Movie Review: Haywire (2011)

Genre: Action  

Director: Steven Soderbergh  

Starring: Gina Carano, Michael Fassbender, Ewan McGregor, Bill Paxton, Channing Tatum, Antonio Banderas, Michael Douglas  

Running Time: 93 minutes  

Synopsis: Agent Mallory Kane (Gina Carano) works for a private intelligence firm led by her ex-lover Kenneth (Ewen McGregor), conducting deniable missions for the CIA's Coblenz (Michael Douglas). After she narrowly escapes a tangle with ex-colleague Aaron (Channing Tatum), flashbacks reveal that her most recent assignments involved rescuing a Chinese national held hostage in Barcelona, and conducting surveillance in Ireland with MI6 agent Paul (Michael Fassbender). Mallory discovers that the two missions are linked and she is being set-up, triggering a quest for revenge.

What Works Well: Mixed martial artist Gina Carano infuses the frequent bone-crunching close-quarters to-the-death fight scenes with more than the usual authenticity. The supporting cast is stacked with talent, and director Steven Soderbergh maintains brisk pacing.

What Does Not Work As Well: Given the short running time, the plot is convoluted, overstuffed, dismissive of important details, and uninterested in textures. All the characters settle into stone-faced killer mode, and the late-in-the-day introduction of Mallory's father (Bill Paxton) is wasted. The multiple climactic battles ride a linear path from exciting to tiresome, Mallory's score-settling reduced to samey shorthand confrontations.

Key Quote:

Paul: I'm assuming the motives of everyone involved are strictly professional.

Kenneth: Paul... the motive is money. The motive is always money.

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Movie Review: U-571 (2000)

A World War Two submarine action film, U-571 offers combat thrills in tight quarters but with limited character depth.

With German U-boats dominating the North Atlantic, U-571 sinks an Allied merchant ship but is then itself damaged by depth charges. The US Navy quickly conceives of a ruse to disguise the submarine S-33 as a German rescue vessel, storm the U-571, and seize the Enigma cipher machine and its valuable code books.

Captain Mike Dahlgren (Bill Paxton) commands S-33, with Lieutenant Andrew Tyler (Matthew McConaughey) as his Executive Officer. The respect between the two men is undermined by some tension as Dahlgren does not believe Tyler is yet ready to command his own vessel and make life-or-death decisions in the heat of battle.

Joining them for this mission are Major Matthew Coonan (David Keith) and Lieutenant Michael Hirsch (Jake Weber). The crew members include Chief Gunner's Mate Henry Klough (Harvey Keitel) and Seaman Bill Wentz (Jack Noseworthy), who is half German. In rough seas the U-571 is captured, but enemy action throws the mission into disarray and Tyler finds himself unexpectedly in command and under extreme pressure to salvage a desperate situation.

The Allied attempts to capture and decipher Enigma resulted in many heroic missions, most of them completed by British naval forces. Here Hollywood takes over with a crass Americanization of history, the US Navy crew and commanders of S-33 portrayed as instrumental in the intelligence gathering war.

Setting aside the snub, U-571 is a decent thriller within the typical limitations of a De Laurentiis production. Any half-hearted interest in people starts and ends in the first 10 minutes with Tyler's nose bent out of shape as a result of not receiving the commission he was hoping for. Once the S-33 mission gets underway the movie is all about hardware, torpedoes, depth charges and the typical thrills, spills, leaks, explosions, solar pings and stealthy combat expected from the submarine warfare sub-genre.

Director Jonathan Mostow co-wrote the screenplay (with David Ayer and Sam Montgomery), and delivers a taut if always-slightly-implausible two hours. The special effects and claustrophobic submarine cinematography convey the tension of enemy confrontations on the surface and underwater. The surprises arrive on cue, a few good men die, and heroics combine with out-of-the-box thinking as crews and machines are pushed to the limit, men sweating outwards in direct proportion to submarines leaking inwards.

The German submarine crew do receive several sequences at the center of the action and speak their own language, but are otherwise strictly confined to heartless enemy characterizations. Matthew McConaughey wears a grim and stony faced expression throughout, and the supporting cast members dutifully follow suit, including rock star Jon Bon Jovi stumbling into an acting gig.

U-571 reimagines history and celebrates machines more than people, but does it all with an admirably straight face.

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Movie Review: True Lies (1994)

A tongue-in-cheek spy thriller with a big dose of domestic intrigue, True Lies combines a big budget action spectacle with the travails of a married couple keeping secrets from each other.

Harry Tasker (Arnold Schwarzenegger) lives a double life. He works as a globe-trotting spy for Omega Sector, a national security counterterrorism agency, but back in Washington DC his wife Helen (Jamie Lee Curtis) and daughter Dana (Eliza Dushku) believe that he is a boring computer systems salesman. Harry and his partner Albert Gibson (Tom Arnold) uncover a plot by glamorous art dealer Juno Skinner (Tia Carrere) and jihadist terrorist Salim Abu Aziz (Art Malik) to detonate stolen nuclear warheads in the United States.

Meanwhile Helen is getting bored with being physically and emotionally abandoned by Harry, and is slowly falling prey to the smarmy charms of used car salesman Simon (Bill Paxton) pretending to be a spy. Harry uncovers Helen's near-infidelity and without revealing his true identity provides her with a fake mission to boost the level of excitement in her life. When Aziz's men intervene and capture both Harry and Helen, the married couple have to confront each other and disrupt the terrorist plot.

Director James Cameron reunites with Schwarzenegger, and while True Lies is far from recreating the magic of the first two Terminator movies, it does deliver a silly fun time. Inspired by the French film La Totale! by Claude Zidi, everything is exaggerated with an overdose of stunts, destruction and special effects. The final 45 minutes is a non-stop cascading climax featuring explosions, endless firefights, rocket launchers, Harrier jets, helicopters, one blown up Florida bridge and several severely damaged high rises. None of it is subtle or even smart, but it is breathlessly entertaining.

What sets True Lies apart is a middle act that takes a break from the terrorist plot and delves into the troubled married life of Harry and Helen, In turn awkward and intriguing, Helen's clumsy drift towards having an affair to add excitement to her dull life with Harry adds an ironic element. What follows is original, funny and disturbing, as Harry's treatment of Helen certainly provides her with a thrill but also borders on abusive.

The rest of the film is James Bond on a really big budget and a little bit of laughing gas. Schwarzenegger slips comfortably into the suave spy persona, and even enjoys a tango twirl with Carrere at a swish Swiss villa bad guy gathering spot. The terrorist conspiracy is short-changed Bond-style into the barest of caricature characters hissing evil, but this being seven years ahead of September 11 2001, Cameron deserves some credit for predicting the zeal of jihadist groups.

Supporting Schwarzenegger is a game Jamie Lee Curtis who adds immeasurably to the film in a role that's much more than the token wife. Tom Arnold and Bill Paxton are the main sources of humour, while Charlton Heston pops up in a short role as the head of Omega Sector before disappearing entirely.

At two hours and twenty minutes the film is sloppily edited and much longer than it needs to be, Cameron extending almost every scene beyond what is necessary. True Lies is over the top in every respect, a case of too much of everything still providing something for everyone.

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Movie Review: Edge Of Tomorrow (2014)

A science fiction military action film, Edge Of Tomorrow (also marketed as Live. Die. Repeat.) makes the most out of a gritty time loop battlefield premise.

In the near future, Earth has been invaded by a destructive and seemingly unstoppable alien species known as the Mimics. With Europe largely occupied, a human army is assembled in England to prepare a massive counterattack, emboldened by a new exoskeleton weapons system. General Brigham (Brendan Gleeson) presses Public Affairs Officer Major Bill Cage (Tom Cruise) into covering the front line, despite Cage's lack of combat training. Very much against his will, Cage joins J Squad under the command of Master Sergeant Farell (Bill Paxton) as they prepare for the invasion on the next day.

The human army is ambushed on the beaches by massive Mimic forces, and Cage duly dies, but not before spotting the famous Sergeant Rita Vrataski (Emily Blunt) in the midst of combat. During the battle Cage is splattered by the blood of a rare alien command species, giving him special powers to loop back in time, and he awakes on the previous day back in the clutches of Farell and J Squad. He repeatedly relives the massacre on the beach, trying to learn from each day's experience to influence the outcome of battle. He finally connects with Vrataski on the day before the invasion, and together they have to figure out a way to destroy the main brain behind the Mimics before Earth is annihilated.

A fusion of Groundhog Day and wicked Aliens-on-Earth engaged in an existential Saving Private Ryan scale battle, Edge Of Tomorrow is an adaptation of the Hiroshi Sakurazaka book All You Need Is Kill. Directed by Doug Liman, the film contains enough human interaction between the charismatic Cage and the jaded Vrataski to infuse the action scenes with meaningful emotion. The combat setting, on the beaches of France and then pushing into the continent, is intended to bring echoes of World War Two to life, the fight against evil this time not so much about ideology but rather human survival.

Edge Of Tomorrow recreates the video game experience of frequent dying, re-spawning and trying again, every attempt intended to improve forward progress by small margins. Death is no longer final, just a momentary frustration that comes with the aggravation of having to replay the familiar in order to venture a few more steps into the new. Ironically, this is the feature stripped out of game-to-movie adaptations, here embraced in a non-adaptation that capitalizes on the value of learning what does not work in order to find what does.

For Vrataski, every day is new. For Cage, it will take a multitude of attempts to save Earth. He cannot succeed without failing, and his frustration and evolution into an efficient killing machine go hand in hand. In depicting this procress, Liman cleverly holds his cards close to his chest: once the premise is set, the film is often intentionally unclear until late in a scene whether events are depicting Cage's first attempt at navigating new terrain, or the umpteenth time.

Less successful are the CGI-dominated action scenes. Most of the Mimics are a swirl of tentacles, and the combat scenes are frantic and fuzzy rather than fearsome.

Tom Cruise is in his element as the roguish public affairs officer dealing with a new and unwelcome reality, Cruise's comfort with the more cerebral elements of action serving the film well. Emily Blunt is intense and bordering on dour, but carries the flag for feminine fighters acquiescing to no one.

Edge Of Tomorrow is a breath of original air, and a breathless exercise in racing against time -- repeatedly.

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Movie Review: Million Dollar Arm (2014)

Based on the true story of the first two men from India to be signed to Major League Baseball contracts, Million Dollar Arm is vanilla filmmaking at its most flavourless.

In Los Angeles, J.B. Bernstein (Jon Hamm) is a sports agent struggling to find new clients. His business partner Ash (Aasif Mandvi), a big fan of cricket, is growing despondent about J.B.'s chances of achieving success. J.B. rents out his garden lodge to medical student Brenda (Lake Bell) but has no desire to pursue a romance with her: he is more interested in airheaded models. Close to reaching the end of his financial rope, J.B. decides to run a "Million Dollar Arm" talent search in India to find cricket bowlers who can be converted to baseball pitchers.

He travels to India and along with crusty scout Ray (Alan Arkin) tours the country for months in search of talent. They finally find two strong-armed prospects in Rinku (Suraj Sharma) and Dinesh (Madhur Mittal), as well as aspiring baseball coach Amit (Pitobash Tripathy). Upon returning to the US, Rinku and Dinesh are sent to work with respected coach Tom House (Bill Paxton) in preparation for a major league tryout, but converting two Indian villagers into top tier pitching prospects will be no easy task.

Produced by Disney Studios, Million Dollar Arm is a well-meaning but strictly linear story, blandly produced, targeted at a family audience and containing little that is memorable. The Tom McCarthy script tries to wring some drama out of a true life underdog story, but the film just lands with the dull thud of vapidity. Everything that happens on the screen can be foreseen well in advance, and the occasional tense moments are of the strictly contrived variety.

Director Craig Gillespie runs through the usual scenes of India as a crowded, smelly, chaotic and yet majestically charming place, and back in Los Angeles he predictably finds a discouraging low point for J.B., Rinku and Dinesh before steering the film towards an exaggerated climax of success. Jon Hamm does his best as the main character to provide some depth to J.B.. The sports agent goes through an evolution from slick operator to caring big brother, and although it's all too sudden as a realistic change of direction, Hamm is able to convey some empathy and grow into a more rounded human being by the film's end. Sharma and Tripathy are likeable as the young Indian men transported from obscurity to a shot at the majors, but Lake Bell is merely adequate as the literal girl next door Brenda who eventually points J.B. in the right direction. Alan Arkin plays a cartoonish variant of the grizzled baseball talent scout, and Bill Paxton is in too few scenes for too short a time to matter.

Million Dollar Arm is wholesome entertainment, but it is also strictly minor league.

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The Movies Of Bill Paxton

All movies starring Bill Paxton and reviewed on the Ace Black Movie Blog are linked below:

Stripes (1981)

Streets Of Fire (1984)

The Terminator (1984)

Commando (1985)

Aliens (1986)

Predator 2 (1990)

Tombstone (1993)

True Lies (1994)

Apollo 13 (1995)

Twister (1996)

Titanic (1997)

U-571 (2000)

Haywire (2011)

2 Guns (2013)

Million Dollar Arm (2014)

Edge Of Tomorrow (2014)

Nightcrawler (2014)

The Circle (2017)

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The Movie Star Index is here.

Movie Review: Twister (1996)

With awe-inspiring special effects undermined by a childish script and hackneyed love triangle, Twister is only tolerable when all the characters shut-up and the twisters are allowed to roar.

Former expert storm chaser Bill Harding (Bill Paxton) is settling down to a career as a television weatherman, and about to marry Dr. Melissa Reeves (Jami Gertz). He just needs to finalize his divorce papers from first wife and former storm-chasing partner Jo Harding (Helen Hunt), who still leads a ramshackle tornado chasing team. Jo has a burning passion to improve the science of predicting tornadoes, having lost her dad to a twister when she was a child. What should be Bill's final quick visit to Jo's camp turns into a wild storm-chasing adventure when a series of wild twisters descend onto the landscape.

Bill's old competitive juices are reignited, not to mention his lust for Jo, as he leaves Melissa twisting in the wind and joins Jo's crew as they attempt to place a new scientific device in a twister's path to gain valuable scientific data about the innards of tornadoes. Competing with them is a well-funded research team led by Jonas Miller (Cary Elwes), who used to be part of Bill's crew before going corporate.

Helen Hunt does her best to carry the acting load, but even she struggles with a script (by Michael Crichton and Ann-Marie Martin) written at Grade 5 level and assembling the most puerile of plot elements and throwing them together with no attempt at sophistication. The Jo / Bill / Melissa triangle is a candidate for the most contrived - and physically annoying - romantic entanglement ever placed on the screen, while the mostly faceless Jonas team motoring along in their black motorcade check off every trite and overused "bad guys" stereotype in the beginner's guide to writing screenplays.

Bill Paxton is far from ready to carry the male lead in a big budget production, and his performance is firmly bogged down in stiff daytime soap quality. Cary Elwes is even worse, and his battle against stock antagonist mannerisms is lost in his first scene. Philip Seymour Hoffman, in a predictable but at least entertaining role as an unkempt member of Jo's team, is left to add some supporting colour.

Twister is much better whenever the storms move in and the chase teams gun their engines and start to race towards the path of destruction, attempting to get as close as possible without getting swept up into the swirling debris. The tornado special effects are powerful, loud, impressive and immersive, director Jan de Bont clearly in his element brushing his cast up against momentous disaster. Twister's final 30 minutes is one long chase of a massive, destructive series of tornadoes, and the film finally hits its stride, the true star of the show proving to be the Industrial Light and Magic special effects crew.

But in this case the special effects just make Twister watchable, not necessarily enjoyable. The film's soul is a swirling emptiness lost in the middle of a large tornado.

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