ANGEL HAS FALLEN (US - 2019) Directed by Ric Roman Waugh. Written by Robert Mark Kamen, Matt Cook and Ric Roman Waugh. Cast: Gerard Butler, Morgan Freeman, Danny Huston, Nick Nolte, Jada Pinkett Smith, Piper Perabo, Lance Reddick, Tim Blake Nelson, Joseph Millson, Ori Pfeffer, Rocci-Boy Williams, Michael Landes. (R, 121 mins) The third entry in a franchise so ridiculous that the only thing preventing Donald Trump from offering Gerard Butler a cabinet position is a presumed inability to correctly pronounce "Gerard," ANGEL HAS FALLEN dials down the raging "America! Fuck yeah!" boner of its two predecessors--2013's OLYMPUS HAS FALLEN and 2016's LONDON HAS FALLEN--which proved to be surprisingly popular mash-ups of the Cannon jingoism of the '80s with the dogshit CGI of the '10s. This time, Mike Banning (Butler), the head of Secret Service detail for OLYMPUS House Speaker, LONDON vice president and now President Allan Trumbull (Morgan Freeman), is in the running for a cushy D.C. desk job as a reward for his years of risking life and limb but is battling PTSD, chronic migraines, back pain, and a secret painkiller addiction that he's kept from his wife Leah (Piper Perabo, replacing Radha Mitchell). While on a routine detail on a presidential fishing trip in Pennsylvania, Trumbull's entire Secret Service team is wiped out by a drone attack, with Banning and the president barely escaping with their lives, the latter winding up in ICU in a coma. Banning awakens to find himself handcuffed to his hospital bed and informed by Secret Service director Gentry (Lance Reddick) and FBI Special Agent Thompson (Jada Pinkett Smith) that he's under arrest for the attempted assassination of the president and the premeditated murder of nearly two dozen Secret Service agents. His fingerprints and DNA were found in a van used to house the bat-like drones, and they've uncovered a secret bank account in his name with $10 million traced back to Russia.
With Trumbull incapacitated, Vice President Kirby (Tim Blake Nelson) is sworn in as acting president and, seeking revenge against the apparent Russian plot to assassinate Trumbull, immediately announces a return to the use of paramilitary contractors, namely Salient, a company owned by Wade Jennings (Danny Huston), Banning's old Army buddy who was really hoping that Banning could talk the anti-contractor Trumbull into offering him a lucrative deal. Meanwhile, Banning can't convince anyone he's been set up, and when Salient mercenaries take down his prisoner transport, he manages to escape and make his way to the isolated, rural West Virginia makeshift compound of his estranged father Clay (Nick Nolte), a grizzled, paranoid, anti-government mountain man who was so haunted by his time in Vietnam that he left his wife and young Mike and went off the grid. Realizing he's been set up by his old friend--and perhaps someone more powerful pulling the strings--and is now the most wanted fugitive in America, Banning reluctantly bonds with and gets some help from Clay before heading back to the hospital in Pennsylvania in an attempt to save the president's life and prove his innocence once and for all.
The last time Morgan Freeman played the US president was in 1998's asteroid-headed-toward-Earth opus DEEP IMPACT, and that was probably a more plausible film than ANGEL HAS FALLEN. The villainy of Wade is obvious from the outset, since he's played by Danny Huston, but the mid-film reveal of the real string-puller will only be a surprise if you've never seen a movie before. But relatively speaking, ANGEL is a bit less cartoonish than the two films that came before it, and is refreshingly devoid of Banning's smart-ass quips clanging to the ground, such as OLYMPUS' "Let's play a few rounds of Fuck Off...you're it!" and LONDON's "Why don't you boys pack up your shit and go back to Fuckheadistan?" That doesn't mean it's a gritty political thriller, but director and former stuntman Ric Roman Waugh (FELON, SNITCH, SHOT CALLER) has a knack for solid action and suspense sequences, including a striking late-film shootout over multiple stories overlooking a hospital lobby. There's also some--but not much--attempt at timely, nudging commentary with Banning being accused of Russian collusion and one key character being a dead ringer for (at press time and subject to change at any moment) Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, which should guarantee that actor's casting in the inevitable HBO miniseries chronicling the Trump presidency.
NOLTE!
Look, like the entire HAS FALLEN trilogy, ANGEL is dumb. But unlike OLYMPUS, it doesn't show a series of establishing second-unit shots of the Washington Monument, the Capitol Building, and the White House accompanied by the caption "Washington, D.C." (it was shot at London's Pinewood Studios and in Bulgaria, with the interstate highways of Pennsylvania and West Virginia looking strangely Eastern European). And it is amazing how Banning has managed to have the kind of career he's had, being the human shield for two presidents, with no one ever finding out about his crazy, off-the-grid, government-hating dad, or how every new-looking truck he manages to steal while on the run is somehow lacking in GPS or anyone reporting it stolen, or how Salient goons manage to get into Banning's house despite cops, Feds, and the media camped right out front. It is what it is, and the digital effects by the Bulgarian clown crew at Worldwide FX are as amateurish as ever, but Butler does his thing, Freeman's dignified presidential gravitas comes natural and is curiously comforting, and Huston is as smug and sneering as ever, which is the reason you hire Danny Huston. But never mind all that. What's really key in making ANGEL HAS FALLEN the most entertaining of the trilogy so far is Nolte. The 78-year-old living legend doesn't turn up until the midway point, but from his first appearance, he steals the film from everyone and instantly reminds you that he's a goddamn national treasure. Notoriously eccentric enough that his casting as a grizzled old mountain man seems like a self-fulfilling prophecy, Nolte gives this everything he's got, reveling in some hilarious one-liners ("You're welcome!") and back-and-forth bantering with Butler ("What is this, your manifesto?" Banning asks when he sees a stack of papers on Clay's table). Clay delivers an emotional, gut-wrenching monologue about how he felt chewed up and spit out by his country after his time in Vietnam that's so good that I wouldn't be surprised if Nolte wrote it himself. ANGEL HAS FALLEN is pretty standard as far as these formulaic things go, but it comes alive and steps up its game whenever Nolte is onscreen. When it's all over, you might ask yourself if every movie could benefit from having a madman-bearded Nick Nolte muttering, grumbling, and being a conspiratorial, cantankerous, and shotgun-toting old curmudgeon. The outtakes on the eventual Blu-ray have to be gold.
After the perfectly acceptable HUNTER KILLER tanked in theaters last fall, I said to a friend "Other than the next entry in the HAS FALLEN series, Gerard Butler's probably headed to VOD going forward." Cut to a little over two months later, and not only was Butler's next movie bowing on VOD, but it was also given an ignominious first-weekend-of-January dumping on top of it. Shot in 2017 as KEEPERS, THE VANISHING (not to be confused with two previous George Sluizer thrillers with the same title) isn't one of Butler's formulaic action vehicles, but it does find the star (and one of 28 credited producers) in Serious Actor mode in the vein of the underseen MACHINE GUN PREACHER. Inspired by the 1900 "Flannan Isle Mystery," where three lighthouse keepers disappeared without a trace from a distant island off the coast of Scotland, THE VANISHING moves the setting to the 1930s and proceeds on pure speculation. The film could've gone in any number of directions--theories of the disappearance range from one of the three men going insane and killing the other two; a sea serpent; and an even an alien abduction--but it opts for a character-driven mash-up of THE TREASURE OF THE SIERRA MADRE and Danny Boyle's breakthrough SHALLOW GRAVE with a bit of a John Carpenter siege scenario for a little while.
Arriving on Flannan Isle for a six-week stint of running the lighthouse and other various maintenance duties, boss Thomas Marshall (Peter Mullan), James Ducat (Butler), and young apprentice/good-natured hazing target Donald McArthur (newcomer Connor Swindells, currently on Netflix's SEX EDUCATION) find their dull routine broken up one morning by the appearance a crashed boat and a body washed ashore on the rocks below. Donald is lowered down to check him and even though he says the man (Gary Kane) isn't breathing, he comes to and attacks Donald, who then bashes his head in with a rock in self-defense. In the crashed boat is a locked trunk that Thomas opens to discover it's filled with an untold fortune in gold bars. James and Donald think they've struck it rich, but Thomas urges caution, reminding them "Somebody's gonna come looking for this guy." Sure enough, two men, Locke (Soren Malling) and Boor (GAME OF THRONES' Olafur Darri Olafsson), show up on the island and start asking questions. It isn't long before there's two more dead bodies and increasing paranoia over more people coming and a growing mistrust of one another over concerns about making off with the gold and who'll keep their mouth shut about it. Given the speculation about what could've gone down on Flannan Isle in 1900--and to this day, no one knows for sure--THE VANISHING certainly takes an unexpected approach when it could've been just as easy to get a movie about a sea monster or aliens made. It benefits from three strong performances by its stars, particularly Mullan as the conflicted Thomas--considered the likely killer by historians who support the "one man went insane killed the other two" theory--still grieving over the deaths of his wife and daughters (and he won't say how they died). But in the context of the film, it's Butler's James who really cracks up and folds under pressure, which allows the actor to stretch a bit when he's usually the hero. THE VANISHING is worth a look for fans of Butler and the great character actor Mullan (SESSION 9), but the pace is a bit too slow (probably why Lionsgate relegated it to VOD), and it starts stumbling in the home stretch when it really matters most, leading to an abrupt and not-very-satisfying conclusion. (R, 107 mins) VOX LUX (US - 2018)
If Lars von Trier attempted to make his own warped version of A STAR IS BORN and was completely in over his head and absolutely terrible at his job, it would probably come out looking a lot like VOX LUX, the latest from actor-turned-filmmaker Brady Corbet. In his acting days, Corbet paid his dues with stints on 24 and with guest spots in the LAW & ORDER universe, but instead of going the mainstream route, he was driven to take roles in films by provocateurs like von Trier (MELANCHOLIA), Gregg Araki (MYSTERIOUS SKIN), Michael Haneke (the remake of FUNNY GAMES), and Olivier Assayas (CLOUDS OF SILS MARIA). I've not seen Corbet's 2016 directing debut THE CHILDHOOD OF A LEADER, but VOX LUX is a film that thinks it's deep and meaningful, but is really just shallow, exploitative, self-indulgent drivel that feels like the kind of nonsense that VELVET BUZZSAW was trying to lampoon. Corbet may have spent time observing and picking the brains of his auteur heroes, but he doesn't seem to have learned anything from them beyond surface imitation. You know you're in for an ordeal when the film opens with von Trier-esque title cards like "Prelude: 1999" followed by "Act I: Genesis (2000-01)." There's also wry and sardonic narration by frequent von Trier star Willem Dafoe, just like the kind John Hurt provided in von Trier's DOGVILLE and MANDERLAY. In an effectively harrowing opening sequence set in 1999, Staten Island teenager Celeste Montgomery (Raffey Cassidy of THE KILLING OF A SACRED DEER) gets a bullet lodged in her spine when she's the sole survivor of a shooting rampage by troubled outcast and character-name-that-could-only-exist-in-a-shitty-movie-like-this, Cullen Active (Logan Riley Bruner), who mows down her entire classroom, and it's all downhill from there. During her long recovery, after which she's still able to walk as long as the bullet doesn't dislodge, she attends a candlelight vigil and performs a song written by her older sister Ellie (Stacy Martin, who played the young Charlotte Gainsbourg in von Trier's NYMPHOMANIAC) that captures the nation's attention and draws interest from various record companies. She gets a manager (Jude Law), a publicist (Jennifer Ehle), and a choreographer, and soon enough, she's about to become teen pop sensation "Celeste," recording songs in NYC and Europe, and then the sisters are partying hard and hooking up with guys in L.A. in the early morning hours of 9/11, when narrator Dafoe gravely intones "Celeste's loss of innocence curiously mirrored that of the nation."
I would pay to see the look on Willem Dafoe's face when he was standing in the recording booth and was handed that line. It's impossible to take anything VOX LUX offers seriously after that, but at about the midway point, there's a 16-year time jump or, as Corbet (who probably now pronounces it "Cor-bay") puts it, "Act II: Regenesis 2017," where we're introduced to 31-year-old Celeste, and the film achieves the unthinkable and somehow gets even worse. Much of that is due to a career-worst performance by Natalie Portman, who takes over the role while Cassidy now plays her teenage daughter Albertine. Adult Celeste is now a Madonna/Lady Gaga-esque pop culture icon, constantly stalked by the tabloids and addled by booze, drugs, public meltdowns, and other scandals. As she prepares for a sold-out comeback concert at a Staten Island arena, her always-enabling manager (still played by Law, who's pretty much Alan Bates in THE ROSE) informs her that terrorists dressed as the dancers in the music video of one of her early hits have just committed a horrific mass shooting on a beach in Croatia. She has nothing but resentment and scorn for the long-suffering Ellie, who's done most of the heavy lifting both writing her songs for her and raising Albertine. It all culminates in a triumphant performance by Celeste in front of her hometown "angels" in an interminable finale featuring songs by Sia that sound like they came from the bottom of her slush pile. Corbet's ham-fisted, would-be commentary on everything from school shootings to 9/11 to the Price of Fame while feebly trying to emulate von Trier and others borders on outright poseurdom, and while Martin and Cassidy manage to emerge generally unscathed (though Cassidy's British accent slips through quite a bit in the first half), a shrill and over-the-top Portman, stuck playing one of the most grating, off-putting, and aggressively unlikable characters in any movie from last year, is just embarrassingly bad. Check out her overly-affected Noo Yawk screech when she's ranting at Ellie or at restaurant managers or at a journalist (Christopher Abbott), or waxing philosophic over society's ills and "ultra mega triple hi-def TVs" and "our intimate knowledge of the commitment to the lowest common denominator." Barely released by Neon and grossing just $730,000, VOX LUX isn't a serious artistic statement by a bold new voice in filmmaking. It's smug, self-impressed, vacuous bullshit. Can someone tell Brady Corbet that masturbation is usually something done in private? (R, 114 mins)
After blowing up the Russian sub that took out the Tampa Bay, Glass goes rogue himself when the Arkansas discovers the wreckage of a Russian sub as well, with visual evidence that it exploded from the inside. They manage to rescue a handful of survivors, including its commander, Andropov (the late Michael Nyqvist), and secures him as an unlikely ally once he shows him that his sub was sabotaged from within. Glass needs Andropov to guide him through mined waters surrounding the Russian military base, where Beaman and his three-man team have been ordered to extract Zakarin and get him aboard the Arkansas before Durov has him executed and the rest of the world thinks the US started a war with Russia.
Butler with Michael Nyqvist (1960-2017)
Except for a few dodgy greenscreen shots above water, HUNTER KILLER is surprisingly good-looking for a film produced by Cannon cover band Millennium and partially shot at their Bulgarian stomping grounds at Sofia's Nu Boyana Studios (some of it was also shot at the more upscale Pinewood Studios in the UK). There's a few dubious-looking CGI explosions, but some look quite believable, and are indicative of Millennium's Bulgarian clown crew at Worldwide FX bringing their A-/B+ game. Things get refreshingly old-school with the use of sub models for the underwater shots, which are usually used fleetingly enough that the facade usually isn't broken, and when it is, it still looks better than a shoddy CGI effect. The plot is pure "America! Fuck Yeah!" hokum, but it's admirably restrained for this sort of thing, especially with its depiction of the mutual respect shown by Glass and Andropov. These two seen-it-all Navy heroes ("This is who we are...this is what we do!" Glass says at one point, because of course he does) are played with an initial mistrust and eventual warm rapport by both Butler (one of 29 credited producers) and the much-missed Swedish character actor Nyqvist (star of the original GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO and memorable as the mob boss in JOHN WICK), who succumbed to lung cancer in June 2017 and looks gaunt and visibly ill in most of his scenes. The film is dedicated to both Nyqvist and co-producer John Thompson--a Millennium exec from the early NuImage days and the guy who ran Cannon's Italian branch in the mid '80s--who died in January 2018.
Other than Stephens, who seems to be rehashing a fictionalized version of the real-life SEAL he played in Michael Bay's 13 HOURS, none of the other big names get much of a chance to make an impression. Cardellini stares at a row of monitors in a Bourne-like command center and sees a live shot of Zakarin and wonders aloud, "What are you up to?" Common has little to do aside from looking concerned while getting chewed out by a ranting, overacting Oldman, who probably didn't spend more than a few days on the set for a glorified cameo prior to his Oscar-winning turn in DARKEST HOUR. Directed in a workmanlike fashion by South African journeyman Donovan Marsh, HUNTER KILLER is a fairly solid and undemanding nautical actioner, the kind of harmlessly watchable popcorn movie you'll probably end up stopping on and staying with to the end when you stumble upon it on cable from now until the end of time.
DEN OF THIEVES (US - 2018) Written and directed by Christian Gudegast. Cast: Gerard Butler, Pablo Schreiber, Curtis "50 Cent" Jackson, O'Shea Jackson Jr., Meadow Williams, Brian Van Holt, Evan Jones, Eric Braeden, Dawn Olivieri, Jordan Bridges, Mo McRae, Maurice Compte, Cooper Andrews, Kaiwi Lyman, Sonya Balmores, Oleg Taktarov. (R, 140 mins)
After a shootout resulting from the hijacking of an empty armored car, O'Brien can't figure out the motive. That is, until a clue leads him to Donnie (O'Shea Jackson Jr), who turns out to be the wheelman for Ray Merriman (Pablo Schreiber), the leader of a crew of skilled, coordinated bank robbers, all ex-military with Kevlar masks and body armor and high-tech assault rifles. O'Brian has a backlog of unsolved robberies with similar MOs and unusual circumstances going back to 2004. He's convinced this is Merriman's crew, as he's just been paroled after ten years, during which time no heists have displayed the tell-tale signs of the unsolved jobs. O'Brien uses Donnie as an informer, but it doesn't accomplish much, since he's just the wheelman and he's kept largely in the dark on the intricate planning. Merriman and his right-hand man Levi (Curtis "50 Cent" Jackson) are plotting their most outlandish job yet: robbing the Federal Reserve in downtown Los Angeles, a building where every inch of the premises is under surveillance and only authorized security and armored car personnel are allowed in. The plan? Get in to steal $30 million in old bills being taken out of circulation--thereby making them untraceable--before they're put in the shredder. O'Brien doesn't really hide the fact that he's on to Merriman and his gang, even showing up to harass and embarrass them as they dine at a Japanese restaurant ("The food here sucks...I'm just here for the ass!" O'Brien bellows in DIPSHIT HEAT's version of this), so Merriman changes the game, plotting a decoy heist to throw O'Brien and his guys off their trail. Of course, things don't quite go as planned.
DEN OF THIEVES bulldozes forward in constant motion, often glossing over the specifics--I'm still not sure what initially leads O'Brien to Donnie, and even as it's happening inside the Reserve, the heist itself makes little sense--but as a scuzzy guilty pleasure, it's undeniably entertaining. Much of that is thanks to Butler, who plays O'Brien as an uncouth, corrupt lout of an antihero who's frequently more unhinged than the perps he's trying to nail. He's introduced hungover and looking like shit, surveying a murder scene outside a coffee shop and helping himself to a donut out of the box dropped by one of the victims. Like most movie cops of this sort, he answers to no one, he straddles the line between cop and criminal, and he does what's necessary to get under his target's skin, like screwing Merriman's stripper girlfriend (Meadow Williams) and then engaging in a shirtless, morning-after staredown in her apartment when Merriman shows up unexpectedly. Schreiber (younger half-brother of Liev, and best known for his roles on THE WIRE, ORANGE IS THE NEW BLACK, and as a recurring Olivia Benson nemesis on LAW & ORDER: SVU) is all stoic and barely-contained fury as Merriman, and with Butler's scenery-chewing, their relationship is much like that of Pacino and De Niro in HEAT and William Petersen and Willem Dafoe in TO LIVE AND DIE IN L.A. (with Williams functioning as the Darlanne Fluegel stand-in). The difference between then and now is that today, everything requires a twist ending, so what better route to take than cribbing from THE USUAL SUSPECTS in a convoluted finale that probably takes a couple of run-throughs to fully comprehend? The Reserve heist not only involves a) a decoy robbery, but also b) the improbability of heavily armed security personnel letting a delivery guy out when they never saw him come in, as well as c) a take-out order of rotten Chinese food. Don't ask. Gudegast gets the HEAT love going right away with a huge opening shootout, plus there's a later nod to the SICARIO traffic jam shootout. Is it fair to call this DIPSHIT HEAT? Yeah, probably, even if Gudegast doesn't let his tough guy dialogue ever get quite as magical as LONDON HAS FALLEN's "Why don't you pack up your shit and move back to Fuckheadistan?" But it's diverting enough and it's the kind of movie you'll end up watching until the end when you're channel-surfing and stumble on it, which is really the best compliment you can pay to something like this. Plus, Gudegast does earn some points for getting daytime soap icon Eric Braeden back on the big screen for just the third time in 20 years--probably not difficult since Braeden is his dad--in a small role as a bar owner named "Ziggy Zerhusen." Top that, Michael Mann!
A mega-budget franchise non-starter that arrived on a wave of bad publicity due to casting controversies--a ridiculous grievance, really, considering that it's not a remotely serious film--GODS OF EGYPT seemed doomed the moment the trailer hit the internet. By the time it was released, the pile-on had already begun, and director Alex Proyas (THE CROW, DARK CITY, I ROBOT) didn't handle it well, taking to Twitter and social media to excoriate critics and detractors. Regardless of how legitimate his complaints were, he couldn't help but come off as, in the parlance of our times, a little butthurt. Is the movie good? Sometimes. "Kinda, almost" might be a good answer. Despite its lofty ambitions, it seems by the end that its sole purpose was to be played continuously on rows of display TVs in the electronics department of a big box retailer. Working with the screenwriting team of Matt Sazama and Burk Sharpless (whose previous triumphs include DRACULA UNTOLD and THE LAST WITCH HUNTER), the visionary Proyas establishes a pretty clearly campy tone, with the early scenes featuring intentionally anachronistic dialogue for its ancient Egypt setting ("This old thing?" one female character sasses when asked about her dress) and a very deliberate sense of humor. But the tone changes from scene to scene, along with the quality of the visual effects. The film is wall-to-wall CGI and looks almost completely animated at times. There are moments where the visuals are jawdroppingly beautiful and others where it looks like it's not even Asylum-worthy. The schizophrenic tone coupled with the repetitive set pieces eventually turn the film into a slog by the midway point.
That doesn't mean it's the catastrophic washout that everyone says it is. Oh, it's an unwieldy mess, but Proyas has stretches where he seems possessed by an in-his-prime Terry Gilliam, and for that reason alone, one shouldn't just blithely dismiss GODS OF EGYPT as soulless schlock. This just looks like a film that got away from its maker and had too much riding on it in terms of becoming a studio's next tentpole franchise. In Egypt, where gods are ten feet tall, bleed gold, and coexist with men, beloved and benevolent King Osiris (Bryan Brown sighting!) intends to pass the throne on to his son Horus (GAME OF THRONES' Nikolaj Coster-Waldau). That plan is thwarted by Osiris' scheming brother Set (a scenery-chewing Gerard Butler), who kills the king and gouges out the eyes of Horus, who goes into hiding as a power-crazed, despotic Set takes his nephew's intended, the Goddess of Love Hathor (Elodie Yung) for himself, enslaves the population, and destroys all the good Osiris has done like some ancient Egyptian Donald Trump. Bek (Brenton Thwaites), a wily young thief, also loses his love Zaya (Courtney Eaton) when she's killed by her owner, Set's architect Urshu (Rufus Sewell). Bek manages to steal one of Horus' eyes--the source of his godly powers--from Set's vault, promising him the other if he helps him find and restore Zaya to earthly life. Horus agrees, as he and Bek form an unholy god-and-man alliance to save Zaya and exact vengeance on Set...if they don't slay each other first! There's some fun in the early going, and it's hard not to get a kick out of Geoffrey Rush engulfed in CGI flames and hurling balls of fire as Horus' grandfather Ra, but GODS OF EGYPT is all over the place, and nearly every stop on their quest involves them being attacked by giant CGI creatures and fleeing an interior or exterior structure, outrunning the destruction as it crumbles around them. It loses its sense of fun and starts to seem more like a GODS OF EGYPT video game. The actors, especially Rush and Butler, came prepared to ham it up, but after a promising start, GODS OF EGYPT just switches to autopilot and becomes one eye-glazingly dull CGI action sequence after another. (PG-13, 127 mins)
THE ASIAN CONNECTION
(US - 2016)
A pretty generic Far East shoot 'em up that features one of Steven Seagal's more lifelike performances in recent years, THE ASIAN CONNECTION would probably be a forgettable but diverting enough actioner if it had better leads. As the nominal villain, a Cambodia-based crime lord named Gan Sirankiri, Seagal is as mumbly as ever but actually logs some significant screen time and even takes part in a few big action sequences without being doubled (surprisingly, he's also a participant in the making-of featurette, a good indication that, for whatever reason, he gave a shit about this one). While Seagal has an "and Steven Seagal" credit and a puffy-eyed Michael Jai White gets top billing for a one-scene cameo as a gun dealer named Greedy Greg, the real star is the thoroughly unappealing John Edward Lee--who resembles some kind of Frankenstein fusion of Stephen Dorff and Josh Duhamel, but somehow with exponentially less charisma--as Jack, an expat American living in Bangkok with his Thai girlfriend Avalon (Kempo black belt Pim Bubear). Desperate for cash, Jack and his buddy Sam (Bryan Gibson) decide to rob a bank in Cambodia and take the cash back over the border into Bangkok. The bank they rob is holding the money of Sirankiri, who understandably wants it back and dispatches his chief goon Niran (Sahajak Boonthanakit, memorable as the gregarious taxi driver "Kenny Rogers" in the otherwise pedestrian NO ESCAPE) to recover it. Niran has other plans, like blackmailing Jack by having him and Sam rob a bunch of banks that hold various amounts of Sirankiri cash and giving him the bulk of the proceeds behind his boss' back, lest something nasty happen to Avalon.
Boasting a story credit for none other than former actor Tom Sizemore, THE ASIAN CONNECTION suffers from a smirking Lee as a hero you never care about, plus an inept performance by Bubear, who may be a karate champ but she can't act. On top of that, director Daniel Zirilli takes zero advantage of her Kempo skills. The script is predictable from start to finish, with Sam turning into a humorless, trigger happy loose cannon with each successive job, a character arc that was obvious upon the first of many times he admonishes Jack with "Don't call me stupid!" when he does something stupid (which is a lot). And yes, it all ends up with a shootout at an abandoned factory. Seagal is in character actor mode here, not nearly as loose as he was in GUTSHOT STRAIGHT, but definitely not sleepwalking through it, either, perhaps a major sign that he's ready to hand over his long-held Laziest Actor in the World crown to Bruce Willis. Not good at all but hardly the worst VOD/DTV title out there, the biggest problem with THE ASIAN CONNECTION is that you've seen it all before, and most likely with better actors than Lee and Bubear. Some more White really could've helped, even though he looks like he got stung by a bee right before his scene was shot. Wasn't BLACK DYNAMITE supposed to take him to better places than this? (R, 91 mins)
JARHEAD 3: THE SIEGE (US - 2016)
The third entry in one of the most unlikely DTV franchises, JARHEAD 3: THE SIEGE has nothing to do with 2014's JARHEAD 2: FIELD OF FIRE and almost nothing to do with Sam Mendes' original 2005 film version of Anthony Swofford's Gulf War memoir. Unlike JARHEAD 2, JARHEAD 3 at least brings back one character from JARHEAD with a brief appearance by Major Lincoln, played by Allstate insurance salesman Dennis Haysbert. Lincoln was a minor character in the 2005 film and is even less significant here, usually observing the action from a chopper and shaking his head when something bad happens. Now an action franchise whose main connecting thread is that it involves Marines, JARHEAD 3: THE SIEGE is budget-conscious 13 HOURS, as ambitious Corporal Evan Albright (HOW TO GET AWAY WITH MURDER's Charlie Weber) arrives at the US Embassy in an unnamed-but-obviously-Benghazi-like location, where everyone gets along with the locals and the US Ambassador (Stephen Hogan) has it pretty easy. Albright quickly establishes himself as an impulsive cowboy during a botched training exercise, and he doesn't win himself any friends by reporting a suspicious cameraman lurking outside the compound to the Ambassador, going over the head of his commanding Gunny Raines (top-billed Scott Adkins). Of course, Albright is right: the cameraman is notorious terrorist Khaled (Hadrian Howard), who leads an assault on the Embassy in which Albright and the other Marines get to engage in some Benghazi fan fiction where tragedy is averted and America triumphs, all while referring to the locals as "Ali Baba" and bellowing things like "This is OUR house! Let's show these motherfuckers how we do it!" and "Locked & loaded!" and, of course, "Let's roll!"
It's mostly jingoistic right-wing military porn in the grand tradition of "America! Fuck Yeah!" but veteran DTV director William Kaufman (now going by the hipper "Will Kaufman") pulls off a few decent shootouts amidst the shaky cam and the iPhone app-level explosions. Weber is a pretty bland hero, and the film doesn't give Adkins much to do other than glower and lecture Albright before being killed off in an explosion about an hour into the movie. The characters are largely cliches, like loudmouth racist Stamper (Joe Corrigall), who goes full Hudson-from-ALIENS as soon as the shit hits the fan, but the worst by far is Blake, a grating comedy relief blogger/documentarian played by 41-year-old Dante Basco, who's a good 15-20 years too old for the role. Blake is constantly filming (cue found-footage scenes) and saying inane things like "When the ambassador is burning shit, you know like, heavy shit is going down" (Blake also has a gluten allergy, making him even more insufferable). As far as in-name-only sequels go, JARHEAD 3: THE SIEGE is passably entertaining and never dull, but that still doesn't seem to be reason enough to justify its existence. (R, 89 mins)
LONDON HAS FALLEN (US - 2016) Directed by Babak Najafi. Written by Creighton Rothenberger, Katrin Benedict, Christian Gudegast, and Chad St. John. Cast: Gerard Butler, Aaron Eckhart, Morgan Freeman, Alon Moni Aboutboul, Angela Bassett, Robert Forster, Jackie Earle Haley, Melissa Leo, Radha Mitchell, Charlotte Riley, Colin Salmon, Waleed Zuaiter, Patrick Kennedy, Sean O'Bryan, Clarkson Guy Williams, Bryan Larkin. (R, 99 mins) This sequel to 2013's OLYMPUS HAS FALLEN has a giant "America! Fuck yeah!" boner swelled to a degree the likes of which we haven't seen since the flag-waving RAMBO sequels and Chuck Norris action movies of the Reagan era. Playing out like what your conservative, Fox News-watching uncle imagines the war on terror to be, LONDON HAS FALLEN has a script that took four credited writers to assemble and may have even been given a final polish by Donald Trump, judging from shouted dialogue like "Just assume everybody is one of those terrorist assholes!" and "Why don't you boys pack up your shit and go back to Fuckheadistan?" Like the first film, it's an acceptably dumb action time killer and yet another attempt to make Gerard Butler a thing, with the star and producer dropping endless action hero bon mots as Mike Banning, the top Secret Service agent to President Benjamin Asher (Aaron Eckhart). Banning and his wife Leah (Radha Mitchell) are expecting their first child and he's just started his vacation and is considering resigning his detail when the President receives word that the British Prime Minister has died of a sudden heart attack following knee surgery. With all the world leaders and dignitaries converging on London for the funeral (of course, the establishing aerial shot of Big Ben, the London Eye ferris wheel, the Palace of Westminster, and the Westminster Bridge over the Thames is accompanied by the caption "London"), the time is right for a massive terrorist attack, which Banning's Spidey Sense naturally detects ("What's wrong?" he's asked, grunting "Nothin'...bugs the hell outta me"). Almost every landmark in London is blown up using what appears to be an explosion app on director Babak Najafi's phone, and when every world leader is killed except for the new PM and Asher, Banning and the President are on the run, pursued throughout London by the interchangeably swarthy, ISIS-like flunkies of Yemen-based terror mastermind Aamir Barkawi (Alon Moni Aboutboul). Barkawi has spent two years planning this highly coordinated attack as revenge for a US military drone attack that took out his daughter on her wedding day and left one of his sons a double amputee. Banning manages to get Asher to an MI-6 safe house run by Agent Marshall (Charlotte Riley), who correctly assumes that someone in the British government is a mole working for Barkawi and that the Prime Minister was murdered.
One of the cheapest-looking $60 million films you'll ever see, LONDON HAS FALLEN has plenty of shoot 'em up action sequences that are fairly well-done, especially a few longer ones that try to go for the CHILDREN OF MEN-type set pieces. Najafi (who directed the Swedish crime thriller EASY MONEY II: HARD TO KILL and episodes of the Cinemax series BANSHEE) can't resist presenting Butler's Banning as a gun-toting, knife-wielding, indestructible smartass killing machine who resembles the John McClane of the later, terrible DIE HARD movies, a crack shot who can take out dozens upon dozens of terrorists who fire straight at him and somehow always miss. The bush-league CGI courtesy of Millennium's usual Bulgarian clown crew at Worldwide FX is just an embarrassment throughout, almost Asylum-level chintzy and frankly unacceptable for a major, nationwide theatrical release--it doesn't matter how many big stars Cannon cover band Millennium rope in or how much money they spend, their visual effects and CGI splatter have never progressed beyond their DTV inception in the '90s when Frank Zagarino was the biggest star they could afford. As incredible as it seems, Worldwide FX's craftsmanship is getting worse. Even with all the rampant xenophobia and over-the-top jingoism, the shitty effects are the most off-putting part of LONDON HAS FALLEN, unless you count Butler's incessant one-liners constantly clanging to the ground (on Asher's bad driving, Banning quips "The car's bulletproof, not politician-proof!" and when Asher, hiding in a closet in the safe house, storms out and blows a bad guy away, Banning snarks "I was wonderin' when you'd come out of the closet!"), the completely illogical plotting (Barkawi spends two years planning the attack at the funeral as if he knew that far in advance that the Prime Minister would need knee surgery) or the unfortunate wasting of a slumming and visibly bored supporting cast.
London
Several OLYMPUS alumni return for some easy paychecks and a visit to scenic Bulgaria at Millennium's renowned Nu Boyana backlot: Angela Bassett briefly returns as Lynne Jacobs (all of the characters get pointless name-caption intros), the director of the Secret Service and Morgan Freeman's Speaker of the House Trumbull has been promoted to VP, essentially serving the same function running the War Room, which looks like the backup conference room at the Sofia Holiday Inn. A sleepy-looking Freeman gets to pretty much be Morgan Freeman and gets a decent amount of screen time (he has one scene with Butler, but they obviously weren't there at the same time). Also returning are Melissa Leo as the Secretary of Defense and Robert Forster as the Joint Chiefs chair, and along with new addition Jackie Earle Haley as the White House Chief of Staff--three veteran, rock-solid character actors with four Oscar nominations and one win between them who have maybe a combined 100 words of dialogue as their sole purpose seems to be grimacing at the events in London being displayed on a giant monitor, though from the looks of it, they could just as easily be reacting to the CGI. Moving fast, with the credits rolling at 90 minutes and the new definition of "It is what it is," LONDON HAS FALLEN is a junk movie that nobody other than Butler's agent was really demanding but it at least knows to not overstay its welcome.
Directed by Antoine Fuqua. Written by Creighton Rothenberger and Katrin Benedikt. Cast: Gerard Butler, Aaron Eckhart, Morgan Freeman, Angela Bassett, Robert Forster, Rick Yune, Melissa Leo, Dylan McDermott, Radha Mitchell, Ashley Judd, Cole Hauser, Finley Jacobsen, Keong Sim, Malana Lea, Phil Austin, Sean O'Bryan. (R, 120 mins)
When the trailer for OLYMPUS HAS FALLEN started making the rounds a couple of months ago, with its seemingly intentionally bad visual effects and dialogue like "I'm the best hope you've got!," "America does not negotiate with terrorists!" and "They've opened the gates of Hell!," one could be forgiven for assuming that a bunch of big-name actors agreed to take part in a fake trailer mocking big-budget, overblown, jingoistic, flag-waving, "America! Fuck Yeah!", porn-for-red-states action explosion epics. But no...OLYMPUS HAS FALLEN is a real movie with real actors. And what's most surprising, other than it's not nearly as terrible as that trailer made it look, is that the actors lured by fat paychecks actually seem to be taking it seriously, as if this is the first film of its kind and they're really doing something groundbreaking. The outrageously overqualified cast is pretty much all this has going for it. They're the reason this thing cost $80 million and still looks like a shot-in-South Africa, straight-to-video Frank Zagarino flick directed by Sam Firstenberg in 1996. Avi Lerner and his Cannon cover band Millennium/Nu Image may be able to somehow pull $80 million out of their asses several times a year despite most of their films going straight-to-DVD and the two EXPENDABLES films being their only recent hits, but true to their Golan-Globus heritage, they haven't been able to shed their B-movie skin despite Herculean efforts to do so. Nowhere is this more apparent than in their continued employment of the Bulgarian visual effects outfit Worldwide FX, whose trademark digital splatter and SyFy Channel-level CGI is showcased here in all its chintzy, D-grade glory. Rushed into production in true Cannon fashion to beat Roland Emmerich's upcoming and very similar WHITE HOUSE DOWN into theaters, OLYMPUS HAS FALLEN is fast-moving and brainlessly entertaining, but the extended CGI destruction of Washington, D.C. (itself CGI'd even before the mayhem, as the film was shot in Louisiana) that's displayed here would've looked subpar in the mid-1990s. No matter how many A-listers they manage to reel in, Millennium/Nu Image will never be a major player with these kinds of shit-ass visual effects and shoddy, blurry greenscreen work.
Secret Service agent Mike Banning (Gerard Butler, who also co-produced) has been wallowing in guilt at his desk job at the Treasury office. 18 months earlier, he was the chief agent on the security detail of President Benjamin Asher (Aaron Eckhart), when a car accident during a snowstorm on a bridge along the icy road to Camp David resulted in Banning saving the President's life but not that of the First Lady (Ashley Judd), whose seatbelt was jammed as the limo plummeted into the cold waters below. The widower Commander-in-Chief removed Banning from his detail, not because he blamed him, but because his presence would be a constant reminder of the First Lady's tragic death to himself and his young son Connor (Finley Jacobsen). While staring at the computer monitor at his desk after another day of feeling sorry for himself, Banning gets a shot at redemption when North Korean terrorists attack D.C. from the air, killing hundreds of citizens and toppling the Washington Monument in a sequence that would be a stunner were the visuals not so cheap and tacky. The President is hosting a South Korean delegation, allowing them into the underground PEOC bunker when he and his staff are moved there. Of course, the delegation has been infiltrated by the same group of terrorists, led by the nefarious Kang (Rick Yung). Kang wants the US military to pull out of the DMZ between North and South Korea and he's prepared to kill President Asher, Vice-President Charlie Rodriguez (Phil Austin), and Secretary of Defense Ruth McMillan (Melissa Leo) before turning America into a post-nuke wasteland if his demands aren't met.
Kang's army overtakes the half-destroyed White House, wiping out the entire security detail, led by Banning's buddy Roma (Cole Hauser), a character who was doomed to die, as he's played by Cole Hauser. Banning takes out a number of Kang's men before infiltrating what's left of the White House, which apparently doesn't change any passwords or security codes over an 18-month period since Banning still has full access to everything in the Oval Office. He gets in contact with the Pentagon, where House Speaker Trumbull (Morgan Freeman) is the acting President, providing intel to him and his advisors, Secret Service chief Jacobs (Angela Bassett) and General Clegg (Robert Forster). Once he locates Connor--codename "Sparkplug"--and gets him to safety through an air vent (Banning sure knows a lot of easy, unsecured ways in and out of the White House), he goes to work eliminating Kang and his cohorts--including former Secret Service agent-turned-hired gun traitor Forbes (Dylan McDermott), who helped coordinate the infiltration--and rescuing the President.
If you think this sounds a lot like DIE HARD, well, you're right. Several scenes are restaged almost in their entirety, including a botched chopper rescue attempt that's shot in such a similar fashion that you almost expect Robert Davi and Grand L. Bush to show up as Agents Johnson and Johnson. And of course, even though he's "the best hope you've got," someone--in this case, Clegg--has to be the requisite "Deputy Chief of Police Dwayne T. Robinson" of the film and doubt Banning and his intentions at every turn, if only to have someone else pipe up about what a dedicated badass he is. And there's also the tough guy wisecrackery, but when Banning tells Kang "Let's play a few rounds of Fuck Off...you're it!," it doesn't quite have the same iconic punch as "Yippee-ki-yay, motherfucker!" Butler is OK in Hollywood's latest attempt to make Gerard Butler happen, though he isn't really exerting himself here in what amounts to a two-hour Bruce Willis impression. He does have a nice rapport in his scenes with young Jacobsen. Eckhart mainly clenches his teeth and yells "Fuck you!" a lot, while the hammy overacting is left to Leo, who gets kicked and beaten to a pulp not once but twice (after the first, she asks President Asher, with blood dripping from her mouth, "How's my hair?"), and in the film's most unintentionally hilarious moment, is dragged down a hallway by her hands to her presumed execution while kicking and shrieking "I pledge allegiance to the flag! Of the United States of aaaaagggghhh!"
Freeman brings surprising humanity and gravitas to the Speaker of the House, a man who disagrees with the President but puts politics aside and demonstates humility and nervousness over the role he wasn't expecting to be playing when he woke up that morning. Considering the stock, one-dimensional characters in Creighton Rothenberger and Katrin Benedikt's script, I'm sure this level of complexity was brought to the table by Freeman himself, and his scenes have some unexpected credibility to them. I particularly liked his initial anxiety when confronted with the situation and how he's stammering and indecisive and rapidly losing the confidence of everyone in the room when he dodges questions and instead asks someone for a cup of coffee, "with double cream and three Sweet & Lows...and put it in a real cup, not one of those styrofoam things," then closes his eyes, and something snaps in him and he's ready to take charge. It's just a little moment of real, human feeling in an otherwise dumb movie, and Freeman, pro that he is, totally sells it when all he really needed to do was show up.
Directed by the underrated Antoine Fuqua, who fares much better with more grounded and gritty films like TRAINING DAY and the criminally underappreciated BROOKLYN'S FINEST, the shockingly cheap-looking OLYMPUS HAS FALLEN isn't quite the laugh-riot you'd expect from the trailer, and if it weren't for the horrible CGI and the fact that the President's high-tech bunker looks like it was quickly thrown together in Avi Lerner's basement, it would almost certainly play better. As it is, it's the kind of movie where an aerial shot featuring the Capitol Building and the Washington Monument includes a caption that reads "Washington, D.C." It's a forgettable but stupidly entertaining enough way to kill two hours, and for what it's worth, it's miles ahead of the abysmal A GOOD DAY TO DIE HARD. But really, it's long past the time for Worldwide FX to install a software update or close up shop because their work just isn't cutting it anymore. Say what you will about Roland Emmerich, but he's a guy who knows how to convincingly destroy Washington D.C., and his WHITE HOUSE DOWN (with President Jamie Foxx's life in the hands of Secret Service agent Channing Tatum. No, really) will undoubtedly make OLYMPUS HAS FALLEN look even more amateurish than it already does.
Directed by Peter Farrelly, Steven Brill, Will Graham, Steve Carr, Griffin Dunne, James Duffy, Jonathan Van Tulleken, Elizabeth Banks, Patrik Forsberg, Brett Ratner, Rusty Cundieff, James Gunn. Cast: Dennis Quaid, Greg Kinnear, Common, Seth MacFarlane, Hugh Jackman, Kate Winslet, Naomi Watts, Liev Schreiber, Anna Faris, Chris Pratt, J.B. Smoove, Emma Stone, Kieran Culkin, Richard Gere, Kate Bosworth, Jack McBrayer, Aasif Mandvi, Justin Long, Jason Sudeikis, Uma Thurman, Kristen Bell, Bobby Cannavale, Leslie Bibb, John Hodgman, Katrina Bowden, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Chloe Grace Moretz, Jimmy Bennett, Patrick Warburton, Matt Walsh, Seann William Scott, Johnny Knoxville, Gerard Butler, Halle Berry, Stephen Merchant, Nicole "Snooki" Polizzi, Terrence Howard, Elizabeth Banks, Josh Duhamel. (R, 94 mins)
The extremely R-rated sketch comedy MOVIE 43 boasts what might be the most overqualified cast ever assembled for the sole purpose of thoroughly embarrassing themselves. The project was headed by Peter Farrelly, who gathered eleven other directors and a total of 18 writers to put together what probably seemed like a good idea in theory: get an incredible amount of A-list movie and TV stars together for a modern take on raunchy 1970s sketch comedies like THE GROOVE TUBE (1974), IF YOU DON'T STOP...YOU'LL GO BLIND (1975), CAN I DO IT...TIL I NEED GLASSES? (1977), JOKES MY FOLKS NEVER TOLD ME (1978), and the subgenre's standard-bearer, THE KENTUCKY FRIED MOVIE (1977). It's hard to believe that this much talent could be squandered so badly, but MOVIE 43 only has a couple of good ideas and a total of about five decent laughs throughout. I don't think it's being too demanding to have expected a little more than that. A joke occasionally lands and only sticks out because what's around it is so depressing and dismal. Entire segments go by where you can't help but ask yourself "What was the endgame here? What is the joke?"
Farrelly handled the main storyline, which has Dennis Quaid as a washed-up director in skinny jeans and a Justin Bieber cut barging into studio exec Greg Kinnear's office and pitching him an idea for a sketch movie. And that's the premise. So, we get Kate Winslet and Hugh Jackman on a blind date, where she discovers that he has a scrotum dangling from his neck. Things briefly pick up with an interesting idea that's one of the very few examples of MOVIE 43 doing something edgy and daring: Naomi Watts and Liev Schreiber play homeschooling parents who want their teenage son to have the complete high school experience, so they regularly subject him to bullying and insults for starters, then throwing a huge party and not inviting him, culminating in Mom trying to make out with him and Dad making a pass at him, all to give him that special "awkward first time" opportunity that all teenagers should have. It's a funny idea, but the writers and segment director Will Graham don't really know where to take it, so it ultimately fizzles, but it's one of the only examples of MOVIE 43 trying to do something. Next, it's Anna Faris asking boyfriend Chris Pratt to "poop" on her (not even the great J.B. Smoove of CURB YOUR ENTHUSIASM can save this one, telling Pratt to eat beefy bean burritos with guacamole to "add some color" to it). Supermarket checkout clerk Kieran Culkin and ex-girlfriend Emma Stone have an intense erotic conversation, unaware that the intercom is picking it up and it's being pumped through the store (Stone: "Do you still like fingers in your butthole?" Culkin: "I want to give you a hickey on your vagina"). Then, Richard Gere is the CEO of a company facing lawsuits over their "iBabe" music player, which is a life-sized replica of a woman, prompting teenage boys to mutilate their penises because of a cooling fan that's in the "lower quadrant." I think the joke is that none of the execs except Kate Bosworth saw that this would be a problem. Next up, Robin (Justin Long) is at a speed date when Batman (Jason Sudeikis, who has a few amusing lines) shows up to cock-block him. Kristen Bell is Supergirl, Uma Thurman is Lois Lane, and Leslie Bibb is Wonder Woman. Then there's a painfully unfunny commercial about "Machine Kids," that shows people getting mad at vending machines, ATMs, and copiers and being told that little kids are inside operating them (I don't know what the joke is, either).
Chloe Grace Moretz is at boyfriend Jimmy Bennett's house when she gets her first period, prompting Bennett, older brother Christopher Mintz-Plasse, and their dad Patrick Warburton to freak out. Then there's a Tampax commercial with a CGI'd shark eating a female swimmer (because of the blood and the...yeah, you know). Seann William Scott and Johnny Knoxville are roommates who kidnap a foul-mouthed leprechaun (Gerard Butler's face CGI'd on to a smaller body) in a segment directed by Brett Ratner (it's a cliche to bag on Ratner at this point, but when there are four people credited as "Brett Ratner's assistants" for a contribution this miniscule, he's pretty much asking for it). Things get better for a short while with Halle Berry and Stephen Merchant on a blind date that turns into an increasingly ridiculous, rude, and politically incorrect game of Truth or Dare. It's another example of a solid idea without a punchline, but there are some amusing gags and this particular segment is comic genius compared to the several that preceded it, even with Oscar winner Berry mashing guacamole with her (stunt) breast and inserting a turkey baster filled with hot sauce into her vagina. Terrence Howard is the coach of a black college basketball team in 1959, where his game plan is essentially "You're black...they're white. This ain't hockey!" It's a one-joke premise that wears out its welcome fairly quickly, but it's not awful and it's nice to see segment director Rusty Cundieff (FEAR OF A BLACK HAT, TALES FROM THE HOOD) working on the big screen again. MOVIE 43 finally ends with a laughless offering from the otherwise dependable James Gunn, with Elizabeth Banks (who directed the Moretz/period segment) battling a jealous, gay, masturbating, animated cat named Beezil for the affection of boyfriend Josh Duhamel.
Other than the Watts/Schreiber "Homeschooling" and the Berry/Merchant "Blind Date," there's not much humor to be found in MOVIE 43. It's more concerned with shock value, which can be funny, but there's just nothing for these people to work with here. If they wanted to be edgy, the filmmakers needed to bring more to the table than diarrhea, menstrual blood, and a nutsack dangling from Hugh Jackman's neck. Even something as simple as having Gere make a gerbil joke would've demonstrated that they were trying and anything was fair game. But really, 15 years after THERE'S SOMETHING ABOUT MARY and we're still getting "jizz as hair gel" jokes? Is MOVIE 43 as apocalyptically bad as many critics have said? Is it "the CITIZEN KANE of bad movies"? No, not even close. Oh, make no mistake...it's terrible, and easily one of 2013's worst films, though I'm sure it won't be the worst. I laughed a few times and it's still better than, say, any spoof movie by Friedberg & Seltzer, the Antichrists behind DATE MOVIE and MEET THE SPARTANS. No, MOVIE 43's biggest crime is amassing an IT'S A MAD, MAD, MAD, MAD WORLD-sized cast (and JERSEY SHORE's Snooki) and thinking the shock and the novelty of these people making genitalia and bodily-function jokes would be enough.
MOVIE 43 was shot over a period of three years, and worked on whenever actors or directors had time in their schedules. The version released overseas omits the wraparound segments with Quaid and Kinnear and substitutes it with three teenagers scouring the internet for something called "Movie 43," reputed to be the world's filthiest film. That at least explains the title, which means nothing in the context of the US release. Two additional segments were shot but ultimately not included: one directed by Bob Odenkirk, with Julianne Moore and Tony Shalhoub as parents being interviewed about their missing daughter (funny!) and one with Anton Yelchin as a necrophiliac, which begs the question of how bad they must've been if they were deemed unworthy of MOVIE 43. I'm sure those will end up on the inevitable "Unrated and Unacceptable!" (or some such nonsense) version on DVD/Blu-ray, but for now, the biggest winners of MOVIE 43 have to be Julianne Moore, Tony Shalhoub, and Anton Yelchin.
Thanks to John Charles for the tip on the alternate version.
