Director: Timur Bekmambetov
Writer: Michael Brandt (screenplay & story)
Derek Haas (screenplay & story)
Chris Morgan(screenplay)
Mark Millar (comic book)
J.G. Jones (comic book)
Starring: James McAvoy, Angelina Jolie, Morgan Freeman, and Terence Stamp has like two scenes
Synopsis
Sad-sack motherfucker learns he's genetically inclined to be a super-assassin who can speed up his heart to percieve the world as extremely slow, trains, kills people. Twists ensue, and he upsets the status quo.
The Woman
this was not great, but not the piece of crap movie i thought this would be. moster was surprised it was from a comic, but it reeks of comic through the whole movie, the characters, the stupid assassin group they belong to, the plot of revenge, and so on and so forth. textbook comic book. it was sometimes a little over the top even for me, but i was surprised at how much it didn't suck. i put this on the queue as a joke. it was no masterpiece by far, but i think my expectations were so low, and it entertained me. SPOILER ALERT! i can also get behind any movie where angelina gets her brains strewn on the wall and floor.
there were bits where the plot pushed past character's personality, like the whole training part. the main character goes from average joe to super assassin in like 2 montages. but eh, it could have been worse.
MOster
This movie was much more different than I expected. Parts of it felt like "Fight Club," but not really. The premise is pretty ridiculous, but that's OK.
The story is a monorail, with absolutely no side plotting or character development outside of the dude. However, it's not a monorail on a tour around Action Movieville. While the twist is not terribly surprising, the denoument is... even though the ending is pretty weak. I was actually interested in seeing how most of this played out.
Acting was not a strong point here. Angelina is stonier than usual, and McAvoy has exactly two emotions. Freeman is slumming it, but not really making the most of that state of affairs. Direction was exactly mediocre, even though there were some differences in the plot and production.
Production was interesting. There were some bits here that I haven't seen in quite the ways they were employed. Specifically, the use of cars rotating around their lateral axes and this idiotic concept of curving bullets were nifty in their execution. The effect surrounding the slowdown was also a little different in its execution. Unfortunately (and unsurprisingly) they were overused. The original score was actually pretty good and I thought I heard some Trent Reznor, who's almost always welcome in my book.
This movie suffered greatly in the editing. The entire story was supposed to take place over the course of six weeks, but the training period (which must have been most of the six weeks) took up close to a third of the runtime and consisted of too much dialog sandwiched by two montages. I really didn't get the urgency at all.
This movie is above average on first viewing; but I don't think I'd seek a repeat performance.
This was directed by the guy who did Nightwatch and Daywatch. He has a particular style, a combination of over the top and dumb comedy. This was also his FIRST american movie - the guy's russian. Foreign action/comedies are always a little off relative to American movies. I agree with the review, but this was very good if you consider the hurdles it came from. Just a thought.
ReplyDeleteWell, I've added Nightwatch. So we'll see how it goes in a couple of years.
ReplyDeleteAnd I did appreciate the style, even if I didn't see much of the humor. But the editing was weak, regardless of the language of the director.