Just a few weeks after the amazing biopic Control was released on DVD, about Joy Division lead singer Ian Curtis, his gravestone has been stolen in Macclesfield Cemetery in England. The inscription on the gravestone read “Ian Curtis 18 - 5- 80 ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’”. Curtis was found hanging in his home May 18th, 1980, at the age of 23. For my review of the film, type “Control” into the search feature.
Kung-Fu Panda is not a kids movie so much as it is a kung-fu movie. For kids. Jack Black is the voice of the panda, Po, who is a clumsy fat oaf with a passion for kung-fu. He is a huge fan of the Furious Five, who are the great kung-fu fighters of his little village. Each one represents a different style of kung-fu, styles which will be very familiar to any fan of the kung-fu genre of movies. The crane (David Cross), the viper (Lucy Liu), the mantis (Seth Rogen), the monkey (Jackie Chan) and the tigress (Angelina Jolie). The film opens with a dream Po is having, a scene out of so many kung-fu movies, where the bad guys show up in the restaurant where the hero is quietly eating his food, and soon he is forced to kick all of their asses, causing massive property damage to the restaurant.
Of course, this is just Po’s dream - in reality, he is not a martial arts hero, he is an employee in his father’s noodle shop. When he lies to his dad and says he was dreaming about noodles, his dad flies into a frenzy - his son has had the noodle dream! He is ready to take over the noodle shop from his father! (Another wonderful theme from so many kung-fu flicks.) In reality though, Po wants to be in the kung-fu scene. And when there is going to be a big ceremony to annoint the next “chosen one”, the martial artist to whom ultimate enlightenment will be given, he does everything he can to go watch. Through a series of mishaps (most of them hilarious), he ends up in the arena, and actually looks to be the “chosen one” himself. Of course, the choice of Po sparks controversy. How can he be the chosen one when he’s a big fat clumsy panda with no kung-fu skills at all?
The master, Shifu (voiced by Dustin Hoffman), is very annoyed at the selection of Po as the chosen one. He believes that his master Oogway (a tortoise) has become senile and chosen the wrong person (or…animal) to be the chosen one. Oogway, by the way, is hilarious. He dispenses this bizarre, cubicle-wall type wisdom that is incredibly cheesy, even for a kung-fu movie. (”The past is history, the future is a mystery, and right now is a gift. That is why they call it the present.”) But it’s delievered so solemnly that it’s awfully funny. Anyway, Shifu decides that he will do everything he can to get Po to quit, so one of the other students can claim the title of “dragon warrior”, and get a chance to read the “dragon scroll” and become the greatest martial artist in history. But Po won’t be so easily dissuaded.
Compounding the problem is the fact that Tai-Lung (voice of Ian McShane), a snow leopard, has escaped from the massive prison that holds him captive. Tai-Lung is the former disciple of Master Shifu, a kung-fu student who surpassed even his master in skill, but then went bad. He tried to take the dragon scroll for himself, but was driven away and imprisoned by Shifu and Oogway. He is now bent on returning to the temple, taking the dragon scroll, and exacting horrible revenge on all those who turned against him. Only Po, of course, stands in his way.
Kung-Fu Panda is terrific because everything in the movie rings true in terms of actual kung-fu cinema. References to other movies abound. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Kill Bill, Hero, Once Upon A Time In China, and many others. The one film I think is most closely mirrored is Kung-Fu Hustle, a bonkers kung-fu comedy that is available on DVD now, with very similar themes. The bad guy gets out of prison and comes to attack the good guy, who all of a sudden learns that he is the chosen one with crazy kung-fu skills…very similar movies, both extremely good. And in terms of old classics, Kung-Fu Panda most closely resembles the Jackie Chan comedic martial arts classic Drunken Master, with the main difference being that Master Shifu is not drunk. But substitute the booze in that movie with the food from this one, and you have many very similar scenes.
Kung-Fu Panda is definitely funny, and definitely kid-friendly, but it’s so much more than a silly kids movie. It’s a solid, very well done kung-fu film. And the resolution in the final scene is absolutely perfect. I don’t think I’m giving too much away here - it is a kids’ movie after all - but Po defeats Tai-Lung in the end with a style that has been perfectly set up over the course of the rest of the film, with Master Shifu’s teachings, Oogway’s wisdom, and Po’s own proclivities. The only difference between Kung-Fu Panda and a real kung-fu movie in this style is the fact that Master Shifu actually lives in the end. Hey - after all, it IS a kids’ movie.
10,000 BC is unfortunate in that it occupies some distressing middle ground. It IS too stupid to be a movie, but not stupid enough to be hilarious. Which means it is just one long, boring, irritating, idiotic ball of suck. This movie has absolutely no idea what it’s doing. Ostensibly, it’s about a clan of cavemen from the mountains. Cavemen who are not especially hairy, and who seem to have a fairly good command of the English language. Which is fine, if you want to just assume that they know English, so the movie can be in English. Like in Hunt For Red October, where all of a sudden they started speaking English. That was fine. We, the movie-goers accept that. But the cavemen in this movie (so we don’t forget they’re primitive) talk in broken English. Look - they couldn’t possibly know English. It’s one of those suspension-of-disbelief movie devices. Why not make them at least competent in English?
Then, the hero of the story kills a mammoth by himself, and becomes…the hero of the story. But his heart is torn, because his new status means he will get to be with his girlfriend, but he knows he was only half-assed attempting to kill the mammoth, and whole-ass running away from it. So, it being a matter of honour, he…camps thirty feet outside the village. What? It’s a good thing he does though, because it means he can see his gorgeous girlfriend (who wears makeup the whole time, by the way) get kidnapped by a marauding band of thugs on horseback. Who speak another language! With subtitles! NO ONE KNOWS A LANGUAGE YET! Make them all English!
Then the narrator comes in, several times, talking about “many moons this” and “many moons that”. Ummm…OK…so now they’re native? And the narrator, who talks like he is one of the tribe, is British? Or is he modern…ancient…native…British…demented? We just plain don’t know. Or care. What we DO care about are things like - why don’t they just call the mammoth a mammoth? They’re speaking ENGLISH, why don’t they have the ENGLISH word for things? Why call it a maddott, or whatever word they’ve invented. And why does the bad guy have a computer-generated voice when he isn’t even speaking ENGLISH? And at the end of the movie, when the good guys triumph over the aliens, did they do a ‘hip-hip-hooray’ cheer?
Yes, I said aliens. And Gods, and supreme beings, and slavery, and pyramids, and a bizarre scene where the hero talks down a sabre-toothed tiger. (By the way, THOSE things look bad-ass. Why don’t the fight those, instead of the giant Moas?) But anyway, who cares? This movie stinks so bad that nothing could redeem it. The great thing, usually, about caveman movies, is the loincloth-wearing brief glimpses of nudity. Well…that and Ringo Starr. And there’s none of that here - after all, this movie needed to keep it’s PG rating to reach a wider audience. So no nipples, no nudity. But lots of loincloths and exposed skin. This, despite the fact that they’re in the mountains. So, they’re basically wearing bikinis on a glacier. And we’re basically turning this off at the twelve minute mark.
The first 20 minutes of In Bruges are absolutely hilarious. Minutes 20 through 25 are heartbreaking and suddenly, crazily brutal. And the last 82 minutes are hilarious and brutal. And all 107 minutes of this movie are joyously, darkly, utterly fantastic. In Bruges has got to be an early candidate for best movie of 2008. It’s beginning to end fantastic, it never stops being side-splittingly funny, and at no point does it ever half-ass anything, shy away from offensive subject matter, or compromise itself in any way. And this movie could well be considered offensive. To everyone. Blacks, whites, natives, Irishmen, Americans, Belgians, and especially the Vietnamese. Fat people, pregnant people, Christians, tourists and especially midgets and dwarves. And boy, is it ever funny.
Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson star as Ray and Ken, two Irish hitmen who have just carried out an assignment in London that has gone horribly wrong. Their employer Harry (Ralph Fiennes) has sent them to lay low in Belgium, in a tiny town called Bruges. Bruges is actually a real town in Belgium, one of the prominent “World Heritage Sites” of UNESCO. It’s a famous town because most of the buildings and structures from the medieval era remain intact, and because, like Venice, it is one of the few canal-based cities in the world. There are roads and plazas, but for the most part people get around on the canals. Bruges features dozens of museums, concert halls, festivals, theatres, and sightseeing locations. And that makes the town an absolutely wonderful place to set a movie filled with such coarse language, gratuitous drug use and graphic violence.
Brendan Gleeson gives an absolutely mesmerizing performance as Ken, the hit man who is completely enamored with this quaint little antique town. His glee at seeing the sights is as charming as Bruges itself. Farrell, on the other hand, absolutely hates the place. He hates the tourists, he hates the sights, he hates the quaintness and the charm. And he has never been funnier in his life. On top of his hatred of Bruges, he has an obsession with midgets, (and their tendency to commit suicide in disproportionate numbers), abuses many substances, and is himself suicidal. There is real pathos in his character, and through all the jokes and the ridiculous situations and the violence, he manages to convey a real sense of pain, loss, and heartbreak in his character.
There is certainly violence in this film, but it’s all first-rate violence. And by that I mean that it’s violence played for laughs, then violence done to tear-jerking effect, then violence for the sake of violence, and then violence for the sake of emotional effect. And it’s all letter-perfect. In fact, just about everything in this movie is done to perfection. The recurring themes - suicide, dwarves, honour - could have seemed very contrived in lesser hands. But in this case, every theme fits perfectly into the scope and tone of the movie. A tone which is sometimes dry, sometimes ironic, sometimes totally insane, and always, always, totally ballsy. This movie does not hesitate to break any taboos, to push any limits, to test any outrage the audience might feel.
Gleeson and Farrell are amazing together. They have the sort of relationship Jules Winfield and Vincent Vega had in Pulp Fiction. And many parts of this movie - especially the dialogue and the drug use and the violence - are very reminiscent of Pulp Fiction. And these two Irish hitmen are every bit as funny and interesting as Samuel L. Jackson and John Travolta. And then - Ralph Fiennes shows up! Fiennes, one of the great actors in movies, is playing a psychopathic character that is unlike any other he has played in his career. And yet, he is perfectly cast for the role. While his arrival on the scene seems to forecast a darker, less humourous turn to the movie as it reaches it’s bloody peak. And it certainly does get even darker once Fiennes enters the picture, but amazingly, it actually gets funnier too!
In Bruges is that rarest of movies that manages to be dark, comedic, dramatic, violent, charming, sweet, bad-ass, action-packed and clever all at the same time. It even throws in a little romance. This is the first great movie of 2008, opening in limited theatrical release in February. It made a total of 8 million dollars in North America, 21 million worldwide. The Love Guru, which by all accounts is an absolute pile of crap, made 14 million in it’s first weekend. But then, how many people watch the great films at the box office? In Bruges was the film debut for writer and director Martin McDonagh, who is one of the great talents to watch in movies. Some day, In Bruges will be remembered the same way people remember Reservoir Dogs. As the brilliant first film that launched a brilliant career. And you can pick up this wonderful movie today, July 1st, thanks to Alliance Films.
In preparation for watching Walker, Texas Ranger: Season Five, out tomorrow, July 1st, from Paramount Home Entertainment, I googled “Chuck Norris”. Three of the first five websites were those Chuck Norris Facts that became an initially funny, then subsequently irritating, internet phenomenon a few years ago. Chuck Norris destroyed the periodic table, because he recognizes only the element of surprise. Chuck Norris doesn’t sleep, he waits. Chuck Norris can kill two stones with one bird. Chuck Norris does not get frostbite. He bites frost. And so on and so forth. Many of these really are funny, and that humour is derived from the fact that Chuck Norris is ridiculous. His movies are ridiculous, his TV show is ridiculous, and he, himself, is ridiculous. It could possibly have worked with Steven Seagal as well, but Chuck Norris is the very essence of what this internet stuff is about.
My first thought, when I saw Walker, Texas Ranger: Season Five in my mailbox was: What the hell? There were FIVE seasons of this? My second thought, after googling and wading through the jokes about roundhouse kicks and fists in the beard, was: what the hell? There were EIGHT seasons of this? Yes. Walker, Texas Ranger lasted EIGHT full seasons. Each one much the same as the last. Norris is Walker, the toughest, meanest, smartest, coolest, strongest, awesomest ranger in all of Texas. Think David Caruso in CSI Miami, only with a cowboy hat. And terrific karate chops. If only Caruso had karate chops! Caruso is a reasonable comparison, too, because he and Norris have similar acting chops.
Chuck Norris has the ability to smile and seem friendly to little kids (like Haley Joel Osment, that kid from The Sixth Sense, in two amusingly saccharine episodes about a young dying boy). And he has the ability to stare down bad guys and let them know he’s tough and means business. After that, he has the ability to…roundhouse kick? I guess? Every bad guy showdown ends with Norris roundhouse kicking someone in the head. That bad guy then falls out a window or off a roof, usually into a pile of straw. There are lots of flashbacks, often to Walker’s childhood. In fact, there are a few episodes in Season Five that are entirely flashbacks. The most irritating being two episodes called Last Of The Breed where Norris tells the story of an old-school wild west bounty hunter named Hayes Cooper. Of course, played by Norris also. There is nothing more irritating than a pointless flashback in an episode, unless it’s an entire two-episodes told in flashback style.
But then, this is the joy one can derive from Walker: Texas Ranger. The sheer irritating idiocy of it all. Most episodes are interchangeable, and those that are different are much worse. Every character, good OR bad, wears a cowboy hat. Perhaps this is how it really is in Texas. Bad guys wear suits and cowboy hats, good guys wear big buckles and cowboy hats. Wigtips - bad. Boots - good. It’s a simple world out there for Walker. And that theme song! That glorious, cheesy, over-the-top theme song! “The eyes of the Ranger are upon you/any wrong you do he’s gonna see/when you’re in Texas look behind you/’cause that’s where the Ranger’s gonna be”. Come ON! Is he a cop or Santa Claus? What does this even mean? Well, it’s just a convenient country-sounding tune to play while Chuck Norris stands tall with a trenchcoat and a shotgun.
You’ve got to take it all with a grain of salt. If you want to truly enjoy this show, you have to love the lack of effort put into each story. You have to love the unnecessary karate moves and the cartoon, interchangeable bad guys. And you have to love Chuck Norris. Here’s a man who built a solid, substantial career, as well as a show that spanned an amazing eight years (I still can’t get over that), solely on his ability to kick people in the face. It’s amazing. Walker Texas Ranger is amazing. Chuck Norris is amazing. Chuck Norris doesn’t act. He really is a Texas Ranger, and this show is all just a documentary of his day-to-day life. They just call him Walker, because he runs for no man.
I have always been a big fan of Karl Malden. I think he is one of the all-time under-rated actors in all of cinema. His performance in Patton is almost on a par with that of George C. Scott. And he holds his own with Marlon Brando in On The Waterfront. But Malden gets forgotten quickly, because Scott in Patton and Brando in Waterfront are two of the most incredible, towering performances in the history of movies. But Karl Malden managed to forge an incredible career, both in movies and in television. One of the few brilliant actors to wind down his career on the small screen, Malden was the star of The Streets of San Francisco from 1972 - 1977. He continued to work in the 80s and 90s, with small roles and TV movies and so forth, but The Streets of San Francisco was really the last great thing he did.
When it comes to Michael Douglas, I am of two minds. At times, I find him to be an absolutely brilliant actor (Wall Street, Falling Down), and at other times I find him tolerable in small doses only (A Perfect Murder, Basic Instinct, Disclosure). Thankfully, Streets of San Francisco gives us Michael Douglas in small doses only. What with it being an hour-long program. But for the most part, this show is the good Michael Douglas. Very few TV shows in history have had two actors of this caliber working together for such a long time - six full seasons. Volume One of the second season comes out on DVD tomorrow, July 1st, from Paramount Home Entertainment.
The best thing about the show, other than the two lead actors, is the location filming. It’s actually filmed IN the streets of San Francisco, setting for such classic films and car chases as the Steve McQueen classic Bullitt. And those movies (and TV shows) become classic because the streets of San Fran lend themselves very much to the ol’ car chase. And there are certainly some cool car chases in this show. As far as police procedurals go, this one is pretty tight, and pretty quick, and it seems like they put a lot of thought into not just the settings but the procedure as well. It’s a little more logical and well-thought-out than other police shows of the era, and each actor, including the guest stars and the extras, knows exactly what he or she is doing in every scene.
And that is really my only, minor, complaint about the show. With talents like Malden and Douglas, there was a little more leeway to let them do their own thing, I would think. But Malden gets a little typecast as the crotchety ornery older cop. And every time we start to forget that he’s sour, they throw him a line so he can make the point again. The relationship between the two, while it’s generally solid, is constantly being pigeonholed into a father-son dynamic, even when it’s kind of unnecessary. And Malden’s insistence on constantly calling Douglas “buddy boy” really dates things. It all makes the show feel focus-grouped. But it’s “1970s” focus-grouped, so it isn’t all that bad. Like, it isn’t Tila Tequila or anything.
Season Two, Volume One, features some impressive guest stars, like James Wainwright, several episodes with Leslie Nielsen, and one with Martin Sheen as a bank robber. This was the first time Sheen and Malden appeared on screen together - the second time was twenty-seven years later when Malden did a guest spot as Father Cavanaugh on The West Wing in 2000. I don’t know if anyone will care about that. But I researched it because I cared, so I figured I may as well write it down. This is no good reason to watch Streets of San Francisco. But there are many other reasons. Malden, Douglas, and that incredible city with it’s incredible streets that lead to some incredible car chases.
Come Drink With Me is an absolute classic of the martial arts genre, filmed in 1965 and released on DVD tomorrow, June 24th, by Alliance Films. It stars Cheng Pei Pei, a legend of Chinese kung-fu films, who might be familiar to modern artists as Jade Fox from Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon. Crouching Tiger, incidentally, is a film that owes a lot to Come Drink With Me, not just the involvement of Pei Pei, but also in tone and in the concept of the high-flying wire stunts that make up so much of the action. While it isn’t as visually incredible as Crouching Tiger (it WAS filmed in 1965), the costumes and set design were first-rate.
This really is one of the best kung-fu films ever made. Cheng Pei Pei is gorgeous, and incredibly skilled and convincing as a fighter, much like Zhang Ziyi today. She plays Golden Swallow, a martial arts expert and bodyguard for the royal family (who also happens to be the daughter of the king) who sets out on a mission to rescue her brother from the clutches of a group of bandits led by an evil kung-fu abbot. Along the way, she finds help from a local drunken beggar named Fan Da-Pei (or, Drunk Cat). His character is one that would become a staple of the Hong Kong martial arts movie industry - the old drunk who’s always singing and sloppy and messy and gross, but is secretly the leader of a lost clan of martial artists, and a ridiculously proficient fighter when push comes to shove. I think it likely that in the Hong Kong of the 1970s and 80s, it was quite likely that people left the drunks in the bars alone, for fear that hassling them might provoke a lethal barrage of kung-fu kicks and punches. And the drunks are always the good guys.
As the movie progresses, it relies on an impressive series of wire-aided fight scenes between Golden Swallow and the bandits, culminating with her showdown with the bandit leader Whiteface, while the drunken master takes on the evil abbot who is also his brother. Throughout, the film is part comedy, part musical, part drama, part romance, and all action. The story is very straightforward, while underlying themes run through the narrative. The major one, of course, is female empowerment. But it also touches on the idea of corruption through religion. This film is widely considered, in Asia, to be one of the best Hong Kong movies of all time, and it made a star out of Cheng Pei Pei and her drunken co-star, Yueh Hua. Their stars would continue to shine brightly in Hong Kong for years to come, and this film is as good today as it was when it was released.
Fans of kung-fu cinema might, just maybe, recognize Gordon Liu. Liu played Johnnie Mo, the leader of the Crazy 88 in Kill Bill Volume One. He also played the role of Pai Mei in Kill Bill Volume Two. This was Quentin Tarantino’s way of paying homage to one of the great actors and martial artists in the history of kung-fu cinema (as was his decision to cast Sonny Chiba as Hattori Hanzo). Liu has had a long and storied career in martial arts movies, and it is in no small part thanks to the film Heroes of the East. Which I believe was an inspiration for Kill Bill itself. A classic in the genre, Heroes of the East was one of the first Chinese movies to portray Japanese martial artists with respect, as noble and powerful warriors. Until then, the Japanese were merely convenient punching bags for the “superior” Chinese fighters.
Of course, Heroes of the East does not go so far as to say the Japanese could actually be better. Kung-fu student Ah To (Liu) is forced into an arranged marriage with a Japanese woman. She is beautiful and feisty, but insists on practicing Japanese martial arts around the house. This leads to a series of confrontations between the couple, which threaten their marital bliss. When she returns to Japan, intent on training harder on her fighting skills with various Japanese masters, it is for the purpose of becoming better so she can beat her husband and show him that Japanese styles are better. When he sends her a note, challenging her in these various fighting disciplines, it is for the purpose of finally ending their dispute. However, all these things get misinterpreted by all those around the couple, and before long Ah To finds himself in a tournament, fighting the seven top martial artists in all of Japan.
Now, this guy is a kung-fu student. A very good one, but still just a student. The idea that he could best all seven of these fighters - the best in their disciplines - judo, karate, katana, nunchaku, yari, sai, and ninjitsu. It’s fairly ridiculous. But at the time (1979), Chinese movies would not accept that their various styles (jian, three-section staff, Qiang, Butterfly swords, rope-dart and the always popular drunken style of kung-fu) could be defeated by even the most powerful of Japanese adversaries. These fight scenes are played for drama, for comedy, for action and for really cool stunts, all of which are expertly handled.
The standard themes in these films are explored - Ah To is emasculated by his martial artist master wife, there is comedy to be derived from looking at women’s boobs, there are sound effects at nothing, like when swords go through the air and make a metallic “swooshing” noise. The various styles matching up against the other styles. And the always-popular and influential “drunken boxing” style of kung-fu, a style which Ah To has to learn overnight, in a scene that is as funny as anything in a kung-fu film. Heroes of the East is a classic most of us here in North America have never even heard of, and it will be released on DVD June 24th by Alliance Films.
The main problem with Jumper, as it is with most Hayden Christensen movies, is Hayden Christensen. He is so wooden, he may as well be a totem pole. Or Steven Seagal. In this movie his love interest is Rachel Bilson, some girl who is famous from some TV show called The OC. She is not a great actress, but compared to him she’s Greta Garbo and Meryl Streep rolled into one. And then there’s Samuel L. Jackson, who will appear in just about anything ever, phoning it in as he does in the bad ones. And this really is a bad movie. The story is that Christensen is a “jumper”, some kind of person who can just disappear from where he is and reappear anywhere he likes. He robs banks with this power, builds something of a playboy lifestyle, until finally he is tracked down by Jackson. Jackson is a “palladin”, which is an organization? A species? A committee? dedicated to tracking down and killing these “jumpers”.
Christensen escapes the first time, meets another “jumper”, finds out there are others like him, and finally meets his mother, Diane Lane, who abandoned him when he was a five-year-old. Basically, the last hour of this movie is a cross-dimensional, all-over-the-world chase and escape involving the two jumpers and Jackson and the other palladins. Which is all well and good, but I’d like a little more story. Where do these “jumpers” come from? Why do they exist? Who are the palladins? Why do they want to kill the jumpers? How come the jumpers don’t always know that there are others like them? Any back story at all would be nice, but there is none. Zip. All of this leads to a fairly mundane, inexplicable and silly conclusion after a mundane, inexplicable and silly movie.
But I kind of like it. In a way, Jumper is delighfully idiotic. The scenes where buses fly through time and space to emerge in the Arabian desert are insane. The plot twists and the ideas that characters have and the complete lack of effort from Jackson and Lane are, in a way, hilarious. The pointless and contrived involvement of Bilson, the unecessary high-school-bully scene, the wannabe heart-rending scenes with Christensen and his father…it all adds up to enough lunacy and idiocy and stupidity to make this movie somehow watchable through it’s mercifully short hour and a half running time. I can’t say it’s a good movie without feeling a little nauseous, but I can say that you may well enjoy it.
When I bought my Blu-Ray player, almost a year ago, it came with 5 free Blu-Ray movies. I had to fill out a little card checking off the movies I might like, and they would be shipped to my house. Because it was almost a year ago, there weren’t many movies out on Blu-Ray yet. So although I could grab Full Metal Jacket and The Prestige, the others were a crap-shoot, so I just picked the three I hadn’t seen. One of those was S.W.A.T. I think. I can’t really remember. In fact, I had completely forgotten I had ever placed this order, since it took eight months for it to arrive. And when it did, it came with a not saying there had been a “slight delay” in shipping because one of the titles I had requested was no longer being made and they had to replace it with something else. And maybe that something was S.W.A.T. I sure hope I didn’t order it on purpose.
And that’s why the movie, although it’s old, merits a review. Because people who are loving the Blu-Ray technology are buying up everything they can on that medium. Every movie that’s out there on Blu-Ray gets serious consideration from the owners of the players. And I am writing this to warn those of you who may want to purchase all these films to avoid SWAT. At all costs. It doesn’t matter one bit how good it looks on your TV, it is a giant waste of your time. Yet another vehicle for Colin Farrell to play an Irish tough guy, SWAT concerns the LAPD SWAT team, the “toughest, meanest, best, coolest, heaviest, deadliest, most powerful, most bad-ass, most attractive fighting force in the world”. Or something.
Colin Farrell, Michelle Rodriguez, LL Cool J, Samuel L. Jackson, and some other chumps train to be SWAT. Farrell is getting a second chance at the team, one that comes after a dust-up with his out-of-control former SWAT team-mate. I wonder if that preamble will be referenced later? Of course it will! For the first hour of the movie, the team trains. And then they pass their course. Much to the chagrin of their captain, who hates them! We also get to see the evil antics of some foreign bad-guy. He might be a drug dealer, or a human trafficker, or a counterfeiter or a distributor of fake Faberge Eggs. We have no idea. We just know he’s evil, because he kills folks, and he will obviously eventually be the guy who faces off against the SWAT team.
So after an hour plus of six guys looking tough, talking tough, flexing and posing and saying bad-ass things to each other while wearing mad-cool sunglasses, there is actually…the plot! Of the movie! Which involves the entire city attacking the SWAT team, who respond by looking tough, talking tough, flexing and posing and saying bad-ass things to other people while wearing mad-cool sunglasses. There is actually no story in the film, no compelling character, no single scene that’s cool enough to justify the action portions of the film…no reason at all to watch this hunk of junk.