The Tournament (18) **** Starring: Robert Carlyle, Kelly Hu, Ving Rhames. Dir: Scott Mann.
Like Battle Royale meets Rat Race, The Tournament combines an all out brawl between the worlds top assasins, and a group of sadistic gamblers into a film encompassing 24 hours, 30 assassins, one priest, and a $10m prize fund.
Following two converging stories of Father MacAvoy (Carlyle), an innocent priest who ends up an unwitting contestant in the deadly game, and Joshua Harlow (Rhames), the winner of the last Tournament 7 years ago, out on a vendetta to hunt down and slaughter the hitman who killed his wife.
Everyone likes a good gory film with lots of shooting and explosions, some people like that to extremes like Saw, and films that just generally fetishise blood, gore and torture. This is not one of those films. This has an air of Tarantino films including Kill Bill and Inglorious, is made with the same level of class, and comprises similar themes and jokes. Revenge, a rather amusing sequence involving a car being catapulted past a speed camera during the motorway chase scene, with the tag-line "That guy's got a ticket!", and an underlining web of trickery.
Other features of the film I enjoyed are the inclusion of a nice sadistic American assassin - everyone loves a sadist - Slade (Ian Somerhalder), and the spectacular freerunning skills of Sébastien Foucan (who some of you may know as the man who founded the art) as French hitman Bogart, who is the one who cunningly enlists MacAvoy into the game.
Overall, The Tournament is a thoroughly enjoyable film, moving us back from the torture filled mind numbing shock fest of the Saw franchise, and reintroducing us to gore with a deeper entertainment value.
Monday, 28 March 2011
Sunday, 13 March 2011
Battle: LA (12A) ****
Battle: LA (12A) **** Starring: Aaron Eckhart, Michelle Rodriguez, Ramon Rodriguez, Ne-Yo. Dir: Johnathon Liebesman
With alien invasion, action fuelled epic Battle: LA, you definitely get a lot of bang for your buck.
The film primarily follows Staff Sergeant Nantz (Eckhart), a soldier stationed outside LA when aliens, under the guise of a meteor shower, begin to attack earth. He is placed second in command of a unit tasked with clearing a zone that is to be bombed of civilians, under 2nd Lieutenant Martinez (R Rodriguez).
Along the way, the squads' disapproval of Nantz grows, as rumours about an accident in his last tour spread, fuelling the anger of Corporal Kevin Harris (Ne-Yo).
The aliens soon prove themselves to be tough foes, killing most of the unit with some pretty cool weapons which don't just leave holes in people and blow stuff up, they burn the soldiers' armour and flsesh as well. If that wasn't enough, the aliens soon prove extremely tough to kill, one of which having most of a machine gun magazine emptied into it and still surviving, before the sodliers eventually blow it up with a grenade.
After walking straight into an ambush, the remainder of the unit meets Sergeant Elena Santos (M Rodriguez), who is out to find the aliens' command centre.
Once all of the main characters have been established, the action really kicks off, with barely a break between aliens and humans exchanging bullets and respectively blowing all sorts of vehicles and buildings up.
The visual effects are brilliant, showing how well CG has developed since the nearest comparable movie of this type, 1997's Independence Day.
There are more parallels to Independence Day to be made, including very similar endings, and a cliche fuelled morale boosting speech, which gives the film an overall feeling that it is a giant propoganda campaign saying how great the American military is. The only part of the film which lets it down, it's almost as though the script-writer was either deliberately over the top with the characters dialogue, or had been put up to it by some top brass.
Despite the sometimes painful cliches, the film proves to be very entertaining, with action, and even a point which was so blatently obvious that something was going to happen, that the shock manages to get you without you intending it to.
With alien invasion, action fuelled epic Battle: LA, you definitely get a lot of bang for your buck.
The film primarily follows Staff Sergeant Nantz (Eckhart), a soldier stationed outside LA when aliens, under the guise of a meteor shower, begin to attack earth. He is placed second in command of a unit tasked with clearing a zone that is to be bombed of civilians, under 2nd Lieutenant Martinez (R Rodriguez).
Along the way, the squads' disapproval of Nantz grows, as rumours about an accident in his last tour spread, fuelling the anger of Corporal Kevin Harris (Ne-Yo).
The aliens soon prove themselves to be tough foes, killing most of the unit with some pretty cool weapons which don't just leave holes in people and blow stuff up, they burn the soldiers' armour and flsesh as well. If that wasn't enough, the aliens soon prove extremely tough to kill, one of which having most of a machine gun magazine emptied into it and still surviving, before the sodliers eventually blow it up with a grenade.
After walking straight into an ambush, the remainder of the unit meets Sergeant Elena Santos (M Rodriguez), who is out to find the aliens' command centre.
Once all of the main characters have been established, the action really kicks off, with barely a break between aliens and humans exchanging bullets and respectively blowing all sorts of vehicles and buildings up.
The visual effects are brilliant, showing how well CG has developed since the nearest comparable movie of this type, 1997's Independence Day.
There are more parallels to Independence Day to be made, including very similar endings, and a cliche fuelled morale boosting speech, which gives the film an overall feeling that it is a giant propoganda campaign saying how great the American military is. The only part of the film which lets it down, it's almost as though the script-writer was either deliberately over the top with the characters dialogue, or had been put up to it by some top brass.
Despite the sometimes painful cliches, the film proves to be very entertaining, with action, and even a point which was so blatently obvious that something was going to happen, that the shock manages to get you without you intending it to.
Wednesday, 2 March 2011
Drive Angry 3D (18) *
Drive Angry 3D (18) * Starring Nicholas Cage, Amber Heard, William Fichtner. Dir Patrick Lussier.
As you watch Drive Angry 3D, you can almost see the thought processes of the production team saying "lets see how much swearing, blood and tits we can get into a film."
The film follows Milton (Cage), an escapee from hell on a vendetta against satanic cultist Jonah King (Billy Burke) who killed his daughter and is about to sacrifice his granddaughter in an attempt to bring hell to earth. Along the way, he is tracked by the mysterious Accountant (Fichtner) who wants to bring Milton back to hell, and meets Piper (Head), whose car he uses to chase down King.
Whilst the special effects are good, playing on the whole 3D coming-out-of-the-screen like is shown in trailers on TV, where artifacts take a swipe at the cinema audience, it doesn't make up for the terrible screen-play, terrible hyperbole, and terrible acting from Cage.
Fichtner stands out against the rest of the cast as the cool and collected Accountant, proving himself to be the better of the two 'big' names in the film, delivering some brilliant quips, such as telling people he meets when their time is up.
I wouldn't readily recommend this film to anyone, a fact which could be reinforced by the fact that, including myself, there were only five people in the cinema when I went to see it. Considering the hype and the amount of trailers seen for the film, it doesn't live up to what it promises, and is one of the few films where I prefered the trailers shown before the feature started.
As you watch Drive Angry 3D, you can almost see the thought processes of the production team saying "lets see how much swearing, blood and tits we can get into a film."
The film follows Milton (Cage), an escapee from hell on a vendetta against satanic cultist Jonah King (Billy Burke) who killed his daughter and is about to sacrifice his granddaughter in an attempt to bring hell to earth. Along the way, he is tracked by the mysterious Accountant (Fichtner) who wants to bring Milton back to hell, and meets Piper (Head), whose car he uses to chase down King.
Whilst the special effects are good, playing on the whole 3D coming-out-of-the-screen like is shown in trailers on TV, where artifacts take a swipe at the cinema audience, it doesn't make up for the terrible screen-play, terrible hyperbole, and terrible acting from Cage.
Fichtner stands out against the rest of the cast as the cool and collected Accountant, proving himself to be the better of the two 'big' names in the film, delivering some brilliant quips, such as telling people he meets when their time is up.
I wouldn't readily recommend this film to anyone, a fact which could be reinforced by the fact that, including myself, there were only five people in the cinema when I went to see it. Considering the hype and the amount of trailers seen for the film, it doesn't live up to what it promises, and is one of the few films where I prefered the trailers shown before the feature started.
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