Movie Reviews - new films reviewed

Pete Garrison (Michael Douglas) is a Secret Service agent and is responsible for protecting the First Lady (Kim Basinger) - and he has an affair with her. When a weaselly informer tells him there is a plot to assassinate the president (David Rasche) and a traitor in the Secret Service is involved, David Breckinridge (Kiefer Sutherland) is put in charge to uncover the mole. Pete and David were best friends for 10 years - until David accused Pete of sleeping with his wife.
All agents undergo a lie detector-test, and because of his affair with the First Lady, Garrison doesn’t pass. On top of that, somebody has found out of his affair with Sarah Ballentine, the president’s wife, and attempts to blackmail him, and suddenly all evidence suggests Pete Garrison is the traitor.
Garrison goes into hiding, and David Breckinridge and rookie Jill Marin (Eva Longoria) are after him, while Garrison uses his skills to try to uncover the plot, identify the mole and find the assassins before it is too late.

The story sounds familiar, and everything you expect you will see - men in black suits wearing Ray Ban sunglasses, guns, sinister assassins, the hot but negligible sidekick (Eva Longoria), and Jack Bauer … sorry - Kiefer Sutherland in Jack Bauer-light mode.
There is a feeling of not only the TV-show 24, but also of Kevin Costner and Clint Eastwood in the air: In THE BODYGUARD, Kevin Costner wasn’t on duty when Reagan got shot - here, Michael Douglas is the Secret Service agent who took a bullet aimed at Ronald Reagan (braver than Clint Eastwood IN THE LINE OF FIRE who failed to do the same for JFK), and in NO WAY OUT, Costner was also looking for a mole while being a suspect himself.
The acting is fine - Michael Douglas is reliable as usual and in almost every scene, it’s Kiefer Sutherland’s best big-screen performance since many years, Kim Basinger does make a fine First Lady, and Eva Longoria is a reasonably hot sidekick:

But the film itself is neither original nor remarkable, just very very average.
The best thing was really the SUPERMAN RETURNS trailer that was shown before the main feature. (Superman Returns - Kate Bosworth pictures)

September 11, 2001. Four hijackers take control of flight UA 93, while three other planes are also hijacked and steered into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Flight United 93 will be the only of the total four hijacked planes to not reach it’s destination.

In quasi-documentary style, Paul Greengrass tells the story how it may have happened, with the focus on the events on flight UA93 and on the ground, in the Air Traffic Control’s crowded rooms. Without falling back on any cheap tricks to stir emotion, without big stars, American Heroism ™ or star-spangled flag waving, UNITED 93 the film captures the essence of 9/11: the confusion, the disbelief, fear and shock.

Unknown actors and real air traffic controlers lend the movie an air of authenticity, Todd Beamer is not played by Bruce Willis or Sylvester Stallone, and he does not shout “Let’s roll”. What we see are real everyday-people who happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

UNITED 93 is more than just another movie about a historic event, it’s a monument for 9/11, the day that changed the world.

Just be aware this is not a documentation, and especially the last minutes of the film don’t correspond with the 9/11 Commission’s account of events. There is no evidence of the passengers actually overwhelming the hijackers before the crash.

Note to Paul Greengrass: Don’t overdo it with the wobbly camera work! Handcams were used for realism and easy use in cramped spaces, but just like in THE BOURNE SUPREMACY, it’s a bit too much of the wobbling.

*** SPOILER WARNING ***
When a ‘cure’ for the mutants is discovered, Magneto (Ian McKellen) assembles an army of mutants to wage war on humankind (or at least a laboratory on Alcatraz) and destroy the cure. But that’s not the only concern of Professor Charles Xavier (Patrick Stewart) and his X-Men (Wolverine/Hugh Jackman, Storm/Halle Berry, Iceman/Shawn Ashmore, Kitty/Ellen Page).
At the same time, Dr. Jean Grey (Famke Janssen) returns from her watery grave (X2) - but she is now Dark Phoenix and has almost unlimited - and uncontrollable - powers. Her first victim is former lover Cyclops (James Marsden), and when Professor Xavier and Magneto both court her to join them, the Professor is her next, and Dark Phoenix joins Magneto’s army of mutants.
Can the remaining X-Men and Dr. Hank McCoy/Beast (Kelsey Grammer) stop Magneto’s Brotherhood of Mutants?
Will Rogue (Anna Paquin) make the decision to take the ‘cure’ to get rid of her powers which condemn her to loneliness?
Who will survive, who will lose their powers and who will die?
And where is Nightcrawler (Alan Cumming) who was the best thing in X2?

X-MEN: THE LAST STAND is announced as the last X-Men film, and it is also the weakest of the trilogy. Gone is director Bryan Singer who made the first two X-MEN movies work, gone is the love to the stories, the characters and the comics which are necessary to make a decent film out of a comic.
Gone are beloved characters like Nightcrawler, Sabretooth, and before long, Cyclops (disintegrated by Dark Phoenix), just when he finally got rid of the stick up his a** and became sort of cool, Professor Xavier, and Mystique (victim of the ‘cure’ and immediately being dropped like a hot potatoe by Magneto when she becomes ‘normal’).
In come new mutants with no characterization and - let’s face it - crappy powers. For the good side, Beast (he is blue, can read hanging from the ceiling upside down, and is sort of strong or knows martial arts), Angel (has wings, can fly, has maybe 5 minutes of screen-time), Kitty (a kid who can walk through walls). For the Dark Side, Juggernaut (Vinnie Jones, looks like a crazy wrestler and is, like, totally strong), Spike (a human hedgehog …. well ….), and Multiple Man (who can split himself into multiple men), and a girl that can move really fast - and these are Magneto’s elite! - and countless nameless and faceless others with probably even more crap mutant powers not even worth mentioning.
Returning characters are wasted - Cyclops killed early, Mystique robbed of her powers, Professor X killed, Storm looking like she robbed the maiden’s mop to use it as her hair and still hasn’t learned to use her amazing powers properly (she can sort of fly now, but still watches with big eyes as the enemy approaches and prefers to exchange girly-fisticuffs instead of zapping the enemy hordes with lightning or stopping them with some storm!), Rogue doing nothing (except being slightly annoying) - just like the use of mutant powers:
Already mentioned Storm darkens the sky when she’s moody but that’s about it, Iceman freezes a lake for some skating, Multiple Man multiplicates just to misguide the government about the whereabouts of Magneto’s army and to surrender, and Magneto himself uses his astonishing powers to impressively rearrange the Golden Gate Bridge to lead the mutant army to the laboratory island (probably because Juggernaut won’t swim) but then just watches as his followers are being slaughtered or ‘cured’ - together with Pyro, who loves most to match his powers with Iceman in pubertal duels.
Famke Janssen’s Dark Phoenix is excused for using her powers strictly as an expression of her inner suffering because she can’t control them, but she sadly looks like she spent the three years between X2 and THE LAST STAND under water.
Hugh Jackman does kick some butt, slicing through the ‘evil’ mutant army, but the Wolverine from the first two films would puke when he could watch himself here, delivering corny lines and maybe even considering to use the stick Cyclops doesn’t need anymore on himself.
The dialogue in general is awful, the ‘emotional’ scenes are boring, it’s just some action scenes that save THE LAST STAND from disaster.
R.I.P. Cyclops, R.I.P. countless nameless mutants, R.I.P. X-MEN THE MOVIE TRILOGY.

*** SPOILER WARNING ***
When Jacques Sauniere (Jean-Pierre Marielle) is found dead in the Louvre, his body arranged like Leonarda da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man and a pentagram painted with blood on his bare chest, Harvard Professor and symbologist Robert Langdon (Tom Hanks - as boring as it sounds) who happens to be in Paris is asked for help by the French police. Together with cryptologist Sophie Neveu (Audrey Tautou - nice) he gets sucked into a secret war between ancient and secret societes, the mysterious Prieure de Sion (Priory of Sion) and Opus Dei being the most prominent of them. And he goes on a long paper chase to uncover the secret of the Holy Grail / Sang Real / Royal Blood - the alleged secret that Jesus was married to Maria Magdalena and had progeny. Who still live amongst us.
‘Alleged’ secret? Well, the story is not exactly shocking latest news. The 1982 book HOLY BLOOD, HOLY GRAIL by Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh and Henry Lincoln tells this story - not as fiction, but as the result of years of investigation. And Dan Brown’s bestseller THE DA VINCI CODE tells the same story - this time as fiction. The book was published in 2003.

Those who have read the book(s) or are familiar with the tale can sit it out, enjoy the performance of Ian McKellen (wo is an excellent Sir Leigh Teabing) and the nice camera-work while ticking off solved riddles and visited locations. Viewers who don’t know anything about the story in advance (i may be mistaken here because i’m quite familiar with the books and legends) will probably find the plot to be as mysterious and elusive as the legendary Prieure de Sion itself, and may resort to clinging onto familiar faces (”this is Tom Hanks, he must be the hero, even if he is totally boring”, “a big part of this movie playing in France, i was just waiting for Jean Reno to appear!”, “isn’t this DOC OCK from SPIDER-MAN 2? (Alfred Molina) Surely he must be the bad guy”, “hmmm, Gandalf … probably a good guy. But he’s also Magneto from the X-Men. Might be a bad guy after all”).

Hans Zimmer’s score will also leave no doubt about what are the interesting / exciting / emotional scenes, and the obtrusive use of flashbacks will make it TOTALLY CLEAR which character suffers from which childhood trauma and why. It’s as if director Ron Howard didn’t trust his actors to properly communicate their emotions and wanted to be REALLY SURE YOU GET IT! Of course it might also be scriptwriter Akiva Goldsman’s fault - he of BATMAN AND ROBIN fame. Howard and Goldsman also stole the riddle-solving scenes from their own movie A BEAUTIFUL MIND and mixed it a bit with Tom Cruise’s virtual-desktop-gesticulations from MINORITY REPORT.

All in all the film is not badly acted and still a gazillion times better than NATIONAL TREASURE, but suffers from a totally unimaginative script and direction and a lack of originality, so only one burning question remains: What was the purpose of making this film? Read the book(s).

“Give me the Rabbit’s Foot” demands Owen Davian (Philip Seymour Hoffman). “I’ll count to ten, then i’ll shoot her.”
Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) is tied up and horrified. ‘She’ is Julia (Michelle Monaghan), his newly-married wife. And he already delivered the Rabbit’s Foot, didn’t he? But Davian doesn’t listen to Ethan, and continues counting. ” … ten!”
Back in time we go to see how it all started and how Ethan ended up in this situation. Ethan has retired from his dangerous work for the IMF (Impossible Mission Force), works as an instructor now and wants to build a family with nurse Julia who thinks he’s working in traffic control. But when one of his best disciples, Lindsey Ferris (Keri Russell), is captured on a mission, he reteams with old mate Luther Strickell (Ving Rhames), Zhen (Maggie Q), and Declan (Jonathan Rhys Meyers) to haul her out. The rescue mission is a failure, but at least they find a clue on how to get Owen Davian, big-time weapons dealer and high on John Brassel’s (Laurence Fishburne) priority list. It’s one more impossible mission for Ethan Hawke then - go to the Vatican and capture Davian. This mission is a success - but once back in the USA with their captive they get attacked and Davian is freed - not before promising Ethan he will let his girlfriend bleed and kill him in front of her eyes.
Then everything starts to fall apart - Julia is kidnapped, Ethan must retrieve and deliver the Rabbit’s Foot to Davian within 48 hours to get her free, Lindsey’s last message to Ethan suggests his boss Brassel is working for Davian, and Ethan is arrested because of his unauthorized mission in the Vatican.
Ethan escapes and goes to Shanghai in search for the Rabbit’s Foot and to rescue his wife (he married Julia between missions in the hospital). In typical Ethan Hunt-style - roof, rope, parachute - he steals the ominous device (some kind of biological weapon) and reports in to Davian. Ethan is being picked up, drugged and wakes up in chains - and Davian demands the Rabbit’s Foot and starts counting …

J.J. Abrams’ and Tom Cruise’s declared goal for this movie was to make Ethan Hunt more human, to bring some real emotion into the franchise and to raise the stakes for Ethan - enter Julia, a pretty nurse and Ethan’s fiance. So we see some scenes of Ethan’s private life and his relationship, but the almost Star Wars Episode II+III-standard dialogue doesn’t convince, and when the action unfolds, the short ‘family’-scenes are forgotten.
Ethan Hawke doesn’t need personal reasons to give 110% anyway - he is as dedicated (or obsessed) about his missions as always, and Cruise delivers - he runs, jumps from roofs, runs some more, shoots, runs again and fights with a Terminator-like determination.
With M:I III you get what you expect: one action-sequence after the other, with no disturbing dialogue or plot in between slowing down the action. And the action is high-tech, fast, explosive and loud. But do we really care? It takes a bloody long time until we are finally back to the gripping scene where the movie starts - too long. So long that you become bored and wonder when the magnificent Philip Seymour Hoffman will finally start counting to ten.
While you are waiting, you can take notes from which films MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE III is stealing right now - the rocket/bridge attack from TRUE LIES, the not-knowing-her-husband-is-a-secret-agent girl also from TRUE LIES, the cringeworthy “romantic” dialogue from various STAR WARS Episodes, the break-in scenes from MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE I + II, the airport scene from TOP GUN, the gadgets and “secret-agent”-missions from all JAMES BOND movies …
The supporting cast is ranging from good to great (Philip Seymour Hoffman - the best James Bond-villain who wasn’t in a James Bond-film), and Tom Cruise is …. Tom Cruise.
If you like your movies big, loud and with a lot of explosions and don’t care about character, plot, dialogue or originality - here you go!