Director F. Gary Gray doesn’t waste any precious time getting to “Law Abiding Citizen’s” action. About thirty seconds into the movie there is a scene of striking ultra-violence that sets up the revenge story which is to follow. It’s just too bad that he allows the pace to go downhill after the opening scene. It’s a thriller without many thrills.
Gerard Butler and his finely carved abdominal muscles play Clyde Shelton the law abiding citizen referred to in the title. His life is changed forever after a home invasion leaves his wife and small child dead. When Assistant DA Nick Rice (Jamie Foxx), a slick up-and-coming lawyer at the DA’s office, makes a deal with one of the killers to testify against his partner in return for a reduced sentence it doesn’t sit well with Clyde. Cut to ten years later. Bad things start happening to everyone involved in the case, starting with the bad guys who both perish in excruciating ways. Clyde is arrested and confesses. That should be the end of it, but very bad things continue to happen. By the time Nick figures out how Clyde is doling out his own form of cruel and unusual punishment from jail it may be too late to save his own life.
There are a lot of words that could be used to describe “Law Abiding Citizen.” Here are some of them: goofy, implausible, ludicrous, inane, far-fetched, daft, nonsensical, illogical, preposterous, outlandish… I could go on, but you get the point. The story is a little silly, but that’s OK. It’s a revenge flick and if it was loaded with wall-to-wall action and some fun dialogue I could deal with the silliness. Look at “Taken” from earlier this year. Silly, silly, silly but fun in a check your brain at the door kind of way.
Unfortunately “Law Abiding Citizen” doesn’t have that kind of verve. There’s too much lag time between the big action set pieces. Every time the movie works up a head of steam the momentum evaporates into talky and mostly badly written dialogue sequences.
A red pencil could have made this script much more palatable but it’s likely that if you removed every line where a characters states the obvious and mundane there’s be very little left, dialogue wise. It’s the kind of movie that shows you a bomb with a cell phone trigger. Comments on it and then, for good measure, has another character say something like, “Do you mean to tell me that if that cell phone rings the bomb will go off?” Anyone who’s ever watched “Mission Impossible” or any other thriller involving bad guys and bombs knows that yes, if the cell phone rings the bomb will go off. It’s movie watching 101. You know it just like you know that the guy in the red shirt will always be the first to die on any given episode of “Star Trek.”
When the characters aren’t speaking in clichés they’re trying to comment on the state of a broken justice system that could let a child killer off with a light sentence. It’s an interesting premise for a revenge film, but again, Wimmer overplays his hand, putting sentences like, “I’m going to bring the whole diseased, corrupt temple down on your head! It’s going to be biblical” into Butler’s mouth.
Too bad the action isn’t as over-the-top as the dialogue. If so “Law Abiding Citizen” might have had a chance to be a great bad movie, as it is, it’s just a bad movie.
“Machine Gun Preacher” is set in a world where the line between mercenary and humanitarian is very thin. Gerard Butler plays the title character, a man who preaches fire-and-brimstone and can shoot the tail feathers off an ostrich at fifty yards.
When we first meet Sam Childers (Butler) he’s a tough guy fresh out of jail. He finds that old habits die hard—especially old drug habits. When his hell raising ways catch up to him something remarkable happens; he finds God. The former biker shifts gears and becomes a model citizen, even funding and building his own church. A sermon about the plight of Sudanese children prompts him to become a crusader for thousands of orphaned African children. He earns a reputation as a gun toting savior but his faith is severely tested when all his efforts to save the children seem to be for naught.
“Machine Gun Preacher” is based on the real life story of Sam Childers, a former trigger-happy biker who founded the Angels of East Africa orphanage. It’s a very compelling story, almost in the territory of stranger than fiction, but this fellow’s colorful life hits a few rocky patches in its translation to the screen.
In an effort to hit all high points of Childers’s life director Marc “Monster’s Ball” Forster speeds through the early part of the story, the transformation from hellion to angel, very quickly. The conversion is a crucial plot point and if we don’t buy into it we’ll have a hard time being on side for the rest of the story.
The rest of the movie skips and jumps around as well, as though it was cut down from a much longer movie. Luckily it moves along at such a clip that the strange blend of revenge and religion is never given the chance to settle for too long. That’s a good thing because it’s an uncomfortable mix. One minute he’s preaching, the next he’s gunning down Sudanese rebels. He’s Rambo with a bible.
The movie is inspirational and shines a light on some poignant issues, but feels more movie-of-the-week than serious drama about a man’s transformation.
Butler brings some intensity to the role, but Michael Shannon and Michelle Monaghan, as the junkie biker who learns to walk a different path and the born again ex-junkie stripper wife respectively, are wasted in roles that give them little to do.
“Machine Gun Preacher” suffers from playing fast and loose with the events that lead up to the story’s main thrust—one man’s ability to change not only his life, but the lives of people around him—and as a result the transformation doesn’t have the impact it should.
Nim’s Island is a fantasy film aimed at the under ten crowd. Based on the popular Wendy Orr kid-lit novel of the same name, it is a gentle fantasy-adventure story featuring an all-star cast including Jodie Foster, Gerard Butler and Abigail Breslin.
Nim (Breslin) is an 11-year-old who lives with her marine biologist father Jack (Gerard Butler) on an uncharted Pacific island. They are the Swiss Family Robinson for a new generation. When she isn’t dancing or playing soccer with best friend, a sea lion, she passes the time reading adventure novels about a fictional character named Alex Rover written by a phobic San Francisco author also named Alexandra Rover (Jodie Foster). When Jack is lost at sea, abandoning Nim on the lonely island, she turns to the only person she thinks can help—her heroine Alex. Thinking she is e-mailing her hero she actually is in touch with the neurotic author who drops everything to come to the rescue. As they work together to find Jack they overcome their fears and Alex becomes the mom Nim never had.
Nim’s Island will likely entertain young girls born after 1998 but may be a tough sell for anyone over the age of ten. Bogged down by bad dialogue, lame action and blatant product placement—Apple Computers anyone?—the whole thing feels lackluster despite the efforts of the cast.
Abigail Breslin sparkles in the lead role, but doesn’t have the depth of personality she usually shows while Jodie Foster gives her worst performance to date. She’s a great actress but her efforts to inject some life into the proceedings fall flat as she proves once and for all that she has no gift for slapstick. Butler fares best of all in a double role that is both charming and fun.
Nim’s Island is an unremarkable movie that does have good values for kids but suffers from a predictable story and a misguided performance from Foster.
When a judgment call costs him his job as a personal security guard to the President of the United States (Aaron Eckhart), Mike Banning (Gerard Butler) is reassigned to a desk job in the Treasury Department. He wants his old job back, a second chance to show he has the right stuff. He gets another crack at it when North Korean terrorists invade Washington, overtake the White House, killing POTUS’s entire security team and kidnapping the Prez. As he only man left with a gun and knowledge of the White House’s security systems, he alone must protect the future of the free world!
“Olympus Has Fallen” is about as standard as action movies get. It’s so standard that the two most presidential of actors—Aaron Eckhart and Morgan Freeman—both play the Commander in Chief. This movie has everything you expect, which, if you have low expectations—and you should—is guns, bombs and at least one character who comforts a mortally wounded man with the words, “C’mon! Hang in there!”
Imagine “Red Dawn” with fewer teenagers and a bigger body count.
And this movie is all about the body count. The first twenty minutes or so is spent on “character development,” an attempt to make stock characters—like the charming but fearless Secret Service agent—but it really begins with the audacious attack and the ensuing mayhem.
From then on it is all bash, boom, bang with a side of motive—evil North Korean mastermind Rick Yune wants to reignite the Korean civil was the U.S. interrupted—and the kind of patriotism that only ever shows up in movies like this (ie: Banning crushes a bad guy’s skull with a statue of Abraham Lincoln).
Director Antoine “Training Day” Fuqua embraces the 80s-style b-movieness of it all, liberally mixing melodrama with mano-a-mano old-school action. If you had a poster of Dolph Lundgren on your wall in 1984 or rent JCVD movies today you’ll find a kindred spirit in “Olympus Has Fallen.”
I tried hard to pin point exactly the thing that bugged me about this new Gerard Butler romantic dramedy. Thought long and hard and I’ve come to realize that we don’t have enough space here for me to fully explain why this doesn’t work but let’s start with the idea that the women are simply treated as sexed-up plot points and move on from there.
Butler plays George Dwyer, former soccer superstar, now sidelined by injuries. Broke and reduced to selling his own memorabilia to make ends meet, he moves to Virginia to be closer to his ex-wife (Jessica Biel) and their son Lewis (Noah Lomax). When the charming Scot begins coaches his son’s soccer team all the soccer moms (Judy Greer, Catherine Zeta-Jones and Uma Thurman) throw themselves at him, but he has eyes for only one woman—his ex-wife.
The first half-hour is, maybe not promising, but on par for this kind of movie. There’s a glint in Butler’s eye, a few giggles and Dennis Quaid, as the soccer team’s pushy sponsor has the makings of a pretty good someone-you-love-to-hate character.
Then it takes a turn.
George has unresolved feelings for his ex-wife and the movie has unresolved plot points falling from the sky like the tears of the Movie Godz who weep when movies this bad get released. When there is a large sum of money meant to be used for soccer outfits and balls is given to a broke person in the first act, that money must become a plot point by act three, otherwise it becomes a loan and therefore dramatically uninteresting. Loose ends dangle, flapping in the wind and worst of all the female characters are treated as lingerie wearing narrative devices and little else.
Seriously, someone please tell Uma Thurman to saddle up and work with Quentin Tarantino again because this rom com detour she’s taken is leading her nowhere.
It’s not he worst rom com ever—that’s because Katherine Heigl doesn’t make an appearance—but it is a sloppily made movie that relis too heavily on Butler’s trademarked eye twinkle and rakish smile. This time around, however, they’re not enough to save “Playing for Keeps.”
“Return to form” is an overused film critic cliché which usually means that a director has gone back to his roots after a few flops. Such is the case with Guy Ritchie’s new British geezer gangster film RocknRolla. His last two films, Swept Away (starring his wife Madonna) and Revolver, were pummeled by the press and ignored by audiences but his new story of London’s underworld should lure some of his core audience back to the theater.
Ritchie, also acting as screenwriter, has crafted a story that breathes the same air as his earlier scripts Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch. Set in London’s down and dirty criminal underworld, the story revolves around powerful old-school gangster Lenny Cole (Tom Wilkinson) who opens up a can of worms when he makes a shady real estate deal with Russian billionaire Uri Obomavich (Karel Roden). When the Russian’s accountant, “a posh bird who likes a bit of the rough life” (Thandie Newton), orchestrates the robbery of a substantial amount of money in transit to Lenny she brings small time crook One-Two (Gerard Butler) his crew the Wild Bunch and two hapless concert promoters (Jeremy Piven and Chris ‘Ludacris’ Bridges) into the fray, all of whom want a piece of the action.
The script makes use of Ritchie’s ear for the cadences of London’s criminal world. The dialogue sparkles with quirky cockney one-liners delivered with a smirk by a cast who seems to have born with plastic spoons in their mouths.
The action, set against a killer pulsating soundtrack featuring a mix of new and old indie rock and punk songs, is as frenetic as ever, all canted camera angles, icy cool slo mo and rock and roll lighting. It’s a testosterone-soaked two hours that owes much to Tarantino both is style and content. Stylish and bursting with camera trickery—a deconstructed sex scene broken into six or seven well chosen shots culminating with the snap of a cigarette lighter is funny and sexy– RocknRolla apes the American director’s energy and way with parallel storylines.
What Ritchie lacks though, is Tarantino’s way with female characters. RocknRolla positively reeks of testosterone, lacking anything resembling a strong female presence. Thandie Newton has some good moments, but is underwritten and not nearly as interesting as the male characters who have, for a start, better characters names like One-Two, Handsome Bob and Mumbles and better fleshed out back stories. Even two Russian thugs who do little more than compare scars and chase Butler through a London neighborhood have a bigger screen presence than Newton. Ritchie may be a poster boy for the new British “ladism” but next time out it would be nice to have a strong feminine role—and please, don’t cast Madonna.
RocknRolla will be called a “return to form” for Ritchie, which is good news for fans of Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch but bad news for actresses looking for interesting roles.
Kathryn Heigl is gorgeous. She’s a blonde bombshell in the tradition of Jean Harlow, a collection of curves, fiery lips and bundled blonde hair that looks as though she just slithered out of a 1950s film noir. She’s also smart, produces her own films and is out spoken about all the right causes. She should be the total package, but the trouble is, on screen, I find her cold. She emanates ice, and not in the classic Alfred Hitchcock cool blonde way. That coldness could work for her in some roles but it is a little hard to swallow in the rom coms she makes between seasons of Grey’s Anatomy.
Her new film, The Ugly Truth, feels like an updated Doris Day / Rock Hudson battle of the sexes; a look at how men and women perceive one another. Heigl is Abby Richter, the terminally single producer of a morning television show. In an effort to boost sagging ratings the station manager hires controversial correspondent Mike Chadway (Gerard Butler). “He is everything that is wrong with television and society,” says Abby. His proudly male chauvinist schtick about how women don’t understand what men want—he’s equal parts Dr. Ruth, Dr. Phil and Hugh Hefner—despite Abbey’s disdain, connects with her audience. They are, in the grand tradition of romantic comedies, oil and water, but despite their differences Abby turns to Mike for hints on how to connect with Colin (Eric Winter), the proverbial good looking doctor next door. Maybe, just maybe, though, love is closer than either of them think…
Movies like The Ugly Truth live or die based on the charm of their stars. Butler can pull off the charismatic rogue role but Heigl grates. It would have been interesting to see Reese Witherspoon or maybe a 1980s vintage Meg Ryan in the same role to judge whether their appeal could rescue this otherwise sad excuse for a rom com.
It’s not just that it is predictable. Originality isn’t a trademark of the genre, so the set up and pay off are expected before the opening credits roll. This one has a few more four letter words than usual but plays out pretty much how you might imagine.
So, if it isn’t the inevitable happy ever after story line that drags The Ugly Truth down, what is it? Well, how about the Three’s Company level dialogue? The lame jokes, writing style and battle of the sexes subject seem to harken back to a different time. Like when Jack, Janet and Crissy were still roommates and bell bottoms were considered cool at the disco. The jokes have been given a makeover but the underlying themes seem twenty years or more of date.
There are a few laughs sprinkled throughout however—the women in the audience I saw this with seemed to find some of Mike’s observations like “For men self improvement stops with toilet training,” hilarious—but if there were any fewer laughs this would simply be a romance, not a romantic comedy. Another scene involving vibrating underwear and a restaurant got some laughs but I thought it was funnier the first time I saw it in When Harry Met Sally.
The Ugly Truth is neither ugly—Heigl and Butler see to that—or truthful—the hackneyed take on relationships sees to that.
Dear Frankie is a four hankie movie. It is a tearjerker about Lizzie, played by Emily Mortimer, who has fled from her abusive husband, and is raising her deaf son, Frankie (Jack McElhone). Instead of telling Frankie the terrible truth about his father, Lizzie tells the boy that his Dad is away at sea on a freighter named the Accra. Frankie writes to his old man, and his mother intercepts the letters and answers them herself.
Tearjerker moment number one: Lizzie says Frankie’s letters are important to her “because it’s the only way I can hear his voice.”
Everything is going well until the day that a ship named the Accra actually docks in Glasgow. Frankie assumes his father is on board, so to keep up the comforting lie she has told to her son, Lizzie decides to find a man who will pretend, temporarily, to be Frankie’s father. The man is played by Gerard Butler, who is no longer hiding his rugged good looks behind a mask as he did in the recent Phantom of the Opera. He is the fatherly stranger who brings comfort to both mother and son.
There are some lovely moments in this quiet little film, a good performance from Butler after the monumental flop of Phantom, but it is Emily Mortimer (Lovely & Amazing and Bright Young Things) as the struggling single mother who shines brightest.
In The Bounty Hunter, Jennifer Aniston and Gerard Butler work on the borders of their comfort zones. Butler is the titular character, a former cop so down on his luck he takes a gig tracking down his ex-wife (and alleged real-life girlfriend) Aniston, for a payday of $5,000.
“I felt this was a different role for her,” says Butler of his co-star. “She is the Queen of Comedy and done a lot of romantic comedies, but this doesn’t feel like a romantic comedy. It feels like an action driven comedy. She was playing a much bitchier, hard edged character than I think anyone has ever seen her do before and for me that is exciting.”
Aniston, best known as Rachel from Friends, or Brad Pitt’s ex wife, depending on your appetite for the tabloids, says she was attracted to the role because “it wasn’t your traditional run of the mill girl meets guy, guy meets girl.”
“It is an action comedy and a road movie with a little romance in there and a little suspense,” she said recently in a sit-down with Metro in New York City.
She was, however, taken by surprise by the physical demands of the production. Doing stunts in four inch heels isn’t as easy as it looks.
“Your adrenaline is going and you’re not really feeling it at the moment and then I’d get home and notice a bruise here and a callous here,” said Aniston, who adds she would consider other action roles in future. “Then there were the handcuffs. Try wearing those, attached to a car door for three days. Not fun.”
For Butler, a Scottish heartthrob best known for his sculpted abs and roles in violent films like 300, the challenge wasn’t the physical side, but breaking the action star stereotype.
“My break in America was Attila the Hun, which went into Time Line, Tomb Raider, Reign of Fire and at that point I loved doing that, but it’s not like when you are still making your way in the business that people go, ‘Tomb Raider, Oh my God, the guy should be in a comedy.’ I was waiting for the right opportunity. I thought I don’t want to dive in with something crappy. I wanted to wait until I’m lucky enough to get the right script that felt right.”
