I realized before watching Lone Survivor is that the title itself is a spoiler. Even without being familiar with the real events this was based on or reading Marcus Luttrell's book about his experience, all you have to do is look at the title to know how it's going to turn out. It kind of a downer when the title saps some of the suspense of a film. Imagine if The Sixth Sense had been alternatively titled He's a Ghost?
Lone Survivor is the true story of Operation Red Wings in Afghanistan. Marcus Luttrell (Mark Wahlberg) is part of a four-man Navy Seal team, the remainder played by Ben Foster, Taylor Kitsch and Emile Hirsch, on a mission to capture a Taliban leader. While staking out the small village where he's hiding, a trio of goat herders, including two boys, happens upon them. They have to make a difficult choice: let them go and hope they can get to safety before the Taliban finds them, or kill them and complete their mission. They decide to uphold the rules of engagement and take their chances. For the record, I voted for killing them, but I'm a murderous, cyborg psychopath.
Of course the Taliban catches up to them, and from there it becomes fight for survival. A punishing, white-knuckle fight for survival.
Lone Survivor is just brutal at times. This is not a glamorous film about war. The amount of bodily abuse these guys take is superhuman. It helps that the film begins with a montage of SEAL training. When you see how grueling it is, it's easier to understand how these soldiers can keep going while taking so much punishment. It's what they were trained for.
Their fight is unrelenting, and it's a little heartbreaking knowing in advance how it's going to turn out. This kind of leads into my only real issue with Lone Survivor. We don't get to know the individuals very well. Writer/director Peter Berg decided to focus more on the action and overall heroism than any type of character moments. There are a few small details here and there, but we know almost nothing about them otherwise. In fact, I struggled to recall anyone's name by the end. We care because they are our soldiers and we want to see them survive, but not because of any emotional investment we have with them. As the film is a tribute to these soldiers, I would have liked to know more about them personally.
Despite not getting to know the team, there is a clear sense of brotherhood and how much they care about each other. Team is made up of a very strong cast that makes it a little easier to connect with them. While Wahlberg is the star, I don't want to single anyone out as it kind of takes away from the sacrifice they collectively made. It didn't take too long before I stopped seeing them as Marky Mark, Warren Worthington, the kid from The Girl Next Door and Tim Riggins, and just saw them as soldiers. And of course no military-themed Peter Berg film would be complete without a Turtle (Jerry Ferrara) sighting.
The overall intensity of the action makes it easy to overlook these flaws. Once the firefight begins, you'll be on the edge of your seat until the conclusion. With the way the action was shot, there are many moments where you feel immersed in it. I'm kicking myself for not seeing this in RPX as the sound was fantastic. There are rattling explosions that made me jump in my seat a few times. Nothing beats the throaty, metallic sound of the sniper rifle either. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe it was an MK 12 (had to look it up). A better sound system in the theatre would have really made this sing.
Sure, you might come out of it a little, "Rah, rah, USA," but what's wrong with that? I'm sure that's a little bit of what Peter Berg was going for, but it's not over the top. I didn't watch Lone Survivor and feel like it was a recruitment film or shoving politics in your face. It's pretty neutral as far as that goes, and is more about the mission and the the sacrifice of the soldiers.
While Lone Survivor is a brutal war movie, it's also a powerful tribute to the courage and resilience of these soldiers. If this wasn't based on a true story, it would be easier to watch this as simply a very good action film, but knowing the sacrifice behind it adds a solemn feeling. Definitely worth a watch though and one of the more realistic films about war I've seen in a while.
Did you know what "savages" meant? Well, neither did I! Fortunately, the latest Oliver Stone movie, Savages, defines it for you, so you get some learnin' with your early images of decapitated bodies.
Savages follows the threesome of Ben, Chon, and O, which is short for Ophelia, and not Oprah as you'd expect. Also, before I get into it, "Chon"? Throughout the movie I kept wondering if they were just saying "John" weird. A few times I honestly thought they were saying "Tron". Who the hell names their kid "Chon" anyway? Please don't tell me this is going to become one of those trendy, middle-class names. It was very distracting every time I heard it.
Anyway, Ben (Aaron Johnson) is the Buddhist, hippie-type, yet has degrees in business and botany, that creates the drugs; Chon (Taylor Kitsch), a former Navy Seal, is basically just there to be the muscle; and O (Blake Lively), is both of their girlfriends. She also doubles as the corny narration throughout the film. After she establishes that she's sleeping with both of them, she makes a comment about how we probably think she's a slut. This was met with a collective, agreeing laugh from the audience.
Ben and Chon have been best buds since high school, but I have a hard time believing any friendship strong enough to share a woman. It's just too implausible to get behind in the first place. Taking a page from Breaking Bad, Ben's skill in botany has allowed them to create the best marijuana on the planet. This has made them rich and in great demand. They take a meeting with a Mexican drug cartel ran by Salma Hayek, and her right-hand man, played by Benicio Del Toro. They make a simple offer: teach us how to make marijuana and we'll make you even richer. It's clear that saying no to these guys would be bad. What do these geniuses do? They not only say no, but insult the Mexican drug cartel in the process. There's no surprise as to where this is headed now.
The frustrating thing about a movie like Savages is that it has all the right things going for it, but it becomes clear that the movie is going along a fairly predictable path, and the actions of the characters are just head scratching at times. Then, you have terrible pacing issues where it takes almost an hour before anything substantial happens. You spend almost half of this 130-minute movie following three characters that you don't care about or find anything to identify with. These guys have the life: they live in a huge house on the beach, have tons of money, have sex all the time and seem to have very little risk as they work with medical distribution places. I don't find that very interesting, and the story drags whenever it focuses on them. Their only conflict is the one they created themselves by refusing the cartel's offer. The 'bad guys' in Savages were more interesting and entertaining, and I found myself rooting for them more than the supposed protagonists.
Savages was based on a book of the same name by Don Winslow, who co-wrote the screenplay with Stone and Shane Salerno. I've heard good things about the book, but I feel like something got lost in the adaptation. It also doesn't help there's some really awful dialog throughout the film. The narration by O's character is so bad that it made me wince at times. The story felt convoluted, and it's one of the worst endings I've seen in a while. Talk about a cop out. I won't spoil it, but if you've seen Funny Games, then know that it's pretty similar.
It's not all bad though. Savages is very brutal and dark, two things I normally enjoy about drug related films. However, some of the violence felt thrown in for shock value, as if they didn't know what to do, so they would just linger on a violent scene. A guess a movie called Savages should have lots of savage violence in it to maintain title integrity. It's a good looking film as well, but again, it feels like there's more style here than substance.
The performances work for the most part. I really enjoyed Selma Hayek, Benicio Del Toro and John Travolta. Hayek was really over-the-top, but I thought it worked well for the character. Travolta is great as the sneaky DEA agent playing both sides. The standout is Benicio Del Toro though. He feels like a caged, rabid animal, and you never quite know what he's going to do next. Most of the highlights of the film involve either him, Hayek or Travolta. I also enjoyed Emile Hirsch as Ben and Chon's techie/money laundering guy. I like him in smaller roles like this.
Aaron Johnson, who you might remember from Kick-Ass, was the most interesting out of the threesome, but that's mainly because you actually got to see his character evolve as the movie went on. While I didn't have a problem with Taylor Kitsch or Blake Lively, I felt their characters were totally flat and really not given any depth to them.
Oh, and here's a huge pet peeve of mine: I can't stand it when there are sex scenes in a movie where everyone keeps their clothes on. It doesn't seem realistic to me at all. At one point they are in a bathtub having sex with clothes on. Who does that?
Savages is violent, dark and has some great performances. Unfortunately, those great performances come from the characters you aren't supposed to root for. It takes way too long to get started and is betrayed by a terrible ending. I just wasn't into it. It's interesting that the poster for Savages already looks like a Blu-Ray cover, because that's how I suggest most of you watch this. It's a rental.
You sank my sense of logic! Battleship is one of those movies that you go in knowing it's not going to be revolutionary, but you hope it will at least be a fun, summer popcorn flick. You'll hear people say things like, "Just shut your brain off and enjoy!" The problem is, I'm tired of shutting my brain off. If that's a perquisite to watching a movie, that's never a good sign.
I'm sure you're thinking I'm getting old and cranky, and that like other critics I have no soul, but I'm getting tired of lazy-ass movies that simply try to flash a bunch of a explosions and images on screen to distract you from the fact that there really isn't anything going on. It's all the typical things that Michael Bay does, but somehow it ends up being even worse. I've heard a lot of comparisons to Skyline and I'd say that's pretty accurate as far as both movies being about alien invasions don't make any sense.
As you may have already guessed, I didn't like Battleship. This review is going to be a little more of a rant and spoiler-filled, so fair warning...
Where to even start? The movie begins with showing you that NASA has found an exoplanet in the "Goldilocks Zone". On the hope that there may be life there, a signal is transmitted, boosted by a satellite in orbit. I'm already kind of scratching my head at this because lots of exoplanets have been found in the "Goldilocks Zone." This isn't anything new, so why are we transmitting to this planet? Are we doing this for all planets we find? Is this why NASA needs more money?
Let's get the first flaw major flaw of this movie out of the way: it's way too long! It's well over two hours, yet you can walk in 30 minutes late and you wont miss anything related to the action. You're introduced to our hero, a drunk Alex Hopper (Taylor Kitsch), who breaks into a convenience store to steal a chicken burrito for Sam (Brooklyn Decker). This scene would have been funny if it wasn't a blatant ripoff of an actual burglary. Here's the clip of the actual event:
They reenact this in the movie as if it was something original. This is the kind of crap I expect to see in something from the makers of Epic Movie. Anyway, this scene is used to setup that Alex is a underachieving loser that's a disappointment to his older brother (Alexander Skarsgård), who's in the Navy. He forces Alex to enlist in order to get his act straight.
We fast forward a few years, and I can only assume it's been a few years because it's never said how much time has passed and nobody looks any older, but Alex is now somehow a lieutenant. I say 'somehow' because it's clear that he's still a screwup and he's about to get kicked out of the Navy. His last mission will be for the RIMPAC naval exercises and then he's out.
Oh, but before we get to that, we're going to watch a soccer match. Yes, you came to watch Battleship because you wanted to see a poorly shot soccer match between the US and Japanese Navy. There's no point to this sequence other than to show you that Alex doesn't get along with one of the guys from the Japanese Navy. Do you think they'll be forced to work together and respect each other by the end of the movie? Oh, the suspense!
Anyway, this is seriously the first 30-40 mintues of the film and it didn't need to be there! You can skip that first part and there's 30-40 minutes of your life you just got back. If you wanted to establish Alex's character, it would have been much easier, and taken less time, to simply start with him already in the military and show that he's the underachieving officer, who's about to be kicked out of the military for fighting or something like that. It's a much harder sell to show him as an absolute screw up even before enlisting, and then in just a short time he's advanced without seeing any character growth or maturity. They tell you several times that Alex is smart and talented, but you never see him do anything that demonstrates that.
Finally, the aliens show up as the Navy is going through their RIMPAC exercises. One of their ships is damaged entering Earth's atmosphere and causes all kinds of destruction as it crashes. These aliens can travel light-years, but I guess they don't have the ability to detect a satellite that's in its direct flight path. Anyway, they Navy investigates the ships that have safely landed in the ocean. Shortly after, the aliens attack.
The other huge problem is aliens themselves. They aren't developed at all. What do they want? It's clear they are invading, but why? They don't have a single line of dialog, so there's never a mention about needing resources or tech, biology or just wanting our planet. Their primary goal seems to be that they need to reestablish communication back home, because it's assumed that their communications ship is the one that crashed earlier. That sets up a silly subplot involving Sam and a military veteran trying to stop them. It's silly, not just because of the characters involved, but because it's ultimately pointless. We communicated with the aliens first. That's how they knew to find us. If they were capable of sending five ships to Earth, what's to stop them from sending five more, or 20? If they never hear back from their ships, you don't think at some point they aren't sending more to investigate?
One of the worst things about the aliens is that they show that they have this threat assessment display that determines whether or not they will attack or even see you. So basically, in Battleship, you can shoot an alien, but then stand still and put your gun down and there's a good chance it will ignore you. This happened several times in the film. Nevermind that they are invading the Earth for whatever reason and they're in the middle of a battle against people who have clearly fired upon them. Also, the aliens showed at other times that they had no issues with causing random destruction that affected civilian targets that posed no threat. Battleship doesn't worry about things like logic or making sense.
Their ship design was actually kind of cool though, but again, there didn't seem to be any consistency to their technology. You see times where their ships will fly and other times where they hop around in the water as if they can't sustain flight. The actual alien design was kind of silly. When the masks finally come off, they have frigging goatees. Yep, spiky goatees. Even aliens have hipsters.
Battleship has some of the worst dialog I've seen in a while. Co-written by Erich and Jon Hoeber, this movie badly needed some punch-up. Peter Berg is a capable director, but it doesn't seem like he had a lot of control over this. I have a hard time believing he thought some of the stuff that happens in the movie made any sense. How did anyone involved in this think it made any sense. There are so many things in the movie that could have been removed. Like, there's a really bad CG shot of a great white shark swimming that looked awful, but it had nothing to do with the story. Why put that in the movie? There's a point in the movie where they actually play a version of Battleship staring at display screens, as the Navy and aliens try to find each other. Really?
There are two moments in the film where someone (presumably) dies and there is absolutely no reaction from the witnessing character, even though it's someone they care about. If you don't care about your characters to show any emotion about them, I don't care about them either. Maybe this is due to hiring 'actors' incapable of expressing these types of emotions. I don't want hate on Taylor Kitsch, but this is already the second shitty sci-fi/fantasy movie he's been in this year. I get the feeling Hollywood is trying to force this guy on us. Jeremy Renner was originally attached to this role, and he wisely passed on it to be in something else. Rihanna doesn't have much to do in the movie other than to run in needless slow motion. She wasn't terrible, but they did a good job of hiding her acting. They just throw Brooklyn Decker in some tank tops and short-shorts, and then her acting consists of either smiling or making a face like she just smelled a fart.
What emotion am I trying to convey right now? Acting!
Similar to the recent Act of Valor, the cast features a lot of military veterans. Since these guys are not actors, I'm going to talk negatively about that. If you cast non-actors in speaking roles, you can't expect much. Even though he's heavily featured in the trailers, Liam Neeson maybe has a total of five minutes in the movie. He gets a pass. Same with Alexander Skarsgård, who's also barely in it. Lastly, Turtle (Jerry Ferrara) shows up in a weird cameo.
In the end, Battleship is more like Battleshit. This is a perfect example of a studio trying to make something out of nothing. Actually, it was about something: product placement. After watching Battleship, I had the urge to have a Coke Zero, microwave a chicken burrito, buy an AC/DC album and maybe join the Navy. I'd love to say this is just a fun, but dumb, popcorn flick, but I couldn't even enjoy it on that level. The movie has no personality, no excitement, and nothing in it makes sense. It's barely worthy of a rental.
Movies like this are tough for me to write about. I have no familiarity at all with Edgar Rice Burrough's book series. In general, you shouldn't have to though because the movie should do a good job of telling you the story. However, after watching John Carter I think it might have helped to have a little more familiarity with the material. Although, I've heard from a few fans that the books have many huge differences from this movie, so maybe it wouldn't have helped. In fact, based on what they've told me, the book sounds a hell of a lot more interesting than this movie ended up being. While this book series is 100 years old, it's clear how this has influenced other works and the books deserve credit for that. The problem is that we have seen it all before in other movies and it's been done better.
Be warned that this review is likely to be a little spoilerific, as I can't really explain my problems with the movie without going into a few details about the movie, so if you still plan on seeing this, you may want to skip to the end.
John Carter starts with Edgar Rice Burroughs (as an actual character in the movie) arriving at the funeral for his uncle, John Carter (Taylor Kitsch). He's presented with one of Carter's journals. As he reads the journal, you flash back to John Carter from a few years ago. Carter, a recent widower, is a gold prospector just trying to find a big score and cash in at this point. He manages to find a cave with gold and a mysterious medallion, but it ends up being some weird alien teleportation device. Carter then finds himself on Mars (called Barsoom by the natives) where he is met by the Tharks, a race of green, tall, four-armed Martians. Carter finds that he is able to jump very high and is super strong, essentially making him the ultimate warrior on a planet seemingly filled all kinds of war and conflict.
Then, there are two warring factions of 'Red Martians' (who are really just white people with really bad fake tans and lots of red Henna tattoos). I was never quite clear of why these two groups were fighting. The Tharks were apparently staying out of it, content to let the other groups fight it out and they'll take over after.
You finally have the Therns, a race of albinos (were the also Martians?) that can teleport and shapeshift and have superior technology, but are working behind the scenes, pulling everyone's strings.
So you've got all of these factions and species, tons of characters and sub plots. You'd think it would all be interesting. Instead, I found it all kind of lifeless and convoluted. Many of the plot points don't hold up at all under even just a little bit of thought. Here are some examples:
There's a thread involving the forced marriage of Dejah (Lynn Collins) and 'Kirk Cuddy' from Steel Dragon (Dominic West), but it's clear that his plan is to kill her and her people. What is there to gain by going through with the wedding if you plan on killing all of them? You don't need to marry her to do that. On the other side, why do Dejah's people agree to the marriage when they'd gain more by just killing him? Plus, Dejah is her people's best scientist, yet also a princess and warrior. Can you throw a few more character traits in there?
Then, there's stuff like John Carter being a widower at the beginning of the movie. He's clearly still mourning his family, but falls for Dejah almost instantly and it never felt like he had any reason to other than she's super hot. When I hear that Carter being a widower wasn't even in the books, it seems like that was another unnecessary character trait thrown in. The romance would have been easier to believe if he wasn't in mourning.
Another thing that bugged me was the race of albino aliens (which in the books I guess weren't introduced until much later in the series.). They are everywhere at once and can shapeshift, yet are just trying to manipulate everyone. For what purpose? Why not just shapeshift and do it yourself? You also appear to have superior technology. Why give it to others? Use it yourself!
Plus, when 'Sinestro' (Mark Strong, who's wasted here) eventually figures out Carter's powers come from his physiology and being from a higher gravity environment, why is he even surprised by this? Weren't your people the reason for how the teleportation device got on Earth in the first place? You see them on Earth both at the beginning and the end of the movie. So, you had been to Earth, but somehow never encountered a human or bothered to notice the higher gravity there? Plus, once you figured this out and you're trying to manipulate a war's outcome, why not kidnap the stronger humans and force them to fight in your war?
It just felt like they tried to cram three movies worth of plots and characters all into one movie As a result, none of it fits very well together and the plot threads and characters aren't developed enough to be invested in any of them. The movie is already over two hours long, so this really seems like something that should have been split into more than one movie. I also thought that the movie was poorly edited and that caused some of the issues with having a harder time following what was going on.
I have to wonder what director and co-writer Andrew Stanton wanted to do here. I'm more surprised than anything. Granted this is is first live-action feature, but he's been involved in so many great Pixar movies (WALL-E, the Toy Story series, Monsters, Inc.) that I really thought he'd do a better job here. When I see there were two more writers (Mark Andrews, Michael Chabon), I have to wonder if this is another example of two many cooks in the ktichen and I think it shows with having too many undeveloped plot elements here.
My friend said this reminded him of his disappointment with Tron: Legacy. While I agree with that, I'm going to stick a little closer to home and say this reminds me a little more of The Phantom Menace. It looks nice, but you just never feel invested in what's going on or any real threat or urgency.
As far as the look of the movie, I do think they did some interesting world building and there's some good looking action. When there is action, I thought it was entertaining, but at the same time, I really wasn't invested all that much in the consequences. I didn't care who was going to win and many times, I didn't even know who was killing who.
Speaking of the design, I'm kind of stealing this next criticism from something I heard on Adam Carolla's podcast recently, but this is something that bugs me about movies like this. You see giant, technologically advanced machinery, beautiful airships that do all kinds graceful flying maneuvers, some races using advanced weapons and technology, but everyone was still dressed like a gladiator or Roman. There's still swordplay and some using musket-like rifles. I'm just not into the whole 'retro-futurism' thing. It's bugged me in most all movies I've seen that use this style.
I wouldn't call this sci-fi either, but more sci-fantasy. You pretty much have to throw the science out right away. First, is the fact that a human can breathe on Mars. Then, if you understand that Mars is farther away from the Sun, then, you'll also understand that it's colder there, but you see flowing water and everyone is scantily clad. You multiple sentient races that all developed on the same planet with drastically different biologies and are at different stages of cultural development, yet all seem to speak the same language. Speaking of, from what I hear in the books, John Carter learns the language of Mars over months, but in the movie, to simplify things he learns the language after drinking some magic water. Um...okay. I can suspend disbelief for certain things, but when it happens through pretty much the entire movie, it get's hard (phrasing!)
Despite the good effects and visuals, I didn't think the 3D did anything for the movie. I saw it on IMAX as well. Also, maybe it was the IMAX screen I saw it on, or it was just me, but I thought the landscape seemed to have a very unnatural yellow tint it. Isn't Mars known for being the red planet? It felt like everything should have had a redder, or rustier look to it. It appears the 3D was done in post again, so I'd avoid 3D entirely. When are movie studios going to get through their thick skulls that converted 3D sucks! Didn't Disney learn from Tron: Legacy's lackluster 3D?
Taylor Kitsch wasn't bad as John Carter, but I didn't find him very interesting. He was just missing that intangible thing that you needed for the lead. I think maybe it's that he felt too young for the role perhaps. I actually thought the performances, both live and voice, were fine for the most part, but again, if I don't really care about the characters, it's hard to care all that much about the performances. It's not the actors fault though. It's actually a very strong cast, but they aren't given much to do.
I hear the budget for this was $250 million? Man, that is a huge investment for a movie that isn't very good. I know it sounds like I hated John Carter, but I actually didn't. It's just that despite the great visuals, there's nothing that wowed me here. I didn't really care about the characters and there are too many plot threads going on for me to be invested in anything. I've already heard that the director said that very little was edited out of the movie, so it appears we don't have an extended cut that might get into more detail to look forward to. I'm sure I'll end up watching this again when it comes out on DVD. It's a rental.
I realized before watching Lone Survivor is that the title itself is a spoiler. Even without being familiar with the real events this was based on or reading Marcus Luttrell's book about his experience, all you have to do is look at the title to know how it's going to turn out. It kind of a downer when the title saps some of the suspense of a film. Imagine if The Sixth Sense had been alternatively titled He's a Ghost?
