Action movies
Sep. 12th, 2010 12:41 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
seriousficSo overall, I think Scott Pilgrim is the clear winner of the summer, action-wise. It has characters you like fighting charismatic villains in interesting, visually distinctive ways, which the rest of the summer hasn't really managed. But just for the record...
Machete
Right off the bat, I'll say I don't agree with this film's politics. Like most sides in the immigration debate, it doesn't go for the obvious solution.
1. Elect Sarah Palin as President and George W. Bush as Super-President.
2. Dirty hippies finally get the message and move to Canada.
3. Thus freeing up space for all the Mexicans who want to come over!
Sofia Vergara will take all the parts Sean Penn would've played. Just think, if we had done this sooner, I could've masturbated furiously throughout all of Mystic River.
But even if you agree if you agree with the film's politics, it's just not that good. Yeah, there are some good action scenes, but pretty much anytime Machete isn't hacking people up with various gardening tools (because he's Mexican, get it?), the film takes a steep nosedive in quality. Admittedly, that's not a lot of the time, but it's still too much.
Part of it is that Machete is actually a pretty boring character. Now, I know what kind of movie this is, and I'm not asking that he has a character arc or backstory or Screenwriting 101 bullshit like that, but just compare him to, say, Snake Plisken, and you see how he suffers. Snake is interesting no matter what he's doing. Machete is only interesting when he's killing someone with something sharp. They try to make him into a memetic badass or something, but he really doesn't have any personality or charm at all.
See, in the Grindhouse trailer that inspired the movie, Machete was this ex-federale badass who was basically hired by law enforcement agencies to do the dirty jobs they didn't want their own guys to do. That's a fun, interesting premise. You have the little exchange where he's telling Jeff Fahey his prices for menial labor, then the guy asks if he's ever killed someone, and Machete calmly replies "That'll be two hundred dollars." He's a bad man. He's the guy in the rated R movie, you know, the guy you're not sure whether or not you like yet. You're not sure where he's coming from.
I'm not sure if this picture of Sam Neill helps convey my point, but fuck if I'm not going to use this Sam Neill picture in every blog post I make from now on.
In the movie, they turn him into the pussy. I'm not kidding. He's the guy in the PG-13 movie everyone's really hoping makes it happen. They give him this backstory where his loved ones get killed by a crime lord and he's out for revenge (isn't that the plot of the Desperado movie? Like, all of them?). Only, for some reason he's in Texas, doing yard work instead of on a roaring rampage of revenge. So he gets picked up, the bad guys ask him to kill a guy... he says no... the bad guys tell him "do it or else," so he says yes... and then he gives all the money to charity. How lame is that? I was under the impression that Machete would just be Danny Trejo as this badass bastard whose only motivation is revenge. Sure, maybe he has a code of honor or a heart of gold, but primarily, he's a bad man doing bad things to badder people. This "Greedo shot first" shit is for the birds.
But okay, maybe you don't care about that, and you just want to see Danny Trejo play a lovable loser who hugs kittens and also decapitates people. It's a grindhouse movie, who cares? Well, there are three big female roles in the movie, the exploitation movie, and none of them do nudity. Which I don't get. Okay, Michelle Rodriguez, she's cool, if she doesn't want to do nudity, that's fine. Lindsey Lohan, she's barely in it, they just want her for shock value, okay. But what is Jessica Alba doing in this movie? She can't act, she won't show her boobs, what the hell is she doing here? Actresses, it's like this. If you're in an exploitation movie, or a slasher movie, or if you're playing a stripper in an R-rated movie...
As opposed to strippers in PG movies.
Then guess what? You're showing the goods. It's like if a straight guy wants to play a gay man. Guess what? He's gonna have to kiss another dude. He might not like it, but it's happening. You think you're better than a straight man playing a gay dude? You're not. Take a page from Angelina Jolie. She's the biggest movie star on the planet, she'll get naked for whatever. Assassin who takes orders from a loom? Nude scene. Turn-of-the-century housewife whose son is kidnapped? Nude scene. I'm pretty sure when she voiced a tiger in Kung-Fu Panda, she did it topless. That's how winners win.
And it's not like she's a bit part either. She's the female lead! I think about half the movie is about her. There'll be Danny Trejo killing people, then a boring scene where Jessica Alba tries to figure out the plot (a corrupt politician who's running on an "immigrants are evil!" platform stages a fake assassination to make it look like immigrants are evil. It's not that hard), then Danny Trejo killing people, then Jessica Alba trying to figure out the plot. Just on and on and on. Anyway, she plays an ICE agent who slowly comes around to Machete's side, which for my money is the most offensive part of the "satire." Yeah, you can't be anti-immigration and want to fight the bad guys because they're murderous scumbags, you have to totally agree with the filmmaker's politics or you're evil. Whatever.
What's worse is that Michelle Rodriguez, who is a much more charismatic performer playing a much more interesting character, plays second banana to Jessica Alba. I'm not even sure what the point of Alba's character is. If we're going to make Machete into this nice, sympathetic lead, why do we need another nice, sympathetic lead for the audience to be invested in? For that matter, why not cast Carla Gugino in the role? She's Hispanic, she's a much better actress, she's willing to do nudity... honestly, if you told me that she gave lollipops to orphans while Jessica Alba spent her weekends spitting on Fantastic Four fans, I'd believe you.
Carla Gugino without make-up.
As long as we're on the subject of Jessica Alba... and come on, it's not like we're going to be discussing her again... how is it that she gets all these badass action heroine roles while Jennifer Garner is stuck doing romantic comedies? Who are the ad wizards that came up with that one?
Hollywood exec: Okay, Jen, you have acting chops, you can act, and you're kinda funny. Also, you're cute and you don't worship Satan, which are the only qualifications needed to be a rom-com lead. So, you'll be doing that. Oh, hey Jess. Let's see, you're also cute and also don't worship Satan, but when you sneeze I look around for a cue card that says "Achooo!" So we'll cast you as the female lead in a bunch of action movies. Hell, in this one the role is the blonde, blue-eyed sister of a white guy, so the only way you could be less suited for that role is if I set you on fire, but I don't give a shit, you're in it!
What was I reviewing again? A River Runs Through It? No, Machete, right. Oh, another thing. Remember all the trailer bits from Grindhouse, like Machete attaching a chaingun to a motorcycle and shooting some guys? Well, they make it into the movie, but nothing is done with them. Machete is in a fight, he picks up a chaingun, puts it on a motorcycle, does a jump, shoots a bunch of guys, then is like "oh, that was fun" and walks off. It takes about ten seconds, all told. Now, in the trailer it looks like it's going to be a Crowning Moment of Awesome, the start of this awesome killing spree, but it's like it's just crowbarred in without any rhyme or reason. I don't think they even reshot the footage to match the rest of the movie. So, that's lame.
You know what's not lame? Sam Neill: Gentleman of Roguish Means.
The Expendables
Meh. This really seems like a can't-miss deal. You have Sylvester Stallone coming off Rambo, a great action movie. The premise is to just get a bunch of action stars together and have them do a men on a mission movie. Pretty simple stuff, yet it never really skyrockets into being great action schlock. Part of it is that it's not really a men on a mission movie. It makes a few stabs in that direction, but the movie is actually pretty firmly about Sly Stallone's character and his soul-searching. Which would be fine if he were playing Rocky Balboa or John Rambo, but he's not. He's playing Barney Ross. I'll be shit if I'm going to care about anyone named Barney.
Fuck this guy, he can't even see the Great Gazoo.
It starts off fine. The Expendables are on a boat, killing some Somali pirates, then Bruce Willis calls them in to go on this mission. So they go to this island to check it out, they see how it sucks... and then the movie starts spinning its wheels for like an hour. They go back, they say "it's too dangerous," (what the fuck, movie? Isn't the whole idea that they go jobs that are really dangerous because it doesn't matter whether they live or die, almost as if they were EXPENDABLE???) and the rest of the movie is Sly Stallone going "hmm, should I go back and help out that nice lady I met?" Obviously, they're going to go back and kill the bad guys. We really don't need to spend a whole hour justifying that decision. They're mercenaries, someone is paying them to kill people. That's all we need. That's it.
Now about the filler. It's not bad... there's some good violence... it's just that it doesn't belong in this movie. The premise is a bunch of action movie stalwarts killing people in the hundreds. We don't need to see their existential angst. I'm not kidding, there's this scene where Mickey Rourke has an Oscar clip moment and starts talking about saving his soul, and this is in the same movie which treats an Arnold Schwarzenegger cameo as the Second Coming. All I want is for them to go to the island and spend an hour in the jungle having crazy adventures before killing the bad guy. You know, they meet up with the resistance, go through a minefield, hit on some innkeeper's daughter, that kinda thing. Maybe they're trying to do a Dirty Dozen thing, where they spend the whole movie getting ready to kill the Nazis, but in that movie, that was all forward motion. They were training up, we were getting to know them, there was no scene where Lee Marvin left to beat up his ex-girlfriend's abusive husband. (Charisma Carpenter, honey, you're better than this. Call Joss Whedon, get him to cast you as a SHIELD agent or someone who gets the Avengers' mail, I don't care, but there's no reason you shouldn't be guest-starring on Glee or at least playing the best friend in a Katherine Heigl movie!)
That's another thing, Dirty Dozen was an ensemble. Expendables has a few scenes like that, but mostly it's this Doctor Who thing where it's Sly Stallone and his Companion. He'll have a scene with Jason Statham, then he'll have a scene with Jet Li, then he'll do something with Mickey Rourke... that's not a men on a mission movie. That's a Sly Stallone movie with special guest stars.
Oh, one more thing. Most of the Expendables are well-cast, but I think there's one too many of them, and it spreads the screentime too thin. And the one too many is Randy Couture. I guess he's a wrestler or something, but he can't act, he has no action chops... I have no idea what he's doing there. And I don't mean he can't act in the fun, Arnold Schwarzenegger way. I mean he can't act like he was taught English by someone writing his vocabulary words on bricks and then throwing them at his head. And it's not like he's a big name in action movies. Just look at this poster.
Clearly, what this movie needed was another bald white guy.
I know Terry Crews has the same number of kills, but he also blocks odor for 16 hours. As long as we're going for the "star power" of Randy Couture, there are so many better choices. Bruce Campbell, Kevin Sorbo, Michael Jai White, Lucy Lawless, Wesley Snipes, Kiefer Sutherland, Chuck Norris, Don "the Dragon" Wilson, Gina Carano, Danny Trejo, Zoe Bell. Hopefully, in the sequel, the first scene will be him getting killed off and then our heroes going out for revenge. And not spending an hour wondering if, like, revenge is really worth it.
Machete
Right off the bat, I'll say I don't agree with this film's politics. Like most sides in the immigration debate, it doesn't go for the obvious solution.
1. Elect Sarah Palin as President and George W. Bush as Super-President.
2. Dirty hippies finally get the message and move to Canada.
3. Thus freeing up space for all the Mexicans who want to come over!
Sofia Vergara will take all the parts Sean Penn would've played. Just think, if we had done this sooner, I could've masturbated furiously throughout all of Mystic River.
But even if you agree if you agree with the film's politics, it's just not that good. Yeah, there are some good action scenes, but pretty much anytime Machete isn't hacking people up with various gardening tools (because he's Mexican, get it?), the film takes a steep nosedive in quality. Admittedly, that's not a lot of the time, but it's still too much.
Part of it is that Machete is actually a pretty boring character. Now, I know what kind of movie this is, and I'm not asking that he has a character arc or backstory or Screenwriting 101 bullshit like that, but just compare him to, say, Snake Plisken, and you see how he suffers. Snake is interesting no matter what he's doing. Machete is only interesting when he's killing someone with something sharp. They try to make him into a memetic badass or something, but he really doesn't have any personality or charm at all.
See, in the Grindhouse trailer that inspired the movie, Machete was this ex-federale badass who was basically hired by law enforcement agencies to do the dirty jobs they didn't want their own guys to do. That's a fun, interesting premise. You have the little exchange where he's telling Jeff Fahey his prices for menial labor, then the guy asks if he's ever killed someone, and Machete calmly replies "That'll be two hundred dollars." He's a bad man. He's the guy in the rated R movie, you know, the guy you're not sure whether or not you like yet. You're not sure where he's coming from.
I'm not sure if this picture of Sam Neill helps convey my point, but fuck if I'm not going to use this Sam Neill picture in every blog post I make from now on.
In the movie, they turn him into the pussy. I'm not kidding. He's the guy in the PG-13 movie everyone's really hoping makes it happen. They give him this backstory where his loved ones get killed by a crime lord and he's out for revenge (isn't that the plot of the Desperado movie? Like, all of them?). Only, for some reason he's in Texas, doing yard work instead of on a roaring rampage of revenge. So he gets picked up, the bad guys ask him to kill a guy... he says no... the bad guys tell him "do it or else," so he says yes... and then he gives all the money to charity. How lame is that? I was under the impression that Machete would just be Danny Trejo as this badass bastard whose only motivation is revenge. Sure, maybe he has a code of honor or a heart of gold, but primarily, he's a bad man doing bad things to badder people. This "Greedo shot first" shit is for the birds.
But okay, maybe you don't care about that, and you just want to see Danny Trejo play a lovable loser who hugs kittens and also decapitates people. It's a grindhouse movie, who cares? Well, there are three big female roles in the movie, the exploitation movie, and none of them do nudity. Which I don't get. Okay, Michelle Rodriguez, she's cool, if she doesn't want to do nudity, that's fine. Lindsey Lohan, she's barely in it, they just want her for shock value, okay. But what is Jessica Alba doing in this movie? She can't act, she won't show her boobs, what the hell is she doing here? Actresses, it's like this. If you're in an exploitation movie, or a slasher movie, or if you're playing a stripper in an R-rated movie...
As opposed to strippers in PG movies.
Then guess what? You're showing the goods. It's like if a straight guy wants to play a gay man. Guess what? He's gonna have to kiss another dude. He might not like it, but it's happening. You think you're better than a straight man playing a gay dude? You're not. Take a page from Angelina Jolie. She's the biggest movie star on the planet, she'll get naked for whatever. Assassin who takes orders from a loom? Nude scene. Turn-of-the-century housewife whose son is kidnapped? Nude scene. I'm pretty sure when she voiced a tiger in Kung-Fu Panda, she did it topless. That's how winners win.
And it's not like she's a bit part either. She's the female lead! I think about half the movie is about her. There'll be Danny Trejo killing people, then a boring scene where Jessica Alba tries to figure out the plot (a corrupt politician who's running on an "immigrants are evil!" platform stages a fake assassination to make it look like immigrants are evil. It's not that hard), then Danny Trejo killing people, then Jessica Alba trying to figure out the plot. Just on and on and on. Anyway, she plays an ICE agent who slowly comes around to Machete's side, which for my money is the most offensive part of the "satire." Yeah, you can't be anti-immigration and want to fight the bad guys because they're murderous scumbags, you have to totally agree with the filmmaker's politics or you're evil. Whatever.
What's worse is that Michelle Rodriguez, who is a much more charismatic performer playing a much more interesting character, plays second banana to Jessica Alba. I'm not even sure what the point of Alba's character is. If we're going to make Machete into this nice, sympathetic lead, why do we need another nice, sympathetic lead for the audience to be invested in? For that matter, why not cast Carla Gugino in the role? She's Hispanic, she's a much better actress, she's willing to do nudity... honestly, if you told me that she gave lollipops to orphans while Jessica Alba spent her weekends spitting on Fantastic Four fans, I'd believe you.
Carla Gugino without make-up.
As long as we're on the subject of Jessica Alba... and come on, it's not like we're going to be discussing her again... how is it that she gets all these badass action heroine roles while Jennifer Garner is stuck doing romantic comedies? Who are the ad wizards that came up with that one?
Hollywood exec: Okay, Jen, you have acting chops, you can act, and you're kinda funny. Also, you're cute and you don't worship Satan, which are the only qualifications needed to be a rom-com lead. So, you'll be doing that. Oh, hey Jess. Let's see, you're also cute and also don't worship Satan, but when you sneeze I look around for a cue card that says "Achooo!" So we'll cast you as the female lead in a bunch of action movies. Hell, in this one the role is the blonde, blue-eyed sister of a white guy, so the only way you could be less suited for that role is if I set you on fire, but I don't give a shit, you're in it!
What was I reviewing again? A River Runs Through It? No, Machete, right. Oh, another thing. Remember all the trailer bits from Grindhouse, like Machete attaching a chaingun to a motorcycle and shooting some guys? Well, they make it into the movie, but nothing is done with them. Machete is in a fight, he picks up a chaingun, puts it on a motorcycle, does a jump, shoots a bunch of guys, then is like "oh, that was fun" and walks off. It takes about ten seconds, all told. Now, in the trailer it looks like it's going to be a Crowning Moment of Awesome, the start of this awesome killing spree, but it's like it's just crowbarred in without any rhyme or reason. I don't think they even reshot the footage to match the rest of the movie. So, that's lame.
You know what's not lame? Sam Neill: Gentleman of Roguish Means.
The Expendables
Meh. This really seems like a can't-miss deal. You have Sylvester Stallone coming off Rambo, a great action movie. The premise is to just get a bunch of action stars together and have them do a men on a mission movie. Pretty simple stuff, yet it never really skyrockets into being great action schlock. Part of it is that it's not really a men on a mission movie. It makes a few stabs in that direction, but the movie is actually pretty firmly about Sly Stallone's character and his soul-searching. Which would be fine if he were playing Rocky Balboa or John Rambo, but he's not. He's playing Barney Ross. I'll be shit if I'm going to care about anyone named Barney.
Fuck this guy, he can't even see the Great Gazoo.
It starts off fine. The Expendables are on a boat, killing some Somali pirates, then Bruce Willis calls them in to go on this mission. So they go to this island to check it out, they see how it sucks... and then the movie starts spinning its wheels for like an hour. They go back, they say "it's too dangerous," (what the fuck, movie? Isn't the whole idea that they go jobs that are really dangerous because it doesn't matter whether they live or die, almost as if they were EXPENDABLE???) and the rest of the movie is Sly Stallone going "hmm, should I go back and help out that nice lady I met?" Obviously, they're going to go back and kill the bad guys. We really don't need to spend a whole hour justifying that decision. They're mercenaries, someone is paying them to kill people. That's all we need. That's it.
Now about the filler. It's not bad... there's some good violence... it's just that it doesn't belong in this movie. The premise is a bunch of action movie stalwarts killing people in the hundreds. We don't need to see their existential angst. I'm not kidding, there's this scene where Mickey Rourke has an Oscar clip moment and starts talking about saving his soul, and this is in the same movie which treats an Arnold Schwarzenegger cameo as the Second Coming. All I want is for them to go to the island and spend an hour in the jungle having crazy adventures before killing the bad guy. You know, they meet up with the resistance, go through a minefield, hit on some innkeeper's daughter, that kinda thing. Maybe they're trying to do a Dirty Dozen thing, where they spend the whole movie getting ready to kill the Nazis, but in that movie, that was all forward motion. They were training up, we were getting to know them, there was no scene where Lee Marvin left to beat up his ex-girlfriend's abusive husband. (Charisma Carpenter, honey, you're better than this. Call Joss Whedon, get him to cast you as a SHIELD agent or someone who gets the Avengers' mail, I don't care, but there's no reason you shouldn't be guest-starring on Glee or at least playing the best friend in a Katherine Heigl movie!)
That's another thing, Dirty Dozen was an ensemble. Expendables has a few scenes like that, but mostly it's this Doctor Who thing where it's Sly Stallone and his Companion. He'll have a scene with Jason Statham, then he'll have a scene with Jet Li, then he'll do something with Mickey Rourke... that's not a men on a mission movie. That's a Sly Stallone movie with special guest stars.
Oh, one more thing. Most of the Expendables are well-cast, but I think there's one too many of them, and it spreads the screentime too thin. And the one too many is Randy Couture. I guess he's a wrestler or something, but he can't act, he has no action chops... I have no idea what he's doing there. And I don't mean he can't act in the fun, Arnold Schwarzenegger way. I mean he can't act like he was taught English by someone writing his vocabulary words on bricks and then throwing them at his head. And it's not like he's a big name in action movies. Just look at this poster.
Clearly, what this movie needed was another bald white guy.
I know Terry Crews has the same number of kills, but he also blocks odor for 16 hours. As long as we're going for the "star power" of Randy Couture, there are so many better choices. Bruce Campbell, Kevin Sorbo, Michael Jai White, Lucy Lawless, Wesley Snipes, Kiefer Sutherland, Chuck Norris, Don "the Dragon" Wilson, Gina Carano, Danny Trejo, Zoe Bell. Hopefully, in the sequel, the first scene will be him getting killed off and then our heroes going out for revenge. And not spending an hour wondering if, like, revenge is really worth it.
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Date: 2010-09-13 02:41 pm (UTC)Includes my idea for how Expendables 2 should go!