Cinema Alliance Movie Reviews

OK, I am not going to warn you again, take your heart medicine and hold on tight because this is violence porn action madness. Bring eyedrops to get the gunpowder smoke out of your eyes. Leave the women and children at home and hunker down in that movie seat and hold on to the armrests. The Expendables starts in real time and stays in real time, from the opening hostage situation to the final battle, with very little in the way of flashbacks or reveries or any such thing. You will enter a world of make-believe, yes, where the gun is (sadly) the conflict resolution tool of choice and the cops never show up no matter how many clips you empty on the street in the city during rush hour.

Don’t let your moral considerations keep you from seeing Mickey Rourke (who apparently never bathes), Jason Statham (now, he has charisma, and ought to do a “real” dramatic role), Sylvester Stallone, and a bunch of other rather fugly, hairy-chested action hero types (including Stone Cold Steve Austin and Jet Li) just thrash about in a well choreographed orgy of car chases and lead flinging. Does art imitate life or does life imitate art? Sly Stallone likely doesn’t care, and most of the audiences that see this movie won’t either. It will entertain most people, even though we all might spend a moment wondering when watching killing and mayhem became such a pervasive form of entertainment, and does that account, at least in part, for our crazy violent American homeland.

At the very least, this is high grade killing and mayhem, with many beautiful explosions, such as the scene where Stallone and Statham incinerate a whole column of men and vehicles on a dock on a South American island. Kill the bad coke dealers. Kill the evil South American dictators. Kill them all, and let God sort them out, as the old mercenary t-shirt reads. If you don’t like killing, stabbing, stomping, burning, exploding, and punching, then stay home. It is all ok here, in the world of the male id, everything except hurting women. If you hurt women you are a bad man. This point is made repeatedly and ridiculously in the film. Kill 42 people, but don’t hit a lady. OK. Fine. That does seem a bit hypocritical, but it is apparently part of the rather dim-witted world view of the director (Stallone) and writer (Stallone) that we don’t hurt women and we mercilessly kill all the soldiers, dictators, and rogue CIA coca merchants. Quite simple, really. Simple and ridiculous and abstract and surreal, like Waiting for Godot or Alice in Wonderland with automatic rifles and C-4. Sort of. Though, all in all, it is a well made movie, with excellent pacing and the requisite gooney one liners.

The female lead, rebellious daughter of dictator General Garza, Giselle Itié, is beautiful, and possibly the only pretty thing besides the scenery in the movie. Sorry, boys. In a strange attempt to inject some historical currency into this story she is water-boarded to extract her secrets toward the end of the film, don’t ask me why, when everybody else is just beaten up for the sheer joy of it.

The film has an unexpected cameo. No, not Bruce Willis or the Ahnold; it is the A-12 automatic shotgun, occasionally shooting mini-grenades that obliterate people is horrible geysers of blood. (Yuck.) (While, like Bruce Willis and Mr. Schwartzenegger,it is not credited, it would have received higher billing than the Ahnold, this is that kind of movie.) I imagine it has a bright future in Traumawood.

I won’t ruin the plot for you. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Like I could. Everybody dies horribly except for the mercenaries. Mickey Rourke has a reverie where he muses that even though he has killed more people than the black plague, he could have saved his soul if he had just saved this one innocent woman. Everybody gathers back at the tattoo parlor to throw knives and wait for the sequel. The End.

Kevin Bolshaw

Coming Attractions –Late August 2010

No chick flicks were promoted during The Expendables. Predictably.

It’s coming, like a demented joke movie trailer that couldn’t be stopped. Danny Trejo in Machete. Robert DiNiro. Jeff Fahey, the pilot from Lost. Jessica Alba. That Lohan chick who cannot seem to stay out of trouble. Cheech Marin, Steven Seagal, and Don Johnson. If this movie doesn’t burn a hole in the screen, it can’t be done. With a cast like this, with a director like Rodriguez, people will be howling and screaming in the theater during the 9-3 opening.

Green Hornet, starring Seth Rogan is either brilliant or this is a giant floparoo. Don’t miss it? Cameron Diaz, Edward Furlong, and Edward James Olmos. This either is great or just another comic book inspired story thrown up against the wall to see if it sticks. But the production design and gadgets look interesting. Scheduled for 1-14-11, this is not the first attempt to “movie-tize” this material.

Devil. M. Night Shyamalan’s new movie about something scary that kills people in an elevator during this trailer. Due out 9-17. A cast of nobodies in an elevator down to the dank underbelly of the movie industry. Audiences must possibly endure the hell of another failed MNS vehicle…

The Last Exorcism. Come on, that was at least two exorcisms ago, ok?

Did I see a trailer for SAW 3D in splatterSurround?  There And also Piranha 3D? I know that Sean wants to see this, but…SAW 3D is SAW VII. I haven’t really tuned to these movies, but with this many sequels, they must be great, right? I mean with like 14 hours to fill, the creative people behind this must have explained life, the universe, and everything, right?

Piranha 3D is scheduled for 8-20-10, so it is out now. Here is the cast: Richard Dreyfuss  Ving Rhames, Christopher Lloyd. Either it will be great and campy or….CHOMP (it will bite)!

Kevin Bolshaw

If you were dropped on your head repeatedly at birth, have I got a movie for you! Yes, even though you had hoped that this crazy Alpha dog squadron of misfit military irregulars had died with George Peppard, SURPRISE! They are back! Now they are framed for a crime they didn’t commit and their service is updated to Iraq, instead of the ‘Nam, but that doesn’t stop them from shooting, flying and (in the case of “Faceman”) screwing everything in sight.

Well, there are some counterfeit 100 dollars bills and some plates to make more and there is a general who fakes his own death, see. And the CIA wants the plates and  the A-Team has to get the plates and the money back. That is after they escape from some Mexican drug police in the beginning in a seemingly unrelated plot at the start of the movie. And the CIA operatives  are cruel to be kind and bad to the bone and they get away with everything. Sort of. And, no, I don’t fault myself for not being able to follow the plot, especially a plot where people fly a tank into a lake and live, have a hundred shipping containers dropped on them and live, get shot at a thousand times and live, get dragged along the road at breakneck speeds and live (well, you get the idea).

You know, maybe the problem is me. Maybe I need to eat a lead sandwich with mercury sauce so I can get the point of making a movie out of the stupidest television series of all time. I watched it as a youth, and it was never more than the fluff in the fluffernutter sandwich then. What next? The Rockford Files? Law and Order? Weeds? Lost? (Please, no, unless you rewrite the ending and the why and wherefore of the whole island. But I did like the Dharma Project stuff. Just make a movie about the Dharma Project, ok?) Dear Horriblewood: SOMETIMES TV SHOWS SHOULD JUST FUCKING DIE! They don’t always translate to the big screen. They are short and bearably cute in an hour, in two hours it becomes like a trip to the dentist.

Having said that, I will grudgingly admit that there are a few good gags, like the 3-D jeep that busts out of the wall for real, or the antics of Sharlto Copley as Mad Murdoch, the man who can fly anything. His homage to Braveheart is a scream. But that is not enough, and seeing Sharlto Copley struggle to play the accent of a US soldier is sort of painful. For God’s sake, Copley deserves a good role, he was great in District 9. And what the fuck is Liam Neeson doing in this flick? This is no Schindler’s List. And Rampage Jackson is no Mr. T. Mr. T. was believable, in a strange way, and I pitied the fool. I did. And if he was a caricature, he was an entertaining caricature.

Incidentally, I have known two Airborne Rangers in my life. They were both extremely serious people. Dedicated, rather humorless people. They were nothing like the clowns in this movie, and if they gave you that certain look, it would make you feel chilly. I am not at all certain that they would appreciate being portrayed as insubordinate rogue nut jobs. But what do I know?

Sean McKnight wanted me to go with him to this movie just to set me off, to see me blow my head gaskets. But that isn’t what did it alone.  The positive user reviews on IMDB did it. People liked this movie. What is happening to our culture? I liked Die Hard. I liked Die Hard 2. I like it when a plan comes together, too, but not if the plan is to shoot my own dick off. Christ! The story was the product of clouded thinking, to say the least.  At least a couple of bad guys die this time, unlike the TV series, but the violence is still a bit watered down and unrealistic, leading me to believe that at least one moron will go out and do something stupid with a firearm because of this movie, and I don’t care what you say. I rate this turkey two sharp sticks in the eyeballs.

Kevin Bolshaw

Director Barry Levinson’s HBO original biopic about Dr. Jack Kevorkian shines a light into a dark place that as often as not we wish we did not ever have to see. The door to the dark and frightening closet of death is flung open wide and so much wattage is poured onto the suffering in there that most people will be forced to see despite themselves that the suffering that accompanies the end of life often appears singularly inglorious and unnecessary.

This movie is a good test of your emotional sensitivity. If you do not get choked up a couple of times you might consider seeking therapy. You may be stunted or damaged in some way. It is also a test of your understanding of free will. Do you really think that some faceless overlord in the sky thinks that it is more moral for us to linger and suffer and lose our dignity even in the face of our own sober and considered pleas for life to end? If the right to end one’s life, especially in the face of lingering agony isn’t as inalienable a right as liberty and the pursuit of happiness, I don’t know an inalienable right.

Like any great story, this one doesn’t have to necessarily be approached on the basis of how heavy its philosophical sledding is said to be. Instead, enjoy the quirky mannerisms and observations of Dr. Jack Kevorkian as portrayed by Al Pacino. As familiar as the Mr. Pacino is to the movie-going public, he almost immediately disappears into the persona of Dr. Death (as he has been known) and gets down to the business of filling in the gaps in the public record. For, like many characters who have been used to sell news, Kevorkian’s story has many details which have seldom seen the light of day.

Did you know that Kevorkian’s sister helped him tirelessly? Did you know that he spent time in prison largely because he defended himself against the wishes of his long-time lawyer? Did you know that he painted some rather unusual paintings which are available to this day as signed and numbered posters form the Arianna Gallery in Royal Oak, Michigan (http://www.arianagallery.com/kevorkian.php)? Were you aware that he appeared on the cover of Time Magazine? Did you know that Dr. Kevorkian never made a dime from his services assisting those whom he helped to pass onto the void? That he assisted in over 130 suicides?

Viewers will enjoy the matter of fact tone of this presentation, which premiered on HBO on April 24^th, 2010, and is available “On Demand” for HBO subscribers. I am certain that it will spark debate anew in many circles, in part due to the steady pace of the story telling and the fine supporting cast led by John Goodman as Kevorkian’s long time friend and supporter Neal Nicol and Hemlock Society group leader Janet Good, played by Susan Sarandon. A respectful nod goes to Brenda Vaccaro as Jack’s sister Margo and Danny Huston as lawyer Geoffrey Fieger for their vigorous acting as well. You may not agree with Kevorkian. You may find, as I did, that opposing viewpoints were underrepresented or presented as >those of< reactionary religious zealots. Nonetheless, you will likely consider your own end differently after having watched it. And you may wonder, as  did I, why people so resist the open discussion of death, not in movies or television shows, not by tidal waves and zombies and maniacs with guns, but the true horror of slow, inexorable, painful death in real life by aging and disease.

Kevin Bolshaw

I have been goggle-eyed since I watched this film a month or so ago and it has been on my list of tasks to write a review of it. On an impulse, I checked the link for awards on the Internet Movie Database. Holy cow! (Am I ever corny!) This film has won 13 Awards and been nominated for 36 more, from  Oscars to film festivals, on aspects including camera work, acting and writing. What else is there? (Catherine Keener, of course.)

Did I happen to mention that I am in love with Catherine Keener? Yes. My forbidden desire for the work of this actress has blossomed into fandom. So at the end of this review I will suggest a few other movies featuring this fine performer.

It is not Ms. Keener, however who gets the majority of the praise, though, in this movie. Emile Hirsch plays the role of  Chris “Alexander Supertramp” McCandless so well that I cannot imagine anyone else doing it, ever. Hirsch’s performance moved me from someone who felt that “this damnfool went and got himself killed in the wilderness” to someone who felt that Chris McCandless made such a good point in living and dying that his story truly deserves to be told. They instruct, also, who fail.

At age twenty-four, Chris McCandless, just graduated from college, bright and athletic, donated his entire savings to charity and left his life behind. We follow him as he abandons his car and his family and his home. He leaves them all behind during a trip out west. He seeks to prove that he can make it all by himself, free himself from his parents support and their way of life, free himself their ways of work and marriage and possessions, just as many young people seek to do. But Chris went farther.

Chris hopped trains and hitchhiked and availed himself of the kindness of strangers. He worked every dodge he could, sometimes doing glorious dotty stuff like canoeing down the Colorado without a permit, sometimes living in a homeless shelter, but always moving to some sort of date with the wide and wild outdoors. He meets with plenty of hard knocks, but he meets people like Rainey and Jan, a couple of RV drifters, and Hal Holbrook’s fatherly Ron Franz, who help him to see to see the timeless truth that “no man is an island, every man is a part of the main[land]”.

For some people there might have been a reason to hesitate, to put down roots, but Chris McCandless sought more, as his sister’s voice, often employed to narrate, attempts to explain. Chris kept going until he hiked into the woods with a small rifle and a bag of rice to stay the winter in the Alaskan wilderness. There is little need to illustrate his trials here, as you can see them in the movie, but there is need to state that the story, told largely through the diary found with his body, makes it clear that we need other people. The more we avoid that support, the more we risk disaster. The more we seek to be alone, the more our heart grows, our mind clears, still more we see that we need other people. And for McCandless, having driven himself to a lonely, starved existence of aching clarity, how ironic his inability to cross the spring floods back to the world he so loved and missed must have seemed. How poignant and painfully sad to be destroyed by the very stubbornness that takes you to the very brightest light of realization.

Emile Hirsch is amazing in this film. He is loved by the camera whether clambering over rocks or riding the rails or very believably starving to death. Hal Holbrook joins a select list of actors who come back in the twilight of a fine career to play yet another great (Oscar nominated) supporting role. Vince Vaughn and William Hurt, both of whom are great in this story, are notably not even the best thing about the movie. Plus, Catherine Keener! I rate this movie five kayaks, so get a copy and view it.

Bonus: see Catherine Keener in Capote, The 40 Year Old Virgin, or Being John Malkovich.

–Kevin Bolshaw

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Iron Man 2 is one long insurance adjuster’s nightmare. Tony Stark gets drunk and busts up his house (with some help from Lt. Col. “Rhodey” Rhodes). The Stark pavilion gets destroyed. Tony’s F1 car gets destroyed in evil Ivan Vanko’s initial attack. Expensive military robots are destroyed left and right.

TONY: Why can’t I fight crime and keep the world peaceful and safe for democracy, again?

INSURANCE AGENT: Sorry, Tony, but you are uninsurable. You nearly broke The Travelers, Lloyd’s, and ING. You have been crushing everything in sight!

TONY: I can self insure, can’t I?

INSURANCE AGENT: You DON’T want to do that! You just don’t understand the kind of money you are into here. You stepped on the Defense Secretary’s foot…it had to be amputated!

TONY: Awww!

It is no accident that this movie is called IM2. You would have to be a two year old child to  accept that so much ordinance could be discharged around squishy little flesh and blood creatures without the body count climbing toward the stratosphere. How could Tony Stark get anyone to hang around with him? “Would you like to be CEO of Stark Industries, Ms. Potts? The death benefits are incredible! What happened to the last CEO? Never mind that!”

Before you start to fume about how I just don’t get it out there in internetland or flyoverland or wherever you might be from, let me assure you that I am completely aware of the Comics Code. I know that comic book artists are not really supposed to show the gore and the giblets. Fine, but let me assure you that this is a moving picture, a movie in the fine tradition of splatter and gore, and I think that the reason that Tony Stark’s suit is red is so that it won’t show the blood and Rhody’s suit is silver because it is Teflon so that the hamburger can be hosed off easily. It is the director who doesn’t get it, And I will stop going after the next couple of sequels if the creative people behind this so called entertainment don’t start showing the violence more realistically. Sure I will.

Who pays for all this? How come nobody ever gets hurt, really hurt? How can anyone cast Mickey Rourke in a movie where he might traumatize little children? Why is he so dirty, don’t they have soap in Russia? What is this world coming to? I am full of questions, which speaks to the fact that without enough plot to engage the mind it will wander. The mind will wander. This movie is long and ponderous in between battle scenes. Did I start to think that Tony Stark was a self-centered dick who should just die from palladium poisoning already and let Rhody Rhodes be the hero? I won’t say.

Nonetheless, this movie gives us the things we need, our movie-going guilty pleasures. High tech hardware is smashed up at a rate which should have a display inset on the screen with a number screaming along tallying up the costs. Woooweee! You get Don Cheadle, that Downey Jr. guy, Sam Rockwell, Samuel L. Jackson, and hotties like Gwyneth Paltrow, Scarlett Johanssen, and Chistiane Amanpour. You get Mickey Rourke slinging around a really cool electrical tentacle weapon that just melts anything. You get some of the best F1 racing footage I have seen (hey, SPEED channel, why don’t you hire some of those guys?) You get deafened by the soundtrack. (Can you hear me AMC? What? What?) And, finally, to you, Director and Schlock Meister, Favreau: Please change the sound track. Can you find no better tunes than Another One Bites the Dust (Queen), Shoot to Thrill, Highway to Hell (AC/DC), and Pick up the Pieces (traditional)?  This stuff is OLD, period. I should know.

Kevin Bolshaw

I don’t know where to begin with this loosely packed dirt clod of a movie. Someone must have stunned the director and producer with a sharp blow from a large Mayan artifact, say a crystal skull.

The plot of 2012 is figmentary and ill-explained and it joins numerous other pieces of junk on the same plane. For no reason that anyone in the movie 2012 can explain, the planets and stars and other sundry astronomical bits will align and the earth’s core will shift, liquefy, buckle, and realign. Floods will happen. Large buildings and fried chicken franchises alike will collapse. The Porklips will be upon us. (Again.) Thanks to Hollywood, you knew you were doomed, but you didn’t know you were doomed to watch crap like this.

Gradually, everyone realizes that some crackpot is right, and the earth falls apart. Some people are spared, mainly by virtue of social status and wealth (dude, no way!), and escape on nuclear sub/aircraft carrier ark ships that launch from China. That’s right. (One gets the sense, sometimes, that some people in upper echelons of the entertainment industry are either consumed by self loathing, or worse, despise the whole human race.) Besides insipid characters, the movie is most notable for gleefully depicting the destruction of noted geographical treasures of the Earth and its helpless people. Yuck. The ships are built in China, and launched by a flood tide rushing in past Everest. Everything happens on a tight timetable. The last flood even rushes in as a (much abused) clock counts down the final seconds before the end. (News flash: a split-second countdown to a world-shaking cataclysm is NOT PLAUSIBLE! Dumbasses!)

Do not waste your time or spend any money to watch this movie. You won’t care about the characters. The production design isn’t that great. The stars clearly did it for the money alone (sorry, guys).  And it only encourages them. To Ron Emmerich and Columbia Pictures: you shame us all. Shame. You should be shunned. Shunned, I say!

Kevin Bolshaw

P. S. (From Wikipedia, the junk food of reference libraries:)

Misinterpretation of the Mesoamerican Long Count calendar is the basis for a New Age belief that a cataclysm will take place on December 21, 2012. December 21, 2012 is simply the first day of the 14th b’ak’tun [complete cycle].

Sandra Noble, executive director of the Mesoamerican research organization FAMSI, notes that “for the ancient Maya, it was a huge celebration to make it to the end of a whole cycle”. She considers the portrayal of December 2012 as a doomsday or cosmic-shift event to be “a complete fabrication and a chance for a lot of people to cash in.”

Population 436

Ok. I might as well be honest, I watched this movie to see how Fred “Hotdog Water” “Rollin’ Starfish” Durst would fare in a film. And I was pleasantly surprised to see that his performance as a sappy country deputy was more engaging than his performance as the frontman for Limp Bizkit (oh no you ditint!). Yes, I did. The movie arrived from Netflix the same day I ordered it On Demand, so I was meant to watch it.  Yesssss….

This mildly scary and moderately entertaining movie owes more than a little to “The Lottery” and M. Night Shamalamalamama’s “Village”, both of which brought a bit more entertainment value to the big screen. I continued to watch both to assess the performance of the aforementioned Durst and to check out the guy from Law and Order, Jeremy Sisto. I was pleasantly surprised to see the plot’s Twilight Zone like premise played out in the able hands of director Michelle Maxwell MacLaren.

In a rather implausible scenario, census department employee Jeremy Sisto is dispatched to the town of (Norman) Rockwell Falls, population 436. Why does it stay at 436, frozen in the mold of the Eisenhower era you ask? Because the mayor of the town is Rod Serling? No, of course not. It would appear, from my admittedly shallow attempt to understand it, that the population stays that way because that is the way that the Godster wants it as He has expressed in some numerological mumbo jumbo. And if the residents don’t comply by taking the “necessary steps”, then KerZAP!.  They kept my attention, but there was no zazz factor, despite the fact that there were car chases of a sort.

Did I mention that you can’t get away? They are watching you. You are doomed. And the cycle repeats. Watch the ending, you’ll see. I’d watch it for free on a rainy Saturday. I rate it 4 chocolate starfishes.

I would have like to see what Ms. MacLaren might have done with one of H. P. Lovecraft’s stories of far flung fishing villages in New England filled with subtly misshapen people who await the midnight ascension of an unspeakable alien horror from the depths. Please, for me, make a version of The Shadow over Innsmouth, or The Call of Cthulu. Or Cthulu vs. Cloverfield Monster….

Kevin Bolshaw

This movie is loosely based on Maurice Sendak’s famous children’s book. As such it is a triumph of design and execution. The characters are interesting and the voices, professionally done by actors who will delight you with their interpretations, entice you to guess who might be inside those crazy looking suits ( so I won’t tell you). En espanol: Donde viven los monstruos En francais: Max et les maximonstres. Italian: Nel paese delle creature selvage. Released in just about every country where there might be children with loose pocket change, or parents who might be shaken upside down ‘till money falls out.

Some of the time there must have been stunt people inside the suits, because there are some very powerful whomps being delivered. Whomps and stomps are the order of the day. Screams and running about wildly and flying through the air. This a powerful boy and these are powerful monsters, yes indeed. Spike Jonze really gets you involved in the beginning as Max (who is probably autistic and ADHD and pumped on Adderal) (or just a normal kid with a divorced mom) has way too much fun for the safety of pets, family, or furniture.

There is conflict with Max’s mother and siblings…and inevitably Max runs away. We really feel the chemistry between Max Records (Max) and Catherine Keener (Mom). We feel her pain and frustration, and Max is just berserk. Wow. (I love Catherine Keener’s work, she is great, somehow she has some sort of special earth mother goddess thing and is great with kids.) So when he runs away to some crazy land of enchantment over behind the landfill we are not surprised. Rather more are we surprised that he doesn’t end up trapped in an abandoned well or trussed up in the back of some creepy guy’s van. That is doubtless what his panicked family is thinking.

Instead, Max has found the land of the thinly disguised hippies! Yes, he enters the land of the crazy people that Maurice Sendak must have grown up with on the commune where he was raised. (Guessing here.) The monsters’ behavior and philosophy would kind of fit with a bunch of free spirited stoners who just played around all day, avoiding growning up and having the unusual luxury of explaining stuff to a young boy in much greater detail than usual.

There is a lot more detail here than was ever packed into the book and I don’t exactly know where it came from, but it was inspired. Though the action moves a bit slowly at times, it is filled with action. It is a movie that, for a change, actually deserves the description: “a playful romp through the mysterious imaginary landscape of a child’s mind”.  The “big suits” become very lifelike and they really stir emotion. They will touch you as large goofy special effects seldom do. Please do see it on DVD or that annoying cable service where you get to watch the movie for a couple of days but not download it for some reason. This movie is recommended for young and old as  good for bonding. Put away the fragile stuff and prop up a couple of stuffed animals to watch it with you.

Kevin Bolshaw

I am pretty sure which way the filmmakers who made Repo Men would have voted on the health care issue. The movie rips and shreds the idea that there is anything sacred about lifesaving care or medicine. It postulates a wholly unregulated future where the only people who will get acute care such as artificial organs are the ones who can show the money or the ones who are willing to borrow it. And as soon as people cannot make the payments the organs are repossessed “with extreme prejudice”.

To make his point, director Miguel Sapotchnik spatters the walls and the actors with blood and gore. In the first part of the story Jude Law and Forest Whitaker dispatch deadbeats with less sentiment than the Philadelphia Parking Authority shows when towing away a car. In a scarily prescient manner, the Repo Men just point their stun guns toward any individual, crowd, or building and usually find an offending debtor. I fear that soon, fellow citizens, concepts like “privacy” and “hiding” may be viewed as quaintly anachronistic. People are zapped, peeled, and left to die on the floor, with the inevitable begging and pleading treated as little more than incidental background music.

Even when Whittaker’s character, Jake, dispatches some unfortunate in a cab in front of Remy’s (Jude Law) house at a party the two feel little remorse. Remy’s wife leaves him as a result of this and other ramifications of his work. Remy goes on and on until he has an on the job accident with a defibrillator that causes him to need a company heart that he cannot afford… (the company is rather ironically called “The Union”).

Having been thrown out of his house by his wife, Remy moves in with Jake for convalescence. And soon the bills come due and the work orders begin to pile up, but Jake cannot motivate himself to do his old job. The denouement is predictable here as Remy runs for it and Jake chases him to an abandoned slum netherworld which I think was sound stages left over from Robocop movies among others. He runs and hides, but he is doomed, they are always doomed in these movies… This provides a great excuse for more uber-violent scenes where the director must have tossed hamburger, ketchup, and strawberry jello into a snow blower for effect. This is pretty good if you are a horror movie fan, but it is not a first date movie (unless you are a butcher dating an EMT or such like).

I think in the larger sense this is all about the dilemma we all face in this modern life. We want the goodies ( as individuals or a society), even the ones we cannot afford (like maximum live-forever health care), but we don’t always care about paying, exactly (draw your own eerie parallel with the housing crisis and banking failures of 2008/9). We are trapped between doing without the latest or the best and living la dolce vita maximus. We know we probably should do without, but a new pancreas would be so tasty, mmmm. They hold it out to us, always the shiny things, the shiny things. So this is a very timely topic, namely, where, if ever, is the reasonable limit to the money to be spent to save lives. In this story, the answer is delivered with brutal pragmatism.

As far as the future vision is concerned I wasn’t knocked out by the production design, but perhaps the lower key effect lets the story be told. Either the visual content is saying “this is the not too distant future” or more time and money could have been spent. I wasn’t too thrilled by the performances here, though I am a big fan of Forest “Ghostdog” Whitaker. I think the cast almost seem trapped somewhere inside the question:  “is this satire or is this drama?” Speaking of Robocop, a touch of the camp displayed in that movie might have provided some much needed comic relief and allowed the actors to broaden their performances. As a result, Jude Law’s narration is lifeless, for example, as compared to Fight Club or Zombieland.

Still, I will watch almost any ambitious science fiction movie, so please make more of them for me. I have a few suggestions of stories to option, if anyone cares. Like A. E. Van Vogt’s Slan, for instance. Or Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash.

This film is worth your matinee money if you like violent action or speculative fiction.

Kevin Bolshaw