My Movie Diary: Summertime Catch-Up

So my new job schedule has impinged a bit on my ability to crank out timely reviews of every movie I see, but I’m determined to keep My Movie Diary going. To that end, I’m going to try and play catch-up here for a couple weeks, remembering what I can about a bunch of flicks I’ve seen in the past seven weeks. . .
(r)=repeat viewing

Face/Off (1997) – Wow, was this thing crazy! Face/Off could perhaps more accurately be called Monsters of Ham, since it stars two of the scene-chewingest actors in Hollywood history: Nicolas Cage and John Travolta. I’d put off seeing this flick until now, largely due to my rather tepid feelings toward the two Hollywood Woo flicks I had seen: Broken Arrow and Hard Target. Neither of those was worth watching, but boy, is Face/Off something else. Kudos to Woo for not just casting such a pair of kooks in his film, but for clearly encouraging them to just go for it. The insane plot involves FBI agent Travolta trying to track down a terrorist group headed by flamboyant hitman Cage. He’s already got Cage under wraps, having shot him and put him into a coma. In order to thwart his plot, though, Travolta has to infiltrate the terrorist group—by swapping faces with Cage! Of course, Cage wakes up from his coma and forces the surgeon to put Travolta’s face on his body, then proceeds to stake his claim to Travolta’s FBI identity. The fact that the central plot point is so ludicrous on its face should clue you in to what kind of flick this is. Not a single scene makes any sense under the slightest scrutiny, but watching Cage pretend to be Travolta and vice-versa is a uniquely wild experience. For my money, Travolta’s never been more fun to watch, as he leans into his Cage impression with an eye-rolling, manic intensity that’s truly hilarious. Cage’s take on Travolta is also quite a bit of fun, as he tries to rein in his more oddball impulses and filter them through Travolta-esque facial contortions. Absolutely everything about this movie is preposterous, fun, and completely over the top. Like every John Woo flick, it would run about twenty minutes shorter without all the slo-mo, and he does manage to find room to fit his fluttering doves into another gunfight. This is the only Hollywood flick that Woo made that really allowed him the space to indulge his craziest impulses, and the result is one of the strangest, silliest action films ever made. Anyone interested in watching two giants of overacting slug it out for two hours of ridiculous mayhem will love this.

Star Wars: The Last Jedi (2017) (r) – So this will be a bit of a mea culpa for choosing The Last Jedi as one of the best flicks of 2017. Upon a second viewing, it’s not. In fact, it’s not even very good. I guess the Star Wars kid inside me was too dazzled by the visuals and pacing when I saw it at the theater, but my Netflix rewatch brought home just how disappointing this movie actually is. The first time I watched it, I didn’t know where the whole thing was actually going as I watched it, so I guess the gaping plot holes and non-sensical character beats somehow didn’t bother me that much after it was over. Knowing how the story turns out makes it impossible to ignore the movie’s shortcomings on a rewatch, though. And if there’s one thing a Star Wars film needs to be, it’s rewatchable. (Spoilers follow) From Poe Dameron’s initial attack on the First Order dreadnaught through Finn’s side excursion to Casino Planet, none of the action really makes much sense in context of the larger story. There is literally no reason for Laura Dern’s character to keep her plans a secret, which leads directly to the abortive mutiny and that whole casino waste of time. Speaking of which, Benecio del Toro is never privy to Dern’s plans, yet somehow is able to betray the whole thing to the First Order. Who told him? For me, though, The Last Jedi’s worst sin is literally making all of the previous flicks pretty pointless in retrospect. It negates much of what J.J. Abrams put into Force Awakens, flippantly dispensing with Kylo Ren’s helmet and Rey’s mysterious backstory with just a couple of snarky lines of dialogue. Even worse, by the end of the film, the rebel alliance has been reduced to about twenty pretty hopeless people, and the First Order looks stronger than the Empire ever did during the initial trilogy. So what was the point of all the heroics of Luke, Leia, and Han in those three films? Clearly the Endor battle was no big turning point at all, and the rebels actually accomplished next to nothing during episodes four through six. Rewatching The Last Jedi became a pretty dispiriting experience, as I realized that Rian Johnson had “killed the past” without offering up anything all that worthwhile to replace it. I’m not at all sure that there’s any way to satisfyingly salvage this storyline in episode nine, either. I guess we’ll see.

Daybreakers (2009) – This disposable bit of genre silliness posits a futuristic world in which the bulk of humanity has fallen victim to a vampire plague. Which basically means that everyone is a vampire, and the remaining humans are either in hiding or locked up in blood banks. The problem is that without enough humans to feed on, the vampires are running out of blood to drink. Which turns them into freaky winged monsters. Ethan Hawke turns in a surprisingly engaged performance as a hematologist working on a synthetic blood replacement—I’ve seen him sleepwalk through much more “serious” flicks than this. Hawke encounters a group led by Willem Defoe, who claims that he’s discovered a cure for vampirism that could save the world. The flick bubbles along at a decently fun clip, and the actors follow Hawke’s lead in turning in good, grounded performances. The success of a goofy genre flick like this rises and falls on its actors. If they look like they’re just there to cash a check, the results can be pretty weak. Everyone here, though, seems to be taking the job fairly seriously, lending the material just enough gravity to sell it. Sam Neill especially seems to be having a blast as the nefarious CEO of the leading blood company, savoring every dastardly line of dialogue. I also appreciated that the flick just drops you into this world without a ton of backstory or a lengthy crawl explaining the ins and outs of the vampire plague. The filmmakers assume the audience is savvy enough to figure out what’s going on without having their hands held. Ultimately, you probably won’t remember much about Daybreakers about a month after you see it, but it’s enjoyable enough while it’s on.

The Great Train Robbery (1978) – I’m a sucker for a heist flick, and train robberies generally offer filmmakers some pretty great opportunities for thrilling action. I was a bit let down by this one, though. The film stars Sean Connery and Donald Sutherland as a pair of London con artists who devise a plot to steal a shipment of gold bars from a heavily guarded train. For a movie called The Great Train Robbery, though, remarkably little of it takes place on a train. Most of the flick concerns the guys’ adventures (along with underdeveloped sidekick Lesley Anne-Down) as they lay down the groundwork for the heist. Namely, they have to figure out how to make copies of four keys held at three different locations. Their pursuit of the keys is moderately engaging, but takes way too long. The pacing of the film drags, which is a cardinal sin in a would-be adventure romp. I place most of the blame for this at the feet of writer/director Michael Crichton. While his directorial eye is passable, his script could have used a critical eye, or at least someone who could say, “Why spend so much time on side quests at the expense of the main plot?” Many of the characters’ choices seem pretty random, motivated more by Crichton’s desire to spin a complicated yarn than to adhere to what actual people might do in the circumstances. Just one easy example: lots of time is spent on the thieves devising a plan to steal the last two keys, which are guarded by a security officer who leaves his post for just 75 seconds a night. They concoct a scheme which involves breaking a convict out of prison, then having him break into the office and unlock all the cabinets, then having Sutherland sprint onto the scene, copy the keys, and dash away under the time limit. Why not just have Lesley Anne-Down distract the cop for a minute or so, as they’d done in a couple of other situations? There’s no reason for this elaborate plan (which almost ends up getting them all caught, by the way), other than to have a prison escape scene and a ticking-clock scene. Crichton can’t see the forest for the trees, and clearly loves his own writing too much to edit it down. By the time the thieves finally get down to robbing the train, some dangerous-looking stuntwork almost gets lost in the shuffle. The Great Train Robbery ends up as a slightly disappointing affair, with the (kind of) exciting, climactic train heist coming a bit too late to redeem it.

Popwell’s Movie Reviews: The Complete List