**Spoiler Alert**
Directed by Darren Aronofsky. Starring: Russell Crowe, Jennifer Connelly, Anthony Hopkins and Emma Watson
I'm not sure what drew Darren Aronofsky to the Old Testament but his career has been anything but predictable: from the cerebral Pi, to the grim and gritty Requiem for a Dream, and the dark melodrama of Black Swan, one is never sure where his imagination will take us. Noah isn't a film I would have ever expected Aronofsky to make but here it is in all its CGI glory.
I won't spend a lot of time with the plot; the story of Noah and his ark should be familiar enough though Aronofsky has taken artistic license with elements of the tale.
One such liberty is the addition of the Watchers; fallen angels from creation now stone-like behemoths who were once allied to Cain after he murdered his brother Abel. The Watcher's big, lumbering movements recall the Ents in Lord of the Rings. In fact, Noah seems more Peter Jackson than Darren Aronofsky in look and feel. The condemned masses, in marching on Noah and his ark bear a strange resemblance to the Orcs with their dark, faceless malevolence. Noah and his family's wardrobe also seem more Middle-earth than Old Testament.
Aronofsky's take on the story is very humanist: Noah and his family behave more like naturalists than biblical characters who practice animal sacrifice and slaughter. One could almost call them vegan in the high regard they show for animal-kind. Aronofsky's humanism is manifest in a series of evolutionary images that are wed with the biblical account of God making the heavens and earth--a very provocative act and my favorite part of the movie. Shots of the earth from a orbital perspective don't provide recognizable continents but one pangea-like super-continent--a sly and clever nod to geological history rather than biblical. It becomes abundantly clear Aronofsky wants Noah to be John Audubon rather than just the creator's handmaiden. The religious right has all but disowned the film for not rigidly adhering to the biblical account. I guess they prefer the traditional depiction of Noah as a 500-year-old submissive geriatric without a thought in his head.
Aronofsky says his film is "the least biblical, biblical movie ever made," which is confirmed by every scene and story development. I was hoping Aronofsky's Noah might offer something that might really upset the religious right, like a dialogue between Noah and his Holy Bigness concerning why an omniscient, omnipotent being would and could create an imperfect species he claims to love then destroy it wantonly when it doesn't behave. Maybe that's material for a more daring movie yet to be made.
I found the film to be mildly entertaining but not on par with Aronofsky's best in spite of its few inspired moments. And though a rainbow plays a role in the story of Noah, the final shot of spectral colors filling the screen was more My Little Pony than Old Testament. Maybe the pony was on the ark? Maybe that's the sequel.
Monday, March 31, 2014
Thursday, March 27, 2014
Oswald Morris (1915-2014)
British cinematographer Oswald Morris passed away recently, having made his mark and significant contributions to cinema. Morris served as a cinematographer for director-legends Stanley Kubrick, John Huston, Tony Richardson, Sidney Lumet, Franco Zefferrili and Norman Jewison, for which he claimed was his most satisfying collaboration. Morris' august resume included 60 films and some innovations that revolutionized his art. For a more detailed account of his life and career, click on the NY Times link below.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/27/arts/oswald-morris-artful-cinematographer-is-dead-at-98.html?rref=obituaries&_r=0
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/27/arts/oswald-morris-artful-cinematographer-is-dead-at-98.html?rref=obituaries&_r=0
Wednesday, March 26, 2014
In what famous film from the 1950s' will one hear the following line:
"I'd hate to take a bite out of you; you're a cookie full of arsenic."
Post your answer in the comment field. Every correct answer will receive my undying love and admiration; whatever that's worth.
What, no takers?? Okay, the answer was--The Sweet Smell of Success (1957). Burt Lancaster delivers the famous line to Tony Curtis.
Post your answer in the comment field. Every correct answer will receive my undying love and admiration; whatever that's worth.
What, no takers?? Okay, the answer was--The Sweet Smell of Success (1957). Burt Lancaster delivers the famous line to Tony Curtis.
Tuesday, March 25, 2014
The Face of Love
**Spoiler Alert**
Dir. Arie Posin. Starring: Annette Bening, Ed Harris and Robin Williams
A film that could unfortunately vanish from American screens before it can be appreciated is Arie Posin's The Face of Love, for which he also shares a writing credit.
Annette Bening plays Nikki, the wife of an architect, played by Ed Harris. A happy marriage is disrupted by the untimely death of her husband in a drowning accident during a vacation in Mexico. The story picks up 5 years later as Nikki, with the help of a grieving widower played by Robin Williams, recovers from her loss.
Wandering through an outdoor market one day, Nikki sees a man who is a splitting image of her deceased husband (also played by Ed Harris). Entranced, she strikes up a conversation and after learning that he is an artist and an instructor at a local college, she convinces him to teach her privately. In doing so, her fascination and passion for her former husband is aroused and transferred to her new lover; which becomes increasingly problematic for all parties concerned.
Refusing to divulge to Tom his uncanny resemblance to her former husband Garrett, he is perplexed by her odd behaviour toward him as her conscience gets the better of her at moments.
Another wrinkle in her newfound romance is the problem of introducing Tom to her daughter, who has just asked her mother to allow her to return home after a failed romance. Like her daughter, Nikki's neighbor and partner in shared grief, Roger (Robin Williams) is also denied contact with Tom. If Nikki's deception isn't trouble enough, her life is further complicated by Roger declaration of love for her.
What follows is a slow unravelling of the knotty plot, which predictably leads to bewilderment, shock and dismay by all involved.
Posin's direction plays a key role in the story. Instead of broad, medium shots we might see on television, Posin employs tight close-ups of Bening's and Harris' faces to capture inner turmoil and latent, emotional wounds. Every line and facial groove in the actor's faces comes into sharp relief; an astonishing and admirable lack of vanity often seen in French cinema but seldom so on American movie screens. And those faces, which reveal so much loss and pain, propel the story; a risky move by Posin in this age of exaggerated emoting (remember August: Osage County?) and many Hollywood actors insistence on looking radiant and ravishing in every frame.
Bening and Harris' performances make The Face of Love a small wonder and it troubles me that such an understated and unassuming film might be lost in the Divergent and 300: Rise of an Empire current.
The Face of Love has its missteps; I'm not sure how I feel about the ending, which left me feeling a little dissatisfied, but even that doesn't diminish what comes before.
Dir. Arie Posin. Starring: Annette Bening, Ed Harris and Robin Williams
A film that could unfortunately vanish from American screens before it can be appreciated is Arie Posin's The Face of Love, for which he also shares a writing credit.
Annette Bening plays Nikki, the wife of an architect, played by Ed Harris. A happy marriage is disrupted by the untimely death of her husband in a drowning accident during a vacation in Mexico. The story picks up 5 years later as Nikki, with the help of a grieving widower played by Robin Williams, recovers from her loss.
Wandering through an outdoor market one day, Nikki sees a man who is a splitting image of her deceased husband (also played by Ed Harris). Entranced, she strikes up a conversation and after learning that he is an artist and an instructor at a local college, she convinces him to teach her privately. In doing so, her fascination and passion for her former husband is aroused and transferred to her new lover; which becomes increasingly problematic for all parties concerned.
Refusing to divulge to Tom his uncanny resemblance to her former husband Garrett, he is perplexed by her odd behaviour toward him as her conscience gets the better of her at moments.
Another wrinkle in her newfound romance is the problem of introducing Tom to her daughter, who has just asked her mother to allow her to return home after a failed romance. Like her daughter, Nikki's neighbor and partner in shared grief, Roger (Robin Williams) is also denied contact with Tom. If Nikki's deception isn't trouble enough, her life is further complicated by Roger declaration of love for her.
What follows is a slow unravelling of the knotty plot, which predictably leads to bewilderment, shock and dismay by all involved.
Posin's direction plays a key role in the story. Instead of broad, medium shots we might see on television, Posin employs tight close-ups of Bening's and Harris' faces to capture inner turmoil and latent, emotional wounds. Every line and facial groove in the actor's faces comes into sharp relief; an astonishing and admirable lack of vanity often seen in French cinema but seldom so on American movie screens. And those faces, which reveal so much loss and pain, propel the story; a risky move by Posin in this age of exaggerated emoting (remember August: Osage County?) and many Hollywood actors insistence on looking radiant and ravishing in every frame.
Bening and Harris' performances make The Face of Love a small wonder and it troubles me that such an understated and unassuming film might be lost in the Divergent and 300: Rise of an Empire current.
The Face of Love has its missteps; I'm not sure how I feel about the ending, which left me feeling a little dissatisfied, but even that doesn't diminish what comes before.
Monday, March 24, 2014
Divergent
**Spoiler Alert** Dir. Neil Burger. Starring: Shailene Woodley, Kate Winslet and Ashley Judd.
Given the phenomenal box-office spoils of the Hunger Games films, Hollywood can't be blamed for attempts at reproducing the same success with an alternate franchise featuring a young, strong, female lead. What can't be countenanced is a doppleganger and a sometimes corny one at that. Divergent, based on the novel by Veronica Roth, tells the story of a future where one's role in society is determined by a specific virtue: Abnegation, Amity, Candor, Dauntless, and Erudite.
A young woman named Beatrice Prior, played by the lovely and burgeoning talent Shailene Woodley, belongs to a Abnegation family but may not be an Abnegate. A preliminary test to determine her virtue is inconclusive and therefore dangerous; a fact kept under wraps by a sympathetic woman conducting the test. Those who belong to none of the virtues are deemed social outcasts and thus Divergents
A more formal test performed before the various factions in a large hall reveals Beatrice to be a Dauntless; a caste of warriors assigned to protect the citizens from what menaces beyond the immense barrier surrounding the city.
Forced to leave her family, Beatrice, self-christened as Tris, undergoes the dangerous and rigorous Dauntless training with other recruits while trying to maintain her secret. The punishment for failing the spartan tests and games is a dismissal from the faction, and an ignoble, social reassignment to those living in the streets and who belong to no faction.
In the course of the story, a faction lead by an Erudite (Kate Winslet) will seize power by exploiting the Dauntless using mind control and in doing so, will attempt to kill all citizens deemed subversives, including all Abnegates; to which Tris' family belongs. One will already guess at this point that Tris plays a key role in the resistance, which leads eventually to the destruction of the Erudites behind the coup (sorry again for spoiling the story) and lays the groundwork for another installment, for we know not what lurks beyond the city defenses
After reading reviews savaging the movie, I expected little and was rewarded accordingly but Divergent isn't all bad, it just seems like a glossy knock-off coming too soon on the heels of Hunger Games 2 to establish its own identity.
Shailene Woodley is a credible action character and like her roles in The Spectacular Now and The Descendants, she brings a quirky charm to a character that is essentially Katniss Everdeen reconfigured and repurposed. Identical, self-empowering trials and struggles Katniss endured greet Tris at every corner.
I would have liked to see more of Kate Winslet, who is given only an outline of a character to work with while Ashley Judd is allowed more color and screentime to acquit herself well.
It doesn't take much brain power to plot the story once the characters are established. Because it is all predictable, little tension or suspense follows. It isn't dull but it's hard to wave away Hunger Games, which buzzes around one's head like a pesky fly during the movie. And like Hunger Games it's difficult to overcome the risible sci-fi-lite setting that would make the average science fiction fan cringe. And what of the allegory, which the film seems to wear on its sleeve; of erudite attempting to vanquish abnegation? Or the none-too-subtle message about the perils of conformity? Is it all silly or profound?
Whether a sequel or a trilogy can help the series forge its own identity has yet to be determined but in the meantime, I'm sure Hollywood will flood the mutliplexes with more Hunger Games clones, which again, given that movie's stellar success, isn't exactly unjustified. Monday morning follow-up: According to the New York Times, Divergent did exceptional box office over the weekend, which will now justify--in Hollywood anyway--a franchise.
Given the phenomenal box-office spoils of the Hunger Games films, Hollywood can't be blamed for attempts at reproducing the same success with an alternate franchise featuring a young, strong, female lead. What can't be countenanced is a doppleganger and a sometimes corny one at that. Divergent, based on the novel by Veronica Roth, tells the story of a future where one's role in society is determined by a specific virtue: Abnegation, Amity, Candor, Dauntless, and Erudite.
A young woman named Beatrice Prior, played by the lovely and burgeoning talent Shailene Woodley, belongs to a Abnegation family but may not be an Abnegate. A preliminary test to determine her virtue is inconclusive and therefore dangerous; a fact kept under wraps by a sympathetic woman conducting the test. Those who belong to none of the virtues are deemed social outcasts and thus Divergents
A more formal test performed before the various factions in a large hall reveals Beatrice to be a Dauntless; a caste of warriors assigned to protect the citizens from what menaces beyond the immense barrier surrounding the city.
Forced to leave her family, Beatrice, self-christened as Tris, undergoes the dangerous and rigorous Dauntless training with other recruits while trying to maintain her secret. The punishment for failing the spartan tests and games is a dismissal from the faction, and an ignoble, social reassignment to those living in the streets and who belong to no faction.
In the course of the story, a faction lead by an Erudite (Kate Winslet) will seize power by exploiting the Dauntless using mind control and in doing so, will attempt to kill all citizens deemed subversives, including all Abnegates; to which Tris' family belongs. One will already guess at this point that Tris plays a key role in the resistance, which leads eventually to the destruction of the Erudites behind the coup (sorry again for spoiling the story) and lays the groundwork for another installment, for we know not what lurks beyond the city defenses
After reading reviews savaging the movie, I expected little and was rewarded accordingly but Divergent isn't all bad, it just seems like a glossy knock-off coming too soon on the heels of Hunger Games 2 to establish its own identity.
Shailene Woodley is a credible action character and like her roles in The Spectacular Now and The Descendants, she brings a quirky charm to a character that is essentially Katniss Everdeen reconfigured and repurposed. Identical, self-empowering trials and struggles Katniss endured greet Tris at every corner.
I would have liked to see more of Kate Winslet, who is given only an outline of a character to work with while Ashley Judd is allowed more color and screentime to acquit herself well.
It doesn't take much brain power to plot the story once the characters are established. Because it is all predictable, little tension or suspense follows. It isn't dull but it's hard to wave away Hunger Games, which buzzes around one's head like a pesky fly during the movie. And like Hunger Games it's difficult to overcome the risible sci-fi-lite setting that would make the average science fiction fan cringe. And what of the allegory, which the film seems to wear on its sleeve; of erudite attempting to vanquish abnegation? Or the none-too-subtle message about the perils of conformity? Is it all silly or profound?
Whether a sequel or a trilogy can help the series forge its own identity has yet to be determined but in the meantime, I'm sure Hollywood will flood the mutliplexes with more Hunger Games clones, which again, given that movie's stellar success, isn't exactly unjustified. Monday morning follow-up: According to the New York Times, Divergent did exceptional box office over the weekend, which will now justify--in Hollywood anyway--a franchise.
Thursday, March 20, 2014
Flick Down Under: Wake in Fright (1971)
Dir. Ted Kotcheff. Starring: Donald Pleasence and Gary Bond
I had the good fortune to be present at a recent screening of a forgotten gem by Canadian director Ted Kotcheff; Wake in Fright.
Kotcheff's most ambitious film, Wake in Fright tells the story of a teacher assigned to a remote, Australian outback town--town defined here as schoolhouse, bar, boarding establishment and railroad platform--who hopes to leave his desolate place of work and residence for the more civilized environs of Sydney.
Very few opening shots establishing setting are as bleak and isolating as Kotcheff's 360 degree long-shot pan of the outback. We see the aforementioned schoolhouse and bar with train tracks bisecting the "town." The hellish waste of searing heat and blanketing dust is a crucial backdrop to the drama that ominously unfolds before us.
The teacher, John Grant, played with wonderful, existential angst by British actor Gary Bond, dismisses his class for the Christmas holidays. He then hurries to the decaying and dilapidated boarding place he inhabits to catch the next train. Grant can't disguise his disgust and impatience with his backwater posting, which he explains later to be part of a bureaucratic bonding; a job assignment he feels imprisons him.
The train stops in a mining town--Bundanyabba--known affectionately to the inhabitants as "The Yabba." Looking for a drink in a crowded bar, he is approached by a friendly police officer who coerces him into several beers--all of which the officer downs in one gulp; forcing Grant to do the same. More drinks are foisted upon him until he rebuffs the officer's call for more. The officer directs him to a restaurant, where he is also introduced to a local gambling diversion where a room full of men bet on a heads or tails game. After witnessing a game or two, he sits down to enjoy a steak where he meets an odd man named Doc Tydon, played with rogueish mischief by Donald Pleasence. Grant behaves disdainfully; scoffing at the Doc's attempt to be amiable.
After an evening of drunkenness, gambling (Grant loses all his money) and hell-raising, he finds himself in the home of Doc Tydon the next day; hungover, sweaty and eager to resume his Sydney-agenda.
Grant's descent into drunkeness, mayhem and despair continues--Doc Tydon a willing enabler. He finally manages an escape from the town via hitch-hiking until, in a comic turn, he finds himself right back where he started--The Yabba!
His ruin nearly complete; filthy, without money, his trip aborted, Grant attempts to first lash out at Doc Tydon for his predicament but unable to find him at his place of residence, he attempts suicide, which fails. The act lands him in the hospital and back in the company of Doc Tydon.
Discharged from the hospital, the Doc helps Grant to the train station, which brings the teacher back to the deserty town from where he--and the film--started. The boarding house proprietor eyes Grant with a I-knew-you'd-be-back smirk; knowing the teacher wouldn't escape the place he most despises.
I've never seen alcohol consumed as compulsively and prodigiously as the characters in Waking Fright. It acts as catalyst for Grant's fall from the haughty disdain he holds for the people and his decline in character. The beer consumed in meaningless, seemingly endless, bacchanalian revelry in The Yabba is a false nepenthe; a truth both men recognize but only Grant resists. We learn Doc Tydon's alcoholism prevented him from practicing in the city but his mania for alcohol is more than welcome in The Yabba, with its accomodating, excessive approach to drinking. Unable and unwilling to free himself from the town, Doc Tydon embraces its hyper-macho culture of drinking, hunting and brawling while Grant remains a reluctant participant.
I'm not sure what to make of the ending; are we to believe Grant has come to terms with the local culture and landscape; a weary resignation or does he merely embrace his damnation; a sentence to a perdition the white man has visited upon himself in colonization and occupation? One could argue for both.
Like Nicolas Roeg's Walkabout, released the same year, the outback's unforgiving, indifferent starkness is a dramatic setting where modern man is at hysterical odds with a world he inhabits. And like Roeg's film, Wake in Fright's setting is a ominous presence, one with which the characters form an uneasy truce.
Kotcheff's film helped bring Australian cinema into the international fold and it remains a singular work. I'm proud to say I was able to see it on the big screen, where its sweeping vistas can be fully appreciated.
I had the good fortune to be present at a recent screening of a forgotten gem by Canadian director Ted Kotcheff; Wake in Fright.
Kotcheff's most ambitious film, Wake in Fright tells the story of a teacher assigned to a remote, Australian outback town--town defined here as schoolhouse, bar, boarding establishment and railroad platform--who hopes to leave his desolate place of work and residence for the more civilized environs of Sydney.
Very few opening shots establishing setting are as bleak and isolating as Kotcheff's 360 degree long-shot pan of the outback. We see the aforementioned schoolhouse and bar with train tracks bisecting the "town." The hellish waste of searing heat and blanketing dust is a crucial backdrop to the drama that ominously unfolds before us.
The teacher, John Grant, played with wonderful, existential angst by British actor Gary Bond, dismisses his class for the Christmas holidays. He then hurries to the decaying and dilapidated boarding place he inhabits to catch the next train. Grant can't disguise his disgust and impatience with his backwater posting, which he explains later to be part of a bureaucratic bonding; a job assignment he feels imprisons him.
The train stops in a mining town--Bundanyabba--known affectionately to the inhabitants as "The Yabba." Looking for a drink in a crowded bar, he is approached by a friendly police officer who coerces him into several beers--all of which the officer downs in one gulp; forcing Grant to do the same. More drinks are foisted upon him until he rebuffs the officer's call for more. The officer directs him to a restaurant, where he is also introduced to a local gambling diversion where a room full of men bet on a heads or tails game. After witnessing a game or two, he sits down to enjoy a steak where he meets an odd man named Doc Tydon, played with rogueish mischief by Donald Pleasence. Grant behaves disdainfully; scoffing at the Doc's attempt to be amiable.
After an evening of drunkenness, gambling (Grant loses all his money) and hell-raising, he finds himself in the home of Doc Tydon the next day; hungover, sweaty and eager to resume his Sydney-agenda.
Grant's descent into drunkeness, mayhem and despair continues--Doc Tydon a willing enabler. He finally manages an escape from the town via hitch-hiking until, in a comic turn, he finds himself right back where he started--The Yabba!
His ruin nearly complete; filthy, without money, his trip aborted, Grant attempts to first lash out at Doc Tydon for his predicament but unable to find him at his place of residence, he attempts suicide, which fails. The act lands him in the hospital and back in the company of Doc Tydon.
Discharged from the hospital, the Doc helps Grant to the train station, which brings the teacher back to the deserty town from where he--and the film--started. The boarding house proprietor eyes Grant with a I-knew-you'd-be-back smirk; knowing the teacher wouldn't escape the place he most despises.
I've never seen alcohol consumed as compulsively and prodigiously as the characters in Waking Fright. It acts as catalyst for Grant's fall from the haughty disdain he holds for the people and his decline in character. The beer consumed in meaningless, seemingly endless, bacchanalian revelry in The Yabba is a false nepenthe; a truth both men recognize but only Grant resists. We learn Doc Tydon's alcoholism prevented him from practicing in the city but his mania for alcohol is more than welcome in The Yabba, with its accomodating, excessive approach to drinking. Unable and unwilling to free himself from the town, Doc Tydon embraces its hyper-macho culture of drinking, hunting and brawling while Grant remains a reluctant participant.
I'm not sure what to make of the ending; are we to believe Grant has come to terms with the local culture and landscape; a weary resignation or does he merely embrace his damnation; a sentence to a perdition the white man has visited upon himself in colonization and occupation? One could argue for both.
Like Nicolas Roeg's Walkabout, released the same year, the outback's unforgiving, indifferent starkness is a dramatic setting where modern man is at hysterical odds with a world he inhabits. And like Roeg's film, Wake in Fright's setting is a ominous presence, one with which the characters form an uneasy truce.
Kotcheff's film helped bring Australian cinema into the international fold and it remains a singular work. I'm proud to say I was able to see it on the big screen, where its sweeping vistas can be fully appreciated.
Monday, March 17, 2014
Need For Speed
Dir. Scott Waugh. Starring: Aaron Paul and Imogen Poots.
I would include a spoiler alert here but will that be necessary for anyone having seen a preview to this hokum? Doesn't the trailer tell it all? And isn't this movie justly dismissed as a Fast and Furious rip-off? Answers: No. Yes. Yes.
Is this really what Aaron Paul (fresh from Breaking Bad), intended as a follow-up to the hit TV series in which he played a critical role? Maybe the money was too obscene to pass up or maybe he wanted to clear his acting palate with something bland and derivative before he moves up and away from Need for Speed.
Here is the synopsis; culled from the IMDB site because I'm too lazy at the moment to bother summing up this offal:
Make no mistake; the Fast and Furious series specializes in over-the-top, absurd and impossible action scenes too but the difference between that franchise and this franchise-hope-to-be-but-mercifully-won't is that the former makes it all entertaining and fun and stylish while the latter is just loud and fast and uninspired. What is particularly interesting about the F and F franchise--now heading into a seventh incarnation--is that it leaves the audience feeling the series has only just begun and a lot more won't be unwelcome.
Aaron Paul does his best in the lead and is a convincing car-stud but stock characters and a chick side-kick (Imogen Poots) with a British accent who shares not a modicum of chemistry with the leading man don't help. Who can blame them? It's almost as if the story and action were dreamed up by studio executives standing around a Coke machine in a company lounge. You know you're in a bad action movie when the scenes crafted to generate the most thrills actually lull a movie-goer to heavy slumber, which is what happened to me. Upon waking and seeing the action on screen, I said to myself "Oh, the movie is still playing." It's also alarming when upon being roused from a delightful snooze one finds one hasn't lost a thread in the storyline.
The plot always seemed vague to me while watching; the quest seemed too silly to be worth remembering or taken seriously. When it ended I was relieved to be leaving the theater; my fatigue not the product of a thrilling adventure but of unmitigated boredom. If I had only not bothered to wake up in the middle of the movie, I might have slept until the final credits but that would have been doing what the filmmakers intended.
I would include a spoiler alert here but will that be necessary for anyone having seen a preview to this hokum? Doesn't the trailer tell it all? And isn't this movie justly dismissed as a Fast and Furious rip-off? Answers: No. Yes. Yes.
Is this really what Aaron Paul (fresh from Breaking Bad), intended as a follow-up to the hit TV series in which he played a critical role? Maybe the money was too obscene to pass up or maybe he wanted to clear his acting palate with something bland and derivative before he moves up and away from Need for Speed.
Here is the synopsis; culled from the IMDB site because I'm too lazy at the moment to bother summing up this offal:
Hobbs has Dom and Brian reassemble their crew in order to take down a mastermind who commands an organization of mercenary drivers across 12 countries. Payment? Full pardons for them all.Did you get that? The movie is really one long chase scene with heaps of preposterousness thrown in to distract us from the dreary fact that this has all been done--and much better I might add--in the Fast and Furious series.
Make no mistake; the Fast and Furious series specializes in over-the-top, absurd and impossible action scenes too but the difference between that franchise and this franchise-hope-to-be-but-mercifully-won't is that the former makes it all entertaining and fun and stylish while the latter is just loud and fast and uninspired. What is particularly interesting about the F and F franchise--now heading into a seventh incarnation--is that it leaves the audience feeling the series has only just begun and a lot more won't be unwelcome.
Aaron Paul does his best in the lead and is a convincing car-stud but stock characters and a chick side-kick (Imogen Poots) with a British accent who shares not a modicum of chemistry with the leading man don't help. Who can blame them? It's almost as if the story and action were dreamed up by studio executives standing around a Coke machine in a company lounge. You know you're in a bad action movie when the scenes crafted to generate the most thrills actually lull a movie-goer to heavy slumber, which is what happened to me. Upon waking and seeing the action on screen, I said to myself "Oh, the movie is still playing." It's also alarming when upon being roused from a delightful snooze one finds one hasn't lost a thread in the storyline.
The plot always seemed vague to me while watching; the quest seemed too silly to be worth remembering or taken seriously. When it ended I was relieved to be leaving the theater; my fatigue not the product of a thrilling adventure but of unmitigated boredom. If I had only not bothered to wake up in the middle of the movie, I might have slept until the final credits but that would have been doing what the filmmakers intended.
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