motherf***er?” through the phone at the kidnappers. More than that, it’s entertaining to watch Neeson’s Scudder just doing some old-fashioned sleuthing about, cleverly cajoling information out of various subjects. Neeson is sufficiently low-key and yet never seems like he’s sleepwalking through the film. He also has the approval of author Block, who thought Neeson would make the ideal Scudder since watching him in Michael Collins.

            Less conventional than its main “catch the kidnappers” plot is the relationship between Scudder and tagalong kid TJ. TJ could have very easily been unbearably irritating and Brian “Astro” Bradley did get on many nerves as a contestant on American X Factor. However, he holds his own opposite Neeson and their interactions lend the film a slight hint of dry levity without the character being “the comic relief”. There’s some sentimentality there too, TJ stricken with sickle cell anaemia, having nowhere to go and drawing superheroes in his sketchbook. The scene in which Scudder chastises TJ for picking up a gun he found in a dumpster is particularly well done and a discussion about cool detective names displays a self-awareness of the genre without it being obnoxious.

           

           Some fans of Liam Neeson have bemoaned that since Taken, the Oscar nominee has starred in a string of run of the mill actioners that don’t particularly test his abilities as an actor. A Walk Among the Tombstones puts less emphasis on the running and the shooting -though there is some of that, to be sure. While the role of Matt Scudder isn’t wildly different from the cool tough guys we’ve become accustomed to seeing Neeson play, there is more here for Neeson to sink his teeth into and this film certainly is more of a grown-up, intense, sometimes disturbing thriller than his more action-oriented movies. And isn’t it nice that the novel’s original name was preserved instead of the title being changed to some snappy synonym for “vengeance”?

Summary: Liam Neeson fans will want to take this walk, his lead performance as the old-school detective and the creepy atmospherics making up for the familiar narrative.

RATING: 3.5 out of 5 Stars

Jedd Jong

A Million Ways to Die in the West

For F*** Magazine

A MILLION WAYS TO DIE IN THE WEST

Director : Seth MacFarlane

Cast : Seth MacFarlane, Charlize Theron, Amanda Seyfried, Neil Patrick Harris, Liam Neeson

Genre : Comedy, Western

Opens : 12 June 2014

Rating : NC16 (Coarse Language and Sexual References) / 116 mins

Directed by, starring and co-written by Seth MacFarlane, here’s the film that details why life in the American frontier was hard, no matter what your station. MacFarlane plays Albert, an unassuming sheep farmer in the town of Old Stump, Arizona whose girlfriend Louise (Seyfried) leaves him for Foy (Harris), a dashing, arrogant moustache tonic salesman. Anna (Theron), the wife of notorious outlaw Clinch Leatherwood (Neeson), arrives in Old Stump, hoping to lie low while her husband continues tearing up the region. She befriends and soon falls in love with Albert, the sheep farmer unaware that his new paramour is in fact married to the most dangerous man in the land.

            The marketing for this film includes an online flash game that is a funny, entertaining spoof of the classic educational video game The Oregon Trail. Alas, nothing in the film itself quite matches the creativity of that tie-in. A fair number of the jokes in A Million Ways to Die in the West land, but the film is overly reliant on lowbrow bodily-function gags and “shocking”, cartoony violence. The movie’s biggest laughs are provided by the surprise celebrity cameos and a joke involving an offensively-themed shooting gallery gets a satisfying payoff during the end credits. However, one of the best of these was completely spoiled in a TV spot, making this yet another example of a comedy where the laughs are run into the ground by the trailers.

            The film hinges on its main character, Albert the sheep-farmer, being likeable enough that audiences will want to root for him to survive all those million possible methods of death. Seth MacFarlane is not likeable. This is not a controversial statement. A Million Ways to Die in the West would have benefitted from a different lead actor but this being the vanity project it is, that was unlikely to happen. With Ted, he was able to hide behind a computer-generated stuffed toy but here, his shortcomings as a leading man are all too apparent. One adjective often used to describe the Family Guy creator is “smug”. “Smug” is pretty much on the opposite end of the spectrum from “hapless, sweet, unassuming and well-meaning”.

            MacFarlane has surrounded himself with an excellent supporting cast, but because he is positioned as the film’s focal point, their presence seems merely perfunctory. Charlize Theron makes for a fun, watchable Annie Oakley-type but as her on-screen husband, Liam Neeson gets the short shrift. While he has slightly more screen time than in Battleship, one can’t help but feel sorry for the actor who has redefined the term “badass” when he’s forced to bare, well, ass. Family Guy fans will be tickled by the casting, since one cutaway gag featured Liam Neeson struggling with his accent in a cowboy film (he retains his Northern Irish brogue here). Neil Patrick Harris relishes the chance to gnaw at the scenery and he certainly rocks that well-coiffed handlebar moustache, in addition to dancing to the Stephen Foster folk ditty “If You’ve Only Got a Moustache”. Giovanni Ribisi and Sarah Silverman are amusing as Albert’s best friend Edward and Edward’s prostitute girlfriend Ruth respectively, if you don’t mind hearing Sarah Silverman graphically describe sex acts.

            A comedic Western in this day and age is a fairly ambitious prospect and something of a gear change from Ted, but MacFarlane fails to mine the opportunities presented by the premise, this outing proving yet again to be too self-indulgent. At 116 minutes long, this does meander and there’s the threat of tumbleweeds, but it would be too harsh to say A Million Ways to Die in the West is completely laugh-free. Co-writers Alec Sulkin and Wellesley Wild, who also worked on Ted and Family Guy with MacFarlane, retain a somewhat mean-spirited sense of humour (the poster has a cactus resembling a hand flipping the viewer off) but once in a while do offer inspired gags. Just not quite often enough.

Summary: Doesn’t quite set our saddles ablaze.

RATING: 2.5 out of 5 Stars

Jedd Jong

Non-Stop

F*** Magazine

NON-STOP

Director: Jaume Collet-Serra
Cast: Liam Neeson, Julianne Moore, Scoot McNairy, Nate Parker, Anson Mount, Michelle Dockery, Corey Stoll, Linus Roache, Omar Metwally, Lupita Nyong’o, Jason Butler Harner
Genre: Action, Mystery, Thriller
Run Time: 106 mins
Opens: 27 February 2014
Rating: PG13 (Some Coarse Language and Violence)

Perhaps there should be a subgenre of action/thrillers called “Badass on a Plane”. In Non-Stop, Liam Neeson joins the ranks of Wesley Snipes, Kurt Russell, Harrison Ford, Samuel L. Jackson and Jodie Foster as a man on a mission stuck in one of those scary metal tubes 40 000 feet in the air. Neeson plays U.S. Federal Air Marshal Bill Marks, who boards a non-stop flight from New York to London on duty. He receives a series of ominous text messages from an unknown sender aboard the plane, threatening to kill one passenger every 20 minutes until a sum of $150 million is paid. With the help of Jen (Moore), the woman in the next seat and Nancy (Dockery), the head flight attendant, Bill must apprehend the perpetrator. Anyone could be a suspect, including fellow air marshal Jack Hammond (Mount), schoolteacher Tom Bowen (McNairy) and NYPD cop Austin Reilly (Stoll).

Non-Stop reteams Neeson with Jaume Collet-Serra, who directed him in Unknown. Non-Stop continues Neeson’s second wind as a tough action hero, though it is a suspense thriller rather than a straight-up action flick. In Unknown, Collet-Serra created a stylish atmosphere and a genuinely intriguing mystery that crumbled more than a little by the time it reached its conclusion, and Non-Stop is similar in those regards. While Non-Stop’s twist ending isn’t as crazy as the one in Unknown, audiences will still find themselves trying to thread together the narrative loopholes afterwards.


Collet-Serra is great at setting moods. Here we have a whodunit on a commercial airliner and Non-Stop plays on many of the fears a good number of travellers face every time they board a plane. There are several clever visual touches, like a moment in which Bill is surrounded by floating graphical representations of the text messages he is receiving, almost like they are closing in on him. There are also some cool camera moves: in one scene, the camera sweeps laterally down the aisle of the plane, then zooms outwards, crosses the exterior of the fuselage, and zooms back in to the rear of the cabin. The screenplay by John W. Richardson, Chris Roach and Ryan Engle is taut if far from watertight, effectively ratcheting up the tension.

Liam Neeson plays the same gruff, grizzled do-gooder archetype he’s been playing a lot in his later career, meaning he doesn’t get to show off his range but he is what the fans what to see him as – a badass. The Bill Marks character isn’t given a lot of depth, and is established upfront as a troubled alcoholic and smoker prone to violent outbursts. There are times in the film when the characterisation of Bill crosses over from “flawed” to “possibly at least a little incompetent” and he does get critically outsmarted by the mystery villain. But should one choose to say “here’s a tough guy on an airplane and I don’t really need to know more about him”, Non-Stop can be enjoyed. Neeson is unflinchingly serious, and don’t call him Shirley.

Non-Stop also reunites Neeson with his Chloe co-star Julianne Moore, who is a friendly, helpful and comforting presence that we as an audience are still supposed to question. It’s not the best use of her talent ever but we’re not complaining. Downton Abbey’s Michelle Dockery is believable as an attentive, cool-headed flight attendant but it is a pity that Lupita Nyong’o, the breakout star of 12 Years a Slave, gets very little to do here. We have a veritable fish market of red herrings and the actors playing the passengers are generally decent, House of Cards’ Corey Stoll particularly arresting.

A theme that unexpectedly crops up in Non-Stop is that of the role that mass media plays in unfolding crises and an instance in which sensationalist news coverage is satirised is pretty interesting. Unfortunately, the film falls back on clichés and stereotypes, bending over backwards to be politically correct in its portrayal of Islamic character Dr. Fahim Nasir (Metwally). There’s also the obligatory “motive rant” speech, in which the culprit lays out the rationale behind the evil plot which makes less sense the more one thinks about it. On the whole, Non-Stop is a fairly entertaining and thrilling diversion and even though the pay-off is not altogether satisfying, Non-Stop is sufficiently absorbing in the moment and this reviewer did get invested in the mystery. It’s one of those “don’t think too hard about how it all fits together” movies, but it emerges above average thanks to the stylish direction and its dependable leading man.

Summary: The title isn’t the only thing silly about Non-Stop, but there’s an adequate “grip the armrests” quotient and is unlikely to wholly disappoint Liam Neeson fans even though it doesn’t quite soar.

RATING: 3.5 out of 5 Stars

Jedd Jong

The Lego Movie

For F*** Magazine

THE LEGO MOVIE 

Director: Phil Lord, Christopher Miller
Cast: Chris Pratt, Elizabeth Banks, Channing Tatum, Jonah Hill, Cobie Smulders, Morgan Freeman, Will Arnett, Will Ferrell, Liam Neeson, Alison Brie, Nick Offerman
Genre: Action, Animation, Comedy
Run Time: 100 mins
Opens: 6 February 2014
Rating: G

“A movie made to sell toys” is practically always a pejorative description. The Michael Bay-directed Transformers films, the two live-action G.I. Joe movies, Battleship, Batman and Robin…not exactly well-regarded cinematic touchstones. Along comes The Lego Movie, unabashedly, joyously based on the iconic Danish construction toys. Those interlocking bricks have come a long way, the Lego brand boasting sets based on licensed properties, video games, books and magazines, theme parks around the world, apparel and other lifestyle products and now, a theatrically-released major motion picture.

Emmet (Pratt) is your regular everyman – every-mini-figure, rather – who goes about a routine, carefree existence as a construction worker in his hometown of Bricksburg. After accidentally coming across the relic known as “The Piece of Resistance”, Emmet is flung into an adventure alongside the tough, plucky Wyldstyle (Banks), with whom he is immediately smitten. The blind seer and head Master Builder Vitruvius (Freeman) tells him of a prophecy Emmet apparently will fulfil, but he appears so ordinary that nobody buys it for a second. Lord Business (Ferrell), obsessed with order and perfection, plans to unleash a superweapon called the “kragle” upon the Lego-verse and sends his split personality-addled enforcer Bad Cop/Good Cop (Neeson) after Emmet. On their journey, Emmet and Wyldstyle meet the likes of cyborg-pirate Metalbeard (Offerman), the cheery Unikitty (Brie), Benny the 1980-something Spaceman (Day) and Batman himself (Arnett), all of whom must unite to defeat Lord Business.

From 1998 to 2002, Lego’s slogan was “Just Imagine…” and as far as that is concerned, this film walks the talk. Every frame is bursting with invention, directors Phil Lord and Chris Miller marrying humour, wit, heart and dazzling technical artistry to bring those colourful bricks to vivid life. It’s hard to wow us moviegoers, we who stifle yawns upon seeing whole cities levelled for the umpteenth time and yet, The Lego Movie possesses a magic in its look with a real “how did they do that?!” quality to it. Digital visual effects house Animal Logic has produced animation that authentically captures that slightly jerky stop-motion feel, a mind-boggling attention to detail evident in everything from the plastic texture of the Lego pieces and how the older ones are slightly stained to the exact place in which Benny’s helmet is cracked to how everything from an ebbing and flowing ocean to bullet hits is comprised of Lego parts.

Yes, this is a “kids’ movie”, but AFOLs (Adult Fans of Lego) will not feel left out. The cognoscenti will be able to catch rewarding Easter eggs and will realise that this is a film made by people who flat-out love Lego and fully grasp its appeal. There are plenty of opportunities to geek out, from Gandalf and Dumbledore sharing the screen (albeit in mini-figure form) to the DC Trinity of Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman making their big-screen debut a whole two years before Zack Snyder’s Batman vs. Superman. As a bonus, Wonder Woman is voiced by Cobie Smulders, who was apparently Joss Whedon’s pick to play the Amazon princess when he was developing his ill-fated Wonder Woman TV series. The use of irreverent cameos from popular characters here very much recalls what Wreck-It Ralph did with videogame icons and also brings to mind the comedy series Robot Chicken, numerous episodes of which were directed by Chris McKay, co-animation director and co-editor on The Lego Movie.

The “chosen one” plot is one that’s as old as storytelling itself, but Lord and Miller are fully aware of that and have their respective tongues firmly planted in their respective cheeks, while never coming across as smug and condescending. This is in stark contrast to the dull recycling children’s movies like Planes are prone to. There are also some surprisingly thought-provoking themes at play here: Emmet lives in a world run by a totalitarian “benevolent dictator” who has a robot army at his beck and call and controls everything in Bricksburg, right down to the kind of music people listen to. Without giving away too much, the film ends with a (quite literal) deus ex machina, but it is a poignant, brilliant, very meta take on that trope. Of course, there is a level of hypocrisy in the villain being named “Lord Business”, when Lego is a sizeable corporate empire that even has a bricks-in-the-boardroom business consultancy service called Lego Serious Play.

Pulling our heads out of curmudgeon land, it’s worth noting that even an animated film as visually arresting as this one can be downed by a bad voice cast. Crisis averted! Chris Pratt is pitch-perfect as an easy-going nice guy and Elizabeth Banks does sound cool and plucky, but it’s the supporting cast that steals the show. Will Ferrell’s President Business is an interesting display of controlled shouty bluster, never hamming it up to an annoying degree. Yes, Morgan Freeman plays another “magical Negro”, but Vitruvius is a reasonably clever deconstruction (heh) of that character type and his delivery is effortlessly funny. Liam Neeson has kinda-dual roles as the gruff Bad Cop and his meek alter-ego Good Cop, sounding pretty much like regular Liam Neeson as the former but affecting a high-pitched Irish lilt as the latter, the likes of which we have never heard from Qui-Gon/Aslan/Ra’s al Ghul/Zeus before, the results downright hilarious. Will Arnett’s Batman, less angsty, comically self-absorbed, still growly-voiced and altogether very funny, is good too.



When The Lego Movie was announced in 2008, this reviewer was eagerly anticipating the result but also wondering “how in the world are they going to pull this off?” All of those concerns are firmly allayed here, Phil Lord and Chris Miller delivering a picture that endlessly delights, amuses and enchants. It’s a spectacle-filled visual smorgasbord that the tykes will love and is also packed with morsels for geeky older audience members, all while thoughtfully commenting on conformity, creativity and the importance of play. This, Michael Bay, is how you do a toy movie.

Summary: The film’s theme song is a ditty called “Everything is Awesome”, and that’s as apt a description of this superb animated flick as possible.

RATING: 4.5 out of 5 Stars

Jedd Jong

Taken 2

For F*** Magazine, Singapore

TAKEN 2

Director:	Olivier Megaton
Cast:	Liam Neeson, Maggie Grace, Famke Janssen, Rade Šerbedžija
Genre:	Action, Thriller
Run Time:	94 mins
Opens:	4 October 2012
Rating:	PG13 - Some Violence

2008’s Taken was a film that, well, took many by surprise. It was something of a sleeper hit, giving its star Liam Neeson a second wind as a viable action hero, and it also made $226,830,568 on a $26.5 million budget. You know what that means: sequel time!

Taken 2 fashions itself as a revenge story - Murad Hoxha (Šerbedžija), the head of the Albanian mafia, is none too happy about the body count from the first film, his son among them. So, he vows to take revenge on Bryan Mills (Neeson) on behalf of the rest of the Albanian village too. Mills takes his ex-wife Lenore (Janssen), going through a rough patch with her current husband, and his daughter Kim (Grace) along with him to Istanbul for a family vacation of sorts. It is there that the tables are turned on him, as Bryan and Lenore are taken, leaving Kim to figure out how to get to them as the bad guys chase after her as well.

Most moviegoers, upon hearing news of a Taken sequel being made, probably had the same thought – “the first one was cool, but do we need a second?” Taken seemed like the kind of film that would receive a shoddy direct-to-video sequel featuring a completely different cast with the exact same premise, so perhaps it can be considered good news that Neeson and co. are back for a proper part deux, with Luc Besson and Robert Mark Kamen also returning to script the movie.

However, Pierre Morel is not back in the director’s chair – in his stead is Olivier Megaton, who directed the Luc Besson-produced films Transporter 3 and Colombiana - and yes, that is his real name. Megaton keeps the film at a frenetic pace once the actual ‘taking’ takes place, but perhaps it’s a little too frenetic for its own good. There are quick cuts and editing flourishes, and where the first film felt as fluid as it was dynamic, here it’s a bit more choppy.

One could be mean and say that the story is not much more than a rehash of the first and truth is, it kind of is – the main difference being that it’s Bryan and Lenore who are kidnapped, with Kim in a position to aid her parents’ escape. Surprisingly, the movie takes its time with its opening scenes, which reintroduce the characters and establish how their relationships have changed since the events of the first movie – Bryan, ever the over-protective dad, not taking kindly to news that Kim now has a boyfriend (Luke Grimes).

This, however, may leave some audience members twiddling their thumbs. It’s a good thing then that when the film kicks into high gear, it doesn’t stop. The filmmakers take advantage of Istanbul’s potential as an action movie location (Bond will next be headed there in Skyfall) and there is a series of foot and vehicular chases through the back alleys and across the rooftops of the Turkish capital. Thing is, we really have seen it all before – and done a smidge better – in the original Taken.

Neeson is as good as he normally is, turning up the intensity and furrowing his brow as only he can. Most of his dialogue is very cut-and-dried and matter of fact, which can be a little hard to take seriously given how his terse speech from the first movie has been reduced to not much more than an internet meme. Famke Janssen has more screen time but not all that much more to do, panicking and crying through most of the movie. Maggie Grace’s part gets more of an upgrade, and you get the sense that Kim has learned a fair bit from her experiences in Paris, and with her father’s guidance possesses a degree of competence (and gets to toss a few grenades to boot). Rade Šerbedžija is stoic as the villain, but not as imposing or frightening as he could have been, and it ends up such that the lower-level grunts seem to pose more of a threat than the head of the Albanian mafia himself.

Is Taken 2 a decent film on its own merits? Yes. But is it an absolutely necessary sequel? No. Was it made primarily as a cash-grab? Probably, and unfortunately, yes.

SUMMARY: Taken 2 passes muster as an action film in the vein of its predecessor, even if it never quite matches it in quality - it’s a little “run of the Mills”, as it were.

RATING: 3 out of 5 STARS

Jedd Jong

Battleship

Movie Review                                                                                                                   17/4/12

BATTLESHIP

(2012 Release)

Starring: Taylor Kitsch, Alexander Skarsgard, Rihanna, Liam Neeson

Directed by: Peter Berg

 

            After the 3-D re-release of Titanic comes more giant ships and another ‘berg (director Peter). I fondly remember playing the board game with my brother on boring Chinese New Year afternoons visiting my grandmother’s house. I also remember attempting to play the game on a plane and losing some pegs. I don’t it ever crossed my mind that the game would make a good movie, and as far as I remember, aliens weren't involved.

            Alex Hopper (Kitsch), a 20-something ne'er do well, is forced to join the Navy by his older brother Stone (Skarsgard), after the former pulls a crazy stunt to win over the attractive Sam (Brooklyn Decker). Sam also happens to be the daughter of Admiral Shane (Neeson), Stone’s superior. Several years later, Alex has become a lieutenant aboard the USS John Paul Jones, and is about to seek permission from the Admiral for his daughter’s hand in marriage.

            While Alex and Stone, serving on different ships, participate in the RIMPAC naval exercise alongside the navies of countries across the world, alien ships land in the waters near Hawaii, as one crashes into Hong Kong. Having lost their communication equipment onboard the crashed ship, the aliens plan to hijack a NASA satellite array to call their home planet for reinforcements. Alex and co, including weapons specialist Petty Officer Raikes (Rihanna) and Japanese Captain Nagata (Tadanobu Asano) attempt to repel the invaders.

            To draw another connection to Titanic, James Cameron has famously lambasted the film while it was in production stages, saying “we have a story crisis. Now they want to make the Battleship game into a film. This is pure desperation...Battleship. This degrades the cinema.” Many cynical moviegoers echoed this sentiment when the project was announced, but in the end, Battleship really isn’t all that bad compared to the mass-produced action movie garbage we get fed every summer. It isn’t all that good either, though.

            Sure, it’s loud, silly and pretty generic, but Battleship isn’t all flotsam. For one, the film displays a hint of winking self-awareness, as if the screenwriters knew they were recruited to craft an audience-pleasing blockbuster and nothing more. There are attempts to reference the gameplay of the original board game, and the aliens use projectiles shaped like the pegs used in game. Apparently, Admiral Shane was supposed to say “you sunk my battleship”, but it was (wisely) left out of the final cut.

            The visual effects are of high quality and fairly photo-realistic, but the alien invaders and their arsenal immediately bring to mind another Hasbro-product-based movie, and it’s not G.I. JOE. Bits and pieces seem like leftover animation from those films, but thankfully Peter Berg is much less of a hack than Michael Bay. The aliens themselves are amphibian-esque humanoids in Iron Man-style exo-suits, and employ “shredders”, circular saws on steroids, to rip through ships, highways and military bases. The main flaw in the design of the aliens is that they are far too humanoid and visually not very interesting. It would have more interesting if the movie revolved around naval strategy and pitted two rival fleets against each other rather than resorting to the extraterrestrial threat plot device.

            As for the movie’s human cast, Taylor Kitsch is able to muster more charisma here than he did in John Carter, and is far better as a modern military man than a Civil War-era one. Alexander Skarsgard, best-known for TV’s True Blood and for being the son of Swedish actor Stellan, is also not bad as the serious, responsible big brother.

Liam Neeson has no problem furrowing his brow and barking commands, and Brooklyn Decker as his daughter delivers the performance one might expect from a swimsuit model, though slightly better than that of her peer Rosie Huntington-Whitely in last year’s ghastly Transformers: Dark of the Moon. There’s a nice subplot involving Sam stuck on Oahu with army combat veteran and double-amputee Mick Canales (Gregory D Gadson) and Cal (Hamish Linklater), the stock nerdy comic relief scientist.

Rihanna’s appearance is the product of nothing less than stunt casting. What, was Michelle Rodriguez otherwise occupied? The Barbadian singer seems incapable of pulling of the tough chick shtick, and it doesn’t get more unbelievable than the “Umbrella” singer playing a gun-toting weapons specialist. At least she doesn’t single-handedly ruin the movie, as she well could have.

            The best thing that I can say about Battleship is that it is nowhere as bad as it could have been, and when it comes to big-budget alien invasion military recruitment poster flicks, you could do worse.

             

          The worst thing that I can say about Battleship is that Rihanna is a weapons specialist.

SUMMARY: This dreadnought is not completely dreadful, but its hull isn’t watertight either – but it does have big guns and fires them often.

RATING: 2.5/5 STARS 

Jedd Jong

Unknown

As published in F*** Magazine, Issue 14 (March 2011) p.97

UNKNOWN

2011

Starring: Liam Neeson, January Jones, Diane Kruger

Directed by: Jaume Collet-Serra

Dark Castle Entertainment/Studio Babelsberg; dist. Warner Bros. Pictures

            It is Oscar season, the time of year when sophisticated, high-brow and complex films are the talk of the town. It is human nature to rebel, and it felt good to eschew such thinking man’s fare in favour of watching Liam Neeson tear up the streets of a European city, as he did in Taken around two years earlier.

            This time, it’s Berlin instead of Paris. Neeson plays botanist Martin Harris, who has taken his wife Liz (Jones) along with him to attend a major biotechnology conference in the city. However, on the way back to the airport to reclaim a briefcase he left behind, Harris’ taxi plunges into the river, and he awakes from a coma four days later in the hospital.

            Harris checks himself out of the hospital to find his wife, but is shocked to discover that she apparently doesn’t recognise him, and another man (Aidan Quinn) has taken his place, pretending to be Martin Harris. The real Martin is shocked and outraged, and everyone else is convinced that not all his dogs are barking.

He struggles to prove his identity and his sanity, seeking help from whoever he can – including the taxi driver who was at the wheel when the accident occurred (Kruger), an elderly former Stasi agent active during the Cold War (Bruno Ganz) and Rodney Cole (Frank Langella), Martin’s oldest friend. At the same time, he must escape pursuit from deadly and mysterious agents, and uncover a horrific conspiracy.

In many respects, Unknown recalls (pardon the pun) the suspense thrillers of the 80s and 90s, such as the stolen-identity techno-thriller The Net and especially Harrison Ford films including Frantic, Witness and The Fugitive – and I’m a big fan of all three of those. In fact, Liam Neeson seems to permanently sport an “oh no, but that cannot be!” face of worry and shock , which he most likely learned from his K-19: The Widowmaker co-star.

Neeson has carved a career out of playing mentors (such as in Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace, Kingdom of Heaven, Krull and Batman Begins), but also as the flawed, tough and sometimes reluctant everyman action hero (see Darkman, biopics Rob Roy and Michael Collins, boxing film The Big Man and the afore-mentioned Taken). It is the latter which he marshals for Unknown, but one gets the feeling that Neeson didn’t need to do much here besides making that Harrison Ford face – and even he cannot make a line as cringe-inducing as “I haven’t forgotten how to kill you, asshole” bearable.

The supporting cast is hit-and-miss: decent, but far from perfect. Mannequin-like beauty January Jones seems mostly stiff and robotic, Diane Kruger running about her native Germany is fun to watch but she’s way too pretty to be a taxi driver (or anything other than a model, really) living in a bad part of town, Aidan Quinn oozes enough sliminess that we can root against him, Bruno Ganz has a twinkle in his eye as the former spy who’s still got it, Mido Hamaza stands around looking dashing as the stock-character Saudi Prince Shada and Frank Langella is woefully underused in what amounts to little more than a cameo.

Unknown works serviceably as a semi-old-fashioned action thriller and it aspires to be The Bourne Identity and indeed Taken, playing on the paranoia of getting into a crisis in an unfamiliar city, with nobody to count on or vouch for you. However, director Jaume Collet-Serra seems more preoccupied with cramming the movie full of stylistic flourishes, including (but not limited to) slow-motion shots, whip pans and Dutch tilts and sepia-toned flashbacks, as opposed to meaningfully developing the plot.

Most of the action sequences in the film are well-shot and the car chases and fisticuffs are reasonably thrilling - of special note is a sinister game of hide-and-seek set in a museum gallery. However, the whole film looks a little too slickly-produced and Hollywood-shiny, and even scenes set in back alleys, ramshackle apartments and a smoky dance club barely look sufficiently gritty and are therefore not believable. It is a good thing then that about midway through, the film gives up it pretentious ambitions to feel realistic as it barrels towards its explosive-if-ridiculous conclusion.

At one point in the movie, a panicked Martin Harris tries to grasp the tremendous amount of thought and preparation that must go into having another man completely steal his identity – if only similar amounts of thought and preparation went into this watchable-but-unsatisfying film.

RATING: 3/5 STARS

Jedd Jong