Action Hero MoviesThis movie has a lot of cringe pompous novice British toffee acting, but it’s still entertaining enough to warrant an Above Average rating. Jamie Fox stands out as the best actor in this movie. He plays the Arab captured, then set free by Robin Hood and devoted to helping him thereafter. The rest of the main cast — including Taron Egerton as Robin Hood, and Eve Hewson as Maid Marian — are pretty poor — and the others including Ben Mendelsohn as the Sheriff of Nottingham, and Tim Minchin as Friar Tuck, and Paul Anderson as Guy of Gisbourne, and Jamie Dornan as Will Scarlet — aren’t much better — but the busy script and dramatic cinematography does a good job of saving the show.
Theme: Rebellion
Elysium starts off with an interesting dystopian sci-fi concept but rather gritty screenplay. In the first half hour, not much happens to the least cast member except he receives a fatal dose of radiation poisoning in his workplace and is given five days left to live. This urges him to rekindle his old master criminal ways in order to reach the satellite city called Elysium – a place for the privileged to live away from the rest of humanity on Earth. He attempts to get there in order to heal himself, but it’s a dangerous mission – families have tried before and they tend to get shot down indiscriminately.
There’s a nice bit of action before the end of the first hour.
Much of the second hour constitutes a bit of an anxiety & depression fest – probably good for horror-drama junkies, but not so much for smooth action hero movie connoisseurs. Easily skippable if you’ve seen it before. Fortunately, that toxic junk at least intermittently subsides to make way for some half-decent action. This movie had a lot of potential to be a lot better than it eventually was though. Unfortunately, due to the amount of bad mixed with the good, I really struggle to rate it Above Average but I will on account of its genre & stars, and its resultant memorability.
Matt Damon manages to shave off his Jason Bourne identity (see what I did there?) by going bald in this movie – it’s not pleasing on the eye but at least it succeeds in creating a fresh new persona for this movie – this one having much more of an air of vulnerability from the start, since he gets radiation poisoning early on – quite fitting for a regularly toxic movie experience.
The fight scene at the end is dry and over dragged out – easily skippable, even though it’s kind of fast action – reminiscent of a Tony Jaa movie – no flying elbows, but just as spiritually dead.
Promoting radiation chamber type beds as cancer cures, at the end, was the icing on the cake – quite inkeeping with the Big Harma theme since the start.
On the plus side, the main baddies are played quite well by Jodie Foster (brains) and Sharlto Copley (brawn). Many of the cast members are pretty good, even if the movie is a bit thin and nasty while posing like it’s strongly representing a really cool genre.
This is a strange movie – 20 mins in and we’re still following around the life of a guy who doesn’t remember anything about his past. He’s played by Kane Kosugi, who wasn’t in the previous Tekken movie (he’s most recognisable as Scott Adkins’ adversary from Ninja II) but based on the name of this movie one might guess he’s the replacement actor for Kazuya Mishima – Heihachi Mishima’s son and Jin Kazama’s father. Not only has he completely forgotten where he is and who he is etc, but he seems to have a bomb implanted inside his chest and if he wants to live he needs to follow the orders of a strange man who calls himself The Minister (played by Rade Šerbedžija) who runs a cult of assassins all bound by the same threat.
It’s not until 25 minutes in that we see the familiar face of Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa who played Heihachi Mishima in the last movie, that the plot appears to be beginning to very slowly unravel. And when I say very slowly, I’m not exaggerating, since another 25 mins later we’re still none-the-wiser as to who this guy is and how he came to be in his current situation.
It’s not until near the end of the first hour that we finally learn, beyond doubt, that the lead character who we’ve been following around for nearly an hour, who’s lost his memory, is indeed Kazuya Mishima, when he remembers the location of his old apartment suite – he asks the receptionist what name he checked in under, and heard he used the initials K M. That still leaves a lot of unanswered questions, but at least we’re making progress since it’s already two thirds of the way through the movie. The big reveal doesn’t actually happen until 10 minutes before the end of the movie, and even then it’s not a big reveal – it’s bare minimum to keep the air of mystery going even beyond the end of the movie.
One thing’s clear though – this movie has a very different genre to the original Tekken movie, which had a much faster tempo and practically none of this slowly unravelling mystery vibe. It works quite well here though – it stays quite intriguing from start to finish, if you’ve not seen it before or at least can’t remember how it goes. The general standard of production, the quality of the action scenes, and the power of the mystery factor are all quite effective here. The acting isn’t terrible either.
It’s quite good from an educational standpoint too, for those who can read the subtle undertones and can already see the synergy with the kinds of methods used by shady agencies to control people in the real world. When I say quite good, I mean it offers a basic level of something to think about, minus the usual warp factors, which is refreshing.
Having said that, there’s still such little going on here, that I can’t fairly rate it on a par with the original. Especially when it comes to rewatching this movie – if you have any memory of what’s going on, that already leaves practically no substance left to enjoy upon rewatching it. For this reason I have to rate it Below Average but only just. There are a lot of respectable movies in & around this kind of rating, so I wouldn’t call it a failure per se – it’s just not something to be recommending too much.
The lead female in this movie – a fellow assassin called Rhona Anders played by Kelly Wenham – has the constant facial expression of a tantrum-throwing teenager, and the voice of a middle to upper class Brit trying to talk like a commoner, so typical of domestic British TV dramas. She’s also built with a stronger frame than the lead male – very butch, no finesse, just like her voice – as if she comes from WWE, and the other females in this movie are no different – this theme hasn’t changed since the first movie. The other main woman in this movie is the landlord of a cheap hotel, called Laura, played by Paige Lindquist, who has a quiet and alluring demeanour but is still physically butch enough to overpower the lead male.
This movie was made shortly after The Matrix came out breaking all kinds of records, and seemed to try to copy its style, with slickly-dressed plain-faced agents dropping guns from their sleeves and shooting guns from exotic martial arts stances as if performing a wushu demo. But it’s not just a corny ripoff; this movie has a quality of its own. Particularly appealing to people with an interest in the plight of a freedom-fighter movement against a hi-tech draconian police state. Like The Matrix, this movie is more of a sci-fi than a martial arts flick, but still contains plenty of fast-paced skilled combative action including empty-handed fighting, samurai swordsmanship and guns ablazing in ‘bullet time’.
Plotwise, Equilibrium basically follows the plight of the highest-ranked, most-skilled assassin from the government’s elite hit squad, from initially callously killing anyone he’s ordered to kill, to eventually becoming leader of the rebellion and overthrowing the evil dictator. It’s not too heavy on the plot so not a movie for drama lovers but has the balance just right for those who prefer adrenaline-rich action and steer clear of gritty drama. With a likeable lead character, entertaining techniques, strong scenery and a simple but powerful story, this movie makes an impact, scoring 8.5/10 for my taste.
Cast wise, there are some strong performances, and some less strong. Christian Bale is a convincing lead, albeit not a massive star, and Sean Bean adds a lot of value to this movie too, like he always does.