Star: Samuel L Jackson

Captain Marvel (2019) – Brie Larson and Samuel L Jackson

Captain Marvel (2019)

Captain Marvel is an OK modern Marvel movie. It’s not very well made, but it’s not very poorly made either.

It’s got subtle and not-so-subtle undertones of a girls’ girl theme, but this doesn’t massively detract from the core plot or action scenes so it’s tolerable for those whose cup of tea it is not.

The action ranges from so-so to pretty good, and although its best scenes have most of the constituents of an awesome experience, they falls short of what the best Marvel movies have managed to achieve (both in action and in drama). The best action scenes, while still pretty good, are a bit limp and end up being a bit of a sissy version of what they could be.

The plot is fairly enjoyable when you’ve not seen it in a few years.

Brie Larson plays the main character, Captain Marvel, born as Carol Danvers and renamed Vers by her kidnappers who may have also wiped her memory. Her acting is alright but nothing special.

Samuel L Jackson plays the next main role, as Nick Fury, a senior agent of SHIELD and as Earth’s main liaison for Captain Marvel – initially trying to arrest her, then eventually helping her when he realises his own agency has been hijacked by the alien race who he initially thought were the enemy but eventually discovered were the good guys. Samuel does a good job and kind of saves the show from what would otherwise be little more than a poorly made, uncoordinated in drama interspliced with mediocre action, only a few scenes of which are sort of good.

Lashana Lynch plays Maria Rambeau, the tomboy-type forgotten ‘best friend’ (and maybe more) of Carol Danvers aka Captain Marvel. Her acting doesn’t impress me.

Ben Mendelsohn plays Talos (the shapeshifting alien) and Keller (the agent who Talos impersonates, who is Nick Fury’s boss). He does a so-so job.

Jude Law plays the main antagonist in the second half of the movie, who initially appears to be a good friend of Vers – her senior comrade, supervisor and training partner (and secretly the guy who originally kidnapped her, before her memory were wiped). Jude does a decent job here, and significantly helps to make this is kind of respectable movie.

The main antagonist at the very end, who Jude Law’s character answers to, is Ronan (played by Lee Pace although you can’t really tell who it is behind the CGI, mask, outfit, makeup, etc). Ronan was the guy who served under Thanos in Guardians Of The Galaxy (2014) before going rogue when he acquired an infinity stone and became the most powerful man in the universe and the main antagonist of that movie, until the Guardians took the stone back. He’s a cool character and wields hammer a bit like Thor.

Djimon Hounsou and Gemma Chan play members of Jude Law’s team – initially comrades of Vers (Captain Marvel). They add value. They’re at least as good as Brie Larson.

Annette Bening with weird contact lenses plays the AI character who helps to deceive & control Vers – modelled on Carol’s forgotten friend, a renegade pilot who developed the technology that gave Captain Marvel her superpowers when it crashed (shot down by Jude Law’s character, who also killed Bening’s character, kidnapped Carol and wiped her mind).

Clark Greg plays Agent Phil Coulson from SHIELD, working under Nick Fury. He’s a good character but only has a very minor role here – I’d be pleased to see him in a bigger role.


Avengers: Age Of Ultron (2015) – Robert Downey Jr and Elizabeth Olsen

Avengers: Age Of Ultron (2015)

This movie tells the tale of an AI being, determined to kill all life on Earth, and the Avengers try to stop it. These Avengers include those we’ve met before, plus a few new ones.

Doubling down on the mind-control theme from the first Avengers movie where Loki was able to turn Hawkeye into his puppet and caused everyone else to argue among themselves; this movie sees Loki’s sceptre used to create a woman (played adequately by Elizabeth Olsen) with the ability to trap people’s minds in their own worst nightmares, and when she eventually becomes an Avenger she starts throwing red Chi Balls around with her mind. Her normal name is Wanda Maximoff but she’s due to eventually become known as The Scarlet Witch (the main antagonist in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, 2022). Only the AI antagonist called Ultron is immune to her mind control powers in this movie, and becomes her leader early on. As a result, all the superheroes start daydreaming and living out their worst nightmares – a sneaky way to bring an extra large dose of horror, or at least irritation, to our screens. This, combined with a much larger helping of slow & muddled drama throughout, means I can’t rate this movie any higher than Bang Average, on a par with Guardians Of The Galaxy from the year before.

Disappointingly but unsurprisingly, they’ve also doubled down on fighting among themselves (even when not mind controlled). It’s like an episode of Eastenders on steroids. Not what a smooth action hero movie connoisseur really wants to sit through. But there are some good bits of course. There’s even a good bit of humour once or twice.

Like most Avengers movies, Robert Downey Jr playing Tony Stark and Iron Man is probably the main character here. Chris Hemsworth has some good screen time as Thor, but not as much as I’d like, and Chris Evans has a lot of screen time as Captain America – probably more than I’d like. Samuel L Jackson makes a strong contribution as always, playing Nick Fury, the Director of SHIELD. Mark Ruffalo puts in a curious performance as Bruce Banner and The Hulk. Scarlett Johansson puts in a decent performance as Natasha Romanoff, although not as strong as her appearance in Iron Man 2 when she seemed younger and more energetic. There were many more significant characters besides these ones too.

Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014) – Chris Evans

No amount of loud music during simplistic high kicking, or non-martial gymnastic tumbling by stuntmen, is going to make Captain America any less dead dry in character or any more cool in superpowers. But they seemed to think it might, with all that kind of noise in the first 15 minutes. Then again later on.

Sure, there’s some decent action bits here, and I mean fractions of bits, from time to time, but that’s literally the limit of this movie’s coolness. Having said that, it’s still mostly easy viewing, while they try to work through an attention-worthy script. So I can’t give it less than a Bang Average rating, but I can’t rate it any higher either. It’s about equal to Chris Pratt’s Guardians Of The Galaxy as well as Chris Pine’s Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit – both also from 2014. It’s also about equal to the original Captain America: The First Avenger from 2011.

Chris Evans stars in this movie, as Captain America himself, and while he’s a bit of a boring superhero, he seems like a pleasant guy which makes for easy viewing that’s neither very awesome nor very distressing.

Further cast members include Scarlett Johansson who plays Agent Natasha Romanoff (aka Black Widow). She’s not bad, but she looks like a Ghost in the Shell of her former self (pardon the pun). At first I really thought she were someone else brought in to be a poundshop or dollarstore version of Scarlett Johansson, then I realised it’s actually her. Maybe it’s the hair style, or the outfits, or she gained weight, or all of the above, but something’s definitely off. She seems drained of energy here. A Stark contrast to when she appeared in Iron Man 2 (pardon the pun). It’s like she aged heavily in those four years.

There’s also Anthony Mackie playing Sam Wilson – he’s probably been casted mainly to represent the ethnic audience and to replicate the chemistry Robert Downey Jr had with Don Cheadle in Iron Man. With vibes of Jamie Fox crossed with Snoop Dogg, he does a fair job.

Frank Grillo also adds value to this movie, as one of the swat-type guys in the SHIELD strike team. He’s got a bit of character to him, and holds down the role of a tactical team member quite well. He’s a familiar face since he’s worked his way into a lot of cheap action hero movies in recent years.

Samuel L Jackson, as Director of SHIELD, does a decent job in raising the standard of the slower scenes from what would probably otherwise be quite boring, into something that’s ultimately quite watchable. He also does a great job of adding value to the occasional high-octane action scene he’s involved in, such as the car chase that results in him being kidnapped. Very rarely does a car chase scene so long drawn out as that one manage to sustain attention so well as that one did.

Shortly after 30 minutes in, after the car chase, this movie becomes increasingly interesting as Samuel L Jackson’s character is waiting in Cap’s apartment, hiding out, telling him silently that SHIELD is compromised, then gets shot by a sniper who Cap pursues only to discover he’s just as physically gifted as himself. That sniper is the main antagonist for much of the movie, played adequately by Sebastian Stan mostly from behind a mask.

By contrast, the last half hour is pretty weak. It’s a fairly non descript one-dimensional long-winded drama-oriented dull-action-based ending, so while at times this movie gets exciting, overall I can’t rank it any better than Bang Average, as mentioned earlier – on a par with the original Captain America: The First Avenger.

Further sequels

If you’re following the Marvel movies in order, next up is Guardians Of The Galaxy (2014) which has an original set of characters, followed by Avengers: Age Of Ultron (2015) where Captain America returns alongside Iron Man, Thor, The Hulk and Black Widow just like in the last Avengers movie. Then we get Ant-Man to round off MCU Phase 2, then Phase 3 kick-starts in 2016 with a third movie dedicated to Captain America, called Captain America: Civil War. Several Marvel movies later, towards the end of Phase 5, we get the fourth Captain America movie called Captain America: Brave New World (2025) no longer starring Chris Evans who says he is happily retired from the role already.

The Avengers (2012) – Robert Downey Jr

This movie is an overload of messy drama and uncoordinated action. It’s as if a kid became the director and was spoilt for choice which superheroes to focus on so he picked every superhero and put them all together but none of them really had a chance to shine. Well, Iron Man (played quite well by Robert Downey Jr) has a few good bits, but for the most part, it’s like too many cooks are spoiling the broth.

This reminds me of Ocean’s Eleven – when it came out with both Brad Pitt and George Clooney in the same movie (not to mention Matt Damon and Julia Roberts too), although I were only a teenager at the time, I expected it to be twice as good as the average Pitt or Clooney movie, but no, it was a massive disappointment, like they were too busy partying to produce anything worth watching. Of course I can look back these days and appreciate what little that movie has to offer, but it’s still far from what it should have been, and this movie – The Avengers – suffers from pretty much the same problem.

The most interesting part comes 1 hour and 40 minutes into the movie, when the sky opens up and the aliens invade earth. But 1 hour and 40 minutes is a time when the average movie has already finished – it’s a long time to sit through drama and spurts of uncoordinated action while waiting for the really good scenes to arrive. Having said that, it doesn’t play out nearly as well as it initially seemed like it might have done. The fight scenes when the aliens come down from the sky are mostly barely any better than something you’d expect from an old episode of the Power Rangers. But there’s a good half an hour left in this long movie to play out the ending properly if it wanted – this longwinded movie goes on for nearly 2 and a half hours but it’s mostly boring filler drama, full of verbal arguments – not a good headspace to be in, which is why it took me several sittings to get through this movie, and this should never be the case with a thrilling action movie – I shouldn’t have mostly forgotten the first hour by the time I get round to watching the third hour – this makes for a weak review, but hey, it’s a weak movie, and that’s one thing I remember thinking since the start. I rate it Bang Average, on a par with Iron Man 2 which came out 2 years prior and was disappointing compared to the first Iron Man movie which I rated a couple of levels higher.

The very ending was alright – it’s one of the best bits, but it’s nothing incredible really.

The main antagonist in this movie is Tom Hiddleston who plays Loki (adopted brother of Thor). He does a fair job, especially for those familiar with the Thor movie series, but doesn’t wow.

It’s also a pleasure to see Scarlett Johansson playing a significant role in this movie, as Natasha Romanoff (the star character in Black Widow, 2021). She was one of the best things about the Iron Man 2 movie.

It’s also good to see some action from Chris Hemsworth – his character Thor is one of the most entertaining in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, although he doesn’t do much in this movie.

Samuel L Jackson adds value as always, as the leader of the agency called SHIELD tasked with putting together The Avengers to defend the Earth from otherworldly threats.

Chris Evans does a standard job as Captain America, promoting an institutional angle, barking orders from the front even though he’s one of the weakest superheroes in the crew – this is obviously part of a military recruitment campaign, designed to appeal to those who want to act like the main man in the room, even when they’re not. Cap’s powers are nothing compared to Iron Man and Thor for example, but I guess his character is meant to be super smart (although so is Iron Man, especially with the help of Jarvis) and of course Cap has military leadership experience – it just seems terribly out of place him barking orders to a team comprising several far more powerful superheroes than he. Having said that, he’s probably just as powerful as Romanoff and Hawkeye. The Avengers team seems half comprised of natural & near-natural humans with unrealistically perfected skills, while the other half seem to be physically indestructible freaks.

Clark Gregg returns as Agent Phil Coulson from the Iron Man movies. He’s always makes an entertaining character, and gets far too little screen time for my liking.

Jeremy Renner takes on a major role as Arrow (another seemingly feeble Avenger who somehow fights perfectly enough to compete very effectively with much more powerful warriors than he). I’m not really a fan of this actor, but he fills a role. He’s not terrible, he’s just giving me Daniel Craig vibes – he seems more made for soppy drama, not action heroism.

Mark Ruffalo plays the Dr Bruce Banner who turns in & out of his alter-ego, the Hulk, played by Lou Ferrigno with the help of plenty of CGI of course. They both do an adequate job of it.

Stellan Skarsgård does alright as Dr Erik Selvig – a man we met in the Thor movie series, who is controlled here by Loki who needs him to help open the portal.

Captain America: The First Avenger (2011) – Chris Evans

This movie gets off to an interesting start – the plot early on is pretty good. The action initially is not bad either. But in the second half, the action becomes little more than white noise. The plot loses track and the whole movie drops off. The very ending is an interesting one, but we went from a great build-up to a load of senseless, uncoordinated action & drama, such that ever since half way through this movie I’ve been mostly looking forward to what’s to come in the sequels because it never looked like any interesting plot developments were likely to happen in this movie.

Chris Evans himself does a decent job acting in this movie, and the CGI effects are quite legendary in how they make his body very small and feeble early on, before he takes the magic serum to become Captain America. He had help from a smaller body double for some scenes, where Evans’ head was placed on his double’s body, but most of it was based purely on footage of Chris Evans which was rendered through CGI to shrink his face & body.

Hayley Atwell is the main female character in this movie. She has a pretty face here, and makes an interesting character.

Samuel L Jackson plays a minor role in an authoritative position – he does a good job as always.

Hugo Weaving (Agent Smith from The Matrix, over a decade older now) plays the main antagonist quite well.

There’s a strong military theme in this movie, as it’s mostly staged back in World War II (with the exception of the very start and the very end).

The superhero himself is quite a simple man, pushing American patriotism and military sentiment, and while the early story and early action are pretty good, this is a relatively weak superhero that I struggle to get behind, especially in the aimless back end of the movie. Having said that, when Captain America was first created, and chased after the man who killed the doctor, that was a great set of scenes which showed a flavour of the potential of this character in future movies. So while I’m keen to watch the sequels next after watching this movie, I am left quite disappointed by the level of this movie, especially in the second half, and for this reason I have to rate it just OK, roughly equal to Iron Man 2 which came out the year before and just as dull itself, with an equal amount of good bits, in stark contrast the first Iron Man movie, if you’ll pardon the pun. Did I mention Tony Stark’s father, Howard Stark, had a minor role in this Captain America movie? It’s an interesting crossover between Iron Man and Captain America movies, and sets the scene for many more crossovers to come in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU). So far, at the time of this movie, we’ve seen Iron Man (2008) kicking off Phase One of the MCU movie series, followed by The Incredible Hulk (2008), then Iron Man 2 (2010), then Thor (2011), then Captain America: The First Avenger (2011), and next in the Marvel movie series, to round off Phase One, is The Avengers (2012), then Phase Two kicks off with Iron Man 3 in 2013, followed by Thor 2 (2013) and Captain America 2 in 2014. So feel free to jump ahead and watch Captain America 2 next, or take it slower and watch The Avengers (2012) next where Captain America also plays a major role. You may even wish to back-track a bit, and watch Iron Man (2008) first, to work your way through all MCU movies in order from the start.

Iron Man 2 (2010) – Robert Downey Jr

While there are some interesting aspects to the plot and some decent action scenes too; for the most part this movie is one or two levels less entertaining than the previous one. They seem to be doubling down on the drama aspect, to boost the plot, but it’s not working well for me as an action hero movie fan – it even gets quite boring from time to time, although it ends quite strong. Obviously there’s no revelatory unveiling of the Iron Man superhero to the world in this movie, since the world already knows all about him, including his identity and his capabilities, so this sequel is in dire need of additional creativity to keep the plot fresh and the action captivating – this movie is noticeably lacking in these departments, so I rate it a couple levels down from the first Iron Man movie.

It’s good to see the return of Robert Downey Jr, and alright to see the return of Gwyneth Paltrow.

It’s also great to see the addition of Scarlett Johansson into the core cast of this movie. Her character initially seems a bit too consistently cold-hearted and blank-faced for my liking – a touch of warmth wouldn’t go amiss – but it keeps us on our toes about who she is and what are her intentions, until it’s all revealed after an hour in, and then it suits her role nicely. Scarlett Johannson and Jon Favreau (from Stark’s company) make a great team in some awesome action scenes towards the end, which includes multiple moments of good humour too. Credit to the writers, producers, directors and actors for that. It’s good to see Jon have a more significant role this time round too – he had only a minor role in the previous Iron Man movie but deserved something better and this has been remedied in Iron Man 2.

Samuel L Jackson makes a refreshing appearance at the top of the second hour, causing the movie to gain positive vibes and become generally more interesting. Better late than never, although I’ll never be able to justify rating this movie as highly as the first, after sitting through its weak first hour.

The intrigue and positive vibes are cranked up another notch about half an hour before the end, as Tony Stark finds a message from his late father with a clue towards creating a new element that can replace the plutonium in his power core (his artificial heart) which is slowly killing him.

Mickey Rourke plays the main antagonist (with techie brain plus brawn) quite well, while his new partner (with business brains, money & influence) is adequately played by Sam Rockwell.

Don Cheadle plays the role of James Rhodes – a black man with quite a senior position in the military, who is friends with Tony Stark, but when Stark is dying and goes a bit crazy, Rhodes steals one of his Iron Man suits believing he’d make a more worthy superhero himself. Don does an adequate job, but he’s no Wesley Snipes or Michael B Jordan.

Don and Sam both carry a bit of a beta-male vibe. Very much lacking that ‘main man in the room’ vibe; although that may be the intention, since Sam shouldn’t overpower Mickey, and Don shouldn’t overpower Robert, but Mickey and Robert are both so-so themselves, half way between Alpha and Beta I’d say. And/or maybe Sam & Don sold their souls to be rewarded with these roles, as is often the way in Hollywood.

Unbreakable (2000) – Bruce Willis and Samuel L Jackson

Unbreakable (2000) begins with a few minutes of torture in the form of loud crying babies. I simply couldn’t listen properly to any of the dialog here – I had no choice but to mute the entire scene and ready the subtitles. Not a good start!

10 minutes later, after a slow but watchable scene with Bruce Willis on a train, we discover why this movie is called Unbreakable and it becomes quite intriguing. Bruce Willis’s character basically has the same superpower as Marvel’s Luke Cage – an unbreakable body; and by contrast, Samuel L Jackson‘s character easily breaks all his bones like they’re made of glass, but never dies – hence the memorable threequel called Glass (2019) which came after the sequel called Split (2016).

This 100 minute long movie doesn’t get really cool until around half an hour before the end. The movie is like all drama for plot build up until near the end, then findally it becomes really interesting as everything that’s been set up unravels as Bruce Willis’s character finally entertains the ideas of Samuel L Jackson’s character, and Bruce accepts that he probably is a real-life version of a comicbook superhero with multiple superpowers. Nice plot twist at the very end too, as we discover what Samuel’s character is really all about.

All in all, I think we can say this is a strange “mild sci-fi” mostly-drama movie with just enough action, and superhero concept, and cinematography, and star power coming from the lead cast members, to make it Watchable for action hero movie fans who aren’t really into the slow drama genre. I’m certainly in no hurry to rewatch it though – this is one of those movies to be watched once in a lifetime, and maybe again with a friend who’s never seen it before, and maybe again if you’ve completely forgot all about it. Best to enjoy it sequentially before its threequel (Glass). I’d skip the first sequel (Split) though. As weak as they are on the action side of things, Unbreakable and Glass just about manage to sustain attention and be quite emotive and memorable to action fans thanks to their star power in Bruce and Samuel plus decent cinematography.

Sequels

The first sequel – Split (2016) starring James McAvoy (from Wanted) – is of zero interest to action hero movie fans who aren’t into slow gritty drama and find horror repulsive. There are no action heroes in this movie except for a seated 1-liner cameo appearance by Bruce Willis in the final few seconds of the movie. It’s just a serial killer-kidnapper drama-horror movie with zero relevance to action hero movie fans.

The threequel – Glass (2019) – gets off to a better start with the return of Bruce Willis as the unbreakable superhero. His age is really showing here though, as he’s in his mid 60s already and doesn’t try to hide it.

Spencer Treat Clark also returns, as Bruce’s son in Glass, although he looks nothing like him and never did, and looks even less like supposed mother. Still, he makes a good office-based sidekick in this movie.

James McAvoy also reprises his role from Split, as the serial killer-kidnapper with split personalities, but fortunately his role is far less one dimensional here, and the entire movie doesn’t revolve around him like it did in Split. Bruce Willis gets an equal share of screentime this time round.

Cleaner (2007) – Samuel L Jackson

Cleaner (2007) is a simple story with an interesting angle. It shows Samuel L Jackson in his element as Tom Cutler, a retired policeman now working for himself as a dead body residue cleaner, often contracted by the local police department to clean up crime scenes.

This movie has a decent supporting cast, including Ed Harris & Luis Guzmán as detectives and former colleagues of Tom’s, plus Eva Mendes as the lead female and wife of the missing man.

I’m not normally a fan of this slow & gritty pace of movie – it’s like a random episode from a TV crime drama series – but Samuel makes it work. Still, it’s so basic, I can’t rate it any higher than just Watchable. I’m certainly not expecting to watch it again so long as I remember much about it, and there’s not much to be remembered except a few nice plot twists.

Jumper (2008) – Hayden Christensen and Samuel L Jackson

Jumper (2008)

Jumper is a fun movie with a good amount of action to match its fantasy concept. Hayden Christensen stars as the main character in this movie – he’s a boy who discovered he can teleport, or ‘jump’, to pretty much anywhere in the world. Samuel L Jackson plays the main man tracking him down, trying to kill him – Samuel leads a squad of agents tracking down all ‘Jumpers’ to kill them on the spot. They both do a great job in the roles here.

Other key cast members include Rachel Bilson who plays the lead female role adequately. And Jamie Bell does an alright job in playing an experienced Jumper who helps Hayden’s character secretly before eventually befriending him and mentoring him in being a good Jumper.

One of the most memorable parts of this movie, is a cheeky line at the beginning where the lead character, acting as a narrator to the audience, says: “I wasn’t always like this. Once I was a normal person. A chump, just like you!”

Go on Hollywood, tell us what you really think about us!

Jumper (2008) is a Decent movie over all. Not many boring bits if any. It delivers a respectable level of entertainment quite consistently.

If you like the concept of this movie, where certain people can jump between places around the world, you may also enjoy movies where certain people travel through time, into the past and the future – such movies include Looper (2012) with Bruce Willis; Timecop (1994) with Van Damme; and the Back To The Future movie series.