Hostel (Unrated Director's Cut)

31 Days of Horror

I was not looking forward to Hostel.  Judas Pato claimed that it was pretty hilarious --- and I almost always agree with Judas --- but my horror movie guru, Danny O'D, pointed out that this was a movie about torture, which I share John McCain's attitude toward: it's a no-no.  Ugh.  But I'm pretty open to watching whatever someone suggests, so I chose to finally watch Eli Roth's Hostel.  I liked Roth's Cabin Fever, but this...?  This feels like something that is just outside my comfort zone.  Will that be a good thing or not?

Hostel begins with a few stupid Americans, Paxton (Jay Hernandez) and Josh (Derek Richardson), and their randomly picked-up Icelandic buddy, Oli (Eythor Gudjonsson), partying in Europe.  They like to party, Josh has no game with the ladies, and Oli wants to stick his penis in anything that moves.

Yes, even them, with their Eli Roth-nipples

The guys, being stupid Americans (and Icelanders), come back to their hostel after curfew.  Thankfully, a cool guy, who totally smokes pot and has a weird mole on his lip, lets them into his apartment.  There, he tells them that sure, Eurpose is okay for sluts, but Eastern Europe -- Slovakia, in particular --- will have them up to their necks in pussy in no time.  Failing to take the time to realize that "up to their necks" could be face-first or feet-first (let alone the desirability of such a state), the boys head to Slovakia.

"We do not fear vaginal asphyxiation"

On the train, they meet an unnamed businessman (Jan Vlasák) who is creepy as you can get, while still eating salad.  Nothing happens on the train, though.  Once they arrive in the Slovakian hostel, they are told that they are going to have to share a room with other people, which is totally lame.  Until those "other people" are total slut babes, that is.

If this was CSI, we would hear Roger Daltrey screaming "YEAAAAHHH!!!"

After a night of booze and sex with their roommates, Paxton and Josh awake to find Oli missing.  Well, maybe he walked his one night stand home, and he'll be back in time for breakfast.  Or lunch.  Or dinner?  That's weird.  Oli's a horn-dog, but he also loves to send text messages with photos of him boning random chicks, so it's especially odd for him to be absent AND silent via text.  You might think that a missing friend would ruin the party for Pax and Josh, but that's not the case; Paxton rationalizes that they will be leaving tomorrow (for Spain) anyway, so they can either be bored or have sex with beautiful sluts.  Emotional angst takes a backseat as the boys try to consummate that thesis.  There's just one problem...the boys seem to be getting drugged.  Pax accidentally gets trapped in an alley and passes out, but when he wakes up, Josh is also missing.  There's something sinister at work here, and Paxton is determined to get to the bottom of it.  That's a choice he's definitely going to regret.  Why?  Um...in a hyphenated word, torture-porn.

If this looks too "edgy" for you, then it is

The acting in Hostel is surprisingly decent.  There are no good actors in this film, but Jay Hernandez was as good as I've seen him here.  Granted, he's usually pretty mediocre/awful, but even his limited acting ability didn't get in the way of his character's believable reactions and motivations.  Derek Richardson was fine as the bitchy, conservative member of the troupe, but that also made him fairly unlikable.  Eythor Gudjonsson, though, was the saving grace of the main cast.  Oli was awesome.  In a film filled with profanity and lewd remarks, Oli stood out, thanks to the joy and unique nature of his work.  Jan Vlasák was suitably creepy in a small, but important, role.  It could have been a more substantial part, but I blame that moer on the script than on Vlasák. 

"I'm the one paying them!" could have been epic with a better script

Barbara Nedeljakova and Jana Kaderabkova were absolutely perfect as the bait for this trap; both girls were sultry and sexy when they needed to be, but sinister and strung-out when they were outside their assigned playtime.  There are only two other (substantially supporting) roles worth mentioning in Hostel.  The first is the absolutely random appearance of Japanese director, Takashi Miike, who plays a member of the Elite Hunting group; this cameo is obviously a show respect for Miike's awesome Japanese horror movies, but I wish he had something more substantial to contribute in his few lines.  On the bright side, the special features interview with Miike was occasionally interesting, in a philosophical way.  The final noteworthy member of this cast is Rick Hoffman, who excelled at being a hateful stereotype of American business aggression; I think I liked Hoffman's performance, but he does such a good job of being unsympathetic that I'm not sure whether to appreciate or hate him.

"Hey, dick, I'm a little preoccupied here"

Hostel is only the second film directed by Eli Roth, but it shows a surprising amount of confidence on the part of the director/writer.  One thing at a time, though.   Roth's direction shows a talent for building suspense; the torture scenes bordered on masterful, with regard to suspense.  The overall pacing of the film is a little uneven, and it would have been better if that sense of suspense or dread was carried through more of the movie, but this is a torture/horror movie --- let's be honest, we're lucky to get anything this competent.  Roth's best moments lie in particular scenes; he does a fantastic job making uncomfortable moments feel absolutely excruciating.  That doesn't translate into the movie as a whole, which has an almost comedic tone at times, but those moments are what sticks out most in the memory.

In other words, you recall the torture more than the boobs

Roth's writing is, at times, a strong point in Hostel, but not so later.  If you like profane penis references, then Hostel has the script for you.  Personally, I don't care about dick jokes one way or the other, but I prefer it when they are legitimately funny, instead of just foul-mouthed.  Hostel doesn't have a lot of clever lines in it, but it is jam-packed with semi-comedic rudeness, disguised as the-kids-really-talk-like-this.  While that may be true, I would have hoped for funnier dialogue.  The script feels a little forced, like it's trying too hard to be edgy.  As for the plot as a whole, I think Roth missed the mark with the final act of the film.  I don't buy Paxton as a savior, even with his drowning story, and I definitely don't buy him as a ruthless kidnapper/probable killer.

[To be fair, that was my reaction to the Unrated Director's Cut, which has a different ending than the Theatrical and Unrated editions.  After seeing the other ending, I stand by my statement.]

Hostel is a movie about torture, so how violent is it?  Not as bad as you would think.  The first half of the movie is almost devoid of violence and gore, so it really isn't until Josh gets kidnapped that the viewer sees anything gross.  Even then, the violence is not nearly as unbearable as I had imagined it to be.  Of course, "not as unbearable" does not mean that this is a gore-free film.  The worst moments are probably when Josh has his Achilles' tendons slashed and when the Japanese girl gets her face torched.

I don't want to look for it, but I'm sure there is a Japanese fetish porn site that loves this picture

Well, okay, the dangling eye was obviously a makeup job, but the puss that oozed out of her wound was disgusting.  There just wasn't as much torture as I was expecting, I guess.  While a lot of people die in the film, most of them get their just desserts in action-ish sequences, where they are not helpless victims.  There is far more implied violence than there is actual onscreen violence; that doesn't mean this is a film that is violence-free, it just has a lot of dead bodies in the background of the main action.

Thankfully, the hunchback body-part-retriever doesn't deliver puns.  In English, anyway.

Eli Roth is famous for supporting both extreme violence and nudity in his movies, and Hostel is no exception.  If you are a fan of female nudity, there are over a dozen breasts pairs to ogle.  Are they gratuitous?  Mostly, yes.  However, they are gleefully gratuitous, which somehow makes it seem less sleazy, although I'm not sure I can explain why. 

What's the verdict on Hostel, then?  I fully expected that I would cringe my way through this movie, but I found it surprisingly watchable.  There are some elements in this film that I loved --- the fact that there were no subtitles added to the sense of isolation, the girls did a good job, and there was enough humor to offset the uncomfortable moments --- but there were just as many that I disliked --- the inconsistent tone, the "edgy" dialogue, the action movie final act.  If I could change only one thing in this movie, I would have had more suspense, even if that meant longer torture scenes.  The fact that the most memorable scenes are so short, and yet have such a central importance to the plot makes this an uneven story, at best.  Given the actors Roth was working with, I think this movie turned out surprisingly good for what it is.  "What it is," though, is a couple of graphic scenes wrapped in another hour-plus of stupid character syndrome.

Takers

Matt Dillon is apparently trying to become the king of the crappy heist movie.  Not even a calendar year after he starred in the armored car heist flick, Armored, he co-stars in Takers, which focuses on --- you guessed it --- an armored car heist.  Congrats, Dillon, in finding the least entertaining robbery scripts in Hollywood.

A group of friends --- Gordon (Idris Elba), John (Paul Walker), A.J. (Hayden Christensen), and brothers Jake (Michael Ealy) and Jesse (Chris Brown) --- work together once a year to pull off a daring bank robbery to finance their ridiculously high-rolling lifestyles.  Seriously, these guys have some really, really nice stuff.  After their most recent job, which was pulled off flawlessly and without firing a shot, the group is ready to lay low for a while before they get together and start planning their next heist.  That's when Ghost (Tip "T.I." Harris) shows up and makes everybody feel awkward; Ghost just got out of prison after serving time for getting caught during one of the crew's old robberies.  He never told the police anything about the others and they, in turn, kept his four million dollars safely invested.  One day out of prison, though, and Ghost has a high-risk, high-reward robbery lined up --- he has the delivery route for a pair of armored cars that are carrying upwards of twenty-five million dollars.  To put that in perspective, in the robbery that opens the film, they got away with about two million.  The plan is very risky, and the fact that Ghost has the plan so soon is suspicious, but the real issue is that this is a one-time offer, because the armored cars are doing that route in only five days.  What do they do?  Well, in the words of Gordon, "We're takers, gents. That's what we do for a living. We take."  That doesn't sound trite at all.

They have the whole "walk slowly away from the explosion" bit down pat.

Meanwhile, it turns out that the supposedly perfect robbery from the beginning of the movie was not entirely perfect.  The stereotypically obsessed with his job (and, therefore, not his daughter) Detective Welles (Matt Dillon) takes the robbery personally, for some reason.  Maybe it's because he likes a challenge, or maybe the easily identifiable salute given by Jesse (while masked) to the security camera rubbed him the wrong way.  Whatever the reason, Welles winds up following a string of highly coincidental and circumstantial evidence that leads him to the crew, as they plan the armored truck job.  Will he be able to out-think the thinkers on this one?

That's an interesting angle to take with any sort of robbery story.  Generally speaking, the stories are told from the perspective of the thief, so the audience naturally sympathizes with them and wants the bad guys to succeed, even though they are stealing.  Takers spends substantial amounts of time with Detective Welles and his partner as they try to crack the case.  Why?  My best guess would be a poor screenplay, but that's just a guess.

The acting in Takers is --- not surprisingly, given the cast --- not that great.  Idris Elba got to use his genuine London accent and he was given the most emotional depth in the film, but it's not enough to make his character seem smart or likable.  Paul Walker is actually the most likable character in the movie, if only because his character is pretty straightforward; Walker's acting skills are minimal, but he came off looking pretty solid here.  Michael Ealy 's character is given a few opportunities to differentiate himself from the others --- he is in love with Zoe Saldana's character --- but he doesn't do much with his chances.  Hayden Christensen didn't have to emote, so he was surprisingly not terrible here.  He did get to make some truly unfortunate faces during an action sequence, though.

Chris Brown and Tip "T.I." Harris did about as well as you might expect from professional musicians; their dialogue often sounded wooden and awkward, and they posed when not delivering their lines.  Brown provided a surprisingly entertaining parkour chase sequence, though, which certainly dwarfed his acting shortcomings.  Matt Dillon's character was pretty one-dimensional, even though we get a glimpse into his family life; he tries to be interesting, but his acting chops are not strong enough to overcome thin writing.  Jay Hernandez was similarly shallow as Dillon's partner that is obviously crooked; we find out his kid needs dialysis treatments and he has a fantastic houseon a cop's salary.  There are a handful of other recognizable actors in small roles --- Marianne Jean-Baptiste, Steve Harris, and the always slimy Johnathon Schaech --- but they are just there as minor role players, nothing spectacular about any of them.

Acting lesson 1: Paul, show me your "thinking" face.

Heist movies are not about the characters involved, usually.  The best movies in this genre are fun to watch because you get to see meticulously plan and then pull off some ridiculously convoluted and complicated robbery.  You don't want the robbers to get away because they are stealing to support their family or because they are going to fund a charity or anything else --- you root for the robbers because they are doing some cool stuff.  By splitting the focus of the story between the robbers and the police pursuing them, Takers complicates what should have been the easiest part of the story.  I'm not saying that you can't tell both sides of a cops-and-robbers tale, but you shouldn't unless you plan on actually developing your characters.  This movie has eight important characters, with recognizable actors filling in bit part roles; it's hard to tell who we're supposed to care about.  What do we learn about the three main characters?  Gordon has a sister, Detective Welles is an unintentionally crappy dad, Ghost is a petty jerk, and John...um... well, the most personal thing we learn about his character is that he enjoys poolside threesomes.  That's not enough information to actually care about any of those three, but it's tons more development than the rest of the cast gets.

The heist itself --- the armored car one --- is fairly interesting, but it's nowhere near as cool as it should be, either.  The planning stages are whirled through, with absolutely no level of difficulty.  When I finally saw what was being done, I was underwhelmed.  I was also confused.  If Ghost is potentially untrustworthy, why is he given the job with the least amount of risk and the highest probability of escape?  Whatever.  Despite the shaky hand-held camera to indicate that action was taking place, I was pretty bored by the time the heist attempt happened.  Luckily, that scene was followed by Chris Brown's extended (and mostly unnecessary) parkour sequence, which was the highlight of the film.

Takers spent a lot of time in development hell before finally coming out in the summer of 2010.  Director John Luessenhop took almost four years off the project to care for his ailing son, T.I. spent eight months in prison, and Chris Brown made the public relations mistake of beating the shit out of his girlfriend.  The movie was finally released, though, that we can all agree on.  It's just not very good.  Luessenhop doesn't develop the characters on-screen and every action sequence looks like it was filmed by someone having a seizure.  I will give credit that it appears that the actors did most of their own stunts, but they might have been more impressive if the camera had a tripod.  This isn't that bad of a movie, but it commits the greatest crime a robbery movie can make --- it's boring.