Fast Five (D-)

I generally reserve my DVD reviews for limited releases that no one got a chance to see in theaters. However, for a movie like Fast Five, I’ll make an exception. The reason: It was well-reviewed, made a ton of money, and was really bad.
Anyway, this movie is really bad. It doesn’t try to be anything amazing, it just wants to be a not-to-serious adventure. It is a really bad not-to-serious adventure.
While I admit I have not seen every entry in the Fast and Furious saga, from what I have watched I can say this is not particularly worse than the others. The center of the story has been moved away from street racing, probably because the number of explosions and sheer scale of location damage shown on screen has eradicated any credulity to an illegal sport of 200+mph racing in downtown LA (or Tokya, or Mexico City, or whatever exotic location the current film is shooting in). Not that we don’t see the occasional crowd—of easily 200 people—gathered for this mythical event in downtown Rio.
Dominic Toretto (Vin Diesel) escapes from his lengthy prison sentence in the opening scene when his sister Mia (Jordana Brewster) and her boyfriend Brian O’Connor (Paul Walker)swerves a car in front of the prison bus he is in. The ensuing collision flips the bus over, but leaves Walker’s car unharmed, because he is very skilled at this sort of thing. He learned it when he was working for the FBI to infiltrate street racing gangs.
Now the three of them become mercenaries, and decide to steel some cars taken from drug-dealers. However, when they try to renegotiate the terms of the agreement in the middle of the act, their “teammates” lose it and end up killing three government officials. Angry at the brutality of these gangsters, the Torettos and O’Connor decide they are going to use the intell they stole to rob the entire fortune from the gangs, which is well over $100 million.
Unfortunately, a US agent (Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson) is intent on capturing them. The Rio official (Elsa Petaky) helping him begins to suspect that maybe they didn’t kill those federal agents after all, but is told that “our job is just to hunt down names we are given.” What isn’t noted is that if the Torettos hadn’t been working with the gangsters no one would have died, and in many countries they are just as guilty regardless of who pulled the trigger. Also, Toretto deserved to go to jail in the first place because organized crime and smuggling drugs is illegal.
$1.3 billion is the amount of our taxes that was used to help fund Mexico’s work in fighting organized crime that is distributing weapons and drugs and perpetrating violence in both nations. While the majority of viewers are totally safe from this, it is pathetic to glorify gangs and smuggling. There is no such thing as “good gangsters” and “bad gangsters.” There is a such thing as people who openly support and aid a corporation that is actively fighting the US and Mexican government, and then there is a such thing as honest people trying to catch them. Then there are rich Americans who try to act like the gangsters or pretend they are some kind of heroes and inadvertently hide the atrocities they are doing.
Fast Five has several other flaws. To begin with, the dumb plot holes. There is no effort in making a coherent story. Sure, the movie is better than most at writing interesting situations and interactions. But it is terrible at explaining how the police chief can make sure only the corrupt cops arrive at the massive explosion filled car chase that is leveling city blocks in downtown Rio.
When two of the good guys must gain a crimelord’s fingerprint, the female one (Gal Gadot) says “never send a man to do a woman’s job” and then strips to very skimpy underwear and seduces the criminal, gaining the fingerprinton her panties when he massages it. Seeing as this is her single contribution to the entire heist, I think some offense should be taken that that is what “a woman’s job” is.
Lyndon B. Johnson once said “Organized crime constitutes nothing less than a guerilla war against society.” I hope when the next Fast and Furious film hits theaters, viewers keep that idea in mind.

Overrated/Underpraised: Kick Ass & Super

Nathan Adams of Filmschoolrejects has started a cool new column which pits a film with undeserved love against an unfortunately ignored or ridiculed one. I'm making a similar blog, and by similar I mean the exact same. :)

For the first entry in my Overrated/Underpraised, I hope to shed the light on an overlooked picture from this year as well as tackling one of last year's disappointments that received lots of undeserved praise.

In order to see all the flaws in Kick-Ass, it is imperative to read the comic book first. Written by Mark Millar (who generally does actual super-hero books), it is a very dark but extremely funny look at the psychology of a society as shown through an original take on the vigilante/super-hero tail. With all its in-jokes and unique (and yes, sometimes shocking, subject matter) it was perfect for the comic community, but perhaps not a good fit for a mainstream film audience. Matthew Vaughn (who was then known for Layer Cake) was a die-hard fan of the series, but was obviously too nervous to carry the story all the way through. You see, the overall story of Kick-Ass the book is of a well-meaning (though perhaps self-centered) person who's attempts to inspire justice leads to anarchy and recklessness that leads to countless preventable deaths. The characters in the book are living a fantasy life, and the irony is that they never realize it, taking on the mantle of Batman, Spider-man, and Joker rather then live their boring actual lives. It is rather depressing if you think about it, and Vaughn either chose not to or decided no one else would want to.

The movie plays as a tongue-in-cheek yet at heart straight-forward action tale with "originality" provided by R-rated violence and language. At first it seems like good fun, but on closer inspection one sees glaring inconstancies. The book shows through hear and there, and it doesn't fit the atmosphere of the movie.

In addition to these faults is Vaughn's typical obsession with adding sex and nudity that wasn't in the source material. It is all PG-13 level, but it is gratuitous and unhealthy and a totally unneeded and unwelcome addition to the story. Also, the picture could do without the marijuana use.

Those who enjoyed it were not thinking deeply enough into it, which is lazy and unhealthy. (You should always try to be aware of what a movie telling you, or else you are susceptible to a subliminal message. Also, you get to sound pretentious as you tell everyone about it.) Those who didn't were met with the response by Vaughn and his fans that the adult subject matter wasn't there thing. Vaughn had the nerve to say this to Roger Ebert, except Ebert clearly states in his review that he is disappointed because he liked the book and the movie didn't live up to its source material.

If you try to explain to a fan why the movie isn't all that good, you will definitely here the statement above. However, if you press, you will be told that some of the books elements had to be compromised in order to reach a mainstream audience (the always optimistic Millar said just that).

Enter Super, a film that refuses to compromise anything. Released about a year after Kick-Ass, it was never intended for a large audience. However, with its impressive cast (Rainn Wilson, Ellen Paige, Liv Tyler, Kevin Bacon…) writer/director James Gunn (Slither) must have hoped for a better reaction than he got. The picture made just $324k and received middling reviews. The picture certainly has its flaws, but this tackles the same idea as the renowned Kick-Ass and comes away with something far larger.

Wilson plays a developmentally-challened, mild-mannered man approaching middle age who is heartbroken when a nasty drug dealer (Bacon) reintroduces his wife (Tyler) to drugs and steels her away. After a few weeks sobbing in his bedroom, the person everybody laughed at has garbed a super costume and taken to the streets to bring justice vigilante-style. The picture is a comedy, but it is hard for people to reach it as we see people we genuinely care about suffer humiliating and miserable circumstances. Kick-Ass gives the audience a distance from its story by making it a revenge-fantasy, Super makes us feel the horror as we see our hero lose himself in something entirely relatable but irrevocably violent. We do get to the humor though, and it is in much the vein as Kick-Ass--when the hero, aka the "Crimson Bolt," is approached by a young woman (Paige) wanting to be a sidekick we see how so much of the desire to "protect justice" is more a desire for a more exciting, adrenaline-filled life. The vigilantes begin doing totally unheroic activities, and like Kick-Ass the public takes a macabre glee in it all.

Unlike Kick-Ass, we get a character driven conclusion. I am not going to spoil it, but what we see is a window into why we really dream of super-heroes: A world where good really does win, but also a deep longing for personal connections. It sounds corny here, but the movie makes us feel the message due to our intense connection with the characters. A connection Kick-Ass the book never intended and Kick-Ass the movie tried to tack on but utterly failed at.

Super isn't necessarily a flop. It could hopefully find its footing on DVD. And I assure you it is a far superior, far more poignant tale than Kick-Ass, and due to this is far funnier. So, shut up crime and let it get recognized as the true vigilante-comedy.

3-D Report: October

3-D movies can be done well and they can be done badly. Unfortunately, people have seen too many movies with the bad kind of 3-D and thus think that they hate the format when in fact they really don't know it. I am compiling a report of the quality of 3-D for every month. Some of the movies could still be in theaters so you could consider seeing them based on this, or watch these if you have a 3-D player when they arrive on DVD. Or at least read this years later when 3-D home viewing is easier to come by. Still, the biggest reason I write this is that I hope readers who have seen the movies in 3-D will know how that movies' 3-D compares to other movies' 3-D. Then there might be less of a negative view towards what is in truth a great new invention. Before reading this some people willlikely think "I hate 3-D because the glasses darken the image so much." Sometimes this is the case but I will tell you if it is. Now, obviously, if you watch the movie in 3-D and take off your glasses in the middle you will notice how much brighter the screen is. THAT DOES NOTE MEAN THE 2-D IS THAT BRIGHT--a well-made movie will lighten the 3-D version with the expectation it will be darkened by wearing glasses. It sounds simple but you would be surprised how many people think that a 3-D version viewed without glasses is the same as an out-of-focus 2-D one. The movies are presented in chronological order.

3D has another quiet month with only two of October's films being releases in the format.

The Three Musketeers

Director/Producer Paul W.S. Anderson is most known for making the visually dark Resident Evil and Mortal Kombat movies, but here he decides to experiment with a whole new color scheme. I can't recall the last time I saw a non-animated action film with all of these bright, cheerful colors. It is not very realistic, but neither is the rest of the movie, and it makes far more sense than the absurdly dark palette of, say, Pirates of the Caribbean. This is such an unusual approach nowadays that it might turn some people off, but it is certain to be a boost in the arm to the 3D genre. After seeing this it is hard to pretend 3D means dark and grimy imagery. Just in case you are still skeptical, you can check online and see that the 2D version is identical. If it was any brighter than its 3D counterpart the viewers would be blind.

The focus is perfect and the 3D (much of which is not converted) never causes any of the problems with the imagery. The background is occasionally digitally blurred (or the scenes set in claustrophobic settings), but this is probably a good idea seeing as if there is too much focus in the objects in the background the viewer will get a headache. On the downside this means that you don't always see the location stretch out before your eyes, but there are enough scenes for it not to be a big flaw.

The 3D may not be quite at the level of Transformers 3 or Pixar fare, but it is still very high quality and definitely a great addition to the entire picture.

Puss in Boots

CGI animated movies generally have the best 3D around. Everything is done in a computer, so the absolute perfect focus, depth, and colors can be created. Puss in Boots is no exception. Never is any imagery unrealistic (except for talking cats) and never do the colors make you sick. There is always an added depth from the technology, but in typical Dreamworks style it never interrupts or distracts.

The one flaw is small, but worth mentioning. A very small group of pictures--Legend of the Guardians, Kung Fu Panda 2, Cars 2…--use 3D relentlessly not by throwing objects at the audience but making every detail of the world stretch out before the audience. This is virtually impossible with non-animated films, but it is definitely a beauty to behold. Puss has a few shots like this, but for the most part the 3D only shows you the extent of the scene you are in, not the mountains miles away as in Panda. This isn't a problem with the technology, it is just a lack of something extra.

Even so, a Dreamworks Animation (aka Dreamworks animated films) movie can never have "bad," "mediocre," or even "good" 3D--it has to be great. That little boy on the moon fishing means something, and Puss's visuals never tarnish that reputation.