Discussing Movies Before The Power Fails

The power keeps cutting off for a split-second, then cutting back on again, which really just serves to keep fouling up the internet connection. Swell. Also, Adorable Baby Panda won't be in this week, the pandas are having something called the Feast of the Dancing Herons. I think it's just a tailgate to celebrate the coming college football season. So I'm going to talk about these other movies I watched with Alex since the last time I talked about movies I watched with Alex.

War - Failed to draw me in. If you're going to have all these double-crosses, and things done in a fit of emotion, I think you have to spend a little more time on those characters, trying to get us invested in them to make us care. But I was just looking for kicking, explosions and gunfire. Well, there was plenty of gunfire, but I was sorely disappointed in the meager number of explosions, and there wasn't quite enough kicking.

I was intrigued by Jet Li's character, but it was more because of what I hoped was going to happen than what did happen. First I thought he was pulling For A Fistful of Dollars maneuver, playing the sides against each other to make more cash. Then I thought he was pitting them against each other to eliminate the leaders and assume command of both syndicates. Then I thought we might get a story about the dangers of becoming someone else, and how far you can go with that before you lose the way back. If we had that, it was in a mostly perfunctory way, and I think it would have worked better if Statham hadn't betrayed his partner, because it would have heightened the conflict between Li's two parts. This is his buddy, always tried to do right by him, but Li may not be the same guy Statham was a friend to, so how will that play out. There was probably potential here for a much better movie, but as it stood the only part that got my attention was, as mentioned in the comments to the last movie post, the point where Statham and Li enagaged in Farm Implement Fighting.

Oh, and I don't think there was any reason for Statham to have a wife and kid. If you want to show that he's abandoned life outside of his job after his partner's unfortunate situation, then you could do that without the family. There's a scene where his wife asks if he's going to be there for their child's first basketball game (or something) and Statham sort of distractedly promises he will, but it never comes up again whether he made it or not, so it doesn't really serve to illustrate his obsession with his case.

30 Days of Night - I've never read the graphic novel, so this is all I've got to go off of. I could never get into the movie, largely because I was annoyed by the vampires. They were so damn wasteful in this movie, biting into a person for 3 seconds (with that ridiculous, sped-up, head-shaking move) then running off, when the person clearly still has plenty of blood, because it's spilling out all over the snow. I don't know their daily requirements, but there were about a dozen vampires, and if the town population sign was right, there were enough people to eat five a day for the duration of the darkness. Except they appeared to slaughter 90% of them in the first day. Just wasteful.

There were certain things I liked. Their Reinfield, getting things ready for them. That they sailed in on a large black ship (which is a callback to Dracula sailing into London on a black ship, I believe). Grumpy, yet kind-hearted Beau Bower and his rampage with the trencher*. I sort of liked Ben Foster as "The Stranger" (the Reinfield), except I couldn't quite figure what was going on with him. Sometimes he was cocky, pushy, very self-assured that he had the oncoming plague to back him up. Other times he was terrified, as though the horror of what he was a party to only sinks in every so often. Beyond that, I didn't find myself caring much about the other characters, besides the elderly fellow, who I hoped would somehow survive, just wandering the streets, without a clue as to what was happening. I think it would have been funny, though too absurd for the movie perhaps.

Shoot 'Em Up - It took me a while to get into the proper mindset with this movie. Early on, I was expecting a hyper-serious movie, then, either about the time "Mr. Smith" cuts the umbilical cord with a bullet, or when he saves the baby by repeatedly shooting the merry-go-round thing to keep it spinning, I realized it's more of a send-up of those action flicks**. The hero who doesn't want to be involved but either can't find anyone to foist the problem on, and can't bring himself to wash his hands of it. He dislikes everything it seems, and the only person he's even remotely close to is a lady of the evening. He looks like a bum, but he has an impressive knowledge of things that are relevant to the plot. He's a remarkable shot, while the dozens and dozens of bad guys must be firing with their eyes shut. His background is somewhat ill-defined, since I never heard him confirm Paul Giamatti's hypothesis on who he is***.

Speaking of Giamatti, I didn't really buy him as a villain. At least not as someone's lieutenant. As the mastermind, yeah, but as someone running around, commiting murders himself, he just doesn't cut an imposing enough figure. I'm not sure I was ever really impressed by things that went on in the movie, maybe because in its universe, almost anything seems possible, so it was hard to really say "Oh, that was awesome!", because there was never a sense it was particularly difficult. I did lagh at some witty comments (mostly Giammatti's), and groan at some of Smith's, comparing one to me getting hit between the eyes with a stick****.

I think the scene that tipped it too far was the gun battle Smith has with security personnel after skydiving out of a Senator's airliner. At that point I was ready to just give up the ghost. Still, the ending was fairly amusing, for how neatly everything ties together for our protagonist. However, it reminded me of the Long Cold Dark story from The Punisher. In that, Frank concluded that he couldn't be any part of his newly discovered daughter's life, because he knew, even if he tried to stop for her, some crime would eventually be ugly enough to draw him back in. Based on the end, and the general lack of impulse control Smith demonstrates in the movie, it seems likely he's not going to be able to stop killing people, but he also seems quite content to continue this little family he's cobbled together. Then again, Shoot 'Em Up is a lot less serious than The Punisher.

* At one point, before I knew what was to come, I told Alex I wanted to see what the townspeople say when they return, especially the family who find the trencher in their parlor.

** Actually, I just remembered what it was. It was when Owen and Giamatti expended bullets in the middle of a firefight to use a building's neon sign to send messages to each other.

*** Though if you're going to leave the origin up in the air, you need to present multiple choice, like the Joker. Just one proposed origin doesn't work terribly well.

**** Yeah, it doesn't make sense, but it was four in the morning, and I had just seen Owen use a dead man's hand to bypass the thumbprint scanner on a handgun, then cap it off with "Nothing like a good handjob".