Unknown

Unknown - Dir. Dir. Jaume Collet-Serra (2011)

Most actors tend to take less physical roles by the time they hit 60. Not Liam Neeson, who has reinvented himself as a badass action hero following the success of Taken. He's certainly believable as an unstoppable killing machine with his deep voice and imposing 6'4 frame. Unknown certainly feels like it came from the same Luc Besson machine that churned out Taken with Neeson cutting a swath through menacing Euro-trash villains. On the contrary, Unknown comes from the Joel Silver action factory. It was directed by Jaume Collet-Serra, who also helmed the horror film Orphan, and based on the novel Out of My Head by French novelist Didier Van Cauwelaert.

Neeson stars as Dr. Martin Harris, a biologist who has just arrived in Berlin for a biotechnology conference with his wife Liz (January Jones). A terrible accident in a taxicab leaves Martin in a coma for several days. When he awakens, he is shocked to discover another man (Aidan Quinn) is now claiming to be Dr. Martin Harris and Liz has no idea who he is. Or Martin's memories a delusion or has he fallen into an elaborate conspiracy? The only clue to uncovering Martin's true identity is the cab driver, Gina (Diane Kruger), who is reluctant to come forward because she is an illegal immigrant from Bosnia.

Unknown is the type of standard fare we've come to expect from a post-Bourne world. The film boils down the Hitchcockian wrong man formula to its barest essentials while trying to plug in various plot holes with fist fights and car chases. Luckily, the one taxi Martin gets into happens to belong to the hottest cab driver in all of Germany. And, of course, Neeson will regain his memories just in the nick of time to dish out some serious beatings.

Neeson is a capable enough actor to make all this silliness credible. He's backed up by some good European talent like Sebastian Koch from The Lives of Others and Rainer Bock from Michael Haneke's The White Ribbon. Frank Langella also turns in a creepy performance as one of Martin's colleagues. The most intriguing character belongs to Bruno Ganz as a former Stasi officer turned private investigator. Ganz is best known as playing Hitler in Downfall, also known as the Hitler from all those YouTube videos where he laments about Burning Man, X-Box Live, and becoming a meme. Too bad you cannot say the same for January Jones. The Mad Men actress turns in another blank-eyed robotic performance as Martin's cold fish wife.

Unknown is best described as Taken meets The Bourne Identity. It's a ridiculous and pedestrian action thriller that may provide some diverting pleasure for about two hours.

Rating: ** (*****)

Seeking Justice

Seeking Justice - Dir. Roger Donaldson (2012)

Nicolas Cage sure has had his ups and downs over the last several years. It's been a long time since he headlined a film that won widespread critical acclaim (Adaptation?) Cage seems content to star in lowbrow tripe like Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance, The Sorcerer's Apprentice or Season of the Witch. The Oscar winning actor can't say no anymore. Not surprising, considering he owes millions in back taxes to the IRS. The poor guy had to sell off extravagances such as an 18^th century castle in England, an island in the Bahamas, and his copy of Action Comics #1. I don't know what's worse, giving up a copy of Superman's first appearance or doing Z-grade direct-to-video schlock like Seeking Justice.

Cage is Will Gerard, a high school teacher trying to enlighten inner city youths about Shakespeare. One night, his wife, Laura (January Jones), is attacked and raped. While waiting at the hospital, Will is approached by the mysterious Simon (Guy Pearce), a member of a clandestine organization meting out their own brand of street justice. Simon offers to deal with his wife's assailant in a manner the police and the courts cannot. All he asks in return is a simple favor to be named later. At first, the favors seem innocuous enough - mail a letter and then observe a woman and her children at the zoo. Next thing you know, Simon orders Will to murder a supposed pedophile. Will and Laura find their lives in danger as they discover just how far reaching and powerful Simon is.

Call Nicolas Cage what you want: a human medical experiment or a living, breathing post-modern expressionist art exhibit, perhaps? Whether it's his bizarre inflections, crazed bug-eyed looks or psychotic twitches, he is entertaining in a unintentional way. There's bad and there's Nicolas Cage bad. Either way, you can hardly accuse him of being boring. Unfortunately, that's exactly what he is in Seeking Justice, boring. Despite returning to the Big Easy, the site of his manic performance in Werner Herzog's Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call – New Orleans, Cage barely registers as if he were going through the motions until the check clears. Equally robotic is his co-star January Jones, who delivers every line with a blank stare and a monotone demeanor, much like her performances in X-Men First Class or Unknown. It's a wonder how she could be as good as Betty Draper on AMC's Mad Men.

The filmmakers may have done better by replacing Jones with Dexter star Jennifer Carpenter, who says barely a few sentences as Laura's best friend, Trudy. The supporting cast also includes Xander Berkeley as a police detective, Harold Perrineau from Lost as Will's best friend, and IronE Singleton from The Walking Dead as one of Simon's enforcers.

Much like Cage, director Roger Donaldson has had a rollercoaster career. He's been behind the camera of well-received films such as Thirteen Days and The World's Fastest Indian. Yet, he's also directed Species, Dante's Peak, the Alec Baldwin/Kim Basinger remake of The Getaway, and the 80's camp classic Cocktail. Donaldson's last feature was The Bank Job, an excellent heist movie that gave Jason Statham a chance to stretch his acting muscles beyond his usual action pictures. Seeking Justice doesn't do the same for Nicolas Cage and is so forgettable; it doesn't even belong amidst Donaldson's weaker efforts. His direction is leaden with random canted angles thrown in to switch up things.

The screenplay credited to Todd Hickey and Robert Tannen is full of weak contrivances and ludicrous plot twists. The methods of Simon's vigilante organization are needlessly Machiavellian. There's a lot of silly cloak-and-dagger activity such as buying two candy bars from a vending machine as a go signal or using the code-phrase, "The hungry rabbit jumps," which was the movie's original title. This same association employs cops, reporters, and skilled thugs. It doesn't make a lick of sense for them to coerce untrained civilians.

As revenge thrillers go, one can do better: Haywire, Lady Vengeance, and Harry Brown being recent examples. Seeking Justice is a second-rate potboiler that is unworthy of even Nicolas Cage's notoriously feeble standards.

Rating: * (*****)

X-Men: First Class

X-Men: First Class - Dir. Matthew Vaughn (2011)

X = $

It’s a simple formula that has worked out for Marvel Comics for decades. Put the letter ‘X’ in the title and you’re almost guaranteed high sales figures. Development began in 1989 for a feature film based on Marvel’s biggest franchise, but it wouldn’t be until 2000 that an X-Men picture would finally see the light of day. X-Men came at the cusp of a new age where comic book movies are now a staple of the Hollywood machine. Its sequel, X2: X-Men United, was even better and widely considered to be one of the best comic book adaptations. The franchise lost steam with the third installment, X-Men: The Last Stand, and spin-off, X-Men Origins: Wolverine. The behind-the-scenes drama seemed more interesting than either of the later films.

Director Bryan Singer defected to Warner Brothers to helm the disappointing Superman Returns. Fox rushed production on Last Stand with Matthew Vaughn as director. However, Vaughn would drop out a month before principal photography and Brett Ratner replaced him. Singer and Vaughn have returned with X-Men: First Class, a prequel/reboot that ties into the first two films while ignoring the events of Last Stand and Wolverine. The screenplay passed through numerous hands with the original draft by Josh Schwartz, the creator of teen-centric TV dramas like The OC and Gossip Girl. Elements from a proposed X-Men Origins: Magneto project by Sheldon Turner (Up in the Air) was merged with a new draft by Jamie Moss (Rise of the Planet of the Apes), which was rewritten by the Thor duo of Ashley Edward Miller & Zack Stentz and again by Vaughn & Jane Goldman.

First Class takes us back to the opening sequence of the first X-Men with a young Erik Lehnsherr utilizing his magnetic powers for the first time as a concentration camp prisoner. Meanwhile, in affluent Westchester County, a very young Charles Xavier meets a shapeshifting girl named Raven, who he adopts as a sister. Years pass and an adult Xavier (James McAvoy) attends Oxford to study genetic mutations while Raven (Jennifer Lawrence) works as a waitress. While Xavier uses his telepathic powers to pick up women, Lehnsherr (Michael Fassbender) hunts down fugitive Nazis. At the top of his hit list is the sadistic camp doctor who murdered his mother. That doctor has reinvented himself as Sebastian Shaw (Kevin Bacon), a millionaire playboy with the power to absorb and channel energy. Shaw is manipulating the Americans and the Russians in order to trigger a nuclear holocaust that will wipe out mankind and allow mutants to rule the Earth. Xavier and Lehnsherr eventually join forces with CIA agent Moira MacTaggert (Rose Byrne) to stop Shaw from igniting World War III.

Shaw has assembled a group of powerful mutants to aid in his quest for genetic supremacy. They include: Emma Frost (January Jones), a telepath who can transform into diamond; Riptide (Alez Gonzalez), who is able to summon powerful winds; and Azazel (Jason Flemyng), a demonic looking teleporter who comic fans will know as the father of Nightcrawler.

The good guys enlist their own band of young recruits including: Banshee (Caleb Landry Jones), who can emit sonic screams; Havok (Lucas Till), who is able to fire plasma beams from his chest; Dr. Henry McCoy aka Beast (Nicholas Hoult), a scientist with prehensile feet; Angel Salvadore (Zoe Kravitz), a go-go dancer with insect-like wings; and Darwin (Edi Gathegi), who has the power of reactive evolution.

As you can tell that's quite the roster of characters for a movie a little over two hours long. Don't forget Oliver Platt as an unnamed Man in Black and various military personnel played by veteran character actors like Michael Ironside, James Remar, Glenn Morshower, and Rade Serbedzija. Fox has a penchant for overstuffing their comic book movies with more characters and subplots than they can handle and First Class is an unfortunate victim of that philosophy. Characters like Angel and Darwin are hardly given any chance to develop or even matter to the overall story. Riptide doesn't even have a single line of dialogue in the movie; he's just there to be the silent and menacing henchman. Despite dropping Marvel's merry mutants hip deep into the Cuban Missile Crisis, First Class doesn't fully utilize its unique 60's setting aside from giving Kevin Bacon the excuse to grow some awesome sideburns. Xavier and Magneto have been compared many times to Martin Luther King and Malcolm X in their differing philosophies. Yet, civil rights barely factors into the film. Ironically, the only mutants of color are either killed or turned evil.

Notoriously picky fanboys won't be pleased with the way First Class takes liberties with the source material. These aren't the original X-Men from the comics. Cyclops, Jean Grey, Iceman, and the other Angel (Warren Worthington III) are nowhere to be found. The movie Havok isn't intended to be Cyclops's brother though changing his beams from white to red is likely meant to be some sort of concession. Moira McTaggert has gone from Scottish scientist to American secret agent. As a life-long comic book reader, I had little issue with the changes made in First Class. The X-Men books were known for their convoluted mythology as storylines were lost and found on the whim of an ever-changing line-up of creative teams. First Class isn't set in the world of the comic books, but the one created for the movies.

Fans of the entire series may be confused as First Class doesn't completely gel with events depicted in the previous films. When it does, it feels as if Fox wasn't sure a sequel would be possible, so they felt obliged to throw in as many recognizable elements as they could. We find out the origins of their codenames, the creation of Cerebro, and how Professor X winds up in a wheelchair. The movie inevitably feels rushed with the Xavier-Magneto relationship put in fast forward. The filmmakers do throw in a few references and in-jokes for the hardcores. There are also a couple clever cameos, including one from a familiar face who is the best there is at what he does.

Despite a few flaws, X-Men: First Class stands as the second best entry in the franchise with X2 ranking as number one. The primary reason for the prequel's success is the casting of James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender as the friends turned enemies. In the past, McAvoy has played reactive characters. As Xavier, he's more aggressive, growing from a cocky prat to a responsible mentor. However, it is Fassbender's Magneto who truly anchors the film. The solo Magneto movie was largely cancelled because Fox didn't believe he could carry a picture alone. After First Class, I would love to see a Magneto: Nazi Hunter starring Fassbender. No pun intended, but the actor is absolutely magnetic in the role of the tortured villain. One of the film's best moments is a Boys From Brazil-esque scene with Lehnsherr tracking two former SS officers to a tiny bar in South America.

Jennifer Lawrence is equally phenomenal as the young Mystique, making her more than just the naked blue chick. She becomes a vulnerable girl desperately searching for her place in a society that finds her ugly. Kevin Bacon is also great and it makes you wonder why it took so long for someone to cast him as a supervillain. Bacon is deliciously over-the-top in the beginning of First Class as the mad scientist looking to exploit a teenaged Lehnsherr's burgeoning powers. The same cannot be said for January Jones as Emma Frost, a sexy and manipulative femme fatale in the comics. Her diamond form is poorly realized and when she's not made of jewels, she's made of wood. Jones is practically robotic in the role. Is this the same Betty Draper we've come to know and love?

Kick-Ass proved that Vaughn could handle high-octane action sequences and First Class has plenty of cool set pieces. The film's climax juggles multiple battles without descending into a jumbled mess of special effects. There are also several unique displays of power such as Azazel's gruesome method of dispatching humans. A telepathic battle involving rotating rooms was cut when Inception beat them to the punch. Vaughn was heavily influenced by classic James Bond films while making First Class and it shows. Sebastian Shaw is the archetypal Bond villain with his secret headquarters and tricked out submarine. The prequel is a globetrotting adventure with higher stakes than any other X-film. The first act is hardly over and the audience has already been taken to Poland, Switzerland, New York, England, Las Vegas, and a Kubrickian war room underneath the Pentagon. It's also fantastic that they put the X-Men in their classic blue and yellow uniforms.

X-Men: First Class gives the X-Men franchise the vital jumpstart it needed and heals the damage done by the awful Last Stand and Wolverine. With a fresh, new cast in place, the X-Men are opened to new possibilities such as a film set in the 70's based on Giant-Size X-Men #1, a redux of the Dark Phoenix Saga, or Days of Future Past.

Rating: *** ½ (*****)