Neither as hilariously bad as GOTTI nor as aggressively awful as SPEED KILLS, the dirt racing drama TRADING PAINT is the "best" of John Travolta's recent VOD output simply by default. Oh, make no mistake, it's terrible, but it has a couple of supporting performances that save it from total Travoltablivion. Travolta (also one of 25 credited producers) is Sam "The Man" Munroe (that's the best nickname they could come up with?), a legend on the Alabama dirt racing circuit who's passed the torch on to his son Cam (Toby Sebastian, best known for his stint as Trystane Martell on GAME OF THRONES). Sam's racing team is plagued by minimal funds and Cam is tired of losing, so he causes a rift when he bails to race for his dad's longtime arch-nemesis Bob Linsky (Michael Madsen). Sam and Cam have always been there for each other, especially after Sam was behind the wheel in a car crash that killed his wife 20 years ago, and Sam is so incensed by his son's betrayal that he comes out of retirement and gets back on the track. This almost ends in tragedy after Sam wins a race and Linsky thinks Cam went easy on him, prompting him to have one of his other drivers (Chris Mullinax) try to knock Cam out of the next race, causing Sam to plow right into Cam's car, with the younger Munroe's car going up in flames as he barely makes it out alive with two broken legs. This leads to a reconciliation as Cam goes on a long road to recovery and rejoins his father's team to reclaim the crown from Linsky at the final race of the season.
Co-written by Gary Gerani (PUMPKINHEAD) and directed by Sweden-based Iraqi filmmaker Karzan Kader, TRADING PAINT is as perfunctory and formulaic as it gets. There's no excitement in the blandly-shot racing sequences, and the forced dramatic tension has no foundation or ultimate purpose. Why are Sam and Linsky such bitter rivals? And who thought present-day Michael Madsen, who's more or less morphed into KILL BILL's Budd, was credible casting as the top driver on the circuit? This is the kind of film where characters who already know each other speak in laborious exposition in order to clumsily get the audience up to speed. An early scene has Sam and new girlfriend Becca (Shania Twain, in her acting debut) out fishing, with Sam asking "Why'd you move down here?" as she goes into the whole backstory of her divorce and finding a new job. Wouldn't they have already covered this subject by this point in their relationship? The same goes for the track announcers when Sam rejoins the circuit, their racing analysis essentially serving as an in-movie summary in case you just stumbled on it or dozed off: "Sam 'The Man' Munroe, coming out of retirement and now he's mixed up in the crazy soap opera that has his son Cam driving for his old arch-rival Bob Linsky...hell, you can't write this any better!" Well, they could, but they didn't bother trying (Cam, embarking on his comeback: "Racing is in our blood!"). Twain has a charming screen presence as Becca and certainly deserves to be in a better film, and Kevin Dunn, as Sam's limping buddy Stumpy (that's original), gets a long monologue where he has to tell a really dumb story about how Sam once saved him from an alligator attack (hence, "Stumpy"), but Dunn is a total pro who uses all of his Character Actor Hall of Famer skills to convincingly sell it. The great Barry Corbin also turns up for a cameo as a folksy racing radio show host, and it's these little bits that periodically upgrade TRADING PAINT from "bad" to "inoffensively mediocre." (R, 87 mins)
An EXPENDABLES-type summit of today's top martial-arts and second-tier action stars, TRIPLE THREAT strands its packed cast in a story that's generic and uninspired even by the standards of VOD. Any one of these guys have made much more interesting films on their own or in pairs and while it seems they're enjoying themselves, this really should've been something special. In the fictional Maha Jayan jungle in southeast Asia, a team of mercenaries led by Devereaux (BLACK DYNAMITE's Michael Jai White) have infiltrated a prison camp with the help of local trackers Payu (ONG-BAK's Tony Jaa) and Long-Fei (CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON stuntman-turned-actor Tiger Chen, one of 30 credited producers), who were enlisted under the guide of helping out with a humanitarian rescue mission. It's a rescue mission, but the mercenaries' true target is their boss Collins (Scott Adkins), a deadly international terrorist who's being held at the camp. A skirmish claims the life of the wife (Sile Zhang) of camp guard Jaka (THE RAID's Iko Uwais), and Collins' crew leaves Payu and Long-Fei for dead. As required by law in films of this sort, Jaka winds up in an illegal, underground fight tournament where he vows revenge on Payu and Long-Fei until they convince him that they were misled and that they're after Collins as well, thus forming the titular unholy alliance. Also mixed into the melee is wealthy heiress Xiao Xing (Celina Jade of WOLF WARRIOR 2 and the TV series ARROW), who's committed to wiping out an Asian crime syndicate headed by Su Feng (Monika Mok), who happens to be the chief benefactor of Collins' terrorist activities.
Director Jesse V. Johnson--who's worked with Adkins several times, most notably on the wildly entertaining ACCIDENT MAN--and veteran fight choreographer Tim Man (ONG BAK, BOYKA: UNDISPUTED) stage some expectedly brutal throwdowns, and there's a surprising amount of splatter, but TRIPLE THREAT still never really catches fire. It doesn't take advantage of having all of these people in the same movie (there's also retired UFC fighter Michael Bisping, CHOCOLATE's Jeeja Yanin, freestyle full combat champ Dominique Vandenberg, and jump kick world record holder Ron Smoorenburg), and Jaka going off on his own in mid-film to attempt an undercover infiltration of Collins' team seems like a decision made less for the narrative and more to accommodate Uwais' availability. The pace drags in that middle section when the focus is on Payu, Long-Fei, and Xing, and when Payu finally confronts Devereaux after realizing it was he who killed his wife, Jaa is actually forced to growl "This is personal." Adkins has some fun as the villain, even though the script (credited to six writers!) requires him to emphatically declare "This ends tonight!" when he realizes the Triple Threat is coming for him. TRIPLE THREAT leaves no cliche untouched, but while you could certainly do a lot worse in the world at Redbox, this is unfortunately among the most forgettable efforts of almost everyone in it. (R, 96 mins)
THE NIGHT COMES FOR US (US/Indonesia - 2018) Written and directed by Timo Tjahjanto. Cast: Joe Taslim, Iko Uwais, Asha Kenyeri Bermudez, Sunny Pang, Salvita Decorte, Abimana Aryasatya, Zack Lee, Dimas Anggara, Julie Estelle, Dian Sastrowardoyo, Hannah Al Rashid, Shareefa Daanish Wibisana, Revaldo. (Unrated, 121 mins)
While writer/director Gareth Evans was busy making APOSTLE, several members of his Indonesian ensemble from the RAID films teamed with HEADSHOT co-director Timo Tjahjanto for THE NIGHT COMES FOR US, which could almost pass as THE RAID 3 if they wanted to try calling it that. Tjahjanto doesn't have quite the chops and the vision of Evans (the two worked together on V/H/S/2, co-directing the "Safe Haven" segment), and THE NIGHT COMES FOR US looks like a somewhat cruder and less polished work. Consequently, Tjahjanto compensates for these shortcomings by going absurdly overboard with a cartoonish level of gore and splatter that turns the film into the martial arts equivalent of a Cannibal Corpse greatest hits album. While the fight choreography is impressive, the endless mutilations, stabbings, slashed throats and carotid arteries, amputations, heads blown off or smashed, disembowelings, castrations, buzz-and/or-table sawings, burnings, box cutters through cheeks, and whatever other ways Tjahjanto devises to maim or kill someone do grow a bit exhausting after a while, no matter how remarkably ferocious it is at times. There's only so many times a bad guy's flunky can stick their arm out and have it snapped to a 90° angle before the novelty starts to wear off.
Indonesian action sensation and RAID franchise star Iko Uwais, recently seen tanking in America co-starring with Mark Wahlberg in the abysmal MILE 22, is onboard here in a key supporting role, but the real star is Joe Taslim, who was featured in the first RAID. Taslim is Ito, a member of Six Seas, a team of elite delegates in the employ of an Asian Triad that runs a drug smuggling and human trafficking operation in the Golden Triangle. When a small fishing village skims a little off the top of their latest payout to the Triad, Ito and his team are dispatched to wipe them out. He suddenly finds his conscience when he looks in the eyes of the lone survivor, a young girl named Reina (Asha Kenyeri Bermudez), and impulsively blows away all of his colleagues and takes a bullet in the process. Ito feels compelled to protect Reina MAN ON FIRE-style and takes her home, much to the shock and dismay of his wife Shinta (Salvita Decorte), who knows the Triad will be coming for them. Ito assembles some close cohorts to keep Reina safe while he tries to gauge how much trouble he's in. In short, it's a lot, as the word is already out that he's betrayed the Triad and he and everyone around him likely won't make it to daybreak alive (yes, this is one of those "survive the night" scenarios). Ito sends Shinta out of town and Triad boss Chien Wu (Sunny Pang) calls in Ito's estranged lifelong friend Arian (Uwais) to track him down and kill him. Chien Wu's Jakarta-wide dragnet gets numerous groups of Triad-hired killers in the mix, including Yohan the Butcher (Revaldo), kinky couple Alma (Dian Sastrowardoyo) and Elena (Hannah Al Rashid), and "The Operator" (Julie Estelle, best known as THE RAID 2's Hammer Girl), who's quickly persuaded to switch sides and help her target take on her bosses.
An early set piece in Yohan's butcher shop comes very close to reaching the levels of gonzo action ecstasy that THE RAID 2 sustained for two and a half hours. It's the best and most inventive sequence in the film, but Tjahjanto too often ditches that kind of creativity and imagination to go for the shock value gross-out. Some of the non-stop splatter is indeed impressive (like when one person calmly tears off what's left of their partially amputated finger and continues fighting) but some of it is so extreme that it takes you out of the moment. THE NIGHT COMES FOR US is a go-for-broke gorefest that's probably the bloodiest film of 2018, but Tjahjanto also spends some time somewhat successfully mimicking the style of Michael Mann in both the very Tangerine Dream-ish score by Fajar Yuskemal and Aria Prayogi and numerous shots of lit-up Asian cityscapes that recall some of the more hypnotic moments of Mann's tragically underappreciated BLACKHAT. Amidst the carnage, the film also displays some occasional humor, like Ito setting three guys on fire in front of a sign that reads "Safety starts with me." Tjahjanto isn't nearly as stylish or gifted a filmmaker as either Mann or Evans, but he does as good a B-grade Mann as he does a B-grade RAID. THE NIGHT COMES FOR US has its share of memorable scenes and offers not one or two, but three pretty badass female assassins (between her work here as The Operator and as the unforgettable Hammer Girl in THE RAID 2, it's time for Julie Estelle to get her own movie), but Tjahjanto could've benefited by taking it down a notch instead of making the DEAD ALIVE of Indonesian action epics.
MILE 22 (US/China - 2018) Directed by Peter Berg. Written by Lea Carpenter. Cast: Mark Wahlberg, Lauren Cohan, Iko Uwais, John Malkovich, Ronda Rousey, Terry Kinney, Carlo Alban, Sam Medina, Natasha Goubskaya, Chae Rin Lee, Emily Skeggs, Keith Arthur Bolden, Poorna Jagannathan, Peter Berg, Nikolai Nikolaeff, Sean Avery, David Garelik. (R, 93 mins) A fictional offshoot of actor-turned-director Peter Berg's "Mark Wahlberg: American Hero" trilogy, MILE 22 sees the duo hitting rock bottom and serves as irrefutable proof that whatever potential Berg might've had is gone and he's totally regressing as a filmmaker. LONE SURVIVOR was prone to military cliches but was a solid, well-acted film overall, and the underappreciated DEEPWATER HORIZON was even better, probably because it didn't paint Wahlberg as the sole hero and gave a lot of screen time to Kurt Russell and other actors, making it more of an ensemble piece. PATRIOTS DAY, Wahlberg/Berg's laughably simplistic take on the Boston Marathon bombing, which placed Wahlberg's completely fictional everyman cop as a tough-talking Johnny On-the-Spot who's magically at the center of all the action, even barking orders at FBI guys and government officials who hold off on making their next move until they consult with him, was a huge stumble, and MILE 22 finds the pair suffocating on the toxic fumes of their alpha male bullshit. This film is atrocious on nearly every level, from its confused plot to its quick-cut action sequences, which are over-edited to the point of sheer incoherence, to Berg functioning as less of a director and more of an enabler who's derelict in his duties, doing nothing to rein in his star, who turns in one of the most embarrassingly self-indulgent performances in recent memory. It's Mark Wahlberg imploding into bad self-parody by doing a ludicrously amped-up impression of "Mark Wahlberg," and that's long before another character actually says "Say hi to your mother for me." Imagine Jason Bourne as a loud, loathsome, motor-mouthed asshole and you'll get an idea of how insufferably grating an over-the-top Wahlberg is here. When John Malkovich yells "Stop monologuing, you bipolar fuck," one gets the impression that the line was unscripted.
Wahlberg is James Silva, the leader of an elite CIA black ops/counterterrorism unit called Ground Branch. He's supposed to be the best of the best, but as the opening sequence at a suburban American safe house of a rogue Russian terror cell and the subsequent 90 minutes demonstrate, a lot of colleagues seem to die on his watch. This isn't surprising seeing that he's almost like the perfect hero for the Trump era: a vein-popping anger management case and bellicose know-it-all prone to blowhard lectures that include long quotes from Wikipedia, frothing-at-the-mouth tantrums, dismissive insults to his colleagues, and endlessly yapping displays of bloated arrogance that make it hard to believe anyone would work under this prick, let alone lay down their lives for him. In an unnamed Asian country, nine containers of cesium have gone missing and Silva's team is activated by remote Overwatch commander Bishop (Malkovich) to deal with Li Noor (THE RAID star Iko Uwais), a cop and former Indonesian government agent who knows the worldwide locations of the missing cesium and wants asylum to the US in exchange for the information. This leads to a sort-of DIPSHIT GAUNTLET as Silva and his team, which includes Alice (Lauren Cohan as Milla Jovovich) and Sam (Ronda Rousey), have to safeguard and escort Li on a 22-mile trip across the city to the airport, all the while evading corrupt local cops charged with taking them out.
It speaks to Berg's clueless approach to MILE 22 that he has Uwais onboard and utterly squanders the opportunity by feeling the need to edit his action sequences into a scrambled, eye-glazing blur. THE RAID and its even better sequel THE RAID 2 were perfect showcases for the Indonesian action star, and Berg must be a fan since the last half hour of MILE 22 makes a sudden switch from DIPSHIT GAUNTLET to DIPSHIT RAID, with Silva, Alice, and Li trapped in a high-rise apartment complex as corrupt local cop Axel's (Sam Medina) goons try to corner and kill them. Working from a script by Lea Carpenter that should've been redacted in pre-production, Berg has made this film a loud, headache-inducing mess, with constant shaky-cam, bizarre camera angles, an over-reliance on close-ups, characters screaming at each other for no reason, and Wahlberg allowed to run rampant, unleashed, unchecked, and completely out of control, shouting at everyone and, in his more introspective moments, constantly snapping his wristband as a way of controlling his fury (it never seems to work). There's half-assed attempts at topicality with passing mentions of "collusion" and "Russian election hacking," and at character development with Alice in a custody battle with her ex-husband, an almost instantly-abandoned subplot that seems to exist only to give Berg some brief screen time as the asshole ex. Rousey's character has nothing to do but sit and watch Silva hurl her birthday cupcake across the room in a fit of rage like a toddler who can't find his binky, and Malkovich, sporting a distracting buzzcut wig and sneakers with a suit, tries out a mannered, halting, staccato delivery that suggests Christopher Walken having a stroke. The abrupt ending leaves the door wide open for a sequel, a presumptuous way to end things that's right in line with its abrasive hero's stratospherically-inflated sense of confidence even though almost everyone bites it under his command and he never sees the big plot twist coming. Cohan shows some action potential and Uwais gives it his best shot even though his work is repeatedly sabotaged by his director, but MILE 22 is just torpedoed from the start by Wahlberg in one of the most aggressively off-putting "hero" star turns you'll ever see in a major movie.
Greek auteur Yorgos Lanthimos (DOGTOOTH) reteams with his LOBSTER star Colin Farrell for this brilliant mindfuck that puts Greek myth and tragedy into modern American suburbia and turns it into a dark and disturbing arthouse horror film. Shot and set in Cincinnati, OH, one of the most quintessentially midwest American cities, THE KILLING OF A SACRED DEER takes its time, building tension, and methodically tightening its grip. Farrell is Dr. Steven Murphy, a renowned cardiologist with a wife, Anna (Nicole Kidman, who starred with Farrell in last year's THE BEGUILED, which was shot after SACRED DEER but released first), teenage daughter Kim (Raffey Cassidy) and young son Bob (Sunny Suljic). Unbeknownst to his family, Steven frequently meets with Martin (DUNKIRK's Barry Keoghan), a polite but troubled 16-year-old. The nature of their relationship isn't revealed until much later, but it appears to be a Big Brother or a mentor-type situation, as Martin's father is dead and his mother (Alicia Silverstone) doesn't seem to be all there in the two years since his passing. After Steven invites Martin to meet his family, the boy's neediness escalates and he starts showing up at Steven's office unannounced, demanding he come to his mother's house for dinner, watch GROUNDHOG DAY with him ("It was my dad's favorite movie") and psychologically manipulating and slowly seducing Kim. Then Martin drops the hammer and Steven is forced to contend with the extent of what the awkward teenager has in store for him and his family.
To say anymore would involve far too many spoilers, but THE KILLING OF A SACRED DEER is hypnotic in ways we rarely see since the loss of Stanley Kubrick. The shot compositions, the long, static takes, and the cold, antiseptic interiors of the hospital and the Steadicam prowling its endless hallways like some sort of Overlook Medical Center all cast that vividly Kubrick spell, at least until the third act when things take a more pronounced Michael Haneke-inspired turn. Lanthimos has fashioned a film that is stilted and awkward by design. These characters are recognizably typical American people but they often talk like they're from another world, effectively emphasizing and almost darkly satirizing the cold detachment so vital to Kubrick. People say inappropriate things with little or no provocation: everyone is fixated on Steven's "beautiful" hands and they're mentioned in practically every other scene. "Do you have hair under your arms?" Bob asks Martin. It's the kind of movie where Martin's mother will start sucking Steven's thumb after he declines dessert and when he's uncomfortable and tries to leave, she sternly intones "I won't let you leave until you've tried my tart." It's the kind of movie where Steven impulsively tells his nine-year-old son that as a child, he once jerked off his drunk, passed-out stepfather ("The sheets were covered in sperm..."). And what prompts Steven to tell a colleague (Bill Camp) at a swanky gala hospital event "Our daughter started menstruating last week..."? Dysfunction is everywhere and the perfection of the American dream is all surface. Steven and Anna love one another but their sex life is bizarre--she strips and lies motionless, almost corpse-like, while he gropes himself, and it's a technique Kim mimics when she tries to initiate her idea of sex with an uninterested Martin, indicating that she's probably watched her parents. The film pulls no punches with its harrowing finale, and like any Lanthimos film, THE KILLING OF A SACRED DEER is decidedly not for everyone (it's closer in spirit to DOGTOOTH than the darkly comedic THE LOBSTER, the latter seeming downright commercial in retrospect). But it's filled with outstanding performances by actors tasked with difficult roles (especially the quietly remarkable turn by Keoghan, who's even better here than he was as the doomed George in DUNKIRK), spellbinding camera work and cinematography by Thimios Bakatakis, and a unique and uncompromising vision on the part of its creators. Lanthimos is one of the masters of today's cinema. (R, 121 mins) CROOKED HOUSE
(UK - 2017)
Kenneth Branagh's middling remake of MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS became a surprise hit in the fall of 2017, but another Agatha Christie adaptation arrived a couple of weeks later and no one knew about it. That's a shame because CROOKED HOUSE, while still flawed, is an overall better film despite Sony's apparent disinterest in promoting it, opting to dump it on 16 screens and VOD with no publicity at all (it wasn't even a theatrical release in the UK, where it premiered on Channel 5). Christie's novel, published in 1949, has fallen through the cracks over the decades even though it was one of the legendary writer's personal favorites of her work. She was especially proud of the incredibly uncompromising ending, which could be why there's never been a CROOKED HOUSE movie until now (there was a four-part BBC radio drama in 2008), and why this adaptation might've been a tough sell for mainstream audiences, even with the presence of some fine actors and a script co-written by GOSFORD PARK screenwriter and DOWNTON ABBEY creator Julian Fellowes. Fellowes' screenplay dated back to 2011, when Neil LaBute was originally attached to direct and Julie Andrews, Gabriel Byrne, and Gemma Arterton set to star. That fell apart in pre-production and the film eventually got made several years later with Gilles Paquet-Brenner (SARAH'S KEY, DARK PLACES) at the helm, reworking Fellowes' script (RAPA NUI writer Tim Rose Price is also credited) and losing all of the initially attached cast. Crooked House is populated by some of Christie's most loathsome characters, whose narcissism and misanthropy are obviously what initially drew LaBute (IN THE COMPANY OF MEN, YOUR FRIENDS AND NEIGHBORS) to the project. Paquet-Brenner tones that down a bit, but CROOKED HOUSE still contains some of the most bitterly sniping repartee in any Christie work.
Charles Hayward (Max Irons) is a British spy-turned-private eye in 1950s London (the film moves the book's setting ahead about a decade). He's hired by former flame Sophia Leonides (Stefanie Martini) to investigate the death of her grandfather Aristide (Gino Picciano), an obscenely wealthy tycoon and diabetic who was poisoned when his insulin was replaced with clear liquid eye medication. The chief suspect is his young trophy wife Brenda (Christina Hendricks), a Vegas showgirl who's of course treated with disdain and scorn by his greedy heirs, all of whom stay at the gargantuan family mansion to form one of the most dysfunctional families in the Christie universe. There's Aristide's eldest son and Sophia's father Philip (Julian Sands) and his washed-up ham actress wife Magda (Gillian Anderson); their obnoxious teenage son Eustace (Preston Nyman) and already cynical young daughter Josephine (Honor Kneafsey); Aristide's pompous youngest son Roger (Christian McKay) and his wife Clemency (Amanda Abbington); and Lady Edith (Glenn Close), the spinster sister of Aristide's late first wife and the only remotely likable one of the bunch aside from the wise-beyond-her-years Josephine. Lady Edith knows the entire family is a scheming nest of vipers and tries to help Hayward in his investigation, which is eventually taken over by dogged Scotland Yard Chief Inspector Taverner (Terence Stamp), who decides Hayward's feelings for Sophia are compromising his ability to handle things on his own. Like THE LIMEHOUSE GOLEM, another recent British period mystery, CROOKED HOUSE starts out clunky and uneven but gets much better as it goes along, especially once Taverner takes charge and puts his foot down with this family of assholes. The film gets a big boost from Stamp, who still can still command the screen and is a much more interesting actor than the bland Irons (the dreadful BITTER HARVEST), who's just not believable as a former spy and has a way to go before he's on the level of his dad Jeremy. CROOKED HOUSE admirably doesn't cushion the blow of its ending, but part of me wonders how astonishingly mean-spirited this would've been in the hands of Neil LaBute. As it is, the film stumbles a bit in its first half, with uninteresting flashbacks to Hayward's romance with Sophia in Cairo (who cares?), but once an attempt is made on young Josephine's life and Stamp's Taverner has had it with everyone, it turns into a reasonably solid film that's worth seeing. (PG-13, 115 mins) BEYOND SKYLINE (US/China/UK/Canada/Singapore - 2017)
Offering further proof that anything can get a sequel in today's global market, BEYOND SKYLINE arrives seven long years after everyone instantly forgot about SKYLINE, a dismal Brett Ratner-produced alien invasion saga that nevertheless made back its paltry budget and was a big success in Asia, so here we are. Shot in late 2014 and into early 2015, BEYOND SKYLINE didn't enjoy the wide release, multiplex exposure its predecessor was given, instead bowing on VOD with the lowest possible expectations. But strange things can happen when nobody's looking, and while it's not a great movie by any means, BEYOND SKYLINE is a vast improvement, functioning as a de facto mulligan with the original film's writer Liam O'Donnell getting behind the camera (replacing veteran visual effects guys The Brothers Strause, still onboard as two of 29 credited producers) to do it right this time. You can almost sense O'Donnell's eagerness to wipe the slate clean since the two holdover characters from the original (played by different actors here) are killed off almost immediately, shifting the focus to the PURGE franchise's Frank Grillo as Mark, a lone wolf, alcoholic, widower cop (is there any other kind?) and his rebellious teenage son Trent (Jonny Weston) caught up in the alien invasion. Stuck in the underground subway tunnels, Mark and Trent team up with a few others, including transit employee Audrey (Bojana Novakovic) and homeless guy Sarge (Antonio Fargas), to evade the aliens but they end up being sucked into a hovering ship anyway, where Trent gets his brain ripped out and planted into an alien, thus reborn as an otherworldly species. While in the ship, Mark encounters Elaine, the pregnant survivor from the first film (Samantha Jean replaces Scottie Thompson) whose child is born with alien DNA after fiance Jarrod (Tony Black replaces Eric Balfour) was made part-alien after a brainectomy. Elaine dies giving birth, and Alien Jarrod sabotages the ship, which crashes in Laos, where Mark and Audrey meet a small band of resistance fighters led by Sua (Indonesian action star Iko Uwais). Oddball scientist Harper (Callan Mulvey) surmises that the alien blood of Elaine's child, who's growing at an accelerated rate and looks three years old after two days, might be the key to defeating the aliens, but in the meantime, Mark and Audrey team up with Sua, his sister Kanya (Pamelyn Chee), and eccentric warrior The Chief (Yayan Ruhian) for some one-on-one martial arts showdowns with the invaders, at which point the film moves from THE PURGE: SKYLINE to THE RAID: SKYLINE.
Considering its $15 million budget and a couple of dubious-looking CGI explosions, BEYOND SKYLINE looks as convincingly "big" as any over-budgeted Hollywood blockbuster opening on 3000 screens. Once again, Grillo is a believably hard-as-nails tough guy hero and things get pretty good once RAID stars Uwais and Ruhian turn up midway through. Aside from needing to look at SKYLINE's Wikipedia page because I had no memory of the Elaine/Jarrod storyline, BEYOND SKYLINE pretty much works as a standalone film, and one that's surprisingly engaging considering how needlessly convoluted it is and how bad SKYLINE was (have you ever met a SKYLINE fan?). O'Donnell takes too long getting to them, but anything goes once Uwais and Ruhian are introduced, and when you add Grillo into the mix (which is interesting since Grillo was at one time attached to the still-unmade American remake of THE RAID), along with some unabashed, over-the-top R-rated violence, BEYOND SKYLINE becomes something SKYLINE never was: entertaining. (R, 106 mins)
STAR WARS: THE FORCE AWAKENS (US - 2015) Directed by J.J. Abrams. Written by Lawrence Kasdan, J.J. Abrams and Michael Arndt. Cast: Harrison Ford, Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher, Adam Driver, Daisy Ridley, John Boyega, Oscar Isaac, Max von Sydow, Lupita Nyong'o, Andy Serkis, Domhnall Gleeson, Anthony Daniels, Peter Mayhew, Gwendoline Christie, Joonas Suotamo, Simon Pegg, Pip Torrens, Kiran Shah, Greg Grunberg, Kenny Baker, Warwick Davis, Ken Leung, Iko Uwais, Harriet Walter, Thomas Brodie-Sangster. (PG-13, 135 mins) Picking up the STAR WARS saga a decade after the mixed-bag prequel trilogy, fan expectations were high with franchise overlord George Lucas removing himself from the equation and Episode VII being handed to polarizing director and lens flare enthusiast J.J. Abrams. Abrams himself is coming off a career nadir with the abysmal STAR TREK: INTO DARKNESS, a film that everyone loved until they actually saw it. Taking place 30 or so years after the events of RETURN OF THE JEDI, STAR WARS: THE FORCE AWAKENS brings together two protagonists--lone warrior/scavenger Rey (Daisy Ridley), from the desert planet Jakku, and morally-conflicted Stormtrooper FN-2187, or "Finn" (ATTACK THE BLOCK's John Boyega)--and a rolling droid called BB-8, who has an important piece of a map in his possession, placed there by Resistance pilot Poe Dameron (EX MACHINA's Oscar Isaac). The Empire may have fallen after the destruction of the second Death Star, but The First Order has risen in its place, overseen by the nefarious, masked Kylo Ren (GIRLS' Adam Driver) and ambitious General Hux (Isaac's EX MACHINA co-star Domnhall Gleeson, channeling Peter Cushing's Grand Moff Tarkin), who work at the behest of Supreme Leader Snoke (motion-captured Andy Serkis). The map contains the key to the whereabouts of the long-missing Luke Skywalker, and with Kylo Ren's Stormtroopers in pursuit, Rey, Finn, and BB-8 commandeer a junked Millennium Falcon and cross paths with none other than Han Solo (Harrison Ford) and Chewbacca (Peter Mayhew in some closeups, but played mostly by stuntman Joonas Suotamo due to 71-year-old Mayhew's disabling knee issues), who are surprised to find their old ship. As the hunt for BB-8 intensifies, the heroes end up joining the Resistance, led by General Leia Organa (Carrie Fisher), who's desperately searching for the whereabouts of her lost brother, Luke.
It's simply impossible to replicate the groundbreaking, game-changing phenomenon that was the original STAR WARS trilogy, which still stand among the most influential films ever made. It's clear that Abrams and co-scripters Michael Arndt (LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE) and EMPIRE STRIKES BACK/RETURN OF THE JEDI co-writer Lawrence Kasdan (THE BIG CHILL) have molded THE FORCE AWAKENS as the "give the fans what they want" nostalgia trip. There's nothing wrong with that, but one must keep their expectations in check. It's filled with exciting action, fun performances, and lots of trips down Memory Lane to get a good sentimental streak going, but that's really all it does. It works for the most part, and you'd almost have to be a total dick to not get a big, stupid grin on your face over Han's and Chewbacca's first appearance 40 minutes in when they discover the Millennium Falcon ("Chewie...we're home!"). The same goes for the eventual appearances of Fisher's Leia (she and Han still harboring feelings for one another, and both feeling a sense of responsibility for the rise of The First Order), Anthony Daniels' C-3PO, and an offline R2-D2 (81-year-old Kenny Baker now credited as "R2-D2 Consultant"), who comes back to life late in the film to provide an important piece of the puzzle involving Luke's location. Mark Hamill returns as Luke--obviously to help set up what must be a larger role in Episode VIII--but don't be fooled by his second billing: there are Hitchcock cameos that last longer than Hamill's appearance in THE FORCE AWAKENS.
There's also a trip to a bar run by 1000-year-old pirate Maz Kanata (motion-captured by 12 YEARS A SLAVE's Lupita Nyong'o) that looks very similar to the legendary Mos Eisley Cantina, and there's numerous callbacks and parallels to previous saga plotlines, from Rey living in the hollowed remnants of an AT-AT Walker to a father-son confrontation that looks very similar to the Cloud City showdown between Luke and Darth Vader in THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK. The set-up itself is very similar to STAR WARS, with BB-8 carrying a crucial piece of information and teaming up with Rey, much like the circumstances that brought R2-D2 and Luke together. Franchise newcomers Boyega and Ridley acquit themselves well, particularly Ridley, whose fierce energy makes her an inspiring heroine worthy of becoming a next-gen Luke Skywalker. Once he removes the helmet, Driver is seriously miscast as the sulking, pouting Kylo Ren, and regardless of that being the intent with the character, it turns Kylo Ren into little more than a millennial Darth Vader with daddy issues. For those who saw the original trilogy when it was new, the real fun of STAR WARS: THE FORCE AWAKENS is seeing the old-school icons back in action. Even though only Han and Chewbacca get any significant screen time, it's great fun seeing them still doing what they do and bickering like an old married couple. Ford gets by on his legend alone, often delivering his dialogue with a "Look, Abrams...how much longer do I have to be here?" tone that sort-of works considering he's playing an older and even more cynical Han that gels rather well with the actor's grouchy persona. He gets a huge laugh out of fans when Rey says "You're the Han Solo?! You made the Kessel Run in 14 parsecs!" to which Han angrily snaps "12 parsecs!" then, shaking his head and harumphing in incredulous disgust under his breath, "14..." Abrams and the writers lean heavily on that sense of established goodwill and unlike the prequel trilogy, it moves quickly, gets pretty much all of the exposition out of the way in the traditional opening crawl, and doesn't dawdle around with political machinations and trade federation debates or get bogged down with George Lucas' complete post-JEDI inability to grasp human interaction. There have been some analogies made comparing this to a long-floundering classic rock band getting a few original members back together for a new album and going on a tour to play one song from it while the rest of the set is all the beloved hits from the past. That perfectly describes STAR WARS: THE FORCE AWAKENS: it's the real thing, it's got enough of the key components, it's fun while you're watching it and maybe you love it now because you really don't like the prequels and this gives you everything you want. But when the dust on Jakku settles, is it really going to hold up against the original trilogy?
THE RAID 2 (US/Indonesia - 2014) Written and directed by Gareth Evans. Cast: Iko Uwais, Arifin Putra, Oka Antara, Tio Pakusadewo, Alex Abbad, Kenichi Endo, Ryuhei Matsuda, Julie Estelle, Very Tri Yulisman, Yayan Ruhian, Cecip Arif Rahman, Cok Simbara, Kazuki Kitamura, Roy Marten, Fikha Effendi. (R, 150 mins)
Welsh-born, Indonesia-based writer/director Gareth Evans caught the attention of martial arts fans with his 2009 cult film MERENTAU, his first teaming with Pencak Silat champion Iko Uwais. The duo paired again for their global breakthrough, 2011's THE RAID, a riveting actioner and an instant classic in the "high-rise mayhem" genre, with Uwais as a rookie cop forced to fight his way floor-by-floor through a Jakarta drug lord's apartment-building stronghold. THE RAID earned acclaim worldwide and was released in the US in 2012 as THE RAID: REDEMPTION (even though no one calls it that), becoming a rare subtitled foreign film to break out of the art-house shackles and open wide, and while it didn't exactly tear it up at the box office, it grossed a relatively respectable $4 million for Sony Pictures Classics on its way to becoming a big hit on DVD and Blu-ray. Evans and Uwais are back with THE RAID 2, and let it be said here and now: they are not fucking around.
THE RAID was a perfect, self-contained B-movie but THE RAID 2 is just...bigger. Not only is the action more expansive, but Evans has grown as a filmmaker. THE RAID was a B-movie, but THE RAID 2 is a film. Evans has already proven that he's an expert action choreographer, but THE RAID 2 is on an altogether higher and more advanced level. A few months after the events of the first film (some reviews say it begins a few hours after, but that can't be, since the hero's wife was pregnant in THE RAID and in THE RAID 2, the kid is a few months old), Jakarta cop Rama (Uwais) is talked into going undercover by his anti-corruption task force boss Bunawar (Cok Simbara), who knows police commissioner Reza (Roy Marten) is in cahoots with various crime organizations, but needs proof. Rama's assignment: get arrested, get convicted, and get sentenced to a few months in prison so he can get close to Uco (Arifin Putra), the incarcerated son of mob boss Bangun (Tio Pakusadewo), and work his way into the organization to see just how many cops are involved in Jakarta's criminal underworld. Fearing for the safety of his wife and infant son after bringing down the drug lord in the first film, Rama agrees and goes undercover as Yuda, but "a few months" turns into a two-year prison sentence, during which time he earns Uco's trust by saving his life in an attempted rubout in the yard. Bangun pulls some strings with the police to get Rama/Yuda released and Yuda becomes an enforcer in the Bangun family. Meanwhile, ambitious, duplicitous would-be gangster Bejo (Alex Abbad) wants a bigger piece of the action and decides to shake things up by manipulating Uco and playing the Bangun family against the Goto (Kenichi Endo) organization, a Japanese outfit with whom Bangun has has ten years of peaceful co-existence.
Where THE RAID's action was limited to the claustrophobic confines of an apartment building, THE RAID 2, its inital premise owing more than a slight debt to DONNIE BRASCO, INFERNAL AFFAIRS and THE DEPARTED, allows Evans to make all of Jakarta his bonecrushing playground. The fight scenes are longer, more intricate, and more violent (Evans had to make some cuts to avoid an NC-17), and by opening things up and resisting the ease of making an identical sequel, Evans and Uwais now get to expand their repertoire to include an epic car chase (watch Uwais stuck in a car with four other people, fighting them in the car, while it's being chased), a blood-drenched fight sequence on a subway with a Bejo hired gun called Hammer Girl (Julie Estelle), whose weapons of choice should be self-explantory, and a long brawl in a muddy prison yard during a torrential downpour. And those are just some of the exhilarating sights on display: Evans pays obvious tribute to Scorsese throughout, especially in the way he makes two and a half hours fly by, but also to Stanley Kubrick in some of the ornate, expansive interiors. One vast cocktail lounge bears a striking resemblance to the Gold Ballroom in THE SHINING, and the tracking shots and production design in the restaurants and offices have that distinctly cold, antiseptic Kubrick aura. In these scenes, THE RAID 2 is often as stunningly beautiful as Nicolas Winding Refn's divisive Kubrick lovefest ONLY GOD FORGIVES.
But all that aside, fans of THE RAID are seeing THE RAID 2 for the action, and on that front, Evans and Uwais deliver, and then some. Rama/Yuda's late-film, restaurant-kitchen battle with a Bejo assassin (Cecip Arif Rahman) is one of the most jaw-dropping fight sequences ever shot in a film full of unforgettable, innovative set pieces. Except for some sparingly-utilized CGI gore (and not the distracting, over-digitized kind), Evans goes practical and avoids the modern propensity for shaky-cam action and leaning on the crutch of CGI. Of course, it's there, but it's used to subtly, conservatively enhance rather than do all of the heavy lifting. The action is clear and coherent, and the characters and the viewer feel the pain of every blow. Limbs are snapped, faces are shot off, throats are ripped out, people are disemboweled, one poor bastard gets hibachied, and heads scrape along the road as they're held out of a door that flies open during a car chase. THE RAID 2 is gloriously, breathtakingly brutal, an action film for action fans who think they've seen it all, with an insane 40-minute climax that should be required viewing for any director working in the genre. While the set-up and the police corruption angle are nothing new, THE RAID 2 is the kind of balls-out action ass-kicking that fans have been awaiting for a long time. I don't want Evans to come to Hollywood unless it's on his own terms. He's doing just fine on his own in Indonesia. THE RAID established him as a new voice in cinematic action. THE RAID 2 is a masterpiece.
Written and directed by Gareth Huw Evans. Cast: Iko Uwais, Joe Taslim, Donny Alamsyah, Ray Sahetapy, Pierre Gruno, Yayan Ruhian. (R, 100 mins)
A young Indonesian Muslim wakes, prays, does morning exercises, and gets ready to go to work. He kisses his very pregnant wife and tells her to rest. He's a police officer, and though he doesn't know it yet, he's embarking on the worst day of his life.
That serene opening sequence is the calmest moment in the explosive, balls-to-the-wall action epic THE RAID: REDEMPTION. Directed by Indonesia-based Welshman Gareth Evans, who made his mark with 2009's cult item MERANTAU, THE RAID: REDEMPTION (the "Redemption" was added by US distributor Sony after THE RAID was already claimed) quickly sets up a story and then it's insanity unleashed. The Muslim cop is Rama (Iko Uwais, one of several MERANTAU stars who also appear here), who's a member of an elite SWAT team dispatched by Lt. Wahyu (Pierre Gruno, who looks like an Indonesian Malcolm McDowell) to raid the 30-story apartment building/stronghold of powerful crime lord Tama (Ray Sahetapy). The cops have long given Tama unspoken clearance to run his operation, which involves a narcotics lab and providing sanctuary for the city's most wanted criminals, in addition to standard slum housing on the lower floors. Rama is a dutiful officer, but questions why now and why today do the cops finally decide to arrest Tama. They quickly secure the lower floors, but a child sees them and pulls the alarm, notifiying Tama, whose bunker is on the 15th floor, that the cops are in the building. Tama dispatches his goons and those from neighboring buildings to get to work. And so begins a day-long, multi-floor battle between cops and criminals, with guns, knives, machetes, hammers, and, when all else fails, fists and feet and whatever else is available, even a propane tank and a refrigerator to make an impromptu bomb.
Iko Uwais as Rama
While the "Best Action Movie in Decades!!!" line that the ads scream is a tad hyperbolic, THE RAID: REDEMPTION is quite a jawdropper. Incredible choreography and fight sequences, expertly-designed and stunningly executed like none you've ever seen before. Before the Silat martial arts skills of Uwait come into play, Evans does a marvelous job of conveying the danger and the claustrophobia of the situation, especially once the SWAT guys find out that Wahyu orchestrated this hit without telling any of his superiors, so no backup is on the way because no one knows they're there. With the constant synth-based score by Linkin Park's Mike Shinoda, the early sequences in the film have the distinct feel of in-his-prime John Carpenter, reversing the frequent Carpenter motif of "evil trying to get in" to "good guys trying to get out." But once Rama finds himself essentially alone, he--with some unexpected help--takes on Tama's men in an endless and breathtaking series of truly inventive fight sequences (of course, some things never change, as the bad guys still attack Rama--how else?--one at a time), Evans really succeeds in establishing himself as a uniquely styled action auteur. I took a look at MERANTAU (currently streaming on Netflix) immediately after seeing this, and it has its share of crazy action sequences, but they come mostly after a talky first hour with a predictable plot. MERANTAU is a slower but solid enough demonstration of his filmmaking talents (before relocating to Jakarta, Evans also made a 2006 British thriller titled FOOTSTEPS, but I haven't seen it) but Evans really makes a statement with THE RAID. He also does a commendable job of using CGI blood in a way that's not cartoonish and distracting. It's there, but it's used more subtly and mixed much more effectively with the Karo syrup for a CGI look that still has the appropriate level of...wetness, if you will. And in a film as blood-drenched as this, that's important, so props to Evans for being one of the few filmmakers today who gets it and uses CGI blood the right way.
Drug lord Tama (Ray Sahetapy) confronted by Lt. Wahyu
(Pierre Gruno as Indonesian Malcolm McDowell)
THE RAID: REDEMPTION is not just a martial-arts movie (it's also an instant classic in the "high-rise mayhem" subgenre), but it's the best martial-arts movie I've seen in quite some time. Maybe not "DECADES!!!" but probably since the CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON-inspired wuxia craze of the early 2000s. If you're a fan of this stuff, it's a virtual impossibility to be disappointed by this.
Original Indonesian poster before Sony
tacked on the REDEMPTION part of the title
