The Man With One Red Shoe Review

If you want a fun little movie with a few laughs and that isn't difficult at all to follow, this is the movie for you.  It's the story of a guy who is unwittingly a pawn in a chess game between two rival CIA factions.  While the potential for a lot of twists and confusing turns is there, the film makers did a very good job of making sure that didn't happen.  in fact, it may have been too good because the movie is actually very shallow with little to no intrigue that a spy movie should have.

But this is, first and foremost, a comedy rather than a spy movie.  So ensuring that the intrigue is there is a much lower priority.  They focus on keeping it light and the result is some very funny bits with Tom Hanks being unaware of what is going on around him and the CIA agents suffering the consequences of his inadvertent bumbling around.  And Hanks plays this very well.  Even back in the 80s, he was a top actor.  Throughout this movie, his performance is stable and convincing even when his situations were not.  he is supported by a competent but not stellar cast that allows him to be the spotlight.

Like I said, it's pretty thin and there are a lot of holes and problems with the script.  But it is funny and only 1.5 hours long.  It's a fun diversion to turn your brain off.  See it.

Knight And Day Review

In an attempt to capitalize on Tom Cruise's success with the Mission:Impossible franchise, they decided to put him in a movie where he does a lot of the same action stuff but can be more flamboyant and "out there" with the character.  It's something he can't do with Ethan Hunt because Hunt is a well defined character.  But Roy is brand new and they can do whatever they want.  And they went too far.  Not just with Roy but with June (Cameron Diaz) too.

The biggest problem with this movie is that the characters are too flawed.  Cruise actually did a very good job with what he had to work with.  Say what you will about him in real life, the guy can act.  I'm willing to accept some unrealistic elements in many movies but Knight and Day is just too much.  Roy is in a very bad situation where he has to find the inventor of a revolutionary energy source.  Yet, he's acting pretty carefree and nonchalant in everything he does.  June survives a plane crash, is kidnapped and drugged by Roy, etc etc.  Yet she completely falls for the guy.  And the whole thing with Roy's parents is just too damn ridiculous to even bother with.

There's just too much away from normal right from the start that I couldn't get on board.  For instance, right at the start, June is told that the flight is full.  Then she's allowed on (for no explicable reason).  She then notices the flight is virtually empty but doesn't seem to question anyone at all.  The movie is full of these contradictions.  They tried to combine the suave James Bond with the situation of Jason Bourne and Helena Kreutz and failed miserably.

It isn't even that well filmed.  While there is plenty of action and the movie does move very quickly, they did not invest enough money in the effects.  Most of the action is very badly green screened.  So that couldn't even save it.  It's a shame because this movie could have been very good.  They relied too heavily on star power and neglected the base of a decent movie.

Don't see it.  There are countless better movies in the espionage genre.

Goldeneye Commentary

I'm a huge fan of the James Bond franchise.  I think they do a good job of making top notch action movies that are obviously not feasible in real life.  That's a tough thing to do without making the audience roll their eyes for two hours.  And I think the Pierce Brosnan Bond movies have done the best job of that.  Goldeneye takes the epidemic of organized crime and corruption that plagued Russia after the Cold War and turned it into a Bond movie that has all the hallmarks and things we come to expect.  It has the two girls (one good, one bad), the syndicate that inexplicably has the resources to pull a huge crime off, single use gadgets and a second in command henchman that kills people in an absolutely ridiculous way.  But, because it is grounded in a historically real situation combined with a personal element between Bond and the villain, it feels a little more real than the Roger Moore Bond movies.

Technically, I think this is also one of the better movies.  It came out at a time when CGI was just coming into its own and, even though it is easy to see that it is heavily green screened, I've seen recent movies that do a vastly worse job than Goldeneye.  As far as settings go, it does what we expect in Bond movies.  There's cold Russia, the Caribbean, Europe, etc.  So there's really nothing special there.  One of the things that really stands out here is the innovative tank chasing Ouromov through the streets of St Petersburg.  Normally, Bond uses his own car with all of its gadgets.  In Goldeneye, he had to improvise with something he isn't familiar with and it results in some cool over the top property destruction.

I know why they had to switch to Daniel Craig to play James Bond.  And I like the Craig movies and the direction its going.  But I am saddened that Brosnan was made to stop.  I really think that he saved the franchise at a time when people were kind of tired of it.  He brought new life and coolness to the character that Timothy Dalton couldn't.  Fortunately, we have four Brosnan Bond movies and all of them are watchable (and Tomorrow Never Dies is my favourite of the franchise).  So see it.

The Bourne Legacy Commentary

I'm a big fan of the Bourne movies.  When I heard they were going to do a fourth one without Matt Damon, I was against it.  Then I saw the trailer and thought it looked really good.  It looked like a fast paced film where they would continue the Bourne theme with a different actor playing a different (but parallel) character.  Then I saw that it had Jeremy Renner, Ed Norton and Rachel Weisz and I figured it must be at least halfway decent.  I've done a 180 on my original thoughts.  This was a great film and I'm glad they've decided to continue the franchise.

Hollywood should take note.  This is the proper way to reboot a franchise.  Rather than give us the same old tired exposition of how the hero came to be, they recognized that it needs to be different from the original franchise with different characters and a different story.  I will concede that the story in the Bourne Legacy is quite similar to that of the other Bourne movies.  In fact, Renner = Matt Damon, Norton = Chris Cooper, Weisz = Potente and Stacey Keach = Brian Cox in almost every way.  But they've changed the back stories and motivations because they changed the characters.  In a way, it combines the recent Star Trek reboot with Prometheus.  Star Trek is continuing the familiar universe that we like and Prometheus took us to a point in a franchise and sent it off in another direction with different characters.  The Bourne Legacy is doing the same thing.  It starts out with events paralleling and involving those of the end of the Matt Damon movies and sending them on a course on their own while still maintaining the mix of character personalities that make the movies successful.

From a technical standpoint, there is really nothing that makes this one better than many other films of the same genre.  The film making is decent all around with some really good locales and cinematography.  The sets and locations used from the mountains in winter to sweaty Manilla streets do a really good job of evoking the right emotion in the audience.  The acting is believable which is good because it's easy to go overboard in a movie like this.  That's a testament to some very good casting.  Renner has emerged as a good actor and Norton has the range to play just about any personality.  The action is ok but not stellar.  It does have a very good chase scene in Manilla and some well choreographed fights.  But I think what makes this an above average film is that the pace keeps building and that makes the tension rise to a boiling point.  As a thriller, that is what it is supposed to do and they do it very well.

Normally, the fourth movie is a series is going to suffer.  But because they decided to refresh and reboot, it stands alone quite well.  You do have to be familiar with the first three to not get too confused (and the Bourne movies are good at confusing an audience) but I recommend all of those anyways.  See it.  It's a very good thriller.

The Bourne Identity Commentary

The Bourne Identity is a lot like Jimi Hendrix.  When you watch it ten years later, you see a fantastic action movie but you tend to forget just how groundbreaking and game-changing it was when it was first made.  Prior to 2002, many spy movies were still following the old mould of James Bond where an extraordinary person was put in an extraordinary position with extraordinary results.  Bourne changed all that.  The fact that many spy/action films are following the same pattern (much like musicians almost always listing Hendrix as an influence) is a testament to the way things are going in the action genre.  Even the James Bond movies have rebooted to make the characters and situations more accessible to the viewer.

I will concede that there have been lots of action moves with a regular guy that we can relate to being put in an extraordinary situation.  John McClane in Die Hard is one of these.  But McClane was thrust into an unbelievable situation.  Jason Bourne, while he leads an extraordinary life, is made accessible and relatable through his amnesia.  Through the whole film, the viewer can relate to not only the character but his situations as well.  We will probably never be fully privy to what goes on in the spy world but I imagine that the events could be very similar to what we see in these films.  From start to finish, you feel like most of these things could actually happen.  Granted, falling 5 stories, shooting a guy on the way down and breaking your fall on a corpse is not likely to turn out for you the way it did for Bourne.  But no action movie is going to be 100% realistic.

Bourne comes as close as you can while making it exciting.  The tension mounts right at the start with Bourne being found floating unconscious in the Mediterranean Sea.  It never lets go and builds to a very tense climax between him and Treadstone at a Paris safe house.  Matt Damon and Franka Potente do a fantastic job of working their way through their mystery and making the viewer feel that they are actually scared as to what they might uncover as well as what is chasing them.

Finally, because it has one and I love them, I need to address the car chase scene.  It is one of the finest I have seen in any movie.  Car chases are great when they involve regular cars in crowded situations.  using a beat up Mini in the narrow Paris streets was fantastic.  The entire gloomy rain atmosphere just adds to it.  The choreography throughout is flawless.  And Bourne's and Kreutz' reaction when it ends in the parking garage is absolutely priceless and one of my favourite movie moments of all time.

This is a fantastic action movie that grabs you and never lets go.  Definitely see it.  You should probably have it in your collection as well.

Traitor Review

Ultimately, this is really just another run of the mill movie about terrorism.  The story is kind of interesting though.  It features Don Cheadle as a former special forces operative that has found Islam and gone rogue into militant religious fanaticism.  The viewer is supposed to spend most of the time trying to figure out if he is ultimately good or bad.  For the most part, they do a decent job of masking his true intentions and, when they are finally revealed, there is no ambiguity to make you question anything.  In this, they have done a decent job of not making a double agent type movie too complicated with twists and turns that ultimately lead to a conclusion that is inevitable.  I did like that about it.  Double agent terrorist and spy movies tend to get confusing and dig too deep into the intrigue.  Traitor didn't do that and they made a movie that was pretty easy to follow.

I also like their use of international settings.  Nothing was over the top exotic.  They go from Yemen to France to the UK to the US to Canada.  While some of these places could be seen as exotic, all of the chosen locales and settings were very realistic to the nature of what the characters needed at the time.  From start to finish, the whole thing felt quite plausible.

So, they take a good story premise and film it very well.  However, they completely derail it with some very bad writing and subpar deliveries from some very decent actors.  The movie has Don Cheadle, Guy Pearce and Jeff Daniels in it.  These three are all accomplished and decent actors in their own right.  Not one of them was overly convincing in their line delivery.  The best would have been Pearce and he made me say, "meh"; especially due to a very fake southern accent.  I refuse to believe that all of these actors would phone it in on their own volition.  My best guess is that the director was just unable to motivate anyone to pick up their game.  And it's hard to do that when the writing is this contrived and, in some places, this cheesy.

I'm torn.  On the one hand, it is well shot and progresses well.  On the other hand, you have to sit through bad line after bad line.  Given the fact that we have a lot of good terrorist/espionage movies to choose from, I'd have to say Don't see it.  If it's free and you don't feel like searching for anything else though, it isn't a terrible thing to watch.

Safe House Review

This is what happens when you  make a movie using only that iPhone app that hipsters use because they think it makes their pictures look all cool and retro.  Instead, you get pictures that are just annoying to look at.  And, as long as they continue to use shaky camera work and unnecessary and awkward closeups, I will continue to bitch about it.  Those two things take away from what is otherwise a very believable and plausible situation.  And those two things (one thing really - the film making) are the only problem with this movie.

It is a terrific story with a Jason Bourne feel to it.  A young, unproven CIA agent whose only job is to babysit a seldom used safe house is thrust into trying to bring in one of the CIA's most wanted men.  What ensues is well placed and judiciously used action mixed in with very tense buildup throughout.  There are only a couple of times where it slows down a little too much but they are short scenes that don't dwell on making the story too human and moral.  With a film like this it would be easy to use the Tobin Frost and Matt Weston as a morality play about shades of grey and by the book isn't always right.  And while they do a little of that, they do not hit you over the head with it.

The acting is really good up and down the entire cast.  I'm not a huge Denzel fan.  While I do think he's a terrific actor, I also think that he's one of the unfortunate ones that has gotten too big for his roles and you seldom get past the fact that you're watching Denzel instead of a good performance.  Here, you forget you're watching Denzel.  He does a great job with the calm and collected "been there, done that" CIA veteran role.  Ryan Reynolds' performance was only slightly below that in calibre.  We all know Reynolds as being at his best when he can be a wisecracking, cocky guy.  But, through this and his performance in Buried, he's showing that he has some pretty good range.  And while I don't think their interaction is as good as that between Tom Cruise and Jamie Foxx in Collateral, it is still quite strong.  (Collateral wasn't a great movie.  But I thought the dialogue between the two was great.)

Finally, I want to mention the location.  For a spy movie in today's political climate, it is easy to just make it happen in Syria or somewhere else in the Middle East.  Or, you could find some exotic European or Asian location.  Setting this in South Africa was brilliant.  It is just exotic enough to hold our interest but it lends that bleak, poverty aspect that keeps it grounded from becoming too Bondesque.

See it.  If you like that surreal, saturated look and shaky camera work, this will be right up your alley.  If you can get put up with it, it is definitely worth your time for the tension, great story and strong performances.