Thor - Ragnarok

Ragnarok N’ Roll

Thor - Ragnarok
2017 USA Directed by Taika Waititi
UK cinema release print.

Warning: Very minor ‘ish’ story spoilers, I suppose.

So here we go again with Thor - Ragnarok. It's yet another, fairly impressive, entry into Marvel’s strand of MCU films (Marvel Cinematic Universe) which all take place in a shared universe and have interlocking characters, themes and situations which build on and support each other. So, essentially, this is yet another sequel to Iron Man, even though Robert Downey Jr’s version of Tony Stark is only mentioned here and doesn’t actually appear in the flesh. Although there have been a few misses along the way... Iron Man 2 and the two Guardians Of The Galaxy films really didn’t do much for me, it has to be said (although I do like the characters in the GOTG films... just not the story ideas surrounding them)... the films are mostly solid and, musical continuity aside, the Marvel films in this sequence seem to have a knack for good casting (both in front of and behind the cameras). This latest installment is no exception to that rule. Sure, it’s certainly not the best of them but it’s definitely somewhere in the upper half of fun Marvel movies, I would say.

The previous two Thor ‘solo’ movies (if you can call this a solo adventure) were different in tone to each other and this third entry again changes the look and feel of the stories. Starting off with Thor imprisoned and talking to the a captive audience abut how he got in this predicament, I at first thought the majority of the running time was going to be one long flashback telling us how Thor got to this point and that the conclusion would lead on from here. Not so, though, and in the first of many surprises, we have a typical James Bondian ‘end of a mission’ moment when Thor talks to a big fiery devil creature and gains an inkling about the duplicity of Loki’s last trick, when it was revealed to the audience but not to Thor that Loki had replaced Zeus and was impersonating him to rule Asgard (at the end of Thor - The Dark World reviewed here). Thor then does battle with the monster and, when he finally gets back to Asgard, uncovers Loki tricksterism (in a nice scene which spoofs Loki’s fake death from Thor - The Dark World). After the two go to find Zeus, played once again by Anthony Hopkins and helped in their quest by a recent addition to the Marvel Universe, they learn that they have an older sister, Hela (played by the wonderful Cate Blanchett), who was banished by Zeus in days gone by. She is the Goddess of Death and she’s pretty powerful.

In a mini showdown, Hela destroy’s Thor’s hammer and, while he and Loki are fleeing to Asgard, she follows them up the Bifrost and both Thor and Loki are thrown from that mode of transport into a random part of the Universe where Thor is taken prisoner by Jeff Goldblum’s ‘Grandmaster’ and forced to fight in the arena against... The Incredible Hulk. However, he has to find a way back to Asgard and so he teams up with Loki, Valkyrie and Hulk/Banner to try to make things right. And that’s the plot set up and that’s all I’m saying about it here... which is pretty much what you can gather from the trailer anyway.

So we have Chris Hemsworth back as Thor and Tom Hiddleston back as Loki and, frankly, the chemistry between them is great. We also have one of my favourite modern actors, Mark Ruffalo, back as Bruce Banner/Hulk and he’s always a fun watch but he’s mostly back as Hulk here, rather than in his human form. The Hulk character has, as you will have seen from the trailers, finally ‘found his voice’, so to speak and is more in keeping with the original comics in this way. I think the character also looks a lot more like Ruffalo here and, maybe I’m wrong here but his head seems to have grown smaller in size too? Seems to have been redesigned. We also have Tessa Thompson who seems miscast, racially, as the blonde haired, Wagnerian styled Valkyrie from the 1970s comics, although I don’t know if she’s been revamped in recent comics like the Nick Fury character was so I might just be showing my age here. Away from the ‘look’ of the character, though, she does do pretty well here and creates an entertaining screen personae but, again, she seems far removed from being The Enchantress as she ‘kinda/also’ was in the early 70s comics.

Idris Elba returns as Heimdall, partaking in some nice heroics and there are also a couple of special cameos here from Sam Neil and Luke ‘brother of Chris’ Hemsworth which provide a great moment when Thor gets back to Asgard. Karl Urban also turns up (although I didn’t actually recognise him, which shows just how good of an actor he is) as a... well he’s definitely someone you have to keep an eye on. He’s not a black and white character by any means, even though he’s still a quick sketch of one... in terms of the film moving at a very fast pace. My favourite new character here, though, was easily a rock creature called Korg who definitely gets all the best laughs in the movie... so I was surprised to learn later that he’d been played by the director, Taika Waititi.

And when I say he got the best laughs...

Thor - Ragnarok shouldn’t really work as well as it does here and this is due to the tone of this one. I mentioned earlier that the previous Thor movies seemed to have a slightly different tone but this one is a complete ‘about face’ to the way in which the characters were presented in the previous Thor adventures. In fact, this one is pretty much written as a comedy all the way through. The scripting pretty much consists of a load of jokes and one liners thrown together and, although a lot of it was apparently improvised on set for this particular film, it really works quite well for most of the time.

Now, you’d think that such an out and out comedy treatment of the subject matter might trivialise the story arc of the ‘big picture’ the Marvel Cinematic Universe has been building towards completing over the next two years but it really doesn’t fall into any of the traps it could have been tripped up with and the tone of the piece never really interferes with the tone and credibility of the established characters (for the most part... I’ll get to my one big complaint in a minute). Furthermore, although comedy is the order of the day in this one, you never really feel like it’s watering down the stakes which are quite high here. It’s also quite edgy in something it does to one of the characters and I realised at one point in the film that one of the scenes used in the trailers must have been shot twice (once with and once without... something) or at least had some heavy CGI work done on it in order to not reveal something which will be a permanent change to one of the regular characters in the MCU.

My one big problem here was the Banner/Hulk character... not in terms of acting but in terms of scripting. For starters, Banner’s few scenes in the movie seem to be really ‘out of character’ to me and it’s like he’s gone completely mad. I understand that after being ‘imprisoned’ in the Hulk’s body for two years the character might return a little dazed and confused but something about the writing here just didn’t seem to ring true to the excellent work Ruffalo has done with Bruce Banner in previous films in the series. Also... and I may be completely wrong about this... but isn’t the continuity completely wrong here. I thought the jet that Hulk used to escape in Avengers - Age Of Ultron (reviewed here) was found or tracked to a specific place on Earth, although Hulk was not found. Or did I remember that wrong because... that’s not in the back story here. The jet seems to have ended up somewhere completely different and ‘off world’. Also, the character makes reference to having been on another planet other than Earth and the one he’s currently on here and Thor seems to remember this too. Well, I don’t. When the heck did this happen in the intervening movies? So I was finding myself very puzzled during some scenes here.

Also, while I'm on the subject of continuity. If Thor was in a happy relationship with Natalie Portman's character still when he left Earth in Avengers - Age Of Ultron... how can they have had any time to 'split up', as is stated here, when he hasn't been back to Earth since then until a certain scene in this film? That makes no sense. Honestly Marvel, if you find yourself in the position where you have to write a character out because they don't want to do anymore, you could at least make it a little more credible.

However, this is all just minor stuff and, in terms of broad strokes, Thor - Ragnarok is definitely one of the better entries in the MCU. Mark Mothersbaugh’s score is nicely done too (although I would have liked to have heard what Brian Tyler might have done with this one) and there’s even a nice musical cameo from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, if I’m not much mistaken. If you’re a fan/follower’/true believer’ of the Marvel movies then you really need to see this... especially since it helps set up (as do they all, I guess), next year’s Avengers - Infinity War. It’s perhaps more married, in terms of the kind of comedy action style it has here, to the two Guardians Of The Galaxy movies but it doesn’t seem to make the same mistakes that those two did (for me) and this one was a much more positive experience. And, like I said, the stakes are high in this one and, by the end of the story, you definitely feel that various things have been changed forever in the wake of this movie. Things which certainly, in some ways, live up to the movie’s subtitle of Ragnarok. My big question of the writers, though, is this... where the heck is Lady Sif these days?

Star Trek Beyond

Peachy Elba

Star Trek Beyond
2016 USA Directed by Justin Lin
UK cinema release print.

Warning: Very slight spoilers beyond...

Well the thirteenth cinematic Star Trek movie is finally here and... I still don’t quite understand why the heck it’s called Star Trek Beyond but... oh well... abstract title for a bit of a fuzzy movie. Star Trek Beyond is probably my least favourite of the mini trilogy within a franchise (to date) which began with the 2009 Star Trek (reviewed by me here in one of my earliest NUTS4R2 reviews) and continued with Star Trek Into Darkness (reviewed here). That being said, it’s nowhere near being a bad movie, certainly in terms of the Trek franchise as a whole... it’s much better than Star Trek Nemesis (reviewed by me here) for instance.

Okay... the story isn’t all that great on this one, to be honest. However, you can tell that British comedy guru Simon Pegg, who plays ‘Scottie’ in the new films, has been let loose on the script for this one because the dialogue is pretty sharp. It’s also a movie which is big in action but still lives up, somewhat thinly perhaps, to the basic science fiction storytelling which made the original 1960s series which these current movies are based on so great.

The actors are all fine here with a much bigger role for both Simon Pegg’s Scotty and Anton Yelchin’s take on Pavel Chekov. I’m sure the majority of my readers will know of the tragic accident which claimed the life of Yelchin about a month ago, a big blow to the acting community, I believe. I remember how good he was in the Jim Jarmusch movie Only Lovers Left Alive (reviewed by me here) and, just recently, Green Room (reviewed by me here). So it’s actually very sad to see him go. Something which I’m sure won’t get easier for audiences as each of the other four films he still has coming out this year are released.

Ironically, Yelchin’s part is somewhat beefed up in this movie and, although Chekov is still very much assigned to a functional role in this, Yelchin gets his chance to shine as he’s with Chris Pine’s incarnation of James T. Kirk for large chunks of the movie, as the two pair up to try and find their lost crew. I think the dead give away that the writers have been getting more interested in Chekov as the franchise continues is the inclusion of a nice line towards the end which certainly echoes the original character, as played by Walter Koenig in the TV show. “Did you know that Scotch was actually invented by a little old lady in Leningrad?” asks Yelchin, which made me smile and realise they were possibly looking to get much more invested in the character as the franchise continues.

Star Trek Beyond is not just a memorial movie for Yelchin, however, who gets a credit at the end of the movie which simply states... For Anton. Pryor to this on his own memorium credit, and throughout the movie, we are continually reminded of another famous Star Trek actor who passed away recently... Leonard Nimoy, who played the original Mr. Spock and continued to do so in the previous two movies. Nimoy is the one constant that bridges the original franchise and this so called reboot (or sequels as most people know them) as his original character went back in time and bore witness to the creation of this redirected timeline that started off this version of the adventures. With two identical Spocks at different ages living in this timeline, the writers have now chosen to kill off the Nimoy version of the character too... or Spock Prime, as he is now known. It’s a touching moment when the current Spock, played so well by Zachary Quinto but with a slightly diminished role in this adventure, is left his older self’s few artefacts which, presumably, he managed to somehow bring back in time within him. Amongst these is a photograph of Nimoy and the rest of his fellow cast from the original movies, grouped in a publicity shot that I’m guessing was one used for Star Trek VI - The Undiscovered Country (reviewed by me here). It’s one of a few touching moments and, probably, one of the very last times we’ll see Nimoy’s face in a Star Trek movie.

All the other actors are great too, of course, with Judge Dredd himself, Karl Urban, playing a great version of Doctor McCoy, Zoe Saldana as a much more active Lieutenant Uhura than Nichelle Nichols ever really got the chance to be and John Cho continuing his good work as Sulu. Also joining the cast are Sofia Boutella as new ally Jaylah and the always watchable Idris Elba as the main villain of the piece, Krall.

So solid acting, great dialogue and special effects which are up to the scratch, as usual. However, there’s perhaps way too much action in this one or, at least, way too much motion. I’ve not seen any other movies by director Justin Lin but in this one the camera seems to be swooping all over the place for most of the time. It rarely comes to a stand still, even in the quieter, more low key scenes, and while this technique serves some scenes well, like the first proper ‘swoop through’ of the ‘snowglobe space station’ Yorktown and also in some of the action scenes... the camerawork does get kinda dizzying and disorienting at some points, it has to be said.

Another thing which had me questioning if I had my 3D glasses on correctly was the lighting in some of the scenes... so much so that I had to take them off at one point to prove to myself that, yes, the scenes really were lit that badly. There are certain sequences in the movie, especially in... without giving too much away... Jaylah’s house, that are not exactly dark but... well, just downright dull and which are hard to register on the eyes. Like the interiors in some scenes are all shot through a fine fog which doesn’t quite want to engage you in a way that might help you appreciate the sets. Fair enough, I guess. I’m assuming the director was going for some kind of neutral effect to give other scenes contrast around these, maybe, but it really didn’t do much for me.

The other thing which didn’t quite work for me was most of the last act... the action sequences seem somewhat less than entertaining although, even with all the swooping and whirling camera movement, I was actually able to keep up with the choreography of the kinetic set pieces in this one. So there’s that, I guess.

At the end of the day... Star Trek Beyond is an okay addition to the franchise. Some of the dialogue such as Scotty’s reference to a giant, green hand, which is obviously a humorous reference to the original Star Trek TV episode Who Mourns For Adonis?, had me chuckling a fair bit and you can’t help but buy into the characters when they have lines like this. Alas, it doesn’t make up for a finale which, for me, brought to mind some of the worst Star Trek movie finales such as Star Trek Insurrection (which was an okay film with a terrible last act and which I reviewed here) and the aforementioned Star Trek Nemesis. Truth be told, by the end of the movie, I was getting pretty bored and I think it could have done with either some pruning at the end or, possibly better, a much more interesting couple of set pieces rather than the usual... countdown to stopping the villain realising his plan with just a few seconds to spare kind of scenario. It was already a tired way of doing things back at the dawn of the century... it’s really yawn inducing now. Or, at least, it is the way it’s presented here.

All in all, though, it’s sure to please Star Trek fans who, I’ve no doubt, will turn out for it in force... although I noticed the 3D screening I went to wasn’t even half full on its opening night... which I can’t quite figure out since it easily took number one spot at the box office. So, yeah, not a bad one and I’ll definitely be rewatching on Blu Ray at some point... possibly when it’s been out for a while and goes onto the sale racks. Star Trek Beyond doesn’t really take you anywhere near where the franchise hasn’t boldly gone before but, at least, it doesn’t do that in a competent manner and there are some really witty one liners along the way. Maybe give it a go if there’s nothing else on at the cinema this week.

Star Trek @ NUTS4R2
Star Trek Series 1
Star Trek - The Motion Picture 
Star Trek II - The Wrath Of Khan
Star Trek III - The Search For Spock
Star Trek IV - The Voyage Home 
Star Trek V - The Final Frontier 
Star Trek VI - The Undiscovered Country
Star Trek - Generations (aka Star Trek VII) 
Star Trek - First Contact 
Star Trek - Insurrection 
Star Trek Nemesis 

Star Trek 11

Star Trek: In Darkness (aka Star Trek 12)

Star Trek Beyond

Dredd 3D

Drokk n’ Roll

Dredd 3D 2012 UK 
Directed by Pete Travis
Playing at UK cinemas now

Warning: There are very minor, drokkin’ spoilers
in this one. Don’t judge me on that.

When I was a child my dad told me about a lot of cool stuff he’d seen at the cinema or read in books or comics. One of his favourite comic strips was called Dan Dare and it ran in a quite superb comic in the 50s and, I think, early 60s, called The Eagle. Sometime in the 80s, one of the publishers started reprinting collected volumes of Dan Dare and I could finally read these awesome strips for myself and see just how fine, and how far from anything else on the comics scene at the time, the artwork was on those. Pretty incredible.

However, back in 1977, when I was 9 years old... I couldn’t.

But something happened that same year. My father and I were in a newsagent in Edmonton Green Shopping Centre and we spotted the very first issue of a new comic that was advertising the “new Dan Dare” comic strip. The comic was 2000AD and my dad bought it for me... and we both read it in turn. From then on we were hooked, although my dog chewed up the free 'Space Spinner' (small, red, plastic frisbee thing) which was free with that first issue. We bought every issue as it came out and I saved them and have them all to this day. I stopped buying the comic maybe six or seven years ago... so I think I read almost 30 years of the thing and , believe me, that’s a lot of comic boxes worth of fine artwork and compelling stories right there.

I remember the advertisement in that first one talking about their new strip starting in issue 2. The strip was called Judge Dredd and he was a “lawman of the future”. He was also ultra violent (the comic used to get in trouble with the trade standards and censors a lot for introducing kids quite graphically to concepts like entry wounds and exit wounds), a bit of a fascist, never smiled, never took his helmet off and, due to the bleak humour injected into the skillfully written stories, became the comic’s most popular character in no time. To this day, to my knowledge, he’s never taken a break from patrolling the futuristic streets of Mega City One and has even existed in three UK publications simultaneously at one point. That’s a lot of Dredd back story to choose from if you’re going to make a movie out of the character.

The second issue also had free 'Biotronic Stickers' with it which you peeled off and stuck to your limbs to make yourself look like you had bits of machinery poking through your arms and legs.So that second weekend two things happened. One was, I discovered I liked this new Judge Dredd comic strip and the second thing was my young discovery of the intense agony that only comes from peeling big, garish stickers slowly and painfully off of my own hairy arms. That second was a lesson I’ll never forget.

They tried making a movie of Judge Dredd back in the mid-90s with Sylvester Stallone in the role (even though Joe Dredd in the strip was obviously modelled after Clint Eastwood) and based, amongst others, on a multi-part, epic story called The Day The Law Died with a tyrannical Chief Judge, Judge Cal, who was obviously based on Caligula. Most people thought the movie was quite bad. I’d say that it wasn’t all bad... the first twenty minutes of that film were pretty good Dredd, actually. Unfortunately the movie did then jettison the pure Dreddness of the character and story and basically turned into a Hollywood action movie that was fine on its own merits but which really stopped doing the character any justice from the moment Sly Stallone took his helmet off.

So frankly, up until this weekend, the absolute best and faithful adaptation we have had of Judge Dredd in terms of the bleak humour and, heck, on a lot of levels actually has been...

... the first Robocop movie.

Everyone going to that movie when it came out in 1994 knew it was ripping off the strip in 2000AD and we were all surprised when the studio that brought that one out didn’t have to pay some hefty royalties to “the galaxy’s greatest comic”. Yep! As I said... that was the most faithful in tone we’ve had to that character at the movies. Up until now.

When I heard they were making a new Judge Dredd movie for this year I wished them luck but didn’t expect it to be any more than another failed clone of the first movie attempt. Dredd was just too bleak and dark humoured for the kind of box office money they were going for.... surely?

Well, yeah, probably. But the good thing is... they done it right.

Now this film has one main problem, that I can see, and that’s Mega City One. I’m guessing there wasn’t enough money in the budget to properly render a true, futuristic vision of Dredd’s turf that would match the visions created by people like Brian Bolland, Mike McMahon and Carlos Ezquerra form the 70s and onwards. However, the lack of “futurism” on display in this version is at least justified in the opening voice over narrative by Dredd himself as a story point and, although I thought it was going to be very off-putting, the fact is... it wasn’t. Almost all of the action in this movie takes place over the 200 levels of one of the giant tower blocks of Mega City One and so there just aren’t enough shots used to let you get too much of a handle on it.

Everything else is pretty good though.

Right down to a newsfeed that mentions an iconic character called Fergie and various bits of referential graffiti highlighting jetboard, graffiti artist Marlon Shakespeare (aka Chopper) and Kenny Who!

The film takes place during Dredd’s examination day of rookie Judge Cassandra Anderson, another character from the comic created in the 80s and based on the look of Debbie Harry. Anderson was immediately popular with the readership of the comics when she was first introduced as a minor character because a) she was a Psi-Division Judge... which means she had psychokinetic and telepathic abilities... and b) she was really hot! So she’s an obvious character to bring to the screen. Also, it allows them to set her up for Judge Death if they chose to feature the four dark judges from Necropolis in any possible sequels.

This film uses exactly the same kind of plot of the recent movie The Raid (itself a variant on what the original version of Bruce Lee’s incomplete version of Game Of Death was supposed to be), but instead of a whole police team going into the building and taking on everyone inside, you have just Dredd and his new rookie, under examination conditions, trying to fight their way against all odds to take out MaMa... a villainess who basically “owns” the block and who has been manufacturing and selling a new street drug called Slo-Mo, which has the effect of slowing time right down for a while for any of its users/addicts.

Actually, the plot device of Slo-Mo is a pretty smart move by the makers of the movie, as it allows for some really great, slow motion photography, with lots of “Argento moments” and also enables the gory violence (this movie has an 18 certificate) to be slowly and voyeuristically consumed in much the same way that us kids in the 70s would be able to have frozen moments of time, from panel to panel of the strip, showing a bullet going into one persons head from one side and then exiting the other with a great splash of “black ink blood” (2000AD was a black and white comic for many years with just the covers and the centre pages being in colour).

I say Argento moments because the cinematography on this one is full of moments which show the beauty of violence in much the same way that Dario Argento would dwell on or create a specific shot or surprising moment, just for the sake of having a great shot with nothing supporting the story. Argento’s pretty much admitted this penchant for the “cool shot” over the story support in interviews and anyone who doubts this just needs to look at the non-sequitur “Mad Puppet” scene in Deep Red (aka Profondo Rosso) to understand what I’m talking about here. Dredd 3D is filled with a lot of shots of slowed down water splashing, or cheeks exploding as bullets fly through them and fire being reflected in his helmet visor etc. Indulgent but brilliant and very welcome. Dario Argento is going to love this movie, I’m sure.

But it’s not just the story that has a lot going for it. The actors are great too. Karl Urban, a young actor I’ve been watching with great interest, gets Dredd right and stays right with the character all the way through. He doesn’t take his helmet off, he doesn’t smile and he’s got a growling Clint Eastwood style voice delivery that really lets you know that he is “the law” and is not expecting to be taking any prisoners when it comes to fighting for justice.

Similarly, a young actress called Olivia Thirlby really does a fantastic job as future Judge Anderson. She instantly wears the part and makes it her own and you will definitely be rooting for her to pass her exam and stay the heck out of trouble while you’re watching this one. There are some pretty intense sequences with her and a captured perp in the movie and she really handles herself well in these scenes because Thirlby looks way too wispy to be able to survive in this kind of hostile, aggressive environment... but survive and flourish she does.

Supervillain MaMa, as played by Lena Headey, is also extremely impressive... although I can’t for the life of me think why. I’ve never really noticed her in movies before, although I’ve seen her in a few I think, but she does an absolutely amazing job here without seeming to do much of anything at all. She doesn’t go in for any flashy, grand-standy type flourishes with the character, she just plays her very simplistically and naturally... which means that half the time she’s just standing around doing nothing much. However, I think it’s fair to say that in the scenes she’s in, I couldn’t take my eyes off her. She really has an absolutely amazing amount of screen presence and the vibe you get from her that she’s a woman to be reckoned with is instant and really serves the movie well. I’ve got to start looking out for this lady in more films.

And I guess that’s it, apart from the music. The score is okayish industrial noise which I’m really hoping will come out on CD so I can actually hear what it sounds like as opposed to being buried in the mix of the movie. Meanwhile, there’s a new album out called DROKK by Geoff Barrow and Ben Salisbury which I just bought which purports to be an album of music “inspired by Mega City One” but which also happens to be, although it’s obviously not sold as this, the rejected score to this movie. Can’t wait to put that on later and check out what might have been.

And that’s all there is to say I think. Dredd 3D perfectly captures the atmosphere and tone of the strip as it was when I used to read it in the 70s, 80s and 90s. The Judge costumes are admittedly a lot clumsier and clunkier than I’d hoped for but you get used to that pretty quickly. I think the real reason this movie might possibly fail at the box office, in addition to being made 30 years too late, is the fact that it is very dry in the tone of the characters and very simplistic in its story. Younger audiences these days want more emotion and upbeat from their action movies... this is just like those comics, so it’s far from what the kiddies will be expecting from it.

Nevertheless, this movie gets a strong recommendation from me. Dredd done right for a change. Catch it while you can. It's Zarjaz!

Dawn of the Red

Red 2010 US

Directed by Robert Schwentke

Playing at all good cinemas now!

When I went to see this movie called Red at the weekend I was fully expecting it to be a bit of a roller-coaster, at least in terms of it’s pacing, but I was also kinda expecting to be disappointed by it. It seems to be a universally well liked film and my response to those kind of “event movies” rarely cross-pollinate well with the opinions of the larger audience. I have to say, I was pleasantly proved wrong on my latter assumptions... but then Red has a secret weapon up it’s sleeve which I wasn’t aware of.

Things I knew about Red before I went:

1. It has a bunch of great actors - Bruce Willis, Morgan Freeman, Helen Mirren, John Malkovich, Brian Cox and Ernest Borgnine - and they are all playing their own age. This is about a bunch of retired hit-men/CIA agents.

2. It has a terrible poster and a terrible title.

3. It has Helen Mirren firing off a big machine gun.

Now quite frankly, the last item in that list kinda sold it to me. In fact the only way that this film could have appealed to me anymore than with that last proposition would have been if that last point had read... It has a naked Helen Mirren firing off a machine gun. Sadly, however, Helen keeps her kit on in this one but even so, this last thing is what got me into the cinema... that and the fact that I also like Bruce, Morgan, John, Brian and Ernest as actors.

What I didn’t know, however, was that this movie had a secret weapon of extra appeal and it’s a double whammy. Point 1... it’s based on a comic book. Point 2... it’s based on a comic book that was originally written by Warren Ellis. Now this second point is important because Warren Ellis was responsible for writing one of the best comics I’ve ever read... not the best, but certainly in the top 10 of all time great comic literature. It was a comic which ran for about 60 issues called Transmetropolitan and if you ever get the chance to check it out you should maybe peruse the pages of this because his slick, clever dialogue coupled with an absolutely amazing and innovative future world is pure artistry. And great art is good so go have a look. As it turns out, the wit of his words doesn’t quite translate as well as it might (is my guess not having read the comic on which this is based) but with a sound template to base your screenplay on... some of it has got to rub off on the writers, surely?

But, back to what should be my main point here... I think just recently, in the last ten years or so, Hollywood has really begun to wake up to the truly rich seam that comic books can offer them as basis for on-screen adventures. The comic book movie has been around since, pretty much, the dawn of film, but it’s only recently that US filmmakers have really given it a proper workout. I’ve been arguing for years now that comics have been so much more subtle and much more willing to push boundaries than movies and it’s not hard to see why (and if you’ve not read a comic book in the last 30 years, do yourself a favour and go and seek out something like Alan Moore’s truly sublime The Ballad of Halo Jones and find out how much of a brilliant literary experience you’ve been missing out on all these years). Comic books don’t have a budget of millions to lose, they are worked on by far less people and the good ones are usually creator led (as far as I can tell) and so these people can afford to take a few risks and push the envelope and talk about and explore subjects and taboos that movies will just shy away from as being suicidally uncommercial.

And even in action titles like Red they can be a good basis for narrative. These things are presented in a visual manner already, after all. Lot’s of mini “frames” of composition which are there to grab your attention. They an translate very well into movie frames (see Sin City, Watchmen, 300 etc). And the thing about comics is that they know action is not always about action. It’s about the build up and come down from the action. It’s not about the moment of the strike - you would not want to read a comic of endless consecutive panels of people firing machine guns endlessly (even if they are Helen Mirren naked) without being peppered with interesting characterisations and situations. And I think that’s what Hollywood is just beginning to pick up from “action” comics (and it’s something that Masters of Cinema like Kurosawa have known from their directorial birth - check out Yojimbo and others of that ilk... it’s all about what comes before and after the moment - not the bloody act of violence itself). It gives them an interesting framework and because the format of comics make them narrative heavy, that’s beginning (I think) to be taken up as an inspiration by the American film-makers whose films make up such a large percentage of the fodder dumped into our multiplexes.

Red has this awareness in spades and the location changes even echo a comic book sensibility - they are somewhat reminiscent of the spirit of the scene wipes in old TV shows like Batman and The Man From UNCLE and they fit in well with the fast pacing of the picture and the general sense of fun which comes across from the actors. And kudos to the few young people in it... Mary Louise Parker is just fantastic and as for Karl Urban (the new Doctor McCoy and Judge Dredd)... he’s just awesome and I’m really going to have to keep an eye on this guy.

Fast paced, funny and as slick a Hollywood action fest as you’re likely to see, Red is a lot of fun and though at least one issue covered is really quite terrible, the deftness with which it is handled is enough to distract you from it long enough that you won’t worry about it until the movie has ended.

If you like action and dialogue heavy humour, take a look at Red.

It’s got a fully clothed Helen Mirren shooting off all kinds of automatic weaponry!