Category Archives: Live Action Movie Reviews

Now You See Me 2 Review

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With the first Now You See Me there were definitely a whole lot of magic tricks on display. Most of them wouldn’t work in real life though so by the end you might as well say it was real magic. There were a ton of plot twists as well so things kept on spinning. Well, this film continues that as the stakes get higher and the magic even more fantastical. It’s a fun film but after a while you have to accept that the main characters know real magic for this to make sense.

We pick up about a year after the first film. The Horsemen are currently in hiding since they are nationally wanted fugitives at this point. Still, Atlas is sick of hiding and asks the Eye to make him the leader over Dylan. The Eye says that might happen someday so just keep pressing on. Shortly afterwards Dylan arrives with the next mission. It’s time to expose another corrupt company. The only problem is that the Horsemen are quickly overwhelmed by a new villain and kidnapped. They must now obey Walter’s orders and steal a tech device or they will all be murdered.

Trust me when I say there is really a lot going on here. Pretty much every character from the first film returns and then you have quite a few new villains popping up here. It definitely raises the stakes and you have to really pay attention if you want to keep up with all of the various plot twists as well. There are so many twists that you feel like the film goes in a full circle where each villain has a plan that’s around 15 layers long. It’s pretty impressive even if it’s also a bit hard to believe at times.

First off, it is fun to see the magic the way the film uses it. Every trick appears quite grand. The characters are good at talking really quickly while they divert your attention and pull out some other kind of trick. The only weakness is part of the fun would be trying to solve the tricks yourself but with half of these appearing to be pure sci-fi there isn’t anything to figure out. Character teleport around the rooms and move as if they were as fast as the Flash. Not only are you suspending disbelief at this point but you actively know that the film is mocking you.

It’s a blast as long as you do look at it through a supernatural lens though. These magicians were scouted by the Eye after all so why wouldn’t they have some kind of ability with the supernatural right? It adds up if you ask me and then it definitely helps clear the air. The special effects are really on point as well. Everything looks really sharp and high tech. You feel like you’re at a futuristic magic show.

The soundtrack is also impressive. It may be a bit limited but the tunes are memorable to be sure. So even if you hear the same track a lot, it becomes more of a theme for the main characters than anything else. The writing itself can be rather shaky at times though. As I mentioned, the film loves its twists but much like the first film, it feels like the twists are here to be here even if they don’t make sense.

A good twist does not necessarily need to be foreshadowed but it should make sense. There have been many great twists in cinema like the Joker intentionally getting captured in the Dark Knight, Eggman tricking Tails into confirming the validity of the Chaos Emerald in Sonic Adventure 2 Battle, Darth Vader calling Obi Wan’s bluff and stabbing him in Star Wars, etc. Then you have twists that don’t really make sense in titles like Attack on Titan that make you think. This is definitely in the latter where even with hindsight if you look back at the films they don’t make sense.

The films have you in a whole merry go ride as things go back and forth and it’s all entertaining but I wouldn’t say it meshes. Still, you can look through it like most. The twists are entertaining and taken at face value, they can be a blast. The script itself also has a lot of great dialogue but also some cringey lines as well. You’ll be shaking your head at quite a bit of the dialogue. So the writing is a mixed bag. The story itself will keep you very well engaged but it’s clear that making everything fit in with the story is secondary to shock value.

As for the characters, I would say the antagonists really steal the show here. First we have Chase who is McKinney’s brother. He’s a pretty terrifying antagonist because he can mind control the other characters with ease and is also able to read body language perfectly. Effectively eh can do anything that McKinney can do to an even higher degree. The guy is twisted and very confident in his abilities. You won’t be forgetting the guy anytime soon.

Then you have Walter who is another genius. The guy enacts a pretty big plan to take down the main characters while barely lifting a finger. He may not be quite as high up on the list as some of the other masterminds but he has his moments. He was a fun antagonist and certainly did well in building up his own team.

Thaddeus can’t be forgotten either as he wants revenge after being captured in the first film. He knows that he has a lot of ground to make up after all so get ready to watch him act all knowing from his prison cell. Turns out you can do a lot from there. He’s incredibly confident and smug as always and is an entertaining character.

Likewise I enjoy Arthur for most of the same reasons. He’s not quite as clever as some of the other characters but he is incredibly rich and has a lot of connections. As a result he can really open doors that nobody else can and doesn’t have to hide from the others. You can definitely tell that this is the kind of guy who definitely won’t hide from anyone.

As for the heroes, we have Atlas who shares the lead spot with Dylan. Atlas was effectively the leader for most of the first movie so he’s not happy to be playing second fiddle this time around. The guy is pretty smart and as talented as ever so it’s easy to see why he doesn’t want to be a backup. He’s my favorite member of the team and does a good job of taking the lead.

Then you have McKinney who likes to take things easy and rarely gets serious. This film is pretty hard on him since there really isn’t a whole lot that he can do against most of the villains. his mind manipulation is still a pretty deadly ability though and not something to be trifled with. I’m not a big fan but he’s not bad.

Next up is Jack who is still the most hands on member of the group. He’s really good with card tricks and has even started learning hypnosis. As a result he now has two special talents which has to make him the most powerful member of the group overall. He’s more charismatic than some of the other characters. While he’s a junior member, I expect Jack will continue improving rapidly.

Lula is the new member of the group as she replaces the previous heroine. Her debut appearance is impressive as she speed blitzed Atlas multiple times and basically humiliates him by staying one step ahead. Her talent is being an expert escape artist and she does this really well. I’m not a big fan of her character though as her main personality trait is being as loud and obnoxious as possible for distraction purposes. Or it might be her main personality but she’s a bit more crude than the rest of the team.

Finally you have Dylan. It’s pretty neat to see him as the commander while still messing with the FBI in the intro. The guy was shown to be the ultimate mastermind at the end of the first film and he keeps that hype here. There’s one scene in particular where he has to fight a bunch of opponents at once and manages to keep them at bay using his magic. Now that’s impressive and not something that just anybody could do. He made for a solid character and one of the best heroes.

Overall, Now You See Me 2 definitely succeeds as a fun thriller. Perhaps calling it a heist film would be more appropriate though. The music is on point, the special effects are really cutting edge and I enjoyed the cast of characters. When you put that all together you have a recipe for a very successful movie. What holds me back from calling it great is that the writing could definitely use a lot of work. It’s a fun film but one that doesn’t hold up under scrutiny. There is a lot of replay value though so I’d consider it a higher tier 7 but it just can’t make it to the next bend. There’s a fun sequence where the characters are all throwing cards around while everyone on the opposing side forgot to bring their glasses so they don’t notice anything. I thought that was pretty creative and a good way to show off their sleight of hand.

Overall 7/10

Curse of the Fly Review

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Curse of the Fly is interesting with how it mixes together a ton of different plot threads that don’t have much connection to each other. First off, it’s called Curse of the Fly but there is almost nothing to do with the actual Fly movie. The enemies don’t even look like Flies. You have the main heroine who has escaped from an insane asylum but she doesn’t seem crazy at all. Is this place actually a criminal organization? Then you have the actual mansion of criminals performing human experiments. It does make for an interesting combo even if it’s really mixed up the whole time.

The film starts with Patricia escaping from the Asylum and meeting up with a passing driver named Martin. Martin figures she can use some help since she seems distressed and takes her over to a hotel. She has a mysterious past that she won’t talk about and Martin doesn’t want to dig his own skeletons out of the closet so he asks if she wants to be married. She agrees and they head over to his place. He’s fairly well off but nobody in the house seems happy to see Patricia. Has she just stepped into a more dangerous situation than she had expected?

Now the opening scene of the movie definitely does drag considerably. It’s a long montage of Patricia running away from the house which just seems to be there for fanservice. The whole prologue of her getting married to Martin is also more low key as you’re just waiting for the characters to get to the house. Will Martin’s allegiance be to his father and the experiments or to his new wife? Unfortunately it’s the former and he really puts her in a ton of danger. There is so much happening it’s hard to even put the review in order but lets take it piece by piece.

The secret Martin is hiding is that he and his father are still conducting human experiments including teleportation and a drug that will allow Martin to stay human. See if he doesn’t have the serum in time then he starts turning into a Fly. I guess you can say that’s the true connection to the Fly film but even this isn’t really treated like a big deal half the time. It only happens maybe 2-3 times in the film.

Now this wouldn’t be all that bad on its face. If anything there would be no reason to keep it a secret. Well, maybe the Fly part but not the experiments. Where things really go wrong is when we find out that they are also running experiments on humans and keeping them locked up in cages. Among them is Martin’s real wife. So…the guy is married and yet he went on to marry someone else? That’s an instant game over for Martin. Not only is this a rebound but hiding the fact that he is actually married is a huge deal.

Martin’s definitely the antagonist around here. Even when Patricia nearly gets attacked by these creatures the guy doesn’t do much. In fact he does worse than nothing since he tries to convince her that she is crazy. Keep in mind that at this point he knows she is from the asylum so he is intentionally using that as leverage to try and make her doubt herself. It’s a pretty low blow.

Now, it should not have worked though. It’s always annoying when someone sees something and just gets talked out of it. At least Patricia has more of an excuse than most characters because of the asylum background but her self doubt should not have been enough to overwhelm her own senses. She saw everything clear as crystal. That should have been the end of it, she forces Martin to come clean and now they’re on even ground. It’s too bad that didn’t quite work out.

Also, we do have a brief subplot where the inspector from the Asylum is coming around to try and figure out what’s going around. He talks to a colleague who knew Martin from a while back. They try to make some headway on this case but as you can probably guess they don’t really do anything until the climax. I did like the inspector’s confidence though. Initially Martin refuses to see him but the guy calls his bluff with a warrant and gets in. Martin doesn’t want the press around due to his shady experiments and the institution doesn’t want them either so both of their goals align in that respect.

Not to worry, we’ve got more plots around. So Martin’s brother Albert who was also in on the experiments a while back but he did the smart thing and ran out of there. He completely got out of the business but where he made the mistake is when he decides to come back and help out after getting some pressure on him from the father. He absolutely should have stayed far away and that would have really ended up helping him a lot. Going back to the scene of the crime could only end badly.

You also have the rest of the staff doing their best to mess with Patricia the whole time. She probably wouldn’t have caught on so fast if the maid wasn’t letting the old wife run around the house or putting pictures of her by Patricia’s bed to mess with her. There’s a lot of mind games going around and it’s clear that the main staff wanted Patricia out of there. Ironically they’re the ones who bolt out of there pretty quickly.

Patricia is one of the more reasonable characters compared to these guys. At the same time, it shows why you shouldn’t marry someone you’ve only known super briefly because it’s not going to end well. Since she had her own secrets she was more open to letting Martin keep his, but that definitely didn’t go over very well. I’d say she should have bolted the moment she saw the inhuman monster running around the place.

Martin’s father is much more open about being a villain and that’s why he beats Martin. The guy puts science above everything including other lives. He’s very up front about this and is always giving lectures to the other characters with how many risks they take. He reminds me of Lou Chaney with how he sounds and talks as well. The guy’s just very charismatic. Not charismatic enough where he should have been able to convince everyone to go along with his crazy schemes though so Albert and Martin are not off the hook. They’re all mass murderers at the end of the day.

The writing is pretty solid though. It’s got that old Universal type writing style where the characters are all sophisticated and talk like mad scientists. The creature designs are fairly memorable. Really this film should have just not called itself anything having to do with the Fly and I think it would have gone over a lot better. Even with Martin becoming a fly for some reason, there isn’t enough of a connection for this to really make any sense. The movie’s only a little over an hour so it was really cramming a lot of content into it.

That said, it’s for that reason that the film stays interesting I suppose so I can’t dock too many points from it. The characters aren’t too smart but I wouldn’t say that’s a writing thing though and just the characters meant to be that way. Like when the maid antagonizes one of the villains. Doing so can only end one way so you’d think it would be better not to say anything….but I guess that’s how it goes. The film ends on a bang and so by the end you feel like you really had a complete adventure here.

Overall, Curse of the Fly does hold up pretty well as a suspense film. There’s a lot of dramatic music throughout which holds up pretty well. The core story may be basic but it’s pretty engaging at the same time. The body count is surprisingly high for an old film and it really shows how crazy some people will get while still thinking they’re on the right side. Meanwhile, the idea of switching around who the main antagonist may be is something that wasn’t used a whole lot back in the day so that’s different. Initially you think Patricia may be suspicious since she refuses to talk about why she is at the Asylum (We never find out why even as the film ends) and she had to break out which is a red flag since she doesn’t quite tell Martin about this. Yet when she enters the house we find out that Martin is the real villain here. (even if the film doesn’t always treat him like the antagonist) If you’re looking for an old school thriller to check out, this is a good one to pick up and you don’t even need to bother checking out the first film since they really aren’t connected.

Overall 7/10

Two Weeks Notice Review

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Next up in the rom-com adventures sees what happens when a member of Team Corporate falls for an Environmentally conscious person. Can he stop burning down trees long enough to get her to his side or will she convince him to be a better person? With a dynamic like this the romance is going to be rather unbelievable right from the start but the film doesn’t really try to make it any more realistic either.

The movie starts with Lucy convincing her friends to try and lie down in front of a wrecking ball so they can stop the latest demolition. Her friends are brave but losing your life is pretty high stakes. Ultimately they are all pushed to the side and Lucy meets the leader of this company. His name is George and he figures they can make some kind of deal. He really needs an assistant and maybe this way it’ll also distract her from all the protesting. This way she can’t get in the way of corporate. So he ends up hiring her and Lucy is thrilled because she can now make a difference across the world….or can she?

It might have been a bit idealistic of Lucy to assume she could really change the corporate ways but you can’t blame her for trying. It’s good to at least make the attempt but my issue is that she didn’t get his word about saving the community center in writing. A big part of why she agrees to help is that he agrees to spare the community center as part of their deal. Sadly Lucy is satisfied with a verbal promise which becomes an issue near the end of the film since corporate won’t have any of that.

Lucy’s a solid heroine who is fighting to protect the small towns and individual businesses. She does a good job with trying to slow the company down but as the film points out, at the end of the day you can’t really stop corporate. Slowing them down is really at the extent of what she can freely do here. By going inside the company she can make a bigger difference so while her parents (Who are also really involved with the protesting) are skeptical, I’d say she made the right call.

Unfortunately it doesn’t feel like she has done a ton of good within the company by the end. The fact that the community center was not formally saved was a big blow. Lucy does realize early on that this whole adventure isn’t as useful as she expected it to be but when she tries to quit, George blocks her. More on this when I go to the romance front but things don’t always go well for her. I have to take some more points from Lucy based on the ending of the film.

Then you have George who definitely isn’t likable. I’m cool with him being on team corporate since someone has to be but the guy can’t do anything on his own. He has to call Lucy to decide what shirt he wants to wear and even to know what to eat. He’s shown to be completely incapable of making a decision on his own and naturally he falls for any girl he meets. So this guy has no strength of character, he is definitely not romance material.

That’s really where the film falters. A rom-com is half romance after all so you need that part to still hold up with the rest but it really doesn’t here. There is really nothing to connect Lucy and George. Sure, the idea of opposites attracting and all is pretty popular but this guy is literally tearing buildings down and living the corporate life. Lucy has been protesting against him and the company for years so that really shouldn’t change just because they work together.

It gets worse when you consider that he was immediately attracted to June and trying to pull some moves with her as soon as she joined the company. Lucy even caught him at a very suspect moment with her at one point. Finally, you have his decision near the end to destroy the center. By this point Lucy has been burned way too many times for this romance to ever even have a chance of leaving the ground. There should just be no way that this would ever work out.

Also, remember how I said he blocked her from taking any other jobs? Lucy does get fed up with all of this at one point and tried to leave but we find out that George personally called every company and threatened them so they wouldn’t hire her. It worked perfectly and this should have further destroyed his image with her. Again, there’s just no way the relationship should work.

While Lucy and George are the only main characters, you also have Lucy’s rival June. She is really only added to the film to add in some drama and show why George can’t be trusted. She is very quick to try and jump into the romance as well and talks awfully tough to Lucy considering she just got into the company. As a result I wasn’t really a fan of hers. I preferred Lucy’s other subordinate who may have been super nervous all the time but at least he did his best.

I’ll give the film props for also not making the company just look super sinister the whole time. The place actually had a pretty good work culture the whole time and when she left, Lucy had made some friends. They may have disagreements on how to conduct business but in most companies the average worker is just trying to get through the day so it would have been a bit much if they were all gung ho about tearing the city down.

On the whole the humor is okay. There aren’t really any laugh out loud moments which is unfortunate. It’s all fairly low key so you’ll have a few good lines here and there and then a lot of cringe moments like when Lucy catches George and has to try and bluff her way out of the place. The writing is passable so this film really ends up being pretty much in the middle. It’s not bad but I wouldn’t say it’s that good either.

Overall, Two Weeks Notice is very by the books. The story gives you the quick dynamic between Lucy and George and then the rest of the film is them quickly learning that in any movie it’s impossible to just have a professional business relationship. They can’t escape each other no matter what happens. I’ve seen quite a few rom coms in my day and I would recommend most of them over this one. It just doesn’t leave much of an impact and maybe that’s why it took so long to watch this review since I saw it about a month ago.

Overall 5/10

Straight Time Review

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This review is of the edited TV-14 version of the film. All thoughts below should be addressed as such as a review of the unedited version would be more negative

When you’ve got a film about a ex-convict attempting to turn his life around, you have to wonder if he will make it through to the end or if he’ll go more Ocean’s Eleven style where the message he learned was just not to get caught next time. Well, no matter how you slice it, Max wasn’t quite ready for the journey that was to follow here. The movie ends up fumbling relatively early on and is never able to get up again.

The movie starts with Max being released from prison. He’s been in and out of prison a whole lot over the years but maybe this was his last time. His parole officer is Earl and he reminds Max that there are a whole lot of strict rules and regulations that Max will be expected to follow. Max decides to break those rules immediately as he picks his own place to sleep and basically tests Earl’s patience.

Later on Max is finally able to get a job and starts complying but also immediately asks out a girl named Jenny. She agrees to go out with this man she has only known for 5 minutes and things are looking good except that Max goes back to hang out with his friend Willy who does a lot of drugs. This naturally ends up putting Max back in jail temporarily through a mix-up. Now Max is wondering if he will ever truly be free or if maybe he should just go back to his life of crime.

That’s the dilemma he finds himself in, but Max really doesn’t do himself any favors. For starters, he should have been following the rules of his parole pretty seriously. Messing up on day 1 is pretty bad. Then you have the whole trying to get back into the romance game so quickly. At least give yourself time to try and get used to the swing of things right? He jokes about dining and dashing immediately which isn’t a good idea.

Max gradually deteriorates throughout the film and I can definitely say that I wasn’t a fan of the guy. It didn’t seem to be like he really made an honest effort to try and turn over a new leaf. He definitely shouldn’t have allowed his friend to do drugs in his room and then he was very quick to just decide to start robbing places again. The instant you turn to a life of crime you’ve lost any sympathy points you might have had.

You’re rooting for the cops to capture Max as soon as possible. The guy’s just unhinged and is a danger to society. Based on how often he has been captured though, I don’t expect that he will be on the loose for long. As for Earl, he is the kind of guy who definitely doesn’t like to be shown any disrespect. Max starts defying him early on which leads to a very quick breakdown in their relationship. As a result he goes pretty tough on Max. He seems like he would have probably been a decent parole officer otherwise.

As for Jenny, my main issue with her is that she just seems way too at east with the whole situation. She meets up with Max and within minutes she is prepared to go out with him. Then she gradually learns that he’s a criminal and has a very minimal reaction to it. He starts getting rather rough about this as he yells that he can do what he wants and that he won’t change who he is. Jenny just accepts this as well.

It’s nice that she is so dedicated but you never really understand why she is. It’s like she just woke up one day and decided that Max must be a good guy. At least she’s a positive influence compared to his other friends Willy and Jerry. Willy and his household just seemed really messed up when Max got invited over. The whole place just didn’t have a good feeling and part of the tension is likely because of the drugs. I would have cut out the whole visiting scene entirely.

Meanwhile Jerry is probably the smartest character here in terms of when they’re actually going through with the heist but at the same time, he had a pretty good job and was making good money so deciding to go back on a life of crime wasn’t very smart. He didn’t put himself in a good position at all. If your partner isn’t leaving the crime scene in time then it’s definitely time to ditch him and escape before it’s too late.

Aside from the unlikable main cast, the movie just isn’t super interesting. It’s more frustrating than anything when you have to follow a bad main character. You see him making all of the wrong decisions time after time and can only shake your head. This is one of those films where it feels like Max creates all of the problems for himself.

Additionally, the romance in the film is just way too rushed and unrealistic. It goes too far in such a short amount of time and the film really didn’t need to include it. The way Max acts all defensive and treats Jenny despite him causing all of the trouble just makes him even more unlikable. They have a one night stand in a scene that goes on for way too long and definitely shows more than it should. All of these elements bundled together show that the film was trying to be a lot more gritty and intense than it needed to be. As a result, it wipes away any good parts that it might have had.

Overall, Straight Time won’t leave much of an impression so you’ll probably forget about it before long. I think it’s a story that could have been handled a lot better but the execution wasn’t on point. To a large extent the film just feels dirty. Every house/landmark in the film is as old as can be. The prison is deteriorating, the motel hasn’t been kept up to date, etc. The characters are morally bankrupt and it feels like the whole town is living in a bad neighborhood. Even the light hearted scenes never quite get all the way to being happy scenes as you feel a sense of dread. With some good characters that can be an effective combo but with nobody to root for, it just adds to the dragging experience of making it to the end here. I’d definitely say to give this one a hard pass.

Overall 1/10

Buried Review

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This review is of the edited TV-14 version of the film. All thoughts below should be addressed as such as a review of the unedited version would be more negative
Being buried underground is definitely something that would be tough to deal with. In most situations if you’re stuck somewhere you figure that there has to be a way out. If you’re underground though then you’re really stuck. If you try punching your way out then the dirt will fall in and crush you. You have limited air so you can’t stay underground and going through the sides will have the same effect as going higher up. In a way your best bet is going down and hoping there’s some kind of tunnel but the odds of that are incredibly low. So…it’s a pretty tough situation to deal with.

The movie picks up with Paul waking up in a coffin underground. He is unable to escape and really has nowhere to go. The only items on him are a pen, glowstick, cell phone, knife, and a small carton of water. He will have to try and think of a way to get out here but it won’t be easy. He was a truck driver who went on a mission to Iraq in order to help people. Unfortunately his men were all shot and then he found himself here. The person holding him hostage says that he will only free Paul if he gets the guy millions of dollars by the end of the day. That’s going to be a hard sell but Paul will have to try and make some calls.

Now, usually in situations like this I say you can’t give in to the demands because they’re not going to save you anyway. Like in this film the guy tells Paul to make some videos and injure himself in the hopes of being let go. You feel like the guy is going to leave Paul to rot anyway so why give in to the demands right? If someone holds you at gun point and tells you to get into the car I’d say your best bet is to run. Worst thing that can happen is he shoots you like he was going to anyway after all.

This one is unique so Buried did a good job of limiting the options here. Paul is already buried when he wakes up so there is absolutely no escape for the reasons I mentioned in the intro. His only hope is making a phone call. To his credit, I can’t say that there are any things to really have been done differently. He calls a ton of people but he’s somewhere in Iraq and has no idea where. He’s underground as well so the odds of anyone finding him are pretty slim. His best chance is to keep on calling but that can get tiring.

The only thing I could call him out for was keeping his lighter on so much. That will definitely get rid of the air extremely quickly. It’s a high pressure situation of course but I’d like for him to have kept it off to at least buy himself some more time., He does tend to fly off the handle quite a bit as well. The people on the phone were usually not very helpful either.

This movie is very serious to be sure but there were a few callers that were so outlandish you almost felt like the film was trying to throw in a little humor. You had some people who couldn’t understand a fairly simple recount by Paul who was explaining how he got buried in here and then a lawyer calling him from Team Corporate with some bad news. There’s even a scene where as Paul is explaining things the screen keeps on zooming in on him. It felt like a parody moment but I suppose the idea was to show how many times he has to repeat the same exact story and each time nobody is very helpful. So that was definitely pretty intense.

Now, while I give the film points for originality and thinking of a new scenario, I have to take away points for almost the same reason. First of all, Paul is stuck in a coffin for the duration of the movie. That means there isn’t really anything happening for large portions of the story. It’s pitch black when he isn’t using the lighter or the phone. There’s a lot of time with him just rolling and trying to make a call to someone. As a result the film is very slow paced. It’s interesting but you can forget about it having any replay value.

Additionally, if I were the film I would have kept it as more of a suspense thriller and kept the hostage situation out of it. Things escalate once the calls start coming in and this becomes a much darker movie with the realization that Paul isn’t the only one in a predicament like this. The whole situation is out of his hands and just gets progressively worse and worse as the movie goes on.

Buried’s ending is also pretty awful. It was bad enough where the film nearly lost everything but I’ll keep it at a point for at least trying something new. I do think the idea is interesting but honestly it would be better with two people. They can be in separate coffins with walkie talkies or just a slightly bigger one but it would help for banter and dialogue. I don’t think you can really effectively have a film with just one person. The people on the phone help in terms of dialogue but it does get old very quickly.

With two people you can still have a whole lot of banter or at least the ability to bounce ideas off of each other. Otherwise you’re just too limited in what you can do and that’s something that happened to this film really quickly. If you threw Paul a bone like some kind of tangible hope he could grab onto that would be good but as you listen to the guys taking his calls you don’t expect he is in a great spot. If I were Paul I would have answered the corporate call very differently by the way. A bunch of well placed “No” answers would have really wrecked their plans at the very least.

As a main character Paul is good. He seems like a reasonable character who was just trying to do the right thing. Unfortunately he was in the wrong place at the wrong time and it ultimately ended up costing him big time. He really has to go through a lot during the movie and never really gets a chance to rest.

Overall, Buried has an interesting premise but I wasn’t a fan of the execution. The whole movie feels just like that…a slow execution. Paul is slowly watching as his time is running out with the air getting low and help always seeming so far away. Death by suffocation is definitely a really tough way to go. It’s not as bad as drowning in my list but it’s all relative once you get to the grisly deaths like that. He has to go through the whole movie with that fear in the back of his mind as he doesn’t know if he’ll live or not. Throw in the random snake, Terrorists, and having to watch other people die on the phone and you’ve pretty much got Paul under torture for the entire film. Buried isn’t a pleasant watch and I’d say to skip it until they announce some kind of reboot or remake which may be able to change things up and give you a better experience.

Overall 1/10

What a Way to Go! Review

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It’s very hard to make you sympathize with a main character who doesn’t want to be rich but this film is going to have a go at it. It’s a fun comedy film that embraces how crazy this concept is. I thought the film may have let their foot off the pedal for a bit in the second half and eased up too much but in the end you’ll definitely have a good time.

The film opens up with some guys dropping a coffin and realizing that they may get sued for all of their dollars. We then see Louisa running to the IRS and trying to give away her vast wealth to the government. They definitely can’t have that and instead take her to a psychologist: Steffanson. Steffanson wants her to explain why she would possibly want to give away her millions of dollars like this. Well, she doesn’t want the money because it always results in the death of her husbands. The rest of the film is effectively an anthology of stories styled after different kinds of romance films.

The first story introduces us to Louisa who really despises money. The reason for this is because her mother is obsessed with it and that has always left a bad impression with Louisa. The richest man in town is in love with her and the Mom is thrilled because their family will finally be rich. Louisa doesn’t like this though so she decides to instead get married to the poorest guy in town, a man named Hopper. Hopper is a man of strong character and family values who refuses to sell his house to the rich tycoon. Crawley (The rich guy) doesn’t take kindly to this and wants to bring Hopper down no matter what it takes.

This was a good way to kick things off. It was my favorite story of the bunch and I also thought the film was at its craziest here. Between Louisa’s mom referring to her as a product and Hopper not noticing when Crawley intentionally splashed him with mud you had a lot going on here. Hopper is really portrayed as someone who is as oblivious as possible but part of why I liked the guy is that he does step up when he realizes that this is hurting his wife’s reputation as well.

Naturally the moral of the film is that money itself is evil so this naturally corrupts Hopper. He starts working unlimited overtime and is never home when it counts. He becomes a millionaire and takes over the city quickly but it comes at the expense of hanging out with Louisa which is a shame. Hopper ends up dying of overwork but at least he did leave Louisa well off and still seemed like a good guy. He ended up letting work become his priority which was a grave error but he meant well. In this story there’s not a whole lot that Louisa could have done differently so I don’t think she should have any regrets.

Next up Louisa moves to France where she falls in love with a poor painter named Larry. All right, this time nothing could possibly make him turn rich right? The two have a pretty happy marriage for a while until one day Louisa suggests that maybe Larry should use some music for his painting machines instead of random noises. (He paints with a pretty genius style whereby sound vibrations power his machines and perform the artwork) Unfortunately the music works too well and Larry becomes rich almost instantly. Like with Hopper, Larry has no time for Louisa anymore and is promptly crushed by his own robots who decided to turn evil.

Ignoring the Sci-Fi ramifications of this, it was a pretty intense way to go out. Louisa didn’t stay in France to stop these would be terminators but I’m sure she wishes she hadn’t mentioned something about the music. Still, it’s hardly her fault to throw in a constructive idea, particularly as it was the first time. It is iffy that we’re on the second marriage so soon…but more on that later. Now she is even richer but still has nobody to share it with so Louisa realized it was time to move on.

Next up, Louisa married a guy called Rod who is already rich. Since the guy is so rich, her deadly curse should not affect him right? After all, before death occurs you have to get money in order to activate it. Unfortunately she is not so lucky. His assets still manage to multiply multiple times over and not even trying to get away from the money is enough to save him. This is probably the weakest of the segments mainly because the film doesn’t even try to give a reason for her to like him. It seems like she only married him to test the curse to be honest and of course this backfired. They knew each other for a matter of minutes before they got together. (Slight exaggeration I suppose but a few days at most)

Finally, we get closer to the opening scene as she meets up with a struggling dancer named Pinky. I suppose “Performer” might be more accurate as he does a lot of routines. Things are going well with their marriage until Louisa says he should try performing without all of that crazy face paint he wears. Pinky obliges and becomes a worldwide hit. Oh the shame. Now this is probably the only case where you could blame Louisa because you’d think she would have recognized the curse being in effect at this point right? Still, it’s a hard way to live when you have to watch your every comment or else you may end up becoming rich.

It was a fun segment and all but by now you could definitely guess how things would play out. The climax in the present is pretty intense though. I actually ended up liking the Psychiatrist as the main villain since he clearly had a plan going. That said, how the actual movie ends could have been a little different. I would have ended about 1 minute sooner from where it did which would have been a funny way to close things out.

So on the whole, the humor lands pretty well. It was fun to see the quick segments during each part where Louisa describes the kind of film each marriage was like. It was a nice tribute to the various films although the French one would get a little dicey. If that is an accurate picture of what those romance films are like then I can say those would probably lose out to the others on average. The writing is solid even outside of the humor so the characters are fairly well rounded and memorable. I would have changed the ending but what we got was still decently good.

It’s a comedy film so you don’t want to take things too seriously but at the same time, Louisa did marry like 4-6 times in one movie. That’s an awful lot of relationships over the course of a lifetime right? It just seems to go way too fast if you ask me. In fact, what that tells me is that they were all rebounds and these relationships weren’t all that genuine. I would say the only person she may have truly loved was Hopper and even then that was in part to spite her family so it’s hard to say. Marrying this many times just seems crazy even if there was no curse.

Also, despite all these crazy happenings, I still can’t imagine just trying to toss all your millions like that to the government. At least find some charities or businesses that you want to donate to but have some kind of a plan. If you just throw it away like nothing then that seems like an awful waste to me. Particularly since Hopper literally died to try and give her a better life. Surely throwing the money away would be a disservice to his memory.

Beyond that Louisa is a fun character. She has a good disposition and does her best to have fun. She was content even without any money in each scenario so it’s not like she’s very high maintenance. She has a lot of bad luck though which is definitely unfortunate. Things just don’t end up going her way which is most unfortunate.

Overall, What a Way to Go is a pretty interesting idea for a film. It’s certainly hard to frame being rich as a bad thing but I suppose if your husband is going to die immediately after you get rich each time then I can see why that would be an inconvenience. It’s just not worth it if you have to have the money by yourself. The film would be even better without the rebounds but then you would have a totally different film. I do think that it starts to lose steam towards the end as it just doesn’t shake things up as much as the opening half. It should have gone a little crazier and had the characters be more exaggerated in order to end on a high note. Still, this is a good film and I would recommend it to anyone looking for a good rom-com.

Overall 6/10

Fire in the Sky Review

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All right, it’s time to look at a true story about someone who was abducted by aliens and lived to tell the tale…..? Hold up, wait a minute…something ain’t right! Aliens are already around and kidnapping people? Now, I will grant you that I don’t 100% believe that there is no chance of aliens appearing but if you ask me, we’ll all know when they show up. In this day and age I don’t think it’s a secret that could be contained and I highly doubt they will be going around and abducting people without causing a scene. It just doesn’t seem likely. Also if they’re advanced enough to reach us from some unexplored solar system while we still struggle to get more than a few people to the Moon at a time…we’d be pretty much doomed.

So, we start the movie off with a group of loggers heading to the mountains for work. It’s made clear from the start that none of them get along all that well except for Mike and Travis who are best friends…or so we’re supposed to believe. I have my doubts personally. Anyway, they are heading home when a spaceship appears. It zaps Travis with one of their mega lasers and he hits the ground hard. Mike and the gang immediately assume he’s dead and despite being “Best Friends” Mike decides to hightail it out of there. After driving for a while Mike’s conscience finally catches up to him and he turns back. Unfortunately, Travis is no longer there.

Now these guys are considered the primary suspects in a murder case. After all, with no body and a lot of bad blood in the group, many people think that Mike and the gang murdered Travis. Now since this is based on a book Travis wrote, you know he eventually returns and at least that helps stop the murder charges but their social reputations have all been hurt quite a bit. The film hurt itself in quite a few ways too. Granted, it is better than the Communion but I would still give this film a thumbs down.

Lets start on the iffy parts because that’s the most fun. Right off the bat the film tries to really hit you with a sledgehammer of how aliens are so real that someone randomly mistakes a street light for a UFO. Yes, the sheriff is driving in his car when he suddenly sees UFO lights approaching. He semi panics but then looks up and it’s just the lights that flash when a train is approaching. Presumably as he takes this route all the time he would have encountered this a lot so…why so scared now?

Now this next one was a doozy for me but you can technically rationalize it. So Travis calls Mike up after he escapes the alien ship and explains that he is by a gas station and needs someone to save him. The gang show up but now Travis can’t talk at all and is so traumatized that he can’t be touched either. After a lot of rehab and work in the hospital he is able to say a few words at least and blames Mike for all of this. How was he able to make the call though?

The defense you can give to this is that the trauma hadn’t sunk in yet and he was able to make the call before it all set in. The adrenaline stepped up and all that. It’s a defense and you can make it work but it still seems like a stretch. I feel like it would have been better for a grand light to be in the sky or something that let the characters know where he was. I think that would have worked a lot better.

As for his adventure in alien world, I think they probably shouldn’t have even included it. The film’s close to 2 hours and I want to say that this scene doesn’t happen until the final 20 minutes of the film. By that point you are so far to the end and the whole thing had been played out in a pretty realistic way that you might as well have kept it that way. If all we knew about the alien abduction was Travis’ word on it then this would really feel like a pretty accurate description of what went down. We would have what Travis claimed happened here and the interesting visuals at the beginning.

By showing us the inside of the alien ship it definitely steps more into full sci-fi town. The aliens seem rather weak individually so I have to say Travis missed his chance to win this one. At one point he knocks one of their helmets off and the alien looks ancient. I’m talking Yoda levels of old. The room was an anti-grav zone so Travis needed to use his momentum by kicking off of the wall and landing a direct punch. Presumably that would knock out the alien and then he could take his time trying to escape. Unfortunately he handled it in the worst ways possible as he just panicked the whole time before seemingly being knocked out.

The experiments that were ran on him were certainly pretty gross that’s for sure. Aliens seem to love torturing humans in pretty much every medium, no wonder why people are so scared of them. Between this movie, Alien, and Predator, it seems like they’re all out to get the humans once and for all. So yeah I’d cut out the alien scene and keep this as a very grounded tale of something weird happening to Travis and the rest of the characters having to wonder if they really saw what they saw or if they were mistaken. Perhaps it was an experimental plane from another country or something.

In the actual town is where you get the more interesting dynamics. I liked the cop that was brought in from another state who is supposed to be an expert on these things. He did a good job of taking control of the narrative right away and trying to get to the bottom of things. He doesn’t buy into the alien angle at all and is very confident the whole time. I liked this confidence, he didn’t suddenly start believing in aliens or panicking. He just treated it like another case to be solved.

I wasn’t a big fan of any of the main characters though. For Mike, ditching Travis was a huge mistake. That just shouldn’t have happened. In the heat of the moment you either fight or flee and now the rest of them will know what his gut reaction is. Dallas was the worst of the guys as he picks fights for no real reason the entire time. He really makes himself out to be an even bigger suspect than necessary. There’s also just nothing to like about the guy and I don’t see why they kept him on the crew.

The other members of the crew were less memorable and mainly here to fill in the numbers. Mainly the most important member of the crew is Mike as we see various characters begin to doubt him. Even his wife and daughter both keep asking him what really happened as if he was lying about the whole thing. It definitely doesn’t do wonders for his self esteem and as the film goes on he seems to have quite a lot of survivor’s guilt.

The writing is pretty solid for the most part here. It’s not a very eventful movie for most of its run but at least on a technical standpoint I thought the movie did a decent job. It didn’t take a lot of risks and the way it handled the town’s reactions seemed to be on point. It was nice to see the lie detector machine as well. I feel like we should hopefully have better machines by now but even recently I remember seeing a video of some billionaires trying one out and you’re still limited to responding with a Yes or No to each question or it doesn’t work well. That’s really limiting and it also seems like it’s hard to get an accurate response out of it. It’s nice but I wouldn’t put a whole lot of stock into the results based on this.

Overall, Fire in the Sky hardly seems like an event that would have really happened but I suppose you never know. I’d like to see one of these films where the guy being abducted fights back a little more though or maybe at least one film where the aliens aren’t gross about everything. Maybe one where they actually have some noticeable cultures and seem civilized instead of pretty mindless the whole time. Give us some cooler alien designs too. Instead of the usual stuff, have them look like Vasto Lordes from Bleach or maybe Insects from Hunter X Hunter. That would be a nice change.

Overall 4/10

Fast & Furious 6 Review

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The ride must go on. Fast Five ended up being my favorite title in the series but little did I suspect that it would get surpassed so quickly. 6 takes everything I liked in the 5th film and then adds on to it. We get a lot of great fight scenes and character moments here. The series holds onto its strong family values and makes it across the finish line in record time.

The movie starts out with Hobbs realizing that he’s up against a villain group that can’t be taken down easily. Usually he doesn’t need any help but this time is an exception. He grabs some intel from one of the villains pretty easily and then sets about recruiting Dom and the old gang for one last ride.

Dom and friends are all millionaires who are having fun around the globe so it may seem hard to recruit them right? Well, not when you have the right ace up your sleeve and Hobbs has a doozy. See, there’s a photo of Dom’s old wife Letty around and it seems like she’s riding with the villains. That should be impossible since she is dead but if there’s even the slightest chance that she is still alive, Dom can’t waste it. He quickly agrees to help. Still, can these heroes stop this new villain group or are they simply outmatched here?

One thing I really liked here was how quickly everyone dropped what they were doing to help Dom. It shows that the money didn’t change them. They’re still a very close knit group and show up when the call goes out. Dom doesn’t have to talk to them for more than an instant to get them on his side. There’s no complaining, whining, or any of that. They’re just ready for action no matter what it takes.

It keeps on reinforcing the family aspect of the series. Dom always explains that these guys are his family and you don’t give up on family. You help out whenever you can with no second doubts. It’s hard to think of any series where the main characters have such a close bond. It’s just nice to see and immediately puts the film in a good spot so far as knowing who to root for and getting you personally engaged in the fight.

As always Dom is a great character here. He really doesn’t waver and hasn’t gotten sloppy in his driving skills. It’s safe to say that the film still portrays him as the best racer in the series. You could maybe make a case for Brian matching him but under pressure you want Dom on your side at all times. When the chips are down he won’t fail. The guy is also the better hand to hand fighter. Dom is a natural leader and just doesn’t back down. One of the more impressive scenes is when he’s face to face with Shaw and doesn’t even flinch when a gun is pointed at him.

Brian has his own subplot here where he breaks into a jail to try and find out what happened to Letty. Ultimately he doesn’t learn a whole lot to the point where he comes back and Dom doesn’t even want to hear what he learned. That said, it was a huge risk and Brian proved that he was willing to do whatever it took to find her again. He also proved himself in a fight as he took on several opponents at once.

Brian’s always been a fun character. He gets overshadowed by Dom but I like the guy and it’ll be sad once he’s gone. His wife Mia doesn’t get to appear much this time around but she encourages Brian to help the team out. She’s still a team player for sure. Elena also doesn’t do much here but you can pretty much see why. With Letty back on the table you can basically confirm that her romance with Dom can’t last.

It’s why I was never on board with that romance either way. It seemed like a rebound no matter how you slice it. Letty would certainly have good reason to be upset about this as well although everyone takes it in stride. Hopefully Elena returns and we can see her in more of an action setting next time.

Of course Hobbs has a big role as you’d expect. He sets the tone right away with how he beat up one of the minions in the interrogation room. That was pretty impressive and it showed that he is just as obsessed as ever with bringing crooks down. He may be a lot more by the book compared to Dom’s crew but he’s willing to be flexible. He has a pretty fun scene with Tej when they have to round up some cars. Most importantly, Hobbs can still fight and comes in clutch during the climax of the film with the 2 vs 2. As a driver he’s slightly below Dom’s crew but holds his own surprisingly well considering that isn’t really his thing.

His new teammate in this film is Riley. She’s pretty solid and gave us the first big fight scene of the film against Letty. I would have to say that was one of the better fights in the movie, there was a ton of back and forth there. It’s definitely not The best fight of course since the climax threw in some big ones but it was a blast. Riley’s also no nonsense and can fight really well. She also knows how to take a hit and keep on going. She left an excellent first impression and always leaves the opponents guessing.

Tej is pretty good at getting the cars set up and planning things out as always. He may not get quite as much to do as some of the other characters but always has good banter with Roman. Likewise, Roman is a pretty charismatic guy. Not all of his jokes land but he does have a lot of fun moments. His lack of fighting skills do get exposed at one point but he does keep getting up so you can’t doubt his determination.

Han may not get a big role during the film but it’s certainly a memorable one. He’s always got a lot of confidence in Gisele and lets her do her own thing. When she moves in on a villain he just moves onto the next one because he knows she has this covered. Gisele does well with her gun and consistently makes accurate shots from long range. She has to be the best shooter on the team by far.

Then of course you have Letty. She isn’t quite herself during the film due to some memory loss. Of course you’ll be wondering how she survived. The film explains how this happened which will answer any questions on that. It doesn’t really make sense why someone did something which allowed her to live though. She makes for a good antagonist and definitely has a lot of fighting skills. I can see a lot of potential for battles in future films as a result. She has a solid character arc.

As for Shaw, he’s a solid main villain. After watching the trailer for Hobbs & Shaw the whole time though I was waiting for a certain twist that never happened. It makes the experience pretty unique to be sure but he still stands up well as a villain in his own right. He can’t fight but is a smart villain who plans for every contingency. The heroes never make a move without him being ready for it. His futuristic cars were also impressive both in how fast they were and also for their raw strength.

The rest of his villain group wasn’t too memorable though. The one who gave Roman and Han a good fight was impressive but good luck remembering his name. The rest of the group doesn’t get a whole lot of dialogue or anything beyond their initial scene though. It is cool that the film set them up as a dark version of the main characters though. They may not have had a proper team fight but it was still cool.

The battle scenes are the best that they’ve been. My favorite fight out of all the films is probably Hobbs vs Dom from Fast Five but this one just has many fights on that level back to back. There is a lot of nonstop action here so something is always going on. You’ve got different climaxes and high tension moments with both sides making move after move. It’s all extremely entertaining and also high quality. This is definitely what you would expect from the series.

The only weakness I would say the series has is the never ending fanservice. As always whenever the heroes go for a rare drive you’ve got everyone dancing on the cars or walking right into the camera. It’d be nice if the films could tone down this aspect and just focus on the fights. It’s not as heavy as in other titles though and the positives still outweigh this negative to a pretty high degree so it shouldn’t hurt your enjoyment of the title.

The writing is on point and has a lot of good humor moments throughout. The film is fairly long and since it has a fast pace that means you can expect a whole lot of adventures here. Fast & Furious 6 just keeps you on the edge of your seat throughout. It’s sort of like the non comic book version of the Avengers (2012) in terms of tone and action. Things even get pretty serious by the end as the film actually does have a body count. While the movies always end on a high note, the gang certainly goes through their share of trials. The soundtrack is also on point. The series always has a lot of different tunes that bring a lot of energy to each scene.

Finally, we can’t miss talking about the end credits scene. This was pretty hype and I always believe you should end your film with a cliffhanger like this one. It’s probably the most hype end scene since Tokyo Drift. We see an event from that film in a new light. Turns out that what happened to Han was a lot more personal than expected. It may be a retroactive change but it’s a solid way to make Tokyo Drift even more important all of a sudden. The new villain is also immediately going to be one of the better FF villains. You can tell from this scene that he means business.

Overall, Fast & Furious 6 was very impressive. This one is going to be extremely tough to defeat but I look forward to seeing how good 7 is. We’ve still got the full cast here so I am expecting it to be pretty good. I wonder if Brian will get a bit of a power up to keep up with Dom and Hobbs or if he will still mostly be more of a support fighter. With that stinger at the end you definitely know that 7 is about to get personal. Dom’s family will need to be ready to meet this challenge.

Overall 8/10

Live Free or Die Hard Review

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This time the series goes back to its roots with quite a lot of action right off the gate. Within the first 10 minutes you’ve already got your opening gun fight and a big action scene after that. The switch to a more tech based villain makes sense for the modern era. This definitely ends up being a very solid watch all around.

The movie starts with John scaring off a guy who was trying to pull some moves on his daughter. You’d think she would be more appreciative but Lucy basically just yells at him and tells John to go away. John then has to make one detour on his way home to pick up Matthew, an expert hacker. John doesn’t know why he has to bring this guy in yet but it’s clear that this is something serious since a group of trained professionals show up to take Matthew with them. This results in a pretty good fight but John manages to escape.

So the issue is that someone seems to have started a Firesale. They are using technology to try and take down the country. This targets many different aspects such as television, phone companies, gas, etc. It’s all based on a plan that Matthew helped with although he didn’t realize just how real this was. John now needs Matthew to think carefully about where these hackers are and how to stop them in time. If they are too slow, America may end up being defeated this time around.

With hackers causing trouble it is a little difficult to know how to stop them. They could be logging in from anywhere and on the net they are also pretty versatile. Unless you take them down at the source they can just sign on again. There is a lot of running around here but unlike the last film, John’s team is usually on the offensive. If they can just find these guys they can deal a finishing blow in no time flat.

John looks pretty solid as always. At this point he’s definitely a veteran and knows how to handle himself. He has a tough time with Matthew because he is the very opposite of experience and determination. Matthew spends a great deal of time complaining before he finally ends up being helpful in the movie. Before that you can expect him to just hold John back.

I’d say the best sequence in the film is when the two are attacked by Mai. She’s the main villain’s right hand woman and can fight quite well. She gives John a pretty good fight and also survives some hits that would take out most fighters. Mai gets hit by a car and keeps on ticking. The battle goes a few rounds and she really leaves an impression on you by the end.

The movie also just went more all out with the fights than it has in a while. The battle with Mai for example felt more like a Jason Bourne or comic book kind of battle. There was some good hand to hand and using whatever object you could find in the background was also crucial. It was two fighters just trying to survive and taking the opponent out right away too.

As for the actual main villain Thomas, he was pretty good. The guy is definitely not a fighter but has a plan for everything. He’s all about shutting the system down with hits wits as opposed to his fists. At this point that’s probably the easiest way to do things too since it’s hard to picture someone using physical force to try and take down the whole country. You’d need to find a few nukes or something to get in the right position for that.

This movie does offer another reminder though of how easy it is to take a badge. At one point the villains have to convince someone that they’re a cop so they just flash the ID real quick. So the person is convinced but I don’t see how that would convince anyone. Badges could be faked ever since their inception and if you’re suspicious about someone already, I don’t see how a badge could help. There isn’t really any good way to find out if the person asking you to follow them is legit though so you just gotta go with your gut. In this case it’s not like she really had a way out anyway.

Live Free or Die Hard looks a lot more modern than the older films. The city has certainly changed a lot and the effects during the night time battle are on point. It was also cool to see the villains using fake footage to cause panic in the streets since that does make a lot of sense as a strategy when you can manipulate all of the channels. It was a good way to stir people up and cause a whole lot of trouble.

It’s only a single scene so this isn’t a big deal but the “romance” in the film is rather weak. Not only does it come out of nowhere but it’s for two characters who barely even interacted. It’s going for more of a funny ending but it doesn’t really land. It doesn’t help that I didn’t like either character involved in it. One just seemed super ungrateful throughout her screen time and the other one spent a lot of time whining. Both traits don’t make you a winning character.

Overall, This was a pretty good installment in the series. If it can keep up this level of action in the next one then we’ll be good. Of course you can’t survive on only action but this film had a pretty good mix of elements. The writing was on point and the story was interesting. The hacking was used pretty well and while it’s not a new concept to hack into the government, it’s one you don’t see a whole lot of thrillers take on. I thought it was a fresh angle and as a whole this is an example of taking the story in a different direction and succeeding at it. I didn’t have any real issues with the film and it’s the kind of title that has a lot of replay value.

Overall 7/10

Die Hard with a Vengeance Review

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This review is of the edited TV-14 version of the film. All thoughts below should be addressed as such as an unedited version would be more negative

Die Hard returns for the third film in the series. This one takes things in a different direction as the first two were complete action thrillers while this one is more of a series of runarounds. The villain loves messing with the heroes and so we don’t have time for a true confrontation until near the very end of the film. It loses sight of the franchise’s normal goal but is an okay film.

We open with a bomb going off and a mysterious guy named Simon calling the cops. He explains that unless John McClane shows up to Harlem wearing a sign with the offensive language, he will blow up more bombs. The police figure they need to comply with this request or more people will die. John realizes this is a suicide mission so he also takes a gun with him. Fortunately a guy called Zeus shows up and they manage to just barely escape with their lives. Simon doesn’t like this so he decides that now both of them have to follow all of the missions. This ranges from solving math equations to catching trains on time. Can the heroes complete all of the missions? The tough thing they also have to wrestle with is that there may not be an end to the missions. They just have to keep on complying and hopefully things will go well.

In a film like this you can see how that’s the most frustrating part for the heroes. The villain has all of the leverage at the moment. He has bombs everywhere and there are no leads onw here he really is. As a result he can just keep having the heroes go on various missions all day until one finishes them off. If the heroes are a minute too slow then one of the bombs will go off after all. Sure, Simon loses some leverage but he has enough extra bombs where it won’t make a difference.

It’s a never ending story and that’s why it can feel futile. It’s why I say if you are ever held at gun point and told to get in a car, just make a break for it or try to tackle the guy. What’s he gonna do..shoot you? He’s going to that or worse if you get in the car anyway so you might as well take your chances. Now in Die Hard 3 it’s a little more complicated since the bombs will be affecting a lot of innocent people. So John and Zeus are doing the right thing in complying with the missions but you wish they would get some real backup at the same time. It just doesn’t feel like they are making any real headway throughout the film.

The individual challenges are okay. They’re not as thrilling as they could be but it’s fun to see the city and the shortcuts that are used to get to each destination. One puzzle was also like something directly out of Professor Layton with the characters having to measure to containers and try to get the right amount of liquid into one of them when one container is too large and the other is too small. It’s definitely a tough puzzle to solve under any circumstance, much less when your lives are in danger.

As for the main characters, the banter between them isn’t nearly as good as most buddy cop kind of films. Zeus is a guy with a big chip on his shoulder and he’s constantly playing the race card and trying to bait John. Then you have John who doesn’t really care about this and tries to reason with Zeus as he would anyone else but to get around the tough talk he lies a few times as well. Things end up blowing up from both characters but by the end they get along well enough. It just doesn’t make for nearly as entertaining a dynamic as most films in this genre though.

Zeus gets better by the end but I wouldn’t say I was really a fan. He does step up and do the right thing when needed but it does take a while. John’s good as always even if his plan is ultimately pretty risky. At one point he decides to just forget the mission and try to capture the villains but when they’ve made it clear that they have cameras on 24/7, isn’t that basically just sacrificing all of the hostages? Things work out with a little plot armor at the ready but just running off was never an option. When he decides to take this route it’s treated as a big deal but it just doesn’t seem like it would work.

It reminds me of the classic situation where a villain says “Don’t move” while holding a hostage and the hero moves anyway. If it works out then I guess that’s good but hindsight doesn’t make it a great decision. At least it does give us a proper climax with some fights and everything though. It’s what you’ve been waiting for the entire film so it does end things on a high note.

As always John is having some difficulties with his wife Holly again. This almost feels like a running gag in the films at this point. No matter how often they patch things up it just doesn’t work out. If things still aren’t working out by now I don’t see it changing but we’ll see if this gets brought up in the 4th film as well.

The effects are on point as expected. While the heroes getting foiled at every turn and having to repeat the tasks may get a bit repetitive, I’d say the pacing of the movie is on point. Simon’s an okay villain. He may not stand out a lot but he had a good plan at the end and almost came out on top. If he didn’t make a James Bond type speech and choose to let the heroes live near the end he really may have gotten away with everything. At the end of the day his own overconfidence was his down fall.

Overall, Die Hard With A Vengeance will get lost among the many action films out there. It just feels like it’s lacking in action despite that being the genre. Technically a lot of the chase scenes and such would be considered action but you won’t get the hand to hand/shooting matches that you had in the first two films. The banter with Zeus and John also tends to be more on the annoying side compared to entertaining. It seemed like they really didn’t like each other compared to most where they talk tough but still have each other’s back. I’d say you can give this one a skip but if you want to see more of John McClane’s adventures then you may as well check it out.

Overall 5/10