The Star eCentral: Movie Reviews
The Star eCentral: Movie Reviews |
| Posted: 06 Oct 2011 10:00 PM PDT Starring: Hugh Jackman, Evangeline Lilly, Dakota Goyo, Kevin Durand, Anthony Mackie In the near future, audience demands for spectator-sport carnage have grown so high that human fighters have been replaced with robots. On the understanding that, you know, robots can rip each other's limbs and heads off and there's no loss of life. That is the simple notion behind the film's setting – the world of robot boxing – and I say "simple" because I don't buy the idea that people will be appeased by robot gladiators pounding each other into scrap outside of a Transformers movie.
There's a reason the word is "bloodthirsty" and not "oilthirsty". Well, that quibble aside, Real Steel turned out to be pretty close to the Real Deal as far as fight flicks go. While not in the same league as Warrior, this sci-fi-themed film works on several levels. Its fight scenes have that whole Rocky underdog vibe going, the drama touches the heart without getting cloying, and there's a general sense of good humour maintained throughout the film that keeps even the tense moments from getting too intense. Jackman puts in a winning performance as Charlie Kenton, a washed-up boxer who now ekes out a living managing robot boxers while searching for that one big payday that will have him set up for life. The pursuit of this "dream" has left him in debt to numerous nasty types, and he's also losing all credibility with childhood friend and sometimes-landlady Bailey Tallet (Lilly), the daughter of his late boxing trainer and mentor.
With so much going wrong … er, on in his life, can you blame Charlie for forgetting that he has a son? Of course you can, but who could pin an abandonment rap on Hugh Jackman for long? (Yeah, it's mostly Jackman's show, though he is matched every step of the way by his young co-star. And sometimes even outpunched.) Anyway, Charlie ends up "caring" for 11-year-old Max (Goto) after the lad's mother dies, but the kid is just another meal ticket to him … initially. Father and son, strangers at the outset, have a rough time at first but eventually bond over a sparring robot named Atom that Max rescues from the junk pile. It dawns on them that Atom is no ordinary sparring robot – and soon, the little feller ("little" in comparison to the other metal behemoths he fights) is making waves on the robot boxing circuit. The Kentons and Atom eventually catch the attention of the powerful Lemkova family, which manages the world champion 'bot, Zeus. Care to guess where Atom's fairytale run will lead them? Don't worry … you'll be absolutely right. Real Steel is smart enough to declare that it's only "partly" based on the Richard Matheson short story Steel, which was previously made into a Twilight Zone episode back in the 1960s. Smart, because the "partly" lets it play with the concept of robot boxing in ways that sticking faithfully to the source material would not allow.
While I still find it hard to believe that bloodthirsty people would get all stirred into a frenzy over robots (and not living beings) tearing each other apart, I will say that Real Steel does what it's here to do. It gets us all fired up, puts on a good show for the yokels … er, moviegoers … and fades out with a "Yo, Adrian, I did it!" moment that undeniably shows that the Rocky movies, more than Matheson's story, inspired its filmmakers. And still, this movie about a busted-up piece of junk helping to mend broken and nonexistent relationships has more heart than the last couple of movies with the Italian Stallion. I'd call that, um, Iron-y. | ||||||
| Posted: 04 Oct 2011 10:00 PM PDT He ain't heavy ... Starring: Joel Edgerton, Tom Hardy, Nick Nolte, Jennifer Morrison, Frank Grillo, Kevin Dunn, Kurt Angle Fight films don't get much better than this tale about two brothers, Brendan and Tommy Conlon (Edgerton and Hardy respectively) – from a family fractured by the abuses of their alcoholic father Paddy (Nolte) – competing in a huge mixed martial arts tournament. It's a basic, straightforward story complete with all the trappings, stock character types and situations of the genre. But the way the tale is told is nothing short of riveting – Warrior will grab and hold your attention thanks to the brilliant storytelling.
It's the kind of movie that doesn't need to tell you everything about how its main characters got to the dark places they're at in the film. Instead, it lets you piece things together from random bits of dialogue ("Must be hard finding a woman who can take a punch these days," Tommy tells Paddy, hinting at prior spousal abuse.) and the way the protagonists react to one another ... or even look at the photographs in a room. Tommy is an ex-Marine with his eye on the US$5mil prize in an upcoming mixed martial-arts tournament. He enlists Paddy as his trainer, estranged as they are, and doesn't mince words with his dad: simply put, he has no interest in any father-son stuff – it's strictly business. Brendan is a physics teacher, married with children, and he wants to have nothing to do with his father, either. Yet we also learn there's no love lost between the brothers as well.
Circumstances force Brendan – a former MMA fighter who left the cage to start a family – back into fighting. And yes, you don't need to be a veteran fight commentator to realise that the brothers will inevitably end up fighting in the same tournament (you just need to have watched the trailer, which gives away a big development in the story). Yet with a film of Warrior's calibre, it's also the journey that is the reward – not just the well-staged fights that take place throughout and at the finish. You really feel for the characters, even Paddy – for whatever sins in his past – as he contritely stumbles and mumbles on his own path to redemption. And one scene where Tommy verbally tears his dad apart while nonchalantly sitting at a slot machine is as brutal as any of the cage fighting that goes on (the resulting effect it has on Paddy is devastating too).
Perhaps most unusually, Warrior manages to convey the conflicting emotions in its characters by setting the viewer up so that you aren't quite sure who to root for either. By having two protagonists, it dumps traditional fight-flick clichés on their collective bum – it's not Rocky vs Apollo/Clubber/Drago, or Ip Man vs The Twister, or James "Cinderella Man" Braddock vs the (movie version of) Max Baer. You will most likely be as torn up over the movie's final fight as the characters themselves must be in their heart of hearts – just as you will no doubt feel the same flood of emotions at its climax. Not just a great fight film, but a terrifically written, acted and put-together film that is one of the year's best. | ||||||
| Posted: 29 Sep 2011 10:00 PM PDT Sometimes it's better to skip movie trailers and just go in clueless. That way, you might be able to squeeze 90 minutes' worth of decent entertainment out of this thriller. Much of the dramatic impact of Dream House is built around a central plot twist that was actually given away in the trailer – one of those "what were they thinking?" moments that movie studios seem doomed to relive every now and then.
(Worst offender: the trailer for the Harrison Ford-Michelle Pfeiffer thriller What Lies Beneath, which rendered the entire first half of the movie pointless.) It could be argued that, hey, a movie doesn't rise and fall on the basis of just one twist (unless it's by that M. Night chap), but … it might, if that's about the biggest smack-you-in-the-gob moment that the plot has to offer.
Anyway, that's for the individual viewer to decide. Getting back to the movie: Dream House refers to the new home of Will Atenton (Craig), who has just quit his job in the publishing industry to work on his novel. With lots of time to spend with his wife Libby (Weisz) and two adorable daughters, Will hopes his new life will be … well, a dream compared to the rat race he's just left behind. Too bad there's something not quite right about this "idyllic" new home. It turns out a family was murdered there! Soon after learning this, Will notices a mysterious figure spying on them, and suspects that his neighbours know more than they're letting on. It isn't long before he learns the shattering truth, and the movie takes a sharp turn off the path which the viewer has been led down from the start. This is where the whole thing could easily fall apart and the makers of Dream House then make two smart decisions. First, they keep things happening fast enough so you don't have too much time to dwell on the familiarity of the "big surprise".
Second, they don't stretch the movie out to the point that it wears out its welcome, wrapping everything up in just about 90 minutes. On the down side, that makes the story's resolution seem too rushed and incomplete somehow, though the clues were there from early on if you think about it. When you do think about it, the whole premise seems somewhat fragile and lightweight. It's typical of what happens when so-called "mainstream" moviemakers venture into the territory of the offbeat/unusual – the end result typically pales in the face of what anyone remotely familiar with the genre has seen before. Ultimately this movie might end up better known for being the one where real-life lovebirds Craig and Weisz met (and indeed, their scenes together show some nice chemistry) than for any achievements of its own. Too bad they didn't put that in the trailer. |
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