Riddick (2013)

I used to attempt a Vin Diesel impression, but it sounded like a mix of Sylvester Stallone with a little bit of Elmer Fudd.  "You'wr nawt afwaid of duh dahk, are you?  Huh huh huh.  Huh huh huh."

Even though it's been almost ten years since The Chronicles of Riddick, Vin Diesel fought pretty hard to make another.  First, he worked out a deal with Universal to get the rights to Riddick for himself.  He owns the character now.  Then, he was so determined to get a film made that he leveraged his house in order to get it done.  I have to credit Diesel for taking the risk.  I hope it works out for him.

The good news is that Riddick is a significant improvement over Chronicles, and it brings back the style and formula for what made Pitch Black a popular film.  It's broken up into three distinct acts that feel like several mini-stories.  The first act is pretty kick ass and was my favorite part of the film.  It takes the time to catch us up with what happened to Riddick after the events of Chronicles.  There's even a cameo from Karl Urban.  After an attempt to find his home planet, he's betrayed by the Necromongers and left for dead on a hostile planet.  Horribly injured, Riddick nurses himself back to health while fighting off the planet's various creatures.  Outside of some narration from Riddick, there's a minimum of dialog.  It's like a sci-fi Rambo survival story.  Also, a lot of work went into the look of the planet and creatures.  If the whole movie had been like this, I think I would have been happy.

Eventually, Riddick knows he's going to have to get off planet.  He finds an old outpost and activates a beacon.  Two groups of bounty hunters arrive to bring him in.  The first group, led by a man named Santana (Jordi Mollà), is there to collect the bounty.  Satana is kind of a douche, so you know things probably wont work out well for him.  The second group, led by Boss Johns (Matt Nable), is after Riddick for a different reason, and has a tie to Riddick's past and the events of Pitch Black.  Riddick isn't going to make it easy for them, staying in hiding and picking off the mercs, while giving them the option of leaving him a ship or he'll kill them all.  The dialog during this part varies from cheesy, eye-rollingly-awful, to funny, to rapey when directed towards Dahl, played by Katee Sackhoff, who's basically doing Starbuck again, which is fine by me.

Finally, the third act is basically Pitch Black 2 where monsters start attacking, and Riddick seems to be the most effective guy at killing them.  He's been through all this before.

Another thing Vin Diesel did was fight for an R rating and that's another area where the film worked.  Sure there's gratuitous nudity, thank you again Katie Sackhoff, but the rating allowed them to not pull any punches.  There are some great and inventive kills as Riddick picks off some of the bounty hunters that rival any horror film.  I mentioned the dialog earlier, but it's pretty much exactly what you'd expect from a room full of egos and testosterone, meaning lots of f-bombs.  I also liked that they didn't go out of their way to make Riddick a good guy.  He's a killer and the very definition of an anti-hero.  I think that got lost in the last film and a weaker rating wouldn't have helped convey that here.

The effects were very good in parts, and very bad in others.  They seemed a few years behind, but considering Riddick had a modest budget for a sci-fi movie, they did a decent job.  Overall, I have to credit writer/director David Twohy for getting the most out of the budget and giving us some entertaining action.  I enjoyed the pace of the film and the overall style.  However, I have to point out that once again one of the climatic scenes featured the same poorly edited fighting that's been plaguing recent films.  This one was even a little more disappointing considering it featured Diesel and Dave Bautista, who are two guys you want to see duke it out and you know can handle the physicality.  It's a missed opportunity to give us something memorable, and instead it's just another run-of-the-mill fight scene.

Riddick is a return to the style and roots of what made people like the character in the first place.  If you were a fan of Pitch Black, but disappointed by Chronicles, then you should be pleased with Riddick.  The dialog and special effects can be a little rough in parts, but overall it's an entertaining film and a late-Summer bright spot in what's been a somewhat disappointing movie season.  I definitely recommend it as a matinee.

3 out of 5 (Death Stars)

Star Trek Into Darkness (2013)

What are Star Wars and Star Trek fans gonna argue about now that the franchises share the same director?  Can you just imagine how it would go?

"The last Star Trek movie had superior direction than Episode VII.  Ugh, and those lense flares on the lightsabers!  Are you kidding me?"

"Um...weren't they directed by the same guy?"

"Oh yeah..."

J.J. Abrams, uniting geeks since 2015.

It's really weirding me out that there's no colon in the title of Star Trek Into Darkness.  Shouldn't there be a colon between Star Trek and Into Darkness?  Otherwise, isn't the title saying that they are taking a trek, based in the stars, into darkness.  And what kind or darkness?  Space is dark, or do they mean darkness as in emotional tone?  I don't know why I'm hung up on that.

If you've been following my blog at all, or just look at my online name, it won't be a surprise to you that I'm not a huge Trekkie.  I didn't get into Trek until The Next Generation, which I loved.  I've also watched a fair amount of the more recent shows like Voyager, Deep Space Nine, and Enterprise, but I never really got into the Original Series.  Even the films featuring the original crew I've only seen once or twice each.  I understood the characters and the relationships, but I always felt like the Original Series and crew was a little before my time.

I was one of the guys that embraced the reboot and changes made in 2009's Star Trek.  I thought it was a good way to introduce Star Trek to the mainstream and a new generation, while still showing some respect to the Original Series.  In some ways I enjoyed Into Darkness even more than the previous film.  I didn't have to spend any time accepting a new cast or wrapping my head around the fact that it's set in an alternate timeline.  I was able to just sit back and enjoy the movie for what it is, and for most of the film that worked for me.  However, many things happen in the second half that really detracted from the film, and not just from a Star Trek perspective, but from a general storytelling one.

I can't really get into the plot too much without spoilers, but I will say that if you've been following the rumors about what Into Darkness was going to be about, I can say that much of what I heard was true, to varying degrees.

Everyone is back for another adventure.  This time the crew is responsible for tracking down a terrorist that has committed several attacks against the Federation.  This terrorist is a rogue Starfleet member named John Harrison (Benedict Cumberbatch).  He's retreated to Kronos, the Klingon homeworld.  Admiral Marcus (Peter Weller) tasks Kirk (Chris Pine) and the Enterprise to hunt him down, even though this may risk full on war with the Klingons.  This manhunt, as well as travelling so close to Klingon territory isn't something that sits well with several members of the crew.

Without revealing anything, they do a twist on a familiar Trek story, but I felt that many of these elements were totally forced.  Even if you weren't aware of any internet rumors or spoilers, the film has few surprises.  This will be especially true if you're familiar with the previous Star Trek film Into Darkness mostly references.

Another thing that really bugged me about the story is that they setup a climax that's supposed to have all this emotional significance, but a previous scene in the film has already let you know that what you're watching is not going to have any real consequence.  Knowing this takes all the impact out of it, and you could feel that the audience wasn't really affected by this either.  They should have been moved by it.  Another twist in the film is spoiled simply by having Peter Weller playing the role.  This isn't Weller's fault, but he's become one of those actors that when you see him in a role, you kind of have him pegged.  I didn't find these things plot holes (there are a few though), as much as just telegraphed storytelling.  It doesn't completely ruin the movie for me, but the more I think about certain plot elements, the more they bug me.

Plus, with shoehorning these familiar Trek elements into it, it takes away from this being original.  Why go through the trouble of rebooting Star Trek and going in a different direction if you're just going to spend a good portion of your second movie doing fan-service to previous stories?  The sad part is that until we get about halfway through the film, it still felt like it was going for something original.

Even though the story was a bit of a disappointment, I wasn't disappointed at all with the look of the film or the action.  J.J. Abrams certainly knows how to make an action packed film that's filled with great effects and is never boring to look at.  There are some great sequences throughout the film and it doesn't let up for a minute.  People have joked for a while that when he made Star Trek he really just made a Star Wars film, and now it's clear that he really is ideally suited for Episode VII.  I can't wait to see what he does with it now.

Seriously, this is only a slight exaggeration this time around.

The 3D is actually good for a change.  I saw this in RPX and this is an example of where I thought it enhanced my enjoyment of the film.  I just heard that 30 minutes of this was shot in IMAX, so even though I didn't see it in IMAX, I'd recommend seeing it in that format if it's available to you.  Oh yeah, this movie's got lense flares galore.

Another strength is that it does have some very funny dialog.  The cast still has great chemistry, and that's holding these films together.  I was a little surprised by how much people say "shit" in the future though.  You'd think we would have phased that out by then.

While in the last film, I thought Uhura (Zoe Saldana), Sulu (John Cho), Chekov (Anton Yelchin), and especially Bones (Karl Urban) had their moments, I felt like this time the real standouts were Scotty (Simon Pegg) and Spock (Zachary Quinto).  Simon Pegg in particular is a total scene stealer.  I also enjoyed Benedict Cumberbatch's performance even though there were many things about his character that bugged me.  I wasn't quite sold on Chris Pine this time around though.  While I really liked him in the first film, I had a harder time buying into some of the scenes where he was trying to be intense and angry.  I think some of this comes from how the characters were written though.  The motivations of both Kirk and Harrison weren't consistent for me.

As far as summer blockbusters go, there's a lot to like about Star Trek Into Darkness.  If you're a fan of the last Star Trek or sci-fi action in general, then it delivers on exactly what you're expecting.  However, if you're a Trekkie, your mileage may vary, especially in the third act where even a non-Trekkie like myself had issues with some of the forced plot elements.  Still though, it has great effects, tons of fast-paced action and enough funny moments to please those looking for a good time at the movies.

3.5 (out of 5) Death Stars

Dredd 3D (2012) - Movie Review

Karl Urban is the law!

I guess today was a 'peace officer' themed day seeing Dredd and End of Watch back-to-back.  While vastly different movies, it's interesting that I managed to watch two movies where I rooted for the cops.

If you haven't seen Sylvester Stallone movie from 1995, don't bother.  That movie was such a disaster that I'm amazed anyone even bothered with making another.  Like many of you, I've grown tired of the constant reboots and remakes of older films, but one of the few exceptions where I think it can work is when the original film was flawed, and a reboot has a chance to do things right or taking a franchise in a different direction.  Dredd 3D is an example of a remake finally working.

Dredd transports us to a future where the world is largely a radioactive wasteland.  The remaining inhabitants of North America live in a mega-city simply called Mega-City One.  Many reside in huge skyscrapers that are essentially self-contained cites, having their own schools and commerce.  The peace is kept by the Hall of Justice and the Judges, who have the authority to act as judge, jury and executioner.

There's a new drug hitting the streets called 'Slo-Mo', which has the effect of the user perceiving time at 1% of it's normal rate.  This allows for some of the best use of extreme slow motion that I've seen in a while.  It's interesting that just last week I watched Resident Evil: Retribution where I was annoyed with it's overuse of slow motion, but Dredd actually uses it creatively.  Dredd also manages to be a movie that effectively used 3D to enhance this effect.  The combo of the 3D and super slow motion provides us with some of the most vivid violence I've ever seen in a movie.  It was like watching an art film about brutal murder.

Judge Dredd (Karl Urban) is tasked with evaluating rookie Judge Anderson (Olivia Thrilby), who's failed her previous tests, but is a powerful psychic.  They respond to a crime scene in a skycraper known as Peach Trees, but things quickly escalate when they arrest a henchman, played by none other than "Avon Barksdale" (Wood Harris), of the drug lord that controls the building.  The drug lord, known as Ma-Ma (Lena Headey),  knows that he won't hold up under interrogation, so she locks the building down in the hope of killing the Judges.  The Judges have no choice but to fight their way to the top floor.

I know what you're thinking, this is essentially the same plot as The Raid: Redemption, and yes, they are very similar.  However, it worth noting that Dredd was in production and filming long before The Raid: Redemption, so I believe this is an unfair criticism of the movie.

Once the building is locked down, the action ramps up, and Dredd earns every bit of its R-rating with its insanely bloody violence and action.  This is where the slow motion and 3D really shine. You literally get to see bullets tearing though bodies.  Despite the brutality, it's also darkly funny in parts.  Between the humor and the violence, I was often reminded of Robocop.

Judge Dredd may be the law, but Karl Urban is the man.  Urban was a big fan of the character, so he actively campaigned to make sure that he never removes his helmet, something Dredd never did in the comics.  In a time when we see so many characters needlessly remove their masks or helmets, it's refreshing to see a movie where that doesn't happen, and an actor that cares more about the character than he does about getting his face on the screen.  Even with only seeing his chin, I though Urban was captivating and played Dredd effectively as an uncompromising force of nature for justice.

I really like Olivia Thirlby, but I initially thought she was an unusual choice to play a Judge.  I'm used to seeing her in smaller, independent films.  However, I thought she did a good job with a role and played off Urban well.  Her character's psychic ability was used in an interesting way and allowed her to be a contrast to Dredd.  Dredd sees things as black and white, where Anderson sees the shades of grey.

Lena Headey gave a nice, understated performance as Ma-Ma, and I appreciated she wasn't over-the-top.  He cold demeanor actually made her seem all that much more deadly and menacing.  Wood Harris was also fun to see as Ma-Ma's henchman, Kay.  I haven't seen him in much since The Wire, so I was just happy to see him again.

Director Pete Travis (Vantage Point) and writer Alex Garland (Sunshine, 28 Days Later...) did a great job of staying true to the source material.  I'm also impressed with what they were able to do with a fairly modest budget.  The movie looks great and you get immersed in this world. The movie never takes itself too seriously, and you shouldn't either.

While not breaking any new ground with the plot, Dredd 3D is an insane action thrill ride that should please both action fans and Judge Dredd fans.  It makes up for the disappointment of the original film, and it's finally an example of a remake done right.  I watched this film with a goofy grin on my face from beginning to end and I enjoyed the hell out of it.  It's also one of the few films I actually recommend seeing in 3D in the theater.

4 (out of 5) Death Stars