The Two-Point-Six Billion Dollar Man

Hollywood is all about the remakes nowadays.  Never mind that the original is pretty good already and still stands the test of time.  If a reasonable period of time has passed since the original, then it could use an update as far as the rigid Ms. Wood (aka Holly) is concerned.

 

It is in this spirit that we get ‘RoboCop 2014,' Brazilian director José Padilha’s contemporary take on love-him-or-hate-him Dutch auteur Paul Verhoeven’s 1987 sci-fi classic about a good cop struggling in a world of evil (okay, two good cops if we include Officer Lewis).  Verhoeven’s original, starring Peter Weller and Nancy Allen, was beloved by fans for its bold, subversive portrayal of corporate greed and corruption.  In the bleak setting of RoboCop's Detroit, law and human decency are under constant siege by not only scum-of-the-earth criminals but evil corporations, immoral politicians and corrupt law enforcement agencies.   Weller’s Alex Murphy never stood a chance before he became RoboCop.  What’s brilliant about Verhoeven’s ‘RoboCop’ is that it placed social commentary and political satire in a dark and edgy R-rated dystopian sci-fi action thriller, often with humorous results.

 

Since the remake is unlikely to hold a candle to the original, my expectations for it was correspondingly low.  So it was to my pleasant surprise that it managed to exceed them.  This glossier, PG-13 rated version is actually pretty good!  Joel Kinnaman’s Alex Murphy/RoboCop had more emotional depth than Peter Weller's.  His shock, revulsion and overreaction upon seeing his 'new and improved' body for the first time seemed genuine, and his attempts to connect with his wife and son came straight from the heart.  Likewise, Michael Keaton did a great job as the movie's villain, OmniCorp (http://www.omnicorp.com/)  CEO Raymond Sellars, a mad (as in insane) tech-guru/entrepreneur who honestly believed that he was doing mankind a favor in realizing his dreams of a robotic 'Police States of America.'  This is timely and topical in our era of paranoia and fear of Big Brother government legislating the use of drones for domestic purposes.  The action scenes of RoboCop fighting against squads of EM-208 combat droids (the love child between a T-800 Terminator and a Cylon?: http://www.omnicorp.com/products/em-208.php) and the redesigned ED-209 fire support walkers from the original movie (would you like to know more?: http://www.omnicorp.com/products/ed-209.php) are exciting to be sure, but they're nothing we haven’t seen before in similar PG-13 superhero and action movies with their tightly edited close-up shots and quick cuts from multiple angles.

 

Cosmetically, the new RoboCop looks more ‘tactical’ in black and speeds along the streets of Detroit on a sleek bike (also from OmniCorp, of course: http://www.omnicorp.com/products/c-1.php), but he stomps around heavily just like the old RoboCop, and his servos and actuators make the same whirring and whining sounds.  The remake also kept some of the original’s satirical elements, such as the opening scene live coverage of ‘Operation Freedom Tehran’ and a recurring talking head (played by Samuel L. Jackson) in the mold of conservative commentator Bill O’Reilly.  If ‘RoboCop 2014’ makes the current generation want to check out the Verhoeven original, so much the better.

 

Grade: A-

 

Pretty Little Bloodsuckers

Ah, another movie adaptation of a YA series.  While the successes of the 'Harry Potter,' 'Twilight' and 'Hunger Games' franchises cannot be denied, other attempts to mine box-office gold were far less lucrative.  In fact, would-be franchise starters 'The Host,' 'Beautiful Creatures,' 'Percy Jackson' and 'The Mortal Instruments' were all abject failures.  Not to be cowed, however, Hollywood continues to try with the upcoming 'Divergent' and this Twilight-meets-Buffy rip-off called 'Vampire Academy.' 

 

Based on a series of YA novels by Richelle Mead, which I have not read, 'Vampire Academy' is about a bunch of prep-school vampires called the Moroi and their half-human, half-vampire servant/protectors called the Dhampir.  The Moroi are peaceful 'good' vampires, unlike the archetypal Hollywood evil vampires, called the Strigoi in the movie and books.  Directed and written by the Waters brothers, Mark and Daniel, of 'Mean Girls' and 'Heathers' fame, respectively, 'Vampire Academy' promises to be another juicy and nasty portrayal of High School bitchiness.

 

So did the movie deliver?  Well, yes and no.  The rapid-fire, wise-cracking dialogue does possess echoes of Joss Whedon and Diablo Cody.  Rose Hathaway, the Buffy-esque Dhampir protector of her highness the princess Lissa Dragomir, is smart and sassy, full of sarcastic wit and well stocked with barbed quips and clever retorts.  Played by newcomer Zoey Deutch, the daughter of 80's brat-packer Lea Thompson, she is truly one to watch.  Unfortunately, the Moroi she watches over and has a psychic (or soul) connection with, Lissa Dragomir (played by Lucy Fry), is boring as hell, as were most of the other characters in the movie except for the chipper Natalie Dashkov, played by Modern Family's Sarah Hyland.

 

The movie is easy enough to follow without too much narrative exposition, and that is a good thing.  The long-haired and brooding 'designer vampires' popularized by 'Twilight' and The CW Network were predictable and a bit been there, done that, as were the googly-eyed romances between some of the characters.  All in all though, the movie isn't nearly as bad as the critics say.

 

Grade: B

  

LEGO Story

The world's most popular toy blocks finally get the big screen treatment in 'The Lego Movie,' a fun-filled action adventure that has something for the whole family.  Eschewing the jerky stop-motion technique of 'Robot Chicken' for smoother CGI animation, 'The Lego Movie' nonetheless managed to retain a vintage shot-with-real-Legos look.  Remarkable, that.

The story of an ordinary, unassuming construction Lego named Emmet who ultimately became someone special (so special, cue 'The Pretenders' song please), 'The Lego Movie' is about rebelling against conformity and discovering your true potential.  Sure, we've heard this all-too-familiar story before.  But 'The Lego Movie' tells it with such humor and a large cast of pop-culture references, from Batman and the Millennium Falcon to a Gandalf-like wizard named 'Vitruvius' and a T-1000-ish 'bad cop,' that the movie somehow endeared itself to our inner 12-year olds. 

Still, if it was only a bunch of hyperkinetic CGI-rendered Legos moving around in various Legos-constructed locales it wouldn't have been enough for me to recommend it.  What did it was the movie's heartwarming final act, when the movie shifted from 'Lego world' to the real world, in which a father-and-son relationship blossoms over their shared affections for these colorful construction blocks in spite of their marked differences on how they should be used.  

Grade: B+

  

"I, Hollywood Retread"

Many have bemoaned the fact that Hollywood is creatively bankrupt and utterly devoid of ideas when it comes to movies.  Indeed, megaplexes are flooded with franchises, sequels, remakes and reboots, or costly made-for-3D-and-IMAX CG-heavy extravaganzas overladen with style but little substance.  Lionsgate’s ‘I, Frankenstein’ has the unique and dubious distinction of being guilty on both counts.

 

Based on a graphic novel and ‘original’ screenplay by ‘Underworld’ creator Kevin Grevioux, there is absolutely nothing that is original about ‘I, Frankenstein.’  This movie about a mad scientist's creation named Adam, a man ’without a soul’ who held the key to humankind’s survival (or destruction) and who's caught in a centuries-long hidden war between the forces of good and evil, is basically a reboot of 'Underworld' couched in new trappings.  All Kevin Grevioux did here was to adapt the ‘Underworld’ screenplay by rote for ‘I, Frankenstein,’ replacing Vampires and Lycans (werewolves) with Gargoyles and Daemons, as well as substituting Adam for the half-Vampire/half-Lycan ‘Hybrid’ in ‘Underworld’ played by Scott Speedman.  Talk about laziness.

 

As Adam, Aaron Eckhardt cannot be any less colorful or one-dimensional if he tried.  ‘I, Frankenstein’ even brought back Bill Nighy as the head daemon-prince Naberius, who is this movie's counterpart to Viktor, the diabolical vampire lord he portrayed in ‘Underworld.'  Yeah, that’s the one whose top half of the head was neatly sliced off by Kate Beckinsale’s Selene in a somersault.

 

“Central Casting.  How may I help you?”

 

“We need an actor over 50 to play an evil supernatural villain overlord.”

 

“How about Bill Nighy?”

 

“Perfect!”

 

Grade: F

 

 I just saved you another 10 bucks.  You're welcome.

Jack Ryan: A Shadow of His Former Self

Chris Pine is the latest incarnation of Jack Ryan, following Ben Affleck, Harrison Ford and Alec Baldwin, in Kenneth Branagh’s vapid and toothless spy thriller ‘Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit.’  A departure from previous Jack Ryan movies, ‘Shadow Recruit’ is a reboot of the popular Tom Clancy character and focuses on his backstory and induction into the cloak-and-dagger world of the CIA.

 

While Jack Ryan is very much a byproduct of ‘80’s Cold War tensions and anxieties between the US and USSR in the late author’s novels, that simply wouldn’t wash in our post-9/11 world.  The character had to be remade in order to mesh with today’s realities and sensibilities.  Hence, Jack Ryan was a student studying Economics in London on September 11, 2001 and, like many other fine young Americans, he promptly dropped out of college pursuing his graduate degree and joined the Marines to dish out some payback.  In parallel to the novels, he survived a helicopter incident but due to a bad back resulting from it had to return to civilian life.  A Navy commander (Kevin Costner) notices and woos him to work undercover for the CIA on Wall Street because, in our age of Wikileaks and Edward Snowden, economic intelligence is “where it’s at.”  Jack Ryan’s first adventure is to stop a ruthless Russian businessman played by Branagh himself who sought to wreak economic catastrophe on the US ‘on a scale not encountered since The Great Depression,’ as Ryan repeatedly tried to convince Kevin Costner.  Yawn.

 

Even if we overlook this unlikely premise of devaluing the mighty dollar and crashing the US economy in one fell swoop, the movie stumbled in the only area that mattered by failing to deliver the taut, tightly paced espionage thriller we expected.  Far from a crackerjack action flick, 'Shadow Recruit' only succeeded in being uninspired, tedious and clichéd.  There’s nothing here that you haven’t seen in other, better movies before.  And the performances are subpar too, from Chris Pine going through the motions as the titular hero to Keira Knightley’s cookie-cutter damsel-in-distress to Branagh’s horrible impression of just about every Bond-ish caricature villain you’ve ever seen, accents and all. 

 

Utterly forgettable, predictable and unnecessary, to call this lifeless movie ‘Bond or Bourne-lite’ is being too kind.  If this is supposed to kick off a new Jack Ryan franchise, the engine just coughed, sputtered and died upon ignition.  RIP Tom Clancy Jack Ryan.

 

Grade: C- 

I watched this, so you won't have to.

Murphy's Law

As special ops badasses go, SEALs are arguably on top of the food chain, the glamorous rock stars of the Special Forces community.  Alas, Hollywood’s track record in portraying this elite brotherhood had been anything but stellar.  Since the 1990 movie ‘Navy SEALs’ starring Charlie Sheen and Michael Biehn, there's only been ‘G.I. Jane’ in 1997 with Demi Moore before the rather dry and dull two-hour recruiting commercial ‘Act of Valor’ featuring real Navy SEALs, if we leave out such movies as ‘Zero Dark Thirty’ and ‘Captain Phillips’ in which SEALs only made brief appearances relative to the movie‘s overall length.

 

That is, until now.  ‘Lone Survivor,’ based on ex-SEAL Petty Officer Second Class Marcus Luttrell’s 2007 non-fiction bestseller, finally gave this special breed of warriors the definitive treatment they deserve.  Back in 2009, I read this story along with another account of a spec-ops mission-gone-awry called ‘Roberts Ridge,’ and when I heard 'Lone Survivor' was being adapted to a movie my reaction was “Great, I can’t wait!”  While significant portions of Luttrell's book were devoted to his experience in Training Class 228 at Coronado and biographical sketches of the four SEAL Team 10 members (Mike Murphy, Danny Dietz, Matthew Axelson and Luttrell, a 6-foot-5 bear-of-a-Texan played by the compact 5-foot-8 Wahlberg) in the ill-fated mission to capture or kill a Taliban leader called Ahmad Shah, the movie wasted little time in getting straight to the gritty action with intense firefights reminiscent of ‘Black Hawk Down,’ ‘Band of Brothers’ and ‘Saving Private Ryan.’  
 

Produced and directed by actor-cum-director Peter Berg (‘The Kingdom’), ‘Lone Survivor’ is a powerful, visceral, grueling and harrowing film which captured the culture and ethos of this special breed of warriors.  Their camaraderie, bravery and selfless sacrifice towards their teammates are qualities we can never fully understand, but this movie came as close as possible to imparting to an outsider the fundamental truth that, when the shit hits the fan, what these warriors fight and die for is each other. 

Grade: A
 

American Hustler

David O. Russell (‘Three Kings,’ ‘The Fighter,’ ‘Silver Linings Playbook’) scores big again with his intricately well-crafted 70’s crime-noir ‘American Hustle,’ loosely based on the ABSCAM Scandal which brought down several prominent politicians at both the state and national levels.  From its opening scene, when hustler Irving Rosenfeld (Christian Bale) and FBI agent Richie DiMaso (Bradley Cooper) tried to bait Camden, New Jersey mayor Carmine Polito (Jeremy Renner) into taking a bribe and DiMaso overplayed his hand, ‘American Hustle’ pulls you irresistibly into its sordid world of con-artists and ‘dirty’ politics and doesn't let up.

Reuniting Christian Bale and Amy Adams from ‘The Fighter’ as well as Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence from ‘Silver Linings Playbook,’ ‘American Hustle’ certainly boasts a talented ensemble cast.  In one of his best performances,  Batman  Bale played the balding, bespectacled and pot-bellied Rosenfeld, a small-time scam-artist who, aided and abetted by stripper-turned-English noblewoman ‘Lady Edith Greensley’ (Adams in a splendid performance, whenever these eyes are not drawn to her side-boob in her low-cut dress), swindles $5,000 checks from desperate people who needed loans he had no intention of honoring.  Caught by ambitious and prone-to-overreach FBI agent DiMaso in a sting operation (though it wasn’t him who screwed up; he just has a weakness for women like Amy Adams and Jennifer Lawrence), he was coerced into using his considerable talents helping DiMaso catch ‘bigger fish’ in the guise of dirty politicians.  Polito, a well-meaning mayor who only wanted to revitalize the economy of his fair city and create jobs by attracting investment to develop a chain of casinos, became their prime target.  Too bad.

Engrossing, intelligent, sexy and quite funny, ‘American Hustle’ takes a fascinating look at the dirty underbelly of 1970’s America.  Its moral palette is rendered not in black-and-white but shades of gray.  What makes this movie so captivating is how we grow to sympathize with Rosenfeld (who in the beginning is a scoundrel worthy of our contempt) as he struggles to ‘do the right thing’ and escape from his situation of being used by a ruthless FBI agent whose methods become more and more questionable.  He may be, as his on-screen wife Rosalyn (Jennifer Lawrence in yet another fine performance) pointed out during an indiscreet moment to their young son, a “sick son of a bitch,” but his story is one of redemption in the end.

Grade: A

That Rosenfeld fella is sure one lucky guy