Avengers - Infinity War

No Turn Unstoned

Avengers - Infinity War
2018 USA Directed by  Anthony and Joe Russo 
UK cinema release print.

Well this was surprisingly good.

I honestly thought that Avengers - Infinity War, the first of two movies which is a culmination of the various plot threads left deliberately dangling in the wake of the first ten years of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), was going to be only half watchable at best. Since the film teams up most (but, contrary to what was advertised, not all) of the specific Marvel superheroes in those films, I was assuming that this would be patchy at best. After all, with over 60 major characters making appearances... well... my thinking was that you could only give them a few lines of dialogue each and then there would be no time left for action. I’m happy to say I was wrong about this... plus a few other things I’d predicted for this film so... yeah, happy to be proved incorrect in this instance. There are some minor problems but not really enough to do overall damage.

Now I’ve not read the comics these are based on but I’m well used to the Marvel movies not being anything like the original source materials and this one certainly isn’t... although I’m guessing the basic plot elements are the same. For instance, in the comics it’s the Silver Surfer who crashes through the roof of Doctor Strange’s mansion and warns him what is coming his way. Well, we still get the roof crash and warning here but it’s courtesy of one of the other characters... specifically one who isn’t locked into sticky negotiations as Disney’s lawyers retrieve the Silver Surfer and many other characters from 20th Century Fox.

The film follows the antics of super villain Thanos, played by Josh Brolin, as he gathers the five Infinity Stones seen in a fair few of the previous movies so he can wield them with his Infinity Gauntlet. Standing in his way are Iron Man, Spider-Man, Thor, Doctor Strange, Hulk, Black Widow, Captain America, War Machine, The Falcon, White Wolf (formerly The Winter Soldier), Black Panther, Scarlet Witch, The Vision, The Guardians Of The Galaxy... and a fair few others.

Now the script is actually quite well written and, breaking the burden of the story to what is effectively three mini teams working together in different parts of the universe, the directors manage to pull together an entertaining movie which doesn’t get distracting and which doesn’t feel like the story is in service to the characters instead of, how it should be, the other way around. In fact, even when they're cross cutting on mini cliffhangers built into the action sequences from one group to the next, it never becomes too overpowering that you don't know exactly where you are with the various characters.

It’s actually very dark in places... in fact the threat and tone of the movie is dark all the time but that doesn’t stop the film-makers from having a lot of humour with it and it’s great to see new combinations of the characters reacting and arguing with each other. There are some truly funny scenes in this and it’s a really nice juggling act because you do find yourself laughing even though the lives of half of the population of the universe can be wiped out at any second.

The movie starts off with a fairly bleak opening sequence, the sound of which can be heard even as the opening logos are rolling up on the screen, which carries on from one of the post-credit sequences in last year’s Thor - Ragnarok (reviewed here). The film takes a little time here to show us just how lethal going up against Thanos can be, in no uncertain terms. It also shows up just how ineffectual against Thanos the biggest ‘character weapon’ in The Avengers' arsenal is. And, yeah, the story didn’t go the way I thought it would. The IMDB cast listings for the film are, at best, wildly inaccurate and I suspect that this, along with other strong hints along the way, were deliberate instances of misinformation by Marvel/Disney so the fans of these movies wouldn’t be able to figure out what is going on here until they were in a cinema watching this thing. Everything is handled quite deftly and, with the excellent performances we get from regular cast members such as Rob Downey Jr, Benedict Cumberbatch, Chris Hemsworth and Elisabeth Olsen, it makes for an entertaining movie, to say the least. A cast ably supported by Alan Silvestri’s music for this one...

Now, I wasn’t the biggest fan of Silvestri’s score for the first movie but he does some good work here which, obviously, utilises his main Avengers theme to good effect. The best use of this, for my money, is when two of the characters are about to get ‘taken out’ by allies of Thanos in a train station in Scotland. Just as things are about to go dark for two of the characters, three of the other regular characters show up for the first time in the film and the music suddenly swells on Silvestri’s main Avengers melody. It’s a great movie moment and gets the hairs on the arm standing to attention, that’s for sure.

Okay so, there’s some bad stuff here too. One of which is the recasting of a character from one of the previous movies. If the character is not that important and could be replaced by another if the original actor didn’t want to come back then... why use that character at all? It seemed a bit odd, to be honest.

Another thing is... well I’m not going to reveal the ending here but how dumb do Marvel think their audience is? Some stuff happens in the last 5 to 10 minutes of the movie and... it just feels like Marvel are insulting everybody’s intelligence here. I can understand how they might have been able to tease out this specific ending around thirty years ago, before the internet but... well all I’m saying is that we all know what movie sequels will be coming out in the next couple of years. Sure, the next two MCU movies... Ant Man and The Wasp and Captain Marvel (in reality, Ms. Marvel) are both set before the events of Infinity War but, you know, people already know what other stuff is in the works down the line. The end of this movie makes the prospect of next year’s follow up seem like it’s going to be a big ‘control z’, ‘undo’ moment of a film, to be honest. So the, actually quite nicely done, dramatic punch of the final act is somewhat softened by the fact that, I would guess, most of the audience don’t believe a moment of it.

One final thing I question somewhat is from the film’s post credit sequence. If you have a distress beacon you can send to a specific person that you think can make a difference to the clear and present danger the various characters find themselves in here... wouldn’t you have activated that during the events of the first Avengers movie? I find it a bit of an odd deus ex machina, to be honest.

Apart from these few things, however, the movie is not the mess I was expecting it to be and the Russo Brothers have knocked out one of the better of the MCU movies with this one. Especially in terms of the main villain. Thanos is not the one dimensional bad guy you might at first think. His motivations for the wholesale slaughter of half of the universe are, it has to be said, not that different to what should be happening in real life on this planet now anyway. We are a vastly overpopulated world and we should be looking for ways to cut back on the growing population... which I think could be done without killing anyone. It’s exactly the same kind of motivation that the ‘evil’ mastermind in Ron Howard’s Inferno (reviewed here) has and, although Thanos’ pursuit of his goal is inherently evil (what with all the wholesale slaughter and such), it doesn’t change the fact that these are exactly the conversations people should be having here now and his arguments do make a lot of sense. When Thanos returns in the next movie, I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s Thanos himself who sets everything back the way it was before some of the events of this movie take place because, if nothing else, he certainly has an unshakeable moral centre.

And that’s about all I’ve got for you on this one. I suspect that the follow up part of this story could easily be a bit of an anticlimax... although I am still expecting the character I thought would die in this one to meet his maker in the next one, that’s for sure. Avengers Infinity Wars is a truly entertaining, funny but also bleak movie experience and, you never know, I might go back to this one and have another look while it’s still at cinemas. Not Marvel’s best movie but certainly one of their best. If you claim to ‘Make mine Marvel!’, as the phrase used to go, then you don’t want to be missing out on this one.

Spider-Man - Homecoming

Fifty Shades Parker

Spider-Man - Homecoming
2017 USA Directed by Jon Watts 
UK cinema release print.

One of the things they’ve managed to do in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), in the nine years since it’s been going in the current incarnation of it, is to take some second tier Marvel characters like Iron Man, Captain America, Hulk, Ant-Man and Thor and do something truly wonderful with them in their cinematic incarnations that, as far as the other non-MCU franchises go, they have emerged triumphant and very much become the first tier characters that they never quite managed to be in the comic books... outshining the majority of the films produced from genuine top tier characters like Spider-Man and The X-Men.

However, when they made a deal for the movie rights to the Spider-Man character so they can use him in conjunction with another company and bring him into the MCU proper... well, they made a real good go of it with his debut appearance in Captain America - Civil War (reviewed here) and one of the positive things I’ll say about both that movie and this one, Spider-Man - Homecoming, is that they have managed to take a character who has already headlined, in different incarnations, a number of big budget theatrical releases and still find a way to breathe new life into the character. Although you’ve seen it all before in terms of the Spider-Man character... you also haven’t, in that they manage to side step the strengths and weaknesses of previous versions and change things up enough that the character feels like a new MCU character. Rather than, say, a stray from another movie.

What this means, though, is that a lot of the things that people loved about the original comics are thrown out with the radioactive bathwater and I think some audience members, myself included to a certain degree, might find it a bit of a shame. I’ve only ever read the first hundred or so issues of the original comic myself but what I’m trying to say here is, if you are looking for a version of the character which finally matches the way he and his supporting cast are in the comic books then look no further than... the 1967 animated TV show because, honestly, that’s probably the closest thing you’ll find. So all of you classic spider-fans are forewarned... this isn’t like the version you remember from the comics.

For instance, the character’s Spider sense isn’t mentioned once here and seems to have been replaced by the voice of Jennifer Connelly as his ‘in suit’ computer on the costume which Tony Stark has manufactured for him. Which has a nice continuity in some ways because Connelly is married to Paul Betany who played the voice of Jarvis in the original Iron Man suit before he was ‘evolved’ into the live-action character of The Vision in Avengers - Age Of Ultron (reviewed here).

So yeah, there are some things which I feel are mis-steps in the new film. Mainly in the casting and characterisations.

For example, we finally have a version of Betty Brant in this version but, instead of looking like the character should look (done so well but without the star billing that Peter Parker’s original love interest should have had in what amounted to cameos in the Sam Raimi versions), she is way too young and has blonde hair instead of her classic look. Flash Thompson, instead of looking like his namesake Flash Gordon looks anything but and Pete’s other love interest from the early days, Liz Allen, rather than being the drop dead blonde from the comics, is 'beyond brunette'. In fact, I’m not sure that even was supposed to be Liz Allen because of the ‘thing’ which comes to light later on in the movie which, I surely won’t spoil for you here. As for MJ? Well here’s she’s not a Mary at all... instead she's Michelle so... don’t know where their heading with that one. Face it tiger... we don’t know quite where that jackpot is coming from as yet. So it’s all a bit of a mess although, it has to be said, the actors and actresses involved in bringing them to life here are all pretty likeable and watchable... so there’s that.

Tom Holland is pretty cool in the role, doing what he’s doing and, so is Jacob Batalon as his best friend Ned. Then there’s the usual MCU characters creeping in here who really work well with Holland’s portrayal, including the always watchable Robert Downey Jr as Tony Stark and his former Iron Man director Jon Favreau reprising his Happy Hogan role. There’s also a great little cameo near the end of the movie by someone who I really didn’t think we’d be seeing return to the MCU franchise and that was a great little moment but... again, won’t mention who that is because I don’t want to spoil it.

So there’s all that and, of course, we have the truly brilliant Michael Keaton playing The Vulture as the main bad guy in this one. Now, this version of the character is, again, nothing like the one who made his debut in the pages of the third issue of Spider-Man’s comic book history, The Amazing Spider-Man Issue 2 from 1963... but the spirit of the character is in tact to a certain extent, although Keaton manages to play him with a lot more sympathy and I was really pleased that Marvel have continued with their uncanny knack for casting just the right people for the right roles because, as you’d expect from Keaton, his performance here is amazing. Especially in a certain scene in a car journey when a certain penny finally drops (aided by a nice moment in the way his face is lit) and you can see the wheels turning in his mind.

The film is a real hoot too. It’s crackingly paced, whizzing by very fast so that you won’t necessarily have time to catch your breath and notice certain weaker points of the film like how it fits into the timeline of the current crop of Marvel movies...

It starts off extremely strongly with a pre-credits sequence showing why Keaton’s version of Adrian Toomes decided to become The Vulture and it’s a sequence starting off in the wake of the big alien battle at the end of the first Avengers movie (which I reviewed here). It also has Tyne Daley (Yeah, that’s Lacey from Cagney And Lacey right there!) as the comic book character Ms. Anne Marie Hoag in a nice moment where the Marvel movies finally acknowledge the existence of Damage Control, the people who clean up after various superheroes have wrecked the place in their battles and who have turned up in a number of comic book series' over the years. We then come to one of those other kinds of problems I alluded to a couple of paragraphs ago in that the rest of the pre-credits... and the movie proper...  takes place eight years on from the events at the end of that first Avengers movie. So you do the maths then. The first Avengers movie came out and was, presumably, set in 2012... that’s only five years ago in reality, right? So why the heck they chose to set this film (and presumably Captain America - Civil War) in the year 2020 is beyond me. Especially since it has a major ‘this doesn't make any sense’ knock on effect in terms of the other movies in the series.

However, like I said, it’s not the kind of movie you’re going to enjoy if you get mired in both expertise in adaptation and continuity logic. Let’s forgive it for now and move on...

The film continues to open strongly post credits with a big excerpt from Peter Parker’s video diary as an alternate, ‘first person’ version of his involvement of the events in Captain America - Civil War and we take that as our starting point for a movie which continues to be strong and totally entertaining all the way through. It sets the tone nicely and gives the title character a good starting point to launch and swing into action from and it’s truly a nice and unexpected touch. There’s also another little unexpected thing later on in the film which I really should have seen coming but I didn’t. This seems to be a bit of a rare year for movies taking me by surprise, it seems, what with the awesome Wonder Woman (reviewed here) also managing to pull the rug from under me (for the most part). It has to be said that the thing I wasn’t expecting here, which I have alluded to twice already (hopefully without potential ‘blind’ audience members noticing it) relies on the kind of silly, clichéd movie continuity that you would almost always only find in a Hollywood movie but.. that’s okay too. I don’t mind being fooled by these things every now and again... love it, in fact. Even though I was particularly dense on this one.

Another great strength of the movie is that it doesn’t feel like the MCU have just borrowed the character to plug into their own movie and are now returning the favour. This film is completely integrated into the Marvel Cinematic Universe like all the other films in that particular franchise and it doesn’t feel like any of the characters have been thoughtlessly added on. The various Avengers characters like the, kind of, appearance of Captain America (you saw some of that in the trailer for this movie so it’s not a spoiler) and the old Avengers tower and the new Avengers ‘mansion’ are all in here for a reason... well mostly... and feel like a natural element of the film and the story line/characterisation... so that’s pretty good. There’s also a major event that happens to Iron Man, in a way, which will obviously need to be alluded to in future Avengers movies, for sure.

And all of this is good stuff.

Another good thing is Michael Giacchino’s inclusion of a newly arranged version of the 1967 animated Spider-Man TV show theme tune which plays here over the Marvel logo at the start (it’s the version which you could see the recording session from in that video which surfaced on the internet a few months ago). As for the rest of the score... well I really like Giacchino but I was hoping he’d use that old theme throughout on this and I was having real trouble with the main Spider-Man theme here because it really sounded familiar from somewhere else... although I couldn’t quit place it. There are  few moments where he seems to be subtly referencing the old TV show theme here but, as far as I could hear, the pay off to that never materialised... at least not in the way I wanted it to. That being said, “as far as I could hear” is an apt comment, I feel, because this really was a movie where the score was maybe dialled down too much and wasn’t allowed to properly compete with the noisy, explosive action scenes when they were scored. So, yeah, looking forward to giving the CD a spin when it arrives so I can hear the score properly, to be honest.

And that’s that. The film is an absolute blast and, although it has an absolutely awful end credits animation which really seems to dumb down the characters completely in about as inappropriate a manner as you can imagine, Spider-Man - Homecoming is a really enjoyable piece of modern popcorn fodder and fans of the MCU films should like this one. There are two ‘post credits’ sequences for the film... one half way through which is actually quite relevant to the future of the Spider-Man movies, in one way or another, followed by one right at the end of the credits which is... completely irrelevant and which some people may well feel is not worth staying on for. Irrelevance aside, though, the movie gets a big recommendation from me... with the caveat that fans of the character as he appeared in the proper comics of the 1960s and early 1970s might have a hard time adapting to what Marvel have decided to do with him here. It is, however, a humdinger of a web spinner.

Avengers - Age Of Ultron

Stark They Were 
And Golden Eyed

Avengers - Age Of Ultron
2015  USA
Directed by Joss Whedon
UK cinema release print

Warning: Really quite huge spoilers implied in the text here... 
don’t read before watching if you really don’t want to know.

Okay. Where to start on this big beast of a movie?

There’s been a lot of pre-hype to this next Avengers movie, as can be expected. Clips started being released maybe a year ago? I think in the case of this movie that was maybe a bit of a mistake because, honestly, the clips released are probably some of the best parts of the film and I could have done with, especially the Hulk-Buster armour, being a bit more of a surprise. Maybe I would have responded to the film a little better if it had been.

Now, I have to say that this is certainly not a bad film and neither, despite first impressions, is it a mess of a movie. It’s actually quite a good, solid little entertainment. However, it’s also not a great movie and, if I totted up some kind of personal ranking for the Marvel Phase 1 and Phase 2 movies, I guess, for me, it would come about halfway down the list.

Just so you know where I’m coming from, I actually gave the original Avengers movie a not so hot review (read it here) and I have to say I was kinda disappointed with that one at the time. However, I rewatched it on Blu Ray about a year later and, it has to be said, it grew on me quite a bit and I really enjoyed it a lot more the second time around. This new film isn’t half as good, in my opinion, and it’s certainly not up to the standards of, say, more recent Marvel movies like Iron Man 3 (reviewed here) and Captain America: The Winter Soldier (reviewed here)... although I liked it a hell of a lot more than the Marvel Universe Phase 2 movie that preceded it (and you can read that review here).

But, like I’ve said before, this particular set of Marvel universe films have been put together by producers who have an uncanny knack of both getting perfect casting (there’s not a bad or inappropriate performance in this film) and picking just the right directors for the job. Following up on this we have writer/director Joss Whedon, who directed the first Avengers movie and was presumably chosen, at least partially, because of his proven ability to work wonders with films and TV shows which require a strong, unifying story arc involving interaction with a large ensemble of characters... such as Firefly, Serenity and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Once again he manages to skillfully wield this army of ever increasing characters that the producers are throwing at him to get something that, while not always gold, is at least very serviceable and satisfying in parts.

The movie once again features Robert Downey Jr as Tony Stark (Iron Man), Mark Ruffalo as Bruce Banner (Hulk), Chris Evans as Steve Rogers (Captain America), Chris Hemsworth as Thor (you know... The Mighty), Scarlett Johansson as Natasha Romanoff (Black Widow), Jeremy Renner as Clint Barton (Hawkeye) and an impressive roster of other regular characters from the Phase Marvel Universe popping up in places where you’d like to see them... the only noticeable absences being Downey Jr’s and Chris Hemsworth’s leading ladies from their stand alone films. Added to this cast are four new characters including the titular character Ultron, a bad guy voiced and motion captured by James Spader. We also have the Iron Man series regular Paul Bettany back as both his usual “voice of Jarvis” and the first live action movie incarnation of “The Vision”, although this character’s origins are terribly messed around with. One good thing about that, though, is the fact that the actor having also voiced Jarvis is absolutely accounted for in the course of the story at an almost metatextual level.

Two other new characters on board are “the twins” Pietro and Wanda Maximoff, aka Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch as played by Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Elizabeth Olson respectively. Now this is an interesting thing because, as I mentioned in my review of Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Pietro is also in 20th Century Fox’s X-Men franchise now, played by a different actor and with different origins. In the original comics he was a mutant (as he presumably is in X-Men: Days Of Future Past - reviewed here) and both he and The Scarlet Witch started out as villains in the 1960s, part of Magneto’s mutant army, before switching sides and joining The Avengers. In Avengers: Age Of Ultron they are, instead, genetically enhanced humans who have been modified by agents of H.Y.D.R.A. So it will be interesting to see if audiences get confused with Quicksilver’s inclusion, in two completely different guises, in both franchises.

Asides from the company politics which allowed for stuff like this to happen, however, I’m happy to report that Spader, Bettany, Taylor-Johnson and Olson all do a great job and more than hold their own against the regular cast members in this movie... which can’t be an easy task when there’s so much talent in the room, so to speak.

So there’s bad things and there’s good with this movie.

For starters, while Banner/Hulk is more integrated into the plot in this one, not to mention a romantic sub-plot with one of the other characters, he also has less impact. In the first movie, they held back on Hulk a little and when he did get a couple of moments, they really counted and were extremely funny. The humour of all the characters is still in here but, especially with Hulk, its quite toned down.

Another problem for me is the structure. This kind of tent peg movie usually builds to a spectacular climax and, though it certainly has a lot of money up there on the screen and has an epic feel to the way it’s been shot and edited... it still feels like there’s a heck of a lot less going on than in the previous collective outing. I think one of the reasons for that is that there’s no real surprise in terms of opposition at the end. In the first film, Loki was the bad guy and it wasn’t until the last hour that he brought on thousands of aliens and even some bigger alien flying slug thingies... the stakes kept getting bigger, at least on a visual level. In this one, although the stakes get bigger in terms of what’s actually going on, on an eye candy level with the antagonist it’s just... more of the same. We have loads of multiple variants of Ultron and he’s everywhere at once. When he’s killed or seems near defeat he brings on... more Ultrons. Yeah, okay, we’ve seen that trick more than once throughout the movie... we didn’t really need to see it again. Now my regular readers know I’m not one for going with a standard, cause and effect, build to a big finale structure and usually revel in films which are brave enough to take a less obvious approach... but in the case of this film I think it does kinda hurt the picture a little, if I’m being honest. I also don’t think it’s anyones fault because, until you get this stuff in an editing room, you’re kind of rolling the dice as to how what you’ve captured and created digitally comes across and so... I think it’s just one of those things. Saying that, I think most people will be more than satisfied with the structure and spectacle in this one... so I’m probably in a minority on this point.

There are some truly nice moments in this too, though.

For instance, there’s an extended version of the pre-release clip Hammer scene, where The Avengers are having a party and everybody, or almost everybody, tries to lift Thor’s hammer off the table. It’s quite fun but... Joss Whedon’s genius doesn’t stop there... it’s actually a really nice set up for a punch line which comes into play for the last act of the movie. So if you do get fed up with this early sequence, remember that it’s all an elaborate set up for a great and humorous moment later on in the movie which also, I should add, tells you everything you need to know about the calibre of one of the new characters and is pretty great movie shorthand for getting a feeling of trust and bonding with the core group of Avengers going. It’s a really nice moment when it happens and, judging from the gasps of glee from the audience I was with... you’ll probably know just what I’m talking about if you’ve seen this film.

Another great thing here is that none of the new characters are skimped on. Sure we get less coverage than maybe most of the regulars do but, the new characters aren’t just treated like add ons here... they have a sense of history and identity, even The Vision, and because of this there’s a great moment towards the end of the film where... oh wait... that really would be a spoiler too far but... well... lets just say, I didn’t see that coming. So that was kinda unexpected which, with modern movies, can only be a good thing.

Another great moment is where we realise that, as much as we think we know these characters from the previous films, there’s always something new up their sleeve. Take Hawkeye, for example. Not only does he very quickly and efficiently, temporarily take care of a character who has pretty much knocked out the entire team at one point, but when the chips are down he fleas with his team to his safe house where we, and most of the team (only Natasha Romanoff knows this fact about Hawkeye which, given their history, is no surprise), get to meet Hawkeye's best kept secret... his wife and kids. So this is all good stuff and it’s in moments like this that we see Joss Whedon’s beating heart breathing life into these four colour creations and bringing the humanity, along with his cast and crew, to these famous creations.

And then there’s the music...

I’ve commented before on the dire lack of musical continuity within the Marvel Phase One and Two movies and have tried to justify it to myself by comparing it to a comic drawn by the same artist but with different inkers each issue. However, this film has two music credits which, surprisingly, come up separately... Music by Brian Tyler and Music by Danny Elfman. The credits don’t share the same screen and, with an album release towards the end of next month which seems to have different cues by each of the two artists, I’m guessing this was not a collaboration. So what happened here? Was Brian Tyler busy because his time on the project over ran and Elfman was called in to score the rest? Or did the producers just reject part of Tyler’s score and instead of having Elfman replace it all, just had him rewrite the bits they didn’t like. I’m sure it’ll be a while before the truth of that situation is revealed to enquiring minds but, it has to be said, the real surprise here is how well this patchwork approach works in the final movie. Both composers seem to have made themselves subservient to certain films in the history of some of the characters and are happily quoting from various themes throughout the series. This gives it a nice musical continuity which really, and puzzlingly, seems to be quite successful...although it has to be said that it’s a noisy movie and a lot still gets lost in the sound design.

So there’s that.

There’s only a mid credits end scene in this one and, if truth be told, it really feels like a retread of an end credits scene from one of the previous movies. However, the film leaves the movie in a spot where it’s quite clear where the characters can go from here and this thing seems to be leading directly into the next Thor and Captain America/Iron Man movies. It’s also getting clearer how the second Guardians Of The Galaxy movie, when it gets made, will jigsaw nicely into proceedings when it comes time for the big two part Avengers Infinity War movies which will signal the end of Phase Three... as this one signals the end of what the Marvel people call Phase Two. Meanwhile, we’ve got the first Phase Three movie, Ant Man, being released in a few months and, since that character and his many later incarnations also has such a strong history with The Avengers in the 1960s and 1970s comics, it will be interesting to see just how many characters they can try and cram into Infinity Wars when it finally hits our screens a few years from now.

But for now we have this film, Avengers: Age Of Ultron and, though I was a little disappointed in places, it’s really not a bad movie and I reckon if I take another look at it at some point soon, I might enjoy it better. My experience with films of a certain type is that sometimes my brain doesn't enjoy the movie too much the first go around because it’s too busy processing all the information some directors like to cram in. So there’s no need for me to recommend this one... if you are into superhero movies which, in the mightly Marvel manner, are pretty much modern morality plays dealing with broad stroke issues then this one’s right up your street. Like I said at the start of the review, it’s certainly not a mess and it’s worth taking a look.

Iron Man Three

Through A Glass Starkly

Iron Man Three
USA/China 2013
Directed by Shane Black
Playing at cinemas now.

Warning: Tiny, slight but sharp, splinters of 
spoilers working towards the heart of this review.

Please Note: The posters advertising this movie refer to the title as Iron Man 3 whereas, on the actual print of the film I saw playing at UK cinemas last week, it was definitely Iron Man Three... which is how I will refer to it in this review. 

You know, I really have always liked screenwriter Shane Black’s work a heck of a lot. Specifically, I loved his writing on the first Lethal Weapon movie, The Last Boy Scout and The Long Kiss Goodnight. When he got his directing gig on another gem he’d written (adapted from an old Mike Shayne adventure) called Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, I was blown away all over again. I think this guy is a true artist when it comes to popular culture and I look forward to him getting his Doc Savage movie off the ground (as long as it’s set sometime in the thirties that is). Which is why I kinda regret some of the things that I feel I need to write here to give Iron Man Three a fair shake of the stick.

I also really loved the first Iron Man movie. I think it’s certainly one of the best two or three super-hero movies ever made and it delivers some serious and sometimes morally challenging ideas with the grace, delivery and style of a 1930s screwball comedy, especially in the scenes of dialogue between Tony Stark (played by Robert Downey Jr) and Pepper Potts (played by Gwyneth Paltrow). I couldn’t say enough good things about that first movie when it was initially released and that’s not really changed in terms of the first one now. The second movie though... well the Stark/Potts relationship took a backseat for the most part and ultimately, I felt kind of let down by it and, though it pains me to say it, I feel the same about Iron Man Three in some regards.

Now please don’t get me wrong here... I thought Iron Man Three, the fifth film to feature Robert Downey Jr as Iron Man (so it’s really Iron Man 5 if you’re counting people!) had some fantastic stuff in it and some of Shane’s writing in the smaller, dialogue filled sequences is absolutely brilliant. In fact, on paper, there’s really not much not to like. The main title character is changed by the events of this movie, which may well have some sort of impact in future films and some new concepts are introduced such as not having to be in the Iron Man suit to be able to pilot it, for one, and then the next logical jump from that being that you can command a whole army of empty suits into your personal crack unit... that was a nice idea (although how they top this kind of thing in future movies I don’t know).

It’s absolutely filled to the brim with some nice moments such as Happy (played again by the director of Iron Man and Iron Man 2, Jon Favreau) being addicted to the TV show Downton Abbey and the brilliant portrayal of The Mandarin by Ben Kingsley which, if you know as little about the screen incarnation of this character as I did, will be quite a pleasant surprise to you when Tony Stark’s character gets to met him in the flesh. The movie also deals with concepts such as a lead character who inadvertently makes his own demons (which I think is a road we’ve kind of been down on before with Iron Man but it seems to work pretty well here) and also dealing with the psychological consequences of the heroic “save and fall” that Tony Stark pulled off in the fourth Iron Man film, The Avengers (aka Avengers Assemble). This is all good stuff and there’s enough good writing on show to tie everything from Tony Stark’s past screen exploits together in a neat and appropriate package, which is just what Shane Black does.

I think the main problems, for me, were the deadly dull bits between the strong dialogue sequences and the sometimes not so kick ass action sequences... and also the ongoing issue that you need to keep having foes who are able to take on Iron Man and try to get them as credible as you can within the silver screen edition of the Marvel Universe that nobody questions it. It was always done fairly “real world” by using people with technically brilliant weapons or weaponised armour in the first two movies, but here Shane Black takes a more organic, “more human than human” approach with ex Neighbours TV soap star Guy Pearce playing a scientist who has invented a drug to give people the ability to grow limbs back (The Lizard in The Amazing Spider-Man really needs to work with this guy, I think) and also to turn them into either super-powered villains or, in some cases, powerful bombs. I guess this could have been handled credibly in a kind of “4-colour-Cronenberg” kind of way but, alas, the flashy, orange CGI work and over the top nature of the super-powered beings in this did seem to scratch a little at the credible surface of even a movie that has characters such as Iron Man running around in them. I guess, since The Avengers, all bets are off when it comes to credibility of the antagonists but I would have preferred him to face a more realistic set of villains in this one. I guess I can see why they felt they needed to do this, though.

The editing was something I lament on this movie, especially in a long battle towards the end of the story (which is where most of the action is located anyway... towards the end of the film). I did have trouble following the speed of the cuts and found placing the shots which flashed before my eyes in this sequence into some kind of coherent order fairly challenging, to be fair. As a result, the final fight in the movie didn’t really hit any emotional high points for me (which are often best done in isolation anyway) and I did find some of the footage kinda incomprehensible as I tried to follow along. And despite that, I still feel the movie needed about 20 - 30 minutes of judicious pruning in certain areas when it comes down to it. A shorter, tighter film may have worked better.

Another weakness of these particular Marvel branded movies is, of course, the consistency of the musical scores...

Marvel have done a heck of a lot of things right in the last five years or so when it comes to the specific subset of the Marvel Universe films they are bringing out as opposed to films series like Spider-Man and X-Men from other studios. They’ve gone for mostly great scripts, well thought out choices of director (Kenneth Branagh for Thor for instance, was one of a few strokes of genius) and they are inhabiting all these movies with a strong set of well established, “serious” actors who lend a certain amount of weight to their roles and who are not, as often happens, ignoring the ensemble nature of the way the characters all need to work together. This is all good stuff, of course.

Why then, are they completely compromising all that by not giving each subset of heroes who make up The Avengers their own, string of signature scores? Take this particular sequence of Iron Man films, for instance. We’ve had three stand alone Iron Man movies (not including The Incredible Hulk and The Avengers within this example, because it just makes the water muddier when it comes to music) and three separate composers scoring each one with completely different leitmotifs for the characters. Seriously, people, we had Ramin Djawadi, John Debney on the second and now Brian Tyler on the third... all of them are excellent composers and all of them have done brilliant and appropriate scores for these films... but none of them match up with each other. Why?

The only stab Marvel made at musical continuity was getting Captain America: The First Avenger composer Alan Silvestri back for The Avengers, but this didn’t do much justice for the Hulk, Thor and Iron Man characters in terms of melodic value and binding the characters together with an integration of those specific melodies. So Iron Man Three does, unfortunately, continue the trend of completely ignoring the musical continuity of the character in every way except style (there’s usually a lot of percussion in the Iron Man movies, for sure).

Having moaned about all that, though, and my general dissatisfaction with certain elements of the film... there are still a lot of really great scenes throughout the running time which are more than worth paying the price of admission for. I’ve already mentioned Ben Kingsley’s scene stealing performance as... well, anyway, his few but amazing scenes. In addition to this you have the Tony/Pepper scenes still fairly sharp and witty in the dialogue and you also have a teenage character for some of the movie who really reminds us that, although it’s never really in great shape, Tony Stark does have a heart and is a real human being who is trying to do the right thing. And I still love the character’s arrogance and the way that his self awareness of his personality informs the audience that you can’t take this guy at what’s showing on the surface... a real testament to Rob Downey Jr’s continued excellence at playing this, and many other, characters.

So I’m done with this one. It’s not the best but even so, it’s a heck of a ride and although you might find yourself dissatisfied with certain sequences, there’s a hell of a lot of good stuff on show and the director, production team and studio should feel proud that they’ve been able to deliver an above average super-hero movie again. It’s not that easy to do.

One last thing... this film continues the trend of the movies having an additional scene after the last drop of the end credits play out... and it’s pretty cool and I was pleased to see one of my favourite living actors sharing some screen time with Robert Downey Jr again. Let’s just say that, if you were a fan of the last movie starring this character... you will want to stay seated for this last, little sequence.

The Avengers

Some Assembly Required

The Avengers 

aka Marvel Avengers Assemble

(aka Iron Man 4, The Incredible Hulk 2, 

Thor 2, Captain America 2)

US  2012

Directed by Joss Whedon

Playing at UK cinemas now

Warning: There are going to be some pretty strong spoilers 

assembling themselves in this review... don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Hmmm... Maybe I was setting myself up for something of a fall but when the good word of mouth buzz about the new movie of “Earths Mightiest Superheroes” (as the tag line on the comics always used to read back when I were a lad and directly quoted by Rob Downey Jr in this movie) hit the internet, I was really expecting to like this film a lot more than I actually did. Don’t get me wrong... it’s not a terrible movie by any means and it’s an incredible task to be able to keep this many balls in the air in terms of plot points and multiple characters who all have to be major factors in this kind of film... it just fell a little short of my expectations and disappointed me a fair bit. This is usually something I try not to let happen... have expectations that a film will actually be quite good, that is. I always try to keep my expectations as low as possible to avoid this kind of disappointment but I guess the long slow tease over the last 4 years where The Avengers has been less than covertly promoted in various "slot in" sequences in 5 other films has artificially built up my expectations somewhat. This is, after all, a film which is a sequel to 4 other superhero franchises, where four of this particular team come from.

Maybe that’s my problem with it. All of those four characters - The Invincible Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk, The Mighty Thor and... The... um... and Captain America -  have to have some serious screen time to keep their respective fans happy and, of course, other members of the team (Black Widow who debuted in Iron Man 2 and Hawkeye who made his first on screen appearance in Thor) also need equal amounts of screen time... not to mention Loki and the other regular characters who are returning from some of the previous films... Nick Fury, Agent Coulson, Doctor Selvig and Pepper Potts (regrettably, Natalie Portman’s character is referred to only in the context of a holographic photo). It’s an almost impossible task to cram all those characters into a movie that really, in my opinion, could have done with about three quarters of a hour of judicious editing down, and still have everything flowing the way a good story does... if story is what you’re after.

Truth be told, because of some of this, it’s a movie which does, in places, become a little dull and jaded around the edges without concentrating on any one thing for too long. It’s certainly weatherable because, in spite of all of this, there are some really great, kick ass moments in this movie, but I did find myself clock watching a little before the end of the movie, which is a little unfortunate.

Also, I thought there was a certain inequality in terms of character arc on this one. Thor, for example, appeared almost from nowhere and I still don’t know how he managed to get back to earth after the end of the last movie, when the rainbow bridge from Asgard to Earth was destroyed. Did I miss the explanation somehow through all the visual noise in this movie? Maybe so. 

I thought Captain America, Nick Fury and Hawkeye had a little less progression of character in this one too. Apparently the original three hour cut of this had a lot more of Captain America in it, including one sequence I would have really liked to have seen and which I would have expected to give the character a little more depth. His reunion with his 40s sweetheart from the previous movie (presumably as a very old woman now) was sadly left on the cutting room floor for the theatrical release but I suspect they’ll stick it out on BluRay when the time comes (not that I’m going to be bullied into buying a BluRay player just for this release!).

And to be fair to the Cap, he did get the best line in the movie. Two words when he was giving orders to his superhero army at the final battle of the movie. Just a quick order to a certain green-skinned goliath who more than fulfils this order... “Hulk... Smash!”

On the other hand... some of the main protagonists in the movie did get a much better character arc and sense of progression and, to be fair to the movie, were handled much better...

Black Widow is introduced in what amounts to a remake of the “tied-to-a-chair-fight” in the first Charlie’s Angels movie. Despite all this, the character manages to demonstrate her techniques of prizing the truth from people not once, but twice, over the course of the movie and her back story is fleshed out as something more like the Black Widow I used to know as a lad growing up in the early seventies as opposed to the travesty of the character as she appeared to be in Iron Man 2. As usual, however, Scarlett Johanssen does a pretty good job in the role.

Agent Coulson, although not exactly a major player but certainly a big series regular, is fleshed out a little more and makes the ultimate sacrifice in this movie by dying at the hand of Loki as he fights back (well, hey, look... when I say there are going to be spoilers in a review there’s going to be spoilers... you were duly warned). Perhaps not a major character for some but certainly he has a lot more screen presence than Loki, who is as dull and flat and useless as he was in Thor. Honestly, I don’t understand why people like this character so much because the guy playing him seems to have virtually zero screen presence... what’s up with that?

Tony Stark was pretty great in this. Not only coming up with ways to save the world and also a new way to put his suit on (as you just knew he would) but also, finally answering the big question which has kinda plagued the character since his inception as a guy wearing armour... is he really a hero? Captain America questions Stark’s ability to make a sacrifice for a cause and cites this quality as a true mark of a hero. In the final battle sequence Stark sacrifices himself for the planet and proves himself a hero (and in this sense, man of the match) but, of course, ends up surviving that sacrifice... since we already know Iron Man 3 (aka Iron Man 5 in my book) is due up for shooting soon. Plus we all knew by this point that we hadn’t seen the shot of Hulk catching him yet from the trailer.

And I’m saving the best character for last because, without him, this movie would not have got anything but a big thumbs down from me...

Bruce Banner/The Incredible Hulk, as played by Mark Ruffalo (I guess nobody wanted to work with Ed Norton again... I hear he’s difficult on set?) really comes through and finally does the character some justice in this movie. I’ve always liked Mark Ruffalo as an actor anyway (seriously check him out in My Life Without Me and In The Cut) but a combination of his acting with some “not half bad” dialogue writing for the character (the original TV Hulk Lou Ferringo does the voice for Hulk on this one but Ruffalo did all the motion capture himself and the CGI Hulk’s features are obviously modelled after Ruffalo) really works wonders and the character positively shines in this one. He plays Banner as a much more confident, in control, kind of person... one who has come to terms with his lot in life and who is at peace with what is obviously a constant raging anger within him (he lets slip near the end that his secret is to be constantly angry all the time, which helps him tame the beast I guess). 

When he’s the Hulk, too, he gets three of the most attention grabbing and “physically” witty scenes in the entire movie. The first is when he and Thor (who he kinda dislikes after a fight with him earlier in the film) take out a load of aliens and they both stand triumphant... there’s some brilliant CGI comic timing as the Hulk does a little side punch into Thor’s head which sends him flying off screen. It’s a bit like a Ren & Stimpy cartoon.

The second standout Hulk moment is where the “evil” Loki starts “monologuing” in front of him about how humans are pathetic and they should all neal to him because he’s a God. Right in the middle of his speech he is interrupted by the Hulk picking him up and battering him all over the place like he’s a limp rag doll. I couldn’t hear Hulk's words to him as he walked off and left him smashed on the ground because the audience was laughing so hard.

The third wicked Hulkout moment is the bit where Iron Man is unconscious, presumed dead. Everyone is all sad and weeping and then Hulk just lets out a big roar right by his face and he wakes up! This was pretty funny.

I really wanted this movie to be more than the sum of it’s parts, especially as some of those parts were really shiny. Alas, I feel The Avengers is less the movie it possibly could have been. That being said... there’s plenty for both comic book afficionados and superhero fans to get their teeth into in this one. Lots of geeky references to old comics but I don’t want to give away too many of them (and I’m still trying to process them all) but I could almost swear there were even a few panels from the legendary four issue mini series Marvels recreated in this one. It’s been over a decade since I read that and the issues aren’t anywhere I could easily get ahold of them for this review (boxes behind boxes behind boxes) but it would be great if somebody reading this could tell me if the waitress looking at the battle from the diner window and her subsequent TV interview footage were taken from this tome. There’s a even an ALIEN reference when Banner is greeted by veteran character actor Harry Dean Stanton (wearing his trademark hat from ALIEN and Paris, Texas) and they get into a conversation about... well... aliens. That was pretty good to see. I would say, however, that the inevitable Stan Lee cameo, which I was waiting for all the film and which didn’t surface until a few minutes before the end, was a little lacking in originality in this one. Probably his worst cameo to date.

Okay so, as you can tell right now, I didn’t love The Avengers but neither did I hate it. Of the six Marvel movies actually made by Marvel Studios themselves so far, I’d say it was my third favourite... far behind the first Iron Man movie and the Thor movie in terms of both quality and entertainment value and into the okay but not so hot status of the other three Marvel Studios movie... Iron Man 2, The Incredible Hulk and Captain America: The First Avenger. However, like I said before, if you’re into comics and/or superhero movies, you’re really not going to want to miss this one... and if you’re a fan of The Hulk, well this is his best movie. Have a good time with it if you can.

Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows

Holmes Is Where The Heart Is

Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows 2011 US

Directed by Guy Ritchie

Screening at UK cinemas.

Warning: Elementary logic should lead you to deduce the presence of spoilers lurking in the shadows of this review.

Ok then. Since I’m really not a lover of gangster pictures (seen enough gangsters in my school days to ever really feel the need to watch glamourised renditions of these hooligans) I’d never seen a Guy Ritchie movie until his first take on Sherlock Holmes a few years back.

Now I’ve always loved the Basil Rathbone/Nigel Bruce versions of Holmes and Watson at the cinema (even though Bruce’s Watson is far from accurate to the original material) and so the prospect of seeing Holmes modernised into an action hero was less than appealing at the time and I was in two minds whether to see it or not until an old friend expressed an interest in going and dragged me into London with her to check it out.

As it happens, I really enjoyed myself with that first movie. Holmes hadn’t been made into the complete buffoon I’d feared and the introduction of action sequences that I’d worried about so much (forgetting that Arthur Conan Doyle’s creation actually was into bare knuckle boxing at one point in his career) was cleverly underpinned with a bullet-time like series of slow motion sequences which showcased Holmes’ keen speculative intellect in fighting intelligently before the shots were replayed at normal speed to show multiple facet’s of Holmes in what turned out to be an intriguing and hugely entertaining series of set pieces.

Added to this were the shining acting talents of Robert Downey Jr, Jude Law and their various co-stars... not to mention Hans Zimmer’s gorgeous score which still gets regular spins in my CD player. Frankly, that first Guy Ritchie Holmes’ movie was damn good.

Which is why I was, perhaps, just a little disappointed with Sherlock Holmes: A Game Of Shadows, being Ritchie’s second foray into the world of pulp fiction’s greatest super sleuth and also my second Guy Ritchie movie. But, having said that, I do find myself wondering just why I felt this one didn’t live up to the blood and thunder of the first movie.

Certainly, this one in set on a larger scale with only a small portion of it set in England and I did enjoy the sense of Victorian London that Ritchie managed to squeeze into every frame of the first film. This feels conspicuously absent in parts of this one. And it’s not like this international road-trip of a movie doesn’t hang together as well as it should either... all the threads come together and make perfect sense as the film builds up to Holmes’ famous “last stand” at the Reichenbach Falls... and we all know how that one ends. Actually, this is one sequence where I think Ritchie (or at least the suits pushing the buttons in Hollywoodland) let the movie down a bit as this movie leaves viewers in no doubt as to the final outcome of that infamous fight and it would have perhaps have been a stronger ending if the producers had been brave enough to have left Holmes for dead (as he was for a time before Doyle resurrected the character some years later) for a while and followed up in the next movie in the series... rather than bring Holmes back at the end of this one. Missed opportunity I feel... and more than a little gutless.

Hmmm... well since I can’t seem to adequately explain why this one didn’t quite pass muster with me, I can only assume that this is one of those handful of Hollywood blockbusters which actually takes a little while to grow on you and I suspect that, when the time comes to pick up the DVD (and I will), I’ll enjoy it much more on the second viewing than I did the first.

So let me tell you about the good things this movie’s got going for it.

Well, for one thing... Guy Ritchie has a marvellous, extended, slow motion escape/chase sequence about three quarters of the way through the movie and though I’m not exactly a fan of slow motion in movies (except when a true artist like Dario Argento uses it at the end of Four Flies On Grey Velvet, for example) this sequence was a bit of a tour-de-force and it was a pleasure to watch the way various actions and details had been cinematically “enhanced”, pushing at the visual language of the form in a rather attractive manner. The acting performances were, once again, all top notch although I did feel that the chemistry between Holmes and Watson was a little less brighter than in the last movie. Also, Eddie Marsden’s brilliant portrayal of Inspector Lestrade is sidelined to what amounts to a little cameo role at the end of the movie and Stephen Fry’s inclusion as Mycroft Holmes is immensely watchable but, not necessarily a very faithful rendition of the character (again, I blame that one on the writers myself).

Jared Harris’ performance as Moriarty was an absolute casting coup and I found myself very impressed by the way the high intellect of the character was combined within the animally magnetic personae of this bear of a man. Such a perfect choice and pitch perfect performance as Moriarty, culminating with a speculative slow-motion “pre-fight” fight sequence in which both the minds of Holmes and the nefarious Napoleon of crime were equally engaged... the “telepathic” communication between the two (yeah, you changed the rules there didn’t you Ritchie... I saw!) forcing Holmes to quickly tip the scales and sacrifice himself to stop Moriarty dead.

On the other hand, Noomi Rapace (who played Lisbeth Salander in the original adaptation of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo and its sequels), while being unbelievably brilliant in her performance and also being in possession of one of the most distinctive and beautiful faces of any actresses working in her profession, was a little bit wasted in a role which tended to sideline her talents a little too much. Which is a shame and a mistake on the writers/producer’s parts because, frankly, when she’s on screen she absolutely lights it up and she’s the one you are watching when the other actors are speaking their lines. Absolutely great screen presence.

Another downer in this one is the fact that, while I appreciated the humour at Holmes expense in the original movie, the character is treated somewhat more as a joke in this one. Holmes’ fire is somewhat subdued by his treatment at the hands and attitudes of the other characters this time around and I could have done with a few more scenes of him asserting his intellectual rigor over scenes of him fannying around in ladies dresses and suffering the indignity of riding a mule instead of a horse.

Talking of which... Zimmer’s score is, once more, an excellent contribution to the movie as a whole (and I’m sure once I hear it out of the context of its place in the sound mix of the actual film I’ll appreciate it even more) but I was surprised and dismayed to hear him doing a reorchestrated cover version of Ennio Morricone’s musical score to the film Two Mules For Sister Sara during the “Holmes rides a mule” sequence instead of coming up with something of his own. A possible case of temp-trackitus I expect. That being said, of course, it was a more than competent cover (of a much better original) and does nothing to detract from the rest of his brilliant score.

And that’s about it for this one. An entertaining but somewhat less satisfying confection of a movie than the previous film, this one is still worth a watch if you’re a fan of that original outing and the spectacle of some of Guy Ritchie and his team’s mise-en-scene and editing style is surely worth a look if you get the chance. I’m not the biggest fan of this one... yet. I do, however, think it will probably strike me as a better movie when the DVD comes out and I’ve had time to let the first impressions sink in a bit better. Nevertheless, a fine film to view as part of this year’s Christmas viewing... if one has nothing better to do.

221 b.p.m... Baker Street

Sherlock Holmes 2009 USA

Directed by Guy Ritchie

Warner Brothers DVD Region 2

I don’t know Guy Ritchie’s films. Not seen any of them apart from this one. It came as quite a surprise to me, however, that I really liked his take on Sherlock Holmes. Holmes purists might find this version of the great detective somewhat harder to swallow than a lot of his previous screen incarnations but maybe they should go back to the original, classic pulp stories by Arthur Conan Doyle.

Watson, for example, is a lot closer to the Watson than, say, the version of him portrayed by Nigel Bruce in those classic Basil Rathbone movies. And don’t get me wrong here please... I love Nigel Bruce’s portrayal and can watch it time and time again... but that’s not really much like Watson a good deal of the time. Jude Law’s portrayal of him is somewhat closer to the original... although, as with all aspects of this movie, the usual film liberties have been taken.

Downey Jr’s portrayal of Holmes is, like most of his work, entertaining and always watchable. Downey Jr is actually a brilliant comic actor and his humourous approach informs all of his characters. His Holmes is no exception and he brings a more “human” quality to the part which might not sit too well with some members of the audience... but you can’t please everyone.

This version of Sherlock Holmes is a version which is trying to compete in a market where almost the entire output of current movie-making is action oriented. The Holmes here is a bare knuckle boxer, as he had been for a while back in the original stories, and Ritchie’s brilliance with the way to adrenalise the Holmes experience is to have a couple of scenes where you see (and hear) Holmes working out the fight in his head and each blow is seen in slow motion as he calculates what he is going to do and the probable physical and psychological damage it will do to his opponent. We then get to see it all strung together at “fast speed” in one hit. This maybe a cheap trick designed to lend a certain credence to the elevation of Sherlock Holmes as a modern action here... but honesty, for me it did the trick.

And added to all this you have a, frankly, near perfect score by Hans Zimmer. I’ve reviewed the score here... http://nuts4r2.blogspot.com/2010/03/sherlock-holmes-soundtrack-by-hans.html ... but it deserves another mention because it is just so catchy and infectious. He makes use of a well worn Steinerism too... which I hadn’t noticed in my initial viewing... permeating the action scenes around the Westminster area in the last twenty or so minutes of the film, he uses two long sustained sets of four notes in the baseline of the background which, if played faster, are the chimes from Big Ben. Really nice little musical joke for those of you who appreciate such things.

Performances are all wonderful... you’ll see some familiar faces here... and the obligatory action editing is nowhere near as confusing as a lot of modern action movies. Definitely a whole hearted recommendation from this quarter. The game is afoot!