Musings

The Expendables (2010) – AMK Hub; last Saturday morning. Back in the late 80’s, the three ‘big’ action-film stars that were churning out box office hits were Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sylvester Stallone, and Bruce Willis. There was frequent talk about attempts to get these three – or heck, even just two of them – into the same film. Sort of like a made in heaven pairing along the lines of Al Pacino and Robert De Niro.

Time has long gone and past. Arnold’s now a Governor, Willis never lost steam, and Stallone was low-key for a while with just a couple of personal projects running before coming back to the forefront with new films wrapping up two key characters he was most closely identified with: Rocky and Rambo.

So, hats off to Stallone for pulling it altogether for this new film that sees the three of them together and as a tidy bonus also starring more recent action-film actors. He’s assembled quite a cast for his new film that he directed, wrote and starred in – and the list of actors include the threesome, former Olympic swimmer turned actor Jason Statham from the Transporter series, Jet Li, and Mickey Rourke. Even Stallone’s old nemesis from Rocky IV, Dolph Lundgren shows up.

The Expendables is the name of a band of mercenaries who take on jobs that the government routinely can’t. Sort of like the A-Team. The lot are led by Ross (Stallone), his knife thrower Christmas (no kidding, and that’s Statham), his vertically challenged but very kungfu expert Yang (Li), and the violent lunatic Jensen (Lundgren). The lot take on a job in a fictitious Latin American drug producing country that’s now taken over by a former CIA operative in cahoots with its banana dictator.

That’s basically the film in a nutshell. There’s no substantive character development, no subtlety, just lots of bullets flying about, mayhem and explosions. The film is quite a throwback to the loud and noisy action films of the 80s with larger than life characters, and film settings that would get panned today for their lack of realism. All explosions in this film seem to be napalm-driven, guns rarely run out of ammunition, and the a good bulk of the faceless bad guys don’t even get screen time to show they get wounded first when they’re shot. Every bullet fired by one of the Expendables is a kill shot in short.

The Expendables and their ridiculous berets.

But hey, it’s a Stallone film and if nothing else, the film isn’t pretentious. The film is enjoyable, if at a superficial level without leaving lasting impressions once you walk out of the theatre.

That said, there are still missed opportunities. The much anticipated scene between the Three Action Film Gods of ‘80s was a bit of a let down. For starters, if you watch carefully, you might notice that the three of them aren’t really seen in the same frame apart from the last bit of it. There’re plenty of camera angle switches as the three talk to each other in antagonist fashion – Arnold and Stallone are the competing and rival mercenary leaders, Willis is the job offerer – but a good part of the scene centers on Stallone and Willis together only. You start wondering if the Arnold was actually filming his scenes separately from the other two.

The information I’m gathering online says that’s untrue – but if so, the film then did not leverage on the presence of the three greats. It would had been a real hoot to see Stallone, Arnold and Willis eyeballing each other in the same scene and in the same frame.

The violence in the film might bother some too. Granted Stallone’s Rambo films have always taken gore right to the acceptable limit when they were each released in their time. If you think about the second, third and fourth Rambo films for instance, the amount of blood splatter and limb explosions and amputations got increasingly ramped.

Bad guy about to get perforated.

In The Expendables though, the film’s has reached a new high level in this regard, and some of it feels gratuitous. Like bad guys getting their hands chopped off, heads chopped off, bodies exploding midriff sort of thing. There’s also a torture scene involving a woman victim that’s a little disturbing to watch too.

It sure gave me mixed feelings. On the one hand, the film is clearly a homage to all the old action films and its highlight is supposed to be the ensemble cast of action actors doing what they are best at. The film has stuff that the audience is supposed to take tongue in cheek. But on the other hand, the very high degree of realistic gore and violence seems to counteract that underlining none-too-serious tone. So, one minute you’ll be chuckling as Christmas mouths off a funny line to Ross, but in the next minute, when some enemy soldiers get blown into pieces in very visceral ways, you might not be smiling anymore. Or maybe that was just me.

Still, Ling liked the film and I thought it was still Ok. The best line in the film? Something about Arnold’s political ambitions. That was a hoot.:)

From Paris with Love (2010) – on rental. Luc Besson, the award winning French film director and producer, is quite a prolific filmmaker. In the last 5 years alone, he’s been credited in an astonishing 18 films already. A lot of his output belong to the action film genre, though within the genre itself there’s been critical hits (e.g. Léon starring Jean Reno and Natalie Portman in her breakout role) and films that got royally panned by reviewers (e.g. Transporter 3).

Interestingly, a couple of his most recent action films have starred big named Hollywood actors. He produced Taken, the action film starring Liam Neeson that I five-starred last year, and this year we’ve got From Paris with Love, a super violent action-heavy starring John Travolta and Jonathan Rhys Meyers.

I don’t care much for Meyers after the over-acting he did in The Tudors, but Travolta is always fun to watch in roles that see him as a foul-mouth guns-a-blazing criminal/terrorist. Travolta does more of the same in this new film but as a borderline good-guy. He plays Charlie Wax, a super counter-terrorist agent who’s motto revolves around ‘smash enemy into pulp first, don’t bother with questions later’. The American agent’s sole expertise lies in violently eliminating terrorist cells.

Starring Travolta, Meyers and a Ming Vase.

Meyers comes in as Ambassadorial aide James Reese but who really dreams of a job with the CIA. Wax is flown into Paris where he’s met by Reese in a hilarious introduction scene involving Wax with a bunch of skeptical French customs officers. It’s scene after scene of gun battles and explosions thereafter with a wide-eyed Reese gradually waking up to the fact that being a CIA agent might mean he has to readjust his life expectancy.

Unlike Taken though, there’s no pretense of subtlety in this film and even less story to speak of. There are a couple of secondary characters, mostly oriented around Reese’s normal (boring) day job and life, though in the film’s last act, one of these characters reveals himself to be a lot more than originally seemed.

There’s a bit of cute and fun banter between the two mostly to do with Wax’s joy in partaking in extreme violence and Reese recoiling in horror each time, but the two otherwise have little ‘buddy’ chemistry. Moreover, unlike Bryan Mills (Neeson)’s motivation in engaging in violence in Taken, Wax’s only motivator is…er… that he’s just loves his guns and perforating terrorists and bad guys with bullet holes.

The film will explain what’s the role of the Ming vase.

So, as fun as Travolta is to watch while he relishes his role as the gun-happy nut, there’s no understanding to attain of his character. Reese fares a little better on account that one of the story’s major outcomes is centered on the aforementioned secondary character.

Still, it’s a ball of loud, noisy fun for about 92 minutes. Travolta apparently liked his role so much he’s open to do a sequel for this film LOL.

Leap Year (2010) – on rental. The long National Day weekend saw the both of us catching up on a whole ton of films. Five actually, including Salt that I just posted a short review of. We also finished watching two Luc Besson films: District B13: Ultimatum starring Parkour expert David Belle, and From Paris with Love (this action film is anything but a romantic drama), and two bona fide romantic dramas: Remember Me, and Leap Year.

Leap Year is a new romantic comedy starring America’s sweetheart Amy Adams who plays Anna, with Matthew Goode, the lanky British actor who recently played Ozymandias in The Watchmen and plays Declan in this new film.

Anna is in a serious relationship with her well-to-do boyfriend doctor Jeremy (Adam Scott). But when the latter doesn’t propose for her hand in marriage but instead goes on a work trip to Dublin, she takes off after him intending to propose to him instead. How’s that? According to Irish tradition, the man who receives a marriage proposal on a Leap Day must accept it.

Unfortunately, getting to her man to Dublin from Boston is anything but easy: inclement weather puts her on the other side of the Isle, and she has to now somehow find her way across the island to Dublin before Leap Day. So she enlists the help of Declan, the proprietor of a local pub in financial difficulties and who needs the money Anna’s willing to pay.

Anna (Amy Adams) and Declan (Matthew Goode).

The film does have a couple of things going for it. Stylistically, it’s filmed in the same way as Made of Honor. You get gorgeous scenery of Ireland, a locale not often seen these days in modern dramas – beautiful enough again for Ling to add to her ‘must see places in my lifetime’. There’s an absolutely stunning view of the steep cliffs along Ireland’s coast line against the setting sun that’s worth the rental or theater admission ticket.

You also get interactions with the Irish locals, one type of which is when they look at Yankee antics, courtesy of Adams this time, with a mix of disdain and bemusement; and the other type of local customs, accents and cultural idiosyncrasies.

There’s also the two likable leads – Goode who’s naturally English and barely manages faking an Irish accent, and Adams – who’s always a joy to watch. Now that’s an actress I find beautiful compared to the likes of Jolie. The two of them are easy on the eyes, and their inevitable romance and feelings for each other are slowly nurtured in a very unrushed manner through the film’s running length.

She’ll be back. Really.

On the other hand; there are missed opportunities. The film’s title is drawn from the aforementioned Irish tradition, but this cultural practice – if at all true to begin with – has only almost coincidental relation to the story itself. The practice is mentioned throughout the film to create some sense of urgency for Anna in her madcap endeavors to get to Jeremy before Leap Day, but beyond this, you could have easily removed this story element and lose very little in the process.

The second issue lies with the story. There’s little that surprises in this film and who Anna eventually ends up with – Declan or Jeremy – is a foregone conclusion. OK, so romantic dramas of this sort are formulaic, but when you have non-conventional films like 500 Days of Summer, the story outcome in Leap Year feels a little too safe.

And lastly; I like Adams. But man, the things the film makes her do here. You’ll see her vomit, get drenched in stormy weather, and roll in mud. The film isn’t coarse by any measure, but I was wondering if the scenes depicting Anna’s dilemma and of her slightly ditzy personality might had been shown without resorting to this sort of antics.

Mixed bag then. Watch if you’re a fan of either actor, or if you’d like to get a preview for another vacation spot during the long December holidays.:)

Salt (2010) – at AMK Hub. Just before the weekend screening of Salt at AMK’s Cathay, I was at my class’ end-of-semester barbeque the Friday evening when one of my students jibed that I was catching the film only because of Angelina Jolie.

To be honest, that’s not quite true – and it’s on account that I don’t personally find Jolie that physically attractive, and apologies to all the males who see her as the exemplar of woman beauty. Personally, Jolie’s feminine features are a little too hard and well-defined for my tastes.

But what to make of her newest action-thriller though? Jolie plays a CIA agent named Evelyn Salt and she’s married to some low-key German guy who studies bugs for a profession. Early on in the film during what should have been a routine interrogation with what seems to be a Russian defector, she gets exposed as a sleeper Russian agent whose job is to assassinate high profile targets when activated.

The rest of the film from this point sees her running from the CIA and law enforcement agencies – and in a bit of a twist, not necessarily to prove her innocence. Heck; the film tries very hard to keep you guessing whether Evelyn is really a double agent i.e. she’s really a sleeper Russian agent waking to be activated, or maybe even a triple agent i.e. she’s really a CIA agent posing as a Russian agent while in CIA’s employ!

The film feels like the outcome of a wild mix of Jason Bourne, James Bond, and The Fugitive – wrapped in a package that features a female super agent as the lead pro/antagonist rather than the usual male guy. Jolie looks in top form as she runs circles around law enforcement, outsmarting them at every turn. Very nicely too; the action scenes are filmed without the hyperactive shaky-cam perspectives found in the Bourne trilogy so it’s actually possible to see Jolie karate-chop her opponents, and undertake world gymnastic stunts similar to what you saw in her two Tomb Raider films. It’s all pretty cool stuff, with the two most exhilarating scenes for me taking were when Salt makes good an escape from her apartment block, and towards the film’s final act in the White House.

That said; the film has an absolutely preposterous plot that’s even more absurd than the other recent summer action-thriller Knight and Day starring Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz, reviewed here too. The film takes liberties with real world agencies whose personnel I imagine will be taking a very dim view of how they’re represented here. Basically, if you’re in forensics, the Secret Service, the CIA, a Russian sleeper agent, or what makes for the Russian president’s security detail, the film would have you believe you’re utterly incompetent compared to the likes of Evelyn Salt, super-agent.

Also, while the film does try to keep you guessing where exactly does Salt’s loyalties lie – and it does this by minimizing her dialog apparently so as not to belay her real intentions – it was real easy to see where this was eventually going for me. Hint: just watch who she disables and who she kills.

Still, if you can discount the story, Salt gets it right everywhere else. The action is unrelenting, well-filmed, and the relatively compact 100 minute a roller-coasting ride from start to the end. I certainly enjoyed this film more than I did for Inception.

Ip Man 2 (2010) – on rental. I’m not sure what’s it with these Hong Kong films centered on the stories of these Chinese martial arts masters, but they sure look like as though they’re going through the same script repeatedly. While watching Ip Man 2, I had to look back into the DVD’s box title again to make sure I wasn’t watching Wong Fei Hong XX.

The film is loosely based on the real martial arts master, Yip Man. The gentleman taught Wing Chun, and his most famous student was Bruce Lee (there’s an utterly tacky scene about this factoid at the end of the film). The new film begins with a nifty montage of key scenes from the first film. The kind of help it offered towards story orientation to new viewers like myself was limited though; the montage had no dialog, so you can only roughly see what the story is about so far in the most general sense.

As the story goes in the new film; Ip Man is in near-poverty but has to support his gorgeously but ridiculously 21st century-looking pregnant wife (Lynn Hung). So, he sets up shop renting the top level of a laundry building to train students in Wing Chun. Unfortunately, his rival martial arts clans – lead by a still surprisingly agile Sammo Hung who plays master Hung Chun-nam – don’t take kindly to the new guy, so they make him jump through a couple of hoops to prove his prowess as a martial artist before they let him run his school. Thrown into the mix somewhere is this British boxer who wants to make an example of all Chinese martial artists. Ip Man takes up this challenge to defend Chinese honor, integrity, martial arts, blah blah blah.

Thing is; you’ve seen it all before in the Tsui Hark Wong Fei Hong films starring Jet Li. All that stuff in Chinese martial arts films about defending Chinese honor against the red devils. The western fighter beats up every other Chinese contender, until the great master reluctantly comes out to make all of us cheer when he beats up the Ang Mo guy, then concludes by waxing lyrical about why all men should respect each other and live in peace.

Fortune Cookie #1: Famous Asian Veteran Actor must not lose fight.

The title character is played by Donnie Yen, the multi-talented martial artist, actor and action-film director. While his pugilistic skill takes center stage on the screen, acting seems to be completely out of Yen’s element. This guy’s the Asian equivalent of Keanu Reeves’ wood. The scenes where he’s supposed to smile will result in you thinking he’s really grimacing. The scenes where he’s troubled look like he’s constipated.

And that’s the key difference between Ip Man and Wong Fei Hong. I’m not about to claim that Jet Li is a great actor, but the guy can at least act – and he’s got a naturally humorous look and air of irreverence about himself.

And as for the supporting cast; the guys playing the Ang Mos seem to be deliberately overacting, Lynn Hung’s only function is to be the wallpaper and stand around looking pretty (even the normally non-critical Ling says Hung has no real personality in the film), and Ip Man’s disciples are all cookies from the same cutter: they are look samey and constitute background filler, with the exception of one guy who’s the first and lead disciple but has a pissed look permanently stuck on his face. The only person who displays any kind of acting chops in the film is veteran Sammo Hung, even if his back story about his oversized family looks like a cheap shot at eliciting sympathy and understanding for why this guy is the way he is.

Fortune Cookie #2: Bet with Ang Mo boxer and you will lose money.

The fight scenes are a different matter though. They don’t reach the height of absurdity in the Wong Fei Hong films. Remember that fight in the first film 20 years ago in the warehouse using bamboo poles? Many of the scenes in Ip Man 2 are filmed close-up where you’ll see the actors’ faces, and more importantly their fists as they pummel each other or deliver those flying kicks to their unlucky victim’s midriff. There’s also a non-descript soundtrack that gets all hot and drum-heavy at the appropriate moments that help drive the adrenaline you’ll get watching those fight scenes.

So, watchable for the fight scenes. A big Fail in the story and acting. You’ve been warned. Check Ann’s blog entry for a second opinion here.

Up in the Air (2009) – on rental. Back about 13 years ago the region was hard hit by the first Asian economic recession. While those in the public education sector were still reasonably secure in their jobs, the rest of us who were in private education – as with the rest of the private sector – was going through a lot of downsizing and winding down of business operations that weren’t making sufficient returns. It was a really bad time, and I know and personally also witnessed close friends and colleagues who lost their jobs.

Up in the Air is a new drama from the young American director Jason Reitman, who’s also made two of my other favorite recent modern day dramas centered on very modern social themes; the multi-award winning Juno (reviewed here), and Thank You for Smoking. It stars George Clooney, who plays a jet-flying executive, Ryan Bingham, and whose main line of business is playing proxy to other companies who are downsizing. His job is to break the bad news to those persons who are being retrenched.

Interestingly, 12 years ago I would have thought Clooney was going to be a major star of action-thriller-type movies. But it’s been anything but. Clooney in this new film adds yet another endorsement to that uncanny ability of his to choose the right dramatic roles in non-big budget films which are all turning out to be critical hits.

His role in Up in the Air is a very slightly different this time though: in all those dramas he’s made in the last decade, his characters are routinely somewhat boisterous, purposeful, and a little larger than life. As Ryan, he’s a lot more mellow, occasionally indecisive and unsure and – dare I say it – displaying some degree of vulnerability. Which really makes him very likable.

Ryan and Alex

His predicament, surprisingly, isn’t so much in his job of giving people their firing orders. In fact, the whole nasty business of retrenchment by proxy is just one of the two themes in the film. The other – about adult commitments in relationships – is introduced early on in the film through Alex (Vera Farmiga), an attractive also frequent air traveler. The two begin a casual relationship, but it slowly starts transforming possibly into something else when the two genuinely enjoy each other’s company and try harder to rearrange their travel itineraries so that they can meet more often.

Ryan and Natalie

There’s a third character in the mix; a young new hire from Ryan’s retrenchment experts company, named Natalie and played by the very attractive Anna Kendrick. She’s no bimbo though. She’s young, idealistic, and at the forefront of proposing radical changes to the company’s business operations that would render Ryan’s personalized methods obsolete. Introduced as a character to drive to first theme in the story, there’s a very smooth and well-done transition of the character’s story contribution towards the second theme about adult commitments in relationships from the second half of the film. The one (minor) gripe I’ve got for the film is that between the two film resolutions between Ryan and Natalie, and Ryan and Alex; the former’s satisfactory, while the latter feels… as though it’s still hanging somewhere.

The film’s story takes us through different cities in America, including the international airport in St. Louis, which Matt takes off from to fly to Singapore. Yep, it’s my first on-screen look at the airport that our Ang Mo bud often complains about LOL.

Up in the Air doesn’t cheat on the ending too. But while it’s not an entirely happy one, it doesn’t feel false in any way, and exactly like what a similar situation would really result in in real-life too. Great film, lovely locales, and wonderful performances from the three leads. Great movie.

Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief (2010) – on rental. The story theme of an ordinary boy who finds his destiny among the powerful and fantastic is one that book authors have been mining for years. Several of these book series have been turned into film franchises even. There’s been the Harry Potter books, Eragon (absolutely awful film adaption a couple years ago of the first novel though), and now Percy Jackson.

The title character’s name, ‘Percy Jackson’, is actually a play on the name of one of Greek mythology’s most well-known heroes, Perseus. In the first book that this new film is based on, two of Olympus’ most powerful Gods – Zeus (Sean ‘Boromir’ Bean LOL) and Poseidon (Kevin McKidd) – are arguing over who has stolen Zeus’ prized master bolt. Zeus threatens war in Olympus, and by extension Earth – since there’s no chance for computer-generated visual carnage and destruction if it’s just war in the clouds – if the bolt isn’t returned to him, like real soon.

Percy (Logan Lerman) is the offspring of Poseidon and his earthly mother, Sally (Catherine Keener), and possesses a good measure of Daddy’s god powers over water. He’s accused of stealing the bolt, and with the assistance of his satyr guardian – Grover played by Brandon T. Jackson (recognized him as Alpa Cino from Tropic Thunder!) – and Annabeth, daughter of the Goddess Athena, and played by Alexandra Daddario – the three set off on a quest to find the real thief and return the bolt to Zeus before all hell breaks loose.

Jackson, Lerman and Daddario

Interestingly, Percy Jackson is the second film already this year that’s based off Greek mythology in what seems to be a revived interest in the retelling of stories from the legendary Greek heroes. We’ve already seen this year’s remake of the 1981 Clash of the Titans (reviewed here on our blog), but that film suffered from a horrifically miscast Sam Worthington as a really wooden Perseus and also a too-casual grounding to the mythological source.

Percy Jackson fares a little better. For starters, there’s better representation of Greek myth in this new film. There’s Medusa (Uma Thurman LOL), the Minotaur and Hydra (both CGed), Chiron the centaur mentor (Pierce Brosnan looking all hairy), Persephone (Rosario Dawson driving up the sexua’o'meter rating and for young boys to gawk at), and their abilities and dispositions are about consistent with lore if only still in the most general sense. Joe Pantoliano even shows up as Percy’s foster father, though his role is pretty inconsequential and his talent largely wasted.

And yep, the cast in this film is like a roster of well-known adult actors doing their bit roles in the production, though in a few persons’ case they are playing roles that are already familiar. Thurman’s Medusa (below) is quite the vamp, but after Poison Ivy in Batman and Robin, she’ll easily sleep walk through roles like this.  Steve Coogan has a hoot playing the third person in the trio of Godly brothers, Hades. The actor turns in a Mick Jagger version of the God and his performance seems a nod towards Johnny Depp’s Jack Sparrow.

This is what owning an iPhone will do to you.

The Hollywood veterans taking their turns to trot out their God parts are all clearly having fun with the lore and legends, but they’re also just supporting players. The three young leads on the other hand – Lerman as Percy, Daddario as Annabeth, and Jackson as Grover – are painful to watch. Lerman’s Percy is outright irritating, poor Daddario seems overwhelmed (doesn’t help that she can’t act), and the normally funny Jackson is given stupid dialog and even dumber subplots, including one about acquiring his satyr horns. It’s unfortunate that the three young leads get the lion’s share of screen time and things really are despondent when they are running around and trying to act demi-Godly, but things invariably cheer up in the film when the veterans reappear.

The irreverence and humor though does at some level work against the film, if for nothing else it creates oscillation between half-seriousness when the adult veteran actors are in the scene, and that the tomfoolery immediately ceases when the scenes re-center on the three young leads trying to act all serious on their quest to save the world. It’s inconsistent and pretty jarring whenever the tone switches.

Still, I enjoyed Percy Jackson marginally more than Clash of the Titans. Even if the story’s dumb and the three leads awful, it’s still a bit of a guilty pleasure watching great actors having fun in supporting roles like these. Watch, enjoy then forget.:)

Inception (2010) – AMK Hub. If Inception is what director Christopher Nolan can come up with during his spare time in between his second and third Batman films, one wonders just what he’d be able to come up with if he had more time. My colleagues caught the film earlier last week, and what they saw onscreen carried over into office banter the following days. Inception‘s movie trailer was simply mind-blowing. It’s hard to imagine how movie lovers upon seeing a scene of a busy street bending skywards would not immediately be intrigued by the film’s premise.

But 2.5 hours later on a packed Saturday late morning screen at the Hub, I left the theater with mixed feelings. At the risk of offending a lot of the film’s fans – the film has scored an astonishing 9.3 rating on IMDB already – I thought Inception was visually stunning, served by great performances and creative enough to feel like a huge gush of fresh air… but also ultimately plagued by story and thematic problems that stop my giving it an unreserved recommendation.

A quick introduction to the film’s creative premise: Leonardo DiCaprio plays Cobbs, a professional dream ‘extractor’ whose specialization is in infiltrating other persons’ dreams and stealing what would normally be inaccessible information. A new job comes through Saito (Ken Watanabe), a powerful businessman who wants Cobbs not to steal information but to plant into his business rival Fischer (Cilian Murphy) an idea that would help Saito maintain his own business’ competitive edge. In order to effect this, Cobbs assembles a team of other specialists, including his right-hand man Arthur (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), the dream level designer Ariadne (Ellen Page), and a master disguiser Earmes (Tom Hardy).

There is one very strong thing going for Inception, and it’s the solid actor performances all round. DiCaprio has gone from strength to strength over the last 15 years since his first major role in The Quick and the Dead, though the good actor possesses a sort of distinguishable look that it’s hard to see a film of his without immediately recognizing the actor. Interestingly, several of Nolan’s Batman alumnus shows up for this film too: and they include Watanabe, Murphy, Michael Caine in a small role as Cobbs’ mentor father, and Hans Zimmer who returns to write another big, noisy and bombastic but ultimately non-descript soundtrack for Inception. Ellen Page, whom I last saw in the delightful Juno, is in the film too and plays a role that is more representative of the actress’ actual age.

The actor though that I thought gave the best performance of this crew is Gordon-Levitt. The young actor is certainly showing quite the range: as a psychotic villain in Killshot to a luckless boyfriend in 500 Days of Summer, and now that of a loyal companion and point-man to Cobbs. While Arthur (Gordon-Levitt) expresses misgivings of taking on Saito’s job, he discharges his role with a deft hand once the mission gets going. There’s a long amazing zero-gravity-like action sequence with him in it, and while the actor’s somewhat slender frame doesn’t naturally put him in a physical form one associates with action films, it’ll be interesting to see whether his action-heavy role in Inception will continue into other similar roles in the future.

[Spoilers]

So, what didn’t work for me in the film? Many aspects, several of which are drawn off the same problem. Inception has been favorably compared online to The Matrix. Thematically, the two films draw upon semi-related material: essentially, the existence of alternative realities that blur the difference between what is real and what is a dream. However, for a film that is entirely based upon persons trawling dream worlds, the dream scenes themselves don’t especially feel very dream-like. Apart from the single standout zero-gravity fight scene that takes place in a hotel corridor, you never get a persistent sense that the heist team and their target are operating in dream worlds.

Let me explain what I mean: just think for a moment the dreams you’ve had. They never make sense. Your environments change constantly, and you’re often doing things that are reminiscent of activities you do in the real world, or you are doing really fantastic things. For instance, one thing that keeps recurring in my dreams is super-human flight. Those are the sort of things we’ve come to expect in dreams, but there’s little of this in Inception. The dream levels are reliant too much on the real world and with the exception of the zero-gravity scene are compliant to real-world physics and artifacts.

The film does try to insert story elements that remind you of its setting. For example, that the subject’s ‘human’ projections might know what you are up to and attempt to fight back. And there’s also the idea that time gets multiplied exponentially between levels, and the aforementioned mind-blowing scene of the street bending upwards. But the latter was the game ‘tutorial’ Cobbs shows to Ariadne to prove his point, and the highlight of the film’s trailer. You never actually see much of that kind of fantastic and constantly changing environments in the film’s long mission, and its absence significantly destroyed much of any sense of immersion I might have had otherwise. The Matrix did a much better job at representing an alternative reality where your powers are limited only by what your willpower and extent of imagination.

The second issue I had was that the story felt unnecessarily complex. One of the key story points is the existence of different dream levels, and that you might be dreaming within a dream. But the story delivery resulted in a terrifically convoluted mess that made it very hard to follow the fine details of what was going on, especially the mentor deception that Cobb’s team was trying to pull on Fischer. Moreover, while I like the idea of time getting slowed between levels, I thought the film’s climatic juxtaposition of scenes from each of the dream levels where the team tries to get kicked back to reality was stretched well past a reasonable limit to keep the audience in suspense.

Thirdly; as imaginative as the film’s theme is, I never quite got the sense that Inception is epic. There are obligatory fight scenes of course, but they don’t feel as though they are an integral part of the story. The faceless and numerous ‘enemies’ in dream world are the apparent human projections in Fischer’s mind, but the story glosses over this as though it wants you to just accept the fact and not to ask any more questions as to why if Fischer was supposedly trained to react defensively in dream world attacks that he didn’t just simply imagine up thousands of enemy agents and overwhelm Cobb’s team. You know, sort of like what Agent Smith did in The Matrix: Reloaded.

Lastly is the absence of any real antagonist, even thinly drawn ones. It’s not a big good-vs-evil battle. It’s not even a localized battle. It’s merely a story about a bunch of dream invaders infiltrating someone else’s mind to implant an idea with some barely-related action scenes thrown in to qualify the film as a science fiction-action movie. The story essentially ends when they all wake up, and when it does, it’s all a bit underwhelming because everything that’s happened isn’t really real in the physical sense. So, all those bad guys who shoot you, or when your team members start getting shot – not to worry. All they need do is wake up in the right way, and all will be fine. No one can really die (though you might end up in ‘limbo’ – watch the film to understand what I mean), which pretty much kills the film’s stakes.

And the much-discussed last scene that will have you asking your movie partner if the entire film was really itself a dream. Ling certainly doesn’t think so, and it’s because she noticed something about to happen when the film cuts to the end-credits. Which begs the question then: why bother with a hanging question if the answer is already semi-obvious on the screen if you pay close attention to the last seconds?

Mixed feelings again. I think there’s a lot going for Nolan’s Inception, and the film is going to make megabucks at the box office. Even a week after the film’s release in Singapore, the theater on Saturday late morning was 70% packed – a pretty uncommon sight nowadays. Watch this film if you’d like a thought-provoking story and great actor performances. Just be prepared to be asking lots of questions at the end of it when you try to unravel the almost convoluted mess. So, don’t flame me, but I really thought it was a…

The Book of Eli (2010) – on rental. There are a couple of actors in Hollywood today that are able to switch with relative ease between roles of opposite alignments. Most can’t. For instance, the one time when Arnuld Schwarzennegar took on the role of a villain, it turned into one of the worst film disasters ever that was the last nail on the coffin for the Batman movie franchise before Christopher Nolan revived it with Batman Begins. But one of the few who can is Denzel Washington, who’s played extremes from both ends of the spectrum and right down the middle too.

One of his two films for 2010 was released at the start of this year, and is titled The Book of Eli. The film is led by a directorial team comprising two brothers, the Hughes, and off a story by Gary Whitta, a well-known person for those of us in the games industry.

Their output is a film set in a post-apocalyptic world about a man, Eli (Washington), who believes he has been given the divine charge of taking the last remaining bible on earth westwards and across the continent of a war- and environmental-ravaged United States. His mission is anything but easy: the landscape has been burned nearly to a crisp by the sun as a result of what I’m guessing is the partial destruction of the ozone layer, and it’s dog-eat-dog among humans and literally (and I mean cannibalism here). And while there are human settlements where the last remnants of humanity gather and try to eke out a living, the settlements are ruled by iron-fisted warlords, one of whom is Carnegie (Gary Oldman) who wants this last copy of the bible for himself.

The film reminds me of a couple of other films based on similar themes. The clearest one is The Postman, one of two Kevin Costner films (the other being Waterworld) that cost a crazy amount of money to make but was a relative bomb at the box office. Like that film, the protagonist here – Eli – is an enigma, and his motivations and what his quest involves is never made clear until near the film’s midpoint. Moreover, like those two Costner films, the Book of Eli has big story ideas but terrible delivery. The audience is let to do with small bits of back story, and while by the film’s third quarter they roughly give a general idea of where this is all going, there are big, like humongously big story holes that don’t make any sense – and some of them are serious enough to impede your ability to fully immerse yourself in the film once you go past the attractive visuals.

America, post-nuclear war

[Spoilers]

Like for instance: that all the bibles in the world have been destroyed because the war that devastated the continent was a religious one allegedly caused by Christianity (and even this is never made very clear). Last I checked: there are a couple billion copies of the bible in circulation. For a film to claim that humans – being the routinely disunited and disagreeable bunch we are – could somehow all in unison band together to destroy all copies and somehow miss only one, is, honestly a fetch whichever side you choose to look.

Or how Eli, which at the end of the film is revealed to be blind, possesses those incredible fighting skills. You could get away with suggesting that a blind man could out-punch half a dozen other men if he was the Daredevil character possessing heightened use of his other senses but that kind of hypernatural ability is never really suggested in the film’s context. And there are even a couple of scenes involving precision archery that will leave you scratching your head why the film even gets into the realm of the superhero and fantastic when everywhere else it seems to ground itself in realism, post-apocalyptic world notwithstanding.

And the ending… just oh my. It takes place on The Rock, i.e. Alcatraz island, off a burnt-out San Francisco city. Even though this section has been marked ‘Spoiler’, I won’t say more besides this: your head will burst with pain along the lines of “WHAT THE…?!?!”

The vultures are going to be feeding off dead carcasses soon.

But if you could somehow just get past the hokey story, there’s still – surprisingly – plenty to enjoy in The Book of Eli. Denzel Washington turns in a great performance as a tormented Eli who has only one purpose in life, and as advised by the voice in his head: to take his bible westwards. Gary Oldman is, as always, fun to watch as the cunning but still half-psychotic villain hell bent on getting that bible, no matter the human cost.

The fight scenes are incredible too, and are free of the monkey-cam operation typical of Michael Bay or any of his admirers. You can actually follow the action here, and it exudes style that reminds me of the old Hong Kong kung-fu films before they unfortunately transformed into the wire-fu you commonly see today.

So, it comes down to what’s important for you. As a brain-dead way of spending about 2 hours of your time watching great action and acting performances, The Book of Eli meets expectations. Just leave your brain at the door-step, and don’t ask yourself too many questions at the film’s end.

Agora (2010) – on rental. One of the films I was really looking forward to catching this year has been Agora. The film stars Rachel Weisz, and she plays Hypatia, a Greek scholar and teacher of mathematics and philosophy who lived around the 4th century and during the rising tide of Christianity in Roman-occupied Egypt.

The film wasn’t easy to watch, possibly the more so for those of us who might have forgotten that our own Christian faith has had terrifically embarrassing moments in the last 2000 years, and I’m not referring to the recent news of priests and young boys. The most well-known incidents and periods that reveal the violence that religious zealotry can cause include the Crusades and the Salem Witch Hunts, so it’s refreshing to see a modern production relating the far lesser-known story of Hypatia.

Historically, Hypatia was unfairly blamed as the cause of tensions between the ruling Roman officials and the Alexandria Pope, and was brutally murdered by a Christian mob. I can’t recall if the film actually reached the cinemas here when I first blogged about my interest in the film in February this year. Either way, I picked it up on rental and gave it a go in the middle of the week.

There’s a theme in Agora that really resonated within me. It’s not the overt dangers of men twisting faith for their own purposes and its modern parallels coming out of militant Islam today. Instead, it’s how the paths of the students we teach as teachers might become intricately entwined with ours. The early scenes of the film establishes the kind of teacher Hypatia was: she encourages her students to question that which doesn’t make sense, resolves with a deft hand religious disputes between her own students, and demonstrates kindness to those who serve her in her father’s household.

Her students include the wealthy and politically powerful, two of whom would later cross paths with her again and significantly change her fate. One is Orestes who becomes the provincial governor of Alexandria, and tries very hard to protect her against the growing assertiveness of the Christian faction in the city; and the other is Synesius, who becomes the Bishop of Ptolemais, an ancient city of what is today Libya.

From a technical standpoint, the film is visually splendid. While its budget of USD75 million is just about half of what Hollywood blockbusters routinely cost these days, you won’t see short cuts taken anywhere on screen. Computer generated imagery is used sparingly and – from what I’m guessing – to enhance the backdrops to recreate 4th century Egypt, a period of history that’s rarely seen in films today.

Weisz turns in a marvelous performance of Hypatia too, but perhaps portrays her too sympathetically and without flaw. What’s known from the historical records are that she was a teacher of mathematics and philosophy, and who some of her better-known students were. But I wonder if some parts of her characterization has been buffed up to turn her into a martyr for truth, even if she’s eventually killed by the Christian mob not for this reason. Veteran but aging French actor Michael Lonsdale is also instantly recognizable and he plays Theon, Hypatia’s kindly father but who finds it difficult to understand the new Christian movement and its intrusion into the old beliefs.

I thought too there was some degree of showmanship on the part of the film. There are a couple of scenes that seem to come right out from Contact – sweeping zooms of the Musaeum of Alexandria and the city from space. And the film isn’t just portraying an unsympathetic period of Christian history. The other religions common of that time are equally portrayed in broad strokes that would have you believe that everyone in ancient Alexandria who was religious – the Jews, the Pagans and the Christians – were all idiots and that only the intellectuals and the teachers had any sort of sense.

Still, I like the film for Weisz’s mesmerizing performance of the philosopher, and how the city of ancient Alexandria – long gone today – really comes to life in a way that reminds me of what Richard Lester did for 17th century Paris in that old pair of Musketeer films from 35 years ago. The film isn’t dumb either. For those of us who are fascinated with early mathematics and how the ancient philosophers were trying to figure out ellipses, foci and what not (I’ve long returned all my math knowledge to my teachers!), the segments when Hypatia is trying to make sense of those complex concepts might be thrilling and alone worth the rental.:)