Monday, September 29, 2014

Movie Review: A Walk Among the Tombstones


Scott Frank (The Lookout) decided September would be a good time to take us for A Walk Among the Tombstones.

We start by seeing Scudder (Liam Neeson, Darkman) off duty as a cop in the early 90's.  He witnesses a couple of guys robbing a bar and deals with it.  This ends in a way that affects him enough to quit the force.  Cut to 1999, where he is now working as an unlicensed private detective.  He gets pulled into a bizarre case when a drug dealer (Dan Stevens, The Guest) hires him to find out who kidnapped his girlfriend.  Things escalate when he finds that this is not the first, or last, time that these kidnappers have hit someone.

If you're looking for another non-stop (pun, totally intended) action flick from Neeson, then you've come to the wrong place.  This is not another Taken clone, but rather more of a mystery thriller and a character piece.  And not a bad one at that.  The plot itself doesn't take you to too many new places, but the dialogue and acting elevate this film above the mediocre level.  I don't think all of the action movies that Neeson has been doing have been that bad really, but they're not a real showcase of his talent.  He's given a little more to work with in this film though, and I think he really shines.  He's conflicted when given the new case because he's a good man and doesn't want to help a drug dealer. He even refuses at first.  Then he finds out what happened to the girlfriend, and he gets pulled in. He is also kind of alone and haunted by his past, but finds a friend in a homeless teen named TJ (Astro, Earth To Echo).

One weak spot in the film would have to be parts of the relationship between Scudder and TJ.  They work together pretty well for most of their time together.  However, they have a few scenes together where the dialog gets a little clunky.  TJ also is forced to become a little too convenient of a plot device at some points.  With what he's given, he does do a fine job of making it work for the most part.  Another shining star in this film though, is Dan Stevens who plays the drug dealer hiring the detective.  I am not real familiar with his work right now, but this film definitely has me alert to look for more of his stuff.  He apparently has a big role on the ever-so-popular BBC show, "Downton Abbey".  In here he is given the role of an icy drug dealer who's got a bit of a hard edge to him.  On top of this, he let's a vulnerability show through when talking about his missing girlfriend, while still maintaining that edge.  It's a fine line, and he walks it well.

Another thing to note is the time setting of 1999.  It's appropriate because this looks and feels like a gritty 90's thriller more so than the glossy, polished films we get now.  Scudder is the grumpy old detective that doesn't want to learn technology.  Having this film set in '99 helps sell that.  The internet and cell phones were still new-ish at the time.  Him not wanting a cell phone, or wanting to learn to use the internet were legitimate.  Try being a detective in this day and age without those skills and you'll probably be laughed right out of a job.  The only time this became a little distracting was with too many mentions of the Y2K scare.  It worked as a one-off joke about why he doesn't want to bother learning how to use a computer himself.  From there, it just got annoying with all the references.

This film is by no means an Oscar contender or anything, but it really holds it's own.  It is a little slower paced, but it's a nice throwback to the older more deliberate, character driven thrillers.  If you're looking for some solid acting and good dialogue, then this little mystery is not a bad choice.  It's a good chance to see Neeson do something a little different for a change, while still getting some of that shoot 'em up action he does so well in the last act.

Rating: ******---- (6 out of 10)

Memorable Quote:
Scudder: Chased 'em into the street, shot two dead.....got a third one in the leg.

Wednesday, September 10, 2014

Movie Review: The November Man

The November Man poster.jpg


Roger Donaldson (Cocktail) brings us this September action/spy thriller, The November Man.


Peter Devereaux (Pierce Brosnan, The Matador) is a CIA agent who retires after his protégé, Mason (Luke Bracey, G.I. Joe: Retaliation) fails to follow an order and things go wrong on a mission.  He has five years of peace before his former boss, Hanley (Bill Smitrovich, Iron Man) calls him back to pull another agent out of deep cover in Russia.  This agent has information on a man trying for the Russian presidency that the CIA needs, and Hanley claims they will only talk to Peter.  Things go wrong again.  The CIA and Russians are both after Peter.  He runs into his old protégé.  Bad guys are good guys, good guys are bad guys.  Who does he trust?  There's a girl they are seeking who was abused by the bad Russian man.  There's a Chechen war that was started on purpose for control of oil.  Ya follow?  Good.


Yeah, let's start with the plot.  It was all over the place, and just about as easy to follow as my description above.  There were just so many plot points crammed into this movie, and the screenwriter tried to put too many twists into it.  This film ran a fairly short 108 minutes, and yet it felt like it was at least 2 hours long.  I will give credit to the fact that despite the jumbled mess of a story, it did all clear up by the end.  It also felt like even with all that was going on, the movie was still a little clichéd and predictable at some points.  There's the retired agent who is pulled back in and has to face his protégé.  There's the obligatory meeting with an informant in a strip club.  There are two-faced characters who are not really who they seem to be.  There was simply just not much in here that set this movie apart from any other generic CIA spy movie like this.


The acting wasn't bad, but it wasn't real great either.  For the most part I don't entirely fault the actors.  They all did a competent job with what they were given.  All the characters were just so by the numbers that there was no room for them to shine.  Brosnan was the only one who had anything to even remotely sink his teeth into and did a fine job.  He plays a man who wants to stay settled down and run his little shop, but in a few scenes you get to see a little bit of the darkness from his past come through and you're not quite sure if he's going to step over the edge.


There's not much else to say about this film.  It's not really bad, and it's not really good.  It just kind of......is.  It's Pierce Brosnan back in the role of a spy, which is a good thing.  There's enough action to keep you interested.  It's the kind of movie you'll find on TBS or TNT, while flipping through your 10,000 cable channels, that you'll stop and watch when you realize there is nothing else on.  You'll enjoy it for what it is, then forget about it month later.


Rating: ****------ (4 out of 10)


Memorable Quote:
Alice: Do all your friends try to kill you?
Peter: Eventually.

Wednesday, September 3, 2014

Movie Review: As Above, So Below



John Erick Dowdle (Quarantine) takes us on a journey to hell and back in As Above, So Below.

Scarlett (Perdita Weeks, The Invisible Woman) is the daughter of a famous anthropologist (no, not Indiana Jones), and is following in his footsteps.  She's adventurous and super smart.  Seriously, she speaks four modern languages, two dead ones, has multiple phds, and is even a black belt in some form of martial arts.  It was a bit overkill for the story, but that's a minor quibble.  In this film she is searching for the infamous Philosopher's Stone.  She teams up with Harry Potter and.....no, wrong story.  Through a little bit of detective work she finds out that it is buried somewhere beneath the city of Paris.  There are catacombs running all throughout the underground of Paris where 6 million people were buried a couple hundred years ago (true story).  The tunnels are a tourist place now, but Scarlett has discovered that there may be a hidden chamber where the stone is now residing.  She gets together a group to go down and help her find it with the promise of treasure.  While down there, they pass an entry that is the supposed gateway to Hell, where they each have to face their inner demons and fight their way back to the surface. Who will survive?

This film is being sold as a horror, and it is for the last half.  The whole first half is something different though.  It is more of a National Treasure/Davinci Code type of movie.  We watch her as she finds clues to the whereabouts of the Philosopher's Stone by sneaking into museums, finding hidden clues, checking the maps.  This worked for me though.  I love those kinds of movies, and this one had a story that held my interest pretty well.  Then when the group gets into the catacombs, we get the horror movie we thought we were going to see.  It is horror set in tunnels and caves, so do we get all the clichés?  Yeah.  Someone falling down long hole?  Check.  Someone getting stuck?  Yep.  A broken bone? Sure.  The difference for me was that they established a good story in the beginning of the film.  The filmmakers kept that story going throughout the last half, and used it to deal with a couple of the clichés in what I thought were interesting ways.  I thought overall the story was a strong point.  It's like The Goonies as a horror movie.

A weak point was the filming style.  It's found footage.  Yes, there are some good examples of found footage movies out there, but I'm just kind of tired of it as a whole.  I will give this one points for implementing the structure better than most.  Scarlett has a man named Benji (Edwin Hodge, The Purge: Anarchy) documenting her journey as she uncovers clues.  When they go down into the catacombs he has a little camera installed on everyone's headlamps, so the story can logically be shown from the viewpoint of any of the characters.  You were never left wondering where a camera was or why it would be there.  The problem I have with the found footage, is movement.  When someone is running through the caves, or worse yet, falling, you just get a blurred image on screen.  It gets hard to tell what is going on when this is happening.  This didn't get real bad too often, but it was enough to be a little distracting here and there.  It also really limits the shot choices for the film, which I suppose is why a lot of horror directors use it.  It's got to be a pretty cheap alternative to traditional camera work.

The acting was just alright, but the characters developed well enough.  I actually liked a few of them, which is good for a horror film, because you want to care enough to not see them get hurt.  Weeks did a solid job of the gung-ho lead of the film.  Ben Feldman (Cloverfield) played her translator friend George.  He was the whiny one that didn't want to be there in the first place that you usually can't stand in these kind of films.  How he ended up going with them when he didn't want to was a little forced, but it was handled better than most.  Even being the whiny one, he was still likeable.  Francois Civil (Frank) was their personal tour guide, Papillon, and also the comic relief.  I thought he did a great job.  Those were the three personalities that really stuck out at all.  The other couple of characters were still likeable, but ultimately forgettable.

I have to admit, I went in not expecting much more than a generic horror.  What I got was a historical mystery adventure with some supernatural horror thrown in.  I could have done without found footage, and the acting was fine, but not great.  The story kept it interesting though, and there was plenty of tension during the last half of the film in the caves.  This film was a pleasant surprise.

Rating: ******---- (6 out of 10)

Memorable Quote:
George (translating): Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.