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BLIND DETECTIVE Singapore Press ConferencePosted on 01 Jul 2013 |
Genre: Horror/Thriller
Director: Kim Dong-Bin
Cast: Park Han-byul, Kim Ji-suk, Park Jin-ju, Ra Mi-ran, Park Won-sang
RunTime: 1 hr 26 mins
Rating: PG13 (Horror)
Released By: Encore Films
Official Website: http://www.2moons.co.kr/
Opening Day: 23 January 2014
Synopsis: Three people wake up in a dark basement. So-hee, a horror story writer, Suk-ho, a college student, and In-jeong, a high school girl, can’t seem to remember how they got there. With eerie sound coming from all corners of the house, the three try to find their way out, only to realize there is no one. The more they try to recall how they got there, the more pain they experience. Suddenly, they detect another presence in the house, threatening their lives. The three turn increasingly insane as they fight off the fear of death. As they uncover how each arrived at the house, the shocking truth is revealed. Two Moons will show you a new level of mystery horror and will surely be a movie experience of the summer.
Movie Review:
First, there was J-horror, led by the genre-defining ‘The Ring’; and then as more and more wannabes tried to emulate its success, came the K-horror, with notable examples like ‘A Tale of Two Sisters’, ‘Whispering Corridors’ and ‘Bunshinsaba’. But in recent years, the cumulative effect of years of getting scared seem to have raised audience expectations of a good horror movie, which led to diminishing returns for the occasional K-horror or for that matter J-horror that tried to make its presence felt on the big screen.
‘Two Moons’ arrives at a time when, we believe, audiences are instinctively sceptical of the promise of a good scare. Hollywood’s ‘The Conjuring’ was one example of a horror which came on the back of excellent word-of-mouth from abroad and continued to build a local following as more and more audiences became convinced of its potential. There is conversely no such word-of-mouth for Kim Dong-bin’s latest movie, which in actual fact, was released some two years ago in its native territory; not only did few in its home country see it when it opened, those who had seen it were largely unimpressed.
That of course begs the question just why ‘Two Moons’ is finding its way into our theatres two years after its insipid debut in South Korea. That said, we’re willing to give this low-budget thriller the benefit of the doubt, so here goes. The premise is standard and simple - three strangers wake up in the basement of a cabin in the woods with no recollection of just how they got there. As you may have guessed, the rest of the movie is pretty much spent unravelling the reasons for their captivity - though as you can probably guess from the opening voiceover explaining the titular phenomenon, not all the individuals that you see onscreen belong in fact to the realm of the living.
Aside from trying to figure out just who is among the already dead, the other part of the mystery has to do with how and why they have been brought together in the same room in the first place. The revelation, when Kim does lift the veil, isn’t exactly groundbreaking, but there is a certain go-for-broke mentality that keeps you watching - and by that we mean replicating famous moments from genre classics like ‘Psycho’ or ‘The Exorcist’ just so to elicit a reaction from its audience. Indeed, there is hardly an original vein to be found here, but you can’t help but admire Kim’s brazenness in mashing together scenes straight out of a Hong Kong vampire movie with that of other Hollywood notables and passing it off as his own.
Even on that level, ‘Two Moons’ plays very much like his critical and commercially panned 2004 horror ‘Red Eye’. Those who have seen that infamous movie will tell you that Kim has merely switched the confines of a train carriage for the claustrophobic confines of a deserted house in the forest, while keeping the general theme of its haunting by grudge-filled spirits waiting to exact vengeance on living inhabitants. What Kim has also failed to do in retooling his earlier flop is create stronger characters, or simply, characters that his audience are likely to care about, and just like in ‘Red Eye’, you can’t quite be bothered about just what happens to the people you see onscreen at the end of the day.
It is no wonder then that ‘Two Moons’ went relatively unheeded even in its native country, and is not likely to ignite any sort of audience interest in the fledgling K-horror genre. With a story that holds little surprises, characters we can’t quite identify with, and most of all little original scares, it is at best a mediocre entry that will only satisfy the most horror-deprived fan. Given the promise of its ‘twin moon’ premise, it also feels like a missed opportunity, one that could have been so much more in the hands of a better filmmaker. Unless you’re desperately in need of a horror fix, you’ll find nothing illuminating here even with the gleam of two moonbeams.
Movie Rating:
(A promising premise given a mediocre execution, this two-years dated K-horror will only satisfy the most horror-deprived fan)
Review by Gabriel Chong
Genre: Thriller/Action
Director: Pang Brothers
Cast: Louis Koo, Sean Lau Ching Wan, Angelica Lee Sinje, Chen Sicheng, Jin Qiaoqiao, Joe Ma, Natalie Tong, Xu Jiaqi, Cheung Siu Fai, Hui Siu Hung, Crystal Lee, Siu Fay
RunTime: 1 hr 45 mins
Rating: PG13 (Some Intense Sequences)
Released By: Shaw
Official Website:
Opening Day: 3 October 2013
Synopsis: On the hottest day in 50 years, in the density packed urban centre, a serious fire incident happened to a busy commercial tower because of an unexpected phenomenon known as “flashover”. As the fire burned their conscience to the ground, those who lacked passion in their life were about to meet a gaggle of firefighters with an indestructible enthusiasm to save lives.
Movie Review:
Following the example of the Koreans, Hong Kong’s sibling director duo Oxide and Danny Pang set a skyscraper on fire for their sophomore stereoscopic movie after 2010’s ‘The Child’s Eye’. While Kim Ji-hoon told his disaster tale ‘The Tower’ from the perspective of the people trapped within the building, the Pangs’ have chosen to emphasise the heroics of the firemen who are prepared to place their lives on the line - in no small measure with the help of the Guangzhou Fire Department, who lent men, trucks and other equipment for the filming of this movie.
It is within that department where the film’s two lead protagonists, Tai Kwan (Lau Ching Wan) and Keung (Louis Koo) find themselves at the beginning. A prologue establishes their disparate personalities - while Tai Kwan emphasises procedure at every turn, Keung doesn’t let that get in the way of plain simple human empathy - and sets them up as estranged siblings four years after Keung fails Tai Kwan's own training exercise. Reprimanded for not following the book and in turn jeopardising the safety of his men, Keung has since resigned from the service to set up his own company in the lucrative business of fire security.
As narrative clichés would have it, Keung would open his office in the same spanking new building as Tai Kwan’s wife Si Lok’s (Angelica Lee) gynaecologist, and that fateful day sees Keung launch his official opening just as Si Lok pays her doctor a visit. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that by the end of the calamity, both brothers would have reconciled their differences; ditto for Tai Kwan and Si Lok’s marital tension, that stems from the former paying too much attention to his work and too little attention on her.
Although the sibling rivalry takes centrestage, other supporting characters also get to resolve their outstanding issues amid the burning flames - a couple (Johnnie To regular Eddie Cheung plays the husband) whose negligence gets them separated from their young daughter (Crystal Lee from ‘Unbeatable’) has to find their way back to her; Si Lok’s gynaecologist (Mainland actor Chen Sicheng) gets his shot at redemption after he chose to ignore said young girl’s pleas for help while trying to save himself; and a pair of opportunistic diamond cutters have to choose to rise above their greed if they are to make it out alive. Yet even if these read like compelling stories, the script (credited to the late Szeto Kam-yuen, as well as Nicholl Tang, Danny Pang, Oxide Pang and Ng Mang-cheung) is no better than soggy melodrama, little of which rings true despite the pedigree of actors assembled.
Once again proving that the Pangs are better visual artists than storytellers, their latest is all about spectacle built on some tight action sequences neatly choreographed by Hong Kong vet Dion Lam. From climbing up a single floor on just a window ledge to balancing on the arm of a construction crane to jumping more than 10 stories down into a flooded elevator shaft, Lau Ching Wan and Louis Koo gamely give their physical best to a movie which arguably asks for little more. Indeed, it is in these sequences where the Pangs’ gift for wringing fear, tension, suspense and dread out of their audiences is at its best, no doubt honed from their years of experience in the horror genre.
The Pangs also use stereoscopy to their advantage, the additional dimension here not only accentuating the vertiginous thrills but also adding depth to the scale of the blazing inferno. More so than in ‘The Child’s Eye’, the 3D photography is less a gimmick than a competent technique to draw their audience into the unfolding disaster, complemented in no small measure by the convincing CGI effects which replicate the undulating waves of fire above and below one’s feet. If this is the Pangs’ attempt to show that they can do as good as their Hollywood or even South Korean counterparts, they certainly have accomplished their goal.
And yet such is a distinction the casual viewer will probably not care much about, especially when their entry in a long line of such disaster movies lacks engaging characters or a compelling narrative to count itself among one of the better ones. Yes, Lau’s fans will inevitably compare his role to that in To’s ‘Lifeline’ - in which he had also played a fireman - and lament how on the whole the latter film remains more memorable. After all, the fulfilment one gets out of watching such films comes from celebrating the human spirit for compassion and courage in the midst of chaos - so despite some well-staged gripping moments, a movie that fails to let its viewers experience such visceral release is pretty much trapped in its own flames.
Movie Rating:
(Some gripping life-and-death sequences cannot quite rescue this Pang Brothers’ stereoscopic movie from its own flames of one-note characters and dull storytelling)
Review by Gabriel Chong
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LAU KAR LEUNG (刘家良) (1934 - 2013)Posted on 25 Jun 2013 |
Genre: Thriller/Drama
Director: Ridley Scott
Cast: Michael Fassbender, Penélope Cruz, Cameron Diaz, Javier Bardem, Brad Pitt, Dean Norris, John Leguizamo, Natalie Dormer
RunTime: 1 hr 58 mins
Rating: M18 (Sexual Scene, Violence and Coarse Language)
Released By: 20th Century Fox
Official Website:
Opening Day: 28 November 2013
Synopsis: Legendary filmmaker Ridley Scott and Pulitzer Prize winning author Cormac McCarthy (No Country for Old Men) have joined forces in the motion picture thriller THE COUNSELOR, starring Michael Fassbender, Javier Bardem, Brad Pitt, Penélope Cruz, and Cameron Diaz. McCarthy, making his screenwriting debut and Scott interweave the author’s characteristic wit and dark humor with a nightmarish scenario, in which a respected lawyer’s dalliance with an illegal business deal spirals out of control.
Movie Review:
Cormac McCarthy’s ‘No Country for Old Men’ may have made a gripping Coen brothers crime thriller, but his first produced screenplay after earning the love of Hollywood from subsequent adaptations like ‘The Road’ and ‘All the Pretty Horses’ proves that it is one thing to be a writer and quite another to be a screenwriter. Indeed, the characters in his self-penned ‘The Counselor’ not only talk a lot (and we might add, too much), they also do so with such pretentiousness that it’s hard to imagine any of them actually inhabiting more than a McCarthy novel.
The titular character remains unnamed throughout the film, but Michael Fassbender plays him as a respectable American lawyer who is tempted by his financial circumstance to enter into some illegal business involving a Mexican cocaine cartel. The overwritten script brings in a whole lot of other characters with shady motivations – there’s Javier Bardem’s Reiner, a business partner of the counsellor who is instrumental in hooking him up with the wrong people; Reiner’s girlfriend Malkina (Cameron Diaz) who turns out even more conniving and malevolent than Reiner himself; and last but not least, Westray (Brad Pitt), a shadowy figure whose involvement remains obtuse throughout the movie.
McCarthy’s idea of building character relationships is to get them to engage in lengthy conversations and wax philosophically about his signature themes of greed, death, choices and consequences. The eloquence however rings phony and hollow, sounding exactly as if a writer typed them – though admittedly if listening to lines like “truth has no temperature” from Diaz when she is accused of being “cold” gets you tingling, then you will be in for a treat. Otherwise, the dialogue is affected as can be, not least because there are at least two lengthy expositions on morality, mortality, regret and even Heavenly redemption.
In the midst of all that capital W writing, the venerable Ridley Scott seems genuinely lost and befuddled. There is hardly any visual momentum to the scenes when all the characters are doing are primarily talking, and because the manner in which they talk makes it seem as if they could go on and on, the transitions in between scenes feel awkward and unwieldy. In between, Scott prettifies the images to show off his character’s lavish lifestyles, which his ‘Prometheus’ cinematographer Dariusz Wolski ensures are a sight to behold. But when he does get a break from the prose, Scott indulges the borderland noir with casual violence, staging not one but two bloody beheadings that we warn you are pretty graphic.
Speaking of beheadings, you probably won’t care much for one of them, but the other, set in a busy street in the heart of London, will probably take you by surprise – not just for how bloody it is, but also why that said actor would agree to such a sequence. But we suspect, most of the actors probably signed on because of the pedigree, and then realised how lacking in clarity and plausibility the script was. Still, they make the best of what they have, though in different ways. Fassbender tries hard to convince, but his earnest intentions are somewhat undermined by the sheer cartoonish nature of Bardem’s over-the-top getup as well as Diaz’s similarly overdone femme fatale.
And so despite a script by a Pulitzer prize winner, a terrific ensemble cast and Ridley Scott at the helm, ‘The Counselor’ is a frustrating example of under fulfilled potential. One sort of guesses what McCarthy intended with this screenplay, but his own indulgence and lack of familiarity with the language of film just makes this a writer’s exercise and nothing more. It isn’t Scott nor the cast’s fault that the movie unfolds with a distinct lack of drama, urgency or purpose. Like we said at the beginning, it’s one thing to be a good writer and quite another to be a good screenwriter. McCarthy clearly isn’t yet a jack of both trades.
Movie Rating:
(An artificial exercise in phony eloquence, this crime thriller suffers from the weight of novelist Cormac McCarthy’s own expository indulgences)
Review by Gabriel Chong
Genre: Drama/Thriller
Director: Brad Furman
Cast: Ben Affleck, Justin Timberlake, Gemma Arterton, Anthony Mackie, David Costabile
RunTime: 1 hr 32 mins
Rating: M18 (Coarse Language and Some Sexual Scenes)
Released By: 20th Century Fox
Official Website: http://www.runnerrunnermovie.com/index.html
Opening Day: 26 September 2013
Synopsis: Richie (Justin Timberlake), a Princeton college student who pays for school with online gambling, bottoms out and travels to Costa Rica to confront the mastermind, Ivan (Ben Affleck), whom he believes has swindled him. Ivan sees a kindred spirit in Richie and brings the younger man into his operation. When Richie comes to fully understand the deviousness of his new boss, he tries to turn the tables on him. .
Movie Review:
Ben Affleck has made three great films in the last few years, all of them starring and directed by the man himself. It’s rather puzzling therefore - after ‘Gone Baby Gone’, ‘The Town’ and ‘Argo’ - what Affleck saw in Brian Koppelman and David Levien’s script or in director Brad Furman to commit to star in this by-the-numbers thriller that arguably adds little to the cred he’s built up so far. Indeed, it’s an odd choice for a multi-hyphenate at a critical turning point in his career when pretty much everyone in Tinseltown was prepared to cast him as a has-been.
In spite of this, Affleck and his co-star Justin Timberlake are about the best things that ‘Runner Runner’ has going for it. The title here refers to a card that either completes a hand or significantly improves one, which is what Affleck’s gambling magnate Ivan Block sees in Timberlake’s Princeton maths whizz Richie Furst at least at the start. But really, fancy titles aside, this is no more than yet another cautionary tale about a young, ambitious up-and-comer who gets way over his head when he is lured into a world of crime and corruption by a smooth-talking, charismatic criminal.
Set against the backdrop of the online poker industry, Furman tries to spin a sleek fast-paced number using the sun-drenched locations in Puerto Rico to stand in for Costa Rica. Just as Block lures Furst into his world of riches, the director best known for his work on the Matthew McConaughey thriller ‘The Lincoln Lawyer’ stuffs the screen with lavish digs, fancy cars, cool boats, private jets and stylish beach parties in the hopes of pulling a fast shimmery one on his audience. To his credit, all that glamour does succeed to mask the movie’s flaws during its brisk setup.
And yet as soon as Furst’s giddy ascent into the shady world of Block’s business is complete, what ensues is pretty much a downhill journey. There’s absolutely no surprise that an overachieving FBI agent (Anthony Mackie) will turn up to enlist Furst in order to take down Block, or for that matter the fact that said agent is willing to risk even Furst’s life in the process. Neither is it any less predictable that Furst will fall in love with Block’s right-hand woman Rebecca (Gemma Arterton), further aggravating the animosity between mentor and protégé.
But perhaps the most disappointing aspect of the plot lies in how simplistic Furst’s plan to demolish Block’s criminal empire turns out to be, an utterly predictable chain of events that only serves to cast aspersions on Block’s own intelligence in the first place. Just like ‘Lawyer’, Furman employs a whole lot of snazzy camera techniques to distract his viewer from the plot failings, but even the casual viewer is likely to find the denouement underwhelming. In fact, the same can be said of the entire slicked up movie, which quickly runs out of any smart moves once you see through its bluff.
That is, even as Timberlake tries his darnest to inject the same kind of smarminess of ‘The Social Network’ into his character. The boyishly charming actor exudes enough wide-eyed naivety at the start to convincingly gear-shift into desperation as things go awry, but it is a clichéd role that does him no favours. On the other hand, Affleck underplays his character’s villainy, and though some may find his performance too nonchalant, it is nicely calibrated to surprise when he reveals a dastardly evil hand.
Yet this is a movie that hardly deserves such subtleties, since just about everything is ostentatious to a fault. To Furman’s credit, he does what he can with a tepid script to draw in and retain his audience’s attention, but there is so much he, or for that matter his stars Timberlake and Affleck, can accomplish. So entirely forgettable it almost ceases to matter, ‘Runner Runner’ is ultimately a ‘Loser Loser’.
Movie Rating:
(A slick, glossed up look can’t quite disguise the fact that this is an entirely derivative, by-the-numbers thriller)
Review by Gabriel Chong
SYNOPSIS: Ever since Adam and Eden fell in love as teens, their bond has faced astronomical odds. The pair are separated not just by social class and a political system bent on keeping them apart but also by a freak planetary condition: they live on twinned worlds with gravities that pull in opposite directions - he on the poverty-stricken planet below, she on the wealthy, exploitative world above. Their budding but illicit romance screeches to a tragic stricken halt when Eden suffers a fatal fall. But when ten years later, Adarm learns she is alive, he sets out on a dangerous quest to the upper world to reconnect with her. Upside Down is a visually stunning romantic adventure that asks the question: what if love was stronger than gravity?
MOVIE REVIEW:
One of the perquisites of watching Upside Down are you need to possess at least a physics degree of sorts to fully grasp what Adam (Jim Sturgess) is talking about in his voice-over right from the start. But then again, it’s just a simple Romeo & Juliet love story contained in a stunning world created by Argentine film director Juan Solanas.
Adam and Eden (Kristen Dunst) are two lovers separated by a twinned world that pulls in opposite direction. Adam lives in the Down world where poverty is common while Eden belongs to the Up world, a wealthy economic vibrant society called TransCity. Controlled by a mega corporation called TransWorld, the people from both worlds are forbidden to get in contact with one another. Learning that his childhood lover is still alive after a fatal incident, Adam got a job with TransWorld hoping to once get in touch with Eden. Constrained by the planetary conditions and class system, will the two lovers reunite again?
As a sci-fi epic story, Upside Down fails in a lot of ways to convince despite the mind-blowing concept of a twinned world and to the extent of establishing three rules. One: all matter is pulled by the gravity from its native world. Two: weight may be offset with matter from the other world. Three: matter in contact with inverse matter burns. As the story progresses, the grand concept is watered down to a series of chase and maniacal attempts by Adam to snag a date with Eden. Did I mention Eden is alive but suffered from amnesia. Adam on the other hand is still constrained by the pull of gravity and his outrageous ways of overcoming this is ultimately silly and unbelievable. Take for example, his amazing ability to survive a gigantic fall into an ocean.
Yet even with the narrative pitfalls, Juan Solanas is a genius when it comes to the visual. The digital effects are stunning in creating the Up world and Down world. There are many shots of people standing and sitting from both worlds mostly in the corporate setting in TransWorld or Adam running across the ceiling, an upside-down cocktail and lots more. It’s hard to differentiate the physical and visual effects that are used to manipulate the concept but it’s definitely a cool thing to pull off.
Jim Sturgess (One Day, Across The Universe) always playing the sentimental, romantic hero is largely a treat to female audiences with his pair of puppy eyes and the once prolific starlet, Kristen Dunst (Spider-Man) has no problem sinking back into a likeable romantic character after the far serious Lars von Trier's Melancholia. British veteran actor Timothy Spall (from the Harry Potter series) livens up the often angsty mood as Bob, Adam’s Up world’s co-worker at TransWorld.
There’s never a serious moment to dissect the social deviance of both worlds though it started out very cleverly. At the end of it, you can even forget about all the sci-fi mumbo-jumbo in Upside Down. Still it remain a spectacular visual feat by Solanas and for that, it deserves a minimum single viewing.
SPECIAL FEATURES:
NIL
AUDIO/VISUAL:
Obviously containing lots of CG work and plenty of blues, grays for the colour palette, the visual on the whole is sharp and images are detailed. The Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack provides an immersive listening experience. The music score is soothing, a few gunshots trembled across the soundstage and ambient effects are great as well.
MOVIE RATING:
DVD RATING :
Review by Linus Tee
Genre: Action/Thriller
Director: Mark Steven Johnson
Cast: Robert De Niro, John Travolta, Milo Ventimiglia, Elizabeth Olin
RunTime: 1 hr 30 mins
Rating: NC-16 (Some Violence and Coarse Language)
Released By: Cathay-Keris Films & InnoForm Media
Official Website: https://www.facebook.com/killingseasonmovie
Opening Day: 15 August 2013
Synopsis: Sharing the screen for the first time in motion picture history, Academy Award® winner Robert De Niro and two-time Oscar® nominee John Travolta star in KILLING SEASON. Deep in the Appalachian mountains, a reclusive American military veteran (Robert De Niro) and a European tourist (John Travolta) strike up an unlikely friendship. But when the tourist's true intentions come to light, what follows is a tense battle across some of America’s most forbidding landscape proving the old adage: the purest form of war is one-on-one.
Movie Review:
‘Killing Season’ marks the first time that Robert De Niro and John Travolta are sharing the screen, and especially for those born in the baby-boomer generation for whom either actor are icons, that matchup might be reason alone to catch this thriller. Yet it is precisely because of such anticipation that we urge you to stay far away from this one, for not only is the film one of the biggest missed opportunities, it is also a reprehensibly bad film in itself, and nothing but an utter embarrassment to both of the veterans’ acting careers.
Essentially a mano-a-mano setup in the Appalachian mountains, De Niro plays a United States military veteran who is paid an unexpected visit by Travolta’s bitter Serbian soldier eighteen years after the end of the Bosnian war. The latter was shot in the back and left for dead by the former back then, and has waited this long to track down his executioner to settle the grudge. As we find out later, Travolta isn’t simply out to kill De Niro; rather, he’s found God in the years since, and wants his slaughterer to make a true and honest confession.
Yes, God is referenced from time to time throughout their cat-and-mouse game, and then invoked repeatedly with the weight of a sledgehammer in the anti-climactic ending which unfolds too conveniently in an abandoned church right smack in the middle of the forest. There’s no such thing as subtlety here - not even with its arthouse pretensions - and indeed, it’s plainly obvious that the religious references are no more than a cheap narrative device to drag out a thinly plotted script.
What’s more maddening is how it is used to justify the gory interludes in between the hunt - and we might as well warn you that it does get pretty graphic. When Travolta first catches up with De Niro after shooting an arrow through his right calf, he forces the latter to thead a steel rod through and then proceeds to string him upside down. And then as payback, De Niro shoots an arrow that pierces through both of Travolta’s cheeks and pins him to a cabin door - not to mention waterboarding him after with heavily salted lemonade.
The torture is gratuitous to say the least, and thoroughly vexing when executed in the name of guilt, redemption and other philosophising about God. It would have been much more gratifying if writer Evan Daugherty had simply settled for a straightforward action movie between two equally matched foes pitted against each other by circumstance - and yet even on that count, there is little remotely intelligent about the chase that ensues, which ultimately descends into a catch-and-release repetition that is just tedious.
One can see that boredom written on De Niro’s face, who looks miserable and tired most of the time; especially in recent years, the respectable actor has taken on a number of questionable projects that seem only in the service of a paycheck, and this is unequivocally one of those. Well, at least Travolta seems to get a kick out of an over-the-top performance complete with a shaved head and a bizarre Eastern European accent - but though it’s a darker role than his usual, he’s played bad much better before in Tony Scott’s ‘Taking of Pelham 123’.
It remains a mystery therefore why two actors of such calibre would sign on for such a dreadful movie, so lacking in any suspense or excitement no thanks in part too by Mark Steven Johnson’s workmanlike direction. What it does manage to hit on the mark are the reputations of De Niro and Travolta, more so given how heavily the movie is marketed on their marquee names. And so consider this a well-intentioned advice for both of their fans - stay away from this stinker, or risk having your love for either one killed by this terrible misfire.
Movie Rating:
(Less an iconic matchup of two acting veterans than a potential career-killing misfire, you’d be advised to stay away from this suspense-free action thriller that trades in pretentious philosophising and torture porn)
Review by Gabriel Chong
Genre: Action/Thriller
Director: Mikael Håfström
Cast: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sylvester Stallone, Jim Caviezel, Curtis "50 Cent" Jackson, Vinnie Jones, Vincent D'Onofrio, Amy Ryan
RunTime: 1 hr 56 mins
Rating: NC16 (Coarse Language and Some Violence)
Released By: Shaw
Official Website: http://escapeplanmovie.com/
Opening Day: 24 October 2013
Synopsis: One of the world's foremost authorities on structural security agrees to take on one last job: breaking out of an ultra-secret, high-tech facility called "The Tomb.” Deceived and wrongly imprisoned, Ray Breslin (Sylvester Stallone) must recruit fellow inmate Emil Rottmayer (Arnold Schwarzenegger) to help devise a daring, nearly impossible plan to escape from the most protected and fortified prison ever built. ESCAPE PLAN is the first pairing of action legends Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger in leading roles, and co-stars Jim Caviezel, Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson, Vinnie Jones, Vincent D’Onofrio and Amy Ryan.
Movie Review:
Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger honestly deserve much better than we give them credit for these days. I mean how many of us can imagine ourselves at the age of 66 (that’s Stallone) or 67 (that’s Schwarzenegger) doing the kind of stuff that they are in their current movies? But no, it seems that all we want to see them do these days is poke fun at their old and aging selves - which admittedly accounts for much of the meta-humour in ‘The Expendables’ and ‘The Expendables 2’.
Incidentally, that Stallone brainchild was the first time the two Hollywood icons first teamed up on a movie together - well, to be more accurate, Stallone was the lead and Schwarzenegger was the special guest star who popped up now and then. As surprising as that may sound, ‘Escape Plan’ marks the first movie that gives both Sly and Arnold equal billing - and what do you know, as unlikely as that may sound, this straightforward actioner is actually a surprisingly enjoyable B-movie diversion that offers exactly the kind of thrills their best movies were known for.
The premise is straightforward on the surface. Sly plays the world’s greatest prison break expert Ray Breslin, who in the extended opening, is seen exposing the flaws in a maximum-security penitentiary using wadded-up paper and a milk carton’s wax lining. Fresh off that mission, Ray is offered a job by the CIA to test a state-of-the-art prison holding some of the world’s worst. Despite reservations from his associates (Amy Ryan and Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson), he agrees to take on the lucrative job and is promptly whisked away to that top-secret place.
It’s a facility like nothing he’s ever seen before. The cells are essentially glass compartments in a huge chamber. The lights are on 24/7. The guards don black Guy Fawkes masks. The isolation cells are blasted in bright light to keep the isolated warm and virtually blinded. Worst of all, the people that sent him there in the first place apparently intend to keep him there. That’s where Arnold comes in, playing a fellow inmate named Emil Rottmayer who forms an unlikely partnership with Sly to break out of their confines.
Easier said than done of course, and director Mikael Hafstrom engineers a couple of thrilling sequences that has Sly putting in place the various parts of his elaborate plan - including a standout one where he finally discovers the location of the underground dungeon. Even more impressive is the twisty script from Miles Chapman (who is also credited for the story) and Arnell Jesko, which offers up a fair amount of intrigue around Rottmayer’s identity - particularly as the well-attired, soft-spoken sadist Warden Hobbs (Jim Caviezel, TV’s ‘Person of Interest’) takes an especially keen interest to a certain contact he used to be in touch with before his incarceration.
Fans of Sly and Arnie looking for more familiar elements however won’t be disappointed. The stars swap plenty of amusing one-liners - including one of our favourites uttered by Arnold to Sly, “You hit like a vegetarian”. The fisticuffs come at a brisk enough frequency and are also often brutal enough to satisfy more hardcore action fanatics. And most importantly, it does end with a sufficiently over-the-top climax that has plenty of Sly and Arnie posturing much like the films they made in their heydays. Yes, it plays very much like an Sly and/or Arnie movie from the past, just with a few more narrative twists and turns.
Clearly relishing the opportunity to return to their unapologetic days of being an action star, Sly and Arnie seem pleasantly energised by the material. While he still puts on a trademark scowl, Sly is more expressive than his usual tough-guy routine, in no small measure also due to Arnie. Indeed, Arnie carries his role with a mischievous twinkle in his eye, at his jovial and jocular best especially in a key moment where he finally gets to cut loose in his native German, spewing a long rant that is so absurdly funny. Together though Sly and Arnie share a delightful rapport trading barbs and blows - the former especially in one brief sequence where they are sitting together devising nicknames for the masked guards.
As far as Stallone or Schwarzenegger movies go, ‘Escape Plan’ more than hits the mark as an entertaining old-school action movie that trades on brute force entertainment values. Rather than take the easy way out by relying on nostalgic appeal, here is a movie that is confident of standing on its own two feet and comfortable at winking at its audience at the same time. Yes, there is something positively spine-tingling watching Arnie fire off a huge-ass machine gun at his opponents, but that is exactly the sort of guilty pleasure which a movie like this promises - and delivers.
Movie Rating:
(Like the old-school thrillers from the past, this match-up made in Hollywood action movie heaven sees Sly and Arnie at their most unapolegetically - and effortlessly - entertaining)
Review by Gabriel Chong
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MR. GO Making Of SpecialPosted on 16 Jul 2013 |
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