The Last Stand

The Last Stand - Dir. Kim Ji-woon (2013)

"How are you, Sheriff?"

"Old."

Well, he said, he'd be back. After serving two terms as the governor of California, Arnold Schwarzenegger returns to the silver screen with The Last Stand. It's his first starring role since Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines in 2003.

Arnold is Ray Owens, a former LAPD officer now working as the sheriff of sleepy Summerton Junction, located near the border of Arizona and Mexico. Away from big city life, Owens' main problem is the obnoxious mayor constantly parking his Camaro in a fire zone. Those peaceful and tranquil days are over when notorious drug lord Gabriel Cortez (Eduardo Noriega) escapes from FBI custody. Grabbing a female agent (Genesis Rodriguez) hostage, Cortez races to the border at over 200mph in a modified Corvette ZR1. Cortez already has a small army waiting for him near Summerton building a bridge across a canyon to escape into Mexico. The only ones that can stop him are Owens and his ragtag bunch of deputies (Zach Gilford, Jaimie Alexander, Luis Guzman), a war vet (Rodrigo Santoro) sleeping it off in their jail cell, and a local nutcase named Lewis Dinkum (Johnny Knoxville).

Arnold never was the most talented thespian, but he succeeded because of his charisma and undeniable screen presence. Neither of those things has dulled even in his sixties. Sure, he's older, a little less mobile, and his one-liners don't have the same zing they used to. "You fucked up my day off," won't go down in movie history the way, "Hasta la vista, baby" did. Still, he's pretty damned entertaining. The Last Stand doesn’t attempt to hide the fact that we are dealing with an aging Arnold as he assumes the kind of grizzled role Clint Eastwood might have.

The script was penned by Andrew Knauer with rewrites by Jeffrey Nachmanoff (The Day After Tomorrow) and George Nolfi (The Adjustment Bureau) to tailor the project once Arnold signed on. The story is a modern day equivalent of Rio Bravo while trading on the usual clichés and narrative formulas of the action genre. The supporting cast is filled with archetypes including the eager to please rookie thirsting for more action and the chronic underachiever who must rise to the occasion. And The Last Stand may have gone overboard in giving Arnold two comic relief sidekicks in the form of Luis Guzman (at his most Luis Guzman) and Johnny Knoxville. While Eduardo Noriega doesn't make the most memorable villain, he does have Peter Stormare as his lead henchman. Stormare is always fun as a bad guy and his inexplicable attempt at a southern accent is hilarious. Unfortunately, the movie grinds to a halt whenever it cuts to the FBI control room where Forest Whitaker proves his tactical genius by shouting, "Find him," and "Do it now," at his underlings.

You don't go to a movie like The Last Stand for emotional character development. As a solid action movie, it doesn't disappoint. The credit goes to Kim Ji-woon who makes in his first American directorial effort. Kim leads a South Korean invasion to Hollywood with Park Chan-wook's Stoker seeing release in March and Bong Joon-ho arriving later in the year with Snowpiercer. Anyone who has seen Kim's The Good, the Bad, and the Weird or I Saw the Devil might go into The Last Stand with high expectations. However, none of the action sequences ever match up to the wild inventiveness seen in either of those pictures. Yet, it never feels as if Kim were handcuffed the way. Cortez's daring escape with a giant magnet is well-staged and the climactic confrontation is riddled with cool moments such as Arnold tackles a man off a roof and shoots him in the head in mid-air and the best use of a flare gun ever committed to film. Then, there's a great car chase with Owens and Cortez playing cat and mouse through a corn field.

The Last Stand's release is rather untimely with the debate on gun control raging across the country. This isn't just because of the violence, but also because much of the humor is derived from Knoxville's character as a gun collecting loony who has found various ways to skirt government regulations. But, The Last Stand is so silly and inconsequential, it could hardly be taken seriously the way Zero Dark Thirty ignited discussions about torture.

Arnold's star power has lost its luster over the years. In the 80's, The Last Stand may have opened to big numbers. Today, the film opened in 9^th place with a paltry $6.2 million. Maybe The Last Stand will find its audience on DVD because it is incredibly fun with an action-packed third act.

Rating: *** (*****)

Broken City

Broken City - Dir. Allen Hughes (2013)

When you have a film that stars big-name talent like Mark Wahlberg, Russell Crowe, and Catherine Zeta-Jones, you expect it to get a prime slot in the release schedule. Instead, Broken City gets dropped into the wasteland of January. Without all the famous faces, it could have easily faded off into direct-to-video obscurity.

Broken City opens with Det. Billy Taggart (Wahlberg) at the center of controversy for gunning down a teenaged rape suspect in the Bolton Village projects of Brooklyn. Crucial evidence is covered up by Mayor Nicholas Hostetler (Crowe) and the Chief of Police Carl Fairbanks (Jeffrey Wright) and the case is dropped though Taggart is forced to resign from the NYPD. For the next several years, he ekes out a living as a private investigator snapping pictures of adulterers. The Mayor, currently in a heated campaign against a young upstart subtly named Jack Valliant (Barry Pepper), hires Taggart for the sum of $50,000 to collect evidence that his wife, Cathleen (Zeta-Jones), is cheating on him. Taggart thinks it will be an easy payday until his mark ends up dead. It's the tip of a vast conspiracy involving a land deal that could mean billions for a few and forced evictions are hundreds of people.

Broken City is the first solo effort for Allen Hughes who has previously directed Menace II Society, From Hell, and The Book of Eli with his twin brother Albert. Newcomer Brian Tucker wrote the screenplay, which has been in development for several years and once made the Black List. That must have been a completely different version. Hughes and Tucker have created a glossy little blockbuster with aspirations of being a socially relevant political thriller. Instead, what we get is a bastardized and sanitized hybrid of Chinatown with the works of Sidney Lumet, specifically Serpico and Prince of the City, except there's no grit or rich storytelling to be found. The script relies too heavily on lazy contrivances to advance the plot. At one point, Taggart falls off the wagon and stumbles through the streets drunk. Then, he's called to a crime scene and shows up completely sober. Another scene Taggart observes the bad guys shredding and disposing of documents. Yet, he just happens to find an entire box full of incriminating evidence in pristine condition right next to the dumpster.

Wahlberg has made it a habit of playing these blue collar Joes and he's perfectly adequate here. The rest of the cast is strong though Jeffrey Wright blows everybody out of the water for what little he is given. Standing out amongst all the veteran talent is young Israeli actress Alona Tal (who some might recognize for her stints on Veronica Mars and Supernatural) as Taggart's loyal secretary Katy. Tal beams in a spunky performance and has some great banter with Wahlberg.

Broken City is disposable cinema, utterly forgettable save for those who are tremendous fans of hard boiled dialogue and macho posturing.

Rating: ** (*****)

Hit & Run

Hit & Run - Dirs. Dax Shepard & David Palmer (2012)

Dax Shepard is hardly a household name, but the actor has made a career out of supporting roles in comedies like Baby Mama, Idiocracy, and When in Rome. He was also the lead in Jon Favreau's underrated Zathura, a sort-of sequel to Jumanji. Shepard has recently made the jump to a multi-hyphenate as the star, producer, writer, and co-director with David Palmer of his own movies. His first picture was a mockumentary entitled Brother's Justice, which followed Shepard's attempts at transforming himself into a bona fide action star. His second feature is Hit & Run, an action-comedy shot on the low-budget of $2 million.

Shepard plays Yul Perrkins, a former getaway driver who is now living in Witness Protection under the alias of Charlie Bronson. He got the name from the infamous British convict (featured in Nichols Winding Refn's film Bronson) who in turn got his name from the famed actor. Charlie's sweet-natured girlfriend, Annie (Kristen Bell), has a Master's degree in Non-Violent Conflict Resolution, a major she created for herself. She gets the opportunity to head up her own department at UCLA, but almost doesn't take it since Charlie cannot leave skip town due to the terms of his relocation. But, Charlie doesn't care and busts out his old '67 Lincoln Continental for a cross-country road trip.

Too bad Charlie's placement in WITSEC is one of the worst kept secrets ever. Annie's jealous ex-boyfriend, Gil (Michael Rosenbaum), runs a background check on Charlie and discovers his secret identity. While chasing off after them, Gil contacts Charlie's former partner, Alex Dimitri (a dreadlocked Bradley Cooper), who went to prison because of Charlie's testimony. Also hot on their trail are Randy Anderson (Tom Arnold), the bumbling U.S. Marshal assigned to protect Charlie, and Gil's brother Terry (Jess Rowland), a sheriff's deputy.

With Hit & Run, Shepard aspired to make a throwback to classic car chase pictures like Smokey and the Bandit. The DIY nature of the production is reminiscent of a less ambitious version of Gone in 60 Seconds. The cast consists of Shepard's friends in the acting community and his real-life fiancée Kristen Bell. Shepard also performed his own stunt driving. Charlie's Continental along with a dune buggy were taken from Shepard's own car collection. Despite best intentions, Hit & Run never leaps off the screen.

The car chases aren't at all exciting. The only moment that exudes any visual inventiveness is a slow motion tire burn out set to a cover version of "Pure Imagination" from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. The comedy is thoroughly strained with one of the film's central jokes being the ethnicity of the convict who raped Dimitri in prison. The rest of the puerile humor revolves around a room full of naked old people and a Grindr-esque iPhone app for homosexual rendezvous.

Hit and Run is a listless comedy stuck in neutral while desperately wishing it was doing a hundred down the interstate.

Rating: * (*****)

Gangster Squad

Gangster Squad - Dir. Ruben Fleischer (2013)

In its heyday, Universal Studios was known for classic monster films like Dracula, Frankenstein, and The Wolf Man. On the other hand, Warner Brothers was renowned for violent gangster flicks that turned actors such as James Cagney and Edward G. Robinson into screen legends. Gangster Squad will hardly be ranked alongside Public Enemy, Little Caesar, or the original Scarface.

Gangster Squad is loosely based on a series of articles published by the L.A. Times and written by Paul Lieberman. "Tales from the Gangster Squad" was about a covert unit of the LAPD that waged war against organized crime. One of their primary targets was Mickey Cohen, a Jewish prizefighter who arrived on the west coast as hired muscle for Bugsy Siegel. The seedy underworld of Hollywood past was previously brought to life in L.A. Confidential. Indeed, Gangster Squad borrows heavily from the works of James Ellroy and The Untouchables.

Mickey Cohen (Sean Penn) has brutally risen through the criminal underworld to control all of the drugs, gambling, and prostitution in Los Angeles. Corruption throughout the LAPD and local government has enabled Cohen's operations. The embattled Chief of Police Bill Parker (Nick Nolte) tasks Sgt. John O'Mara (Josh Brolin), a decorated WWII veteran, with assembling his own task force to combat Cohen. They are given carte blanche to dismantle Cohen's empire without the need for warrants or arrests. The roster for O'Mara's squad includes: Sgt. Jerry Wooters (Ryan Gosling), a suave ladies' man; Coleman Harris (Anthony Mackie), a black beat cop with a mastery of the switchblade; surveillance expert Conwell Keeler (Giovanni Ribisi); Max Kennard (Robert Patrick), a mustachioed gunslinger; and earnest rookie Navidad Ramirez (Michael Pena). Things are complicated when Wooters romances Cohen's girlfriend and etiquette tutor, Grace Faraday (Emma Stone).

Gangster Squad is a visually stunning picture. Production designer Maher Ahmad has faithfully recreated a bygone era of Los Angeles full of fedoras, trenchcoats, sporty roadsters, and Tommy guns. It's all exquisitely lit with an accentuated color palette thanks to cinematographer Dion Beebe. Director Ruben Fleischer made a stylish debut with Zombieland and continues his trend for energetic action sequences with plenty of shootouts, explosions, chaotic brawls, and a car chase where potato masher grenades are lobbed about. One of the best staged scenes involves the squad breaking into Cohen's nightclub to burn his dirty money while Carmen Miranda sings on stage. One scene that didn't make the cut featured gangsters opening fire on a packed audience inside Grauman's Chinese Theater. The movie was delayed from its original September release following the tragedy in Aurora and the sequence was replaced with a shootout in Chinatown, which was no less bloody. Make no mistake; Gangster Squad is a violent film. Bodies are riddled with bullets, a trio of goons is burned alive, innocent bystanders routinely die, and one man is ripped in half after being tied to two cars.

Fleischer isn't afraid to reference other films in an obvious manner. The movie opens with Penn's Cohen quoting Bela Lugosi in Dracula. Later, a character is shot and falls face first into a swimming pool ala Sunset Boulevard. Fleischer even throws in a staircase gunfight during the climax as a nod to The Untouchables recreation of the Odessa Steps from Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkin. Anthony Mackie flings his knife in a similar fashion to James Coburn in The Magnificent Seven. While Untouchables and Magnificent Seven were certainly an influence, there's also a heavy dose of Dick Tracy throughout Gangster Squad. Josh Brolin's square-jawed hero looks an awful lot like Chester Gould's iconic detective with the humorless stoicism of Joe Friday from Dragnet. Then, there's Sean Penn who bears no resemblance to the real Cohen and appears to have stepped right out of a comic strip. The make-up work turns him into a caricature and Penn plays it accordingly. He's a snarling beast chewing through every scene. Penn gets his Cagney moment when he shouts, "Here comes Santy Claus," while latching onto a Tommy gun during a Christmas shootout.

The hammy acting and relentless violence distracts from the fact that the hackneyed plot. The screenplay by Will Beall, a former LAPD officer, is rife with clichés and one-dimensional characters. Brolin's O'Mara is one of the worst leaders in cinematic history. As Wooters states, "You're a bull in a China shop, Sarge, but we follow you in anyways." That doesn't say much for O'Mara or his charges. He blindly leaps into the fray and can definitely be blamed for much of the film's collateral damage. In a nice twist, it is O'Mara's wife (Mireille Enos) who selects the members of his squad though she's never given more to do other than worry about her husband. The squad themselves aren't given any distinct personalities. Meanwhile, Gosling is so laidback cool that it almost borders on self-parody, especially when he's effortlessly flicking his Zippo lighter. He has some great scenes with Emma Stone who might as well be Jessica Rabbit's younger, slinkier sister.

Gangster Squad is a pure exercise in style over substance. This is L.A. Confidential dumbed down and turned into an R-rated, live-action cartoon.

Rating: ** ½ (*****)

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey - Dir. Peter Jackson (2012)

An Unexpected Journey might as well describe the arduous process of bringing J.R.R. Tolkien's celebrated novel, The Hobbit, to the silver screen. The adaptation languished in development hell due to legal entanglements and the dire financial straits of MGM, who were co-producing it with New Line Cinema. While Peter Jackson stayed on as producer and co-writer with collaborators Philippa Boyens and Frank Walsh, the directorial reins were handed over to Guillermo Del Toro. However, after two years of pre-production in New Zealand, Del Toro departed and Jackson returned as director. Not to disparage the man's undeniable talents, but a fresh pair of eyes may have done wonders for The Hobbit.

Jackson's remake of King Kong received similar criticisms to his LOTR prequel in that both were lambasted for being self-indulgent and overlong. Things might have turned out differently had The Hobbit been filmed first as originally intended. The novel was a lighthearted adventure aimed at children whereas The Lord of the Rings was an expansive trilogy that weaved a rich and incredibly complex mythology. Jackson and his team somehow took what was necessary and jettisoned the extraneous to craft three pictures that stand as remarkable cinematic achievements. Now that he's given the audience a taste of mammoth spectacle, Jackson may have felt obliged to do the same with The Hobbit. The question remained how Jackson would adapt one book and some extra material into a new trilogy.

Bilbo Baggins (Martin Freeman) lives a simple and quiet life that is interrupted upon the arrival of the wizard Gandalf (Ian McKellan). Gandalf practically shanghais Bilbo into a quest with a band of dwarves led by Thorin Oakenshield (Richard Armitage). They seek to take back their kingdom of Erebor from the dragon Smaug that drove them from their land and treasure years ago. Along the way, they are pursued by a bloodthirsty Orc named Azog the Defiler (Manu Bennett), who killed Thorin's father during a battle at the gates of Moria.

It's truly wonderful to return to the world of Middle-Earth as envisioned by Peter Jackson. Once the nostalgia fades, you realize just how laborious the story is. The Hobbit takes its time introducing the protagonists and Bilbo doesn't embark on his adventure until about half an hour. Characters given only a passing reference in the book, such as Azog and Radagast the Brown (Sylvester McCoy), are expanded upon for the movie. The quest itself takes numerous detours including an interminable stop at Rivendell where Gandalf seeks council with Elrond (Hugo Weaving) and Galadriel (Cate Blanchett). The majority of the sequence doesn't advance the plot, but merely serves as a setup for later installments. There's also a scene depicting the elderly Bilbo (Ian Holm) and Frodo (Elijah Wood) set just before the events of Fellowship of the Ring that should have been reserved for the Extended Edition Blu-ray. Jackson threatens an additional twenty minutes of footage for that version.

Freeman's Sherlock co-star Benedict Cumberbatch receives a prominent credit for playing Smaug and the Necromancer. Yet, he doesn't appear at all or speak a single line.

While Jackson may not be the most judicious writer, he does have a remarkable eye for action. There's a scene where two mountains come to life and clash against the backdrop of a torrential thunderstorm with Bilbo and the dwarves helplessly caught in the middle like insects. Another sees the heroes fight their way through an underground goblin den.

Despite the inordinate runtime, the large company of dwarves are hardly flesh out save for Thorin though most get a smidgeon of personality. Owing to a lack of doom and gloom, Gandalf is a less portentous character in the prequel. He's a little looser and more whimsical, allowing McKellan to have some fun with him. The same goes for Hugo Weaving as Elrond. The real star of The Hobbit is Martin Freeman who is perfectly cast as the unlikeliest of heroes. Freeman has great comic timing and the right amount of nervous reluctance. Even with all the amazing set pieces, the highlight of The Hobbit is the sequence where Bilbo and Gollum (Andy Serkis) challenge each other to a game of riddles. These scenes run the gamut of emotions from humorous to frightening. A lot of that is owed to both the performance of Freeman as well as Serkis with an assist from the motion capture artists. Technology has grown to allow Gollum a more expressive and ghoulish visage.

Speaking of technology, The Hobbit is the first feature film shot at 48-frames per second (aka High Frame Rate), which is double the industry standard. Thus, audiences have the choice to see it in plain old 2D, regular 3D, HFR 3D, IMAX 3D, and HFR IMAX 3D. I saw The Hobbit first in 2D in order to avoid any visual distractions. That would be my preferred format. The HFR version features exceptionally clear picture quality and a far more defined depth of field for the 3D. On the other hand, the resolution is so sharp that the movie looks more like a high definition broadcast of a theatrical play. There are times when the characters move as if they are on fast forward. I haven't mentioned the eyestrain it caused me from time to time. Maybe when James Cameron shoots Avatar 2 and 3 at 60FPS the tech will have improved, but for now HFR should be considered a work in progress.

After shooting Star Wars in 1977, George Lucas didn't return to the director's chair until he filmed The Phantom Menace over twenty years later. Fans immediately decried the prequels as drivel that emphasized special effects over genuine emotion. The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey certainly isn't as awful as any of the Star Wars prequels, but it hardly holds a glowing blue sword to the Lord of the Rings trilogy. The Hobbit simply didn't need to be told on such a grand scale.

Rating: *** (*****)