Mish Mash 5 (On the Line, The Juror, G.I. Jane, Rumble in the Bronx, Hard Rain)

Another mish mash so soon?  Yeah, why not?

1.       I couldn’t help myself and saw On the Line starring active at the time ‘N SYNC members Lance Bass and Joey Fatone.  I was expecting not only a disaster based on who was in it but also extreme awkwardness because Bass is gay and here he has to play a guy who falls in love with a girl.  When this movie was made he hadn’t come out yet so I wondered if that would play into this at all.  Sadly it didn’t.  Bass turned out to be an ok actor.  He’s not good really, but he certainly got the job done just fine.

The film itself is your usual romance chick flick with the guy searching for this girl that he met on the train but never got her name or number.  Since he has nothing to go on he makes flyers describing the encounter and posts them all over Chicago (this picture sucks Chicago’s dick so hard).  Bass clearly didn’t think ahead because he’s shocked when a million women respond.  It’s a bad movie and at times put together pretty poorly.  But it’s just average bad and not anything special.  Oh well.

2.       Over the years I’ve seen most of The Juror a couple of times but I wasn’t sure if I ever saw the ending.  I couldn’t remember it so that means I probably didn’t.  Well the other night I finally manned up and kept with it ‘till the credits.  Now the whole thing is set in New York (mostly upstate) but somehow the last ten or fifteen minutes take place in a Mayan temple in Guatemala.  How the fuck did we end up here?  Once this started happening I knew for sure I had never seen this part of the movie ‘cause I would’ve remembered this shit.  It’s so unbelievably out of place from the rest of the two hour picture. 

There was absolutely no reason to end in Guatemala either.  They very easily could’ve tweaked things to have a showdown in another part of the U.S. like Texas or Seattle of some shit.  But ancient Mayan ruins in Guate-fuckin’-mala?  Who the hell approved that script and why did they think it was vital to have the story end there?  I’ll admit I like it though.  It was such a left turn that I was absorbed by the sudden drastic change in setting.  I was very intrigued about where this was headed and if there were going to be more surprises.  Boy, that was such a goddamn strange choice.

When it’s all said and done The Juror isn’t a great movie.  It has some fun moments and Alec Baldwin plays a pretty dark figure but it’s nothing to write home about.  Oh wait, I think I kind of just did that.  Shit.

3.       Speaking of Demi Moore movies (she stars in The Juror), I finally saw G.I. Jane the other night.  It’s alright.  I liked a bunch of that training shit but it was also really cheesy.  The whole thing unfolds exactly how you think it will with one exception: the ending.

Man was this film anticlimactic.  I thought Moore was going to get thrown in a situation where she gets caught by foreign enemies, fights her way out of it, kills a lot of dudes, rescues her squad and they escape to freedom.  But instead it ends with her just formulating some plan to save the master chief that barely works out.  She doesn’t really kick a lot of ass or do anything that makes her an exceptional soldier (at least among Navy SEALs).

On top of the lackluster finale the whole firefight sequence that closes this thing out was shot unbelievably poorly.  I mean this is some of the worst filmed action I’ve ever seen.  And I’m not just saying that willy nilly.  I really mean it.  All the fucking snap zooms in and out, the camera shaking, the quick cuts, the obvious lack of choreography, the total confusion of who’s where and what’s actually happening…holy shit…it was such a goddamn fucking mess.  Equate it to whatever you want (a group of monkeys, ten year olds, blind people, etc.) with who was in charge of putting this together.  It won’t change the fact that it exists.

But to end on a good note, the fight between Moore and Viggo Mortensen (Daylight) is fucking great.  They really kick the shit out of each other.  That was my favorite part of the picture.    

4.       I wonder why Jackie Chan and company decided to go for an R rating with Rumble in the Bronx.  They very easily could’ve left out two of the three “fucks”.  Maybe the guy getting thrown in the wood chipper off camera was part of it too?  I dunno.  I don’t really get it.  It’s such a light R.  It could be that since this was going to be Jackie’s first big film in North America he wanted to start off on a seemingly edgy foot.  You know, get people interested with the fireball filled poster and the rating and then when you have their attention show ‘em some incredible martial arting.  They’ll be so captivated that they’ll stop looking for a harder movie than the one they really made.  Whatever it was it worked and established Jackie in North America for the foreseeable future.    

5.       Another film I finally got around to was Hard Rain.  This was an obvious attempt by Christian Slater to repeat the magic of Broken Arrow.  He got the same writer (Graham Yost who also wrote Speed and Speed 2: Cruise Control) and put himself in the starring role.  He even produced this thing further ensuring that the final product would be as Broken Arrow-y as possible.

His character, Tom, is essentially the same guy in the same position as Hale from Broken Arrow.  Tom’s an armored car guard and his truck gets held up.  He takes the money and hides it while he battles the bad guys.  Then when the money ends up in the bad guys’ hands Tom has to go retrieve it.  Oh yea, and all of this takes place during a torrential downpour that has flooded an entire town.

I like the idea of a town being flooded and the water constantly rising so that it ups the ante every so often.  I guess they used that angle to full effect with a couple of moments of near drowning, boats and jet skis are ridden, giant waves of flood water knock people over, the power goes out, one dude gets electrocuted, large debris like trees smash into things, and so on.  I can’t really think of something obvious they should’ve done with the water that they didn’t.

Overall, it ain’t no Broken Arrow.  The script is kinda weak, the casting isn’t the greatest (with the exception of Morgan Freeman as the bad guy), the action is solid but not terrific and, disappointingly, it’s not directed by John Woo (although apparently he was going to).  It’s not a bad movie but it’s pretty forgettable.