The Mummy - Tomb Of The Dragon Emperor

Life’s A Dragon, 
Then You Die

The Mummy - 
Tomb Of The Dragon Emperor
United States/Germany/China/Canada 
2008 Directed by Rob Cohen
Universal UK Blu Ray

Warning: Some mild spoilers.

We were all smacking our lips in anticipation of a third film in the Rick O’ Connell Mummy series after the brilliance of The Mummy (reviewed here) and the pretty great follow up The Mummy Returns (reviewed here). And we were all dreadfully disappointed in what finally came out in cinemas. Stephen Sommers, who wrote and directed the previous two installments, did not direct this movie... other than he’s listed as one of the producers. I hate to say it but... it really shows. I don’t know why he wasn’t involved but his 2004 movie Van Helsing, where he further expanded his reimagining of the classic Universal monster movies, was not treated kindly by critics or box office alike. I don’t know why because I thought that particular take was also pretty good but, I don’t know, maybe that’s why he didn’t do the third Mummy movie. He is sorely missed in this sequel. 

Now, the film isn’t a total mess... it certainly works as a typical action adventure movie of the 2000s but, that’s where this film also fails big time. The thing about the previous two installments is that they were both something very special... so expectations were high this would deliver a similar concoction and, to be fair, a lot of the ingredients which made those two a huge success are present and relatively correct. There’s a huge element missing though and, that element would be... fun. Despite an overemphasis perhaps on the humour found in the first two, this film is not the entertaining romp it should have been and falls flat a lot of the time. That being said, there are one or two notable things in the film and, honestly, it’s not the cast’s fault for sure.

We only have two returning actors from the first film present and correct here... that would be Brendan Fraser as Rick O’Connell and John Hannah as Evelyn’s brother Jonathan. And they’re as good as they can be with this script... as are all the other actors. Another character returns from the previous film, Rick and Evie’s son Alex but, of course, since this is set halfway through the next decade again (each Mummy move in this series is set in a different decade) and Alex is supposed to be considerably older and grown up, he couldn’t be played by the same actor (as this was only about seven years since the last film). Instead they get Luke Ford, who makes a not bad stab at this and even, somehow, manages to have some of the same character traits of the child version from that last story. I say somehow because, character consistency is not high on the priority with the next actor I’ll talk about... again, not her fault.

Okay, so the great Rachel Weisz did not, for reasons known best to her (with many different reported explanations for her absence but I think I believe her when she says she didn’t like the script), return for this sequel. However, the character of Evelyn is all present and correct and the original actress was replaced in this film by Maria Bello. And she does a great job so I mean it as no disrespect to say that, in this role, she is no Miss Weisz. Now, one of the problems I have with her is that she is playing it in a much different manner to the character we’ve come to know. That decision could be defended by remembering that, in the last movie, Evelyn was resurrected from the dead as both herself and the daughter of the murdered Pharaoh in the first film... so a slightly different personality could be a valid choice... if that fact were at all referenced in this one but, nope, not much (if anything) is said about it (this time it’s her husband who gets killed and then brought back to life). She does get a nice line of dialogue though... which I’ll come back to in a minute. 

For the record, both Arnold Vosloo and Oded Fehr declined to return for this film also... so the original script must have been pretty different from what we ended up with. 

Two other big actors in this movie are both kung fu legends in their own country... Jet Li as the villainous Dragon Emperor himself and future Oscar winner Michelle Yeoh. Both are great but, come on... another reason people were chomping at the bit for this movie was that we wanted to see them both put their kung fu skills to use (and a ten minute fight scene between the two would have been most welcome). It would be an understatement to say that neither has a chance to shine in this one... especially in Yeoh’s case. 

Right... there are a few nice things. One is that we are re-introduced to Evelyn at a book reading of her latest novel, based on the second of her adventures. When someone asks her if the character in her book is based on her, Bello’s face is revealed and she says... “Honestly, I can say she's a completely different person.” Which is a nice and cheeky nod to the audience (pretty much the only one in the film, I’ll get to that) that she is a different actress taking over the role. It’s the exact same kind of metatextual comment on casting that George Lazenby delivers at the end of the pre-credits sequence in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (reviewed here) when he turns to the camera and says, “This never happened to the other fellow.” So... a nice moment. 

The only other nice thing in this movie... for me... asides from a nod to the first two films by having the name of Jonathan’s night club be “Imhotep’s”... is the inclusion of a small bunch of abominable snowmen... aka yetis... who help out our merry band of heroes at a crucial time. They’re nicely done although, I’ve no idea how two of the creatures can make a visual reference to the game of American Football... to be sure. Maybe try not to think about that too hard. 

A curious thing is that, when Jet Li’s character is fully resurrected, he can take on various forms. The two things he shape shifts into seem curious choices. One is a three headed dragon which bears an uncanny resemblance to King Ghidorah in the original Godzilla films and the other creature he changes into seems to slightly resemble King Caesar, from that same cycle of Godzilla films so... I dunno... I’m surprised the studio didn’t get sued over this. Maybe the director was secretly trying to pitch for a Godzilla reboot at the time? Who knows but... anyone who is into their kaiju eiga would surely get a jolt at seeing these creatures here.

As I was watching the film... I was trying to figure out why it just doesn’t work. There’s loads of humour (which mostly falls flat for me... unlike the other two movies), the action set pieces are well put together, the actors are all good and Randy Eidelman’s score for this (although partially replaced by stuff from John Debney, it would seem) is sweeping and fine... if not a patch on the scores provided for the earlier films by Jerry Goldsmith and Alan Silvestri. I think, for me, the film loses out in terms of the script and the way the humour is played. The script is really stating the obvious and explaining every last thing to the audience and capitalising it... me and my father looked at each other this time when a particularly stupid line (one of the unintentionally stupid lines) came up. And the other problem with it is that, unlike its predecessors, the audience aren’t let in on the joke. Asides from the “different person altogether” line, there are none of the sly winks to the audience that the other two had. It feels like its taking itself too seriously and, consequently, it never really gets us on its side... it’s just not as entertaining as either previous installment and... yeah... it’s just a bit of a let down.

No further films were made (as yet) in this series although, the Tom Cruise version of The Mummy (reviewed here) does include the book of the dead from the first film as a visual reference in one scene... so it’s technically taking place in the same universe. A fourth one featuring an Aztec Mummy was planned but never came to fruition... again, as yet. As for how I stand on this... well, for me, The Mummy - Tomb Of The Dragon Emperor certainly hasn’t grown on me. It was as much of a disappointment this time around as the previous times I saw it so, yeah, if you only see this one, don’t miss out on the first two just because this is not up to scratch. I hope someday the original writer/director and cast will come back to do just one more but... who knows if that will happen. 

Magnificent Warriors

Fight Like A Gal

Magnificent Warriors
aka Dynamite Fighters
aka Zhong hua zhan shi
Hong Kong 1987
Directed by David Chung
D & B Films
Eureka Blu Ray Zone B

I’ve been quite taken with Michelle Yeoh, since seeing her at the cinema in 1997 as the new ‘Bond girl’ opposite Pierce Brosnan in Tomorrow Never Dies (reviewed here). I was aware even then that she was probably not used to letting other people perform her stunts, which she would have sorted out herself in many of these early Hong Kong movies but, as I watched her career with interest (and congratulations to her for winning the Oscar for Everything, Everywhere, All At Once - reviewed by me here), I’d never seen any of those pre-Bond roles. However, between them, British boutique labels such as Arrow Films, 88 Films and, in this case, Eureka Master of Cinema, have finally cottoned on that kung fu films will sell by the bucket load to English audiences, who have hitherto had to pursue bootleg recordings of a lot of these titles. Now, I had no idea which Michelle Yeoh movie I wanted to see first from her early career but then I saw a trailer for this release and realised, yeah, Magnificent Warriors was probably the one.

So, this is set in the 1930s and, I think it would be true that the influence of the then recent US blockbuster movies Raiders Of The Lost Ark and Indiana Jones And The Temple Of Doom are very much in evidence here. Michelle Yeoh had not made more than a handful of movies before this and not necessarily action based ones either, but here her training as a dancer and willingness to work hard pays off as she is, front and centre, the main protagonist of this one. Although she’s not an archeologist but a pilot in this. One might say she’s an anti-heroine because she’s also a gun runner, carrying arms in her biplane but, one has to take into account that the film is set historically during the Japanese invasion/occupation of China... so she is very much a resistance fighter, in some ways, to help stop her people being repressed.

And it’s the look and feel of her character which mostly distills the spirit of Indiana Jones more than anything else... as the film is obviously also influenced by various Hong Kong and Hollywood films before those, which also would have fed into the Spielberg films as much as they do here. So Yeoh’s character Ming-Ming wears the leather jacket and uses her bullwhip in ways much more interesting than her American visual counterpart. She really kicks backside in this movie and is especially good with a weapon which, being as ignorant in the art and instruments of war as I am, I can only describe as a pointy, dagger thing on a rope. Certainly, these must have been really intensive shoots (scheduled to their main locations for three weeks but actually taking three months, by all accounts) and the cast must have been left bruised and bloody after each day’s filming. When I watched the sequence where she was flicking the rope all around and spinning it over her head etc, it put me in mind of the same moves used by the Go Go Yubari character in Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill Volume One. Not saying he got that from here, by the way, I’m sure this choreography is not unique... just drawing the similarity to more widely seen films to aid the brevity of what kind of fighting moves you can see on display here.

And yeah, it’s a rip roaring movie with some good chemistry between all the lead protagonists such as Richard Ng, Tung-Shing Yee and Chindy Lau. There’s lots of humour thrown into the mix too, as Ming-Ming is tasked with rescuing a stranded secret agent who is, in turn, tasked with stopping the Japanese troops from taking over a village community and using the main building as a factory to manufacture their new poisonous gas... there’s even a scene which is reminiscent (or vice versa) of the ‘testing the gas’ scene in Patty Jenkin’s Wonder Woman movie (reviewed here).

Combine the humour and acting chops with a plot filled to the brim with action and not much room for anything else and, well, you’re definitely onto a winner with this particular audience member. I would have to say that the film’s main weakness might be that the action scenes don’t feel like they lead to a satisfying climax. There’s a long battle scene at the end which pitches the Japanese forces against the Chinese villagers defending their city and it’s certainly fine and explosive enough... but I felt the more interesting action sequences were the ones in the first half of the film, which concentrated on hand to hand combat. So, yeah, it felt a little anticlimactic to me. I was also... and this is no fault of the film... a little disappointed with the liner notes in the accompanying booklet (I should have perhaps waited for a cheaper reissue without the booklet and slipcase, I think). For example, the listing on the back makes great play of it having its original theatrical ending, not seen on home video before. But, there’s nowhere in the packaging that tells you what the difference was, where that ending starts from and why it was cut out. Absolutely no idea. It might be mentioned on one of the two commentary tracks on the disc but, yeah, I rarely have time to do the commentary tracks these days, it has to be said.

Anyway, it’s still a cracking little movie and the print and transfer on this are pretty good. I’ve not seen Magnificent Warriors before but I’ve no doubt this is probably the best way to see it. I really enjoyed this one and might look at seeing what other early Michelle Yeoh films I can get hold of at some point*.

*The writing of this review pre-dates my viewing of Yes, Madam (reviewed here) but I wanted to put this current batch of Hong Kong reviews into some kind of chronological order.

Royal Warriors

Heavy Duty

Royal Warriors
aka Wong ga jin si
aka In The Line Of Duty
aka In The Line Of Duty 2
Hong Kong 1986
Directed by David Chung
Eureka Masters Of Cinema Blu Ray Zone B

Well, this is confusing. So, Royal Warriors is one of Michelle Yeoh’s very early films, the next film she did after Yes, Madam (reviewed here) and Magnificent Warriors (review coming soon). Except, in some territories it’s known as In The Line Of Duty and kicks off that series... even though the next films are nothing to do with this one and feature different cast and characters. Except, it’s also known in some Western states as number two in the In The Line Of Duty series, with Yes, Madam known as the first of the In The Line Of Duty films... even though that one also has nothing in common with the others (other than Yes, Madam also stars Yeoh... in a totally different but similar role).  Okay... so this is all very confusing, it has to be said.

What’s not confusing is that this one has a lot going for it in terms of the action and stunts. Opening with a silly, gang fight sequence in which Yeoh rescues a man completely unrelated to the plot from a pair of thugs, who are also completely unrelated to the rest of the movie... it moves on swiftly to a really strong action sequence on a plane where Yeoh and the two mail protagonists...  a fellow police officer of her majesty’s Hong Kong police force (hence the title this has been released as over here, Royal Warriors... which is kind of tenuous anyway) played by Hiroyuki Sanada and an air security officer called Michael Wong, played by... um... Michael Wong.

However, the two bad guys the three manage to kill before they harm anymore passengers, are part of four friends who promised to look out and avenge each other in whatever war they are flashing back to here. So, our three heroes (Wong is trying to get into a romantic relationship with Yeoh’s character) are targets for the other two. And then, the next day when Sanada’s character leaves the police force to go back to Japan with his wife and kid, he watches the car said spouse and sprog get into explode... and the chase is on, so to speak.

And it’s a pretty heavy and serious film, no doubt about that. There are stabs of humour here and there but none of the usual, very broad comedy I’ve seen in a lot of these types of movies lately (thank goodness). Instead, the film just keeps pouring on the grief with loads of innocent bystanders being killed in the crossfire of the action set pieces and then with Wong’s character killing himself to stop Yeoh’s police officer being lured into the same building as the final killer left standing. In fact, the whole bait for the killer to bring the two surviving cops to where he wants to trap them is Wong’s stolen coffin, under danger of being crushed by the villain... so, yeah, it’s a pretty heavy film a lot of the time.

However, despite the cheesy 80s synthesiser soundtrack... another sad prerequisite for the Hong Kong films of this era, it seems to me... the film is quite solid in the way it positions and executes the various fights, shoot outs and chases in this one. Hiroyuki Sanada has some good fighting moves in this and so does the always brilliant Michelle Yeoh, for sure. You can certainly see why, after doing a load of these Hong Kong movies, she was disappointed that on the Bond film Tomorrow Never Dies (reviewed by me here) she wasn’t allowed to perform all her own stunts.

And that’s me done on this one, I think. Royal Warriors, or whatever you want to call it this week, is a good, solid Hong Kong action movie and I’m glad I’ve finally started catching up to these films, if a little late in life. Labels like 88 Films and, in this case, Eureka Masters Of Cinema, are doing a good job at finally getting these things released for the UK market and, while I’m skipping a fair amount of the ones they’ve been releasing over the last few years, I’m happy to be able to get to see some of these films and you’ll certainly see a fair few more reviews of this kind of stuff coming up on the blog in the next few months or so... if you like these kinds of things.

Yes, Madam!

Mad Men VS Madams

Yes, Madam!
aka Police Assassins
aka In The Line Of Duty 2
Directed by Corey Yuen
Hong Kong 1985
D & B Films  Co. Ltd/Eureka
Blu Ray Zone B

Okay, this gets really confusing... this is the first in a series of films that came to be known as the ‘In The Line Of Duty’ series but didn’t get that moniker until the filming of another movie, which also became known as In The Line Of Duty 2, in addition to its real name. But then this ‘first’ film known as Yes, Madam! was marketed internationally as, um, In The Line Of Duty 2 and... yeah, it gets even more complicated than that with the various titles and switched sequences... I have no idea which one I’m supposed to watch next. What do they think this is... a Caroll Baker giallo?

Anyway, Michelle Yeoh had only done two movies prior to this one and this was her first starring role. Meanwhile, the producers wanted to create a new male action hero to co-star in the movie to be ‘the new Bruce Lee’. Various people from a kung fu school in the USA were sent over to audition and some of the ladies went along too. When Corey Yuen and the producers saw what Cynthia Rothrock was able to do, they changed their ideas and rewrote the role for her... this was her first film and she is the first caucasian actress to headline Hong Kong movies.

The plot deals with Yeoh’s Inspector Ng trying to stop bad guys from finding some small time crooks who accidentally become embroiled with some microfilm (remember the days of microfilms in movies being a big deal?). To help her, because it all started when a high ranking police inspector from Scotland Yard is murdered for the microfilm... another ‘English’ police inspector is sent to give Ng a hand... which is Rothrock as Inspector Carrie Morris. After that it’s all comedy and bits and pieces of action (much less action than was shot due to running time constraints) as Yeoh and Rothrock’s characters try and keep tabs on three small time criminals - named Aspirin, Panadol and Strepsil - before they get themselves killed and the microfilm is destroyed.

The humour, like a lot of these Hong Kong films, is more than a little broad but the stunts and action sequences, most of which were performed by the actors themselves such as Yeoh and Rothrock (who got a lot of bruises for their seven month shoot... Rothrock got a torn inner ear for good measure, too), is pretty good and inventive. This was the first time Rothrock used her signature move ‘the scorpion kick’ in a movie... the choreographer asked her if she wanted to throw anything of herself into the mix and she showed him that move and he definitely wanted it in the film. I’m actually surprised by these two actresses having this as their first big roles because, I have to say, they both seem pretty confident in this and make it all look easy.

Despite not quite having as much action as I was expecting, the film still seems to hurtle along at a blistering pace... the comedy might be a bit too unsubtle at times but you certainly won’t get bored with this one. There are a couple of nice highlights too, such as, at the end of her first big action sequence in the film, Michelle Yeoh gets a Dirty Harry moment where she tells the villain she is pointing her shotgun at that she doesn’t know if there are any shells left in the gun and that he would maybe like to try his luck. Another nice moment in terms of editing is when Cynthia Rock saves the life of Panadol (played by famous director Hark Tsui) by shooting a rope from around his neck when he’s hanging off of a wall... the rope breaks and he lands in a chair at the police station, courtesy of a nicely placed edit and shot match. Good stuff.

One thing which felt a little off to me was the moment when a hitman digs his silencer into an apple and puts the apple in the mouth of his victim to stop him from calling out. When he shoots the guy point blank through the mouth, there seems to be absolutely no exit wound on the guys head, even when the camera shows the dead guy later. Just felt a bit odd... hardly any blood for such a close up piece of violence.

The other thing that felt way off was that, at the end of the day, the bad guy gets killed but only while he’s going quietly with the police, by one of the comic relief thieves. In fact, the two heroines and their accomplices are all under arrest for trespassing on the villain’s property and, if not for the murder, he would have gone scott free. The film then just stops and you assume all the good guys and gals go to prison for their actions... a really unusual ending for sure.

But, nevertheless, I found Yes, Madam! to be a pretty entertaining movie and Yeoh and Rothrock make a really good team here (I believe they also became fast friends in real life... Rothrock didn’t know the language when she came over to Hong Kong but Yeoh knew some English and they used to go out to dinner every night, is my understanding). It’s a shame the two didn’t do more of these films together, for sure.

A Haunting In Venice

Venice This
Happening?

A Haunting In Venice
Directed by Kenneth Branagh
US/UK/Italy 2023
20th Century Fox
Blu Ray Zone B

Warning: Slight, implied spoilers.

Okay, so I put off watching A Haunting In Venice at the cinema back in September because I knew it would make a good Christmas or birthday present for my mum and so I saved it to watch with the family. Glad I did because, although it’s okay, it’s perhaps not as good as Kenneth Branagh’s previous two Poirot movies and I’m glad I only have to watch it the once, to be honest.

Unlike the last couple, this film is not loaded with famous celebrities this time around... at least not ones I’d seen or heard of... other than, of course, the inclusion of the great actress Michelle Yeoh, who does a good job with her, sadly short, role... yeah, I saw that one coming. They do manage to at least give her some bang for her buck, though,  in the scenes she is in... going head to head with Poirot as she plays a medium, whom Poirot has been ‘invited’ to show up as a fake. This is actually something he does quite quickly, although the film seems to take the stance, depending on whose witness testimony you believe, on whether this is just partial fakery to lend credence to real supernatural phenomena... or completely a sham.

And it’s this ‘certain point of view’ strand which runs throughout the course of the film.

Branagh is, of course, excellent as Poirot or, rather, excellent as a detective character (my understanding is that Agatha Christie purists rightly take umbrage with his interpretation of Christie’s popular literary detective) and he, aided by some quite good actors, carries the weight of the film as the script follows that ‘double POV’ style uncertainty by very much trying to both eat and retain the fancy pastry at the same time (or have it’s cake and eat it, as they say).

So, there are some great and spooky jump scares in this as various supernatural manifestations are unleashed at the great detective, while he tries to solve various murders which take place (either at the start of the story or as part of its back story). There are sadly no real surprises in terms of ‘whodunnit’ and why (apart from, perhaps, a tiny bit of unwelcome chicanery from his former friend Ariadne Oliver, played by Tina Fey), you’ll figure out various parts of the underlying solution (including the real identity of a blackmailer) long before they are revealed on screen. The supernatural shenanigans are where a lot of the entertainment value comes from on this one. A constantly underlying subtext which is both explained away as the effect of a specific poison made by the honey of certain bees while simultaneously showing the audience itself that... this may not be all of the story (in other words and, especially following the final character death near the end of the movie... make up your own mind if ghostly spirits leant a helping hand here).

So all this good acting and not a terrible script, coupled with some absolutely sunning sets and some nice visual compositions (and I loved the blues used in the opening set of extended establishing shots which turn out to be part of a dream that Poirot is having) makes for an entertaining film, surprising or not. Unfortunately, Branagh’s regular composer Patrick Doyle was not available to collaborate on this project with him but Hildur Guðnadóttir’s score for A Haunting In Venice does a pretty good job, especially at underlying the spooky, supernatural shenanigans presented in the film. A nice enough addition to Branagh’s Poirot canon and I hope he does another one soon.

Everything, Everywhere, All At Once

Happily
Evelyn
After

Everything,
Everywhere,
All At Once
USA  2022
Directed by Dan Kwan
& Daniel Scheinert
(aka Daniels)
UK cinema Unlimited
cardholder preview.

Warning: Some inevitable spoilers.

Wow. It’s ‘the morning after’ and I’m hoping that my brain has managed to process enough information for me to try and write something half intelligent about this confusing but, ultimately very fun experience at the movies.

Well... okay, in a nutshell, the plot of Everything, Everywhere, All At Once involves an infinite number of alternate multiverses and a team of ‘good guys’ who have come to our universe because they believe a character called Evelyn can help fight against a villain known as Jobu Tupaki, who is threatening to destroy all the different multiverses by sucking them all in as part of the ‘everything’ of a giant black bagel with ‘everything’ on it. So Evelyn is taught how to jump into different versions of herself in different worlds to acquire the memory of the skills she needs in order to slingshot back into her current universe and try and fight a battle, of sorts, in her own reality. That’s my best take away from this as a plot so, if I got it slightly wrong, forgive me but, it’s a very dense film of different layers and, well, everything kind of happens all at once in it, as the title suggests.

But, as I implied, asides from not being 100% on how the physics and rules of the ‘jumping’ from incarnation to incarnation works... it kinda doesn’t matter. Once you can relax into this film and just take it for what it is, which is a bombardment of rich and, frankly, crazy ideas, then you should have a lot of fun with it. There are endless pop culture references in here from 2001 A Space Odyssey through Ratatouille (which I’ve not seen myself but, even so, I totally got the long running Racacoonie joke in this) and even Wong Kar Wai’s In The Mood For Love.

But this is only one level of the fun as we are transported along with Evelyn, rapid fire, into alternate realities where, for instance, Evelyn is a rock with googly eyes (like a pet rock... and the googly eyes are kind of an inverse black bagel in terms of their significance in the movie) or caught in a lesbian love affair in a universe where everyone has hot dogs for hands (and ooze mustard and ketchup from their mouths when having sex). So there’s stuff going on all the time at, trust me on this one, a fair lick of a pace... love it or hate it, you at least won’t get bored during this film, which is split up into three parts... 1. Everything, 2. Everywhere and 3. All At Once.

So you need a cast who are experienced to be able to handle all this stuff credibly (and also handle some of the quite intense action choreography which is sometimes needed for many of the scenes). And that’s exactly what we have here...

Evelyn is played by Michelle Yeoh who, frankly, I’ve always had a soft spot for and she really demonstrates that at 60 years of age (looking pretty much like she's 30) she’s still not too old to really carry a movie on her back. She’s always had brilliant fighting skills from her pre-Bond (and after) days of making kung fu action movies and, while that certainly stands her in good stead for this role (which was apparently at first conceived for her old Supercop co-star Jackie Chan), her brilliant way of putting over the emotions and complexities of her character are absolutely wonderful. What a fantastic actress.

I’ll get to Evelyn’s husband in a little while. Her daughter is played by Stephanie Hsu, who I don’t think I’ve seen before but, once her different multiversal personalities start snapping to and fro, it’s a quite dazzling performance as she captures multiple different states of mind at the flip of a switch. Again, a very strong actress who really shines in the second half of the film.

As Evelyn’s father we have the living legend that is James Wong. He just turned 93 a couple of days ago and has finally been given a star on the Hollywood Walk Of Fame (with over 600 roles to his credit... it’s about time) but he was certainly spry and nimble enough to do some sequences you would expect from a much younger actor in this.

Joining these three as a villanous henchman... or rather henchwoman (and sometime hot dog fingered lover) is the equally legendary Jamie Lee Curtis. She’s certainly come a long way in her career and does a great job with one of many complex roles in the film, which must have been far from her comfort zone. Trust me when I say that all the actors in this movie look and act totally ridiculous for a lot of the time... which has always been the case with actors but, in this movie, more so.

And then there’s the big surprise (for me at least, I went into this one relatively blind), of just who is playing the key role of Evelyn’s husband Waymond. He gives a very good, supporting, warm hearted performance but also, in an incredible fight sequence where he uses his belt bag as a pair of nunchucks in a tax office, acquits himself way more than adequately in the fighting skills department. All the way through the movie he looked somewhat familiar but I just couldn’t place him. All the candidates I thought he might be would have been a lot older than he is here. So, when I saw in the credits that he’s played by Ke Huy Quan, I blinked somewhat, said to myself, “Wait... really? Is that...?” and then confirmed what I suddenly realised with the IMDB app on my phone. Yep, it’s the guy who, as a boy, played Short Round in Indiana Jones And The Temple Of Doom (and who was also in The Goonies, which is a movie I haven’t seen, actually). All I can say is wow. He’s just fantastic in this and, I can tell you, has great chemistry with Michelle Yeoh. They should put these two in more movies together, I think.

And that’s all I’m going to say about this one. Especially since it’s almost impossible to describe most of the scenes in any credible way... you kind of have to experience it to know it, I think. Suffice to say, I found Everything, Everywhere, All At Once to be a highly entertaining and extremely impressive cinematic experience and I’ll definitely be importing the Blu Ray release of this very soon (I have a feeling it won’t get one in the UK... I believe it’s reserved for TV channel exclusivity aka ‘the death of the art of film’ over here). It’s not showing in a lot of UK cinemas... or certainly a lot less than, say, other multiverse movies currently at the cinema (which I will catch up on soon for the blog, I promise)... so I would definitely try and catch this one on the big screen if you have the opportunity.

Shang-Chi And The Legend Of The Ten Rings

The Bride
Of Xu Wenwu

Shang-Chi And The
Legend Of The Ten Rings
USA/Australia 2021
Directed by Destin Daniel Cretton
Marvel Studios

Warning: This has all the spoilers
so don’t read if you don’t want to know.

Okay... be patient and let me get this out of my system because this is nothing new for the way Marvel have been treating their rich source of characters in their film franchises. Shang-Chi And The Legend Of The Ten Rings is, allegedly, based on the old Marvel Shang-Chi, Master Of Kung Fu comic books. Now, it was never a title I read back in the 1970s but I do at least remember the one, very important thing about the character and it is this... Shang-Chi’s father in the comics was none other than Sax Rohmer’s embodiment of the ‘yellow peril’, Dr. Fu Manchu. This is something Marvel retconned, for some reason, at some point in the 21st Century incarnation of the comics but, come on... Marvel movies are owned by Disney now. Surely they could have afforded to pay the copyright to retain the infamous master villain for their new movie (who, incidentally, also doesn’t share the name of his father from the rebooted version of the comics either... go figure). Honestly, I am sick to death of Marvel not treating their characters with the respect they deserve. Not having Fu Manchu in this movie is as much of a crime against filmanity as when they excluded Doc Savage and the Amazing Five from the movie ‘adaptation’ of The Rocketeer. I mean, what is going on here? What a travesty! And just to rub it in, they’ve got one of the most respected Asian actors of our time, Tony Leung, in the role of the father and have named the character... wait for it... Xu Wenwu. Presumably because it rhymes with Fu Manchu. I mean... come on!

And you know what... I am so tempted to just end my review right there before I even get started with the conclusion that, once again, Marvel have screwed their own characters and not done right by them, not to mention completely disrespecting the audience who pay money to go and see movies based on comic book characters they love... only to see them in homogenised and commercialised forms because they presumably think this will bring them more money in. Personally, I think money is a terrible thing to measure success by and use to grant access to the continued production of an art form but... that’s why they call it the movie business I guess.

However, since the film isn’t absolutely terrible, I’ll now give a brief review because, although it’s not the slice of comic book genius I’d been misled into thinking it would be (honestly, it’s not the worst but I would say it’s maybe somewhere within the bottom three or four of the Marvel Cinematic Universe movies), it does have some entertaining sequences midst other, more draggy and dull scenes, to be sure.

Okay, so the plot is really simple. Simu Liu plays Shang-Chi and Awkwafina plays his best friend Katy. When his 1000 year old conqueror father and master of the Ten Rings comes to retrieve the amulets belonging to Shang-Chi and his sister, to free someone who he thinks is his dead wife from a dark portal guarded in a hidden village... Shang-Chi, Katy and his sister team up with his auntie, played by acting legend Michelle Yeoh, to try to stop his father from unleashing an evil, soul sucking force into the world. And... I wish I could say the story was more complex than that or had more twists and turns (especially since the movie runs for over two hours)... but it doesn’t.

It does have a lot of nice action set pieces though... not as fast or furious as I would have expected from a film which is presumably trying to match some of the classic Asian Kung-Fu based movies but... although this stuff was like a dialled back version of it, well it wasn’t too shabby in places. The most interesting fight scenes took place on a bus and then on scaffolding outside a big tower block and they were pretty good. However, that being said, they both take place in the first half of the movie and so, yeah, as much as they do try and pack a lot of action in, the climax of the movie does feel like a bit of a damp squib, it has to be said.

But there is some nice humour and also various references to some of the previous MCU films and also a few characters turning up from earlier parts of the franchise. This is where it gets properly spoilery people... you were warned. So we have Benedict Wong returning as Doctor Strange’s sidekick Wong, in a few scenes and it was nice seeing him again. We also have Ben Kingsley returning as Trevor Slattery, the Liverpudlian actor who was hired to be the face of The Mandarin in Iron Man 3 and the spin off short from that, All Hail The King. He gets some good moments where he mostly manages to win back some dignity, although the conversation about Planet Of The Apes, which shows how stupid he is, has to be one of the highlights of the film. Plus there’s a Black Widow (not the famous one) and The Abomination (played by Tim Roth... reprising the role from The Incredible Hulk and tying this into his re-emergence in next year’s She-Hulk TV show). There are also a couple of important characters in one of the end credits scenes.

So, okay, there are two end credits scenes in this one... one mid-credits and another end credits. Now, I really didn’t understand what the heck the final post-credit scene was trying to say but the mid-credits scene, set soon after Shang-Chi and Katy go to Wong’s Greenwich Village headquarters, has a couple of big characters. One is Brie Larson reprising her role as Captain Marvel and the other is Mark Ruffalo as Bruce Banner... which really had me baffled because... he is playing Bruce Banner, not the new hybrid version of the Hulk that he became in Avengers End Game. Now, we know this scene is post-End Game because, a) he is already friendly with Captain Marvel and b) he still has his arm in a sling from performing his Infinity Gauntlet snap in that movie. However, since we have not been given any insight that he can change back from the smarter Professor Hulk version of his character... and since we know from the trailers from the She-Hulk TV show that he very much is still the new version of his character... I have to ask what the heck is going on here? This makes no sense... and once again Marvel has lost my interest in the continuity stakes. I hope this gets addressed at some point but... what are the odds, right?

And that’s really all I have to say in this overly long review of an overly long movie. Shang-Chi And The Legend Of The Ten Rings is not terrible but it’s not great either. All the actors hold up really well, a lot of the sets and lighting are colourful, there are dragons and cute creatures but, ultimately, in between the bursts of humour and action, it does get a bit dull and ploddy and could maybe have benefited from being around 45 minutes to an hour lighter, I thought. I guess I have to look forward to The Eternals next but... so far, in terms of reportage from my friends, I haven’t heard anything good about it.

Gunpowder Milkshake

Dinergeddon

Gunpowder Milkshake
France/Germany/USA 2021
Directed by Navot Papushado

Warning: Some light spoilers here.

Wow, what a great action movie. I’ve been a huge admirer of Karen Gillan ever since she charmed our hearts and minds as Amy Pond in Doctor Who. She’s finally making some success of it in Hollywoodland now, with roles like Nebula in multiple Marvel Cinematic Universe films and, okay, the odd thing like the Jumanji reboot (a film for which I’ve still not had the heart to publish my review and, I will one day but, to sum up my thoughts on that one... bloody awful... but she was still good in it, even if she couldn’t save the picture). Since I saw her in the opening of Stuber (reviewed here) and she played the all action cop partner who was fridged right at the start of the film to motivate the main character, I’d been wondering when the fine folks in Hollywood were finally going to let her head up an action vehicle and, yeah, Gunpowder Milkshake is an almost perfect film with which to do it.

The plot is very simplistic, which means there are no ‘I saw that coming an hour ago’ reveals and it really is just a string of big action set pieces strung together with the bare bones of a story. Here, she plays a very successful hit woman working for ‘The Firm’. Her mother, played by the equally wonderful Lena Heady, kinda ran out on her when she was young and she was subsequently brought up by one of the higher ups in The Firm to be... well... just like her mother. The film opens with a mostly absent action sequence which is continually referred back to throughout the film in which, due to bad instructions, she kills the son of the head of a criminal organisation. She then compounds the mistake by not recovering some stolen money but also by rescuing a young girl, aged 8 and three quarters and played by Chloe Coleman, whose father she also mistakenly killed.

And then, both the heads of rival criminal organisations want her out of the way and so she goes to borrow weaponry from three former associates (I’m simplifying for the sake of brevity here) at a library which specialises in firepower... played by another three big action names, Michelle Yeoh, Angela Bassett and Carla Gugino. Along the way, while protecting the newly orphaned child, she also reunites with her mother and, long story short, the six women fight back against the huge groups of assassins coming for them.

And it’s just a wonderful movie. Giving us a diner where people have to check their guns in, a library where people can check guns out and, eventually, leading us back to the diner... where many people get checked out. The chemistry between the actors and the wonderful dialogue they perform is top notch (even Michael Smiley gets a look in and, as for the representative for 'The Firm', it’s Paul Giamatti, ‘nuff said!) but even that pales in comparison to the absolutely wonderful mise en scène of the thing. It’s like a colourful, poppy comic book tapping into a vague noir thriller sensibility and then mixed liberally with a fair few spaghetti western tropes into the bargain. I knew I was in good hands when Gillan returns home at the start of the movie, opens the fridge and there’s a wonderful shot looking at her from inside the fridge which then tracks down from one shelve to the one below it in a smooth camera movement. Another great shot, which acts by way of an establishing shot, is when we are caught up with the aftermath scene of her character’s unfilmed mistake and the room full of carnage is viewed through the vertical rectangle of an open doorway surrounded by blackness at the centre of the wide screen ratio, the rectangle widening out slowly as the camera zooms in.

There’s some beautiful use of colour too, with a very bright palette of combined primaries which occasionally gives way to a frame which is purely infused with just one colour, such as red washing over the shot. This film goes for a full on eye candy approach which, when coupled with the rich sound design and beautifully choreographed action sequences, makes for a very seductive viewing experience.

There are some nice things I hadn’t seen here before too, including a scene where the kid has to help Gillan’s character because both her hands have been numbed but she has to get into a big fight and, similarly, because of the same reason, she has to help the child drive her car in a cat and mouse car chase in an interior car park. It’s good, inventive stuff and well worth a look, even for the most jaded action fans... and it doesn’t hurt that it has a warm heart beating at the story’s centre either.

And as for Frank Ilfman’s incredible score... well. It starts off really well with a theme made of five note melodic segments played on, what sounds to me, like a cimbalom (or something near to that). It’s used quite a lot in the early part of the movie but then, starting with a scene which itself has big ‘showdown eye’ moments reminiscent of a Sergio Leone spaghetti western, there's what sounds like either a sample or rerecording of the ‘we can fight’ chorus from Morricone’s score for that director’s A Fistful Of Dollars... as we are presented with a beautiful action cue that acts as an ‘homage with a beat’ to various Morricone scores, including a chime which has the same orchestral punctuation of the pocket watch chimes in For A Few Dollars More and some spots which glue the music together in the style of Edda Dell'Orso’s kick ass vocals for films like The Good, The Bad and The Ugly and Once Upon A Time In The West. It’s a wonderful cue which scores a fight in Gutterballs Bowling Alley (a reference to The Big Lebowski, perhaps) and, although two of the major action scenes use needle dropped songs to back them up, there is a lot of the Morricone influenced stuff in it and while the song which scores the slow motion fight at the diner is fine, it’s heavily preluded by a typical Morricone-esque showdown opener which Ilfman manages to pull off with a certain amount of style. I’ve heard other composers try to do this on occasion and, sometimes fail to keep the spirit without overly copying from the late, great Italian maestro.

And if that wasn’t enough, in a shootout scene about halfway through the movie, the four bad guys are wearing latex masks of the ‘big four’ Universal monsters... Dracula, Frankenstein, The Mummy and The Wolfman... culminating in a scene where Gillan violently despatches the 'Dracula dude' in the exact manner befitting his original counterpart (perhaps more in line with the way Hammer would do it, in terms of graphic violence). It’s not a subtle movie for sure but... it is very welcome.

And that’s all I’ve got to say right now about Gunpowder Milkshake. If you are a fan of action movies which have beautiful cinematography, great actors, a nice bit of scripting and some wonderful music, then you really can’t go wrong with this one. I just hope this one makes it onto Blu Ray at some point because I’m chomping at the bit to grab this one as soon as it comes out. A highly recommended, explosive beverage of a movie, for sure. 

Morgan

Guten Morgan

Morgan
2016 USA Directed by Luke Scott
UK cinema release print.

Typical. You wait ages for a movie to play at your cinema with Michelle Yeoh in it and then two come along within seven days of each other (see my review of Mechanic Resurrection here for the other).

Morgan is the feature length debut of Luke Scott, son of Ridley (and I promise I won’t mention that fact again... there’s a lot better things to be than someone living in the shadow of somebody else). After the totally chilling teaser trailer and the somewhat less scary full trailer for the movie, I was pretty much hooked on seeing this and went on its opening evening. I have to say that, although I do have some big criticisms of the movie, for the most part it’s a quite compelling, well oiled machine which would probably bear repeat viewing well.

The trailer makes the film look a science fiction tinged horror movie but... it’s not quite. There’s a lot of punch, chase, stunt work in the last third of the movie and so it’s more along the lines of a sci-fi fuelled action movie in some ways. The strength of it is... even though it’s “not quite a horror movie”, it’s kind of shot in the cinematic style of one. The director is pretty great in keeping to that methodology too and, although some of the editing seemed a little choppy in places, the shorter shots dovetail nicely into the longer ones, delivering an overall satisfying experience, at least in terms of story content and the visual and audio style in which it’s executed.

He also does some nice things with the design of the compositions in places, making full use of the widescreen aspect ratio to present characters on opposite sides of the screen, often leaving the middle of the shot bereft of movement and nicely forcing the collective eye of the audience to work at it and, thusly, propel themselves into the immersive experience a little better. That kind of tactic doesn’t always work for directors, to be honest, but it does in this movie and, at the very least, makes for some real eye candy in terms of the look of some of the scenes.

More compositional retinal soda pop comes from Scott’s decision to use surrogate visual planes to frame important parts of the action... such as putting the focus of a scene as something playing out on a screen somewhere or using reflections in panes of glass to enhance the look of the shot. Indeed, some of the work he does with reflective surfaces in the movie reminded me of some kind of enhanced “Ingmar Berman on acid” style of composition, in the way faces are superimposed either next to each other or directly over the top of one another... which in the case of certain shots I’m thinking of actually are a clue to something which you’ve probably already guessed but which isn’t finally spelled out until near the end of the movie. More on that ending in a few paragraph’s time.

Morgan also has a terrific cast and they are all working very well together. It’s very much, until the last third, an ensemble piece and hardly anyone gets more screen time than anyone else. Here you have the likes of Kate Mara, as company Risk Assessment trouble-shooter Lee Weathers, Anya Taylor-Joy  as the titular created superhuman... and other wonderful performers such as Toby Jones, Rose Leslie, Vinette Robinson, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Paul Giamatti, the aforementioned Michelle Yeoh, Boyd Holbrook, Chris Sullivan and even Brian Cox, among others, all playing corporate employees in one guise or another. And everyone is turning in amazing performances... especially Toby Jones, whose role may get a bit overlooked but who I believe gives one of his finest and understated performances as Dr. Simon Ziegler.

The film tells of Kate Mara’s Lee coming into a locked down facility where a home grown product, the now five year old Morgan of the title (although at five years old she already has the physical appearance of a late teen and a keen intelligence much greater than a lot of grown adults), has been confined to her quarters after an incident involving Jennifer Jason Leigh. In this incident, which is executed in a single, top down view and which comprises the pre-title sequence, Morgan is sullen and then, as seen in one of the trailers, suddenly compelled to leap into action and stab out one of Leigh’s eyes. Kate Mara’s character is there, seemingly, to see if the company product needs to be ‘terminated’ or if, in fact, Morgan is, indeed, a suitable case for treatment. Something which the company psychiatrist, played by Paul Giamatti, will be able to evaluate when he comes the day after Lee’s arrival at the facility.

As I said before, Scott pitches the movie to the audience couched in the trappings of horror/suspense films and he does it pretty well, ratcheting up the tension to the sequence where Giamatti arrives and interviews Morgan... something the well prepared audience will already guess goes horribly wrong from the indications in the trailer. From here on out, the film is a hunter/prey kind of movie and the action sequences come to the fore... there’s even a car chase at one point. The director keeps these action sequences playing out in the same visceral but low key visual style, though, which means that the change of pace in the last act doesn’t jar with anything you’ve seen before... which, again, is deftly handled.

However, one of the problems with the movie, and one that I alluded to earlier, is that one of the characters you are introduced to in the first few minutes is obviously holding some kind of secret and... it’s pretty obvious what that secret is liable to be. One of the other characters, more or less, partially calls it out early on in the film too and we really didn’t need that hint so early on. Also, the story seems to treat this minor revelation as some kind of ‘twist’ at the end of the movie when, in fact, you already know this half an hour into the procedings, if you’re paying attention. And with absolute certainty by the time the aftermath of a slightly grizzly impalement scene kind of proves a point. This, in itself, is kinda forgivable because, really, that’s one of the few places the script could logically go to anyway. However, the really big problem with this movie is the “post ending”, which seems tagged on as a “let’s bring Brian Cox in to re-explain it for the exceptionally slow people in the audience too” kind of conclusion. This ending is completely false and it doesn’t just insult the intelligence of the audience, it bludgeons their intelligence repeatedly over the head and then pokes it again with a sharp stick just to make sure it’s done. I was really offended at the way everything was recapped at the end and I think the film would have been a much stronger experience if the last five minutes was just scrapped and the film ended as one of the characters gets in a car and drives away. This really did put a dampener on a film that was, really, pretty great up until this point.

The other aspect of the movie which I found a little disappointing stems from my expectations raised by the trailer campaign. In the first teaser, the Morgan creature starts repeatedly humming a little fragment of melody and its really quite chilly and creepy. Somewhere in between that first trailer and the second, I’m guessing, where this was not heard again, the people behind the film must have decided to eliminate that creepy character quirk from the final product. Now, I can almost understand this as it maybe it’s too pointed about certain aspects of Morgan’s psychological profile but... I honestly think the trade off would have been worth it because that humming sent a real shiver down the spine.

Another thing that those trailers promised was a Morgan who “is still evolving” and, possibly by sheer editing alone, hints at an almost psychokinetic ability from the title character. Now, this idea seems to have been eliminated mostly from the final product too. Certainly there are still big trace elements of this character’s meta-human powers, such as the fact that the character can tell when she is being watched through a video camera or the revelation that she knows all about various people who are coming to visit her for the first time. However, I suspect there might have been a much different cut of the movie originally delivered and the character was somewhat toned down or reshaped in the final cut, at some point. Possibly when that terrible post-ending explanation scene was added into the mix. I’m not sure if this possibility of a more invincible version of Morgan would have been a good thing or not but... well I guess we’ll find out over the next few decades if there was, in actual fact, a different slant on the character... as stories get told about the production over the years, maybe.

As it happens, despite that awful ‘explanation ending’,  which nearly ruined the whole movie for me (note to studio heads... if you don’t spell it out for the audience, some of them might pay admission a second time so they can work it out for themselves and you get more profits), the film is actually a great piece of work and a startling full length feature debut from Luke Scott. Amazing performances aside, there’s a lot to recommend about Morgan and, even if it does have a kind of Ex Machina (reviewed here) meets Splice (reviewed here) vibe going for it, it’s also a better film than either of those and well worth a visit to the cinema with a possible Blu Ray pick up at a later date. I only hope Max Richter’s score for this thing gets a proper CD release at some point. He’s a great composer and seriously under-represented in soundtrack releases. Either way, though, give Morgan a go... it’s a nice little movie.

Mechanic - Resurrection

Kill Life

Mechanic - Resurrection
2016 France/USA Directed by Dennis Gansel
UK cinema release print.

Mechanic Resurrection has less of a useful title than if it had been a sequel to the original Charlie Bronson film The Mechanic, rather than Simon West’s sequel starring Jason Statham. That being said, the title does at least hold some relevance in that an assassin who wishes to retire from the game wants people to think he is dead, I would guess. So there's that.

The footage from the last movie of Statham rolling from his car just as it’s about to explode at the gas station is used as leverage in the early stages of this movie... but not to as good effect as the second bait to lure him in to do a ‘three hit job’ for an 'old acquaintance'. And that’s basically the plot, pretty much all of it, with Jessica Alba as the lure and Michelle Yeoh as the person who falls for that lure, more so, than Statham’s Arthur Bishop character does... thus yanking her friend Bishop into the trap set for him.

This film is a completely different kettle of fish to the first movie, The Mechanic (reviewed here) and the fact that it’s not bound to being a remake from a specific source material, like that first one, is both this movie's strength and weakness. Weakness because the various characters seem a little less detailed and less intricately drawn in this one and, although the script does pay lip service to the Arthur Bishop character by having the lead still be a vinyl junkie, in a brief scene at the start (although the classical music is gone for this second outing), everything seems less ‘set up’ and less credible in terms of back story and that does kind of hurt it a little, I felt.

However, it is also this movie’s strength because, free from the constraints of any source, the film becomes much more explosive and fun in terms of the action and, although many people will possibly see this as a bad thing, it was kind of what I was expecting and what I was hoping for, to be honest. I like Jason Statham as an actor and, also, I believe he’s one of the few modern era performers who can safely be called a genuine movie star in the same way that greats like John Wayne, James Stewart or Cary Grant might be seen as that. True, the actors in question will bring their own fictional baggage with them to the films and Jason Statham is certainly no different in that respect... but it didn't hurt their careers much and neither, I suspect, does it do Statham any harm. So, for me, he joins modern, larger than life movie stars like Stallone, Schwarzenneger and Harrison Ford and, like them, he’s also a pretty darned good actor. So what I’m trying to say here is... without being a remake of something else, the film is free to be a typical Jason Statham action movie and, frankly, that’s just what I wanted to see.

The film starts off strong with a shorthand series of scenes showing us Arthur Bishop’s life direction after the end of the last movie before going into a wonderful and quite intense action sequence with nice little pieces of Mickey Spillane style brutalism, such as  pinning one antagonists hand with a dagger onto the back of another antagonist during a fight. Because of Statham’s experience in these kinds of roles, you believe he can do it and even his ludicrous, unplanned escape route takes on a layer of credibility as the writers and director pull off a stunt sequence that wouldn’t look out of place in a James Bond movie. It’s all good stuff.

Now, the plot is extremely simplistic, just like the first one, perhaps even more so. Statham is honey trapped into doing three impossible kills and to make them look like accidents, for someone in his past with a grudge against him. The second of these kills is extremely obvious but, like all in this movie, incredibly fun to watch and so I really don’t mind that the film is, in almost every way possible, predictable as hell. There are no surprises from the fate of Tommy Lee Jones character, the third on Bishop’s hit list, for example. In fact, the only surprising things about this movie is that a) Jessica Alba’s character didn’t turn out to be a little more complicated than she at first appears and b) the wonderful Michelle Yeoh doesn’t get in on the action stuff herself... which is a shame because I really like her when she does the action stuff. However, Yeoh brings the plausibility of someone a character like Bishop would trust with her to the proceedings because, heck, who’s not going to believe in someone like Michelle Yeoh. She’s a great actress and although she’s criminally underused here, she does bring a lot to the table in terms of getting certain messages across quickly, so a lot of character building stuff can be waived credibly. Jessica Alba is also great but, again, quite underused since she’s a pretty good actress too.

Now, the movie is directed by Dennis Gansel who, as far as I’m concerned, directed one of the few truly great vampire movies of the last ten years, We Are The Night, which I reviewed here. The film doesn’t look nearly as slick or decorative as that earlier film and he seems to have made a conscious decision to frame the shots and have them edited in a more ‘raw and edgy’ way. In fact, the film completely eschews those nice colour palettes and contrasts from scene to scene that were a deft touch on Simon West’s The Mechanic. So it would be true to say, therefore, that Mechanic Resurrection feels a little more Hollywood in its approach to the product but, honestly, for this kind of movie, that doesn’t hurt it either.

Mark Isham returns to score this sequel , which is less jazzy but equally cool with its emphasis on action music to match the on screen shenanigans of the lead character. I only hope the score gets a proper CD release from Lakeshore Records and doesn’t languish in electronic download hell for people who have the necessary virtual space and matching tin ears to be able to enjoy it compressed into such a package. After all, we got two different CD scores for the first movie so... I just hope this comes out in a proper physical medium sometime and, if it does, hopefully not just the kind of vinyl recording that the film's main protagonist would obsess over. As it is in the movie, though... great bit of scoring. I’ve always had a soft spot for Isham and he certainly provides a nice, action oriented soundtrack which is a succinct and appropriate match to the visual style of the film. Some nice work here.

So there you have it. A nice sequel to what was an okay remake. It’s certainly a film I’d watch more than the first and Statham and his costars certainly don’t let him down... including a slightly different kind of characterisation from Tommy Lee Jones than you may have seen him do before. I can see exactly why he took this part. Without giving too much away, I’m hoping that there will be a third ‘Mechanic’ movie before too long and, if they do go ahead with that, that it’ll have room for some of the characters invented for this second installment to return. If you like Jason Statham action movies then there’s no question you should go check this one out. Also, although it’s a sequel, there’s not too much reference made to the previous movie, so you can probably watch this as a stand alone without needing any info from the first one. Any blanks are quite easy to fill in and are all set up for this movie anyway... meaning that the back stories of every other character in this movie and their relationship to Arthur are not referencing the first one. So seriously give Mechanic: Resurrection a try if you like your stunts and action with a veneer of Stathamesque credibility. This one’s a good ‘un.

Tomorrow Never Dies

Died In The Wool

Tomorrow Never Dies
1997 UK/USA
Directed by Roger Spottiswoode 
EON Blu Ray Region A/B/C

When I first saw this movie on the weekend of its release, back in 2007, I think I was overly harsh on it. Certainly, after the sheer brilliance of GoldenEye, I saw this as something of a pigeon step back from the full-on Bondness of that first Brosnan movie. At the time I compared GoldenEye with veering off in the direction of the kind of Bond films Sean Connery would have happily gotten away with making whereas, Tomorrow Never Dies feels like it’s trying to channel the look and feel of a Roger Moore era Bond adventure.

It’s not that I didn’t enjoy the flick, far from it, and I’ve certainly appreciated it more over the intervening years, but I can still acknowledge that my initial comparison, at any rate, still holds true. I think what I was responding to, though, more than anything, is the amount of action the people responsible crammed into this movie. It doesn’t exactly hold back in the spectacle stakes and, frankly, is definitely guilty of that old Roger Moore school of keeping the spy/detection scenes to a minimum and leaving them insultingly simple, and then use them merely as glue to hold all the action sequences together. Guilty as charged, I think.

However, I have to acknowledge also that it’s certainly far above the Moore films in terms of quality and ultimately, if you’re into well choreographed, well scored action sequences, then this is the Bond film for you. There’s loads of them. I think at the time I was lamenting the fact that the studios were up to their old tricks and trying to turn the Bond character into some kind of action hero again, rather than a spy character who has a lot of action thrown at him. The Bond films aren’t Die Hard, Lethal Weapon, Rambo or even Jason Bourne films... and there’s no reason why they should be (other than income I guess).

So what do we have here then?

Well, the gunbarrel music takes a different part of the Bond theme to the bit usually played in these sequences prior to this... that’s a bit of a blow really, but considering the outstanding quality of the musical score on this picture, I think I can forgive it that. The opening sequence is, once again, and this seems to be a trend on the first three Brosnan movies, one of the better opening sequences in the series’ history. Opening with Judy Dench’s M doing a double act with her old TV series co-star Geoffrey Palmer (which is something the American audiences may not have appreciated at the time but was a big laugh for British fans) we have Bond in contact with them and Colin Salmon (in his first appearance in the series as Robinson) via headset and video link, as he causes some well timed mayhem and havoc at an arms bazar, getting in and out of trouble and averting nuclear chaos at the same time. Like the film before it, a real humdinger of a pre-credits piece which also, again like GoldenEye, has a very powerful score.

The film has a passable opening title sequence and then goes from action strength to strength as Bond finds himself up against Jonathan Pryce’s Elliot Carver character, encountering actress Teri Hatcher (who was popular for playing Lois Lane in the TV show Lois & Clark: The New Adventures Of Superman at the time) and teaming up with famous martial arts star Michelle Yeoh for the rip roaring second half of the movie. It’s all very fast paced and has some especially well made action sequences, including a car park car chase (which was originally shot in Germany but didn’t work and so was then re-shot in Brent Cross Shopping Centre in London a while after) and a bicycle/helicopter chase where Brosnan and Yeoh are chained together (Yeoh was used to doing her own stunts and I’m guessing, like a lot of the Asian action stars used to not worrying about insurance in their own country,  she gets a bit frustrated by not being allowed to do absolutely everything herself when she has to shoot a Western financed movie). The film is certainly not as sedate as GoldenEye... but it does do its own thing and exists at a level which is not a hundred miles away from what Bond is about. It is quite stylish and if the dialogue sounds maybe just a little too polished in places, then I think I can cut it some slack as it’s an enjoyable old romp.

And then there’s the music.

I’d loved Serra’s score for GoldenEye (as you can read in my review here) and I was annoyed that the producers hadn’t recalled him for this one to keep some musical continuity in the Brosnan era. I kept that grudge up until the Tomorrow Never Dies soundtrack CD was released, slightly ahead of the movie, and heard what composer David Arnold had done with the thing. It’s phenomenal.

It sounds a cliché now, especially because this is what Arnold himself was saying about what he was trying to do with the score when interviewed about it later, but the music in this film really does straddle both the music of its time and the 1960s Bond. It’s definitely a loving tribute to the style of John Barry’s great scores with a heck of a lot of what I can only called ‘Arnoldisms’ thrown in to boot. Bits of it even sound a little old fashioned... and then he’ll hit you with a bit of techno and fuse it all brilliantly.

One of the best moments in the score comes from the very start of Brosnan’s first action moment, where he literally delivers a “punch line” and then starts shooting. We are treated to a little Barry motif comprising two fast sets of 5 notes totalling a quick 10 note melody which, over the years has come to be known as the “Bond Is Back” sub-theme and it’s strange how that small piece of music has become embedded in the public consciousness in this time... possibly not in America, I don’t know, but certainly in Britain and here’s why. Although the only time this particular piece of music (which could almost stake a claim to being “the third Bond theme”... following swiftly behind Monty Norman’s The James Bond Theme and John Barry’s other famous sub-theme, the 007 theme) appeared prior to this was at the start of the opening titles of the 1963 Bond film From Russia With Love, this particular opening 10 note melody was played on nearly every trailer for any Bond film on our ITV channel for at least 20 years I reckon... and usually with a voice over narration declaring that... “Bond Is Back”. The melody makes a few appearances in Tomorrow Never Dies and I’m really pleased that Arnold brought this musical time piece back for the movie. I wish he’d take the time to do the same for Barry’s 007 theme someday.

The song is also a bit of an interesting deal on this movie. There was a kind of song contest for it and Sheryl Crow won. The song is brilliant and works really well and could almost... almost... have been the perfect song for this movie. Unfortunately, there was an even better song written for it by the score’s composer David Arnold, and performed by K. D. Lang which, even though Crow’s song is devastatingly cool, blows the one used at the front of the movie out of the water. Which is unfortunate because, honestly, Crow's song is Bond gold too, but I can only assume the producers went with Crow because she was very much in the public eye at the time. The thing about the song Arnold wrote for Lang, however, is that when he was writing the score to the movie, he used the melody lines from that song and you can hear its powerful brass and rhythmic melody all the way through it. Maybe it’s because the song was just too darned good that the producers let him change the title of it to Surrender (although in the chorus Lang still belts out the words Tomorrow Never Dies) and record it and use it as an end title song on the film. It really works well here too, of course, since the orchestration and melody reiterates phrases from the score you’ve been listening too throughout the length of the movie, but it’s a shame we didn’t get it at the front, with oddly choreographed and stupendously naked silhouetted women dancing around to it, is all I can say.

One other little oddity about the film deserves a mention. I don’t know if many people remember this... but I do remember how things were with this film back when it was being made. The pressure was on for this movie to be a hit, naturally, with the studios. But, bizarrely, after a few worrying stories highlighted by the tabloids in this country, all of a sudden the average British person on the street was worried about the progress of the film. It was really strange. People who had nothing invested in this were getting worried about the director being able to handle a Bond film and, you know, etc. etc. This got so bad that EON even called a press conference a little way into the shooting of the picture and had Pierce Brosnan allay everybody’s fears and calm them all down... saying the shoot was going fine and there was absolutely nothing to worry about. It sounds crazy, I know, but I remember it and it didn’t feel like such a bizarre over-reaction at the time.

The producers needn’t have worried. Even though it wasn’t quite what I wanted from the second Brosnan film, it certainly did the business and, I think, is a bit of a classic in its own right. It even, dare I say it, has one of the very best Desmond Llewellyn as Q briefing scenes in the history of the series. Possibly even the greatest of the lot, actually. Even though you can see Llewellyn is having to read half his lines off a note pad, the timing and laughs (and action) in the gadget briefing scene seriously rivals Goldfinger and maybe even surpasses it.

As I said above, if you love the Bond films and you really like a lot of, maybe too much, action in your movies... Tomorrow Never Dies is still a spectacular and witty movie which you’ll probably enjoy immensely. But the best, and possibly the last, great Bond film, was just around the corner...

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