Deadpool & Wolverine

Penny Deadpool

Deadpool & Wolverine
Directed by Shawn Levy
USA/Canada/Australia/
New Zealand 2024
Marvel
UK cinema cut.

Warning: Some very slight spoilers.

Well, Deadpool & Wolverine isn’t terrible.

Sadly, that’s one of the most complimentary things I can say about it. Discounting the appearance of Ryan Reynolds as Deadpool in X-Men Origins: Wolverine (reviewed by me here), for me this new one if the weakest of the Deadpool films. It has its problems but, it moves so fast that a lot of people probably won’t notice and I’d be surprised if this wasn’t one of the biggest box office openings of the Marvel Cinematic Universe films (yeah, I’m sure this one will be quite popular with people).

Okay, positive things first because, as much as there are negatives there are good things to say too. So Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman as the title characters have great chemistry and the film is filled with great actors and also some interesting cameo appearances from past Marvel characters (not all of them from the MCU versions of the movies). And there are some funny one liners dotted around which Reynolds delivers in his usual Bug Bunnyish manner and it’s all good fun, to a point.

It’s got a very strong opening... and a very strong first half hour it has to be said, including a title sequence battle royale where, after digging up Wolverine’s rotting corpse from the grave left after his death in Logan (reviewed here) and finding he hasn’t regenerated, he gets into a fight with a weird time agency (I think the same one from the Loki TV show) and kills many of them in very gory ways using various bones from the skeleton of Logan as weapons.

We then get embroiled in a story where Deadpool is tasked with helping to kill off his dwindling timeline (which is decaying because of the death of Logan, who is apparently that timeline’s ‘anchor being’ )... but instead he grabs a Wolverine from another timeline to save is own universe and friends while trying to fight off the film’s two villains... played for laughs by Matthew Macfadyen as Mr. Paradox and played startlingly seriously, by the scene stealing Emma Corrin as Cassandra Nova.

Right from the outset the film is loaded with constant swear words and lots and lots of Marvel and non-Marvel pop culture references... and sometimes these hit really well and other times they don’t. But here’s the thing... while the film starts off as charming and it certainly has its heart in the right place, all the endless allusions to other movies and the constant fighting seem to be there to distract from the simplicity of the story and... well... it all felt like padding, to be honest. The first three quarters of an hour or so of this kind of thing is great but, yeah, after that initial set up it just gets, um, kind of dull. And while there are a lot of characters from the previous two films (along side some other notable appearances), my favourite character from the second movie, Domino, is curiously absent.

So, spectacular for sure and there’s certainly a lot of CGI blood spilled... yeah, I prefer practical effects myself but with a film with this much gory action, the alternative would have taken far too long and really hurt the budget (is my guess)... but, no.

Also, there are a lot of needle drop songs in this (and also melodic references to scores like Silvestri’s one for The Avengers) but it would have helped me personally if I’d have recognised more than just a couple of them, I think. I mean, I recognised Jimmy Durante and I think one of them maybe Madonna. That's kinda it on the song references for me.

And, truth be told, although I certainly liked the film, I did find myself checking my watch long before the end. Now, the film didn’t turn out to be the big ‘MCU reset button’ I was expecting it to be and part of me is glad and part of me isn’t. I mean, okay, we now have a variation of Wolverine that can be recalled when the big tentpole Marvel features start coming again (which is not necessary now we have the concept of a multiverse carried into the movies anyway) but ultimately, despite lots of rumblings that this would change the shape of the MCU, it really does seem to be a movie with no real stakes or consequences. This coupled with the fact that Deadpool’s regenerative powers seem to work in an entirely different manner to how they worked in the last two movies really left me cold, if not a little confused.

The trailer campaign didn’t help it much either. When I was watching it I felt like I’d already seen most of the scenes referenced in the last few months. So there were some surprises but... not so many of them. Where the trailers really let it down, though, is in the big, climactic scene where two of the lead characters (look, I’m trying to skirt around the danger zone with this in terms of spoilers, okay) appear to have met their matter/anti-matter end and died. However, in the trailer there are scenes where they appear together in it which haven’t turned up yet so you know... you kinda do know... that these two are going to make it out alive and kicking. So they kinda killed that one themselves.

And, yeah, that’s me done with this one, I think. Deadpool & Wolverine is going to hit big and will make a lot of people happy. Sadly, I didn’t get on with it nearly as much as I thought I would but, there’s always a chance that it might grow on me at some point in the future, for sure (I might find it easier to process the second time around). So, yeah, I’ll try it again when it comes out on Blu Ray (and goes into the sales), I think.

Red Notice

Withering Heist

Red Notice
USA 2021
Directed by Rawson Marshall Thurber
Seven Bucks Productions

Warning: A very minor pointer to a possible spoiler.

Okay, so I don’t quite know why this movie has been getting some mixed to bad reviews but, I have to admit I kinda liked it. I don’t think the three lead actors... Gal Gadot, Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson and Ryan Reynolds had bad chemistry at all (as has been suggested) and my only real disappointment with the movie is that it telegraphs itself a little too much in terms of something which happens much later in the movie.

So the plot of Red Notice is all to do with the three famed ‘Eggs Of Cleopatra’... three bejewelled eggs crafted as gifts for Cleopatra (which are a complete fiction and conjured up entirely for this film, of course). Anyway, these fabled eggs... err... fictional fabled eggs, are wanted as a wedding gift by a rich sultan for his daughter and he has offered 300 million dollars for the person who can secure all three. Cue various international art thieves trying to steal the three from their known owners with the one twist that Nolan Booth (played by Ryan Reynolds), international art thief, is one of the few people in the world who actually knows the location of the third egg. However, an FBI agent, John Hartley (played by The Rock) and his new partner Inspector Das (played by Ritu Arya who feels like a mega-star in the making and really needs to get some higher profile roles) track him down while he’s trying to steal the first egg and capture him... but not before the international art thief known as The Bishop, played by Gal Gadot, makes off with the egg for herself.

Furthermore, she frames Hartley for the theft and he ends up in a Russian fortress style prison with Booth as his cell mate. After they escape, they go after the second egg so Booth can get his reputation back and Hartley can arrest The Bishop.... both pursued relentlessly by Inspector Das as the two become partners in crime etc. So yeah, simple plot set up and it sings along fairly nicely as an action comedy. There’s a good amount of action and the opening chase in and around a museum exhibiting the first egg is pretty great. There’s a lot of comedy (as you would expect with Ryan Reynolds involved) and fortunately Gadot and The Rock are pretty good at comedy too.

There are also some nice metatextual references throughout the film, mainly coming from Reynolds character who, I guess, we are all used to making such references from films like his turns in the Deadpool franchise. For example, he directly refers to one of the eggs as a McGuffin at one point (if you don’t know what that is then google it) and in one scene where he’s filling in The Rock (and therefore the audience) on the specifics of a plan, he refers to the bodyguards and party goers in a sequence as ‘featured extras’. Also, when he and The Rock find themselves in an underground Nazi bunker in Argentina, as well as a quick shot labelled up as the wooden crate which housed the Ark of the Covenant in Raiders Of The Lost Ark, Reynolds has also just been whistling the Indiana Jones theme. I have to say though, in the trivia section on the IMDB, it’s noted that Steve Jablonsky’s score for this movie is very much like the Indiana Jones films and, well, I’d have to say I disagree on that count. Jablonsky really does not sound like John Williams (and vice versa for that matter so, I have to wonder who the heck is writing silly things like this on the IMDB these days).

My one disappointment stems from a ‘surprise reveal’ near the end of the picture. Spoiler... it wasn’t in any way a surprise. By the time I was half way through I’d picked up on something pretty basic about the relationship between two of the characters which was saved as some kind of plot twist for the last ten minutes or so but, honestly, this was telegraphed in the film way too much and I suspect most audiences would have seen that one coming an hour before this point in the picture. So, yeah, that did put a kind of dampener on things by the time it comes up.

That being said, though, the film is still a speedy and entertaining action comedy starring three of Hollywood’s A list actors who are all old hands at this kind of thing. So it’s still a joy to watch even if some of it is a bit obvious. At the end of the film a ‘Red Notice’, aka a high level, Interpol watch notice, is put on certain characters and everything is nicely left open for a sequel, should that be required. Well, all I can say on that one is... sure, I’d watch a sequel to this. Especially since the audience wouldn’t then have to spend the entire movie waiting for one of the characters to catch up to them in regards to the central ‘twist’. I had a good time with Red Notice and, if you like big action films peppered with a fair few one liners and a comic tone, then you shouldn’t have much of a problem with this one, I suspect.

Free Guy

Ready NPC One

Free Guy
USA/Canada 2021
Directed by M. Shawn Levy
Walt Disney

Warning: Plot spoilers so, if you didn’t see the trailer,
probably don’t read the paragraphs here dealing with the story.

Okay, so Free Guy is one of those nicely made action fantasy movies with a lot of heart. It’s not exactly original but it’s presented in a way slightly differently to most movies that take on this kind of theme and, I’d say it more or less does it’s own thing so, I’m not going to criticise it on the ‘originality’ stakes.

After explaining to the audience the difference between the Heroes who wear sunglasses and those who don’t, Guy (played by Ryan Reynolds), wakes up every morning in Free City, grabs his blue shirt from the cupboard and heads off over to the coffee shop for his morning drink before going to work as a bank teller. A bank that’s robbed every day, one of a series of largely violent incidents barely blinked at by Guy and his friends because this stuff is happening all the time. Then he becomes somewhat aware of a girl, Molotov, who inadvertently inspires him to break out of his established routine and he steals a pair of sunglasses. The glasses help him see the world for what it is... a game in which he can evolve and raise his character level in order for Molotov, who is really Millie (played by Jodie Comer), to take him seriously.

And when I say she’s really Millie, Free City is just a big, global online video game but Guy, without any forehand knowledge of this, is an NPC (which, to those of you who don’t play video games, stands for Non Player Character). So the non-evolving, collateral damage characters who are there to interact with players and get punched, blown up or otherwise injured before re-spawning for another glorious day in Free City (much like the characters played by movie extras, I guess). However, Millie and her ex-partner Keys (played by Joe Keery) are trying to find the evidence inside the game that proves that Key’s boss, who distributes the game and who is played by director Taika Waititi, has illegally used their game engine as the basis for Free City. And once she realises what’s going on with Guy, she needs the assistance of the first evolving AI character, which itself is a remnant of that original software, to help her locate it before the sequel game is released to the public and the original version is overwritten... effectively ending all the NPC’s lives in the game (as far as Guy is concerned).

And I won’t say anymore than that but it’s a really nice action comedy with a side helping of romance and a big heart. It does, honestly, resemble Ready Player One (reviewed here) a lot. Actually, the film shares a screenwriter with Ready Player One so, perhaps that’s not so surprising. And the plot also has similarities to Disney’s earlier 1982 hit Tron in some ways... although the way in which it’s presented here is certainly a lot different.  

Reynolds is absolutely perfect in the role of the up beat NPC Guy and Jodie Comer is... well I’ve only seen her be brilliant in everything she’s in so far and she has good on-screen chemistry with Reynolds, for sure. There are also a heck of a lot of cameo appearances in the movie, too many to mention here... some quite overt like Channing Tatum and Chris Evans, others more hidden like Hugh Jackman. Also, there are loads of video game references (most of which went completely over my head because I’m not a big game player, although I did pick up that Free City was based a little on Liberty City from some of the Grand Theft Auto games) and a load of pop culture shout outs too... fans of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Star Wars and a couple of their scores are in for a treat too, it has to be said.

The film hurtles along at a rapid pace but there’s still time to pack in a ‘double love story’ (kind of) and even a nice, very welcome reference to the problematic and insane lack of gun control laws in America, it has to be said. It’s a morally uplifting film in a lot of ways and it’s all packaged up in a world filled with hot cars, health power ups, exploding buildings and all the things you might expect from a modern, action oriented video game. However, it also pushes the idea that playing games with a violent content is not necessarily the way to go and there’s a nice moment when it’s shown that everybody around in the ‘real world’ has come to love the main NPC, known globally as Blue Shirt Guy, because he goes around trying to save people and promote the idea that everyone should be nice to each other... which is also a sensibility which has grown in him from the original source code of the unreleased game hidden somewhere in the world of Free City. It’s a nice concept and the brisk pacing and non-stop comedy shenanigans of the main characters means the idea never outstays it welcome.

And that’s pretty much all I’ve got to say about Free Guy. This film is another hit for Reynolds, as far as I’m concerned and Comer proves she has what it takes to be able to help carry a huge studio tent pole movie too. Absolutely brilliant fun and this is one I’ll definitely be picking up on Blu Ray to show my nearest and dearest. Definitely worth catching this one.

The Hitman's Wife’s Bodyguard

Virus, The Angels Fell

The Hitman's Wife’s Bodyguard
2021 UK/USA
Directed by Patrick Hughes
UK cinema release print.

Warning: Some small spoilers.

The Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard is, obviously, the sequel to The Hitman’s Bodyguard (which I reviewed here)... well now, hey, it’s better than giving it a 2 on the end. Now, I’d heard that this sequel is not as strong as the first film but, frankly, although there’s one slight issue I have with it, I think this second movie is far superior to the first and gets some things right which were thrown away as kind of a missed opportunity in the first.

Okay, so the plot is that a big bad guy played by Antonio Banderas is going around various countries in Europe, drilling into their electrical supply lines and then crippling their countries in a very explosive, Hollywood style over-the-top manner by injecting a computer virus into the various systems. None of it sounds that do-able in real life (in this fashion) but, well, it’s a movie plot set up so it works just fine. We’re in fantasy land here after all... as demonstrated by the amount of physical punishment that Ryan Reynolds takes in this movie, which would surely hospitalise a real person for months at the very least (he’s run over with a car at least twice).

Anyway, somehow Samuel L. Jackson’s hitman character gets kidnapped and mixed up with this whole scheme and it’s down to the always wonderful Salma Hayek, reprising her role as Jackson’s wife, to get him out. So she gets to the psychologically troubled (due to events in the last movie) Ryan Reynolds bodyguard character, forcing him out of his ‘new, stress free life’ because she misunderstands her husband’s request of who to get to help her get Jackson away from his captors. And, of course, in the process of this initial rescue, the three become ‘travelling companions’ as they get embroiled in the whole caper and tasked with saving the world from Banderas’ evil scheme.

And it’s a hoot. This one retains the wonderful, disagreeable chemistry between Reynolds and Jackson and then ramps it up by expanding Salma Hayek’s role from the first film to really add the craziness. Salma is on fire here and she’s easily the best thing about the movie, it has to be said... the three leads are all great and make a perfect team in this one.

And it’s a bit ‘business as usual’ for a Hollywood action film but the various gun battles, fist fights, car chases and stunts are all quite watchable and this one does the one thing the first film should have done more of. I remember complaining the first time around that Jackson and Reynolds were so good playing off one another but that, for some reason, they rarely shared any action sequences together... the writers always seemed to split them up and cross cut between two separate action sequences for each character. Here, I’m happy to say, we have none of that. All three leads... Reynolds, Jackson and Hayek... share a lot of screen time together and collaborate on all of the action scenes really well (and they’re all quite funny performances too... which helps anyway).

There’s perhaps an over reliance on a kind of visual punchline to many of the scenes, perhaps... where we, and usually the characters, perceive something to be happening and then the camera will pull back to reveal a different picture, such as the fact they've just been surrounded by a section of the secret service holding guns on them... or something will happen to just change the situation suddenly, like all three getting tranquiliser darts in the neck (of course, Reynolds gets about six shot in his face) but it’s not too distracting and it provides the required humour as intended so, I can’t complain too much about this stuff. Nor possibly on the use of ‘unexpected dream sequences’ being used in a similarly humorous way.

What I can complain about is that some of it isn’t all that funny in places and there is an over reliance on way too much swearing, perhaps but...yeah, a lot of comedy in general is hit and miss, to be honest but the joke to laugh ratio isn’t bad here and, frankly, one woman at the screening I was at was laughing hysterically throughout the whole movie so, I’m maybe a little humour-light myself, in all fairness.

Other than that, there’s a nice Steve McQueen reference and a silly but watchable guest role for Morgan Freeman as Ryan Reynold’s ‘ultimate bodyguard father’... but I don’t want to say too much about that character here, to be honest.

Ultimately, if you liked the first movie, then you should have a fair amount of fun with The Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard... and Salma Hayek seems to be in so few things these days that it’s always good to see her in anything new, especially humorous roles (I always loved her as ‘the muse’ in Kevin Smith’s Dogma). I had a fairly good time with this one and, from the sound of the audience, everyone else had an even better time with it than me. So, yeah, if you liked the first one, then definitely don’t miss out on this one. And if you do, be forewarned, there’s a mid-end credits scene plus a little joke on the very end of the movie, if you are so inclined to stay.

Deadpool 2

Pool Runnings

Deadpool 2
2018 USA Directed by David Leitch
UK cinema release print.

Warning: I’ve tried to keep it to a minimum but... slight spoilers.

Okay so, just over two years since the fairly awesome Deadpool movie (reviewed here) hit our cinemas we finally have Deadpool 2 and it’s... err... okay, well it’s really not bad, I suppose... ish.

Actually, I did find this sequel kinda disappointing to be honest... I just can’t put my finger on why that was because the performances by the likes of Ryan Reynolds, Josh Brolin, Morena Baccarin, Brianna Hildebrand and Zazie Beetz were all pretty cool. Likewise, the script wasn’t too bad and although I found it a little bit more dense in terms of semi-obscure Marvel Comics and Marvel Cinematic Universe references (I suspect some people will not have a clue that there are certain jokes here) it was pretty “full on” and moved a mile a minute. Added to that, the direction and action editing wasn’t bad, with David Leitch, who directed Atomic Blonde (reviewed here) jumping into the main chair on this one... at least you could understand what was going on most of the time.

Why, then, did I feel this movie was fun but not all that engaging?

Well, it doesn’t help that one of my favourite characters from the first film is basically killed off in the first five or ten minutes. Now, it has to be said, since this film’s big new character, Cable, is a time traveller, it kinda felt this was an easy set up for the first major casualty of the film to return at the end. The strange thing was, the film-makers didn’t take the easy way around to this (nor one which made any sense in terms of how we’ve seen the way their version of time travel works earlier in the film... temporal logic flies completely out the window by this point) and have saved it for one of the mid-closing credits sequences in the movie. Which is fine but, since the jokey and metatextual nature of the majority of those extras could possibly be taken as a separate thing apart from the movie, I and a couple of people I spoke to, couldn’t quite work out if the character was supposed to be alive for the next movie or not (if there is one). So, yeah, it’s kind of puzzling. Either way, though, there’s not too much of the particular character in question (who I won’t reveal here) in this and so I was not happy about it.

I was even less happy when I watched a somewhat James Bondian opening title sequence which kinda commented on what the audience’s state of mind must have been in after the pre-credits sequence in which said character died. I really didn’t need to be told how I was supposed to be feeling and, like I said, I was already expecting time travel shenanigans by this point.

Another thing which niggled a little is that another of my favourite characters from the first film... didn’t have a heck of a lot to do in this one either, it has to be said. I wanted to see more of a particular person in this and that just didn’t happen for me... although that character's arc since the first movie is kinda cute, at least.

There were, of course, loads of good things about the movie too and, like I said, it’s really not a bad experience at all... I just didn’t love it like I did the first one.

Okay so, good things...

Well there are a couple of nice new characters. One of them didn’t last that long (although, again, time travel to wipe out past incidents people!) but the one who did, Domino (played really well by Zaxie Beetz) was a pretty cool one. Domino’s super power is good luck which Deadpool argues is not cinematic. Then the cast and crew spend time demonstrating just how visually interesting and comedic it is throughout the rest of the film, of course. I loved the way how sometimes things would just fall into place for her and at other times, the action would pre-empt and set things up to her advantage. For example, we see some stuff happening with a bus heading towards the walls of the building she’s in just before we hear her say something along the lines of “We could really use a bus right now”. Said transport crashes through the walls for her to use a half a second later.

Also, Cable’s character does go through kind of an emotional arc and Brolin plays him really well... I’m really beginning to get the hang of this actor now. He brought a lot of depth and emotion to Thanos in Avengers - Infinity War (reviewed here) and he’s similarly interesting and three dimensional here.

Other good stuff includes a battle between Deadpool and Cable in prison where our hero tries to stop Cable from killing a young boy before he has the chance to do horrifying things in the future. The problem here, though, is that probably nothing else in the film really tops this sequence, which must be about half the way through the movie and the rest of the film felt a little like an anticlimax in comparison. However, it’s a very nice sequence and, like I said, the film really isn’t a bad one.

Another great thing is the quality of the jokes. I said that a lot of them are going to go over some people’s heads but there’s a lovely moment where the character bridges the gap, so to speak, of the various Marvel franchises by cracking a line made famous in some of the MCU movies which I really appreciated. Plus, the very first thing you see on screen of a certain musical paperweight is going to get some wide grins I’m sure. Not to mention some of the franchise crossing and even, in a weird way, comic book company crossing in some of the post-credits scenes. In fact, there are a fair few jokes at the expense of the DC universe in this movie too, which got some laughs from the audience I was with (despite having to wait 40 minutes for a broken projector at Cineworld to be repaired before the movie started).

All in all, I find I don’t have too much to say about this one, to be honest. My hope is that there was just so much going on with it that I need to see it again to process it properly and then I’ll maybe enjoy it more then. I usually refer to the Ryan Reynolds character as being similar to Groucho Marx crossed with the superhero genre and, if I were to push the analogy, I might say that the original Deadpool felt a little like one of the early, Marx Brothers masterpieces of the late 1920s and early 1930s whereas, Deadpool 2 is more like one of their later, not so outrageously funny but still fairly entertaining efforts. If you’re a Deadpool fan you may find yourself a little less enamoured with this one but, saying that, I seem to be pretty much in the minority on this one. Not the best Marvel movie I’ve seen but, absolutely nowhere near the bad ones either. Hopefully the third one, if there is one, will recapture the spirit of the first.

The Hitman's Bodyguard

Witness For The Execution

The Hitman's Bodyguard
2017 USA/China/Bulgaria/Netherlands
Directed by Patrick Hughes
UK cinema release print.

Warning: Very mild spoiler for something
you find out very early on in the movie.

The Hitman’s Bodyguard stars Ryan Reynolds and Samuel L.  Jackson and is one of those sub genres of the action comedy film which comes under ‘hesitant buddies’ movie. We’ve seen them all before, of course, and there are good and bad examples of this dotted around cinema history, especially over the last 50 years, with some truly great ones being Freebie And The Bean, the first Lethal Weapon and The Long Kiss Goodnight (which also stars Jackson, this time teaming up with Geena Davis). They’re films which involve two things in their ingredients done especially right if they are to be truly worth any repeat viewing and, in terms of what I think those elements are, this film definitely has one and... well it almost has the other. This is above and beyond all the normal , obvious things that this genre needs to get right, of course, such as good action and a good sense of pacing.

Let’s get to the onscreen chemistry between the lead characters first. Reynolds and Jackson have it in spades. They’re both actors, actually, that I have a lot of time for. I’ve been watching Sam Jackson for a while but first became aware of him properly in Stephen Spielberg’s Jurassic Park (reviewed here). He’s an actor I appreciate a lot and, I guess in some ways he’s something of a living legend. Ryan Reynolds I don’t know so well but I liked what he did in Deadpool (reviewed here) and I also loved what he did in Green Lantern (reviewed here) which I think was a, sadly, underappreciated gem of a movie that I suspect might do well over time and become better appreciated in 20 to 30 years than it is right now. He’s also an actor I have a lot of time for. So there’s that and... yup. Like I said, I can confirm the chemistry between the two male leads in this is really very good. They play off each other amazingly well with Jackson reflecting a joyous, life loving assassin who makes a deal to testify against the movie’s prime villain in order to get his wife, played by the always brilliant Salma Hayek, out of jail. Reynolds is the deadpan genius of a straight man for a lot of the show and, together, they really work well.

The film starts off strongly where we see the end of Reynold’s last case as ‘Triple A rated’ bodyguard Michael Bryce, with everything suddenly going wrong before his eyes. Cut to two years later and he is a washed up, down on his luck shadow of his previous self but, still doing a similar job for another firm. We see him pick up a drug addled Richard E. Grant and get him to safety and it is only when we hear him talking to his co-worker on the phone that we realise what this relatively easy looking job entailed... as we see him take out at least a half a dozen bad guys in flashback on his way to pick up his client. One wonders why someone who is so proficient at taking out the opposition is still in the position he’s in but, there you go, that’s who this guy is. We then meet Gary Oldman as dictator Vladislav Dukhovich, who is on trial from crimes against humanity but, somehow, not one shred of evidence has been found against him that will stick. We meet him a little earlier in a scene which is pretty standard fare to make his villainy personal to the audience, as he does something pretty nasty to one of his victims. We then meet the incarcerated Darius Kincaid, played by Jackson, who makes that deal for his wife’s freedom with the British to show up and testify at Vladislav’s trial... if they can get him there alive. Of course, as soon as they try to transport him it’s predictably bedlam but Bryce’s ex girlfriend, Agent Amelia Roussel played by Elodie Yung (who I liked so much in Gods Of Egypt... reviewed here) gets him to a temporary safe house and calls in Bryce to help out. Of course, the two recognise each other immediately because Darius has tried to kill Bryce 38* times in their working life so, after the inevitable fight, things settle down and we are left with Bryce and Darius ‘on the road’ and trying to get to the court in Amsterdam from London (most of the first half of the film is set in the UK) while avoiding the opposition and trying to outwit the traitorous plant within the British secret service who is working for Vladislav and trying to make sure Darius never gets to that trial.

And that’s the set up and, like I said before, the chemistry between the two male leads is pretty good... so that’s all fine. And, yes, the film is pretty pacey and has a lot of good and sometimes quite violent action set pieces. That being said, I did have a few problems with it and... I’ll get to those now.

The other essential element you need, I believe, for this specific sub-genre of film to work, is a very good script. The structure in this is relatively sound... a bit clichéd but I’ve got no issues with that. However, the dialogue is really not that great in a lot of places. Don’t get me wrong, there’s some excellent stuff in here including some poignant bonding between the two leads (as you would expect from this kind of film) and some very funny moments. Ultimately, though, I just felt something was maybe missing for some of the time. The dialogue didn’t always feel like it was making the most out of the situations which we're presented with on the screen at certain points but, on the other hand, it’s still not terrible so I’m really not complaining too bitterly. I did, however, feel that this element never allowed the film to rise to being a truly ‘great’ movie and, instead, it kinda hovers at the ‘really quite nice’ level for a lot of the time, instead. No worries, though... that’s a lot better than most movies out there these days.

Another thing I found was that the action sequences completely failed to exploit the great rapport between Reynolds and Jackson by having a lot of it take place at the same time but with them in separate locations. There seem to be surprisingly few scenes of this nature involving the two of them on screen at the same time. Instead, Reynolds will do his thing in a completely different area while Jackson is doing something similarly violent somewhere else. Take the excellent speedboat chase in Amsterdam, for example. Jackson is on the boat and escaping the villains while Reynolds is on a bike protecting him from afar and having his own battles. Similarly, a car chase with Jackson which is fairly long takes place while Reynolds is involved in a foot chase and gets down with some violent shenanigans in a kitchen. How the two miraculously meet up again after this sequence does raise the eyebrows, it has to be said and certainly stretches ones ability to suspend disbelief. Maybe there were some scenes cut which explained how Jackson can just happen to backtrack the long distance he drove and somehow go to the exact place where Reynolds is having a fight but, you know, it wasn’t evident in this final release print.

These are, however, fairly mild problems and, for the most part, the film is an entertaining and joyful experience. I was surprised to find that I liked the score, considering this genre often has some dire music in it. This one is by composer Atli Örvarsson, who also did the wonderful “baroque n’ roll” score for Hansel And Gretel Witch Hunters (reviewed by me here) among others. It’s a really good fit to the movie and mixed in loud enough that I could appreciate it properly in context... I’m also delighted to find that there’s some kind of CD release for this so, you know, that one goes on the list (although half of it seems to be ‘pop songs’ so now I’m having second thoughts about bothering to purchase this).

So there you have it. The Hitman’s Bodyguard is not the best of this kind of movie that I’ve seen but it’s still a pretty okay one and certainly something I’d like to see a sequel to (The Bodyguard’s Hitman, maybe?). Entertaining enough with great performances, some great action and, importantly, editing that doesn’t lose you in the middle and leave you behind during those stunt sequences. A good night out at the cinema and something you might enjoy if the buddy action comedy genre is your kind of thing.

*I’ve only just realised while writing this review, that the dialogue in that scene
going from 37 to 38 is a little homage to Kevin Smith’s Clerks. A nice touch.

Life

Life Lesions

Life
USA 2017
Directed by Daniel Espinosa
UK cinema release print.

Warning: Mild spoiler allusions about the end of the movie at the end of this review.

Hmmmm.... okay. When I first saw the trailer for Life a few weeks ago at the cinema my first thoughts were... “How come I’ve not heard anything about this movie before now? Were they trying to keep it a secret?” Which is not good, really, I would have thought, when you’re trying to publicise a new Hollywood movie. My follow up thoughts were along the lines that the movie looked like a pretty close rip-off of ALIEN but with nods to the ‘reality’ of films like Gravity (reviewed here) and with a few famous people in it. Strangely enough, when I got to the cinema and saw the thing, I soon realised I was watching a fairly close rip-off of ALIEN but with nods to the ‘reality’ of films like Gravity and with a few famous people in it. Woah, deja vu.

I guess with a film like Life you can at least say that it does what it says on the tin in regards to the minimal amount of marketing I saw and, I’m quite happy to report that it’s really not a terrible movie. On the contrary, it’s quite suspenseful and intense in a few sequences and that’s just what a scary movie, or at least something trying to be a scary movie, should be, right? Alas, it also has some problems too but let me just concentrate on the good stuff first...

That good stuff would be the central performances of the actors and actresses - Ryan Reynolds, Jake Gyllenhaal, Rebecca Ferguson, Olga Dihovichnaya, Hiroyuki Sanada and Ariyon Bakare. They all do good work here and another plus sign for the movie is they are able to interact with an environment that looks pretty good on film. All the antigravity stuff works fine and looks credible.

The film’s alien ‘actor’ is also good. Named Calvin, it’s not the straight ‘homage’ to ALIEN that a lot of the movie ends up being and, although it basically looks like Flubber, it kinda works. Especially when it gets inside characters and causes damage from the inside... so the camera can linger on all that internal blood escaping through the mouth and floating around... which is kinda okay, although the first time it’s properly done it goes on forever and maybe outstays its welcome as an effect fairly promptly in the movie.

Jon Ekstrand’s score is equally good and appropriate to the action, helping the film create the tone it needs when it best needs it. I am awaiting a physical CD release which is not scheduled until May and I can only keep my fingers crossed that it doesn’t get cancelled due to critical or box office reaction to the film... which I believe has been fairly poor.

Okay... so that’s it for the good stuff.

My real problem with this was that the editing and sequence of events didn’t get enough coverage for me to be able to properly tell what was going on in certain scenes. For instance, I watched a character die and then 5 or 10 minutes later he was back without any kind of fanfare, just wounded. I had no clue but obviously the other characters did. Also, at one point, and I suspect this error may have occurred due to scenes getting chopped in the final edit (although I’ve no way of knowing so don’t quote me on that), I counted that there were, in fact, two aliens because there was no way the same alien could have been hiding where it does without being seen (or travelling through locked doors if I’m remembering correctly). So I assumed there were two of them to deal with after a certain point in the movie when, it turns out... no, there was just one. I think the way this was put together could have stood being made a lot clearer at certain points.

Thirdly... remember Star Trek - The Motion Picture (reviewed here)? Special effects like the ones seen in that film were still relatively new and the producers overcompensated for that by throwing in loads of ‘vanity shots’ of the effects, highlighted just to show them off in what are probably some of the more boring moments of any of the Star Trek movies. It was like the people behind the camera were saying “We spent a lot of money on these shots and you’re damn well going to enjoy them!”. Alas, I felt Life suffered from a similar, if not quite as extreme, propensity to linger on various effect shots which, frankly, I was not interested in and which slow down the movie... in this case, slowing it down in a negative way. The effects were great but I didn’t really need them shoved into my face at close range and that’s kind of how I felt certain things were being handled here, frankly.

Okay, lastly, the film has an ending which most people are going to see coming at least five minutes, if not more, before the film actually catches up to it. It was pretty obvious although, I have to say, it was a pretty nice ending and it almost makes the film suddenly feel like it’s been adapted from one of those old EC horror comics which got into so much trouble in the 1950s. It’s silly and schlocky but it’s also a kinda fun stab at an ending and... that’s almost a requiem description for the entire film, in some ways. A kinda fun stab at a movie which, maybe, is a bit obvious and doesn’t quite make it in some ways.

Life isn’t in danger of blowing anyone away, for sure, but it is a kinda entertaining horror movie, for the most part. It won’t make you think and it won’t haunt you afterwards and, like I said, it has some problems. However, if you are into sci-fi horror films it’s not that much worse than a lot of ‘straight-to-home-video’ releases of the 1980s and, as I’m sure you’re aware if you are into watching film, some of those can be a lot of fun. A not bad time at the cinema and I may even grab this one on Blu Ray once it’s done the rounds and drops below a fiver. There’s still plenty of room for ‘space horror’ in my life.

Deadpool

Metatext Tool

Deadpool
2015 USA/Canada
Directed by Tim Miller
UK cinema release print.

I have absolutely no idea who Deadpool is.

That is to say, he’s an early 1990s comic book creation... a time when I’d mostly given up on superhero comic books for... any other comic books that were more interesting. What I’m saying here is... I can’t judge this thing in terms of it being a good or bad adaptation.

I didn’t like the trailer for this movie much either... but the only time my friend, who actually did like the trailer, could go and see this was the first night it opened. So it was pretty much sold out for most of the screenings but we managed to get in. I’m really glad we did, as it happens.

Now I was going to be all sure of myself and say this is the third comic book movie I’d seen with Ryan Reynolds in it (an actor who I quite like)... but a quick check on IMDB reveals a slightly different picture. This is, in fact, his fifth comic book movie. He was in one of the Blade movies... which I’ve not seen but my dad is a big fan of those. He was in RIPD, which I kinda liked and my review is here. He was also Green Lantern, which I loved and reviewed here.  Yeah, I was that guy who liked that movie, so you might want to take anything I say with a pinch of salt from hereon in. The other comic book movie Reynolds was in was X-Men Origins: Wolverine, again another movie which I liked despite its general reception. I reviewed it here but... here’s the thing about that movie. I don’t actually even remember him in it but Ryan Reynolds played Deadpool in that movie too. Something which I just can’t recall but which I’m sure I’ll more than notice next time I pop that movie into the player.

This current variant of Deadpool has a slightly different origin, apparently due to the timeline set up from Bryan Singer’s X-Men: Days Of Future Past, which I reviewed here and which I absolutely hated because of the total lack of logic of the starting point from where that movie told its tale. It completely broke continuity with previous films in the series. However, this apparently explains why both Deadpool and Colossus both have some differences to their characters... with Colossus even being played by a different actor.

However, with all this stuff out of the way, is Deadpool a good movie?

Oh yeah.

Like I said, I wasn’t that enamoured of the trailer but the movie itself is an absolute gem. After a quite funny opening title sequence which looks like it could have really been enhanced even more in some kind of 3D release, the film starts off with a battle scene between Deadpool and a load of bad guys which is filled with violence. A lot of the scenes in those trailers were made up from parts of this sequence. Then, just as the old Marvel comics used to do back in the good old days, we get the main character telling you the story of how he arrived at this point and, as the battle continues on, he keeps coming back to it at different points until about two thirds of the way through the narrative, when you’re about caught up on the back story and just why the title character is like he is. This style of getting you hooked on the action and playing ‘catch up’ afterwords is typical of the difference between the way rival companies DC and Marvel used to operate, especially in the 1960s and 1970s, actually. DC were always more linear... Marvel comics made you shift your mindset just a little to accommodate the sequencing.

Now, I said Deadpool, played brilliantly by Ryan Reynolds as some kind of ultra-violent Groucho Marx by way of Bugs Bunny character, tells the audience the story of how he got to this point. Well, he does this by breaking the fourth wall and I believe this is also something that is part of his character in the comics... similar to what John Byrne used to do with his run on The Sensational She-Hulk, I would guess. But when I say he breaks the fourth wall, I don’t mean he does it from time to time... I mean he does it constantly. In fact, he doesn’t break the fourth wall so much as rip it apart with a bulldozer, stamp on it, reassemble it and then kick it some more until he starts bleeding all over the audience... you might want to duck if you’re in the first few rows. And he doesn’t stop at just catching you up with the story... he is talking to the audience constantly, all the way through the movie, and making metatextual references, sometimes at the expense of other characters who are rooted in the narrative.

Slight spoiler in this paragraph: For example, he goes toe to toe with Colossus (played by Stefan Kapicic) and Negasonic Teenage Warhead (played brilliantly by someone called Brianna Hildebrand) and, when he goes to the X-Men Mansion for help later in the movie and it’s only the two of them at home, he makes a crack to the audience about the producers only being able to afford these two X-Men for the movie. He does this kind of thing constantly (no, I’m really not going to spoil all the jokes for you here) and you’d really think that this would get kind of old real fast but... it really doesn’t. The movie doesn’t become just one terrible metatextual joke and it’s still able to function as what it’s supposed to be... which is a really fun movie with adult themes. Parents should probably not be trying to sneak their kids into this one, though, I think.

The editing and structural fragmentation keeps everything moving forward in a really breezy and exciting, fast paced way and, once again, Ryan Reynolds proves that he can hold this kind of movie together pretty well when required. Of course, he has absolutely great support from the likes of the aforementioned X-Men, T. J Miller as his buddy, a treacherous Ed Skrein as the main villain (who did so well trying to fill Jason Statham’s shoes in the fourth of The Transporter movies... reviewed here) and the absolutely extraordinary Morena Baccarin as Deadpool’s sexy girlfriend Vanessa. Yeah, that’s right, Inara from Firefly/Serenity is in this and the chemistry between her and Reynolds is just electric.

And that’s about all I’ve got to say on Deadpool, I think. Absolutely brilliant movie which I, surprisingly, enjoyed way more than I thought I would, given my response to the trailers for this one. Definite recommendation from me for anyone who likes seeing characters from the Marvel universe done in a truly entertaining fashion and I’m really looking forward to seeing what they do for a sequel to this one, which has already been green lit in Hollywood, it would seem. Looking forward to the ‘harder’ cut on Blu Ray, which is apparently in the works, even more, I would say. Oh, word to the wise, there are a couple of extra scenes right at the end of the credits... well, more like an extra scene and then an extension of that scene hot on the heels of it. So you Marvel fans might want to stick around for that one. Anyway, what the heck? Go see this movie. I had a real blast with it and I hope you do too.

R.I.P.D - Rest In Peace Department

Brown Breadquarters

R.I.P.D - Rest In Peace Department
2013 USA
Directed by Robert Schwentke
Playing at UK cinemas now.

Warning: There are some slight spoilers about the basic set up of 
the plot here, most of which are already detailed in the trailer anyway.

R.I.P.D is one of those simple concept pitch films which comes up every now and again and, for all intents and purposes, the trailer is not really far from the truth of the movie. With apologies to Mark Kermode and his recent comments on summing up a movie in a few words, the trailer was pretty much "Men In Black does Ghostbusters". And that’s not a million miles away from the truth, in actual fact. Maybe a bit less Ghostbusters and more Men In Black sequel in tone perhaps but... well you’ll get the idea.

The plot involves young cop Nick (played by Ryan Reynolds) who is killed by his partner Hayes, played by Kevin Bacon. Instead of rising up to the pearly gates to face his "Judgement Day", he is instead whisked sideways and joins up with the R.I.P.D... that’s Rest In Peace Department to you. Here he is partnered up with the always watchable Jeff Bridges playing a 19th Century cowboy called Roy... although I think its fair to say that the character as Bridges plays him is less inspired by the name Roy and the connotations that has with the "All American Western" at a certain stage in its history and more informed by Bridges stint playing Rooster Cogburn in the Cohen Brothers version of True Grit. He does seem to be channeling that part a little, although he manages to make his pronunciation and delivery only just comprehensible at times, it has to be said. But it’s a fun performance and certainly entertaining when pitched against Reynolds fish out of water rookie in the R.I.P.D.

So, anyway, the job of the R.I.P.D is to track down all the escaped “dead ‘uns” who have fled to earth and bring them back for their final judgement. Thus endeth the plot and thus begineth the rooting, tooting and shooting. And there’s not much else involved, to be honest. It’s a very formulaic movie but there’s certainly nothing wrong with formulaic entertainment done right.

There are some very obvious clichés right from the outset though, it has to be said. You don’t put someone like Kevin Bacon into a picture like this, for example, playing a minor role so, even before the first ten minutes are up and he’s betrayed his true colours, you know that he’s going to be more involved in the plot later on. As it happens, a transgression Reynold’s character has made means he needs to make up with his fresh widow, who is under the spell of Bacon and it’s here that the film really does go exactly the way you think it’s going to go, I’m afraid. I’m not going to tell you want happens but I’ll be amazed if you can’t work out the little twists and turns before they occur.

That being said, it’s a nice bit of Men In Black style chemistry the film has going for it, without quite the same level of rich details and twists which that specific film series tends to bring to bat. You could, however, argue that it’s more streamlined with less deviations, entertaining or not, from the story line and, if you did, I’d be happy to defer to that judgement. The relationship between Bridges and Reynolds is strained and unforgiving a lot of the time, but that actually works in its favour. Do you really want to go through this whole movie where the two lead protagonists are acting all “nicey nicey” with each other?

On the whole, the performances are all excellent. I especially enjoyed Mary-Louise Parker’s Proctor character, and her relationship with Roy, but all the performances are as dead on, if you’ll excuse the inadvertent pun, as they need to be for a ‘popcorn fodder’ kind of movie like this one. And, as it happens, it’s supported by excellent special effects, supportive scoring, good solid direction and, helpfully, editing which won’t confuse you in the action sequences which, considering what happens during those sequences, seems to be to be a bit of a minor miracle right there. One thing I can’t tell you for sure though is whether it’s a good adaptation of the Dark Horse comic book it’s based on... I’m sorry, I just haven’t read it.

The film is predictable, as I said, but there are really two ways the ending, given its target audience, could have gone and you won’t know which of the two possible versions, involving Nick’s widow, they go with until right at the last knockings. That’s okay though, at least you’ll be guessing up until the last minute. As is expected in films of this nature, it’s easy to see where you could get a sequel from on this one and I certainly would like to see where the studios would go with this as I did find myself quite entertained through most of the running time. Alas, I don’t think it’s been at all successful financially and so it’s unlikely now that we’ll be seeing a sequel to this one anytime soon... unless it manages to pull an Austin Powers or The Transporter in terms of its DVD takings. Time will tell I guess... but I’m not expecting much from that revenue avenue.

However, fans of good time Hollywood blockbusters where you really don’t have to be thinking about anything while your watching should have a fair enough time with this one. Worth a watch before it leaves the cinema, I think.

Green Lantern 3D

Greening From Ear to Ear!

Green Lantern 3D US 2011

Directed by Martin Campbell

Playing at cinemas now.

Not a spoiler warning: I don’t think I can really, legitimately put a spoiler warning on this one. This is a big, dumb summer blockbuster movie which has no real twists or turns in the narrative. There’s never any doubt that Green Lantern won’t win the day and, as such, there's nothing I could possibly give away that might be considered as spoiler material. So consider yourself un-warned!

“In brightest day, in blackest night,

No evil shall escape my sight

Let those who worship evil's might,

Beware my power... Green Lantern's light!”

Revised Green Lantern Oath from the mid-forties to present day.

You know it’s kinda ironic that, after my initial reaction to seeing this movie last night, I really hadn’t been looking forward to seeing this one at all. All the signs that it would be a bad one were there right from the start... before they’d even started writing the movie. I like to see my superhero movies done right... and it's a rare occurrence when they are not screwed up by the movie studios “adapting” them.

Not setting the original X-Men, Spiderman, Fantastic Four and Hulk movies in the early sixties, for example, made me really mad. As did DC’s decision not to set their Superman and Batman movies in the late thirties. Not to put Daredevil in his proper yellow costume instead of the red one they elected to use, which he didn’t use in the comics until a few issues into his run (if memory serves) got me really angry. The decision to give the Hulk green skin in the movies instead of the grey skin he had in his first issue... what the f***? They take too many liberties with these properties! And look, in the new Captain America movie they have him with a circular shield! He didn’t have a shield that shape until his second issue! And where are The Original Human Torch and Namor, The Sub Mariner if you’re going to do a Captain America set in his proper time period... seriously people... where are The Invaders?

All the things that have really annoyed me over the years about superheroes on film looked set to be happening again, as expected, with the new Green Lantern movie... but by this time my response has pretty much been numbed down to... whatever.

My first disappointment when the Green Lantern movie was first announced was the fact that they weren’t doing the “proper” Green Lantern... aka the Golden Age Green Lantern Alan Scott who made his comics debut in 1940. He wore a red costume (don’t even ask) and his “magical” power ring, powered from the Green Lantern, affected everything except things made of wood. But no... in their wisdom, the movie studios decided that they were doing the 1959 Silver Age Green Lantern Hal Jordan, who did wear a green costume and who had a power ring that would be useful against everything unless it was coloured yellow. Okay... so not such a big deal I guess. I always quite liked the silver age incarnation of Green Lantern, even though he was a member of the more modern Justice League of America (JLA) and not the forties super group Justice Society of America (JSA) as his earlier counterpart had been. After the mid-seventies I kinda lost interest in Green Lantern... so I don’t know about any of Hal Jordan’s replacements or the story arc where Hal Jordan became the prime villain of the DC universe Parallax and destroyed the Green Lantern Corp before somehow redeeming himself later on. I’m in my early forties now (old man alert) so it’s been a long time since I really caught up with these characters.

My first and only real hope was that Martin Campbell had signed on to direct the movie. Now I wasn’t overstruck on that third version of Casino Royale he directed back in 2006 but he’s done some good, well crafted work over the years and I was particularly impressed with his first, resurrection of the Bond franchise on Goldeneye. In fact, I’d probably put Goldeneye at the tail end of my top 5 Bond movies, up there with the excellent Lazenby movie and a few of the Connery films.

Even this though, couldn’t really get me in any way fired up to see the new Green Lantern movie... but I’d liked the character as a kid (especially when he used to team up with Green Arrow) and I’d already seen a rubbishy movie with Green as part of the title earlier in the year (yeah, you all know what that was, right) and I figured... “what are the odds?” Well actually, the odds were pretty bad because, from what I‘d gathered on Twitter, the reviews and comments about the new Green Lantern movie were not at all good... so that was kind of a dampener too. And, of course, the final insult to my potential of the enjoyment of this movie was also locked firmly into place... they’d shot it in 3D. Oh, good grief!

But I went along anyway because I don’t get to the cinema as often as I'd like these days (mainly because the movies they show are mostly dire) and this one was at least something I could relate to.

Colour me surprised. I loved it.

Green Lantern is not a tricky film to get to grips with. The direction is solid and it’s fairly fast moving and does pretty much everything you’d want a Green Lantern movie to do, to be honest. I’ve heard some disappointed people talking about this on Twitter and they’ve been let down by it and said it was boring. Now I don’t know if that’s a reaction to the wall-to-wall action in this movie... I personally, usually get very bored with action flicks because action without context is very dull. However, there was enough talking and other spectacle on show in this that I was never once bored in this movie.

I was thinking about this a lot last night and I’ve come to the conclusion that one of the reasons people may be inclined to dismiss this movie is that, depending on their age, the storyline just may be way to simplistic for an audience that demands more sophisticated, or at least more convoluted, plotting in this day and age. As I more than intimated in my opening to this post, there aren’t really any twisty turny plot points to be found in this movie or anything that anyone with even a rudimentary knowledge of sixties Green Lantern could consider unexpected or spoiler worthy. As my modicum of research for this article (and I rarely ever bother to do research, just fact checking from my unreliable old man’s memories... but shhh, don’t tell anyone) I reread the first three silver age Green Lantern stories which debuted in DC Showcase Issue 22 and I have to say that, while the movie has tarted up the background of Hal Jordan’s character (well you had to really), it’s pretty much left all the basic anchor points of the story as they originally were... and I think that with a character who is, basically, as cut and dry as Green Lantern was back in the sixties, this was probably the right call to make for his big screen debut.

There isn’t anything amazing or new on show in this film, to be honest, but it does have a very strong supporting element to it in the shape of an actor called Ryan Reynolds as Hal Jordan. Now I don’t really know this actor, I don’t remember him from the one film I’ve seen him in - Smokin’ Aces - and so I can’t really pass too much comment as to whether he’s a good actor or not. But what I can say is that he looks the dead spit of the Hal Jordan character as he was drawn in that debut issue back in 1959 and that he does brilliantly in the role, giving it the seriousness and respect that a role like this deserves. I’ll say it again... colour me surprised.

There are also a couple of nice touches in the movie. For instance, and I don’t know if anyone else has noticed this but, after Green Lantern's big entrance in the “helicopter rescue” scene, when he flies off, I’m pretty sure that the four notes played in James Newton Howards barely noticeable score as he does this (it’s mostly lost in the action mix of big explosions and effects sounds, which is a shame) are a version of Johnny Williams Superman the Movie theme (apparently a cameo appearance by Clark Kent was originally scheduled into the movie but got dropped later on).

The other great thing is when they pull the rug out of an unbelieving audience when it comes to Green Lantern protecting his secret identity. Pretty much all his friends figure out who he is and when one particular person seems like she isn’t, I was all ready to leap down the films throat because it’s really only a little mask with not much practical use in real life, there’s no way it would hide someone’s identity (this has always been a flaw with DC’s heroes... Mr. Kent’s glasses and very slight hairstyle change, for instance). But the director is definitely in on the joke and that character also realises, within less than a minute, that Green Lantern is, in fact, Hal Jordan... so that’s a nice little twist the movie makes... perhaps as a nod to the recent success of the Iron Man franchise which makes no bones about everyone knowing that the titular character is Tony Stark.

True, there’s a few little clunkers in the movie... like the ring giving Hal Jordan a background knowledge of The Guardians and the Green Lantern Corp but then still having to have stupid plot points explained to him for the benefit of the audience. What they really needed to give him was an exposition ring!

And the fact that the ring gives him the power of hearing everything translated into his own language but when a scene showing a sizeable gathering of aliens is shown, they’re all speaking alien languages. But these flaws are minor considering some of the clunkers made in other recent superhero movies (I loved the new X-Men: First Class but there were some amazing continuity errors made in it) and the entertainment factor kinda outweighs the little details on this one.

Even Sinistro, as played by Mark Strong who is probably best known for being the lead villain in Guy Ritchie’s first Sherlock Holmes movie, is a pretty likeable guy. Now before all you Lantern lovers scream at me about Sinistro... yeah, I know he’s a bad guy and so will most of the audience. After all, Sinistro is to Green Lantern what The Joker is to Batman, right? Well, they’ve really done a good job with Sinistro here as this film also serves as background detail to his character in light of a possible sequel. Most people in the audience are going to be waiting for the penny to drop and for Sinistro to turn into the bad guy, Green Lantern’s arch nemesis... well, all I’m saying is that, if you wait until a little of the way into the end credits, Sinistro fans will be rewarded!

And, really, there’s not much else to say about this film. Simple but effective big budget effects movie with a touch of heart that I really was not expecting to have a good thing to say about.

Colour me surprised.

Colour me green!

NUTS4R2’s Astonishing Trivia Treats: Although the Green Lantern oath used in the film will be familiar to fans of the character, this version of the oath was a revised one running from the mid-forties onwards. The original Green Lantern oath went something like this... “...and I shall shed my light over dark evil. For the dark things cannot stand the light, The light of the Green Lantern!”