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Bride Wars Set for Chinese Valentine's Day ReleasePosted on 08 Apr 2015 |
SYNOPSIS: Katniss Everdeen, girl on fire has survived. She awakens from the cruel and haunting Quarter Quell deep inside the bunkered catacombs of District 13. Separated from some of her closest allies and fearing for their safety in the Capitol, Katniss finally agrees to be the Mockingly, the symbolic leader of the rebellion. Still uncertain as to whom she can trust, Katniss must help 13 rise from the shadows, all the while knowing that President Snow has focused his hatred into a personal vendetta against her - and her loved ones.
MOVIE REVIEW:
At this juncture, you probably have watched the entire series sans the last part of course. Else I doubt you will be keen on a movie that requires heavy knowledge of the earlier two instalments.
The ordeal of Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence) continues as our leading lady has been turned into a pawn/PR spokeswoman under the hands of President Alma Coin (Julianne Moore) of District 13. Her BFF, Peeta (Josh Hutcherson) remains in custody under President Snow (Donald Sutherland) in the Capitol. At the same time, the ruthless Snow is hell bent on destroying anyone who is associated with Everdeen.
The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1 is apparently more character-driven as compared to The Hunger Games and Catching Fire. Honestly speaking, it certainly has no fanciful games, no ruthless competition between tributes whatsoever. What it has is the movie’s strong lead, Jennifer Lawrence as the PTSD suffering Katniss. Unlike the strong, decisive old Katniss Everdeen who sacrificed for her younger sister's well-being. The present Katniss spent the almost two hours duration stricken with guilt, worries and being one heck of an emo monster. Nevertheless it’s a good opportunity for Lawrence to showcase her undeniable solid acting but the audience on the other hand needs to exercise more tolerance.
As this is a bridge leading to the grand finale (or as some put it, a money grab tactic by Lionsgate to prolong the lucrative franchise), the script by Danny Strong and Peter Craig lacks the tension of its predecessors with occasional long stretches of silence and awkward close-ups even though you can’t deny the underlying themes of oppression and power struggle delves deeper and darker.
Technicalities wise, director Francis Lawrence delivers a handsomely made episode despite a breakneck pace of shooting two movies back-to-back. The combination of CG and physical effects are flawless, the sets and costumes incredibly well-done and the music score by James Newton Howard soars to greater heights with a hauntingly beautiful rendition of “The Hanging Tree” by Lawrence.
Much has been speculated of the late Philip Seymour Hoffman’s last appearance on the big screen. Indeed, his role as Plutarch Heavensbee, Coin’s adviser in the District is given slightly more screentime whether it’s intentional or not and he never disappoints as usual. The rest of the original cast members, Liam Hemsworth, Woody Harrelson, Elizabeth Banks, Stanley Tucci, Donald Sutherland returns with many other newcomers though many are relegated to fleeting appearances.
It’s not entirely fair to call The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1 a teaser or cliffhanger. It’s merely a grim buildup to the finale and also underlining the fact that Jennifer Lawrence remains a force to be reckoned with.
SPECIAL FEATURES:
Running at nearly two hours, the making of Mockingjay Part 1 is a generously packed documentary that consists of eight chapters.
Hope & Rebellion: Continuing the Saga goes into details, the tone and story of the franchise.
Designing Distopia: Visual Aesthetic discuss about the creation of gigantic sets.
The various cast members (with the exception of the late Hoffman) talks about the movie in Rebels & Warriors: The Cast
Fusing Form & Function: Costume, Make-Up & Hair takes viewers on a journey of how some of the characters; hair and costume is created.
The shooting took place from Atlanta to Germany to Paris in Fighting the System: Shooting on Location.
Not all the stunts are CG including the propelling scene in the climax. District 13: Rebellion Tactics: Stunts and Special Effects takes us behind-the-scenes of how they shot the sequences.
The sound mix, CG effects and the score are discussed in Perfecting Panem: The Post-Production Process.
Taking Back Our Future: Reflections & Looking Forward delves mainly on the ending of Part 1.
AUDIO/VISUAL:
A missing Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack marred this otherwise sharp and fine looking movie.
MOVIE RATING:
DVD RATING :
Review by Linus Tee
SYNOPSIS: The thirty-eight year old ambitious and workaholic editor of the fashion magazine Rebelle Alice Lantins returns from Brazil to Paris and loses her flash memory in the airplane. However the student of architecture Balthazar Apfel finds it and calls Alice to tell her. She schedules a meeting in the bar where Balthazar is drinking with his friends but he tells her the device is at home. He offers a ride in his scooter to Alice and while he is putting on a spare helmet on her, two coworkers of Alice see from an angle that make them believe that Balthazar is kissing Alice. They take a photo and posts it in the Twitter. On the next morning, everybody is laughing at Alice but the chief editor and her boss Vincent Khan loves the idea that Alice is dating someone twenty years younger. Alice decides to impersonate that she is in love with Balthazar to get a promotion in the magazine. But soon, she learns that she should not trifle with love.
MOVIE REVIEW:
Alice Lantins (Virginie Efira), near 40 with a kid in tow is a workaholic fashion magazine editor aiming for a promotion. But her immediate boss, Vincent finds her too uptight and she needs to find the rebel in her to qualify for the higher post.
However when a young architectural student, Balthazar (Pierre Niney) accidentally picked up her USB drive, Alice suddenly finds herself a popular figure in the office especially Vincent who has a changed opinion of her. Cougar or not, Alice slowly finds herself falling in love with a guy twenty years her junior.
It Boy is a light, frothy rom-com that will generally please everyone who loves the genre. Just to make it clear, French rom-coms are not really consider to be arthouse material. And this one is no exception as it belongs to one of those typical boy-meets-girl affairs with a slight twist. It’s no longer about two individuals with different characteristics falling in love; it’s about a boy-eater seeking its prey.
Directed and co-written by David Moreau (who helmed the remake of The Eye), the flick is filled with numerous interesting characters, clever dialogue and some tickling scenes. For example, Alice’s meddling sister attempt at matchmaking her with a gynecologist ended disastrously while Balthazar’s womanizing father’s advice to his boy isn’t exactly noteworthy. It’s so wonderfully paced save for an ending that seems awkwardly tack on.
Virginie Efira and Pierre Niney are incredible as the two lovers. Efira looks like the French version of Kate Hudson and to be honest, she is too gorgeous to be playing a cougar. Pierre Niney easily wins the heart of the audience with his soulful eyes and playful appearance. It Boy might not delve deep into the morality of having a younger partner but it remains a commercially appealing romantic comedy. I’m not surprise if Hollywood picks this one up for Hudson or Reese Witherspoon in the near future.
SPECIAL FEATURES:
NIL
AUDIO/VISUAL:
The DVD comes with serviceable visual output and decent audio track.
MOVIE RATING:
DVD RATING :
Review by Linus Tee
Because it is only every self respecting artiste’s dream to lend his or her voice to an animation feature, “ella ella ella” Rihanna has done her part for this work based on the 2007 children book The True Meaning of Smekday. Not only does the 27 year old voice the protagonist teenage girl in the movie, this soundtrack is headlined by the Barbadian singer.
This is a concept album which contains only eight tracks, running at a total of 31 minutes. Kicking off the CD is Rihanna’s “Towards the Sun”, an inspirational pop ballad backed up with grand chorals, easily making it the most likeable cue on the album. Teenagers would have no problems putting the next two tracks on their playlists – Clarence Coffee Jr’s (from the song writing team The Monsters and the Strangerz) “Run to Me” and Canadian musician Kiesza “Cannonball”. Both tracks are infused with healthy energy and infectious tunes.
Elsewhere, you can get into the party mood with English singer and songwriter Charli XCX’s “Red Balloon” (you’ll find yourself tapping your feet to the upbeat rhythm) and British DJ Jacob Plant’s “Drop That” (the perfect tune to a human train and chug chug chug around the party floor).
Rihanna also performs two other songs – the emotional “As Real as You and Me” and the bopping “Dancing in the Dark”. Both tracks are easy to like and should go down easily with the pickiest listener.
Closing the album is “shake your booty” Jennifer Lopez’s (who voices Rihanna’s mother in the movie) “Feel the Light”, an aptly moving song to bring out the family theme of the animated feature. The heartfelt tune with R & B influence is a fitting concluding track to this soundtrack headlined by the two female artistes appealing to different (predominantly male, probably) listeners from two different generations.
ALBUM RATING:
Recommended Track: (1) Towards the Sun
Review by John Li
Genre: Action/Thriller
Director: Soi Cheang
Cast: Tony Jaa, Louis Koo, Wu Jing, Simon Yam, Zhang Jin, Philip Keung, Ken Lo
Runtime: 2 hrs
Rating: NC-16 (Violence and Drug Use)
Released By: Shaw
Official Website:
Opening Day: 2 July 2015
Synopsis: A tough Hong Kong cop Kit busts a major gangster only to find his cover blown and his main witness gone. The gangster in retaliation has him kidnapped and put in a Thai jail with a false criminal identity. A lowly prison guard Chai with extraordinary fighting skills guards Kit and prevents his escape from prison. The prison guard’s daughter suffers from a rare form of leukaemia and Kit is the only donor who can save her. The prison guard discovers Kit’s real identity and helps him to escape in return for his agreeing to save his daughter. Together Kit and Chai must face the gangster and his minions and take them down.
Movie Review:
It has taken slightly more than a decade for someone to pull off an ‘SPL’ sequel, but not for a lack of trying. Dennis S.Y. Law came the closest in 2008 with ‘Fatal Move’ that reunited three of the original’s key players – Sammo Hung, Simon Yam and Wu Jing - before deciding it was better off as a standalone movie; and for those who have seen that middling excuse of a triad flick, you’ll understand just why we are relieved he didn’t get to sully the brand name. But hey, it isn’t quite so straightforward to make a sequel to a movie which had the balls to kill off each one of its three main characters played by Donnie Yen, Hung and Yam, and this long-awaited sequel is even more gratifying because it is in many ways as good as, if not better, than the original.
Rather than be tied down by the events of the first movie, incoming writers Jill Leung Lai-yin and Wong Ying have gone for a completely new narrative that honours the themes in the original. Yes, for the uninitiated, ‘SPL’ stands for the names of the three stars in Chinese astrology that signify destruction, conflict and greed, and just as these elements drove the characters in the first movie to their fateful end, so too do they propel the destinies of the main characters here – Kit (Wu Jing), a drug-addicted Hong Kong undercover cop in an organ trafficking syndicate who finds himself in a Thai prison after his cover is blown; Wah (Yam), his uncle and handler also assigned to the same case; and Chai (Tony Jaa), a guard at the prison Kit is locked up in whose daughter Sa is suffering from leukaemia and needs a bone marrow transplant soon.
As it turns out, the potential donor which the hospital has identified for Chai’s daughter happens to be Kit, though both will remain unaware of that stroke of fate until much later. It is a somewhat implausible coincidence no doubt, one that we would readily scoff at in any other movie, but which you’ll have to accept as being central to ‘SPL 2’s’ very premise. The other intertwining thread of events has to do with Hung (Louis Koo), the ailing leader of the aforementioned syndicate which he runs with the corrupt prison warden Ko (Max Zhang) at the penitentiary Kit has been sent into. Hung himself is in need of a life-saving heart transplant, although because of his rare Bombay blood type, his only hope lies in his younger brother Bill (Jun Hung), whom he resorts to kidnapping when the latter refuses to donate his very organ.
Whereas the emphasis was very much on Yen’s action and action choreography previously, this sequel pays a lot more attention to both character and storytelling. Indeed, each one of the many characters is distinctly defined by their proclivity to preserve their own life and/or that of a loved one, while being forced to confront how far they are willing to go to compromise their own sense of morality, justice or duty. In particular, Jaa gets his meatiest role yet playing a father who is forced to choose between a human cure for his daughter’s blood ailment in exchange for his silence on the illegal skin trade happening right under his watch, and the actor gives probably his most nuanced performance to date. Also noteworthy is Koo’s villainous turn, whose character justifying his selfish deed by the countless other lives he has saved before.
It is to Cheang’s credit that the various narrative threads never get confusing, especially so at the start when he jumps back and forth to explain how Kit landed in prison. Though it may seem like a gimmick, the non-linear manner in which Cheang introduces us to his disparate characters eventually makes for a surprisingly compelling plot for a film of its genre, which often treats the latter as no more than filler in between the crowd-pleasing action sequences. Not that Cheang neglects the latter though – it is for its hard-hitting action that its predecessor was known for, and with action director Li Chung-Chi, this sequel honours that spirit with some truly exhilarating fights of its own.
Because Wu Jing, Zhang Jin and Tony Jaa are martial artists in their own right, there is no need for that sort of distracting camerawork that Hollywood action movies seem to be very fond of in recent years. Yes, Kenny Tse’s cinematography is clean, simple and crisp, conveying the balletic moves of the stars who are front and centre in each and every one of the sequences. Li choreographs the poetic mayhem with flair, which consists of impressive set-pieces, such as a shootout at Hong Kong’s new cruise terminal following a sting operation and no less than a full-scale prison riot filmed in one single unbroken tracking shot, as well as intimate mano-a-mano fights between the principal characters.
The best is saved for last, as Kit and Chai make their last stand against Ko and his henchmen in the penthouse of the Lotus Medical Centre in Thailand. The scenes towards the end where Kit and Chai tag-team to take down Ko are especially exhilarating, and most certainly match up to the sheer thrill of watching Donnie Yen and Wu Jing go at each other in a narrow alleyway in the first movie. Yes, those wondering if this sequel lives up to the action orgasm of its predecessor need not worry; the combination of Tony Jaa, Wu Jing and Zhang Jin makes for just a lethal concoction of bare-knuckle fights and bone-crunching violence.
But more than just a pastiche of well-staged action sequences stitched together, this sequel is a better film on the whole than the original thanks to an engaging story and some genuinely empathetic characters. Yes, the premise itself guarantees a certain degree of narrative contrivance, but Cheang’s film preserves the no holds barred spirit of its predecessor while delivering a compelling crime/ morality thriller. It’s as good a follow-up as fans will get, and well-worth the decade wait for one of the best action films you’ll see this year.
Movie Rating:
(Never mind that it doesn’t return Donnie Yen and Sammo Hung – this in-name only sequel retains the gritty, no-holds-barred spirit of the original and is a compelling crime thriller with some worthily exhilarating action of its own)
Review by Gabriel Chong
Genre: Comedy
Director: Huck Botko
Cast: Cam Gigandet, Nick Thune, Jamie Chung, Katherine Cunningham
RunTime: 1 hr 28 mins
Rating: M18 (Sexual References and Sexual Scenes)
Released By: Shaw
Official Website:
Opening Day: 11 June 2014
Synopsis: With women practically throwing themselves at him, Rich (Cam Gigandet) can’t control himself. But he continually blames his penis, which seems to have a mind of its own. After ruining yet another promising relationship with Jamie (Jamie Chung) Rich has finally had enough and wishes his penis would just leave him alone. The next morning, Rich wakes up to find his wish has come true and his johnson is no longer on his body. Even worse, Rich is shocked to discover that his penis has taken human form. Selfish, oversexed and irresponsible, his penis is now on the loose with no desire to return. Pitted against his alter ego, Rich must figure out how to reign in his penis, both literally and figuratively, in order to finally learn what separates the men from their boys.
Movie Review:
‘Bad Johnson’ is about a serial womaniser named Rich Johnson (Cam Gigandet) whose addiction to sex jeopardises any chance that he has of a proper relationship with a woman, until he wakes up one day to discover that his appendage has somehow transmogrified into an slacker dude (Nick Thune). If that opening line has got you (err…) hooked, then you might just be the audience that writer Jeff Tetreault and director Huck Botko had in mind with their high-concept sex farce.
Truth be told, there is potentially a lot of promise in this scenario concocted by Tetreault, which gives new meaning to the excuse by many a horn dog that their penis has a “mind of its own”. Unfortunately for Rich, his penis’ mind is but preoccupied with its own pleasure, so after collect-calling Rich to pick it up, the bearded slacker hires an escort service, visits strip clubs, smokes weed, and chalks up astronomical credit card bills, leaving Rich exasperated like a parent who has lost control of his or her teenage kid.
We’re not too convinced that Rich’s horn doggery had everything to do with his penis, and nothing to do with his own sexual desires, but hey if you follow Tetreault’s drift, Rich is the guy we’re supposed to empathise with and his penis the douchebag we’re supposed to despise. To emphasise that, Rich gets to fall in love for real with one of his clients Lindsay (Katherine Cunningham) without the distraction of his anatomical troublemaker, which sets in motion an eventual showdown between Rich and his libido.
It might sound inspired on paper to have a Don Juan confront his own anatomy in human form, but that premise doesn’t play out just as brilliantly no thanks to rather pedestrian execution by both Tetreault and Botko. For a character named Rich, our protagonist is thuddingly shallow – basically, horny when he has a cock and wheedling without one. Rich’s penis turns out to be no more than an obnoxious dick (yes, pun intended) who is boorish, offensive and a plain bully. There is no nuance in their relationship, which remains monotonously antagonistic from start to finish and that simply revolves around who is slave to the other.
As you probably can guess, Tetreault stuffs his script with an endless stream of penis jokes, some of which are supposed to be funny just because they happen in a very literal sense to Rich. Unfortunately, it does get stale very quickly, and there is nothing a trite rom-com finish can do to make it any less limp. The same goes for Botko, who takes an all-too literal reading to Tetreault’s script, and ends up with a film that looks as dull as it probably read on the page. Even the brief sight of Rich’s genital area conspicuously devoid of his penis looks exactly like how you would expect it to, i.e. a Ken Doll.
Like we said at the start, there is ripe promise here for something sharp and funny, but neither Tetreault nor Botko seem to have the ‘balls’ to bring it to fruition. Former ‘Twilight’ heartthrob Cam Gigandet makes the best of an underwritten role, and Thune is sufficiently repugnant, but it isn’t quite enough to sustain a feature-length movie. As it is, we might have chuckled harder if it were a ‘Saturday Night Live’ episode or one part of a larger sketch film, because ‘Bad Johnson’ simply can’t quite keep its comedy hard-on long enough to deliver a satisfactory payoff. You’ll be intrigued all right, but you’ll probably be left disappointed.
Movie Rating:
(A one-note joke that can't quite keep up its mojo, this sex farce fizzles flaccid too quickly)
Review by Gabriel Chong
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SPL 2 BOX OFFICE CROSSES $600K IN SINGAPORE AFTER 11 DAYSPosted on 13 Jul 2015 |
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START OF PRODUCTION FOR STAR WARS: EPISODE VIIIPosted on 16 Feb 2016 |
Genre: Drama
Director: JK Youn
Cast: Hwang Jung-min, Kim Yunjin, Oh Dal-soo, Jeong Jin-yeong, Jang Young-nam, Ra Mi-ran
Runtime: 2 hrs 6 mins
Rating: PG13 (Some Violence)
Released By: Golden Village Pictures
Official Website:
Opening Day: 16 April 2015
Synopsis: In December 1950, Hungnam Port is crowded with refugees of the Korean War. Amid the chaos, 12-year-old Duk-soo sees his fate change in the blink of an eye when his hand slips and he loses track of his youngest sister, of whom he promised to never let go. Leaving behind his father who stayed to search for her, Duk-soo and other family members make their escape to Busan and settle down in its bustling Gukje Market, waiting for the rest of the family to come. Taking responsibility for his aging mother and young siblings, Duk-soo starts working all manner of odd jobs and devotes himself entirely to his family. To earn his little brother’s college tuition, Duk-soo goes to Germany as a coal miner and barely escapes alive. However, it is there that he meets Youngja, a fellow immigrant worker and his first love, who eventually becomes his lifelong companion. After enduring all the hardships in Germany, Duk-soo returns to Busan and begins to pursue his dream of becoming a naval captain; but fate intervenes once again and he is left with no choice but to head to war-torn Vietnam to cover his sister’s wedding expenses. Upon his return, Duk-soo sets out on a final mission in the hopes of finding his father and youngest sister, who went missing in Hungnam over 30 years ago. ODE TO MY FATHER is a powerful generational epic that depicts the fierce and intense era of our fathers’ generation through the lifetime stories of one man.
Movie Review:
Trust the Koreans to bring the words melodrama and blockbuster into the same motion picture. Indeed, JK Youn’s latest film after his record-breaking special effects extravaganza ‘Haeundae’ sees him tell a family drama over sixty years that spans both the Korean War in the 1950s, the Gastarbeiter programme in mid-60s Germany, the Vietnam War in the 1970s as well as many other momentous periods etched in the psyche of his country’s people – and each one of these episodes serves as a ‘blockbuster’ in itself not just in spectacle but emotion. It is no wonder that the film has since gone on to make its own history, becoming the second most-watched film in Korean cinema.
Co-written by Youn and Park Soo-jin, the film opens in the present day with Deok-Su (Hwang Jung-min), his wife Yeong-ja (Kim Yun-jin) and his best friend Dal-goo (Oh Dal-su) who live in the coastal city of Busan, where Deok-su and his family run a small store in the city’s Gukje (International) Market. On a walk with his youngest granddaughter Seo-yeon through the Market, Deok-Su recalls an eventful yet tumultuous life journey that starts in the early 1950s. Then a young boy who was one of the hundreds of refugees fleeing the Korean War, Deok-Su loses grip of his younger sister Mak-sun and is separated from his father, who disembarks to look for Mak-sun, as they try to board the SS Meredith Victory, an American cargo freighter that evacuated 14,000 refugees in Hungnam, North Korea.
Arriving in Busan, Deok-soo is looked after by his father’s eldest sister but is forced to leave school and support the family by working as a shoe shiner. The rest of the movie unfolds as a succession of perils as he strives to support his family as a young man – first, on Dal-gu’s suggestion, he signs up with the inter-government Gastarbeiter scheme and is sent to work in the coal mines of West Germany, where he not only survives a mine disaster but also meets his wife-to-be Yeong-ja who was studying to be a nurse; then, he signs up for a non-military position in Vietnam with Dal-gu, where he narrowly escapes the clutches of the invading Viet Cong in Saigon but helps Dal-gu find a wife (Nguyễn Mai Chi) in a South Vietnamese villager that they help evacuate.
True to the template of a blockbuster, Youn’s film is constructed around a few major setpieces, each one of them deftly executed with both scope and intimacy so we can appreciate the immensity of the historical chapter as well as what it meant for our lead protagonist Deok-su and to a lesser but no less significant extent his family members and Dal-gu. It is therefore no surprise that Youn chooses as his finale the reunion of thousands of families in a live KBS-televised event back in 1983 – including that of Deok-su, who after three decades is finally reunited with his father and sister. Notwithstanding the fact that it is a re-enactment, Youn stages the climax with emotional aplomb; and by that, we mean you better be prepared for plenty of hugs, tears and kisses, perhaps even some of your own in a vicarious way.
Like the best Korean tearjerkers, Youn’s film makes no apologies for being unabashedly sentimental, but there is no denying that it is poignant enough to move you to tears. As with his previous movies, Youn demonstrates a firm grasp of mise-en-scene, so even though his core audience will likely have no difficulty identifying with his protagonist’s struggles, he stages each one of the four major events with startling realism and, by doing so, pulls you into the thick of history. But most like ‘Haeundae’, Youn shows a knack for mining human drama potently, ensuring that his key sequences connect not just on a visual level but also on a deeply emotional one.
The accomplishment certainly isn’t Youn’s alone; in fact, Hwang deserves much praise for doing the heavy lifting as the emotional anchor of the film. It is with his character that we laugh, cry and rejoice with, and Hwang’s performance is sincere, heartfelt and affecting. It is even more impressive that he manages to carry the character from his twenties into his twilight years, and with a roster from gangland drama ‘New World’ to war comedy ‘Battlefield Heroes’ shows yet again why he is one of the most versatile actors in the industry now. It also helps that he has such an effortless chemistry with Oh, the duo’s friendship through the years one of the most endearing relationships in the film.
To fault ‘Ode to my Father’ for being emotionally manipulative is an understatement; that said, this is melodrama at its finest, coupled with some awe-inspiring scenes of spectacle, which is intended through and through for you to weep along with it. But in the midst of that, Youn delivers a compelling feature that taps respectfully into the wounded Korean psyche of the 1950s to the 1990s from key upheavals that now form the very fabric of their society. There is no doubt why it has been so successful at home, and for everyone else, this is a still an epic blockbuster melodrama which resonates with its universal themes of love, reconciliation and survival.
Movie Rating:
(Shamelessly manipulative and yet effectively poignant, this Korean blockbuster melodrama tugs so persuasively at your heartstrings you won’t mind letting the tears go)
Review by Gabriel Chong
Genre: Action/Thriller
Director: Jalmari Helander
Cast: Samuel L. Jackson, Onni Tommila, Felicity Huffman, Victor Garber, Jim Broadbent, Ted Levine, Ray Stevenson, Mehmet Kurtulus
Runtime: 1 hr 31 mins
Rating: PG13 (Some Violence & Brief Coarse Language)
Released By: Golden Village Pictures
Official Website: https://www.facebook.com/BigGameMovie
Opening Day: 7 May 2015
Synopsis: A young teenager (newcomer Onni Tommila) camping in the woods helps rescue the President of the United States (Samuel L. Jackson) when Air Force One is shot down near his campsite.
Movie Review:
An absurd story about a thirteen year old saving the President of United States. Checked. Unbelievable action sequences featuring exploding aircrafts and bulletproof protagonists. Checked. One-dimensional villains who have no shame uttering cheesy dialogue. Checked. Throw Samuel L. Jackson into the mix and congratulations, you have Big Game.
Set in Finland, Big Game begins by introducing the audience to young Oskari (Onni Tommila) and the traditions of his small community. Just a day shy of his thirteenth birthday, Oskari embarks on a coming-of-age tradition that requires him to survive and hunt alone in the frigid wilderness of the Finnish Lapland. The son of a hunter who brought back a bear in the same hunting tradition, Oskari has big shoes to fill in order to prove his worth.
Meanwhile, up in the skies, the aircraft carrying U.S President Moore (Samuel L. Jackson) is coming under missile attacks. Forced into an emergency evacuation pod by trusted Secret Service Agent Morris (Ray Stevenson), Moore finds himself hurtling down into the foreign landscapes of the Finnish wilderness. Fortunately for Moore, his pod is discovered by Oskari, who happens to conveniently be within the vicinity of his landing. Unknown to Moore however, is that Morris has gone rogue and is conspiring with Hazar (Mehmet Kurtulus), a psychotic terrorist bent on hunting Moore as game.
There is a difference between films that parody or pay homage to movie genres and films that masquerade itself as one. While one speaks volume of a director’s understanding of the genre, the other says much about the director’s skills (or lack thereof). Unfortunately for director Jalmari Helander, Big Game belongs to the latter category.
Despite Helander’s inclusion of clichés and tropes, Big Game just does not come across as a throwback, parody or homage to the action genre. In fact, Big Game starts off well as an action flick with its premise and characters. As such, oddities in the film can be easily seen as awkward set-ups as long as they fulfill their purposes later in the story. The strange emergency evacuation pod on board the aircraft, for example, can be forgiven as it plays a role in creating the interesting encounter between the President and Oskari.
What is unforgivable, however, is when oddities in plot and logic overpower the main focus of the film. Instead of focusing on Oskari’s development and personal growth, Helander decides to, as put across by Kirk Lazarus, “go full retard” and spends his budget on ridiculously exaggerated action sequences. The tonal shift, beginning with Oskari’s decision to jump onto a freezer transported by a helicopter, is the “jumping the shark” moment that marks the descend of the film into a ludicrous b-grade movie; so much so that Jackson and Tommila’s performances are lost in face of the bizarre comic book violence.
Plot loopholes are also abundant in the film, making the viewing of the film a strange experience. For instance, CIA terrorist expert Hurbert’s (Jim Broadbent) involvement in the President’s assisnation is not clearly explained; the same with his relationship with Hazar. Felicity Huffman’s lack of lines as the bland CIA Director also suggests that the film has been edited and re-edited into a pale translation of the original script.
That being said, Big Game can be enjoyable if you are a connoisseur of B-grade action flicks. With it campy plot and exaggerated action sequences, Big Game is one action-adventure flick that B-grade movie lovers should not miss.
Movie Rating:
(A campy B-grade movie perfect for young thirteen year olds jacked up on coke and popcorn)
Review by Leng Mong
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