Hostage (2005)
** out of ****
In the past, Bruce Willis has certainly proven himself a bona-fide action star in movies such as “Die Hard”, “Armageddon”, and “Mercury Rising”. In each of those films, and a few others, he brings to his characters a certain hard-boiled charisma that works. In the hostage thriller appropiately titled “Hostage”, Willis has that same charisma, but it’s in the wrong movie.
Here, Willis plays Jeff Talley, a former LAPD hostage negotiator who retires from the position after his latest situation goes horribly wrong. One year later, Talley is just a normal patrolman who doesn’t really get involved in life-and-death situations. We then cut to three teen boys in a battered red pickup truck who spy a shiny new Escalade truck driving by. Hoping to steal the car, they follow it to a huge mountaintop mansion with elaborate security measures.
The house is owned by Walter Smith (Kevin Pollack), a wealthy accountant for the mob who is in possession of a disk that contains encrypted information of a recent illegal business transaction comitted by the mob he works for. Smith hides the disk inside a DVD case and places it on his shelf of DVDs for the time being. Meanwhile, the three teens named Mars (Ben Foster), Dennis (Jonathan Tucker), and his younger brother Kevin (Marshall Allman) sneak inside the house armed with guns. First, they take hostage Smith’s children, Jennifer (Michelle Horn) and Tommy (Jimmy Bennett) before knocking Smith himself unconscious. Then, they open fire on the police officers who respond to a silent alarm that was activated earlier. Talley is one of the officers who responds, but of course, he goes unscathed.
Talley manages to make contact with Dennis, who’s in charge, and tries to coax him into saying what his demands are. When asked if he’s “the guy”, meaning the negotiator, Talley responds no. That’s a problem because Dennis will only speak with the real hostage negotiator. Talley then hands the situation over to County and leaves. But Talley soon discovers that he may want to be involved with what’s happening.
As it turns out, the people who Smith is working for have been monitoring the situation unfold on the news. Desperate, they turn to Talley, forcing him to find a way to get his hands on the DVD they need. Talley’s motivation for doing this is his kidnapped wife and child. If Talley doesn’t do what the criminals say, then his family is dead. Fortunately, an opportunity presents itself when young Tommy manages to break free of his bonds, get hold of his sister’s cellphone, and contact Talley via the local police department. The mere fact that the three violent teens don’t seem to notice that young Tommy disappears for long periods of time is highly improbable. But anyaway, let’s finish the plot description.
Upon Talley’s orders, Tommy makes his way through the ventalation shafts in the house with little effort. This allows Tommy to view one or two events in the film that help motivate him to reach his goal, which is to snatch the DVD from his father’s office. I’ll stop there, because if I go any further I’ll ruin the movie. But given the level of mediocrity “Hostage” seems to be on, that would be kind of a favor. But, as you can imagine, Talley’s suspicious actions arouse the attention of the other officers on the scene.
Bruce Willis is so good at this type of genre, that there are some movies that are worth seeing just for his performance. But this still isn’t really worth seeing, even though Willis does provide some good emotional leeway for the story when faced with his threatened family. Other than that, Jeff Talley seems like just another John McClane (only without the wisecracks). Kevin Pollack is decent in the scenes he’s in, but he’s robbed of any real screen time due to the fact that his character is knocked out for 2/3 of the movie. The only people who are completely believable, however, are the three teens. They act exactly how three juvenile delinquents would act given the situation. Their sociopathic tendencies and cussing sprees are what mainly contribute to the film’s “R” rating.
The action seems formulaic and tired out, if not insane. The first part of the finale takes place inside the towering inferno the household has become and involves bloody bodies and people being set on fire, intended and accidental. One of the teens is so banged up and bruised by that time, that it’s a miracle he’s still walking. The second part of the finale, however, seems a bit more realistic as it involves a shootout in an abandoned saloon-like bar. Throughout this movie, I thought the violence was too out of control with plently of people being shot and punched, kicked, etc. In essence, the violence took away from the story and characters; something we seem to have come familiar with in recent years.
The thing that bothered me the most about “Hostage”, however, is how cliched and predictable it is. It’s too by-the-book and doesn’t try anything new or interesting. The first 45 to 50 minutes, though, did make it seem like the movie was going somewhere before everything became just a little bit too complicated and mildly convoluted for my taste. Even for a hostage thriller, some of the things they do here seem too unrealistic and half-baked and by the end of the movie, even though I saw it happen, I found myself still wondering how we arrived there.
Compared to the better films of this genre, such as 1994′s ingenious high-speed hostage thriller “Speed” or the more plausible “The Negotiator”, “Hostage” just seems to fall flat. It presents an interesting story, but becomes confused about where to go with it. It’s a hostage to the cliches that plauge the genre.
Shrek The Third
** out of ****
Earlier this year, mega-sequel “Spider-Man 3″ disappointed slightly, mainly due to the fact that the film became too confused about what it wanted to be and the overwhelming amount of subplots. Now, “Shrek The Third” has been released, and it too falls victim to “sequelitis”.
At best, “Shrek The Third” is mediocre. It lacks the comedic zeal that made the first two films so enjoyable and basically recycles what it does retain from the first two installments. “Shrek” was brilliant and consistently funny, “Shrek 2″ was fresh and energetic, but “Shrek The Third” just feels forced and mildly contrived. There is not much here to warrant a trip to the theatre, but perhaps a rental on a rainy day.
This time, instead of slaying dragons or fighting magical fairy tale creatures, Shrek faces a career decision. Fiona’s father, King of Far Far Away, has just died and left the kingdom in Shrek’s command. However, Shrek is hesitant about taking over the throne and searches for a way out so he can return home to his swamp. As it turns out, Shrek is not the only living heir to the throne. Fiona’s cousin, Arthur (voiced by Justin Timberlake) is right behind Shrek, so Shrek decides to set off on a quest to retrieve Artie and bring him back to Far Far Away. Donkey (Eddie Murphy) and Puss In Boots (Antonio Banderas) accompany their big ogre friend and arrive at a place easily comparable to a high school, but in medieval times.
As it turns out, Artie is student who is shuned by all his peers, including the nerds. So at first, he jumps at the opportunity to become King. But after learning of the pressure that comes with the job, he becomes arrogant and attempts to turn back. Meanwhile, a pregnant Fiona is left to fend off the vengeful Prince Charming (Rupert Everett) and his gang of fairy tale villains who come to take over the kingdom and thus create their own “Happily Ever After”. In order to stop this madness, Fiona, her former queen mother, and her fellow princess gals form a posse that is very similar to Charlie’s Angels.
What makes “Shrek The Third” so disappointing is that there is very little to enjoy about it. The first two films bombarded us with jokes, hilarious pop culture references, and even jokes within jokes. “Shrek The Third” just has its moments of chuckles scattered about here and there, but no real belly laughs. It trudges through the story at a snail-like pace, even though the film clocks in at a mere 86 minutes which makes it the shortest in the series. But because of a dry storyline, the film feels longer.
“Shrek The Third” also seems to go through an identity crisis. For a movie aimed at kids, the film has some elements to it that may not capture the intended audience’s attention quite like the first two. For instance, the most grim element is an on-screen death of a character within the first 15 minutes.
Donkey, who is really the best part of these movies, is reduced to nothing more than a second secondary character. He is robbed of the opportunity to really shine and provide some great one-liners that made him so lovable in the previous installments. Puss In Boots, another great character in these films, is also given a relatively smaller role. The reason for this is probably the amount of new characters this time around. And that is precisely the same mistake “Spider-Man 3″ made: packing too many characters into one movie.
In the end, “Shrek The Third” winds up being the weakest and dullest entry into the series thus far. There is not the feeling of enthusiasm incorporated into it on the filmmakers’ parts and in terms of comedy, it goes through a dry spell. “Shrek 4″ is already being written, and hopefully it will return to the cleverness and wittiness that made the first two films so good.
I Am Legend
** out of ****
”I Am Legend”? No, a title like “I Am Mediocre” seems much more appropriate. Such a shame, too, when you consider how much effort was put into this movie about civilization for one man in a post-apocolyptic future. The marketing campaign for “I Am Legend” was very good, because the trailers and T.V. ads for the film showed very little of the danger for the main character. It was an effective way to convey the fact that there would be edge-of-your-seat suspense, but alas, the suspense in “I Am Legend” isn’t really that strong.
And the movie itself is a big disappointment, to say the least. “I Am Legend” had a lot going for it: a big star (Will Smith), an enticing premise, and some pretty nifty-looking action. Out of those three elements, “I Am Legend” delivers on only one of them. Will Smith’s performance is great; the role of former military scientist Robert Neville allows Smith to show his range as an actor. For most of the movie, Smith gives a one-man show and much like John Cusack in this past summer’s “1408″, he is astounding to watch here. But the problem is that Smith is given a very subpar script to work with; a script that never fully realizes how much more it could have added for the story.
The opening of “I Am Legend”, however, is really good as it tells us that scientists have developed a cure for cancer; the cure has apparently cured every living host it has been injected into. This is all in 2009. But the cure soon transforms into a deadly virus itself that is incurable and has symptoms of uncontrollable aggression. Flash forward to three years later, where New York is completely deserted, save for one man: Robert Neville. We first meet Neville through a very interesting opening sequence in which he races around the empty streets of New York, hunting a herd of deer for food. The way the filmmakers create an empty New York is chilling and very interesting. Deserted cars line every street while grass grows through cracks on the roads. This vision is another one of the few good things about the movie.
But back to the plot, Neville has been trying for 1,001 days to develop a cure he hopes to transfer into the bodies of infected hosts. He has yet to succeed. During the day, Neville goes about an average routine: he gets up and works out, eats breakfast, and he even rents videos from a video store where he carries on conversations with mannequins. Neville also gathers other supplies and waits by the docks in hopes of seeing someone answer the pleas of help he sends out over all AM frequencies. By day, Neville is calm, efficient and in control. But by night, he barricades himself inside his house, praying for daybreak. You see, even though Neville may be the last man on earth…he is not alone. Neville shares the streets of New York with the mutated victims of the virus, known as simply ‘the infected’, or dark seekers. These infected hosts can’t come into the sunlight and thrive only on darkness. They are a threat to Neville because they feed on human flesh.
The story then adds one more twist when two survivors, a mother and her son, arrive in New York. They really serve no purpose except to do something important at the very end of the film. But basically, “I Am Legend” is about Robert Neville trying to find a cure for a virus he inadvertantly created while battling the infected. I should add that the movie is adapted from a book of the same name by Richard Matheson.
As a sci-fi thriller, “I Am Legend” just doesn’t work. The main reason for that is because it raises questions that it never really answers. Such as, if this virus turns humans into rabid and violent beings that can’t think properly, how is it they are able to set a trap for Neville? If Neville truly believes he’s the last healthy human on the planet, who’s he making the antidote for? But I guess since this is meant to be a stylish doomsday action film, we’re not supposed to ask those questions. Well, we can if the movie itself doesn’t work.
The CGI for the mutated people isn’t that good either. These zombies reminded me of the half-transformed creature in “The Mummy” films; they have little or next to no true skin, they can open their mouths really wide, and they have no hair. The mutated dogs even look unconvincing. Wait, I just thought of another question: why have the virus turn people into mindless, bloodthirsty zombies? That concept has been worn out by now. Why not try to be creative and make these zombies grow smarter over time so that they can formulate real strategies instead of just running and screaming? The only true scene of suspense comes when Neville is forced to enter a darkened building that the creatures inhabit so he can rescue his dog, Sam. And that’s before we even see the zombies for the first time. I don’t like revealing the monsters too early; after you see the threat, the movie suddenly becomes not so scary. The infected zombies soon become annoying because they are clearly not good for anything except trying to kill Neville.
But as I said before, Will Smith gives perhaps his best performance in quite some time, even if the film itself fails. Smith is engrossing as Robert Neville; he’s deadpan, slightly hollow, irritated at times, and even has moments that show that isolation has taken its toll on him. Neville has many flashbacks about his dead wife and daughter, who died while trying to be evacuated from the island. Will Smith proves that he’s such a good actor, he can carry an entire movie by himself if need be. His performance has reminded some critics of Tom Hanks in “Cast Away”, and I must agree. Smith does indeed convince you that he’s been alone for three years and has become affected in some way by it. His performance is worthy of Awards recognition; I liked him just a little better in this than I did in “The Pursuit Of Happyness”.
And I think this was one of those very rare times when I wished that the filmmakers hadn’t let the film deteriorate into the standard action picture that we’ve seen many a moon. “I Am Legend” is a movie that presents interesting ideas, but never fully takes advantage of them. The suspense is nonexistant, the action is perfunctory and typical, and the special effects are disappointing. The only obviously good elements, though, are Will Smith’s performance and the haunting vision of a deserted New York City. It’s a film that starts out good, but then steadily begins to go downhill, raising questions that slowly evolve over time.
But an added bonus is the great second teaser trailer for “The Dark Knight” playing before the movie.
