300

"Prepare for glory," indeed.  After the awesomeness that was Sin City, I was excited when 300 was announced; not only am I a comic book geek, but I am a particularly big fan of Frank Miller's work.  And when 300 came out, it was glorious.  Angry, manly, violent, and not at all homoerotic (wink, wink), this movie was perfect for what it was.  However, when I bought it on DVD and re-watched it a few times, I started to notice that the movie was...well, a little silly, I suppose.  It has been a few years since my last viewing, so I wonder how gracefully the film has aged for me...

Nope.  Not even a little gay.

For the uninitiated, 300 is the story of the Battle of Thermopylae in 480 BC.  When an emissary from the Persian "god-king" Xerxes (Rodrigo Santoro) arrives in the Greek city-state of Sparta, he more or less threatens to rape Sparta if King Leonidas (Gerard Butler) does not choose to surrender to the overwhelming numbers of the Persian army.  Leonidas informs the messenger that this is Sparta, which is apparently a previously agreed upon signal for Spartans to push the messenger and his guards into a dark pit in the middle of Sparta, which seems to exist only for pushing people into.

"THIS!  IS!  RIDICULOUS!"

From this point on, Sparta must prepare for war against Persia, right?  Not so fast.  Some disgusting, inbred priests apparently have the last word on going to war, and they won't approve it (for a few reasons).  Leonidas cannot have the army of Sparta fight the Persians.  He can, however, take an honor guard of three hundred men (so...shouldn't this be titled 301?) and go on a little stroll that leads them to where the Persians will undoubtedly march.  What can three hundred men do against the hordes of Persia?  With a clever choice of where to fight --- and a heaping dose of bad-assery --- the answer is "quite a bit, actually."

Before I get into the acting of 300, I want to mention the style of the film.  The movie was filmed almost entirely with a blue screen, so the backgrounds and lighting are both highly stylized.  The movie uses slow-motion constantly, even for seemingly inane tasks, like climbing a mountain.  The battle scenes are grisly and gory, with a lot of stylized blood spattering the screen (although, oddly enough, not the Spartans).  And the acting is composed almost entirely of shouts.  Of course, the movie is being related as a motivational tale, told by Dilios (David Wenham) around a campfire; the fantastic and fearless characters in this movie are being related by a narrator that has good reason to make these Spartans sound like the damn bogeymen.  That's neither an approval or a disapproval of the acting in this movie --- I'm just saying that there was a reason for the director to have everyone act the way they do.

That said, wow.  The acting is something else.  I would love to blame the actors for their horribawful line delivery (cast slogan: "Try shouting more"), as well as the script, but that would be unfair.  No one in this film gives a complex performance (aside from Lena Headey) and every character is clearly good or evil, with absolutely no shades of grey.  So, what does the cast have left to do?  They have to look cool and tough while wearing undies and a cape.

Mission accomplished.

Gerard Butler really seems to enjoy himself as the too-tough-to-bleed Spartan king, and I can't blame him.  How often do you get to deliver lines like "Tonight we dine in Hell" as part of a motivational speech?  I would hesitate to call Butler good here, but he is entertaining enough.  David Wenham is the narrator, and at times, his narration sounds like he is doing voice-over for some very dirty porn.  I'm not sure why his character is the only one with a 20th century haircut, either, but whatever.  His voice just bothers me.  The other Spartans played their parts well enough, with only Vincent Regan and Michael Fassbender really standing out; Regan stuck out because his hair gets a major case of the frizzies as the film progresses and Fassbender was pretty cool as the Spartan that enjoys war the most. 

Lena Headey was pretty good as the tough wife of the king; she stands out, if only because hers is the only character with moral ambiguity.  Dominic West, who is capable of good work, was pretty boring as a sleazy politician.  The only Persian that wasn't a faceless, characterless monster was King Xerxes himself, Rodrigo Santoro; I guess he was okay, given the script, but his character design is pretty strange.

Director and co-writer Zack Snyder did his very best to bring the comic book 300 to life and stay true to the source material.  In that, he was successful.  You can tell which scenes were taken from the graphic novel, if only because every one of them is shot in slow-motion.  I will give Snyder a lot of credit for making this a visually unusual film.  The color palette, the stylized gore, and the omnipresent slow-motion shots add up for a very distinctive and very visually appealing film.  "Visually appealing" is not always the same as "well directed," though.  Snyder put all his efforts into making this movie look cool --- and he definitely succeeds --- but he omitted any subtlety or emotion with the actors and characters.  Snyder made a movie that looks and feels like the work of an artist, but without any depth.  It's not surprising to me that his follow-up films have been less successful than this one; how often do you find a script where the audience just wants to see them screaming and murdering people?  Ooh, maybe Snyder should direct the next Friday the 13th!

This is the most difficult movie I have reviewed so far, because it is both awesome and terrible at the same time.  The slow-motion is beyond excessive and is used without any regard for context or meaning.  Sometimes it looks cool, but sometimes it is just inappropriately funny.  The story is painfully simple, and yet omits some very basic things; the Spartans all march off to fight the Persians with just their leather undies, capes, and weapons --- and then, all of a sudden, they pull out their metal helmets that they were obviously not carrying at any point on their march.  Did they keister those things, or what?  And why is Gerard Butler wearing eyeliner in the final scenes?  That was just strange.  Not as strange as an army full of mostly bearded Greeks having absolutely no body hair, but strange nonetheless. 

Not even a treasure trail.

And the performances...!  I have seen Holocaust dramas with more wit and humor in them than 300.  Everything is super-serious (unless it involves Michael Fassbender loving violence), all the dialogue is shouted, and teeth are gritted whenever actors are not shouting.  And I don't even want to get into the WTF quality of the Persian characters.  I have no problem portraying an invading army as evil, but damn...the Persians in this movie are all inhuman monsters.  Again, I understand that this is probably because the film is being told as a story to motivate the Greek troops, but I can sympathize with anyone offended by the movie.  In so many ways, this is an awful movie.

And yet...and yet...I really enjoy 300.  Not in an ironic fashion, or because I laugh when I watch it (although I do that, too).  I genuinely like this movie.  But it's so bad!  But it's so bad-ass!  I've pointed out some of the shortcomings of the film, but the pure and brutal testosterone jolt this film provides balances things out for me.  This is pure, unadulterated violence on film, with none of the guilt or feelings that other violent movies try and force upon you.  Sure, this is probably the most homoerotic film in my collection, aside from Spartacus.  Whatever.  Whoever said that being manly excludes homosexual under- or overtones?  I think the important thing about this movie is that, despite everything it does poorly, I am still happy to watch it and revel in its 400-feet-over-the-top goodness.

When I was searching for movies stills online, I can across a wealth of 300-inspired visual jokes.  Here are the best I found:

This next one is my favorite.  When I was in high school, I worked at a grocery store, and we have caution signs to put up whenever there was a wet floor.  I took a Sharpie marker and doodled enough to make the falling guy look like he was diving for a baseball.  Whoever did this is much funnier than me.

How to Train Your Dragon

Vikings are awesome.  Fact.  If I had to pick between a viking, pirate or ninja, I would just wait five minutes, because the Viking would undoubtedly cut the other two in half with a battle axe and then fashion a helmet from their skulls.  Like I said: awesome.  And their religion is just as bad-ass, even from the bits and pieces historians have been able to assemble (Vikings didn't write...unless it was in the blood of their enemies).  For instance, their head god, Odin, poked out his own eye to gain godly wisdom and hung himself from a tree for nine days with a spear in his side to learn magic.  And then, on his day of rest, he created the ultimate viking, and the man that Biblical Adam is loosely based on, Chuck Norris.  And then Odin punched Chuck Norris in the stomach so hard that his testicles popped out of their protective spot inside the pelvis; that is why all men now have their most delicate body part dangling, undefended, in the wind.

What does that have to do with How to Train Your Dragon?  It has Vikings in it, duh.

How to Train Your Dragon is loosely based on a series of books on the life and times of a (probably fictional) Viking named Hiccup (voiced by Jay Baruchel).  As his name implies, Hiccup is not much of a viking; while the others are brawny and mostly simple, Hiccup is skinny and cerebral.  His village, Berk, is frequently attacked and raided for livestock by a variety of dragons.  As such, the Vikings of Berk make a big deal about killing dragons.  Desperate to prove himself to the town and Stoick (Gerard Butler), the village leader (and Hiccup's dad), Hiccup tries to invent tools that will help him kill a dragon.  One night, Hiccup uses one of his inventions to knock down a member of the most feared dragon species of them all, the Night Fury.  Nobody believes him, though, so Hiccup tracks the dragon down and finds it helpless, still caught in his net.  Now, if Hiccup was a standard Viking, he would have cut out the dragon's heart to prove his victory to others, but Hiccup feels bad and instead releases the creature.  Obviously, the dragon kills Hiccup because dragons are evil creatures and the rest of the movie is about Stoick seeking revenge for his lost song --- WHAAA?!?  The dragon lets Hiccup live?  That flies in the face of everything the Berkians know about dragons!  I wonder if the brainy Hiccup will try to learn more about this dragon and somehow find a way to prove himself to his father and the village?

The voice acting is decent all-around, with Jay Baruchel doing double duty as both a character and the narrator.  The rest of the cast played exactly who you would expect them to play in a movie.  Christopher Mintz-Plasse plays a (Viking) nerd who spouts off Dungeons and Dragons (get it?) -style data (Attack +2, Armor +1, etc.) about every known dragon whenever he opens his mouth.  America Ferrera plays the "girls kick ass" love interest and Jonah Hill plays an obnoxious kid that should shut up more often.  Gerard Butler plays the rough-and-tumble Viking leader/father and Craig Ferguson voices the one-armed and one-legged dragon-killing instructor for the kids.  That's right...the two adults are both Scottish, and none of the children are.  Do these Vikings grow into their accents?  Is a Scottish burr a reward for reaching manhood?  Startlingly, these questions are never addressed in this film.  Aside from the peculiarity of the accents, everybody does a decent job.  Mintz-Plasse's recurring joke of a character was kind of funny, but the only real standout in the voice-acting department was Craig Ferguson, who was funny and surprised me with how well he handled the more dramatic moments. 


This movie was directed and co-written by Chris Sanders and Dean DeBois, both former Disney people whose highest profile work was on Lilo and Stitch and its subsequent direct-to-DVD sequels.  As far as the directing goes, they do a pretty good job, I think.  There are no outstanding voice performances, but the animation looks great and the story is told well enough.  I don't know why they opted to make Scottish Vikings with American children, but I doubt that bugs anyone but me.  And anyone viewing the film in Nordic countries. 

I liked the movie as entertainment for a child, but it wasn't great, certainly not to the tune of the $500+ million it made in theaters.  Yes, it's a cute story and dragons are cool, but the story lacks an emotional punch.  This is not too surprising, since Dreamworks Animation usually makes funny but vapid kids movies, but Dragon is a little different.  There isn't nearly as much comedy as you might think in this movie, but it doesn't drag despite that lack.  The film also deals with several potentially heavy topics; there is a fractured father-son relationship, the notion of being a social outcast, the importance of standing up for personal values, the power of group-think mentalities, the place of animals in our culture (friends vs. pets vs. prey), among other issues.  Don't worry, though --- How to Train Your Dragon might bring up these issues, but it doesn't develop any of them.  You would think that the emotional core of the film would center around Hiccup and his dragon, but it bounces around to his love interest and one scene with his father.  Deep, this isn't.  Still, dragons are cool and the movie is about seeing the dragons breathe fire and fly.  I don't think this is a bad movie --- kids should certainly enjoy it --- and it is certainly watchable by adults, but it's a little simple for my tastes.  And it loses some points for making Vikings with Scotsmerican accents.

There is also an animated short that goes along with the DVD, called The Legend of the Boneknapper Dragon.  This follows Hiccup and his friends as they try to help their teacher (Craig Ferguson) find a legendary dragon that nobody but he believes in.  The mini-film is mostly just Craig Ferguson telling stories to the kids, with traditional animation helping.  I thought this short, while predictable and repetitive, was much more entertaining than the feature film and proves, once again, that Craig Ferguson is a funny guy when he is not reading monologue jokes.

Gamer

"Why did you watch another video game movie, Brian?"  Well, voice in my head, it could be because hope springs eternal.  True, movies based on video games are, as a rule, pretty terrible.  Not that that stops people from making them, but even the more recent releases that should know better are still awful; Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun Li, House of the Dead, Alone in the Dark...you get the picture.  Basing a movie's plot on a video game isn't such a great idea, either.  Aside from the occasional gem like Scott Pilgrim, you get utter crap like The Wizard and Brainscan.  But Scott Pilgrim (and, hopefully, Tron: Legacy) proves that you can make a video game-based movie and make it as fun as the games that it is based on.  But the thing that convinced me to watch this via my Netflix Instant Queue was this fantastic plot summary they provided:

It's 2034, and humans can control and kill each other in a large-scale online gaming world. But Kable (Gerard Butler), a wrongfully convicted soldier forced to join the violent competition, tries to free himself by taking out its evil architect, Ken 

Whoa!  The bad guy is Ken?  That sounds pretty awesome!  I always knew that Barbie-loving man-slut had more backbone than pundits gave him credit for.  And 2034?  That's only two years after Demolition Man takes place!  I didn't know this was a sequel!

Actually, that plot description isn't too accurate.  The year is, and I quote, "Some years from this exact moment," which is an annoying cop-out for any sci-fi movie.  Take a stand, people; even if your claim of gang wars ripping Los Angeles apart by 1997 is wrong, Predator 2, at least you had the balls to make an idiotically bold prediction.

In the future, there is a wildly popular game, called Society.  Basically, it's like The Sims, but you pay to control real people; at home, you play on your high-tech computer, and your words and desires are carried out by people who have had nanites implanted in their brain, which assigns control of their bodies to a designated user.  The people being controlled in the game get paid, but nowhere near as well as the game's creator, Ken Castle (Michael C. Hall).  After a few years of being the world's richest man, based solely on this game, Castle introduces a new game, called Slayers.  In this game, players pay to control death row inmates in a massively multiplayer online (MMO) third-person shooter game.  So, if you controlled me, my life would depend on how well you can aim my guns and how quickly you react to the hectic warzone surrounding me.  Lucky me.  The game's biggest star is John Tillman (Gerard Butler), AKA Kable in the game, because he has outperformed every other player by a country mile; if Kable survives thirty games, he is a free man.  So far, he has completed twenty-seven, which is about twenty more than the next best player.  If he makes it out of the game, Tillman will find his wife, Angie (Amber Valletta), and child.  But he's not going to make it out of the game.  According to Humanz Brother (Ludacris), leader of the anti-Slayers/Society group, Humanz, Tillman knows an important secret about Ken Castle that Ken will stop at nothing to keep secret.  But what can Tillman do, when he's stuck being controlled by a whiny seventeen year-old (Logan Lerman)?  He's doomed!  Or is he?  No, he's probably not.

First off, I would like to congratulate this movie on its cast.  Not only was it able to snag one of today's more distinguished dumb action movie heroes, with Gerard Butler (what, was Jason Statham busy?), but the supporting cast is full of noteworthy actors.  Aaron Yoo, Alison Lohman, Zoe Bell, James Roday, Maggie Lawson, Milo Ventimiglia, and Keith David all have teeny tiny bit parts.  The parts were too small to be good or bad, but they all made an appearance.  Kyra Sedgwick underperformed in her role as a TV "journalist," but she was able to convey some of the duplicitous nature that profession requires.  John Leguizamo apparently needed some quick cash; he shows up for maybe three minutes of screen time, acts awkward (and a little funny) and is gone again.  None of these characters is important in any way to the larger story, but I was definitely impressed with how many actors I recognized in this.

I also like some of the lighter touches in the film.  I thought the occasional pixelation of the screen was a nice touch for a video game movie.  I liked that the villain was truly a monstrous bad guy, bent on world domination --- you don't see that too much any more, and it is also appropriate for a video game movie.  I was astonished that Disney let the filmmakers take a song from Pinocchio, although I'm sure it didn't come cheap.  Actually, I liked many bits that stayed true to playing video games.  Of course an obese man plays Society as a slutty woman.  Of course the Society characters wear clothes that no normal person wears, like rap video-style hot pants and latex suits.  And of course, in a shooter game played by teenagers, the dead characters get "teabagged" by those that have shot them.  Those little details did a good job of emphasizing that there is a game being played in this movie.

Of course, the plot is pretty terrible.  I don't care how much this movie wants to convince me that Slayers is a worldwide gaming/pay-per-view phenomenon, the amount of advertising shown in the "real world" for the show is just plain silly; every advertisement you see is for the game, be it dozens of full-building painted ads, or even one of the great pyramids in Egypt sporting a promo.  I don't care how popular something is, even in the undetermined future, over-saturation of a product leads to an inevitable public backlash.  The story is overly melodramatic and stupid, particularly in the moments after the climax.  SPOILER: After killing Ken Castle, Tillman politely asks Castle's cronies to deactivate the nanites in all the brains of Society and Slayer players.  They say, okay, it's done.  End of film, roll the damn credits.  Wha-?!?  The acting is about what you would expect in a Gerard Butler movie, with lots of grunting and facial stubble.  Amber Valletta, Ludacris and Logan Lerman would seem like important characters in this movie, but they ultimately serve as plot devices to get Tillman from point A to point B.  I enjoyed Terry Crews' appearance, even if it was absolutely over-the-top.  And I liked Michael C. Hall in the villain role, even though his southern accent drove me nuts; he played a despicable, unrealistic character and obviously had fun doing it.  I take that back...I liked Michael C. Hall toward the end of the movie when he was having fun overacting, but he seriously irritated me for the first half of the movie.  Characters like this are par for the course from writer/directors Neveldine/Taylor (that is their chosen professional name, so I will choose not to mock it just because it's as stupid as FaceSlashOff), who made the Crank movies before this.  They make ridiculously stupid action movies and went for more of the same here.  They weren't trying to do anything more or less than that, so I can't criticize them for succeeding in their goal.

Should this film even be judged by regular movie standards?  I think the filmmakers were intending to make a movie that mirrors the in-game experience of many of today's top video games.  The answer to my question is yes (if you don't want it judged like a movie, choose a different genre), but even if I looked at this film as an homage to violent shoot-em-up games like Call of Duty, MMORPGs like World of Warcraft, and sims like, uh, The Sims, this movie is still lacking. 

I don't care that the movie is dumb.  So are video games.  I care that it's often boring and pretentious.  Social commentary in films doesn't carry much weight when the films are idiotic, but that doesn't stop this movie from preaching that you shouldn't control the actions of others through video games.  Wow.  Way to take a bold stance on an important issue, guys.  I wonder if they are for or against turning babies into an affordable meat paste for poor people to eat?  I expected this movie to have more and better action.  Yes, there's plenty of action in the Slayer sequences, but it's just a few minutes of blurred images and bodies exploding; I wanted more action in the parts of the movie that advanced the plot.  And the plot...well, it could have been less complicated.  This could have been a story about how the user and the usee worked together to overcome the odds and survive the game.  It could have been about an underground group toppling the biggest entertainment empire in the world for corrupting humanity.  It could have been about the determination of a man to find his family again.  Heck, it could have been all about one man trying to kill the bad guy.  All of that, mixed together in a ninety minute movie, was just too much.

I suspect that this movie could definitely fall into Lefty Gold territory if I watched it with friends, but that is an experiment for another time.

Law Abiding Citizen

I wish the tag line to this movie was "...or Is He?"  Obviously, a movie with the title Law Abiding Citizen and the tag line "The system must pay" makes my tag line a joke, but...this isn't a good movie.  It should take its smiles where it can.

This is a revenge flick, so somebody needs to die, right?  Gerard Butler's wife and daughter are murdered before his eyes; there are two men involved, one that is clearly unwilling to spill blood, and the other that likes to kill and is obviously in charge.  When both men are arrested, the Assistant District Attorney (Jamie Foxx) makes a deal with the bloodthirsty crook, in order to guarantee a conviction and get the timid crook a death sentence.  Butler doesn't like this, but it was Foxx's call to make, and he made it.  Ten years later, Gerard Butler starts killing everyone involved in the case, from the criminals to the judge to the DA's office.  The twist is that Butler allows himself to be arrested...and the killings not only continue, but increase.

Whoa!  What a twist!  How does Butler do it?  Well, you have to thank Kurt Wimmer, the screenwriter for this beauty as well as Ultraviolet and Equilibrium, because it does not make much logical sense.  Okay, the reason Butler is able to kill people, even when he's locked up in prison, is because he is a strategist.  No, really, that's why.  Because he can plan stuff.  Okay, fine.  Butler's a long-established military genius who...no, wait...when the movie opens, he's an inventor of gadgets.  Hmm...well, I guess this generation changes occupations more often than our parents did.  How do you get into that field, I wonder...is there an application?  Is there a check box for revenge-fueled inventors?  No matter.  The dude can plan stuff, and that stuff is death.

Now that would be pretty cool if it was how the movie played out.  If Butler was a Bobby Fisher-level chess genius who could see ten steps ahead, it would be pretty sweet to see all the mean stuff he would set up.  Instead, what we get here is a remote-controlled car outfitted with missiles and a lot of car bombs.  Heck, my creepy high school lab partner can do that.  I will admit that there is a totally awesome cell phone-related death, but that's definitely the only original kill. At first, there is an air of mystery to how Butler does all this, but the last fifth of the movie answers almost everything.  Understanding how Butler does it could be awesome, especially if it was treated as a moment of recognition where everything clicks for Jamie Foxx's character.  Instead, we get answers that aren't terribly original or interesting.

Where does this movie fail, aside from plot originality and violence?  In the area of nudity, for one.  When Butler is arrested (at a time and place he chose) he got naked.  There is no sex in this movie, so there was no need for me to see Butler butt, but a decision was made: the arrest must be pantsless.  You'd think that this would be remarked on by somebody, either the arresting SWAT team (yes, he was waiting at his front door, naked, for the SWAT team), the judge, the lawyers or somebody.  Apparently, I live a sheltered life.

The acting wasn't great, but it wasn't bad.  Butler was his normal self, which makes accepting him as a genius a little difficult, but not impossible.  Foxx plays a lawyer that isn't nice, but he is competent here.  The supporting actors are fine, I guess.  Colm Meaney, Bruce McGill, and Leslie Bibb have all had better roles in their careers, but their work here is nothing to be ashamed of. This doesn't do much to recommend the directorial talents of F. Gary Gray, but like his other films (The Italian Job, Friday), this films ends up resting on the charisma of its stars.

The biggest problem for me was the characters.  The problem is that the two major characters are unsympathetic.  Butler's character is driven by revenge.  He doesn't want to only kill those responsible for the death of his family, but those that failed to see his view of justice fulfilled.  Okay, that's not too bad.  He's a sympathetic villain (at least, as long as his victims were convicted criminals), making a political point, but he's still a villain.  Jamie Foxx is an ADA with his eyes set on a fabulous career; he made a questionable call when he accepted the killer's plea bargain, but he did it because he did not want to hurt his conviction record.  When Butler starts killing everyone, Foxx does not get any more sympathetic; he is largely an absentee dad and is generally a cocky SOB.  You want to side with Foxx, but he's stubborn and stupid throughout the film.  So, you might think that the viewer is supposed to side with Butler.  The obvious target for Butler, once he murders the killer and the accomplice, is Foxx; after all, he made the deal and told Butler to his face that it was going to happen, regardless of Butler's feelings.  But no, Butler car bombs half a dozen people in the District Attorney's office that had nothing to do with his case.  He killed his targets' chauffeurs and protection details.  That, by any definition, goes beyond the notion of justice and makes Butler at least as bad as the men that killed his family.  Foxx is not as morally reprehensible as Butler, but he does not learn a lesson or admit guilt, so his character is still a cocky SOB.

If this film was taking a stance on vigilante justice, I might be able to understand the shades of gray with the main characters.  It doesn't, though; any point it might be trying to make is nullified by the ending.  Foxx never apologizes for letting a criminal off easy and Butler never admits that killing lawyers and judges is sometimes bad.  The ending actually makes such complaints moot, since Foxx's actions are about as far from the right choice as I can imagine.  With neither character having a developmental arc to their character's feelings on the issue in question, there's no drama.  No drama, a lack of creativity and sub-par action make this a bad movie.