god. that was truly exhausting. although not quite as exhausting as king kong. but then i think i followed that script.
i have no idea what was actually going on in this one... the villainous plot was beyond me and i have a feeling that might have been intentional. but it may have been something to do with a biological weapon and that causing a war and then america going in to sort it out and democracy winning. i know. that makes NO sense. unless the villians were somehow connected to the neo-cons and this was an anti-bush movie. but the script was so convoluted that as soon as somebody said more than two sentences it became well... incomprehensible.
this movie was a 12A certificate.
the opening scene is essentially a game of psychological torture on our hero by the villain, using hero's girl as the weapon. and while some sharp and fast editing meant we didn't see it, we were given the impression that our hero's finacee had been executed with a gun fired at point blank range in the head.
(the next 3/4 of the movie is essentially then a flashback of what has brought us to this point. we then see the scene again. and this time we find out the young woman was indeed executed. moments later, however, it turns out the dead woman is in fact one of the villain's staff (who'd failed to do her job to her boss's satisfaction) wearing a prosthetic mask so that our hero believed he was sitting six feet from his beloved as she was summarily sent off this mortal coil to punish him. oh, what a relief! it's not the lovely julia after all. it's only the translator.)
now i might be getting conservative in my old age (32 and a half) but i'm not sure i'd want a 12 year old of mine, (if i had one, and i don't, so i'll admit this is hypothetical), to even be given the impression they had just seen a young woman executed. but as a 12A rated movie this means you could bring a child younger than 12 in to see this stuff.
the 'moral' (and i use that term very loosely) in this movie is "family is...everything".
it's good to be reminded why going to the movies usually means a trip to the art house cinema at queen's.
"In Scientology no one is asked to accept anything as belief or on faith. That which is true for you is what you have observed to be true."
i have observed this movie. in truth, it's a crock of absurd shite.
LB,x
I was afraid it was going to be. I had hopes that it would be alright but thanks for the heads up and I will wait for dollar night on ppv to watch it...
ReplyDeletegar
gar
ReplyDeleteroger ebert has a review at his website that hits the nail on the head.
it's not without entertaining moments and philip seymour hoffman does his job well... but i'm surprised at the number of reviews i've seen that question the questionable morality being played with...
makes me realise that one of the reasons i liked the x-files was that killing people was never made to look easy. the heroes used their weapons far less than you might expect and it was always with a sense that taking the life of another, even in self defence, is not something that's easy to live with... evil treats life with disdain.
i think of the scene where scully killed donnie phfaster - even though he would have killed her, dismembered her, sexually mutilated her, even eaten her, as he'd done so many times before to other women and would do again and again, she questioned whether the devil was what made her kill him... mulder says the bible allows for vengeance. and he was plain evil... but there was no celebration in his death... killing him was not something she was comfortable with... nor even was mulder...
to offer a character who was 'plain evil' and still pose the question, 'what spirit do you serve?' when you have to stop that evil, is testement to the creators...