Blood drenched and brutal, stylish and silly, “Boy Kills World,” a new action comedy starring Bill Skarsgård, and now playing on theatres, is a pure and simple story of revenge.
A prologue paints a picture of a post-apocalyptic future. Fascist leader Hilda Van Der Koy (Famke Janssen) rules with an iron fist, using cruelty and unhinged televised murders called “The Culling,” featuring breakfast cereal mascots, to “make an example of those who pose a threat to the Van Der Koys.”
Into this, comes Skarsgård as Boy, a youngster left traumatized by Van Der Koy’s murder of his entire family. Deaf and mute, the orphaned Boy is rescued by enigmatic martial arts master Shaman (Yayan Ruhian). Years of training transform Boy from a small scared child, to a muscle-bound killer filled with rage, thoughts of vengeance and guided by an inner voice, courtesy of his favorite video game.
“I am an instrument, shaped for a single purpose,” his inner voice declares. “to kill Hilda Van Der Koy!”
With the help of resistance fighters Basho (Andrew Koji) and Benny (Isaiah Mustafa), Boy unleashes a deranged campaign of chaos that will lead him to the top echelons of power.
Recently “Monkey Man” mined some of the same territory as “Boy Kills World.” Both are films about avenging the death of a mother, both are high octane fight fests, but “Boy Kills World” replaces the solemn tone of “Monkey Man” with irreverence. The new film is essentially a series of cartoony, splatter-zone fight sequences hung around a simple story that sees Boy seek revenge using fists, knives, guns and even a cheese grater to an armpit.
“Boy Kills World” packs a wallop in those scenes, but does not deliver an emotional smackdown. Director and screenwriter Moritz Mohr floats a family story in the puddles of blood left behind by Boy’s rampage, but by the time we get there it is too little too late. We’ve already been desensitized by the ballet of bullets and buckets of blood. The tonal shift doesn’t work and goes on too long, but for genre fans, Skarsgård’s finely sculpted abs and twitchy action should satisfy.
It’s a question asked of Dev Patel’s character in “Monkey Man,” a new thriller from producer Jordan Peele, now playing in theatres, but it’s also something you may want to ponder before buying a ticket.
Like the Keanu Reeves franchise, “Monkey Man” is ripe with R-rated violence, crowd-pleasing action and quirky world-building, but extreme brutality and a healthy dose of socio-political rhetoric separates the two action heroes.
Patel, who directed the film, stars as Kid, a man from the fictional Indian city of Yatana. He exists at the bottom of the caste system, tamped down by the elites, and memories of his mother’s (Adithi Kalkunte) death at the hands of corrupt police chief Rana (Sikander Kher). “In this city,” he says, “the rich don’t see us as people. To them, we’re animals.”
His suppressed rage explodes on the underground fight circuit. Wearing a monkey mask in tribute to the Hindu monkey deity Hanuman, his fists to do the talking, giving voice to his trauma. “When I was a boy,” he says, “my mother used to tell me a story of a demon king and his army. They brought fire and terror to the land until they faced the protector of the people… the White Monkey.”
Driven by revenge against those who took his mother, his childhood and his home, he exacts bloody retribution from those who wronged him. “Just one small ember can burn down everything,” says his guiding voice.
The ferocious violence of “Monkey Man” is abundant, but doesn’t have the elegance of the abovementioned Keanu Reeves franchise. It’s grittier, driven by rage, a manifestation of Kid’s brutal revenge against the people that did him wrong. The powerful fight scenes, à la “Only God Forgives” or “Raid,” establish Patel as a filmmaker outside the mainstream, unafraid to take risks.
He keeps the camera up-close-and-personal, using close-ups to convey Kid’s anguish and wrath and the pained looks on his victim’s faces. It makes for an intense viewing experience as Patel’s frenetic camera paints the screen with wild, occasionally surreal, images.
“Monkey Man” is an experience, an in-your-face flick about a guy who takes a licking and keeps on ticking. Part exploitation cinema, part revenge story, it’s elevated by Patel’s arthouse flourishes and the film’s political and spiritual bent.
“Land of Bad,” a new military thriller starring Liam Hemsworth and Russell Crowe, and now playing in theatres, uses highflying drone warfare as a backdrop for a story of survival on the ground.
Set in the South Philippines, the story begins with a covert Special Forces operation to extract a CIA asset captured by some very bad people.
Three highly skilled veterans, Sergeant Abel (Luke Hemsworth), Bishop (Ricky Whittle) and Captain Sugar (Milo Ventimiglia), are teamed with Sergeant JJ “Playboy” Kinney (Liam Hemsworth), a rookie whose nerves are showing even before they parachute into enemy territory.
Kinney’s job is to provide on-the-ground data to Captain Ed “Reaper” Grimm (Russell Crowe), a drone operator at a remote command post in Las Vegas. “I am the eyes in the sky,” Grimm says. “The bringer of doom.”
When the situation goes awry, Kinney is left on his own in hostile territory with only Reaper’s disembodied voice to guide him to safety.
“Land of Bad” asks (but doesn’t answer) questions about the role of technology in warfare, and if long distance battle, in the form of drones, is less barbaric than up-close-personal, Mano a Mano conflict. It’s an interesting, very twenty-first century issue, but it falls by the wayside as the action takes center stage.
Director William Eubank stages several exciting battles, provides lots of ticking-clock tension and plenty of obstacles—ie: baddies with guns and giant mountains between Kinney and safety—to keep Kinney’s odyssey edging the viewer toward the edge of their collective seats. There’s nothing much new here, but the action scenes are effective in creating a sense of immediacy and danger.
As a newbie in the group, Liam Hemsworth has an interesting arc, from nervous newcomer to reluctant hero. It goes a notch beyond the usual action hero portrayal, and humanizes Kinney as all hell breaks loose around him.
Crowe slides by on sheer movie star charisma. His take on Reaper is, by times, playful and powerful. But at the end of the day, he’s a stereotype of the anti-establishment figure who places emotion above authority. But, in the film’s unexpected dance scene he proves he can still cut a rug. Are You Not Entertained? Sure are, by the sheer absurdity of Crowe’s last twenty minutes on screen.
“Land of Bad” does not reinvent the war film wheel, but rolls along serviceably enough as an engaging action flick.
A grade-A Jason Statham B-movie, “The Beekeeper” is a back-to-basics effort from the action star that adds a new variation to his standard character assortment. We’ve seen Statham Character #1, in which he is a “loner with a past who must protect a loved one.” Then there’s Statham Character #2 which is the “loner with a past who must protect a youthful innocent.” And now we have Statham Character #3, a “loner with a past who avenges the death of ‘the only person who ever took care of me.’”
When we first meet Adam Clay (Statham), his neighbor, the kindly Mrs. Parker (Phylicia Rashad), invites him over for dinner. Later in the evening, he returns with a jar of the liquid gold produced by the bees he keeps on his property, to find a terrible scene. Turns out, while he tended his bee hives, she was the victim of a sophisticated phishing scam that siphoned out all the cash from her personal accounts, and from the children’s charity she controlled.
He arrives to find dinner burning unattended, and Mrs. Parker dead from a self-inflicted gun-shot wound. After a tussle with Mrs. Parker’s F.B.I. agent daughter Verona (Emmy Raver-Lampman), he sets off to get to get even with the people who caused the death of, “the only person who ever took care of me.”
“Taking from an elderly person is as bad as stealing from a child,” he says, buzzin’ around the bad guy’s hive.
Turns out he’s a retired operative for a clandestine organization called “Beekeepers.” The deadliest of the deadly, they make John Wick look tame, and are sworn to protect the hive at all costs.
As the bodies pile up, all roads lead to Derek Danforth (Josh Hutcherson), the human grease stain at the head of Danforth Industries, a sleazy operation that makes millions by separating the vulnerable from their cash.
“Just tell me who this guy is,” Danforth demands from his head-of-security Wallace Westwyld (Jeremy Irons).
“He’s probably the last pair of eyes you’re going to stare at,” he replies.
“The Beekeeper” is Primal Statham. It’s exactly the Jason Statham movie you expect it will be.
A man of few words, Clay is someone who lets his fists do the talking, and they speak multitudes. An exercise in overkill, this is a violent movie that delights in punching the bad guys in the face. Or tying them to a runaway truck. Or nailing them repeatedly with a stapler. It’s pure good vs. evil, no more or less.
It’s also a little silly. Statham actually asks, “To bee, or not to bee?” at one point, but the laughs are part of the experience. Verona delivers one of the film’s biggest, possibly unintended, laughs when she says, to the cockney-accented Clay, “There’s some British Isles hiding in your accent.” That line makes as much sense as anything in this movie, but that’s cool because “The Beekeeper” is an old-school, over-the-top actioner, laced with one-liners, that doesn’t take itself too seriously.
The title “Silent Night,” action icon John Woo’s first American film in twenty years, is a double entendre. On one hand it refers to the holiday season in which most of the action takes place, but it’s also a nod to the film’s construction. With no dialogue, it’s a quiet movie about a guy who makes a lot of noise.
The movie begins with a bang as Brian Godluck (Joel Kinnaman), dressed in a Rudolph Christmas sweater and sleigh bell necklace, attempts to outrun two cars filled with gun toting bad guys. The odds are not tilted in his favor, and soon he is in hospital with a bullet-sized hole in his throat. Alive but unable to speak through shredded vocal cords, he’s lucky to be alive but doesn’t seem too happy about it.
Returning home with wife Saya (Catalina Sandino Moreno) it’s revealed he is not the only victim. Turns out, on the previous Christmas Eve a stray bullet killed their young son Taylor in the front yard of their Texas home.
Haunted by the loss of his son, Brian hits the bottle, spending his days drunk and disengaged, waiting for the police to get on the case. At an appointment with Detective Dennis Vassel (Scott Mescudi), Brian spots the Most Wanted posters for the men responsible for murdering his son.
It triggers something in him; a fierce need for revenge. He becomes a one-man army, builds up an arsenal, trains in self-defense, does surveillance on the baddies and writes “Kill Them All” on the calendar on Christmas Eve.
Those looking to “Silent Night” for the patented John Woo full-on assault action will be disappointed. After the pulse-racing opening sequence the movie becomes ninety percent set-up, leading to a generic shoot-out so dull it makes “My Dinner with Andre” seem exciting by comparison. A fight scene between Brian and a gang member is promising, but ultimately leads nowhere.
The gimmick, cutting all dialogue save for the odd police scanner buzz, radio news report or the self-defense videos Brian watches, works against the effectiveness of the storytelling. Woo’s poetic visuals are evident, although a tear that turns into a bullet feels a little heavy handed, but the lack of dialogue reduces the characters to one dimension.
Kinnaman’s vacillates between ennui and bloodthirsty, but not much in between. We don’t know anything about him and because he doesn’t speak, he doesn’t even get a cool, “what I do have are a very particular set of skills” speech.
But at least he has some range. The gang members are meat puppets, snarling bullet catchers with targets on their backs and nothing more. This is a basic good vs. evil bullet ballet, but some kind of character work might have gone a long way toward making us care about the people on screen and their stories.
“Silent Night” takes a long time to get where it is going, and once it gets there, isn’t worth the wait.
Gerard Butler is no stranger to action. On film he’s battled more terrorists than you can shake a stick at, and he once even took on a network of powerful of satellites gone amok.
His latest, “Mission Kandahar” (titled simply “Kandahar” in the United States), now playing in theatres, brings the action earthbound in a story based on the true experiences of screenwriter and former military intelligence officer, Mitchell LaFortune in Afghanistan in the aftermath of the Snowden leaks.
Butler is Tom Harris, a divorced MI5 military intelligence officer working undercover in Afghanistan circa 2021. He is a “total chameleon,” a man who disappears into the job as he poses as technician hired by their government to lay internet cable in the desert, all the while while gathering intelligence on the Taliban.
Just as he is about to end his mission, and head home to England to visit his daughter, an intelligence leak reveals his identity, location and mission goals. “Our cover is blown,” he says. “We leave in fifteen minutes.”
Exposed and in danger, he and his loyal Afghan interpreter and fixer (Navid Negahban) are trapped in hostile territory.
“No one is coming to rescue us,” Harris says, as he takes matters into his own hands to get the two of them across the 640 kilometers to an extraction point at an old CIA base in Kandahar Province before elite enemy forces can stop them. “The distance is not the main issue. It’s what’s in between.”
Butler, like Liam Neeson, makes very specific kinds of action films. With “Mission Kandahar” he filters the very real issue of securing safety for the Afghan citizens who worked alongside U.S. and NATO personnel for twenty years, through the lens of a Butler Action Flick. That means some defying-all-odds action, a loved one waiting at home for him to return, stereotypical baddies and lots of things that go boom. And, of course, there’s The Presence, the bulky Butler leading the action.
Often entertaining—see “Plane”—Butler’s movies exist in a world mostly untouched by reality, as though the golden era of direct-to-DVD action flicks never went away.
For better and for worse, “Mission Kandahar” fits that mold. The story’s real-life backdrop provides a canvas, but melodrama and action are the movie’s reality.
As if flying in real life wasn’t bad enough these days, along comes “Plane,” a new Gerard Butler resourceful hero movie, that brings the experience of a terrible flight to your local theatre.
The story begins on New Year’s Eve aboard the half empty Trailblazer flight 119. Butler is Brodie Torrance, a widowed pilot with a far-a-way look in his eye and a daughter in Hawaii he doesn’t see often enough.
In the cabin are the usual assortment of b-movie types, the hot-headed American, giggling teens posting on social media, the brash Brit, and, of course, Louis Gaspare (Mike Colter), an accused murderer being extradited to face trial.
When a lightning strike forces a crash landing on Jolo, a remote Philippine island run by heavily armed anti-government militias, Torrance must pull out all the stops to save his passengers.Meanwhile, at Trailblazer’s New York headquarters, a crisis management team lead by the tough-as-nails David Scarsdale (Tony Goldwyn), manages the situation from afar.
As action movies go, even with the relatively low expectations that come from an action film with Butler’s name above the title, “Plane” is about as bland as airline food. From its blunt, one word title and one dimensional characters, to its clumsy action scenes and Ed Wood style “toy airplane in flight” sequences, the Jean-François Richet-directed, so-called thriller fails to take flight.
Butler does what he can, grimacing and, occasionally flashing the charisma that made him a star in the first place, while spitting out trademarked action movie dialogue.
“That’s your plan?” asks one of the passengers after Torrance details a risky move. “Do you have a better one?” he replies, echoing a thousand action stars that came before him.
Worse than that, Richet and screenwriters Charles Cumming and J. P. Davis, don’t trust the audience. It’s not enough to show the lightning strike and the havoc it creates. We must also be told that the plane was hit with “enough juice to light a city.” We know. We just saw it. How about giving us new information, or, failing that, interesting dialogue?
If there were still DVD delete bins at the local video store, “Plane” would be gathering dust at the bottom of the barrel.
“Plane” feels like being stuck in the middle seat on a long flight.
“The Gray Man,” a new shoot ‘em up starring Ryan Gosling, and now streaming on Netflix after a quick trip to theatres, overwhelms the senses with an underwhelming story.
The story begins in 2003 with convicted murderer Court Gentry (Gosling) accepting a job offer from a CIA operative named Donald Fitzroy (Billy Bob Thornton) to live in the “gray zone” in return for a commuted sentence. He will be part of the top-secret Sierra program, trained to be a “ghost,” live in the margins and assassinate people who need killing. He’ll be the kind of guy you send in when you can’t send anyone else in. “Take all the pain that got you here,” says Fitzroy, “turn it around, and make it useful.”
Cut to 18 years later. Gentry, now known simply as Six, because “077 was taken,” he deadpans, is on assignment in Bangkok. On the orders of CIA honcho Denny Carmichael (Regé-Jean Page), he’s there to assassinate an asset and retrieve an encrypted drive. When Six refuses to pull the trigger because there is a child in the way—he’s not all bad!—things quickly spiral out of control.
With the help of CIA agent Dani Miranda (Ana de Armas), Six gets the disc, but, in doing so, becomes a target himself. Turns out the disc contains info proof of unsanctioned bombings and assassinations ordered by Carmichael, in his bid to turn the CIA into his own personal army. Carmichael wants the disc destroyed and to eliminate any traces of the only people skilled enough to expose him, the Sierra program.
But how do you kill the CIA’s most deadly assassin? You hire morally compromised independent contractor Lloyd Hansen (Chris Evans) to “put a Grade A hit” on Six. To lure Six into his web, Lloyd kidnaps the closest thing Six has to family, Fitzroy and his young niece (Julia Butters). “You want to make an omelet,” says Lloyd, “you gotta kill some people.”
“The Gray Man” is a big-budget, globe-trotting adventure that makes up in exotic locations and gunplay what it lacks in intrigue and interesting characters. Filtered through the endlessly restless camera of Anthony and Joe Russo, the movie has all the elements normally associated with high end action movies. Fists fly. By times it is a bullet ballet. Things explode. There are tough guy one liners (“Are you OK?” Miranda asks after one city-block destroying action sequence. “My ego is a little bruised,” Six snorts.), double-dealing and death around every corner.
So why isn’t it more exciting?
The story is fairly simple. It’s the kind of superkiller on-the-run we’ve seen before in everything from “John Wick” and “Nobody” to almost any Jason Statham movie, but it isn’t the simplicity or familiarity that sinks “The Gray Man.” It’s the overkill. And I don’t just mean the unusually high body count. It’s the more-is-more Michael Bay by-way-of-the-“Bourne”-franchise approach that overwhelms. The story is constantly on the move, jumping from country to country, from time frame to time frame, never pausing long enough to allow us to get to know, or care, about the characters.
Six is meant to be an enigma, and while Gosling can convincingly pull off the action and deliver a line, but he’s basically unknowable, a stoic man with a number for a name. His relationship with Fitzroy’s niece gives him some humanity, but he remains a dour presence in the center of the film.
At least Evans, as the “trash ‘stached” sociopath, appears to be having a good time. Nobody else does. That could be because there are so many characters, most of which are underused or underdeveloped. No amount of fancy camerawork could make Carmichael interesting. As the big bad meanie at the heart of all the trouble, he’s a pantomime character with only one gear.
More interesting are Indian superstar Dhanush playing a killer who values honor over cash, in his striking debut in a Hollywood film, and de Armas who does what she can with an underwritten part.
“The Gray Man” is big, loud popcorn summer entertainment that spends much time setting itself up for a sequel, time that would have been better spent creating suspense.
The release of “Memory,” a new Liam Neeson action movie, now playing in theatres, makes the star’s fourteenth anniversary as an action star. 2008’s “Taken” kicked off the “special set of skills” phase of his career of usually playing tough guys shooting their way through one last job.
“Memory” continues the actor’s unbroken string of shoot ‘em ups, but with a twist. He still has a special set of skills, which he deploys to deadly effect, but this time there is a ticking clock.
Neeson is Alex Lewis, an assassin for hire who prides himself in the precision of his work. He is brutally efficient, but lately there have been slip ups. Nothing major, but his memory isn’t what it once was, and the quality of his work is suffering.
As his memory fades, Lewis finds himself in the crosshairs of an FBI agent Vincent Serra (Guy Pearce, who starred in “memento,” one of the best thrillers involving memory ever made) and Mexican intelligence. Worse, when he turns down a job from ruthless crime human trafficking boss Davana Sealman (Monica Bellucci) to kill a child, she vows to kill him. “I’ve done crazy things,” he says, “but you don’t hurt children, ever.”
To stay alive and help bring Sealman to justice, he must piece the shattered pieces of his memory back together. “We all have to die,” he says, “what’s important what you do before you go.”
Directed by veteran James Bond filmmaker Martin Campbell, “Memory” is a well-constructed thriller, but has a generic, workmanlike feel. The characters feel as though they’ve been cut-and-pasted from other, better movies, leaving the viewer with a feeling of déjà vu. We’ve been there and done that and despite the level of performances from a cast of old pros, it is sunk by a laboured script.
The story of a man trying to undo the bad he has done in his life as his memory fades is a compelling one, but unfortunately, in the end, “Memory” is a forgettable action flick.
