Iron Man 3 (2013)

I’m Gonna Offer the Choice: Do You Want an Empty Life, or a Meaningful Death?

The release of the Avengers set a high bar for superhero movies that I imagine filmmakers will find it very difficult to meet.  But it would be horrible if they decided that they had done it and that they had to stop there.  Of course they needed more.  Nay … I needed more.  I was worried that I might go into the follow up movie with expectations too high for any movie but Avengers 2 to match, but I found myself able to manage my expectations fairly well.  And it certainly wasn’t the movie that made that so easy to do; it has quite a pedigree of its own to live up to.  And not just the Avengers.  The first movie in this series was probably the first step in the process of Marvel (and probably Hollywood in general) taking comic book movies seriously.  The second one let a lot of fans down, but I wasn’t altogether opposed to it.  And I finally got to see the third.  And so I present to you my review of Iron Man 3, written by Drew Pearce, co-written and directed by Shane Black, and starring Robert Downey, Jr., Guy Pearce, Ben Kingsley, Gwyneth Paltrow, Rebecca Hall, Don Cheadle, James Badge Dale, Jon Favreau, Ty Simpkins, Paul Bettany, and Stephanie Szostak.

In 1999, Tony Stark (Robert Downey, Jr.) meets a scientist named Maya Hansen (Rebecca Hall), who has been working on something she calls “Extremis” – an experimental cellular regeneration treatment with the nasty side effect of making some of the patients explode.  He also meets a disabled scientist named Aldrich Killian (Guy Pearce), who offers them a place in his company, A.I.M. (Advanced Idea Mechanics).  But Stark is mainly interested in banging Hansen, so he neglects the other things in favor of that goal.  Years later, Stark is mentally unstable in all sorts of different ways.  Because of the events with the Chitauri, Stark cannot sleep and instead spends his time building new suits of his Iron Man armor, he has occasionally debilitating panic attacks, and his relationship with his girlfriend Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow) are strained.  And to make things worse, a terrorist named the Mandarin (Ben Kingsley) is laying siege to the world with random explosions that leave no bomb residue.

I liked this movie … but I had a few problems with the movie that hindered my ability to love it.  And a big portion of the problems surround the problem with being a fan.  I loved what I thought they were doing with the Mandarin in this movie by making him a terrorist, but I did not like what it turned out they were actually doing with him.  I’m okay with you removing the magic rings element of the Mandarin if you want to keep the series based more in real life (even though the Avengers introduced someone that also relies heavily on magic rings in a matter of speaking), but what you did with the Mandarin in this movie was take one of Iron Man’s greatest villains and make him completely insignificant by the end of the movie.  And it wasn’t even a surprise!  I started getting sad that I was seeing it coming when I first saw the movie studio the Mandarin would broadcast from.  And they did the same thing with another of the biggest characters in the Iron Man mythos: Iron Man himself!  I didn’t come to see Tony Stark 3; I came to see Iron Man 3.  But the greater majority of this movie is Tony Stark fighting outside of a suit because his suits were destroyed or ineffective.  And then – almost to apologize for that – they spend the last fight scene of the movie dripping with Iron Man suits.  You’d think I’d appreciate that since I was complaining about the lack of metal suits through the rest of the movie, but that’s also not the case.  The suits Stark kept jumping into in that last fight were so disposable you’d think they were made of Post Its.  The bad guys would slice through them like a hot hand through Iron Man suits.  Then he’d run around for a while and jump into a new suit for a few seconds of fighting.  And he didn’t even get to be the ultimate hero at the end of the movie!  Though how it happened was fairly badass, it wasn’t Iron Man doing it.  I need my hero to defeat my villain.

That amount of complaining might lead you to incorrect conclusions about my thoughts on this movie.  I did not hate it, but parts of it bummed me out.  It was still a good movie, and I’d even recommend seeing it in theaters if you haven’t already.  It’s still got some decent writing in the story, and Tony Stark has some great lines as always.  For instance, I liked when he called that little kid a pussy.  When an enemy asked Tony Stark if all he had was “cheap tricks and cheesy one-liners” and Tony responded with “that should be the name of my autobiography,” I still laughed.

The look of the movie remains fantastic, and I could not bring myself to complain about that.  Even though I didn’t like that most of the action didn’t involve Iron Man, I appreciated the action that was there.  And I could not stop myself from getting a little excited when the large group of Iron Man prototypes shows up to throw down, but I found myself thinking that it was good that Tony fucked around and created all those disposable Iron Man suits, but why wouldn’t he create just one of them that could withstand tremendous heat?  In the comics, Stark has different armor for all sorts of different occasions.  He has one that can go underwater, he has one that can go into space, he has one that can take on the Hulk, but he doesn’t have one that can withstand heat?  I find that farfetched, and I refuse to realize the irony in calling something in a superhero comic book movie “farfetched.”

The performances in the movie also remained excellent.  I find it impossible to not like Robert Downey, Jr., especially as Tony Stark.  He’s got more than enough acting and comedic chops to go around.  Gwyneth Paltrow remains great as well, able to go toe-to-toe with Downey in every way.  I thought Guy Pearce was a little over the top in the nerdy version of his character, but he did the rest of it very well.  I thought Ben Kingsley was amazing and badass throughout the greater majority of the movie, and he even brought some (unwelcome) comedic parts to the movie.  I welcome comedic stuff when Tony Stark brings it because it’s true to his character, but it’s really not something I want to see the Mandarin doing.  When I saw Ty Simpkins in the movie, it made me nervous.  You see, I’ve been watching Married With Children recently and I’ve just reached the part where they unleash the character of Seven upon the world, effectively destroying every episode he was in, as is generally the case when they decide what something needs to boost ratings is to add a child sidekick.  Thankfully, I didn’t have those feelings with Simpkins.  He didn’t specifically bring very much to the table for me, but Downey did in his interactions with him.

Iron Man 3 was a good movie, but my nerdiness made me resent certain parts of it.  The story was good, but I didn’t appreciate the angle they went with the Mandarin.  The action was good, but I didn’t appreciate the relative lack of Iron Man, nor did I appreciate how disposable his armor was.  And anything I didn’t like about the performances was not to be blamed on the actors.  They were all fantastic.  Overall, I was torn in my feelings about Iron Man 3, but I am not torn in my belief that you should watch this movie.  It could have been better, but it remains worth the price of admission.  Iron Man 3 gets “Lesson number one: heroes, there is no such thing” out of “You know, it’s moments like these when I realize how much of a superhero I am.”

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Prometheus (2012)

My God, We Were So Wrong…

When Samrizon recommended that I watch today’s movie, she seemed a little deflated that I said it may have to wait quite some time. As with most movies in theaters, I can’t really afford to go and see everything people want me to when it’s in theaters. I’d much rather wait until I can find it for a dollar on RedBox or on Netflix. But I did indeed want to see this movie, being a fan (to different degrees) of the quadrilogy that already existed. When Friendboss Josh heard the Who’s singing in Whoville and his heart grew three sizes this day, I was afforded the ability to go to a theater that was playing the movie for only $5. This movie is Prometheus, written by Damon Lindelof and Jon Spaihts, directed by Ridley Scott, and starring Noomi Rapace, Logan Marshall-Green, Michael Fassbender, Charlize Theron, Idris Elba, Guy Pearce, Sean Harris, Rafe Spall, Kate Dickie, Emun Elliott, Benedict Wong, and Patrick Wilson.

In the year 2089, two archaeologists, Elizabeth Shaw (Noomi Rapace) and Charlie Holloway (Logan Marshall-Green), find a cave painting in Scotland that, along with similar murals from groups that never met each other from around the world, points to a star like our own sun and a habitable planet. They take this as an invitation from a group they call “the Engineers”, who they believe created our species. The elderly CEO of Weyland Corporation, Peter Weyland (Guy Pearce), funds a ship called Prometheus to take the two archaeologists and a group of other people to the planet to see if they can find the Engineers. An android called David (Michael Fassbender) wakes up the crew as they arrive in the year 2093. They find a collection of non-artificial structures and start to explore them, soon finding dead bodies of the Engineers, which are more human than they originally thought. Also, there’s a black goo that they find that starts some bad things into motion. And also some good things. I mean, have you seen Alien? That’s a good movie!

I went into this movie REALLY wanting to be blown away, but try as it might, the movie never really resonated with me. It wasn’t a bad movie, but I was hoping for a major nerd boner that never arrived. And I need this, guys. I’m single and hurting. I’ll probably need to watch Avengers again to get my fix. This movie just didn’t excite me. It was pretty slow moving until the last half hour. At first it’s just archaeology, then it’s just space travel, then it’s just a mystery that’s not that mysterious. Not until someone gets infected later in the movie does shit start going down that captures my attention. The mystery part is somewhat excusable because I went into this movie know it was a prequel to a movie I’ve already seen, so this entire movie just becomes a waiting game until we get to see a Xenomorph. I got a little excited that shit was gonna go down when Shaw told one of the other crew members to leave the weapon behind when they were heading into the structure. I didn’t get excited because that’s a good idea, because it’s entirely not. Sure, it’s a scientific expedition, but better safe than sorry, right? But usually when a bonehead decision like that is made in the name of noble scientific enterprise, shit goes down and people start dying. That didn’t happen. Around the time when someone gets infected is when the movie starts to pick up, but I was also getting angry because some jerkfaces in the audience were talking and someone said, “He’s infected,” really loudly. Ya think? Are you basing that on what you’re seeing now or the part where we watched the guy cause him to get infected in a super obvious way? Later on, there’s a hurried surgery scene that is rich with thrills, and from that point on it doesn’t let up, but I wished it had happened sooner. For one more thing, I won’t spoil it directly so I’ll just turn it into a metaphor. If two people are running away from a hula hoop, should it really take that long to realize that you can side-step it instead of continuing to run in front of it? If you see the movie, that’ll make more sense.

I would say that, by far, the best thing about this movie is definitely the look. It’s a spectacular visual feast. The movie lets you know that much pretty quickly into the movie as they open with a big sweep over huge and gorgeous landscapes on the moon LV-223. Almost everything looks amazing in this movie. The Engineers (though they look like Powder on steroids) are great looking creatures that could look either benevolent or malevolent, so you never really know which way they’ll go with the story. The structure and the aliens are still heavily influenced by H.R. Giger, which means they’re going to be creepy and dark, but also awesome. The first version of the aliens that are encountered bummed me out for two reasons. First, they didn’t look like the facehuggers that we know and love. Second, they were REALLY phallic. And they go into the mouth. I can’t wait until they turn Prometheus into a porn. The holographic star map that David watches later in the movie is also a visual delight, but I couldn’t help but think that it was the futuristic version of a laser light show, without the benefit of REO Speedwagon. The only real visual problem with the movie was Peter Weyland. You could have actually hired an old guy instead of putting really unconvincing old guy makeup on a young dude. And you didn’t even try when it came to his feet!

The performances in the movie were good, but not what I’d call great. They were what the roles called for, but that usually left them being not altogether compelling to me. Noomi Rapace did a good job, but I was disappointed by her character. I think one of the things that’s been a staple in all of the Alien movies is a badass female lead. Sigourney Weaver was a boss. Ellen Ripley was always right up there with Sarah Connor as some of the most badass women to ever grace the screen. And it’s not like Noomi can’t do badass; she was the original Lisbeth Salander in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo movies. But in this movie, she was never a badass. She was pretty standard damsel in distress all the way through that was just a scientist and was only our heroine because we were watching the bad things happen all around her. I know it wasn’t really the character she was going for, but I missed it. Charlize Theron was kind of a badass bitch, but way more bitch than badass, so certainly no replacement for Ripley. I liked that apparently all it takes to have sex with her is to suggest that she might be a robot. Speaking of which, Michael Fassbender was good in his role, but it was totally ruined for me when Samrizon ruined that he was a robot. Okay, so you find that out pretty quickly, but Samrizon should shut her damned cake hole. Fassbender definitely acted like a robot, but a robot isn’t always the most impressive performance. You have to be stiff and robotic, which isn’t all that interesting to watch. And you kind of get the idea of where the movie is going from his performance because he doesn’t hide the fact that he’s not that big of a fan of humans.

I really wanted Prometheus to blow me away, but it didn’t really manage to do so. The story was fine, but it takes a while for it to get going. Once it does, it remains pretty awesome for a while, but I started to get bored waiting for that to start. The look of the movie was completely fantastic and worth seeing for just the spectacle alone. The performances were fine in the movie, but never blew my mind. I understand that you couldn’t put Ellen Ripley in this chronologically, but that doesn’t mean you can’t have a character that’s just as awesome. The movie didn’t impress me, but I still think it’s worth seeing in the theaters. It’s a good movie, but not as good as I wanted it to be. Check it out, but it might help to have lower expectations. Prometheus gets “Big things have small beginnings” out of “WE are the gods now.”

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Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark (2011)

Where’s Hell Boy When You Need Him?

I was inspired to watch today’s movie by … uh … it being on Netflix.  That’s all it takes sometimes.  I’ve done quite a few review requests lately and felt like I needed to do a little something for me.  That doesn’t really explain why I decided to watch this movie though.  I didn’t have any super strong need to see this movie, but it did pique my interest.  I don’t know if it was the director that was attached … because it wasn’t directed by who I thought it was.  He just presented it.  Though I’ve not always been a fan of this guy’s movies, I am usually intrigued by his artistic direction.  So I said, “What the hell?  I’ll give it a go.”  Then I sat down and watched Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark, written by Matthew Robbins and Guillermo del Toro, directed by Troy Nixey, and starring Bailee Madison, Katie Holmes, Guy Pearce, Garry McDonald, Jack Thompson, Julia Blake, Nicholas Bell, Edwina Ritchard, and Alan Dale.

A long time ago in Providence County, Rhode Island, Emerson Blackwood (Garry McDonald) has lost his mind.  You can assume this much based on the fact that he kills his housekeeper (Edwina Ritchard) with a hammer and chisel in order to offer her teeth to the tiny creatures that live in his stove.  But it turns out he might not be that crazy.  The tiny creatures have taken his son into the bottom of the fireplace and take Blackwood for trying to offer them adult teeth.  In what is supposed to be the present day, people are using Polaroid cameras for some reason.  They’re using them to take pictures of a young girl named Sally Hirst (Bailee Madison) who has been sent by her mother to live with her father Alex (Guy Pearce).  The pictures are being taken by his girlfriend Kim (Katie Holmes).  Sally gets right on top of being a little mopey bitch and shunning Kim’s attempts to get close to her.  In the house, the tiny creatures awaken in the ash pit.  Sally stumbles across a window that looks into the basement, causing Alex to find the basement door, hidden by a false wall, much to the chagrin of one of the workmen, Mr. Harris (Jack Thompson).  Sally gets really interested in the ash pit, to the point of removing the bolts that held the fireplace door shut.  Then shit starts going down.

I found this movie to be completely underwhelming.  It’s an interesting enough premise for a horror movie, but they never land on the scares.  I feel like it suffers from the same problem that most horror movies suffer from: that CG allows them to show their creatures.  I know nothing of the original movie this movie was based on, but I know that the little creatures that pestered the people of the house were mildly creepy at first, but you saw them so many times throughout the movie that they completely lost their ability to scare and just wound up being a slight step up in freakiness than some really annoying rats.  And without scares, it must rely on its story to be interesting, but it can’t really live up to it.  It’s basically just a movie about ruining the idea of tooth fairies for any kids unfortunate enough to stumble across this movie, that hadn’t already had the idea of the tooth fairy ruined by The Rock or Larry the Cable Guy.  Then there’s a pretty typical little kid being tormented by something supernatural, but no one believes her, as well as some stuff about the stepmother-type figure trying to win over the daughter that blames her for her parents’ problems.  Nothing’s completely shocking and it mostly turns out exactly like you expect.  But there were also a lot of things that bothered me.  At one point, Alex says that Kim would be a terrible poker player because she’s “been ironing that shirt for hours.”  Yeah, that’s a big tell, when you start ironing a shirt at a poker table.  I understand that you were TRYING to say that she was doing a poor job masking her concern, but your statement did little to convey that.  One of the bigger issues I took could be forgiven, but follows with something I can’t.  I can get behind Alex and Kim being too stupid and curious to think there was probably a reason that the basement door was not only locked, but they put a wall up in front of it.  Without that curiosity, there would be no movie.  What I cannot condone is the douchebag groundskeeper, Mr. Harris, being so clearly aware of why it was sealed up and refusing to say anything.  They probably wouldn’t have believed your tales of fairies that eat teeth living in the stove, but you could’ve tried.  At least you were the first one punished for your silence.  Then you have the next annoyingly stupid curiosity on the part of the little kid.  When I was a kid of her age, there is no way I would open up a stove that was conspicuously tightly sealed because I heard creepy voices inside calling my name.  I think I’d have the opposite reaction and would try to pour cement in there.  The kid can’t be blamed completely, as she was only really able to loosen the bolts and the creatures were able to unscrew them from behind … somehow.  I would really like to try to see how easy it is to unscrew bolts from the inside, because I get the feeling it’s nearly impossible after a certain point when you can’t grip them anymore.  And, if the fairies had this ability, why did they not do it earlier?  But the kid is also pretty stupid.  When she’s given the teddy bear that says, “I love you,” she disregards it as stupid.  Later, when the fairies are manipulating it and it’s still just saying, “I love you,” she asks it if it can talk.  It could talk before, you daft git!  The ending of the movie was also a bummer.  At first, it was kind of sad what happened.  Then, it was just stupid.  I guess the nicest thing I could say about this movie is that it’s only an hour and nine minutes.

The look of the movie was fine enough, but I found myself being a bit disappointed.  It’s mainly due to Guillermo del Toro’s involvement.  I thought he was the director of the movie, so I expected, if nothing else, it would be a visually striking movie.  I wouldn’t say I like his movies, but I like how they look.  When this movie had none of that to it, I was bummed out.  It’s a pretty basic looking movie.  It’s thankfully not as dark as you might expect a movie about creatures that are injured by light to be.  Well, technically, they acted more irritated by light.  It’s not the kind of movie that’s overly graphic; I can only think of two occasions in the movie that are actually brutal.  One was when Mr. Harris is attacked by the creatures with various tools, such as a utility knife and a screwdriver.  The second was less bloody, but bothered me more.  It was when someone’s leg gets pulled back really hard and snaps backwards.  As someone who’s broken their leg before, it made me uncomfortable.  There was also a point in the beginning when you could hear the scraping of the chisel Lord Blackwood had on the housekeeper’s teeth that made my skin crawl.  Beyond that, you just see the creatures too much and they lose their effect.  And their constant whispering irritated me fairly quickly.  Imagine an entire movie about Harry Potter speaking in Parseltongue.  Losing the effect of the creatures left them to try to go for cheap scares, like the drawn out scene of the girl looking under the sheets, but I’ve seen that kind of scene before and we all knew what was going to happen.  I think there was a ghost movie that did the whole sheet thing and had some ghost feet in there.  Wasn’t scary then either.

I can’t think of any performance in this movie that really worked for me.  A great deal of that responsibility is due to Bailee Madison.  She wasn’t a particularly bad actress, but her character was such a little bitch for the first half of the movie.  It’s probably not a popular belief system, but I am all for kicking a little girl in the throat for being a little snot like that.  Too far?  I’ll reel it back.  She did get on my nerves terribly bad.   I got the feeling that, if Katie Holmes had gotten to name her, she would’ve been named Surly Cruise.  Yeah!  I stayed up all night writing that joke!  Katie Holmes’ character didn’t bother me that much.  She seemed a little dumb at first, but was thankfully the first one to start believing the kid.  I always find myself getting annoyed with the parents when they act like everything the kid’s saying is horseshit even with all the signs to the contrary.  Speaking of which, Guy Pearce!  That was my description of his character in the movie.  The actual parent was just waiting to yell, “You’re full of shit,” every time the little girl started talking.

Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark made no impact whatsoever on my fear of the dark.  First of all, I don’t like being told what to do.  And second, it wasn’t very scary.  There was no suspense, no chills, and the creatures may be unsettling on the first viewing, but lose their steam pretty quickly as you see them about as much as you see any other character in the movie.  The premise is interesting, the delivery is not, and I found the majority of the performances irritating.  Not the worst movie, and at least it’s pretty short, but there’s no good reason to watch it.  Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark gets “Turn off the lights” out of “Don’t tell me you believe this.”

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L.A. Confidential (1997)

Off the Record, On the QT, and Very Hush-Hush

My roommate and I did two movies back to back, but thankfully the second one originally came out well within our lifetime.  It was one I knew about, but never really found myself that interested in watching.  But he got the movie, so I figured we might as well watch the thing.  While watching it, I found myself completely unable to stop thinking about a certain video game that I really enjoyed last year, but I’ll be mentioning that later.  For now, let’s get into my review of L.A. Confidential, based on a book by James Ellroy, written by Brian Helgeland and Curtis Hanson, directed by Curtis Hanson, and starring Russell Crowe, Guy Pearce, James Cromwell, Kim Basinger, Kevin Spacey, David Strathairn, Danny DeVito, Ron Rifkin, Graham Beckel, and Simon Baker.

Detective Wendell “Bud” White (Russell Crowe) and his partner, Dick Stensland (Graham Beckel), are delivering alcohol to a policeman party, while periodically stopping so Bud can whoop on some guys abusing their ladies, something he has a big problem with.  At the police station, narcotics detective Jack Vincennes (Kevin Spacey) shows up along with a group of Mexican guys rumored to have recently attacked and beaten some police officers, and they get turned over to the night’s watch commander, Sergeant Edmund Exley (Guy Pearce).  Alcohol and rumor make their way quickly around the office, inciting the police officers to go down to the cells and attack the Mexicans.  Reporters get some pictures of it and call it “Bloody Christmas”, which makes the LA Times and tarnishes the reputation of the LAPD.  District Attorney Ellis Loew (Ron Rifkin) and Captain Dudley Smith (James Cromwell) interview officers to figure out who will testify and who will have this pinned on them.  White won’t testify, Exley is totally on board, and even suggests using the TV show that he works on to gain leverage on Vincennes and get his support.  This whole plan gets a couple of officers, including White’s partner Stensland, is expelled.  Exley gets promoted.  Shortly after, Exley is called to the Nite Owl coffee shop and finds a large group of people murdered in the bathroom.  One of these people is Stensland.  For the rest of the movie, we follow Exley, White, and Vincennes as they try to find out what truly happened that night in the Nite Owl, but what they find may go much deeper than they expected.

I really liked LA Noire … I mean Confidential.  This was a really good movie, but all I kept thinking about the entire time is how similar this movie is to LA Noire, which gained respect for this movie, but lost a little for LA Noire.  The movie had a really interesting story, but it was perhaps a bit predictable, and it was elevated by some really good performances and some really good action.  The story of the movie is fairly classic noire movie fare, with corruption and betrayal happening with the police that’s being battled by a few good cops, and there’s a little mob action going on to boot.  You can probably figure out who the bad guy is before the movie tells you, but it’s much harder to figure out why and how.  Either way, having guessed the culprit didn’t really affect my enjoyment of the movie.  A lot of the movie was just back to back intense scenes of puzzle solving.  It could not go without saying that the movie reminds me of LA Noire.  Not just the noire style and the LA setting, but there were some scenes of collecting clues, some pretty intense interrogation scenes, and even some entire plot points that were shared with the game.  They worked really well in both.  The movie is not one that I would call “action packed”, per se, but there’s a couple of scenes with good, solid action.  One in particular that stands out is the one that ends the movie in a giant shootout that was pretty awesome.

The performances are another great part about this movie, and I can scarcely think of one that did not hold up their end of the bargain.  Crowe was the bomb in this movie.  He was a total badass, but also put in some serious acting in parts.  His part of the final shootout in the movie was particularly badass, and a later scene with Basinger was particularly well acted, but he’s pretty great throughout.  Guy Pearce is a good contrast to Crowe in this movie.  As the movie moves along, we find that they’re both good cops, but in different ways.  Pearce is all by the book and Crowe is all about seeing justice served.  Pearce is Superman, Crowe is Batman.  Unfortunately for Pearce, him being the by the books cop made me dislike him until near the end of the movie.  I’m more of a Batman kind of guy.  Spacey is still a good guy, but he’s barely a cop until the end of the movie.  He’s more of a celebrity who does police work on the side.  Kim Basinger puts on a great performance as well, but I couldn’t stop thinking about how amazing this chick looks and she was in her 40’s in this movie.  She’s almost 60 now, and I haven’t seen her in a bit, but I’d wager I would still smash.  James Cromwell did a great job as well, being very charming and likeable for the greater majority of the movie.

LA Confidential is a movie I’m happy that I finally watched.  If you’re not into games, but you heard good things about LA Noire, you can basically just watch this and get the gist of the game because they borrowed so heavily from it.  Good story, great performances, and some intense scenes and action make this a good watch.  I watched my roommate’s copy of the movie, but I would totally buy it myself as well, so it’s at least worth a rental for you.  LA Confidential gets “You look better than Veronica Lake” out of “Lookie here, the great jerkoff case of 1953.”

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The Hurt Locker (2008)

This Box is Full of Stuff That Almost Killed Me

Today’s movie had a lot of buzz going for it when it came out. I remember hearing about it, but never wanting to see it. I saw it as an action/drama set in the middle of a war and there was something about bombs in it, and I decided “I don’t really wanna see that.” I like a good action movie, but the combination of it being a drama and it being a drama set in a realistic, present day war situation made me think it would take a lot out of me to watch it. I’ve seen enough war movies to know that I am too much of a coward … I mean pacifist … to want to go there and do that, so why would I want to watch a movie about it? Well it came time for me to do it anyway, and so here is your review of The Hurt Locker, written by Mark Boal, directed by Kathryn Bigelow, and starring Jeremy Renner, Anthony Mackie, Brian Geraghty, Guy Pearce, Christopher Sayegh, Ralph Fiennes, Christian Camargo, David Morse, and Evangeline Lilly.

In the beginning, Staff Sergeant Thompson (Guy Pearce) is out to disarm an IED (Improvised Explosive Device) with his teammates, Sergeant Sanborn (Anthony Mackie) and Specialist Eldrich (Brian Geraghty). Someone in the area with a cell phone sets it off and kills Thompson. Shortly after, Thompson is replaced by Sergeant First Class James (Jeremy Renner). The rest of the movie follows these three through various situations that test their abilities and their patience. Sanborn and Eldrich don’t get along with James’ eccentric and renegade ways through each of them. They have to disarm a bomb in the trunk of a car next to the UN and James decides he would rather work with his radio and bombsuit removed, they detonate some explosives in a remote desert and Sanborn talks with Eldrich about “accidentally” setting off the explosion as James goes to get his gloves from the kill zone, they find the body of a boy that James had befriended on the base filled with explosives, and other situations as we count down the days until their tour of duty is over.

This is a pretty awesome movie, but not quite perfect. It has great action, fantastic tension, superb performances, but the story gives me a little bit of difficulty. The movie is mostly about disarming bombs, which is usually a really slow, but super tense situation, and the movie captures that brilliantly. I was captivated by the movie practically all the way through. I would say the pinnacle of the tension was the scene where they had a super realistic sniper battle after meeting Ralph Fiennes and his crew of mercenaries. The building was really far away and none of the trained snipers were still alive and they kept missing because of the range of the enemies and things kept going wrong like the bullets jamming because the sniper’s blood was in the clip and other enemies were creeping up behind them, but it was really tense and enthralling. It ended on a bit of a low note, but it was still really good. It was also filmed really well, and this was best illustrated in the very beginning when Guy Pearce dies. It exploded, causing the dirt to pop up off the ground and the rust was shaken off of a nearby car. It was really cool to look at. The problem I had with it was that it never really explained to us how Guy Pearce actually met his end. He was running away from the explosion in a bomb suit and blood exploded onto the visor of his helmet. Not being a bomb expert (as I’m sure most viewers aren’t), I wondered what it was that killed him, but never found out. Was it the shockwave that killed him? Shrapnel from the explosion? I have no idea. It didn’t take me out of the movie, but I feel like they should have dumbed it down a bit for the non-veteran audience. The real problem I had with the story was that it practically didn’t exist. It was just following around three guys going to various, somewhat unrelated situations and resolving them as best they could. There was never any story arc or resolution. It was kind of about how people get addicted to war, and they showed that at the very end when Renner returns to his wife and kid for a short time, but then returns to the service for another year of service. It feels like a bit of easy writing because you just put the same three guys into real-life dangerous situations, but you instantly get the emotional response from American audiences because we all love our troops and watching things that they actually have to deal with while we’re relatively comfortable and safe over here gets our attention. But you didn’t have to write this, so it seems a bit lazy without some kind of story arc. It didn’t actually occur to me until right after the movie though, so obviously it wasn’t that big of an issue because the things they did right overcame the lazy writing. One other thing that occurred to me as strange in the writing was what happened with Christopher Sayegh’s character “Beckham”. He was a little boy that Renner had befriended at the base and then later they find him dead and packed with explosives. This is deeply troubling to Renner in the movie, but what is deeply troubling to me is that it later turns out that this was some other random boy and Beckham was still alive. Not only does this strike me as kind of “all these people look the same” racist, but it takes away that scene’s emotional impact for the audience and for no good reason. Why not just leave it as that boy and we would all still be bummed about it? Instead Beckham just comes back later and we think “Oh, sucks for that other boy, but at least the one we knew was still alive. But James might be kind of racist, right?” I mean I couldn’t tell that it wasn’t him that was dead, but I acknowledge my racism!

The performances in this movie are fantastic all the way through. Renner was unrealistically a maverick in the field – which is something that they would not tolerate in the actual Army – but his performance was great. He kept his cool relatively well in tense situations, but really showed what he could do when reacting to finding Beckham’s dead body. And, though the movie shat on that later, his performance remains fantastic. Anthony Mackie also gave a great performance. He was the more realistic character in the group, trying to follow the proper protocols when Renner was doing his own thing. The problem I had with his character is the part where he was discussing killing Renner. I don’t know if that stuff goes down in the real Army, but I’m sure it’s not doing good things for their recruiting numbers. I like to think of my Army as the guys that are practically a family and leave no man behind, not the guys that may cause the guy to get left behind because he’s kind of a dick. Brian Geraghty is also very good, but I felt like his character was a little melodramatic at times and depressing. After Guy Pearce died in the beginning, he just kept talking about death nonstop. I understand it being a devastating thing to go through, but it’s not helping you get home to just be waiting to die yourself. He did have a lot more of the emotional performances in the movie because of it though. Ralph Fiennes and Guy Pearce were really good in the movie as well, but they go by so quickly, even though they’re the biggest names in the movie.

Finally watched it and very glad I did, The Hurt Locker combines great visuals, great tension, and great performances to make a pretty amazing movie. The only thing that struck me as off in the movie is the lack of any cohesive story to tie the awesome situations together. But this is still definitely a movie worth watching. I never felt like the real life drama took anything out of me, but it was super entertaining and demands your attention. You can find it on Netflix, but I’ll probably be purchasing it soon. The Hurt Locker gets “There’s enough bang in there to blow us all to Jesus” out of “”Support your troops, and whatnot.”

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