Film reviews – by Adam Vaughan
Film of the week:
Other reviews:
Rating key – ◊ Total turkey | ♥ Drooping hotdog | ♥♥ Pick n Mix | ♥♥♥ Bit of fizz | ♥♥♥♥ Popcorn-tastic | ♥♥♥♥♥ Not to be missed
The Raid (18) ♥♥♥
From Welsh born director, Gareth Evans, comes this high kicking, fast punching Indonesian martial arts bonanza which features some of the best fight scenes and stunt work I’ve seen in a long time.
The Raid
A special ops team is sent to an apartment block controlled by a ruthless crime lord. Their task is to take him out. Once inside, they must work their way up, clearing each floor, before reaching the boss. However, they become locked inside and must fight for their lives as an assortment of henchmen are sent to kill them.
Its video game set up is hardly mind-boggling, but it’s the cast’s fists and feet that do most of the talking. And the stunt sequences are quite extraordinary. Evans certainly knows how to keep the action moving. It’s like a Jason Statham movie on Prozac.
The bloody, frenzied fights at times have a violently balletic quality to them. There’s little else going on beyond the skirmishes, but if it’s all-out action you’re after, The Raid delivers. And then some.
The Dictator (15) ♥♥
Sacha Baron Cohen’s unique form of wit has lost its bite in The Dictator.
Both Borat and Bruno sought to highlight America’s prejudices through Cohen’s idiotic central characters. Collaborating with director Larry Charles once again, The Dictator is more of a straight knockabout comedy than the mockumentary framework of the previous two films which managed to capture – whether staged or not – many an awkward exchange.
What this means is that a lot of the edge has been taken off the set pieces which occur when Cohen’s inept dictator, Admiral General Aladeen, is embroiled in a mistaken identity farce when visiting America. Granted, some sequences are funny, such as when Aladeen now beardless and unrecognisable as a Middle Eastern oppressor, boards a helicopter tour of New York with some terrified tourists.
However, the gag soon runs thin and Cohen’s script resorts to simple vulgarity over acerbic satire. This should be, and was expected to be, a lot funnier than it is.
Dark Shadows (12A) ♥♥
Director Tim Burton follows the monumental success of Alice in Wonderland, with an even more diluted and consequently less involving vision.
Now, don’t get me wrong, of course directors can do different things. It’s just that Burton’s excursions into whimsy are less interesting than his more macabre adventures. For my money, Sleepy Hollow and Sweeney Todd are better films than Beetlejuice and Alice. The problem with Dark Shadows is that it can’t decide whether it wants to be a ghoulish revenge story or a vamp out of water comedy.
Based on a 1960′s gothic soap opera of the same name, Dark Shadows revolves around the Collins family who established the fishing village of Collinsport in the eighteenth century. The son, Barnabus (Johnny Depp), is one day cursed by a witch named Angelique (Eva Green), who works at the family’s mansion, Collinwood, in a jealous rage when he picks another woman over her. Angelique turns Barnabus into a vampire so that he spends the rest of his days mourning over the death of his beloved, whom fell to her death while under the witch’s spell.
Johnny Depp in Dark Shadows
Two hundred years later, Barnabus awakens to find himself in 1970′s America and very much out of touch with the times. Angelique has taken over the fishing industry in Collinsport and his family home has become run down. Barnabus returns to Collinwood and vows to this generation of Collins’s that he will restore the family business to its former glory.
Firstly, there are too many stories going on at once: There’s Barnabus seeking vengeance on Eva Green’s witch who cursed him for spurning her advances; saving the family fish canning business; Helena Bonham Carter’s therapist (now living with the family) becoming attracted to Barnabus; The arrival of Collinwood’s new governess Victoria (Bella Heathcote), who bears an uncanny resemblance to Barnabus’s old love; Michelle Pfeiffer as the mansion’s matriarch keeping the vampire’s secret; as well as an unnecessary cameo from Alice Cooper. If this sounds convoluted and muddled, it’s because it is.
There are some funny moments, such as a prelude leading up to a newly awakened Barnabus confusing a McDonald’s sign as an emblem of Satan and a sequence in which, talking to a group of stoner hippies (or unshaven young people as Barnabus describes them), the vampire quotes Love Story.
However, these instances are few and far between in a disappointing eighth collaboration between Depp and Burton.