Back Seat Producers

Detective Max Payne lost his wife and child to a brutal killing. And though now, Payne is bound to a desk, he still continues to try and solve the murder himself and soon he finds the clues that leads him to the pharmaceutical company that his wife had worked for, currently trafficking in a super-soldier drug called Valkyr, that has hallucinatory effects on most who take it…

Max Payne is the latest video-game to movie conversion and it comes to us from the hands of director John Moore, who was wonderful with the film Behind Enemy Lines but less so with some more recent efforts. The game itself was really quite fun, bringing with it the mechanic of “bullet-time” allowing you to slow time for some really cool effects a la John Woo movies or more recently, The Matrix.

The movie is certainly an earnest effort and above anything else, absolutely has a fantastic look to it, but what it lacks is the fun factor which comes way too little and too late into the film.

The first hour has it’s moments, but for the most part is just so dry that I just didn’t really care about anything that was happening in it. Max himself, at least in this movie, is a one-note character, just driven to the point of being the atypical “cop on the edge” character. Now that would’ve been fine had there been a little more wit about everything else going on, and that doesn’t necessarily mean having to have humor about it, but just something else to it that would’ve at least made it much more fun to get into. Unfortunately, it lacks this, and as such, it’s pretty boring until about it’s last half hour. And even though things pick up then, they don’t pick up enough, at least by what’s promised in the trailer.

Pretty much, the trailer has all of the best parts of the film in it.

Mark Wahlberg plays Max, and he’s certainly got the look and the intensity, but little else, but then as I said, if this had a little more wit about it, he wouldn’t have needed anything else. He’s backed up with actors like Mila Kunis, Amaury Nolasco, Donal Logue, Chris O’Donnell, Chris “Ludacris” Bridges, Kate Burton and Beau Bridges, and all do a decent enough job, but again all are hampered by a pretty pedestrian first two acts.

I’d recently watched the movie Shoot ‘Em Up again and had a pretty good time with it and actually think that what Max Payne needs is just a little of what Shoot ‘Em Up has in abundance, and that’s more of a wilder over-the-top and somewhat self-aware fun factor, primarily during it;s first hour… had it done that, this could’ve been a whole lot of fun, but as it is, it looks great but doesn’t have anything really cool or fun in it that you haven’t already seen played out over it’s trailer. Not one of the worst that I’ve seen for the year, but certainly a big disappointment.

It’s 1882, and the small town of Appaloosa in the New Mexico territory has fallen under prey by a ruthless rancher by the name of Randall Bragg. After Bragg cold-bloodedly kills the sheriff and two deputies while they try to apprehend two of his men for crimes committed against the townspeople, the town is in a state of desperation. They choose to hire two roving peacekeepers, Virgil Cole and Everett Hitch to come in and clean up their town, with one catch: they literally have to turn control of the town over to them. Soon though, a young widow, Allison French, moves into town and further complicates their situation.

Appaloosa is the new movie from star and director Ed Harris based on the novel by Robert Parker (best known for the Spencer series) and it’s just a brilliant movie, another western that joins the likes of 3:10 To Yuma (though I have a bit of an issue with the ending of that film, I still recognize it’s extreme high quality getting there), Open Range and less recently, Unforgiven showing that there’s still life in the classic Western genre in film, if it’s handled just right.

Harris’ film is authentic as can be, shot against some really beautiful landscapes, and looking at the end credits, he’s even hired enough extras to actually be the populace of this town at the time. Everything just feels really right. But where this really excels is in the relationship between Cole and Hitch, a very deep-rooted friendship with both men as a compliment to each other making them a great team for the job they have to do.

Ed Harris plays Cole and Viggo Mortenson plays Hitch, and obviously after working together in a movie like A History of Violence, these guys obviously “get” each other and have chemistry that’s just totally natural. They’re backed up by Jeremy Irons as Bragg and a rougher than normal looking Renee Zellwegger as Allison, who both do really fine work here. Further welcome in the cast is Lance Herikson as a rival gunman to Cole and Hitch, brought in later in the film, Henrikson is just a natural for something like this.

Obviously, I had a great time with this film. It is leisurely paced, but nothing seems out of place or wrong to how everything plays out in the end. It’s easily followed and yet has it’s own complexities as well as some subtle humor. And if you do decide to see this, stay through the end credits. No there’s no extra scene at the end, but through the credits, there’s a little song sung by Ed Harris himself that’s a really nice and knowing end punctuation to the life ahead for his character, Virgil Cole. Appaloosa is just brilliant and of course, highly recommended…

In New York City, a fluff news TV reporter and her cameraman are assigned the task of riding along with a group of firefighters for an evening. As things are looking to be a routine evening, an alarm goes off and the fire crew and the TV people head in, along with a couple of NYC police officers. They go to an apartment building, where a woman has been screaming like she’s being tortured to death. Once there, they discover that something horrifying has happened to the woman, something disgusting that sends her into a flying rage and makes her attack her would-be rescuers, and just as immediately, the building is closed off to everyone, with various law enforcement, military and the CDC on the case, and a night of brutal horror is set to begin…

That’s the premise of Quarantine which itself is a remake of a Spanish horror film called [REC], which unfortunately I’ve not seen, and it also looks to be the big break for a little known director by the name of John Erick Dowdle. And unfortunately, this looks to be a film that I can’t quite give the type of review for that I’d really like to hand out primarily because we saw it with the worst audience that I’ve seen a movie with since Hard Candy from a few years ago. The thing is, it actually seems like the kind of film that is my kind of horror film, and objectively, I can tell you that it is well made and lis quite effective with just one major complaint, and that complaint isn’t due to the film itself but rather it’s marketing.

But first, yeah, our audience was just horrendous for this- primarily mostly composed of late teenagers and know-it-all twentysomethings that were there more to entertain themselves than to see a movie and really just making this the worst movie-going experience that I’ve had in years, and it’s a shame because I do think this can be quite effective under the right circumstances, but so far those circumstances are calling for me to recommend this as something that you wait for on DVD rather than go out to the theatre to see. As I’ve said about audiences like this before, I can only hope there’s a special place in hell reserved just for them for being assholes. It really makes me yearn for the days when ushers would walk the theatre with flashlights, ready to boot out anyone making a disturbance.

Now with that out of the way, the film itself is made the same way as movies like The Blair Witch Project and Cloverfield all done from a handheld video camera operated by one of the cast. So if you’ve already got an aversion to these type of films, then straight up, this won’t be for you. I think this is pretty well told though, considering the circumstances I saw it under, with the camera work being a little more straightforward as the film starts and then getting extremely chaotic as things progress.

The cast is filled with lots of “those guys” who you see in other films as mostly support. It’s headed up by Jennifer Carpenter who was extremely effective in The Exorcism of Emily Rose playing this overly bubbly and annoying, but again I hope I’m being objective enough to say that my own perception could certainly be colored by the conditions I saw this under, and that whole perception might change later on. Other cast members include Steve Harris as her cameraman, Jay Hernandez and Johnathan Schaech as the firefighters she’s assigned to cover, and veteran character guys like Rade Serbedzija and Greg Germann as a couple of the residents of the apartment house. And really everyone does a fine job for this type of movie.

My biggest complaint though, other than that of the a-hole audience we saw it with, is the fact that the marketing of the film blows the final shot of the piece. That shot, and I won’t say what it is, is a key part of the trailer for the film and if you’ve seen it, then once it gets to that point, you’re just waiting for it to happen as opposed to letting it shock you the way it should. And it’s a real shame, because the climax is pretty good here, leading you to an area that I certainly didn’t consider as being the root cause of what has transpired through the film.

So here’s the deal- I certainly do recommend this, but really you just might want to wait until some time has passed and it comes out on DVD, doing that will most certainly let you see it under better conditions. Just wait for this to come home, and turn off all the lights as you watch it and hopefully the trailer won’t be too fresh in mind as everything plays out. And then… then, if you like this type of horror film as I do, then you’ll probably have a great time with this, but for now, avoid this like the plague in the theatre…

In what is an undisclosed city in maybe a near future time period, traffic is stopped as one young man is in his car and all of a sudden finds that he cannot see. This incident begins a chain reaction of events leading to all who come into contact with the young man also getting the affliction. When the eye doctor who has been working with him comes under with the disease, that’s when a movement is begun to quarantine those afflicted. The doctor’s wife, who herself isn’t blind, feigns being blind to be with her husband. Both are brought to a center where they and the few others that are with them are left to fend for themselves within their ward. And from there, events multiply, literally sending the world into chaos.

And that’s the premise of Blindness the new movie from director Fernando Meirelles, who previously gave us the movies, The Constant Gardener (haven’t seen it) and City of God (I have seen this one and it’s one hell of a movie). I was sorta hoping that this movie would be what M. Night Shymalan’s The Happening wasn’t, but instead it devolves to what seems more like contrived film school third world allegory that asks you to swallow a lot in order to follow it.

Where this falls apart is in the idea of the quarantine, because basically these people are thrown into this building with literally no one to watch out for them, other than the military standing guard making certain that no one gets out. It just out and out ignores the idea that these people would be in reality under a microscope to figure out what was causing this, especially as the blindness continues to escalate. Later in the film, another character is brought into the ward who begins to explain what is happening in the outside world, and how the process of investigating the source has broken down, but unfortunately, this process feels like something tacked on later (and according to reports of some re-shoots after an exhibition in Cannes, it very well could be) as an afterthought, but not the point that the director is trying to make.

And that point is basically all it takes is one event to send people who have comfortable lives into a life of utter squalor. Now really, I don’t have a problem with this being the point of the film, it’s just that getting there is incredibly contrived. And through it all, one woman, the doctor’s wife, still has the ability to see, which she’s hiding from everyone, except her husband, and due to the script, she does things that a sighted person just wouldn’t do in this situation.

Meirelles has a good cast at work here, including Julianne Moore, Mark Ruffalo, Danny Glover, Gael Garcia Bernal and Alice Braga and they certainly do what’s asked of them, but as I said above, what’s asked is horribly contrived.

This isn’t a movie for the faint-hearted as there is a lot of unpleasantness here- specifically around scenes within the ward- so consider that a warning if you’re planning to see it. The thing is, I’d almost expect that most might be more tempted to walk out halfway through it, I know I certainly was, and not due to it’s unpleasantness, but more to it’s contrived and forced quality to shove a message down my throat. I give Meirelles credit though for a well done first quarter of the film as the outbreak is happening, with some inventive and stylistic camera work, and also by it’s quality there’s really nothing out there quite like this right now. But at the same time, it just doesn’t hold up, and I tend to think that if you want to see something like this that explores some of the same themes, but played out better, maybe re-watching Children of Men is the way to go, or an even better playing out of these themes in Oliver Hershberger’s excellent film The Experiment. Right now, the only way I could even want to see this one again would be just to play Mystery Science Theatre 3000 with it. Not as bad as The Happening but damn near close and certainly outweighing it on the pretentious side…