Saturday Night Fever

Who doesn’t love themselves some disco?  I know I do.  Ok, please put that noose away and just hear me out.  Disco is nothing but good time music that captivated the public and pop artists for years.  Michael Jackson’s Off the Wall is straight up disco and a bunch of songs off of Thriller are also disco but with less strings and more synth.  Even Paul McCartney gave it a shot with “Goodnight Tonight”.  There are other records that people like to think of as pop but disco is a subgenre of pop.  All I’m sayin’ is there’s more to this music than “Disco Inferno”, “I Will Survive” and “Le Freak”.  Damn good pop and dance tunes have come out of this universally despised craze.  Now that I’ve said my piece let’s check out Saturday Night Fever.  It’s most likely the first thing that comes to mind when someone says the word “disco”.  But this film is about so much more.  There’s a bunch of surprisingly dark shit that happens.

Racial slurs, gang banging and attempted rape aren’t the things I expected to be put in front of my eyes when I popped this in.  I thought it was going to be nothing but John Travolta dancing in a club and trying to get with the love interest.  That does happen but everything else is a pretty unadulterated glimpse into the life of a young Brooklyn kid/thug.

Travolta is Tony Manero, by day he works at a hardware store but by night he’s the dancing king of…at least this one particular club (2001 Odyssey) and maybe all of Brooklyn but it’s not clear.  All the women at 2001 want to dance with him, wipe his brow and just be in his company.  One night Tony sees this chick out on the floor (Stephanie (Karen Lynn Gorney (umm this is pretty much her only claim to fame))) that impresses him and decides to partner up with her for a dance competition. 

The love story part is very strange and I don’t think I’ve seen anything like it before.  Usually when the two leads fall for each other either there’s instant chemistry or it takes the whole picture for them to realize they’re in love.  In the end they’re the perfect fit.  With this movie Tony falls for Stephanie but Stephanie isn’t this ideal creature that you expect.  She’s got a nasally (and in my opinion annoying) voice, rambles on about meeting famous people at her workplace (we never find out if she’s making it up for not), dumps on Brooklyn and praises Manhattan and the real kicker is she’s not that interested in Tony.  Over the course of the film Stephanie gains a new friend in Tony, not a lover.  They share a special bond because of their mutual passion for dancing but that relationship doesn’t blossom into a love affair.  Tony would like that to happen but Stephanie doesn’t relent.  This is such a refreshing and unformulaic take on film romance.  It’s cool to see a movie take a risk and for that risk to actually work and not blow up in the picture’s face.

This thing is full of surprises like that and this brings me to Tony’s band of friends.  They’re rowdy and crude.  They’re racist, treat women like shit and do some really fucking dumb things like walk along the edge of and hang from the cables of the Verrazano bridge.  I like that the filmmakers didn’t water down the culture of these Brooklyn kids.  If they go beat up the guys that jumped one of their own then it’s just who they are.  There’s even a part where one of Tony’ friends is having sex in the backseat of a car right outside 2001 Odyssey while the rest of the gang tells him to hurry up.  But he says the chick hasn’t cum yet so they gotta keep going.

There’s this one girl, Annette (Donna Pescow (lots of TV shit)) that I have to mention that’s in love with Tony but Tony’s not in love with her (get it?  Sort of like the reverse situation that Tony has with Stephanie).  She gets treated pretty horribly throughout the movie with Tony dumping her as a dancing partner for Stephanie, she’s constantly rejected by Tony to go out, she has a cruel practical joke played on her when Tony and his buds pretend to jump off the Verrazano (she gets called a “stupid bitch” for falling for that by the way) and she gets gang banged by the friends.  Annette is obsessed with Tony and sure that’s a little creepy but she doesn’t seem like a bad person.  I feel sorry for her because of how much she gets dumped on in this movie.  It’s really tragic.

And what about the dancing?  It’s pretty cool.  Travolta worked really hard to not only get in shape but to also learn all the moves.  It paid off ‘cause he looks smooth as a motherfucker out there.  The scene where he dances by himself is particularly impressive and I can see why it’s the one part of the movie that everyone knows (well that and the intro where Travolta walks down the street to “Stayin’ Alive”).

The highlight (besides the dancing) is Travolta himself.  He plays a convincing tough and vain Brooklynite.  Confidence just oozes out of the guy and that makes him fun to watch.  I never once thought, “hey that’s John Travolta”.  He does a good job drawing you in to the aura that’s supposed to be there.  I guess I forget that he’s a good actor.  You couldn’t just have any old schmo that can dance as the lead.  You need a charismatic sonuvabitch to pull off a role like this and having Travolta in there with his weirdness on full display works great.   

The juxtaposition (did I really just use that word?) of the simplistic ecstasy of night time disco dancing against the complexity of the rest of Tony’s life makes for an interesting picture.  In the club he reigns supreme but outside of that his life isn’t really going anywhere.  Tony’s supposed to be one helluva stud but he can’t get the girl that he really wants.  He can only have her on the dance floor.  Tony even tries to rape Stephanie because his emotions for her boil over.  And it’s unclear if Tony has changed at the end of the film.  He says he has and that he wants to move forward with his life, a life outside of dancing.  But Stephanie quickly explains to him that it’s not easy.  At one point Tony wonders if he’ll ever be as passionate about something else as he is about dancing.  I think Tony learns that he needs to find whatever that something else is or learn to cope with a non dance centric life because if he doesn’t then he’ll throw himself off the Verrazano.

I really dug this movie.  It was way more interesting and deeper than I thought it would be.  I love the vulgar nature of the characters set against an activity and music that’s supposed to make you feel good bring happiness even if it’s for a couple of hours.  For example when Tony is dancing with Fran Drescher (in her film debut) he says “if you’re as good in bed as you are on the dance floor I bet you’re one lousy fuck”.  It’s that kinda shit that gives this film unexpected balls.  I say give it a shot.  Don’t let preconceived notions get in the way.     
   

Centurion

So I guess Neil Marshall had a positive experience with Doomsday because he decided to do another big-ish picture.  He also must’ve particularly enjoyed shooting the medieval portion and gave him the yearnin’ to do an all out period piece.

This one takes place in Roman times and is about the legendary Ninth Legion.  In our real world history the group disappeared in Scotland and no one knows exactly what happened to them.  In Marshall’s history these guys were sent in to destroy the Picts but were massacred by them instead (also a popular theory of their demise).  With only a few survivors remaining, including Michael Fassbender (Prometheus, A Dangerous Method, Blood Creek) as the de facto leader, they first try to rescue their general (Dominic West (The Wire, Punisher: War Zone)) who’s been taken hostage and then try to cross back into Roman territory.

Fassbender and West are really good in this.  I get why Fassbender receives a lot of praise for whatever he’s in.  He seems devoted to the character and wants you to be into it too.  He cares for the ragtag group of men that’s been left to him and even after a horrible slaughter of the legion Fassbender still has his sense of duty.  The other dudes with him go along without question because this guy is confident and can’t stand the thought of leaving anyone behind.  These are all good traits for a hero to have but difficult to pull off well because you need to sense the drive and believe that our protagonist is doing this because it’s the right thing and not because this is a movie so they need something to do.  Good work Fassbender, I’ll keep a better eye on you in the future.

West is fucking fantastic as the jolly but tough as nail general.  Man do I love this character.  The way we’re introduced to him perfectly sums up the guy.  In a tavern he’s just beat someone at arm wrestling but the loser wants a rematch.  The general refuses at first saying that they should give it a rest and just drink together but the opponent is pissed and wants to go again.  The persistence pays off and the general agrees to one more match.  West wins pretty easily but after he pins his challenger’s arm he stabs it with a knife and slams his head on the table.  He then calls him a sore loser which prompts a bar fight to ensue.  So the gist is this guy could be your best friend or your worst enemy.  Fight fair and square and he’ll give you respect but be a whiner and he’ll cut a hole in your arm and beat the shit outta you.  Also, having this scene take place in a bar with the general among his men drinking and carrying on tells us that he respects and loves his troops.  He sees himself as one of them, not above them.  Now even though West does great he also hams it up quite a bit.  He yells practically every line, has a pretty smug look on his face a lot of the time and is just overall very belligerent.  It’s a little over the top and I love it.

On to the production, Marshall did a good job shooting this one.  Apparently it was all done on location and there were no green screens used.  The wide shots of people marching across mountainous and heavily forested landscapes look very pretty and the battle scenes are goddamn gritty.  Marshall balances these things nicely.  He also made his most violent and bloody movie to date.  So many people get their throat slit or their head cut off.  It’s fucking brutal.  It seemed like there was a bunch of CGI blood being thrown around because it just looked too beautiful and perfect a lot of the time and there was also a ton of it being strewn about but it’s difficult to tell.  The fight scenes are all done well too except the end of the last one which gets kinda messy and confusing.  In fact the whole last ten minutes get that way.  Marshall has a problem of late with endings ‘cause Doomsday and now this don’t seem to add up.

What’s sort of interesting about this movie is that the Romans are the good guys.  Or you find yourself rooting for them anyway.  And that’s sort of a weird notion if you can pull yourself back from the entrenched story that the film presents.  The game plan was that the Romans were supposed to march into Scotland and decimate the Picts but the Picts ended up completely destroying the Romans.  So we feel for the Romans because they were massacred and also because we’re set up to hate the Picts through various scenes.  But it’s the Romans that want to conquer everybody and not the other way around.  The Picts are only protecting their turf.  I mean fuck, they’re just looking out for their well being and their families.  And this handful of Roman survivors goes on to invade a Pict village and kill some of them anyway including a little kid.  This whole idea of making the bad guys the good guys is even more apparent in Valkyrie.  In that picture we side with this faction of Nazis that want to overthrow Hitler but I mean they’re still Nazis, right?  They still went along with shit and did these horrible things but we’re supposed to be on board with them because they’re more reasonable than the alternative that we’re presented with.  It’s sort of the same thing in Centurion.  We like Fassbender and West so anyone that does something bad to them must be the antagonist.  We’re set up with the Romans by showing that they’re more civil and have an ordered society that resembles our own while the Picts are barbarians that live by superstition and archaic rules.  I’m not talking about historical accuracy here but more how a film can play with your feelings.  It’s interesting that a bloodthirsty Roman general or even a rebellious Nazi can be a hero all in the proper context.

This is the third film Marshall has set in Scotland out of his four (Dog Soldiers and Doomsday are the other two).  All of his movies have the same broad concept of a small group of people behind enemy lines that go up against a formidable force.  Two have been horror and two have been action.  I like what he’s doing with trying to use real shit and not CGI.  And I also like how his characters have a real good outline to them but the problem is they aren’t given a lot of depth or back story.  His filmmaking skills have definitely improved over the years but his storytelling skills seem to be deteriorating a bit (like his inability to craft a coherent ending anymore).  It’s nice that he takes his time with his movies as there is generally a three year gap between productions.  I think he cares.  He actually wants to make a good film that also has well executed action and blood.  I’m not going to get into a whole thing about this but did anyone else notice that The Dark Knight Rises had no blood in it?  For such a big action adventure type picture the violence was kept strictly in check.  That gives it a cold and ball-less feel.  It’s good to know there’s a guy like Neil Marshall out there that still wants to make movies that are at least somewhat reminiscent of 80’s and 90’s action and when he’s not doing that he’s making some of the best horror films in cinema in my opinion.      

So anyway, as far as this one goes I liked it.  It’s probably my least favorite Marshall film of the first four but not by much.  Another not bad, not great picture to add to the pile.  If you’re into Roman era movies you’ll dig it.  If you’re into action you’ll probably dig it too. 

You know, since the disappearance of the Ninth Legion is a mystery this could be exactly what happened to them.  I mean it looks like this part of history is up for grabs and so far this is the version I like best (albeit the only version I’ve seen on the subject).        

Doomsday

Up until now Neil Marshall had done relatively small movies.  The cast was small, the story was small, but the production felt bigger than it was in reality.  With the success of The Descent Marshall decided to go all out and make a giant film.

I knew absolutely nothing about this when I saw it in theaters and was pleasantly surprised.  Marshall took Escape from New York, The Road Warrior, Aliens, Gladiator, The Warriors and who knows what other pictures and put them in a blender.  That sounds like a disaster but it works better than you would think.  The story is about a virus that kills people almost instantly.  It broke out in Scotland so they quarantined the whole country.  No one gets in or out.  Thirty years later the virus shows up again but this time in London.  Now all of a sudden there’s interest to find a cure which some suits believe is in Scotland.  Living people have been spotted there which means some are immune to the disease.  Scientists could make a vaccine from their blood but they need someone to go over the wall and bring back a specimen.

Now I want to say right off the bat that I like this movie.  It’s a helluva ride with a lot of good action.  There are gun fights, a sword fight, a car chase, a dude gets burned alive and there’s even a gladiatorial match.  And it’s all done much better than its contemporaries.  The lead character, Sinclair (Rhona Mitra (Highwaymen, Underworld: Rise of the Lycans)), is basically a female Snake Plissken.  She has only one eye but wears a fake eyeball (that can act as a video camera) instead of an eye patch, she dresses pretty much all in black, she has a doesn’t-give-a-shit, take-no-shit attitude and you get the idea.  Definitely not as good as Snake but who the fuck is?  The other two characters that were cool were Sol, the leader of the cannibalistic Road Warrior type gang, and Canaris, some evil high up guy that wants to rule the UK.  Everyone else was just ok.

For this write up I went back to watch this sucker again and still enjoyed it but realized a couple of things.  First, the plot doesn’t really make any sense if you think about it.  For three years the British government knew that living folks existed in Scotland and just ignored it until the virus hit their home turf.  (Spoiler) Also at the end Canaris gets a hold of a survivor (remember they can find a cure for the disease with this person) but says that he’s going to wait yet another bunch of years before administering a vaccine.  I get that he’s the bad guy and he was to do shit that will make him look like an asshole but this is just baffling.  He says he’ll look like a hero later when he shows up with a cure but why wouldn’t he look like a hero if he came out with a vaccine immediately?  The only thing I can think of is that he’s going to make money off of the cure and wants demand to be at its peak.  But that’s not the smartest business move.  People are dying so there won’t be as many folks to give the vaccine to.  The sick aren’t the only ones that are gonna need this shit.  The healthy will need it too to prevent the disease from setting in to start with.  This felt pretty lazy and like the filmmakers didn’t think that Canaris was evil enough so they had to have him do this other shit that is definitely villainous but doesn’t add up.

Another thing is that the team that gets sent into diseased Scotland looses their bio suits after a little while.  None of them seem to get the deadly virus while they’re over there which lessens the threat of the quarantined area.  I mean the disease was the reason why Scotland was cut off from the rest of the world.  The few living people over there are supposed to be immune but our group of heroes isn’t.

And the whole idea of a covert operation with sneaking people across the border isn’t really necessary.  They say in the movie that they don’t want to fly a helicopter in there to arouse suspicion.  But we’re talking about the entire UK at threat of being decimated.  They should’ve just flown a chopper in, grabbed the first couple of people they saw and flown back over the wall.  This aspect of the film actually isn’t that bad but it’s definitely a forced spin on Escape from New York.  Marshall couldn’t come up with something as good as the president being held hostage in the quarantined section.  It makes more sense that a covert operation would be implemented in that situation.  But a virus that’s a threat to the world?  Just find a cure ASAP, who cares if people notice.  And even if someone did notice, they don’t know what’s going on so it doesn’t seem like there’s a big risk there.

This film isn’t as good as the ones it’s imitating (except maybe Gladiator).  It’s too influenced by its influences.  I would’ve liked Marshall to be more subtle about it.  He kind of took one step forward and two steps back with this one.  Instead of continuing to expand the boundaries of horror or making another best-in-subgenre movie he went for an action extravaganza with a cast of hundreds, filming in South Africa, incorporating so many different types of action, extreme makeup and blood effects and even going back to the old art of using a miniature for the exploding bus at the end.  All that shit’s cool but I just want it to be more original and/or less reliant on its inspiration.  It borders on big dumb action like Invasion U.S.A. and Death Wish 3 where you’re treated to a pretty incredible spectacle but there’s almost no depth to it leaving you somewhat unsatisfied.

Even though I shat on this a bit I can’t deny that I smiled a bunch during this thing.  It may be too obvious a mix of your favorite action pictures and segmented as such but man is it fun.      

The Descent

I haven’t seen this one since it was in theaters and it’s way more interesting than I remembered.  I mean I liked it but the ratio of horror movie to non-horror movie was less than memory served and also after watching Neil Marshall’s previous picture (Dog Soldiers) I have a newfound appreciation for the guy.

Now I’m gonna assume that you’ve seen this already because even if you haven’t someone told you all about this fuckin’ thing.  Am I right or am I right?

So the traditional horror part is only the last half hour while the cave and intro parts make up roughly an hour.  I remember it being more like 50/50.  And because of that this movie caught me off guard again.  Well first of all I think the spelunking part can work as horror for some people and I’ll admit that I’m one of them.  It’s not the claustrophobia aspect but the fear of going into a fucking hole in the ground with your only exit being tiny tubes that just lead to other rooms made of fucking rock and there’s no way you can call for help or for people to come and get you and it’s pitch black down there and fuck man.  Not to mention on top of all of this is the possibility of a cave in at any moment.  Between the tight spaces, the darkness, remoteness, danger factor and idea of venturing into the unknown there’s a lot of creepy shit that this cave exploring premise has built into it.

Then the creature part is your payoff.  The spelunking-gone-wrong section goes on for so long and you get caught up in it that either you forget that there are supposed to be monsters in this or you begin to wonder what the fuck your friends were talking about when they told you about these cave crawlers.  It’s a risky way to do a horror film but it works here.  I’m glad there wasn’t a rash of pictures after this came out with the first two thirds about one thing that’s maybe a little creepy and the last third filled with typical scary movie shit.  That trend would’ve been a fucking bore. 

You see I knew how the monsters were revealed and it got me pretty good the first time.  But even this time around this fuckin’ film got me again.  I mean I literally said out loud to no one “fuck, they got me again” and I had to rewind the movie so I could pay more attention to the reveal.  I can’t believe Marshall fuckin’ set the trap, lulled me in and caught me sleeping twice.  And having the *bam* horror stab happen a second after the creature appears on the camera is more effective than if they had the appearance and the stab occur at the same time.  Because when the video camera pans over the first thing you see is one of our characters and when you finally notice the monster it’s synced to the horror stab.  It’s almost like the stab plays just for you.

That ending is pretty fucking good too.  I love that Marshall put that (sort of) happy ending in there for everyone and then said “This is how you expect this to end right?  Well fuck you.  I’m gonna end this motherfucker the way I want to.”  It would’ve been ballsy enough to have a bleak ending but to dangle a fake hopeful conclusion in front of your face only to take it away immediately is goddamn crazy.  Good for him for sticking to his guns and putting in the ending that he thought was best.

I don’t even really need to go on about the creature battle do I?  On a scale, the trapped-in-a-cave part is probably about a 4 but Jesus the last half hour they crank it up to 11.  So much blood, so many brutal deaths, such ferocity, such brutality and even though it’s short, so satisfying.  After all the shit that these women have been through it feels so good to see them get out their frustrations unmercifully on these fucking beasts.

Marshall sure has a strange and interesting idea of what a horror movie can be.  Dog Soldiers is straight forward: a group of soldiers fight werewolves.  That’s a little different than The Descent’s premise: a group of friends go spelunking, get trapped in a cave, endure hardship while trying to find a way out, encounter and combat humanoid cave creatures that try to eat them, no one gets out of the cave.  Man, that must’ve been a hard sell to studios.  Well I’m glad Marshall made it and that the film was successful. 

You can officially count me as a Neil Marshall fan (for those of you that tally that sort of thing).  I dig his little-CGI-as-possible approach and his incredible sense for action.  His shooting style has improved a bunch in his second go around which is nice to see.  Apparently there were no real caves used in this film and that’s really impressive because the sets look phenomenally real.  Marshall knows what the fuck he’s doing guys.  The way The Descent is constructed could’ve been disastrous (and on paper it should’ve been) but Marshall knew it would work.  He admits that he ripped off the idea of reevaluating what a happy ending is from Brazil (meaning if the character is content in their own mind is that considered a happy ending (our lead is still stuck in the cave but has finally found some inner peace) or is something more traditional only considered a happy ending (escaping the cave)).  It’s a fascinating idea and not something that you would expect out of a horror picture.  This is way deeper than Dog Soldiers folks.      

If you haven’t seen this sonuvabitch and you read this piece anyway I don’t know what the fuck your problem is.  Get a hold of a copy and check it out.  I wouldn’t go as far to say that this is a classic but parts of it are excellent.  This one’s difficult to categorize and an anomaly in horror.  It’s certainly different and definitely good.  

Dog Soldiers

Alright boys and girls let me just set this up for you.  A military exercise in Scotland with a squad of rookie soldiers goes very wrong when fucking werewolves come out of the woodwork and attack them.  They hold up in a farm house and make a stand fighting these fuckers off throughout the night.

Ok, I know what you’re thinking, “sure, that sounds good but it’s probably pretty shitty, right?”  No!  This is fucking great.

I mean this is essentially Night of the Living Dead but with werewolves instead of zombies.  But holy shit did they up the ante.  Our gang of soldiers fights the creatures off with machine guns, shotguns, handguns, grenades, swords, boiling water and blunt objects.  These wolves are ferocious so you need something equally ferocious to battle them with.

And I actually wanted to see our characters survive.  I cared about them man.  Everyone does a bang up job but the three main dudes are especially good.  Sean Pertwee (Event Horizon) plays the sergeant and he just has natural charisma.  Kevin McKidd (Trainspotting, Brave) is our real hero though and rises to take command of the squad when the sarge gets injured.  Like Pertwee, charm and leadership come easy.  And finally Liam Cunningham (The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor, Safe House) is the human villain.  I’ll tell ya, he reminds me a lot of Powers Boothe by the way he looks and acts so of course, I really dug this guy in this role.  I love how we’re set up to hate him by having him demand McKidd shoot a dog as the culmination of his training.  And then when McKidd refuses Cunningham just does it himself for absolutely no reason.

But definitely the best thing about this movie is the werewolves themselves.  For a long while you only get very quick glimpses of these things.  There’ll be a shot of it in the shadows or a close up of its snout of something.  As the film goes on you get longer and better views of the creatures and man do they look good.  They’re people in full body costumes on stilts with an animatronic head.  No fucking bad CGI here.  And not only do I absolutely love the way these things look but I also love how they’re handled in this picture.  The camera never holds too long on one of them which was the right approach.  A lot of times we only see the arms and that was extremely effective.  For example there’s a scene where the soldiers are running from the wolves and hop into a truck.  A werewolf rams its arm through the roof swatting all around while our guys are cramped in this tight space with nowhere to go.  The arm is basically a human arm but muscular, dark in color and with claws on the fingertips.  It looks fucking great and kinda scary actually.  This was the scene that made me realize that I had something special on my hands.

On the making of featurette on the DVD the filmmakers shit all over CGI and make the case for using practical real life effects.  The producer says that people would be focused on the CGI and be in awe of it (in a good way) instead of focusing on the movie.  I agree with him except for that last part.  People would be in amazement of how shitty the CGI would look, not how great.  But good for them for flipping that shit the ol’ bird and doing it the way it should be done even though it means more work.  The filmmakers argue that they could only do the shit they wanted to do with traditional effects like punching these motherfuckin’ werewolves, stabbing them through the chest , shooting them, burning them and blowing them up.  Fuckin’ a.

The director is Neil Marshall and he’s the dude that did The Descent.  This was his first movie and he did a damn good job.  Ok, maybe technically it’s not so great.  Like he edits every scene like it’s an action scene with all quick cuts and the flow of the story for the first fifteen or twenty minutes is a little weird.  But once the werewolves show up Marshall settles in nicely. 

This is a low budget horror flick but Marshall makes it feel more like they had a mid level budget.  He describes it as Saving Private Ryan with werewolves and he looked dead fuckin’ serious when he said it.  This is totally not that.  But you do get a ton of bang for your buck.  And dare I say best werewolf movie ever?  An American Werewolf in London is good and a better movie if you catch my drift.  But I dunno guys this thing kicked fucking ass.  I thoroughly enjoyed it and highly recommend it.
  

Pentathlon

I had initially only heard of the pentathlon through the title of this movie.  And then about a month ago a buddy of mine told me what it entailed.  There are five events that the athlete has to compete in and they include swimming, running, fencing, horse riding and shooting a gun.  My friend described it as “the movie villain training event” which is a great summation and one that I totally agree with.  So because the 2012 Olympics are underway I thought it would be fitting to check this one out.

Dolph Lundgren (Universal Soldier: Regeneration, Johnny Mnemonic) plays Eric Brogar, an East German athlete competing in the 1988 Seoul games.  His coach is Heinrich Muller (David Soul (Salem’s Lot, Magnum Force)) and he’s a neo-Nazi crazy sonuvabitch.  He wants Eric to cheat by taking some sort of drugs but Brogar refuses and wins the gold anyway.  Eric then promptly defects to the U.S. to escape his miserable life in communist Germany and his coach.  Well only a couple of months later the Berlin wall falls and Brogar feels like an asshole.  He becomes depressed and an alcoholic.  Years later Muller decides to commit a terrorist act in America right before the 1996 Atlanta games.  Eric pulls himself together (with the help of his boss/trainer at the local rib shack…I’m not kidding) and decides to compete once again but gets caught up in Muller’s bullshit.

If that sounds like a lot of story, I guess it kind of is.  The plot changes pretty frequently but it never gets confusing.  I like how quickly things move in this.  It’s not an action movie really but there’s a bunch of exciting shit.  Like the constant tension between Muller and, well, everyone, the comeback of Eric, the defecting scene towards the beginning and the terrorist plot towards the end.  It’s all good.

It’s interesting that this is an R picture.  I can’t help but think that if something like this was made today it would be PG or PG-13.  These guys went for it and had cursing, Nazis, terrorism and people getting shot and beat up.  I especially like that Eric uses some of his pentathlon skills to battle the bad guys.  There’s a scene where Brogar has a sword fight and another where he shoots some henchmen.

You know, Dolph Lundgren is a better actor than I think most people want to admit.  I mean he was really menacing in Rocky IV, kind of sad and pathetic but mean as hell in The Expendables and Universal Soldier, totally whacked out in Johnny Mnemonic and even sweet, caring and vengeful in Showdown in Little Tokyo.  He’s got some range to him.  In this one Lundgren has inner demons that he has to triumph over as well as some real life demons, the fucked in the head coach.  Sure, maybe his accent isn’t consistent throughout but I feel like I’m in good hands with Dolph.  Like whatever comes up he can deal with it and we’ll eventually pull through this shit together.

And I have to mention that the director is Bruce Malmuth who did Hard to Kill right before this.  He also did the unfortunately boring Nighthawks starring Stallone.  Pentathlon was the last thing he directed before he died.  Between that and Hard to Kill, he went out on top in my eyes.

So yeah, I would recommend this movie.  The bulk of it has less to do with the Olympics than I expected but it’s still a fun time.  Not great but not bad.  It’s perfect for a one time watch.

In Time

This is a prime example of a good idea executed poorly.  It’s sad when you can see the potential while it’s being killed right in front of your eyes.

In the future everyone has a set amount of time to live.  The first 25 years are free but after that you only have one additional year to get your shit together.  The glowing green clock on your arm starts ticking and it can’t be stopped.  Because of this the currency is in time.  So if you want a cup of coffee it’ll cost you four mins, a bus ride can cost an hour, your rent will be a couple of days, etc.  When you work you get paid in time so that’s one way to stay alive.  You can also transfer time from person to person by grabbing someone’s arm just like how you can give someone ten bucks.  Potentially you could live forever as long as you have time on your clock.  So everyone talks about time and almost nothing but time (which is something that took longer than I expected to get used to).  And just like people with and without money there are those with tons of time (like decades or hundreds of years) and those with little (like days or hours).  There doesn’t appear to be a middle class but hang on to that thought for later in this piece.  The two classes are separated by time zones (get it?) that cost like months and years to cross which gives the rich town and the poor ghetto a buffer.

So that’s a cool concept, right?  It’s pretty damn original and has potential.  Well it’s too bad that the script is a piece of shit.  The story goes that Will Salas (Justin Timberlake) lives in the poor town and one day he saves a guy’s life that has a century on his clock.  This dude is fed up with life and actually wants to die so while Will is sleeping he gives him all of his time.  The mystery man is dead and Salas now has over 100 years.  He goes to tell his mother but she runs out of time and dies because they jacked up the bus fare, fuckin’ dicks.  Will vows to bring the system down or make them pay or something.  He goes to the rich town, finds the love interest (Amanda Seyfried (Red Riding Hood)) and then it very oddly turns into Bonnie and Clyde/Robin Hood for the rest of the movie.  These two rob banks of time and give it to the poor.

First off I just want to say that Timberlake disappointed.  Did anyone else think he was awesome in Alpha Dog?  Did anyone else think Alpha Dog was a good movie?  I thought it was a lot of fun, well except for the end.  That was kinda tragic but otherwise I had a blast.  And Justin was perfect in the role he was cast.  I think that’s because it wasn’t too far removed from who he is in real life, some fun lovin’, pot smokin’, party throwin’, lady’s man.  Sure he’s involved in some illegal shit but that’s part of what makes his character appealing.  In In Time Timberlake is like the perfect person.  He’s always helping people by giving them his time, he wants people to see that the system if fucked up and corrupt, he runs from the cops but knows that they’re just doing their job and aren’t the real bad guys, he’s willing to sacrifice himself at the end to save his girlfriend, he buys his mother flowers and etc.  This guy doesn’t have a flaw of any kind and it makes me fucking hate this character.  Salas is such a good person that it’s annoying.  And Timberlake gives a pretty fucking bad performance too.  He can’t do a range of emotions at all.  He can do happy just fine and maybe angry for a second but anything else?  I don’t think so.  Watch the scene where Timberlake tries to convey sadness after his character’s mother dies and you’ll realize that he shouldn’t play people that aren’t like Frankie Ballenbacher from Alpha Dog.  Oh, and everyone else is really bad in this except Cillian Murphy (Red Eye) but he’s a little flat.  He plays the cop hot on Will’s trail and he’s got the badass name the Timekeeper.

The whole movie has this real slick look to it like you’re watching a Giorgio Armani ad come to life.  Almost everything is in black and white, the clothes, the cars, the buildings, etc.  They were going for a retro future look, like the cars are all from the 60’s or 70’s (but they make that whirring noise when they start up and stop like all futuristic cars in these types of movies) and there aren’t any cell phones (they actually use a payphone).  I’m not really against the way this picture looks but I’m not really into it either so in the end it didn’t do much for me.

There are three main reasons why this film doesn’t work.  The first is the characters are bland.  No one is exciting or interesting to watch.  Everyone feels stiff and too confined within their roles. 

Second is the pacing.  There’s so much downtime with Timberlake and Seyfried talking about how much time sucks and that they wish it didn’t have to be this way.  We get it fellas.  We got it in the first ten minutes.  You don’t need to hit us over the head with this shit for the entire movie.  Think about it.  Pictures about money and greed don’t have the characters constantly talking about money and nothing but.  There’s usually other shit that happens and non-money topics come up.  With this film the people are too enamored with their own world.  They can’t get past the fucking ticking clock on their arms and that prevents anything else from entering the conversation. 

And third, oddly enough, is the we’re-running-out-of-time situation is overplayed.  For almost the entire picture Salas is almost out of time.  He’s constantly down to a minute and change or even seconds but he always finds some way to get more time.  I mean in theory this is exactly what I want to see out the concept presented to us.  It sounds exciting if our guy has to continually think of ways to get time.  It should sorta be like the Crank movies where the whole thing’s on edge.  But here it gets boring real fast.  I never felt like Will was actually gonna run out of time after a little bit.  I never got sucked in and felt worried that he might not get out of one of his many sticky situations.  And I think I know exactly where this idea died for me.  When Salas travels to the rich town he decides to go to the casino and play some poker, well one hand of poker anyway.  People are wagering like 100,000 years (which I don’t think Will has but he’s able to bet it anyway) and he ponies up.  In a total James Bond type scene he has a sly conversation with the bad guy during the hand about possibly being out of his league.  Will wagers everything he’s got only leaving himself a couple of seconds, doesn’t bat an eye and wins a million years or some shit.  Not only is this scene out of place (arguably the whole movie is out of place) but the day before when Salas was talking to the mystery dude that coughed up a century, Will told him that he wouldn’t waste all that time.  Blowing all of your time on a hand of poker is clearly wasting it.  This is also after Will vows revenge.  Gambling everything you have isn’t a good way to get your revenge plot in motion in my opinion, especially if it’s going to leave you dead.  Anyway this was the part of the movie that made me not care about this character running out of time.  If he doesn’t value it why should I?

Obviously this film is a statement on inequality in society though.  It feels like the filmmakers were going for more of a message than entertainment which I guess is fine but it’s so heavy handed.  The film is saying that in the future the middle class will disappear and there will only be the super rich and the super poor.  The rich will control everything, including raising rates to keep the poor in poverty, and live forever.  The poor must die because the conundrum is that with this premise of time=life you can’t have everyone live for eternity.  There wouldn’t be enough room or resources.  The question they pose is would you allow people to die so you could be immortal?  And of course Will says at the end that not one person should die for immortality.  The film argues that time (money) should be spread more evenly among the people and not horded by a small group.  The bad guy contests that doing so will create an imbalance and the world will come to an end.  But the thing is that the world is already imbalanced so for these very poor people they don’t have much, if anything, to lose.  And there’s also a message in there that rich people don’t really “live”.  They’re just soulless beings while the non-rich can “do a lot in a day”.  I get what they’re saying but I just wish they had done it in a subtler way.  No one likes being obviously preached to, especially in a sci-fi adventure flick.

I thought Salas and co. were going to find a cure for this clock thing and everyone would be freed from it.  All people get to start living normally at 25 until they die naturally.  But instead it’s about trying to find a way to make people’s lives more bearable with this man made catastrophe by giving them more time. 

It’s not a terribly fun film.  There are too many plot holes, boring characters, the production design is rigid, there’s a really bad CGI car crash into the L.A. storm drain, there’s a secondary villain whose purpose I didn’t understand, the thing drags a lot and the messaging is shoved in your face.  I want to say that it’s miscast too but the movie is pretty bad so that doesn’t seem so out of place.  Also, everyone in this is supposed to look 25 because in the universe of the movie that’s when time stands still for the human body.  But they didn’t cast anyone that looks that age.  Not only do they all look at the very least 30 but there are clearly age differences between the characters.  Nobody’s buying that Cillian Murphy, Johnny Galecki (Roseanne) and Justin Timberlake are all fuckin’ 25.

And speaking of the world this picture lives in, what if someone cuts off your clock arm?  Do you die or does the clock keep ticking on your dismembered arm?  I mean I like that you can kill someone in a conventional way even before their time is up in this movie but if the clock arm gets injured does that affect your time?  Is the clock something you’re born with or do they insert it when they’re writing up your birth certificate?  It would be cool if you weren’t born with it so there could be this whole underground society of non-clockers.    

Alright that’s enough rambling.  Even though these guys came up with a good idea it didn’t turn out very well.  Way too schlocky.