Conan The Destroyer

Crom, But Not Forgotten

Conan The Destroyer
USA/Mexico 1984 
Directed by Richard Fleischer
20th Century Fox Australian Blu Ray All Zones 

Oh, well... I remember looking forward to seeing Conan The Destroyer when it came out in 1984 but, even then, I realised it was a bit of a mess. Fun but... not that great as a movie about Robert E. Howard’s memorable hero. Let’s make no mistake, Conan The Barbarian (reviewed here) was pretty much the last truly great film from the ‘heroic fantasy/sword and sorcery’ genre and still is to this day, in my opinion (Peter Jackson kind of screwed up Tolkien and the nearest thing we have to a modern fantasy adventure of this kind is probably the contemporary set Mandy from a couple of years ago, which I reviewed here). The fact that John Milius wasn’t able to return to the director’s chair here really sealed the fate of this film, I think. 

What we have is an adventure fantasy movie with the emphasis on the more magical and mystical elements of Robert E. Howard’s Conan adventures... at the expense of the absence of a lot of the things that really worked so well from that first movie. The character is way too sophisticated in this sequel and the tone much too light hearted. The idea was to make the film even more box office friendly by making it appeal more to kids so the violence and single mindedness of the plot was kind of toned down in the hopes that it would get a lower classification in cinemas... something which kinda backfired in the UK, where the film still managed to garner an AA rating with nothing much to show for it. So, there’s also a lot less blood letting and goriness in this iteration and... that does kind of betray the spirit of the original stories, to some extent. 

Asides from Sven-Ole Thorsen, who is playing a completely different character and who is in the majority of Arnold Schwarzeneger’s films, we have only two characters back from the first film. At least they are played by the same actors... Schwarzenegger as Conan The Cimmerian and Mako as the minor wizard Akiro. We also have a bunch of new characters payed by Grace Jones, Olivia d’Abo, Wilt Chamberlain, Tracey Walter, Pat Roach (as Thoth Amon, no less, who never even met Conan in the original stories, instead always staying at the periphery of the adventures) and, as the other lead villain (as if Thoth Amon wasn’t enough for them) we have, in the words of the Superman The Movie Topps Bubble Gum card captions, ‘the alluring Sarah Douglas’. 

And, they’re all good actors and they jell quite well (well, I heard Grace Jones didn’t get on with some on the set but, yeah, I kinda expected that) and are all pretty good but, as I said, Conan has moved on and although he is still obsessed with the dead Valeria, the film seems like barely anything to do with the original. It’s a kind of half-hearted fantasy adventure which looks and feels more like Roger Moore’s For Your Eyes Only era films than the gritty, half exploitative, sword and sandal epic it really needs to be. I believe the tone of the film was not favourable to the director and that Schwarzenneger also objected to the ‘dumbing down’ of the character in this way which, I believe, went a good way to him losing interest in doing a third movie in the series (at the time... I’m still hearing the third part, King Conan, is still in development with him attached). 

The one good thing is the late, great composer Basil Poledouris’ sequel score. He does recook several themes from the first one such as the main Anvil Of Crom music, the Wheel Of Pain music (when Conan and another character are trying to lift open a heavy door), a sped up version of the Wifeing theme (during a brief, static effects insert of Sandahl Bergam as the dead Valeria) and several versions of The Orgy (aka the greatest score cue in soundtrack history), which I always thought was supposed to represent the Cult of Thulsa Doom from the first movie and so, therefore, seems somewhat out of place but no less welcome here. Other than these, there’s a new heroic theme which also seems somewhat out of place, while still being fairly listenable but, you know, nothing new which matches the strength of the themes in the first one (nothing as cool as, say, the Theology theme at any rate). Still, Poledouris was a great composer and the score is probably the best thing about this movie, it has to be said. I wish Intrada would finally release that restored version of the score they’ve been working on for years... I really have no desire to purchase the rerecording after the travesty of the Conan The Barbarian re-recording.*

The only other thing I could say is that you do get the odd shade of the visual legacy of Conan thrown in, perhaps sometimes accidentally, from time to time. The main moment, to my mind, is when Conan is fighting the creature that Thoth Amon metamorphoses into in the chamber of mirrors, which strongly resembles, to me anyway, one of the Frank Frazetta covers from the 1960s/70s Conan paperback reprints. Which is nice and a rare flash of gold in an otherwise drab production, it has to be said.

And that’s me done with Conan The Destroyer, methinks. I probably don’t really have to watch this one again in my lifetime because it does kind of leave you with a bad taste in the mouth after the sheer brilliance of the first movie. For years I waited for a third movie to come along which would crown Conan King of Aquilonia but, alas, when a third film did come along it was a rebooted version of Conan The Barbarian (a review of this was forged by me here many years ago, when this blog was still young in the eyes of men) but, alas, it didn’t star Schwarzenegger and it got as much wrong as it got right, it seemed to me. The 1982 movie is still the one great Conan movie, as far as I’m concerned and, as the years pass, I begin to think it will always remain so. 

*Actually, since I wrote this review, they have finally released it in 2022... still havent gotten around to listening to it yet, though.

Conan The Barbarian (1982)

Crom Night

Conan The Barbarian (1982)
USA/Spain/Mexico 1982 
Directed by John Milius
20th Century Fox 
Australian Blu Ray All Zones 

“They told him to thrown down his sword in the earth. 
Ha! Time enough for earth in the grave.”
The Wizard, Conan The Barbarian (1982)

A quick note about the Blu Ray version of the classic film which I used for this review. It’s the Australian edition which my cousin, who lives there now, got to me fairly cheaply. The reason I chose this one is because it contains two different versions of the movie, dependent on what zone your Blu Ray is set to. If you watch this on the British setting, Zone B, it will only play the censored version of the film, falling in line with the BBFC categorisation. However, if you have a multizone machine and play it in another country’s zone, such as Zone A (US zone), then it will play the full length, uncensored version of the film.

I was fourteen years old when I first saw the AA rated (14 years and over... if you can remember that ratings system) Conan The Barbarian on its original cinema release back in 1982. However, I was quite familiar with the long series of short stories published in the UK at the time, which included the original 1930s stories by Robert E. Howard and intermingled with additional stories either expanded from unfinished Howard manuscripts or, more notoriously, rewriting other Howard tales and transforming them into Conan stories. I had read a few of the Marvel comic books and magazines too, of course but, not many of them compared to the amount of novelised collections of the character I read. 

So I knew what to expect from the character and, although I remember being slightly disappointed when the skeleton from whom Conan stole his sword didn’t rise up and attack him as the mummified remains did in the L. Sprague De Camp story that sequence was based on (although, there is a very slight suggestion that he almost does), I still felt that John Milius and his cast/crew had done an amazing job of, not only making an entertaining movie but, really staying to the spirit of Robert E. Howard’s original works. I’ve always thought of this as the last great studio ‘heroic fantasy’ genre film and, despite the number of knock offs (and even a genuine sequel), not to mention some not so great adaptations of Tolkien in recent years, I still stand by that. A few have come close but this one... this is the last great one I think, after all those films by the likes of Ray Harryhausen... where everything comes together to make things work and create the perfect ‘sword and sorcery’ film.

John Milius’ script, which trashed a lot of Oliver Stone’s previous draft and reset it in the original mythical timeline of Robert E. Howard’s fictional Hyborian Age (the film was originally to have been set in the far future like some kind of post-apocalyptic tale), is a pretty good creation and one of its strengths is that it gives a young Arnold Schwarzenegger, who had a very strong Austrian accent at that time, very minimal dialogue to work with. He was a relative newcomer on the acting scene but two things really help this very capable and interesting actor out near the start of his career. Number one is that he was surrounded with truly great co-stars like James Earl Jones (the voice of Darth Vader) who played the film’s lead villain, Thulsa Doom and, of course, the great Max Von Sydow (who plays a cameo as King Osric) and this was a good training ground for him, I reckon. 

Secondly, the minimal dialogue, while serving the actual character of Conan fairly well and helping make the character more convincing (he’s perhaps a little less wordy than his literary counterpart, if memory serves), allowing Schwarzenegger’s physical presence and attitude to define the role, is actually both very well written and, except in a few notable instances, is the pattern for the majority of the other characters in the movie too. Including Schwarzenegger’s brilliant co-stars Sandahl Bergman as Valeria and Gerry Lopez as Subotai (although they also get a few scenes to let their dialogue go beyond the few words variety here and there). Epic and poetic streaks of minimal dialogue like, for example... “The blood became as snow.” from the wizard, played by Mako, who is also the film’s narrator. 

A lot of the time the movie is almost silent acting but, that’s okay because the richness of the visual images, the fluid editing and the tremendous achievement of the musical score written by the late Basil Poledouris, means that the film really doesn’t need to lean on the crutch of dialogue and, in fact, cinema was born without it anyway, to an extent. 

Thinking about my favourite sequence in the film... after Conan has been crucified and bites the throat out of a vulture (which is a scene from one of the many Howard stories rubbed together and fashioned into a completely new story for the film), after he is brought back to life again... Conan, Subotai and Valeria penetrate Thulsa Doom’s lair in a sequence where they rescue King Osric’s daughter while taking on a fairly heavy loss. The whole sequence lasts maybe 12 or 14 minutes but, during the whole thing until the three thieves have escaped, just before one of them gets shot with a snake (yeah, you read that right), there are only four lines of minimal dialogue, comprising nine words. I noted them down as I watched this time...

Subotai: So this is paradise?
When he catches a glimpse of an enthusiastic orgy of cannibals.
Valeria: The princess!
Valeria: Come on.
Big, heavy looking villain: You!

The movie is pure cinema whichever way you look at it and, though I’m not all that happy with some of the satire on show... it takes a serious side swipe at hippies although, to be fair, it also bashes suicide cults at the same time (so it can’t all be bad), I’d have to say that the film certainly holds up to repeated viewings over the decades (I’m not sure if I’m into double figures on this movie yet but, getting there). It’s also probably one of the first films (at least released into cinemas in this country) to mix the bloody violence and gore which, even when the 1930s Weird Tales pulps the stories were first published in, are part and parcel of many of the literary yarns published in this genre. It actually felt, for a brief amount of time, that fantasy cinema was actually, finally growing up. Alas, the kiddies would win out in the end... and I’ll discuss what happened with the sequel when I rewatch that one very soon.

The film has some outstanding set pieces and moments, many inspired from the original short stories, plus some nice cinematic ideas... such as the sweat from Conan’s head as he steals a dazzling jewel dripping onto the eye of a giant snake which then awakes and attacks him. There are also some of Milius’ movie influences on quite vivid display too. The setting up of the encampment for the final battle sequence is like a miniature homage to Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai and the writing that covers Conan’s body to help protect it from demons, when the wizard is trying to stop his almost dead body from being taken by them, is reminiscent of the writing used to try and stop other supernatural creatures in one of the segments of Kobayashi’s Kwaidan.

And then there’s that beautiful score by Basil Poledouris. I don’t think I’ve seen many ‘greatest film score’ lists over the last few decades that haven’t included this in their top ten. Certainly, I think it’s one of the most astounding achievements in the art of film music and one piece of music, The Orgy, co-composed by Poledouris with his daughter Zoe, which uses a repeat structure similar in style to Ravel’s Bolero, it seems to me, is easily my favourite piece of film music ever written. 

The score serves both as something supporting the movie’s emotional moments but also has its own ways of giving to the story. For instance, in a wonderful montage where we see Conan grow from a child into Arnold Schwarzenegger, pushing a giant Wheel Of Pain for a decade, Poledouris writes in screeching iron to the track, something which starts, timed to the rhythm of the score, as soon as the wheel first comes into the left of the shot, like a sound effect but, in this case, a musical punctuation. And, of course, as a stand alone listen, this is a fantastic work of art. I own various incarnations of this score on vinyl and then CD over the years, including one which is transcribed for solo church organ as an album. 

And that’s me done with the absolutely brilliant, first cinematic incarnation of Conan The Barbarian. I could never recommend this movie enough to anybody and this hopefully won’t be the last time I watch it. I’ll be jumping onto the slightly less satisfying sequel, which I’ve not seen more than a few times and don’t remember all that well, sometime very soon. Also, if you’re into this kind of thing, I’ll hopefully be reading a thick doorstop of a reprint of all the original Robert E. Howard Conan stories as they appeared in Weird Tales, in an absolutely beautiful hardback edition (double columned like those original magazines, no less), so look out for a review of that at some point too... 

No, wait, I ended up reading that and posting the review long before I got around to putting this review up so, yeah, you can read that review right here. 

Terminator Dark Fate

The Fate And The Furious

Terminator Dark Fate
(aka Terminator 6)
2019 USA Directed by Tim Miller
UK cinema release print.

Warning: This one has some spoilers because I don’t have a great deal to say about it but I can, at least, talk about specific plot points.

Terminator Dark Fate is the latest in a long line of Terminator films, starting off with James Cameron’s break out picture The Terminator back in 1984. I saw that first one a year or two after that via a big box video rental from the Off Licence about five minutes walk away (it’s still an off licence but, alas, doesn’t rent videos anymore). Out of all the Terminator movies, that first one was by far and away the best of the series and it’s the only one so far I’ve watched multiple times. All the others I’ve only seen once on their cinema releases. Out of the rest... 2 and 5 were pretty unwatchable, 3 and 4 were a little more entertaining.

This new sixth one is... somewhere in the middle of that lot in watchability, I reckon.

Now, I’ve got no idea just what is going on with the story anymore. They’re a little more contradictory as they go on and all have tried to reboot the franchise in some way. Frankly, the continuity on these things is just as bad as the 1940s Universal Mummy sequels or the various X-Men movies from 20th Century Fox... pretty non existent and disrespectful to the audiences who have plonked down money to see a sequel which fitted in with the prior films in the series.

Alas, Terminator Dark Fate is absolutely guilty of the same derogatory attitude towards its paying audience and within the first five or so minutes of the movie, it completely disregards the 3rd, 4th and 5th films by wiping out the possibilities of those futures, having a ‘younged up’ John Connor shot dead by a Terminator soon after the events of the second film. We then jump to present day when another Terminator, played by Gabriel Luna (who you may remember played Ghost Rider in Marvel’s Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D) is sent back to our time to kill a young woman called Danni Ramos, played by Natalia Reyes. However, an ‘augmented human’... basically a synthesis of future tech crossed with a human being, so a super powered cyborg, in other words... is sent back to protect her in the form of Grace, played by Mackenzie Davis.

And, to be fair, things get off to a great start with some strong and unrelenting action sequences which really had me believing that this may be one of the better terminator sequels. I was enjoying what I was seeing a lot and that didn’t let up when, in an early ‘deus ex machina’ moment seen in the trailer, Sarah Connor (with Linda Hamilton returning to play the somewhat iconic role) comes to everyone’s rescue and stalls the pursuit of the new Terminator for a little while. She has been getting anonymous messages from someone ‘off the grid’ for years now telling her when and where a Terminator will appear... “For John...” and is the poster girl for America’s Most Wanted as she has been dealing with various Terminators over the years. When Grace hacks her phone they match some coordinates she was sent back with and they go on a road trip to find themselves at the home of... the Terminator who killed John Connor at the start of the film. He has matured into Arnold Schwarzenneger as he looks now and, since he has new orders and is more or less the cybernetic equivalent of a Ronin (a masterless samurai), he has ‘grown a conscience’ and wants to make amends. And the rest of the film is, of course, more action as this group tries to destroy the Terminator, suffering a few losses along the way.

And... it doesn’t quite do what it needed to do for me to really get on its side. Which is a shame because, for the first hour, I was really into it hook, line and sinker. When Schwarzenegger turns up, though, things kind of go downhill a little and it’s not specifically because of him. As usual, Arnold is really cool in this and he does have some good moments in the film... as do all the cast, who make up a great ensemble. And it’s not even that the script is that bad either, despite its disrespect to the three films that preceded it. I just think that, by this point, there’s been a lot of truly spectacular action sequences and, frankly, the action in the second half of the movie, relentless though it is, just doesn’t really top anything you’ve already seen before and the pauses between set pieces aren’t really enough to keep you invested in them for the whole movie. I kinda had action fatigue by around the midway mark, I think. That was my biggest problem with it.

The ending and the not completely surprising revelation about the importance of the girl everyone is protecting is not that satisfying either, it has to be said. And it’s a shame because, like I said, the movie has got a great opening for the first hour. Then it just gets... well kinda dull actually. I no longer needed to see any action by this point and I was just waiting for all the pyrotechnics to finish. Pacing is everything and the second half of the film didn’t really have much contrast in it, truth be told.

Tom Holkenborg’s score to this however, is pretty cool. It’s quite respectful of Brad Fiedel’s original and it works and lifts the action in the occasional scenes when you can actually hear it without getting caught in the crossfire, so to speak. I believe La La Land are planning on issuing a CD of this one towards the end of the month and I may well pick this one up at some point.

Other than that... not much else to say. Good chemistry between the actors, some nice action scenes at the start and, thankfully, some good editing in those action scenes too... you’d probably not get too confused by what’s going on in this one, so that’s good news. Other than that though... not much else to weigh in with Terminator Dark Fate I think. Fans of the franchise will probably be happy enough with it (although I hear that the box office take on this is not what the studios would have wanted). Newcomers to the franchise could also probably pick up what’s going on fairly early in the film too so if you want to see a lot of explosions and bullets and flying bodies, then this is probably the film for you. I’m not sure however, at least in terms of the Terminator movies, that Arnold Schwarzenneger will ‘be back’ for another.

Maggie

Maggie Trousers

Maggie
2015 USA/Switzerland
Directed by Henry Hobson
UK cinema release print.

This is an amazing film.

I've probably made it abundantly clear in a few of my past reviews that I've long been a fan of Arnold Schwarzenneger. Not all of his films, for sure... he's made a fair few clunkers in his time and his choices of roles haven't always been something I'd want to see... but as a solid actor it’s hard not to appreciate him. I first saw him at the cinema in a film called Cactus Jack opposite Kirk Douglas, on a double bill with one of the Nicholas Hammond TV to movie versions of The Amazing Spider-Man. But it was when I went to the cinema a few years later to see him in the first release of Conan The Barbarian that I really took notice of who he was.

Now, to be fair, Schwarzenneger is probably best known as a personality... and I mean that in the best sense. He's a star and one of the few internationally recognised, larger than life actors who are famous for his on screen image. In this sense, he's the closest thing we've got to a modern John Wayne type, old Hollywood style actor. That being said, I think his likeable tough guy personae tends to overwhelm people’s perceptions of him and he's rarely given credit for what he actually is... a damn good actor. It helps to be a major star but his thespian skills are a heck of a lot better than people realise, I think.

Which is why I was so desperate to see his new film Maggie. Okay, so it's a zombie movie, granted, but it's a low budget zombie movie with a distinct lack of action... a genre Schwarzenneger is best known for, although there is a little action or implied action thrown into a couple of the sequences. There’s also not as much emphasis on horror as you might think... although there are a few very suspenseful moments where you will be in fear on behalf of either Schwarzenegger’s character Wade or his wife Caroline, played by Joely Richardson. However, this is more of an exploration of the dynamics of a family who know they are going to lose their daughter to the slowly decaying caress of a terminal and dangerous-to-others disease which is gradually turning her into a killer zombie, more than anything else.

The plot set up, such as it is, is really simple and certainly doesn't get any more complex as it continues... but this is not a bad thing especially and works pretty well for a small scale movie like this one. It shows us, right from the start, a world plunged into the middle of a zombie virus... although the zombies are not labelled with the 'Z' word here. To give them a little more credibility, perhaps, the victims of the virus are referred to as ‘necroambulists’, possibly as a nod to the most famous cinematic somnambulist of all time, Cesare, the sole occupant of The Cabinet Of Dr. Caligari. Like the variants in 28 Days Later and its sequel, these are not monsters who have come back from the dead but people who have succumbed to infection, via the bite of a another infected person. In all other ways, though, the human victims of the disease are being slowly reduced to the shambling counterparts popularised by George A Romero's early Living Dead movies.

In a way, the film could be likened to a drawn out version of the scene in Romero's original Dawn Of The Dead, where the friend who was bitten falls sick and then slowly dies... before popping back up as a zombie. The difference being that there's no death to zombie moment here... the victim becomes slowly more zombie-like and there's a slightly different kind of pay off at the end of this movie too.

Like the majority of zombie movies, the virus and its origins are a mystery and everyone just goes about their daily business living with, and adapting to, a world which imposes curfews on the streets and where you wait with your infected loved ones until the police come to take them to quarantine. In quarantine, they are thrown in with a load of similar, unfortunate people until they start eating each other and their 'wardens' can see that all trace of their former humanity is gone. Then they are given a drug to kill them which, for the dramatic purposes of this movie, is an extremely painful poison for your zombie stricken relatives to have to struggle through.

Schwarzenegger’s character, Wade, is first seen driving to a hospital compound to take Maggie away with him to his relatively isolated farm. The film becomes about making the most of the last days with his daughter and how to make the choice between letting the cops take his kin into quarantine, giving her the illegally acquired drug himself or, the more humane but difficult option, a swift bullet to the head to end her suffering so that she can't harm others. It’s a pretty bleak film, in many ways.

Schwarzenneger really shines in his heartfelt and dramatic performance here. I've heard some people say that this is his best performance in a movie and they might be right. Like I said, though, I've always thought of him as a good actor and I think what we're seeing here is a very small scale film (the lowest budget he's had since the first of The Terminator movies, which was pretty much a B-movie when it came out) and it allows his natural acting abilities to show through. He's not punching someone or driving at high speed through explosions and, as a consequence of that, some people are maybe just waking up to the fact that he's a very expressive actor and, even when he doesn't have a lot of lines, he can give a lot of emotion and inner monologue rendered as subtle facial expression. I'm hoping this movie will maybe stop straight jacketing him to mostly action roles. He's extremely good in this and people need to see it.

The other star of the show is, of course, the title character herself, played by Abigail Breslin. She does an a absolutely fantastic job in this and although a lot of that is supporting Schwarzenegger’s performance as her tragedy bound father, she is also amazing in the scenes she shares with fellow teenagers or with Joely Richardson as her cautious mother. The writer sets up the rules of the zombies particular to this film anecdotally from a couple of sources and some of the later, two hander scenes between Maggie and her mother or father are actually extremely suspenseful because the audience knows what signs to look out for. You will be on the edge of your seat to find out who she's going to take a bite out of first. It all gets very taut at certain points in the running time before heading towards what is actually a really charming ending to the movie, exploring the idea that sometimes, even if a person becomes a ravenous, flesh eating zombie, its possible for that creature to retain a certain sense of its essential humanity.

The film is shot with a kind of constantly moving, reactive camera which tends to focus on scenes where there is not a great deal of movement. Little jiggles to the camera with micro-movements to keep the image slightly shifting is what seems to be going on here. Almost like a found footage movie but on a much more subtle scale. I'm not the biggest fan of this technique but it does give the camera a slight feel of reacting to the characters and events on screen “as it happens” and I guess it's one way of building up a level of credibility with your key players. It's fashionable at the moment and I've seen it used a lot on TV in recent decades on shows such as Firefly and the rebooted Battlestar Galactica. It works really well here, though, and I didn't find it that distracting, I’m glad to say.

Director Hobson also tends to cut away to little details of the acting and away from the main action and I thought this technique worked pretty well the way he managed to pull it off here. So he will cut away to a close up shot of Schwarzenneger turning a key on his petrol tank, for example, or cut to his hand picking up a photograph and recording the detail there. It's good stuff and it certainly helps enhance/capture the subtleties of the wonderful cast in this film, all of whom are absolutely excellent, whether they are in a major or minor supporting role. And it's similarly enhanced by a fairly low key but incredibly moving score by David Wingo, which really does deserve to get a proper CD release rather than the stupid digital download it's currently been lumbered with.

And that's about it. A different film for some Schwarzenegger fans to have to adjust to and I really don't think it's been very well marketed, to be honest. In this country at least. I went to the opening evening showing at my local and they put it in the smallest screen they had. That was arguably a wise move on the part of the cinema I guess because, including me, there were a total of eleven people in the screening and around three of those walked out half way through. So not living up to people's expectations of an ‘Arnold Schwarzenneger movie’ for sure but, honestly, one of the most impressive films he's been involved with and I hope this movie will help potential directors and producers in Hollywoodland realise that he's capable of doing far more than what people have been used to seeing him do over the decades. Whether you're a fan of the actor or not, if you want to see a serious dramatic film about issues and emotions raised by the implications of a fictional zombie virus... this film is it. Maggie is a triumphant movie for all involved and, if you are a fan of the genre, then you certainly won't want to miss this one. Catch it soon, before it disappears as quickly as it came.

Terminator Genisys

Pie In The Skynet

Terminator Genisys
2015  USA
Directed by Alan Taylor
UK cinema release print.

Well, I have to admit, I was expecting this movie to be a huge train wreck. Colour me surprised that, while it has some problems, Terminator Genisys was a really entertaining time at the movies and I’m really pleased about that.

I saw the original 1984 James Cameron film, The Terminator, between one and two years after it was released at cinemas, courtesy of a rental VHS tape from my local off-licence. I got to see it again on a big screen and in the right aspect ratio years later and, as such, it’s the only one of this series of movies, at time of writing this article, that I’ve seen twice. Although I’m thinking of getting a blu ray set if they release them all uncut towards the end of the year.

I loved that first movie at the time. It was obviously low budget and it was the kind of midnight movie style offering that made you wonder why they ever bothered to release it into cinemas in the first place. A B-movie exploitation film but a cool one... as far as I was concerned. When we all queued up a number of years later to see Cameron’s sequel, Terminator 2: Judgement Day, I was really disappointed with it and just didn’t have much good to say about it, in comparison to the origuinal. I preferred Terminator 3: Rise Of The Machines because it had a sexy lady Terminator and it had a Schwarzenegger tribute to the original Django movie in it... really enjoyed that aspect of it. The one I really liked was the fourth one, Terminator: Salvation, for some reason, which I enjoyed almost as much as the first movie.

This fifth movie is really starting off from a point which is, frankly, a load of nonsense. None of the same actors apart from Schwarzenegger are back and it’s something I criticised some of the other films for... if the same actors don’t want to come back... don’t make another movie. Simple. So right away you know it’s a ridiculous load of tosh and the story seems to be full of so many mistakes in the temporal logic of the thing, similar to the stupid errors in films like Back To The Future Part 2 and X-Men: Days Of Future Past (reviewed here), that you have to completely ignore any grounding in trying to make this a valid sequel to anything... so the main thing is to not take this movie in any way seriously and you should have a good time with it.

Yeah, I understand if I say it’s a “switch your brain off movie” it’s just validating the lack of attempt of film studios to make more robust and logical movies but, heck, I can only respond to what’s in front of me here. And I fully understand that my lack of remembrance of pretty much anything of the previous movies makes me unable to properly comment on any possible continuity problems in this chapter of the series. That being said, if something is changed in the past, you can’t just go back and sort it out from a future point because the future point of what you just changed no longer exists... that’s pretty much a no brainer. There’s lots of that kind of anti-logic in this one but, you know what, I’m just going to let it slide because it’s so self evident that I can’t imagine anyone not having a problem with it and you certainly don’t need me to point this stuff out.

However, what this film is... is a non-stop action movie. And it’s a well oiled machine of an action movie, at that. It isn’t confusing, keeps up the pacing (which is pretty much action crescendo all the way through... like the recent Mad Max: Fury Road, reviewed by me here) and has a great set of actors. In addition to the always underrated and always brilliant Arnold Schwarzenegger, we have Jason Clarke as John Connor, Emilia Clarke as Sarah Connor, Jai Courtney as Kyle Reese, Byung-Hun Lee as the Jason Patrick version of The Terminator (?), J. K. Simmons (playing slightly against type compared to what I’ve seen him do, though no less brilliantly) and the wonderful Matt Smith (in a not so visible but highly effective role). All more than capable actors, all doing a bang up job. So that’s all good, then.

The film is really well directed and Taylor keeps the camera moving a lot of the time. The rhythm of the editing is pretty neat (a scene where Schwarzenegger and Courtney are competing at ammunition loading springs to mind) and the lighting and colour palette seems to be pretty cool throughout and also helps stop things flagging on a visual level. There are some really cool sequences in terms of shot design and the way the editing works too...

For instance, there’s an amazing scene where we follow Jason Clark in profile as he walks through a load of vertical machinery like pipes, at speed, with the verticals rushing past to the right of shot as his character is walking towards the left of the screen... while he is kept in the middle of the shot via the moving camera viewpoint. Then the shot suddenly cuts to a pan of the same character continuing his walking... however, we see him from the front and we are panning in to him from the right... at exactly the same speed as the previous shot... which means the verticals rushing to the right are just continuing at the same pace, making it a completely seamless transition despite showing a completely different angle, because of the “visual glue” of the camera movement in relation to the foreground elements. Unbelievably cool and, although the two shots put together probably last less than 5 to 6 seconds, it just blew me away. The director completely won me over with these couple of shots.

Another great thing is the music. Now, apart from a couple of moments where literally just a few notes of the original Terminator theme are referenced, before being properly brought into play in the end credits suite (which plays like a new version of Brad Fiedel’s original) there aren't a lot of similarities to the thematic elements that have come before. However, Lorne Balfe’s score is robust and, like his score to The Sweeney (reviewed here) is an absolutely awesome and appropriate set of musical cues to accompany and enhance the emotions and dynamics of the movie. I felt myself admiring the music more and more as I got further into the film, which managed to thankfully hold its own in the sound mix during some of the fast and furious bullet ballets which the movie has on offer. This composer is definitely one of the "new guard" to watch out for, as far as I'm concerned... Taking his place among such modern soundtrack maestros as Alexandre Desplat, Michael Giachhino, Bear McCreary and Brian Tyler, as far as I'm concerned.

Ultimately, although there are some really big flaws in the thinking of certain elements - such as being able to grow new flesh which is designed to age and have it all blending in somehow - the film gets a lot of things right. True, there is a, presumably deliberately left, loose end in terms of just who or what sent the Schwarzenegger version of the Terminator nicknamed "pops" back to Sarah Connor’s childhood and there's a certain amount of predictability in terms of the ultimate fate of that version of the character (which will become obvious to you as soon as you see the interior of a certain interior set about half way through the movie) but the lack of logic and surprise doesn't mean an awful lot, bearing in mind that they throw it all away right from the start anyway. This film won't explain or fix any timeline issues of the previous movies but, at least, the audience can have some fun with the competency and creative flourishes inherent in the visual side. And, hey, there are some nice one liners in there too, which may make you smile. So, yeah, if you're into science fiction movies in general, Terminator Genisys is a flawed but fun picture to put on your "to watch" list. Not as good as the first or fourth installments but, yeah, it's definitely worth a watch and, I'm pretty sure after this one, Schwarzenegger will be back.

Escape Plan

Hard Cell

Escape Plan
2013 USA
Directed by Mikael Håfström
Playing at UK cinemas now.

It’s an old but not overly used premise these days. A man who makes his living by breaking out of prison and thus exposing the security flaws of said prison to the government. Silvester Stallone plays lead character, Ray Breslin, with a certain charm and determination that only he might bring to the role. The plot is very simple... Ray Breslin takes on a job from a private firm to take on a new, "inescapable" prison and, once the job starts, all his safety nets to keep him from staying incarcerated if anything goes wrong are immediately and deliberately taken away from him and he realises that somebody wanted to put him in prison for good and bury him there.

At a point which felt a little bit like rushed scripting at first but, in light of other things which happen later on was actually quite dead on, he is immediately befriended by another prisoner who the chief warder, played by Jim Caviezel, has to obtain certain sensitive information from. The over-friendly prisoner is called Emil Rottmayer and he’s played by the other legendary action actor in this movie, Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Now this, of course, is a fanboy’s dream team up and, although I found the film to be quite flawed in one way, it has to be noted that one of the very big strengths of the script of this movie, which really is quite a likeable one, is that this film in no way feels like it is a bunch of Hollywood suits trying to think up an overblown vehicle to handle the juxtaposition of these two giant personalities that are Stallone and Schwarzenneger. What it feels like is a movie trying to tell a decent story with some nice action sequences in it which just happens to have these stars in it, doing really well with their roles, too, as it happens. I’ve always had a lot of time for both these actors, even if they don’t always pick the kind of movies I’d want to watch, and I can confirm that the on screen chemistry between the two is absolutely dynamite here. They really work well together. In fact, the acting and storyline really aren’t a problem here.

However, there is a problem.

With a script and talent like this in front of and behind the camera, this should have been a great movie and, while it is immensely entertaining, on the whole, I did find myself distracted by the pedestrian way in which the movie was shot and edited. It felt a little like watching an early 80s soap opera from television in the way it was put together, I felt. Now I don’t know if this was the fault of the director or whether it was the producers rushing him through and him not getting enough master shots, but the whole thing seemed to me to be, closeup/cut to reverse/cut back to reverse of that... and etc. Don’t get me wrong, I thought it was very easy to watch  and that’s always a good thing but, frankly, I felt underwhelmed with the way most sequences of shots were designed and edited together for pretty much the whole movie. I wanted something a little more well oiled and slickly designed for this kind of movie but it did seem to be fairly standard in terms of cinematography, edited and direction to me.

That being said, what the movie did do, which is fairly rare for me with modern movies as regular readers of my reviews will be able to attest to, is surprise me a few times. When I thought I had all the answers to two particular aspects of the story, I was pretty much left without a clue. And that is just so rare for films these days. Now, to be fair to myself, it might be because I wasn’t listening properly to the sub-plot of the movie involving one of the characters but, at the end of the movie especially, they did manage to take me by surprise and I do appreciate that. To paraphrase Stallone in the movie, "I never saw that one coming."

The music is kinda interesting too because it’s mostly buried in the mix during the action sequences apart from the percussion and, it has to be said, when the percussion part of the score by Alex Heffes (who scored the director’s previous movie The Rite, reviewed here) started up, I actually mistook it for machine gun fire when I couldn’t see it and it popped me right out of the movie because I was waiting to hear if the sudden burst repeated itself rhythmically, which it then did. I think, for me, I could have done with the score being dialled up a bit so the music was a little more obvious and there were less sound effects, but I know some audiences like their crash, bang and wallop so I won’t press the point. I think it might be an interesting stand alone listen, although I can only find it available at present as a digital download and, frankly, no CD equals no sale, thanks very much music companies.

All in all, despite my problems with it, I did find myself having an entertaining night out at the movies and if you like the two principal actors involved, you will probably find yourself having a good time with it. Definitely a pop corn and beers kind of movie, if you’re into that kind o’ thing.

The Last Stand

Last Man Standing

The Last Stand
USA 2013
Directed by Jee-woon Kim
Playing at cinemas now.

When an escaped prisoner is on the lam, his team ride into town to make sure that nothing can stop him going through the place which is the only town in between him and his escape route to the Mexican border.

But the sleepy town in question’s sheriff has other ideas...

Yeah, you guessed it. Jee-woon Kim, the South Korean director who gave us such films as the original version of A Tale Of Two Sisters and his rip-roaring tribute to the spaghetti western, The Good, The Bad, The Weird (reviewed here) has delivered us yet another “western-dressed-up-in-action-movie-clothing”. This time, however, it’s more like one of those 1950s John Wayne westerns where the sheriff is protecting the town from attack by the inevitable “bad guys”.

I’ve talked about this on here before, I think, but Arnold Schwarzenegger, it’s my belief, is one of the few modern movie actors who brings exactly the same “larger than life” star quality to contemporary cinema that such actors as John Wayne and Errol Flynn used to bring with them. Toting all that baggage around isn’t always what’s good for the film, and sometimes they are just playing the same old variations of themselves, but their personality is so engaging that what they did bring to their pictures was worth it’s weight in gold at the box office. And Schwarzenegger’s role of Sheriff Ray Owens in The Last Stand is just the kind of part that calls for that easy. laid back style of acting blended with larger than life personality and the governator definitely delivers in spades here.

Now, talking of box office, it’s beyond amazing to me that this movie seems to have bombed in America... I don’t know why because I thought it was really great fun. Yes it’s cosy and comfy and formulaic and, maybe, a throwback to some of the action fests of the 1980s... but this really isn’t a bad thing and the “old school” oater plot combined with “action scenes on acid” direction from Kim, makes for a considerably entertaining time at the local cinema and, just in case some of the contemporary movie audiences these days have possibly forgotten this... art can also be entertainment and popcorn fodder like this one still requires a large amount of skill behind and in front of the camera... and if you like action movies or old westerns, then you might want to give this one a chance.

The performances are standout with some great “old friends” of cinema doing a fine job in terms of making it all look easy. Forest Whitaker is fantastic, as is Luis Guzmán (wearing a cowboy hat, no less, to really push the point home) and I have no idea who Johnny Knoxville is, but he’s a fun watch in this. You also have young Jamie Alexander from Thor doing a brilliant job as the main female lead and, of course, the always watchable Peter Stormare playing the principal, villain’s henchman. And, as one last nod to the film’s status as a western, you have an excellent, stand out cameo from one of cinema’s greatest character actors, Harry Dean Stanton. This is a good cast of people who make the thinly drawn characters easy to believe in.

And when I say thinly drawn characters, yeah that could be a negative in many movies, but here it works okay because the film is really well written (in some ways) and the clichéd set of protagonists (and antagonists) who populate this movie are so familiar to audiences these days, that with just a few broad sketches, you can reliably fill in all the blanks and it’s like you’ve been living with these people for years.

So stereotypes? Yeah.

But lovable stereotypes who you believe in and don’t want to see come to any harm... which obviously helps a lot in your emotional investment in the movie.

Now, on the whole, the editing during the action sequences is blistering but comprehensible... save for one sequence when I knew that one of the main characters had gotten blown up and killed but... he then turns up 5 minutes later unharmed. This is because I’d not been able to keep up with decoding the shots fast enough and got confused with which car had been hit with a rocket launcher. Maybe the next time I see it, which will be on DVD from whatever high street store sale is left standing by the end of the year, what with HMV in the way it is now, I’ll be able to decipher that stuff easier. It is just one little sequence in a movie full of absolutely wonderful action editing though, so maybe it’s not the editor’s fault and maybe not enough coverage was shot to be able to fix it in editing.

Either way, it’s a minor grumble for a film full of well edited action sequences which are violent, no doubt about it, but also have a certain sense of humour about them. I don’t know if it’s strictly right or morally cool to laugh when somebody is blown apart before your eyes and the arms land on a couple of people, causing them inconvenience, but it got a big laugh out of the audience I was watching it with and the tone of the piece tells you not to take the bloody, visceral nature of the on screen shenanigans too seriously.

Similarly, the dialogue is quite corny and clichéd throughout a lot of the film (although I wonder if I would have perceived it as such if I was watching it in Korean with English subtitles) but big Arnie and the gang play it with a knowing wink and despite there being some dialogue that may make a younger, more serious audience wince, the tone is pitch perfect and plays more as a parody than a series of clunky lines. You know the game the movie makers are playing with you here, and feel invited to join in, rather than alienated.

All in all, I thought this film was very well handled, hugely enjoyable and Schwarzenegger proves that he’s still as watchable and reliable as he always has been. It definitely deserves to do better than it is fairing at the box office at present and I’m hoping that, when the time comes for the DVD release, people will start to generate some good word of mouth on this little, action gem.

Hopefully Arnie will be back!