TAK3N (aka Taken 3)

Mills And Boom

TAK3N (aka Taken 3)
2014  France
Directed by Olivier Megaton 
UK cinema release print.

Liam Neeson explodes back on the screen as Bryan Mills...

Unfortunately.

Don’t get me wrong. I love Liam Neeson, I think he’s a great actor and, funnily enough, I also loved the first Taken movie... otherwise I wouldn’t have subjected myself to seeing the third installment in the franchise. I love producer Luc Besson too, of course, and as for Olivier Megaton... well, I liked Transporter 3 and Columbiana (reviewed here).

That being said, while not a complete disaster, Taken 2 (reviewed here) had some big shoes to fill and it was not the greatest sequel, by any stretch. I think the problem with the franchise, in terms of my expectations of it, is that it opened so strongly. Asides from his more swashbuckling role in Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace (reviewed here), Taken was pretty much the first time we’d seen Liam neeson play a “hard as nails” action hero and he did so credibly in a film which made good on the promise of its trailer. Neeson is always believable at the very least, of course, but the script in the first one was very strong for the kind of movie it was and, alas, neither Taken 2 or Taken 3 live up to it, to be fair.

This one starts off by setting up the majority of the bad guys by showing them doing some nasty stuff at the start of the film... which is pretty standard and almost a basic requirement of a movie like this. However, it has to be said that the drastic things they do at this point really don’t help the credibility of the rest of the storyline. The absolute seeming lack of interest by the police in terms of the impact of this opening on the rest of the story (aka, the police would have been keeping a closer eye on someone who they are not all that worried about in this movie because it would spoil the so called “surprise twist” for the audience) really compromises the logic and any chance of realism for the progression later on in the film.

Once this sequence is done we are onto an opening credits section of “the urban landscape from above, at night” but, before you reach for the panic button, I’d have to say that the opening titles are really well handled and the cityscapes on view are treated in a much more interesting way - by using fast dissolves and fast zooms to highlight certain areas and accentuate the links between various shots in the urban sprawl. This, coupled with typography which doesn’t stay in any one place for too long and leads your eye on to different parts of the screen, works really well and I was quite impressed with the overall treatment of what could have been another big opening movie yawn.

The downside to that is, of course, the rest of the movie is never really as good as the title sequence. Everybody, at least in terms of the actual actors performing their roles, is all very good - heroes, villains and supporting characters alike. There just doesn’t seem to be much happening with the story line and, worse, some of the bits in the movie don’t even make any sense other than it gives the writers something to hang another dumb and, in some cases, confusingly edited, action sequence on to. Why, for instance, does Bryan go to all of that trouble and place himself in an extreme danger situation which might be impossible for him to get out of, just so he can go say “Hi” to his kid without actually telling her anything more or giving her anything useful to do. It makes no sense.

In addition to Liam Neeson, Maggie Grace and the “totally wasted in minor roles these days but truly cool actress” who is Famke Janssen, we have Forest Whitaker who is basically there to serve the same function as he did in the Arnold Schwarzenegger movie The Last Stand (reviewed here) and, like in that movie, he does a really excellent job in this picture... even going so far as to give his character a knight from a game of chess and arming himself with the elastic band from his “Bryan Mills” file and adding little gestures involving these props. It just seems though, unless there’s a much longer cut of this movie struggling to get out from somewhere, that these are distractions to stop the actor from getting bored because he seems to not have all that much function in the story in terms of his character, truth be told. He senses the dangerous and righteousness of Neeson’s personality but, for the whole movie, he still remains one step behind. It would have been more interesting if he at least contributed more to the plot and maybe teamed up and helped save Liam Neeson and the token person who gets tak3n towards the end to justify the title... but nothing like that actually happens and his character, while beautifully played, seems to be nothing more than superfluous throughout the whole movie, I’m afraid.

I know this is a fairly short review from me on this one but, alas, I really don’t have too much more to say about this movie. The original Taken was a remarkable debut in the series but, so far, the sequels have been just okay... certainly nothing capturing the special spirit of the first movie in the series. Because that first one was truly great I was hoping that the third one would be a heck of a lot better than the lacklustre second movie but, it seems, I was sadly mistak3n.

Deep Rising

Rise Guys

Deep Rising
1998 USA
Directed by Stephen Sommers
Entertainment In Video 
DVD Region 2

This film had pretty much been off my radar up until a month or two ago. I'm almost afraid to admit, once again, that my route into this one was through the music but... what happened was that Intrada released a limited number of an expanded edition of the score and it was a Jerry Goldsmith score I didn't already have. Now I've always loved the music of Jerry Goldsmith (even as a kid when I hummed his stuff before I knew who wrote it) and I was lucky enough to see him in concert maybe six or seven times in his lifetime. I don't buy all his scores but I have a good deal of them and so, once I'd listened to the sound samples, I decided I'd have to get that one soonest as it's a fine score from his late period.

This, of course, meant I wanted to find out about the movie and, when I saw two specific things about this film, I ordered a cheap DVD copy off amazon for a couple of quid. So, the two things which had, more or less, decided me on an instant purchase, asides from Jerry's marvellous action score? They were the words "sea monsters" and "Stephen Sommers".

Now, before this, I'd only seen four Stephen Sommers Movies in my life but three of those I hold in very high regard and the fourth one, GI Joe: The Rise Of Cobra, was at least enjoyable enough, if somewhat silly. I really loved this director, though, for the three movies I'd seen him do which, in all respects, were basically fun, retro B-movies but made with fairly large budgets - The Mummy, The Mummy Returns and the much maligned but equally groovy Van Helsing.

So, as I started watching, I was pleased to notice that this starts off in B-movie territory right from the outset, with a bunch of heroes for hire, providing a boat and cargo shipping and headed up by Treat Williams. They have been retained by a crew of villainous hijackers (including Jason Flemyng and loads of modern character actors) and their target is a cruise ship captained by another villain who is working in cahoots with the hijackers. A villain who has just caught a cat burglar type lady, played by the always lovely Famke Janssen, trying to rip off his own haul.

This already sounds like a collision course for a boys own adventure, of course, but remember that other word I said made me want to take a look at this movie? The two ships/boats (whatever) are both completely crippled by... oh yeah... sea monsters.

Great, many tentacled sea monsters resembling, somewhat, a cthuhuian elder race best spoken of in hushed tones in an old H. P. Lovecraft story. And so the film goes all The Poseidon Adventure for a little while and then you're left with two or three quarreling factions constantly at each others throats while everybody is trying to find their best chance of escape while avoiding being swallowed and slowly digested by the "tentacle of the week", so to speak.

And the best thing about this movie... apart from pretty much everything I've mentioned up until now?

Benny is in it.

That is to say, the wonderful modern character actor Kevin J. O Connor, who payed the weaselly Benny in The Mummy and the weaselly Igor in Van Helsing... plays the weaselly grease monkey on the side of the good guys (for once) named Joey. And, as I predicted, Sommers gives him some of the best lines of the movie. My favourite being a moment when the good guys, bad guys and the lovely femme fatale are stuck inside an elevator playing "canned music". Suddenly, a sinister and ominous sound is heard from outside the lift. "What is it?" asks Treat Williams' character John Finnegan. "The Girl From Ipanema" says Joey, referring to the elevator music. I think I chuckled just a little too gleefully at that one... even though I kinda knew he was going to say it.

Actually, one of the strengths of the writing of the movie is the way Sommers uses stereotype characters who don't need a lot of explaining. He hits the ground running and gives you just enough quick character info so that you can work out the dynamics of the relationships without feeling, at any time, shortchanged by the fact that there’s no real character development in the movie. It's formulaic writing but it does its job well and it does it quick... this is the essence of pulp writing and this is essentially a pulp movie we have here... and that's not meant to be in any way a derogatory comment.

Deep Rising is beautifully filmed with lots of long, slow swooping camera shots and appropriately placed dutch angles. A lot of it is set in dark or dimly lit, claustrophobic spaces but you never really fail to notice everything in shot and, luckily, the editing is anything but confusing too, although I think there were a couple of little "sequential errors" with the continuity.

Unlike the aforementioned Sommers' Universal Monster reboots, this has a higher BBFC classification and so the director is able to play the horror elements a little more edgier than I was used to seeing him do... backing up some of the suspense scenes with a few well timed pieces of goriness thrown into the mix. The CGI work on the tentacle monsters themselves is pretty good but the few smatterings of assorted nastiness also has some great effects work, with the walking, groaning, half digested former crewman being a particularly interesting achievement... if you're into that kind of thing.

So... a great ensemble cast of actors, glorious B-movie writing with some cool one liners, good camerawork coupled with more than competent editing, some nice effects work and, also, a pace that never really lets up. The cherry on top of the cake is, of course, that late period Jerry Goldsmith score which captures his style of writing from films like The Mummy, The Thirteenth Warrior, LA Confidential, Star Trek: First Contact and dozens of others of his later works which shared the same kind of building, rhythmic drives and sweeping, melodic invention. In other words, one of the great composers giving a larger than life B-movie action/horror score for a work that celebrates that kind of stylistic influence and which is wholly relevant to the proceedings (not to mention being a darned good listen away from the movie too).

If you like old, pulpy B-movies with cliched but likeable characters and a predictable but enjoyable storyline, not to mention a wet bike being chased through the decks of a flooded ship by a giant sea monster thingy... then you should probably put Deep Rising on your "to watch" pile. I'm really glad I did.

GoldenEye

Pierce Creatures

GoldenEye
1995 UK/USA
Directed by Martin Campbell
EON Blu Ray Region A/B/C

Okay then. This one’s a corker.

After the disappointment of the previous film, Licence To Kill, which had Timothy Dalton playing Bond very well in what was essentially a rubbish movie... I found myself in kind of a state of disenchantment with the Bond franchise once again. The gap between the last film and this one was nearly six years and somehow I’d just assumed that everyone involved with the mess of that last movie were just hanging their heads in shame and that it had been the franchise killer. Seriously, I’d just thought that everyone had realised how terrible Licence To Kill was and just finally decided to stop making any more Bond films for fear of accidentally doing the same thing. I’d written it off, just as I’d written off any post McCoy Doctor Who stories way back then too.

Truth be told... although the box office on Licence To Kill was quite poor, there were also various legal issues which were getting in the way of continuing the series. By the time all the wrangling had been sorted out, Timothy Dalton had decided he’d had enough, which was a great loss to the franchise but also helped the series gain legs when the new bit of casting proved equally suitable for the role.

Pierce Brosnan was the guy I had pegged to play Bond in The Living Daylights without even knowing he’d come that close (holds up finger and thumb with small gap between them) to going ahead in the role in that film. This time, at least, when I told people they should have got Pierce Brosnan in on it, they mostly knew who I was talking about. And low and behold, they actually gave the role to Brosnan... who I still, at the time, didn’t even know had been up for the role even.

So this was it then. I’d have to go and see the new Bond movie and just keep my fingers crossed that they’d learnt a few lessons since Licence To Kill.

As it turns out... they had. GoldenEye is one of the top five Bond movies ever committed to celluloid. They get everything just right in this one and it’s truly a film which ushered in a new golden age of Bond... for a little while, at least. If you want to know what my top 5 Bond films are in ascending order it would be as follows: 5. GoldenEye, 4. The Living Daylights, 3. Dr. No, 2. From Russia With Love and 1. On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. If you want to get in to Bond then those are the five to get you “into the groove”, so to speak.

This film brought a lot of cast changes with it. The Bill Tanner character, who actually appears in 6 of the Bond movies to date, was played this time around by Michael Kitchen. Judy Dench makes an amazing M and Samantha Bond was an equally well written Miss Moneypenny. There were also a couple of new characters with Jack Wade (a kind of stand in for the Felix Leiter character since Licence To Kill, as the films didn’t have the guts of bringing the character back with his disabilities like Fleming did in the books after Live And Let Die), played by previous Bond villain Joe Don Baker and Valentin Dmitrovich Zukovsky as played by the lovable Robbie Coltrane. Both reappear again later in the series.

And just in case there were any doubts this was still a Bond movie... we have the return of Desmond Llewellyn carrying on with his usual Q personae... which is all very entertaining.

As if this wasnt enough, we have the likes of Izabella Scorupco as the leading lady, a small part for Tchéky Karyo (who many will know from his role in Luc Besson’s Nikita), the inimitable Alan Cumming, Sean Bean as the bad guy and Famke Janssen as one of the sexiest Bond girls ever to grace a Bond movie... and Bond doesn’t even sleep with this character.

So the point I’m pushing here is you’ve got a cast of absolute professionals doing their thing and, for once, they’ve got a script which, while just a tad creaky now, is still bloody well written and in the hands of these acting geniuses the lines sing off the page.

GoldenEye starts out with an absolute powerhouse of a pre-credits sequence involving extreme bungee jumping, a stealth mission gone wrong, a shootout, a chase and an airplane catch up stunt which takes the biscuit and plays with the bounds of credibility... until you realise that a) it’s physically possible and b) this is proven because the stunt in question seems to have been done for real in the movie. You also have a character in this sequence who is left for dead and returns as the villain for the main body of the movie, which is set nine years after this pre-credits sequence. I think this is the first time that kind of long dead character follow through from the opening has been done in a Bond film.

After this we go straight into an absolutely brilliant Bonder than Bond opening title sequence which, in my opinion, has never been bettered in the movies since this one and it’s backed up by a pretty good ballad too, sung by Tina Turner.

Furthermore, after these two fabulous things, we then go into a post-credit sequence car chase/race between Famke Janssen and Brosnan which is a completely, jaw droppingly, beautiful partnership between some brilliantly designed and well thought out footage which is lovingly married by the editor, who cuts it perfectly. I think this sequence alone is something which should be used as a text book for any budding action directors. It’s a fast sequence which is beautifully crafted and which doesn’t lose the audience... a perfect example of speed, power and wit, presented intelligently.

And the best part of all of this is... the film does not go down hill after this heady series of “opening events”.

GoldenEye is also one of the perfect Bond films because, unlike the next movie in the series, which suffers from this a little, it doesn’t just string big action sequences together without giving the characters and plot time to breathe. It’s a proper Bond film and not just an action fest and this is important, I feel, on a Bond film. It’s a spy movie genre... not a Hollywood hit and run.

And then there’s the music.

Okay, I’ll tell you up front that I really love the GoldenEye score but that it has very many detractors/haters in “film music fan” circles. For some reason a lot of people really disliked it. Personally I was thrilled at the time that Eric Serra, the guy who breathed musical life into such Besson films as Subway, The Big Blue and Nikita, was scoring this movie and he didn’t let me down.

Even from the pre-credits sequence, the music hooks you. It starts very early on by pumping the classic Monty Norman Bond theme, orchestrated as a kind of bass percussion underneath the music... a slow, pounding, relentlessness that “brings the Bond” with every note. This is a device re-used throughout the film but, if this wasn’t enough, you also have the famous three note trumpet motif from Goldfinger (you know the one) reorchestrated for synthesisers and punctuating this opening with a kind of audio echo of Bonds past. It’s truly fantastic and it really angers me when people on various film music message boards say this score has no tune in it... um, people, it has both the Bond theme and quotes from Goldfinger in it right from the outset... get a life.

I loved David Arnold's scores for the next two movies in the series but I think Serra’s score holds it’s own with a lot of the better Bond scores. Put it this way... when this film came out I’d been kinda having a break from listening to movie scores for a year or two. I was more into avant-garde contemporary composers or atonal/serial modernists at the time. GoldenEye reminded me why I’d spent years listening to movie scores and reignited my passion for the art form, which I’d been interested in since about the age of four, but which really took hold of me when I was nine. Similarly, my cousin, who really likes movies but isn’t really into soundtracks all that much, went out and bought this score at the time too because he loved it in the movie so much and I know he really liked the album presentation. So I find negative comments about the score a bit annoying when I think it fits the film like a glove, to be honest. There’s a tank chase sequence which is really ace in the film and I think the score sounds out of kilter with the rest of the movie... but that’s because that sequence was scored by another composer when the producers etc lost faith with Serra’s score. The irony of that is, Serra’s original tank chase music made its way onto the soundtrack album and... well... they were crazy to rescore it. It’s perfect!

Overall, the film is a well rounded action adventure yarn within the spy genre it rises from. It’s a brilliant package which doesn’t forget to appeal to what’s in your heart before it gets back to coaxing up your adrenalin levels.

Alas, the UK blu-ray of this version retains the same BBFC cuts that I thought were going to be reinstated this time around. I’ve bought three DVD prints of this film over the years and they’re all different. The only way to see some quite edgy stuff which reminds you how the writers had tried to put the toughness back into the Bond character (albeit in a slightly misogynistic but not inappropriate way) is to buy the US edition of the movie... which I will be doing again for the stand alone Blue Ray version at some point... which will bring my total count on DVD and Blu Ray (I’m not even going to bring up VHS) to 5 prints. Not good but, hey, what can one do when faced with an overly censorious government.

And that’s that. Brosnan was a great version of Bond and I was deliriously happy that the franchise was back on course again. 1995 was a pretty good year for Bond fans.

EON James Bond Movie Reviews on NUTS4R2

Dr. No

From Russia With Love

Goldfinger

Thunderball

You Only Live Twice  

On Her Majesty’s Secret Service

Diamonds Are Forever

Live And Let Die

The Man With The Golden Gun  

The Spy Who Loved Me

Moonraker

For Your Eyes Only

Octopussy

A View To A Kill 

The LIving Daylights 

Licence To Kill  

GoldenEye

Tomorrow Never Dies

The World Is Not Enough  

Die Another Day 

Casino Royale

Quantum Of Solace

Skyfall
S.P.E.C.T.R.E

The Wolverine 3D (X-Men 6)

Ronin Around

The Wolverine 3D (X-Men 6)
2013 USA
Directed by James Mangold
Playing at cinemas now.

Warning: There will be some big spoilers slicing 
away at you in this one. Approach with caution.

You know, I really quite like the X-Men movie franchise, even though it’s nothing like The Uncanny X-Men I used to read very occasionally as a kid. I used to read the odd British reprint in the very early 70s, harking back to the early 60s (in fact, I think I read the first few issues of the original series) which was many years before the creation of the super-group’s most popular member, Wolverine (or Weapon X as I believe he used to be known, back in the days when he was kind of a villain?). To me the characters were Professor X, Beast, Cyclops, Iceman and Marvel Girl (now better known by her civilian moniker of Jean Grey). They were the X-Men I wanted to see back when they brought the first movie out 13 years ago.

However, I really liked that movie and, of the five previous films in the franchise, the only one which let me down big time and made me curse the internal politics of the Hollywood suits who, by all accounts, deliberately waited for the original director of the first two to leave the production, was X-Men: The Last Stand (X-Men 3). That particular entry into the franchise was a) not their last stand, clearly and b) really quite rubbish. Especially since the original film's writing/directing team had beautifully set up the Dark Phoenix plot from the comics so brilliantly with the death of Jean Grey at the end of the second film... hinting at the continuation with a “held” camera shot panning across a lake. Everybody knew Marvel Girl would be resurrected as a dark villainess destroyer like she was in the comics and everyone was so psyched to see what would happen next. Unfortunately the change of director meant that the Dark Phoenix fulfillment story became relegated to a minor plot point in the third movie... which was a real mis-step for the franchise (but don’t worry, I’m reminding you of all this for a reason pertinent to this review).

When X-Men Origins: Wolverine burst onto our screen, my impression was that nobody was that interested in the X-Men anymore. The disappointment of that previous movie had kind of killed off the audience it seems to me. However, I went to see it and really quite liked it (my review of it is here). It wasn’t a perfect movie but it did feel like a modernish b-movie in terms of the fun of the way it was put together. Kind of like an early to mid 80s straight-to-home-video release but with a bigger budget thrown at it. It kinda worked on the level it was going for and, like I said, it had some fun in it.

The fifth X-Men movie, X-Men:First Class (reviewed here) was a bit of a strange prequel. It had stuff happening in it which totally contradicted the events which were flashed back to in the third X-Men film, as though the powers that be wanted to completely forget that third mis-step and reboot the series. Except it couldn’t be a reboot because there were a couple of interesting actor/character cameos in that film and... to be honest... this movie totally screws any continuity with the previous installments in the series. That it was so successful at the box office is because of one thing alone... it’s a completely brilliant, kick ass movie which succeeds on nearly every level and rivals the first two movies in every way. Such a brilliant, if continuity challenged movie.

Now, stick with me if you’re finding all this continuity stuff interesting because there’s a sequence at the end of The Wolverine which directly links it into the other parts of the franchise and sets up the new movie, X-Men: Days Of Future Past, currently filming, which combines the casts from the original X-Men movies and X-Men: First Class... I’ll come back to all this towards the end of this review.

And so, here we have Hugh Jackman’s sixth time playing Logan (Wolverine) on film. He’s a character who, as we know from previous movies, can heal himself very quickly and, because of this, has lived many hundreds of years (along with his brother who was cursed with the same talent/misfortune). We also know about his adamantium skeleton and we know that even before he had this technology thrust upon him, he had bone claws which would emerge at will from his knuckles. We also know that Hugh Jackman, a fan of the character, turned out to be completely perfect casting and plays him with the seriousness and gravitas that a fan-favourite character of this magnitude requires. So we know nothing is going to be wrong about his performance here and, what do you know, he’s still perfect in the role. And from hereon in, this review gets spoilery people!

This film is an adaptation of the 1982 comic-book 4 issue mini series The Wolverine, by Chris Claremont and Frank Miller. I’ve not read that and can’t tell you whether it’s a completely faithful adaptation or not but this film certainly feels like it was adapted from something. It’s got a lot of substance to it and is not, contrary to what the trailers will have you believe, just a load of action sequences strung together. In fact, the action sequences in this were the ones which left me a little disappointed, to be honest. I found them a trifle long winded at times but, frankly, it didn’t detract from my enjoyment of a beautifully put together movie. Logan’s relationship with the two lead Asian actresses in the film is really quite wonderful and, as always, Jackman makes you believe in the character through his sheer lack of sociability and resignedness and the way that vibe bounces off of friend and foe alike is a sheer delight to watch.

There are also some nice shot compositions, especially the first shot where the World War II Japanese concentration camp is established, which works particularly well in 3D when it pans to the right of the shot. And really nice set ups during the period when Logan is staying with a character called Mariko at her private hideaway, which play with size and perspective in a really nice way, pitching extremes of size directly against each other in the same shot for some nice angular and sometimes, triangular designs.

There's a really silly slip up, though, during that last mentioned set of sequences. There's a scene at a dinner table where much attention is drawn to the positioning of chopsticks and, well, all I can say is it's the mystery of the bizarrely moving chopsticks from horizontal position to vertical position again. Now this can have happened in two ways. One is that the dinner conversation was originally much longer and the chopsticks were "reset" during that conversation but then the sequence was shortened in the editing and that part cut out. Frankly though, because your attention is drawn towards the offending culinary objects, the slip up is quite blatant. I think what might have happened is the final shot which finishes the sequence off, a shot which has no conversation in it and which includes the problem, may have been spliced onto the end from an alternate take of an earlier shot to have something in medium shot to finish the sequence off... either way, the effect is quite comical and perhaps a little unwanted.

Plus some interesting choices in continuity with the rest of the franchise and this is where it gets interesting since The Wolverine is also, it turns out, a direct sequel to X-Men: The Last Stand. Haunted by the spirit of Jean Grey, who he had to kill in her Dark Phoenix incarnation in that film, Logan has a fair few dream-like conversations with her throughout this movie (Jean Grey again played remarkably charismatically by Famke Janssen) in a sort of The Ghost And Mrs. Muir kind of existence (or younger readers might take the analogy of Six and Baltar in the modern incarnation of the Battlestar Galactica TV series, if they prefer). This works pretty well to add a certain amount of depth to the character and explains the almost nomadic existence he has been living since the events in that third film. Also, it makes sense to link it with that movie in some ways because the events in X-Men Origins: Wolverine were clearly taking place at a point before the first X-Men movie and don’t require this film to tie up any loose “character” ends from that film.

This movie plays out really well though and, all in all, it’s quite extreme and raw for the rating... although nowhere near as extreme as I would have liked and had hoped for when director Darren Aronofsky was originally attached to the project in its early days. Well, okay, it’s raw for “modern” Hollywood anyway, and we can’t help but be trapped in the censorially worse-than-Victorian culture we are living in at the moment, I guess.

The score by Marco Beltrami, who is the 6th composer to work on an X-Men film (so much for musical continuity between films, you idiot producers) is actually quite mellow but not as pseudo-Japanese style as I was expecting. Perhaps that would, to be honest, have been a wrong move and this score supports the drama quite well. I’ve no idea as yet whether it works as well as a stand alone listen because I was only able to sneak enough time in to listen to the first third of the album over the week before I saw the movie, but I’m guessing it’s a nice enough listen and Beltrami’s a solid composer.

Now then... you will have hopefully seen this movie by now and if you did, I sincerely hope you stayed for the mid-credits epilogue sequence. If you didn’t, well, maybe you should try to see it. There’s been a lot of complaints, including from myself, that the last X-Men film brought about so many impossible continuity errors that it just made a mockery of the series. Now Bryan Singer, the original director of the first two movies in the franchise, who is making the next one, has said that he has recognised this and will try to do something about it. Now, they’re doing Days Of Future Past and all the actors who played the characters in both sets of movies, are reuniting to play the same characters at different points in time, presumably at the same time - Professor X meet young Professor X etc... but I don’t see how any of that can reunite the two timelines unless, one of the timelines is significantly altered. Now, the post end credits sequence on the third movie implied that the mind of Professor X had somehow survived in someone else’s body but, if I recall correctly, both Professor X and Magneto, played by Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellan, were destroyed. With me so far? Okay...

The mid end credits sequence in The Wolverine is set two years after the events that take place in the main body of the movie. There, at an airport, an uncredited Ian McKellan as Magneto and an uncredited Patrick Stewart as Professor X try to enlist Logan’s aid. Logan is suitably baffled by their presence, and so are the audience. Also, the implication could be that even Jean Grey somehow survived and that’s why she is always in Logan’s head throughout this movie (okay, so that last might just be wishful thinking on my part but, what the heck?). However, this does give me hope for the future of the franchise because, if Singer is able to come up with a good reason for Magneto and Professor X to still be walking the earth, then surely the continuity errors from the last movie should be small enough in comparison for him to take care of. Let’s hope so anyway. I guess we’ll find out during May 2014, which is when X-Men: Days Of Future Past is due to be released.

Until then, enjoy The Wolverine. It’s not as fun as X-Men Origins: Wolverine, to be sure, but it’s certainly got a more mature feel to it and a lot more narrative and character development to get your head around. And Jackman is always good to watch as Logan, bringing a lot to the role and embedding it with a continuity in character attitude that elevates the role to being one of the great on-screen characters of our time. He even gets away with doing a quite blatant homage to James Bond in Diamonds Are Forever... and if you've seen that film then you'll know exactly what I'm talking about. Don’t miss out, bub!

Hansel And Gretel: Witch Hunters 3D

Every Witchery Way

Hansel And Gretel: Witch Hunters 3D
Germany/USA 2013
Directed by Tommy Wirkola
Playing at cinemas now.

Alrighty.

So now we have the big gingerbread house of a movie that is Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters. It’s an intriguing concept, in that it’s something I’ve not expected to see in terms of using a source material to inspire a gung-ho action flick and the writer/director’s certainly taken a good stab at doing something which is almost as irresistible as the succulent confection of a witches abode that features so heavily in the source fairy tale (and also at certain points in the movie). It’s certainly a lot of fun, that’s for sure.

There are also a few problems with it which I’ll also highlight a little as I go through my personal witch hunting experience.

If you don’t already know, this film is a kick-ass action movie in much the same camp as the badly received Stephen Sommers movie Van Helsing, from almost a decade ago. This may be, I suppose why a lot of people don't seem to be that turned on about going to see it... which is a shame because it’s got some nice things to offer. Now, I happen to have really loved the Van Helsing movie so, when I saw the trailers for this film featuring crossbows, gatling guns, flying witchery, Famke Jannsen, Jeremy Renner (who I like a lot as an action hero, ever since I first became aware of him in 28 Weeks Later) and, as the lovely icing on an already rich cake, the fantastic UK actress/glamour puss phenomenon who is Gemma Arterton... I was already kinda full on gagging to see this particular movie.

The film starts off with a pre-credits recap of the fairy tale version of the story (or “a” version of the story) for people who don’t know it, which neatly leads onto an ultimately expected but still nice little revelation about the main protagonists later on in the movie. It’s a pretty cool sequence and, the young girl in particular, looks very much like Gemma Arterton, who she grows up to be while the opening credits sequence plays out. This particular title sequence is a real masterpiece in itself (especially in 3D) with “newspaper” articles which trace the path of the two witch hunters as they grow up and make a name for themselves in the... ahem... “Witch Hunters For Hire” business. The nature of the illustrative drawings used and the way they are presented in 3D make them almost look like those old, Victorian, Pollock’s Toy Theatre cutouts (black and white for a penny, colour for tuppence) and this helps lend a certain sense of larger than life theatricality to the proceedings as we then plunge into a “witch trial” which is stopped by the title characters in their grown up form.

These characters are quick and easy to be established through some verbal and physical shorthand and then the basic plot (and it is pretty basic, it has to be said, though there’s nothing wrong with that) is out of the way and everyone can get on with the witch hunting and general “beating-upness” of the movie in some set pieces which are half way between dazzling and, unfortunately, bewildering. Yes, this movie suffers from some confusing editing during the action sequences, it’s true, but I’m hoping when (and that is a when, not an if) I watch this movie again, on DVD, some of the - fight/chase/run/fight a bit more - sequences will make more sense. To be fair, it might have been that my brain was trying to cope with all the 3D effects and, in tight juxtaposition with a fast action sequence, I was just not processing the information fast enough.

There are some nice supporting characters in the shape of Hansel’s red headed love interest played by the very beautiful Pihla Viitala and also “Hansel & Gretel’s biggest fan”, played by Thomas Mann (who turns in a really likeable performance and who is not to be confused with the German geezah who wrote Death In Venice). The film also features Peter Stormare in a minor villain role but, although he is more than worthy of the character, he never really gets the chance to let rip with his particular kind of craziness and I think this is a case of the specific casting choice raising this viewers expectations of the character via the baggage of his previous roles... which is a shame but, hey, he’s still excellent and credible in it, so I need to temper my expectations a little, maybe.

There’s some nice business with a troll character that I really liked and he really drives home one of the things that I’d kind of subconsciously noticed right from the outset but which was then pushed to the front of my mind when I watched the first big sequence with this character... this film is not for little kids. It’s violent, for sure, but I was kind of expecting it to be the Marvel comic book style of turning violence into a bloodless ballet, which the majority of large budget films over the last decade or so have been guilty of, primarily because of censorship issues and the fears said censorship would have on the box office. This, however, is quite gory all the way through, with loads of decapitation, head pulping, bodies torn apart, bodies exploding and, you know, all the gory stuff. It wasn’t until after I’d seen the movie, when I looked up the director to write this review, that I realised it was written and directed by the same guy who wrote and directed Dead Snow (aka Dod Sno), the excellent, tongue in cheek nazi-zombie movie which was on everyone’s radar a few years ago. This explains a lot. I certainly can’t say I prefer Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters over Dead Snow (which I loved) but now i understand why this movie was refreshingly, for the kind of movie it is, blessed with a penchant for gory bloodletting when it could so easily have bypassed that aspect of the production.

I also think there may have been script issues along the way too... which is a shame. There are some nice details and little character props put in the film and one of these is the fact that, due to Hansel’s childhood experience at the original witch’s gingerbread lair, he has to inject himself with a substance every couple of hours or die... which could have made for a suspenseful scene towards the end of the picture but, alas, all references to this facet of the character seem to fly out of the window by the end of the movie and he goes for long stretches of time without even once “pulling out his plunger” after a certain point. There’s one scene which may explain the reasons for this in terms of story logic, except if that is what was going on, it wasn’t made implicit enough, for me at least, to register. What I think, is more likely, is that the film was originally a much longer cut and the sequences explaining just what is going on in relation to this story element were lost in the edit somewhere along the line. Personally I’d like to see a longer version of this movie where stuff like this is addressed at some point in my near future. Oh well... maybe with the blu-ray.

Another script issue might be the language, which seemed a bit too modern in a lot of places... specifically when it came to the use of swear words in whatever the time period of this film is supposed to be covering. I remember reading an article when I was a kid about “controlled anachronism” in the context of fantasy fiction but, frankly, there’s a lot of reference to “those f*cking witches” throughout the film and this did seem to lessen the credibility of the central characters somewhat... I would have personally gone with a more antiquated set of swear words to run through the film but, all in all, it doesn’t really spoil the movie too much and the pacing is such that you never really have too much time to think about it before being yanked into the next set piece.

So, in essence, what we have here is a movie which is a rollicking action fest, if that’s your thing, and has some pretty cool actors playing some characters with a fair bit of heart and depth (although, it is a shorthand sketchy kind of depth, to be sure) tearing through an adult fairy tale at a fairly fast pace with a good amount of gore thrown into the mix. Some nice scoring, too, in the few places you can actually hear it properly (it does tend to get buried in the mix in places) which I’m looking forward to grabbing for a “stand alone” listen when it gets released towards the end of next month.

This is not the best action movie going, by a long shot, but it is trying something new and it is, by and large, a fairly enjoyable romp in the cinema if you’ve got nothing else to do one night. I’d recommend it to most people but don't go into it with really high expectations... this director is in better form with nazi zombies than he is with twisted fairy tales.

Taken 2 (aka Taken - La Vendetta)

Skill List

Taken 2 (aka Taken - La Vendetta) 
2012 France 
Directed by Olivier Megaton
Playing at UK cinemas now

Warning: This review will have a very particular set of spoilers. 

Two days previous: 
“Okay movie, now listen very carefully. I have a very particular set of skills which makes watching films like you very easy. If I like you, I will say good things about you in my review. But if you don’t live up to the spirit of the first movie of this franchise... I will find you. I will watch you. And I will review you poorly!”

Now: 
You know I really loved the first movie in this series of films. We’d all seen Liam Neeson jump around with his Jedi skills in the Star Wars prequel trilogy, but I think this might have been one of the first times (if not, the very first?) that we’d seen him groomed by a director to be an out and out action man. We all knew he could look the part and that he could be convincing enough as an actor to make us believe it to an extent... but could he actually do a gritty, tough guy action movie without it looking really silly?

The resulting film was a resounding success. A popular movie with most of my friends (including me) and a fairly good profit “taken” at the box office... even though it turned out the initial cut of the film was severely compromised (this was thankfully restored on the eventual DVD release). Less successful was a follow up movie which Neeson headed up and which was trying to hit the same “audience vibe” as Taken. That one was called Unknown... and, unfortunately, the script let it down abysmally (see my review here).

I’ll say up front, right now, in case you think this is going to be a negative review and can’t be bothered to read anymore or skip to the end, that I had a lot less problems with Taken 2 than I thought I was going to have. I think it does have some things about it which are less than stellar but I feel, overall, the criticisms I am hearing of this movie are a little over the top and, frankly, inaccurate. If you want to hear what I think the basic problems are and whether you think they’ll spoil your experience at the cinema with this one then, please, read on.

I had some serious worries about Taken 2, and these worries stemmed from four sources. Number one was that, about a year and a half/two years ago, I read that Neeson hadn’t wanted to rush into a sequel based on the strength of the script he’d seen. I can’t remember which magazine news-feed was the source for this, but it said that Besson had replied something along the lines of... “whether you think the script is ready or not, we shoot at such and such time or... you can just not be in it”. At which point a key player in this as I see it, Mr. Neeson, got on board. A pay check is a pay check, after all. But this says to me that the script was really not in a state he wanted to touch.

Secondly... another revelation from one of the movie news-feed style sites about 6 months ago said that it would be Neeson and the character of his ex-wife, played again by Famke Janssen, who would be “taken” and it would be the daughter he spent the majority of the first film trying to rescue, who would be rescuing them. Nothing against the actress Maggie Grace (who readers may remember from Lost but, if not, then the over the top, but quite cool with it, Lockout, reviewed here) but, frankly, there’s no way the character as portrayed by her in the first film could do that here without compromising everything we know about that character and her abilities. However, while this rumour turned out to be totally true... I’m happy to say that they found a way of doing it while still retaining the “weak, spoiled brattishness” of the original character.

Thirdly... I saw the trailer.

It was awful. It’s too long and it doesn’t sell the film... especially since it gives away the story and, frankly, the story is the big problem with this movie. It feels unbelievably contrived, all to just get the name of the first picture into the title of the second... and that’s because it is contrived.

Fourthly... I’d heard there were some really bad reviews about this one on TV, radio and twitter shout outs... and I kind of believed them.

So, when I got to the cinema I wasn’t exactly expecting to have a good time. Actually, though, as a non-stop action movie... it’s not a bad way to spend an hour and a half. Although the story really is badly handled... concerning a group of older thugs who are the fathers, uncles, cousins and brothers of a load of people Neeson’s character Brian tortured and killed his way through in the first movie to get his daughter back. This lot are out for revenge so when Brian goes on holiday with his daughter and ex-wife (with the obvious subtext that she won’t be his ex for much longer but become part of a family unit again), the old geezah running the show is out to kidnap and torture the lot of them.  They get Brian and his wife but lose the daughter and Brian gains access to cell phone communication while in captivity long enough to get his daughter to find him and get a gun to him (just in the nick of time for him to shoot her own would be killer)... but then he carelessly loses the wife again and, after dumping his daughter at the American Embassy, he tracks the people who survived his initial escape and kills all of them too... rescuing his wife in the process.

It’s actually not, to this untrained observer, a good structure to have as a script for this type of film. Even Kurosawa would show the audience a straight line to map out the action and then follow on through the basic outline to give a film a straight A to B feeling. This is not the only way to go with your story, obviously... but since it’s dealing with just a few incidents, this story for Taken 2 did feel like it kinda derailed itself and then reacted to new information halfway through. It’s like the climax came about two thirds of the way through... and then the film started a new act and climax which felt kinda tacked on and redundant. Would have liked a less messier way of having the same events occurring than the framework this one was hung onto, to be honest. it leaves you feeling a little unsatisfied.

However, what does work in this one, even if some of the events surrounding the characters still feels a little too concocted for convenience in their back story (as in the ex-wife having trouble with her new husband and separating so she’s free to get all doughy eyed over Brian again), is that the characters all feel like the people they were in the first one. I’d heard a criticism that this film didn’t feel like it was a Taken movie (whatever that is) and I’d disagree. I think all the characters, and actors for that matter, were faithful to their origins in the first movie and so this does genuinely feel like it’s another installment in the franchise... a weak installment, but certainly a continuation nonetheless.

Similarly, the action scenes are all as fast and furious as they were in the original and feel like they are coming from the same place. However, and this is where it gets truly annoying, the UK version of the film has had cuts made, at the suggestion of the BBFC, so the studios can keep it down to a 12A rating and get more kiddies in. Now I did know this before I saw it but, since this particular cinema trip was pretty much window shopping until the opportunity to buy an uncut version on DVD occurs (be it from France, America or possibly the UK), I relaxed my rules about seeing something cut because I didn’t want to buy this one without trying if it was awful, and since it all goes on a Cineworld Unlimited card anyway. How much of a difference could it make, I thought to myself.

Well, unfortunately, the answer to the last question is... a lot.

The editing in the fight sequences seems even more aggressive and choppy than it actually really is, is my guess, because for about half the people who Mr. Neeson sent to their final oblivion, I couldn’t even figure out how they had been killed. Were they stabbed, garrotted, strangled, shot, had their necks broken? I don’t know. One minute they were fighting and the next they were kind of laying on the floor dead... the victim of another annoying, senseless and careless censorship edit. I’m pretty sure in one fight, even, Mr. Neeson was hammering away at two guys, he kills one and then he has no opponent left... lost in the final UK cut. This is something to note then, please, film censors and studios who stupidly collaborate with them... if you keep showing acts of violence with no real consequence other than people laying around on the floor afterwards... then you will be sending a very seductive message to impressionable people throughout the land watching this stuff. People will start imitating it... after all, stuff like this doesn’t really hurt, does it? Yes, it bloody well does and censors need to let these things be seen to serve as warnings of the fragility of the human body and to help prevent the kiddies from... you know... trying this at home.

Okay, so censorship rant over with... Taken 2 is certainly not the film that it’s predecessor is, that’s for sure. However, fans of the first movie and action fans in general should still have an okay time with this movie. In fact, a friend of mine mentioned today that he’d seen it this weekend and really liked it, even though he’d not seen the first movie. So I don’t think a great deal of people are going to have too much of a problem with it... and judging from the money it took this weekend, I doubt very much if the studio cares whether they did or not. Expect a third outing a few years down the line is my guess... although I don’t know who’ll have to get “taken” in the next one... maybe the president?