Sunday, March 29, 2009
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
Body of Lies
An above average thriller about the US involvement in the Middle East. Not quite as awesome as I hoped it would be, but well worth watching. Good acting, especially from DiCap and Crowe. The message of this film bows down to political correctness but, because it's a thriller, and not a serious topical drama, it gets let off the hook. The Middle East is a very exciting setting and the political climate make for a pretty gripping film. Russell Crowe plays a family man whose indifference to the life and death situations of others is pretty vile. DiCaprio plays a similar role to his in The Departed. He's good at playing these stressed out, well intentioned guys. My favourite character was Hani Salaam (pictured). He wore some awesome suits and was basically 'Captain Meaty' in every scene.
It's better than The Boondock Saints.
Saturday, March 21, 2009
The Boondock Saints
This movie is a huge heap of rubbish. For some reason, it has a cult following, and from that following I had heard many recommendations to watch it. Normally, I think even a fairly bad film is worth watching once, but this is beyond bad. The characters are as thin as anorexic paper, the script is embarrassingly corny and unrealistic, the violence is gratuitous, the acting is laughably over the top, the editing is a mess, and the story is completely stupid.
The Boondock Saints follows the story of two Irish brothers (played unconvincingly by two annoying B-list actors) in Boston, that have been assigned by God to eliminate all the criminals in the city by mercilessly killing them. An outrageous gay FBI detective is leading the investigation into the killings (a cringe worthy performance by Willem Dafoe). That's pretty much the plot. One of the film's many problems is that it has no suspense or mystery because you already know who the killers are, so watching the lengthy crime scene investigations is utterly pointless. Speaking of which, Willem Dafoe was even worse than David Caruso in CSI: Miami, with his cheesy dialogue delivery. There are quite a few moments where this film attempts humour and fails miserably. The funniest thing about it was watching Dafoe doing a little Irish jig.
The writer and director Troy Duffy was clearly desperate for his film to be a Reservoir Dogs or a Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels. It was definitely meant to draw adjectives like "cool", "slick", "badass", and "edgy". It doesn't come close to any of those things though. It's stylised but in a Chickenfeed sort of way. Troy Duffy is not Quentin Tarantino and this film will look quite dated in the future, if it doesn't already, 10 years on.
The Boondock Saints has the nerve to end with a blatant attempt at a serious moral dilemma (is it wrong to kill bad people?). A question that doesn't deserve to be answered in the context of this film. Duffy doesn't take his film seriously for the the first 90 minutes and then, all of a sudden he changes the film's tone. That's an awful lot to ask of an audience.
I haven't disliked a film this much for a long time. It was a struggle getting to the end of this one. I can't understand why it has such a large legion of fans. It's just a terrible, terrible film. Stay away from it.
The Boondock Saints follows the story of two Irish brothers (played unconvincingly by two annoying B-list actors) in Boston, that have been assigned by God to eliminate all the criminals in the city by mercilessly killing them. An outrageous gay FBI detective is leading the investigation into the killings (a cringe worthy performance by Willem Dafoe). That's pretty much the plot. One of the film's many problems is that it has no suspense or mystery because you already know who the killers are, so watching the lengthy crime scene investigations is utterly pointless. Speaking of which, Willem Dafoe was even worse than David Caruso in CSI: Miami, with his cheesy dialogue delivery. There are quite a few moments where this film attempts humour and fails miserably. The funniest thing about it was watching Dafoe doing a little Irish jig.
The writer and director Troy Duffy was clearly desperate for his film to be a Reservoir Dogs or a Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels. It was definitely meant to draw adjectives like "cool", "slick", "badass", and "edgy". It doesn't come close to any of those things though. It's stylised but in a Chickenfeed sort of way. Troy Duffy is not Quentin Tarantino and this film will look quite dated in the future, if it doesn't already, 10 years on.
The Boondock Saints has the nerve to end with a blatant attempt at a serious moral dilemma (is it wrong to kill bad people?). A question that doesn't deserve to be answered in the context of this film. Duffy doesn't take his film seriously for the the first 90 minutes and then, all of a sudden he changes the film's tone. That's an awful lot to ask of an audience.
I haven't disliked a film this much for a long time. It was a struggle getting to the end of this one. I can't understand why it has such a large legion of fans. It's just a terrible, terrible film. Stay away from it.
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