Action Movies
More older reviews.
- Highlander: Endgame
- From Dusk til Dawn
- Who Am I?
- The World Is Not Enough
- Zero Woman
- Knock Off
- The Legend of Drunken Master
Highlander: Endgame was a good return for the Highlander franchise from small screen back to big, but it was not without its problems. For one thing, those not familiar with both the first movie and the TV show will be confused; no real attempt was made to explain the Highlander universe to non fans. Endgame will be enjoyable and coherent to any current fan, however, and a few neophytes may decide to find out what they've missed.
The characters and tone of the TV show were faithfully recreated. Adrian Paul was especially good, but Christopher Lambert did a good job as well. None of the acting, actually, was bad. Most of the sword fights and other action sequences were very well done. I was bit disappointed, however, with some of the special effects. Some of the blue/green screen shots, for example, were poorly done. The historic recreations were also well done and in keeping with the show. They successfully juggled the lighthearted feel of the TV show and the gloomier feel of the original movie.
Overall, the movie should have been longer to allow for more story development, more backstory development, more philosophical discourse on the "mind-numbing sameness of it all" and other major themes, a longer concluding fight, better explanations of the Watchers' role, better character development (Jin Ke could have been intriguing), and more interaction between Duncan and Connor (it was one of the movie's better elements). None of these things were poorly done, mind you; as a Highlander fan, I just wanted more.
Okay. To begin with, I liked this little trash fest. Perhaps that says something about me, perhaps it doesn't.
George Clooney and Quentin Tarantino (who co-wrote the film) play brothers who rob and kill. They rob for money, they kill when "necessary" to avoid being caught. Quentin has an additional problem: he likes to rape and murder women. It's obviously a psychosis, and George tries to keep him on a short leash to keep it under control. This is not Butch and Sundance. They're not nice guys driven to desperate measures. They're cold bastards. But they obviously love each other.
The first half of the movie is about the duo's efforts to escape to Mexico by kidnapping a family in a Winnebago for cover. After getting to Mexico, the movie evolves (some critics would certainly say "devolves") into a vampire flick. No kidding. Salma Hayek plays the leader of a pack of vampires that have taken over a bar in the remote deserts of Mexico, and Clooney and company must survive a night in their company. What was Tarantino thinking? But somehow, it works, at least as a guy film. Clooney's matter-of-fact acceptance of the plot twist helps make it work. I won't spoil the ending, but I got a real kick out of Clooney's final words to the girl he kidnapped.
Jackie Chan plays a Hong Kong based CIA operative who, along with his team, is double-crossed by a rogue CIA officer while on a mission to "recover" a radioactive meteorite in Africa. Jackie falls from a helicopter whose controls have been set to crash and kill the team, and thus is the only team-member to survive the double-cross, but loses his memory in the fall. Who Am I? is no mystery and we know whodunnit all along, but it's fun watching Jackie — now known as "Who Am I?" — as he travels from Africa to Rotterdam on the quest for his lost identity and for the identity of those who want him dead.
Despite one badly dubbed scene, most of the dialogue in Who Am I? is good, the plot isn't too far fetched, the military sequences are suitably high-tech and unusually cohesive, the fight scenes are well-done with just a touch of Chan's trademark humor, the editing is far superior to that done to the American releases of some of Chan's previous films (Armor of the Gods and Operation Condor come to mind), and, most importantly, well into his forties, Jackie Chan continues to make the unbelievable seem easy. I liked this film as much as Chan's well-known Supercop.
Pierce Brosnan returns for his third stab at the James Bond role and does a pretty good job at it. With his cruelly handsome looks and intense, cold deliveries, he's certainly better in the role than Roger Moore ever was, but then, so was George Lazenby. The guns, gadgets, and girls are all in place; the plot is more readily believable (and memorable) than that of the last 007 installment, Tomorrow Never Dies; Sophie Marceau was simultaneously innocent, beautiful, seductive, and ... and watch the movie; Robert Carlyle was well-cast as a subtler, non-moustache-twirling villain acting out of motivations other than greed; and Judi Dench's M has a slightly expanded role. And I have to disagree with most of the mainstream critics: Denise Richards, while no Michelle Yeoh, was not the worst Bond girl ever. That distinction probably falls on the shoulders of Ursula Andress, but she has a lot of competition. Remember Grace Jones?
A few quibbles: M should have had the opportunity to do something besides look concerned and rot in a cell. She could have least escaped from captivity on her own by overpowering or outsmarting one of the villain's henchmen or something. I would also have liked to see Colin Salmon's role expanded. He has too much presence as an actor to just hang about in the shadows for a couple of scenes and do a voiceover. And the best element from Tomorrow Never Dies, Michelle Yeoh, was sadly missing.
Action movies are always violent and often sexist, and Zero Woman is no exception. In this movie almost every major character dies a violent, bloody death, and two out of three female characters, including the lead, are raped. The rape scenes alone virtually guarantee that this trashy little Japanese film will offend, but if rape isn't enough, they've thrown in some bondage and brutality for good measure.
The tone of Zero Woman can be summed up with a description of one scene:
The heroine, a cop from Section Zero, is sent out to gather information from a known drug dealer. As bait, she is given a bag of cocaine to sell the dealer, but the dealer already knows she's a cop and instructs her to do a line of her own coke, supposedly so he can be confident of its purity. A good cop would have found a way out, a good action movie cop would have pulled her gun, but not Zero Woman! She inhales a huge, clumpy pile of blow and becomes instantly so high (the cocaine seemed to have some sort of narcotic effect on her) that the drug dealer is able fondle her breasts (in one of about five gratuitous scenes to feature the heroine's bare breasts), pull her jeans down, and rape her from behind without meeting resistance. After a few minutes, Zero Woman manages to grab a meat hook (don't ask) and snare her assailant with it. A camera cut, and Zero Woman is dressed, in control, down from her high, and interrogating the dug dealer while torturing him with the meat hook.
Hong Kong has long produced some of the most innovative action movies, but only in recent years are they crawling off American video store shelves and into American theatres. They are doing so, in part, by bringing Hong Kong's directors to the U.S. and having them work with familiar American actors like John Travolta and Nicholas Cage, and by bringing familiar actors to Hong Kong to star in vehicles set there.
Director Tsui Hark'svisually exciting film Knock Off is set in Hong Kong, right as the British are returning it to China, and stars Jean-Claude van Damme and Rob Schneider (from TV's Saturday Night Live) as slightly crooked garment manufacturers caught up in a tangled web of cops, spies, and terrorists, with van Damme unsure who is playing on which side. The terrorist plot is certainly original, the action is riveting and well choreographed, and at times some of van Damme's trickier moves approach those of Jackie Chan. And his English is improving. Rob Schneider was surprisingly good, characterized not by a standout performance, but by the absence of any of the pain normally associated with the acting of any Saturday Night Live alumni. Paul Sorvino is basically wasted, but Lela Rochon does a fine job of convincingly walking the tightrope between beauty and danger. Unless you'd prefer to sit home and watch the PGA Tournament, this rather fun movie is definitely worth a rental.
Jackie Chan has all but given up the kung fu movies he made in his youth in favor of action-comedies, but he returned to the genre once, in 1994, to make Drunken Master II, a sequel to the 1978 hit that made him a superstar. The film has now been dubbed into English and released in the US as The Legend of Drunken Master, and wow! If you love kung fu movies, you must see this film. If you love action movies, you must see this film. If you love Jackie Chan, you must see this film. If you've never seen a Jackie Chan film, but want to understand his international appeal, you must see this film. The Legend of Drunken Master has stunts, it has comedy, it has sword fights, and it has kung fu. A lot of kung fu. It may be the perfect Jackie Chan film. Better than Project A. Better than ... dare I say it? ... Supercop.
Jackie plays Wong Fei-hung, a Cantonese folk hero immortalized in well over a hundred Hong Kong movies (yes, I looked that up), but like he did in the original Drunken Master, Chan plays Wong for laughs. Wong is the son of a stern physician who thinks his son's "drunken boxing" style of kung fu is dangerous to its practioners because of the risk of alcoholism. Wong tries to heed his father's wishes and practice only more traditional forms of kung fu, but he always seems to find himself in situations that require that little bit extra ... Anita Mui adds a great deal to the film's levity as Wong's stepmother and ally against his father (the irony in part being that Chan and Mui, I would guess, are about the same age). Wong must stop the evil British and their traitorous Chinese allies from stealing ancient Chinese art treasures, and ... and that's about it. The plot isn't the point. The point is the amazing stuntwork and dazzlingly choreographed fight sequences. I might have already said this, but you must see this film.
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