Theme: Identity

Edge Of Tomorrow (2014) – Tom Cruise and Emily Blunt

Edge Of Tomorrow (2014)

The first 10 minutes are cleverly designed to build a backstory to this movie, and while it starts off a bit messy, Tom Cruise‘s presence sharpens it up nicely. By 10 minutes in it’s clear Tom Cruise is playing Major William Cage, some top marketing guy for the military who doesn’t like to get his hands dirty, and upon attempting to blackmail a general, finds himself railroaded to the frontline with his rank stripped and nobody believing his story.

By 20 minutes in, the Major is getting his first taste of battle on the front line and it’s a bit of a nightmare, but it’s well executed, and it soon becomes something quite intriguing, when 5 minutes later he dies and his day restarts and everything becomes Déjà Vu. Then 5 minutes later still – now half an hour in – the day restarts again, so it’s now the third instance of the same day. This time he’s less confused, and tries very hard to prove himself and alert everyone what’s going on, but fails only ends up with a taped up mouth. He also tries fighting the aliens proactively using his limited foresight, but dies pretty quickly. Then we see him die quickly again. Then on the fifth attempt he tries talking to the lead female – the Angel of Verdun, Sergeant Rita Vrataski, played by Emily Blunt – and it’s already clear that he’s been here many times before, the movie’s just skipped several iterations. One the next full reset, we see him try a different tact. He subtly proves his strange abilities to predict the future, and assures everyone he’s not trying to avoid the war – he’s now acting enthusiastic and friendly but not controversial at all – this is of course a rouse to gain everyone’s trust so they all lower their guard and he’s free to do what he needs to do – this time it’s meeting up with the woman who told him to come find her when he wakes up. It seems she has the same ability as he does, and knows all about it. There’s a few nice touches of humour here too.

By 50 minutes in, William Cage (Tom Cruise) and Rita Vrataski (Emily Blunt) have met Rita’s friend, a top scientist who understands how this alien enemy operates, and what’s causing the day to keep resetting, and everything becomes clear, or at least as clear as it ever will be. Rita starts training Tom in combat skills, which he’s gravely lacking, and she tells him he needs to make sure he dies every day, else he’s out of the game.

It gets a bit tense, gritty and uncomfortable towards the end of the first hour, and it’s safe to say, most of the fun is already gone now. But there’s still nearly an hour left to go. For this reason, although this movie showed great potential to be arguably the best action hero movie ever made, in the end I’m going to settle for a rating of Very Good, which is no mean feat of course.

After a solid 20 minutes of gritty drama and uncomfortable action, the mood picks up with half an hour to go as the Major & Sergeant come up with a new plan and head to HQ to get what they need. Unfortunately though, this refreshing uplift only lasts a few minutes before it gets gritty again and doesn’t let up till the very end. Nevertheless, we can’t discount the great entertainment value of the first hour, making this a Very Good action hero movie on a par with Denzel’s equally great movie The Equalizer from the same year.

Percy Jackson And The Lightning Thief (2010) – Logan Lerman and Pierce Brosnan

This movie is mildly entertaining. It occasionally features some good acting, including from the lead character Percy Jackson played by Logan Lerman, and occasionally from others too, such as: Grover, Percy’s protective Satyr, played by Brandon T Jackson; and Zeus, chief diety, played by Sean Bean; and even Pierce Brosnan as Mr Brunner aka Chiron, Percy’s mentor centaur/minotaur type thing.

However, this movie is equally full of attempted sacrilege and shallow lackadaisical expressions, just as you’d expect from any bunch of spoilt & corrupted yet naive and skin-deep Hollywood teenagers trying to play dieties for kicks & giggles above all else.

So it’s got its pros & cons like most movies, and I rank it fairly average among action movies rated by this website.

Although it’s full of a mix of mild entertainment and awkward drama, there is eventually a really cool action scene, but it takes until 100 minutes to deliver it. In that moment, Percy proves he’s the real son of Poseidon by unleashing his power over water, to defeat his enemy, the actual lightning thief, Luke, son of Hermes. It only lasts a matter of seconds though – not even a minute – and for this reason, I can’t rate this movie any higher than Bang Average irrespective the potential and quality it displayed occasionally.

Sequel: Percy Jackson: Sea Of Monsters (2013)

This movie kicks off with a chunky dose of boredom, awkwardness and sacrilege – just as expected. It’s a bit weaker in storyline buildup than the last one, and the cyclops nymph who’s meant to be Percy’s half brother is not appealing to watch (and that’s an understatement). While there is some half decent action in this movie, and some unique plot characteristics, it’s generally a bit below the par set by the first in the series and for this reason it looks set for a decidedly Below Average rating.

This movie has an air of a kids’ TV drama series, with actors and acting standards to match. Unsurprisingly, Pierce Brosnan didn’t come back for this one – his character was a major figure again but played by someone else this time.

Although the teen drama series vibe never really lets up, the action and energy in the latter half of this movie kind of make up for its lack of substance early on, thus bringing the final rating close to average and similar to the original – probably slightly weaker, especially due to the poor start, but not by much, considering the well played back end.

Abduction (2019) – Scott Adkins and Andy On

Abduction (2019)

This movie is a strange mix between fast action and vibes of dispair. It takes about half an hour to really warm up, with a strong backstory already built, but it stays a bit confusing right the way through the movie.

By the start of the second hour, the three main protagonists are now somewhat introduced and are working together in a team to track down their loved ones – to rescue them from the aliens who have abducted them. This is probably the highlight of the movie, in terms of mood. But it doesn’t take long till they’re all captured and things become quite depressing right through till the end of the movie – that’s quite a missed opportunity to have a lot more fun, and it brings this movie down from what looked set for a very high rating, down to just Decent which is still no mean feat.

Andy On was impressive, as one of two roughly equal co-stars, called Connor, with vibes similar to Jet Li, just a bit less intense. He was able to match Scott Adkins (who played Quinn – the other co-star) in terms of charisma and screen combat capability, while coming from such a different culture – they made a quite good team.

The lead female – Adkins’ psychiatrist – was played quite well by Vietnamese actress Trương Ngọc Ánh. The second main female – Connor’s kidnapped wife – was played adequately by Lily Ji.

The best bit about this movie is arguably the very ending – it’s got a cool bit of mysterious music at the end, blended in very well with the final scene. It’s not an adrenaline-rush tune, but it’s quite spiritually stirring nevertheless.

This movie is also abundant with metaphors that coincide significantly with theories that became popular around world events that followed this movie’s release in 2019. It’s as if someone were trying to get a message out, but had no permission or trick to do so any more explicitly than were done here. Of course this is pure conjecture, but it kind of makes me respect Scott Adkins a bit more than I previously did. Maybe it’s misplaced credit, who knows. And by the same token, maybe we should respect the weird Wachowskis too, since even though they seem to be much deeper ‘in the club’, and even though they seemed to have the full backing of the system to do so, they basically promoted the same kind of metaphors via The Matrix, and somewhat in Jupiter Ascending too.

The Last Airbender (2010) – Noah Ringer

The Last Airbender (2010)

Even while all the comments online are along the lines of “this is terrible compared to the original cartoon series” I personally thought this movie was Very Good (compared to what else is out there). I haven’t seen the original cartoons and have no interest in seeing them either. When I were a young child, maybe I’d have watched the cartoons if they were on TV, but as an adult now, I generally avoid animations – I need movies with real people in them, and this one fits that requirement. Having said that, this movie has a theme very similar to one of my favourite cartoons as a child – Captain Planet. Both have the idea of people who can use individual elemental powers, and a main hero capable of using all the elements together.

Sure, there’s plenty of missed opportunities here, for example, there could have been plenty of kung fu moves that better match the elements. And I’m not a fan of calling air manipulators “air benders” – that’s a bit queer. But flaws aside, this movie still has a lot going for it – especially its highs – especially near the end.

There’s a strong awakening theme with this movie, as the Avatar realises his true potential and his duty to bring harmony between the clans and restore peace in the world.

Noah Ringer stars as Aang, the Avatar – the one person in the world capable of manipulating all four elements.

If you enjoyed this movie, you may also like to watch the Netflix series by the same name – again, it’s not an animation, but it’s still quite juvenile, yet still quite entertaining.

Unknown (2011) – Liam Neeson and Diane Kruger

This movie is a bit depressing to begin with. In the first half an hour, Liam Neeson‘s character, Dr Martin Harris, gets ruined by a car accident that all coincides with an elaborate scheme to steal his identity that even his wife plays along with, and this situation somehow manages to gaslight him into admitting that he’s not really who he says & knows he is, after only a few minutes of argument – or so it seems, until we see it was just an excuse to avoid arrest. But then by 35 minutes in, he seems truly gaslighted – even calling himself insane and asking a doctor for help, who only gaslights him further and drugs him up, which is sad to see but is an accurate reflection of how such a person is likely to be dealt with by such an other person in the real world.

Some folks might think this movie were commissioned to scare people into getting maximum IDs & verifications, in theory for their own protection, but in fact making them most easily scrutinised & controlled. The caving in to gaslighting, and the medical preprogramming, probably appeal to the same sponsors too; as does the GMO promotion at the very end, which I would say is quantity-minded and quality-ignorant on top of short-sighted – but that’s just a bluff – these folks know what they’re doing and it’s quite nefarious.

Fortunately, the real action picks up by 40 minutes in – if it didn’t get going soon, this movie wouldn’t appeal much to action movie fans like those who enjoyed Neeson’s performance in Taken (2008). Bearing in mind this movie was made prior to Taken 2 (2012).

In the end, Unknown (2011) paints a powerful but depressing story. It has some good acting, some good action and some good plot substance, but is still a bit thin on all these fronts, and it’s a bit heavy on dispiriting drama and the BS pushing, so for conscious connoisseurs of slick action hero movies, I have to rate this one Below Average at best. About equal to Taken 2 which was released just 1 year after this one and was pushing a similar amount of BS but of a different sort.

Diane Kruger does a decent job in the main supporting role here – as a woman called Gina who drove the taxi that crashed, then saved Dr Harris’s life, then when he found her again, she helped him some more, and they became quite close. She’s not a bad actress here – she helped make the movie what it is. Several other decent actors contributed too, but didn’t get so much screen time.

There’s an interesting plot twist half an hour before the end, which explains where Dr Harris’s combat skills come from, but it’s not until the final few minutes of the movie when he gets more of his memory back, that he really becomes an omnipotent fighting machine reminiscent of Liam Neeson’s performance in Taken.