kellym40 film review

Action hails from new heights in ‘Skyscraper’

Rating 2.5/5

Although I found some faults with this film, it was a somewhat enjoyable experience (maybe because it was released on my birthday). More probable is that it had just enough to keep me engaged without it meandering off in many different storylines and subplots.

As one reviewer put it, it’s something of a combination of Die Hard and The Towering Inferno. Which means, it has just enough mindless action to keep an audience entertained for 102 minutes, but not much else to make you go “Wow, that was amazing.” 

Rawson Marshall Thurber wrote and directed this particular piece of movie cinema with the idea of making a summer blockbuster with a big name actor attached to it. The film does provide a spectacle and sets forth an array of action sequences. However, while it does an adequate job of creating the thrilling action scenes, it doesn’t appear to have a good grasp on setting up the major plot. Unless I just missed something along the way. I didn’t fully get the major story point until maybe half way through the film. And of course once I got it, I put the pieces together and I was back in the film. As I said earlier, I was engulfed in the film. It was that initial set up, which should have been early in the second act, that would have made it just a little more clear of why the bad guys were trying to do what they are doing.

First, before going any further, the film starts off introducing the hero Will Sawyer (Dwayne Johnson) as a highly trained Marine and FBI agent who’s in charge of a hostage negotiation that doesn’t go as planned. The suspect sets off a bomb, killing some agents and wounding others. This is the inciting incident that sets the movie in motion. He is rushed to the hospital and meets his future wife Sarah (Neve Campbell) the doctor about to operate on him. Flash-forward several years later, we find Will married with two kids. He has lost his left leg below the knee in that earlier incident. Will now serves as a security consultant where his latest job has taken him and his family – McKenna Grace and Noah Cottrell portray his children – to Hong Kong. His job is to analyze the safety of The Pearl – a self-contained city, stretching higher into the sky within the building. It’s the design of billionaire Zhao Long Ji (Chin Han)

Of course, the audience does discover Will is being set up somehow as his former team member, Ben (Pablo Schreiber) who was also injured in the blast from the beginning of the film, receives a text message indicating he is in some way working with the bad guys.

Roland Moller plays Kores Botha, who leads his team of evil henchmen into the bulding with highly flammable chemicals to set the place on fire. Will’s wife and kids were not supposed to be there, but they have returned unexpectedly because they actually live in one of the residential units in a building that is not supposed to open yet? I guess they get to stay there because Will is the security consultant.

That’s of course the moment that Johnson springs into action to save his family. This propels the movie into the second act. In the wildly imaginative, thrilling action sequences that follow, Will uses his military training (and his prosthetic leg) in creative ways in order to get to his family and stop the evildoers.

The film moved along at a decent pace for the 102-minute runtime. The effects were believable, which added to the excitement and thrills. However, they weren’t extraordinary. It did sort of feel like Die Hard in the sense it took place in a tall building as he was trying to get to his family and bring them to safety. Something to note, though, is that Johnson, while a decent action star, didn’t quite seem to fit here. Something just felt out of place with his role. That being said, most of the leading characters (good guys and bad guys) didn’t seem to have much in character development. There wasn’t much there to make you really feel for the characters.

In all, the film did have action and effects and it kept me in just enough to be entertained for a little while, but not enough to make it remarkable.

kellym40 film review

Johnson flexes some muscle in ‘Hercules’ and fails to make a punch

Rating 2/5

There could be much to say about director Brett Ratner’s 2014 Hercules, but I don’t think there really is. I suppose, though, if you enjoy some action, fighting, a little humor, campy dialogue, and Dwayne Johnson flexing a little muscle while pushing over a large statue, then this might be for you. It’s like if you like that sort of thing, that’s the sort of thing you like. Writers Ryan Condal and Evan Spiliotopoulos are credited for the script that boasted 98 minutes of the aforementioned campy dialogue (although not as campy as most of the Kevin Sorbo television series of the ‘90’s) and seemingly bland story.

Earlier in the same year, audiences were treated to The Legend of Hercules starring Kellan Lutz and directed by Renny Harlin. In that film, (which I have not seen yet, but probably will appear in a future post) a story surfaces, which supposedly is grounded more in the traditional Greek mythology of Hercules’ origin. Ratner’s version portrayed Hercules as sort of a mercenary for hire, which is apparently based on another story of the famed demigod, leading a small rag-tag team of “misfits” on quests to earn gold. It was like if the A-Team was set in the fantastical realm of Greek mythology. If you need to overthrow a king, and if no one else can help, and if you can find him, maybe you can hire Hercules.

The performances were nothing extraordinary here but basically cookie-cutter two-dimensional characters with no real distinguishable characteristics. They really had nothing that allowed me to have an interest to what happened to them. The film also starred Ian McShane, John Hurt, Rufus Sewell, Aksel Hennie, Ingrid Berdal, Reece Ritchie, Joseph Fiennes, Tobias Santelmann, and Rebecca Ferguson, and of course many others; but again there was nothing that made me feel for the characters or care about their activities and story arcs.

I will admit, though, some of the fight scenes and big battle scenes were decently choreographed and done to an almost precision point that served the film well for what it was. I just particularly didn’t care for the type of film it appeared to be. However, even with its faults, the film was somewhat enjoyable on some level. There was some entertainment in the characters but it didn’t have enough to sustain my interest through the duration of the film. Other films seem to do it better with a more engaging story and characters even though there might not necessarily be a lot of action in every scene with huge explosions and fights.

There are those that may find this particular kind of film more enjoyable. That’s not to say it wasn’t watchable, because it was. It’s just not something I would necessarily see again if I didn’t have to. It might serve a purpose to have something playing in the background while performing another activity or something to watch for some simple entertainment on a lazy afternoon.

 

 

kellym40 film review

‘Central Intelligence’ fails to be intelligent

Rating 2/5

In mid-June, the film Central Intelligence hit theaters. The movie starred a couple of big names with Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson and Kevin Hart to lead the cast into what looked like a typical action comedy. Rawson Marshall Thurber, whose most recent adventures in film directing were Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story and We’re the Millers (among some television credits), helmed the director’s chair. I’ve seen Dodgeball. That movie seemed like another typical Ben Stiller/Vince Vaughn silly comedy that appeared to work a little better than this film.

They say in theater (stage plays), comedy is the hardest genre to direct and produce (I should know because I’ve performed in several or been a part of in some capacity through college and such). Because of the sheer fact of the timing of jokes and dialogue and pacing, comedy is difficult. So if it is done right, then the laughs and audience should enjoy it. If the pacing or timing is off, then the show doesn’t quite work as well. Somehow with this film, Central Intelligence didn’t seem to know quite what kind of movie it was supposed to be and therefore didn’t work as well as it could have. It had the makings of an action-drama, but weaved comedy, a touching “love” story, and an overlaying message about bullying in the script, which was penned by Ike Barinholtz and David Stassen. Just as we were getting into the second act (the main thrust of the film) I wasn’t sure what to think about it. And by the end of the film, I was (lack of a better word) confused. I wasn’t sure those elements worked together well for this film. While the film did have moments of touching friendship, laughter and action, it just didn’t work well enough to keep up with the overall story.

The performances by Hart and Johnson were nothing more than ordinary. At times, I felt Johnson’s character just wasn’t sure how to act and it seemed the comedy was a little forced at times (maybe much of the time), which made me feel unsure and even uneasy about the character. Hart’s character was a little more believable, but it still seemed somewhat under par. Amy Ryan, Danielle Nicolet, Aaron Paul, and a couple of other big names, Jason Bateman and Melissa McCarthy, lend their talents in cameos. Bateman’s character had a little more screen time than what I would call a cameo, but yet that still didn’t seem to redeem the film. All of the performances appeared to be nothing special here.

The premise, at first, seemed promising. And the overall story was something seemingly “fresh” in buddy action-comedy, but apparent flaws with the script and direction stalled the film from being better than it could have been. The film is rated PG-13 and comes in at about 1 hours and 47 minutes.