Movie Review: John Wick (2014)

A wild action film, John Wick is an artistic but overcooked tale of revenge most violent.

Professional assassin John Wick (Keanu Reeves) had quit the killing industry to settle down with his wife Helen (Bridget Moynahan). She succumbed to a terminal illness, leaving him alone but gifting him a cute dog as her farewell gesture. Russian mobster Iosef Tarasov (Alfie Allen) invades Wick's house, steals his car and kills the dog. Wick gets back into the business of assassination to seek his revenge.

Unfortunately, Iosef is the son of master criminal Viggo (Michael Nyqvist), who naturally wants to protect his son from John's vengeance. Viggo issues an open contract worth $2 million to anyone who would kill Wick, attracting the attention of assassins Marcus (Willem Dafoe) and Ms. Perkins (Adrianne Palicki). Wick has to fend off the killers coming after him and fight his way through the thick layer of guards protecting the Tarasovs.

Drawing inspiration from Tarantino's elaborately staged killfests and Hong Kong cinema's penchant for stylish violence, John Wick is all about the aesthetics. After a slowish start to establish the premise, director Chad Stahelski moves the action from one rowdy set-piece to the next, Wick slicing through countless and mostly faceless enemies with shootouts and headshots galore, all fast-edited into barely coherent montages.

There is no doubting the kinetic and often sleek artistry on display, but there is also no doubting that too much of the same thing is boring. Once the shooting starts the plot all but stops, and for the best part of an hour the film is all about how many bad dudes Wick will have to dispose of before the credits roll.

Of course Wick himself survives a ridiculous amount of damage and gaping wounds along the way, getting up every time to lick his wounds and unleash another round of mayhem, pain and bleeding be damned.

Keanu Reeves cruises through the film having finally found a natural but less impressive successor role to his exploits in The Matrix. John Wick lets his guns do the talking, a perfect fit for an actor who prefers to just be rather than act.

Of more interest is a sketched-in world of shadowy professional assassins, including the Continental Hotel in New York City where they all congregate on neutral territory, theoretically a kill-free zone until someone breaks the rules. Rulebroker Winston (Ian McShane) sits atop the organized order of killers, and somewhere his intriguing story waits to be told. But until then, John Wick will continue firing his guns, reloading, and firing again, heads exploding like watermelons all around him.

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Movie Review: Battle: Los Angeles (2011)

A science fiction military action film, Battle: Los Angeles is overwhelmed by bad battleground CGI and rarely achieves a respectable level of action-driven entertainment.

At the Camp Pendleton military base near Los Angeles, Staff Sergeant Michael Nantz (Aaron Eckhart) is about to retire from the Marines, still emotionally scarred by losing some of his men in a recent deployment. His plans are interrupted when hostile aliens stage a massive invasion of Earth, with the heavily armed aggressors arriving on meteor-like vessels and landing off the coast of dozens of cities around the world.

Nantz is pressed back into service as part of a platoon under the command of Lieutenant Martinez (Ramon Rodriguez), tasked with saving civilians trapped at a Santa Monica police station. The civilians include veterinarian Michele (Bridget Moynahan) and local man Joe (Michael Peña), who is with his young son. However, the aliens prove much more powerful than initially thought. Nantz and Martinez are joined by air force Technical Sergeant  Santos (Michelle Rodriguez) and together they have to find a way to save the civilians and uncover a weakness in their enemy.

Directed by Jonathan Liebesman, Battle: Los Angeles is a noisy, often frantic affair. While the premise is about a global invasion and humans fighting for the very survival of the species, the film zooms in to the squadron level, and focuses on a few men engaged in running street battles through mostly destroyed Los Angeles area neighbourhoods.

Battle: Los Angeles most resembles the much better Black Hawk Down, with the Somalis replaced by aliens. And just as Black Hawk Down had limited interest in defining who the enemy was, Battle: Los Angeles doubles down on the concept of the enemy as just an abstract thing to be destroyed. Here the aliens are blurry CGI creations, mostly seen from a distance. The lack of any narrative content explaining the other side of the conflict frequently reduces the film to the level of a dumb first person shooter video game.

Liebesman demonstrates no control over battlefield visuals, often overwhelming the screen with CGI-created projectiles flying in all directions, giving the impression that a bunch of pimple-faced excitable teenagers were given the task of adding noise and fury to the screen and kept on adding more because more must be better. The jerky camera work does not help. Similarly, the attempts to humanize the squad members all fail. The Marines surrounding Nantz remain interchangeable grunts drawn from the basic repertoire of World War Two movies from the 1940s.

The film is not a total loss: as the action moves into the final 30 minutes acts of heroism, comradeship and sacrifice finally begin to cut through the clutter, and Battle: Los Angeles picks up some emotional steam, helped by a committed and fully square-jawed Aaron Eckhart performance. His grim determination may be enough to save the planet, but not quite the movie.

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The Movies Of Bridget Moynahan

All movies starring Bridget Moynahan and reviewed on the Ace Black Blog are linked below:

Coyote Ugly (2000)

Serendipity (2001)

The Sum Of All Fears (2002)

Lord Of War (2005)

Battle: Los Angeles (2011)

John Wick (2014)

All Ace Black Blog Movie Reviews are here.
The Index of Movie Stars is here.

Movie Review: Lord Of War (2005)

An exposé drama about the international arms trade, Lord Of War is a highly enjoyable romp through the business of selling the tools of death.

The son of Ukrainian refugees, Yuri Orlov (Nicolas Cage) grew up in a rough Brooklyn neighbourhood and learned from personal experience the value of guns. In the early 1980s Yuri starts his own business as a gun dealer, before teaming up with his brother Vitaly (Jared Leto) and quickly expanding into the international trade. Yuri becomes an expert in finding loopholes to break arms embargos, and particularly skilled in locating and reselling abandoned weapons caches around the world. His initial attempts to partner with Simeon Weisz (Ian Holm), the world's most renowned weapons dealer, are rebuffed.

Staying one step ahead of dogged and incorruptible Interpol agent Jack Valentine (Ethan Hawke), Yuri sells weapons in all the world's hotspots including Liberia where dictator André Baptiste Sr. (Eamonn Walker) becomes a favoured client. Yuri also wins the love of glamorous fashion model Ava Fontaine (Bridget Moynahan) but Vitaly falls victim to a drug addiction. The fall of the Soviet Union results in a flood of new product on the market, and Yuri uses old family connections in Ukraine to expand his business and join the ranks of elite weapons traders. Weisz now needs Yuri's help, and Valentine remains in hot pursuit.

Written and directed by Andrew Niccol and co-produced by Cage, Lord Of War is an irreverent but sharp-eyed take on the world of independent gun smuggling inspired by real world characters such as Sarkis Soghanalian, Oleg Orlov and Viktor Bout. Touching down in the rubble of some of the world's worst conflict zones, the film pokes away at the double standards of an international system that places sanctions and admonishes dictators while ensuring men like Yuri carry on with the business of supplying rifles for child soldiers.

Although the story is undoubtedly episodic and over-narrated, Niccol finds a groove in the adventures of an antihero who uses every excuse in the book to justify his profession, and has every trick at his disposal to skate past international laws. The film moves briskly and with plenty of panache, Niccol finding memorable set-pieces in places as diverse as the rubble of war-torn Beirut, on the high seas off the shores of South America, in a derelict Monrovia hotel, in Ukrainian warehouses crammed with weaponry, and most effectively on a dusty road in Africa. A forced cargo plane landing results in a real-time lesson in third world armament distribution efficiency and recycling economics.

Meanwhile back home Yuri builds a life of wealth and comfort for his family. Ava and his parents turn a blind eye to the source of all the money until the glare of the obvious becomes impossible to ignore. But just as Vitaly is addicted to cocaine, Yuri is addicted to the thrill of the weapons deal, and with no shortage to the number of buyers, sellers and dirty wars, his services are always in demand. Nicolas Cage delivers a pragmatically laid back central performance built on an advanced intellect thriving in a despicable profession, his dead eyes concealing layers of self-delusion.

Lord Of War is a gut punch to the concept of a world at peace. As the guardians of morality profit from war, killing is Yuri's business, and business is good.

All Ace Black Blog Movie Reviews are here.

Movie Review: Coyote Ugly (2000)

A trite romantic drama set in the world of bar top dancing, Coyote Ugly lines up and kicks out tired clichés to fill the time between the many scenes of hot women cavorting on the bar to loud music.

Violet Sanford (Piper Perabo) leaves her New Jersey home and overweight toll booth operator dad Bill (John Goodman) to seek a career as a songwriter in New York City. Violet suffers from stage fright, a condition that also afflicted her late mother, and her inability to perform in front of a crowd hampers opportunities to get her material heard. Meanwhile she can't break through the front door of any of the record companies or talent agencies, and her apartment is robbed to compound her misery. Violet does meet handsome Australian burger flipper Kevin O'Donnell (Adam Garcia), and they start a relationship.

Desperate to find some employment, Violet stumbles onto work at Coyote Ugly, a rough and tumble bar owned by Lil Lovell (Maria Bello, portraying the real-life bar owner), where attractive waitresses including Cammie (Izabella Miko) and Rachel (Bridget Moynahan) rev up customers with seductive bar top dances. The timid Violet can't join the dancing but eventually finds the courage to sing along with the jukebox. Kevin insists that she not give up on her dream to be a serious song writer and prods her to overcome her stage fright. Her dad Bill is crushed when he discovers what kind of bar Violet is working at, and Kevin's pushiness threatens to rupture the one remaining good relationship in her life.

Directed by David McNally and produced by Jerry Bruckheimer, Coyote Ugly is based on a magazine article by none other than Elizabeth Gilbert, who would go on to write more mawkish material like Eat, Pray, Love. The film is an unapologetic excuse to feature plenty of bar top dancing scenes, micro-edited down to artificially create energy and remove any traces of talent on either side of the camera. With a script apparently penned by an uncoordinated army of eight writers, Coyote Ugly is a standard innocent-girl-in-the-big-bad-city-falls-in-love story, the dancing scenes attempting to chase away the dullness but only adding another layer of asininity.

In this world a hip shake and a shoulder shimmy are inexplicably enough to send bar patrons into a whooping frenzy while the alcohol pumps kick into overdrive. The girls prance up and down the bar, spraying customers with water, juggling bottles and breathing fire, creating a wet dream environment for the young adolescent mind. For everyone else, no amount of gyration can cover up the utter banality of both the story and the action at the bar.

The struggle-to-make-it and romance elements are pulled from the laborious drawer. Every career door slams in Violet's face with a thud, stage fright is a hackneyed emotional hurdle, and lover-to-be Kevin is a remarkably charming and available prince in cook's clothing but of course he hides his own deep dark sob story.

Coyote Ugly is saved from being an utter debacle by Piper Perabo, the relative unknown plucked from obscurity and dropped into the lead role for a big budget production. Perabo is much better than the material deserves, and she somehow rises above the dross to deliver a relatively genuine and empathetic performance. Perabo combines small town smarts with a sharp edge and quick wit, and avoids most of the dopey innocence that typically accompanies the role.

The rest of the cast is more consistent with the sluggish story, with Goodman in particular veering towards obesity in both weight and melodrama. Tyra Banks has a small role as a former bar top dancer and LeAnn Rimes appears briefly as herself.

Coyote Ugly refers to waking up sober after a one night stand, and feeling the urge to gnaw off, coyote style, an arm trapped under a repulsive man. The film is not quite that bad, but does leave behind the sense of time wasted chasing an ill-conceived impulse.

All Ace Black Blog Movie Reviews are here.

Movie Review: Serendipity (2001)

A sweet romance, Serendipity fully commits to a single premise and makes the most of it. John Cusack and Kate Beckinsale find excellent chemistry and are extremely appealing as star-struck would-be lovers, their future guided by the quirky side of fate.

In New York City at Christmas time, Jonathan (Cusack) and Sara (Beckinsale) reach for the same pair of gloves at a department store. Although she has a boyfriend and he has a girlfriend, they are instantly smitten with each other and spend a few hours together, including sharing desert at an ice cream bar called Serendipity, and ice skating under the stars at Central Park. The magical evening is ruined by a devilish kid pushing all the elevator buttons at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel, and the couple are separated. Jonathan only knows Sara's first name, and is unable to locate her.

Years later, Jonathan is engaged to Halley (Bridget Moynahan) and Sara has relocated to San Francisco and is engaged to musician Lars (John Corbett). But both are suddenly unsure of their chosen partners, and small clues prompt them to start looking for each other again. Jonathan recruits his best friend Dean (Jeremy Piven), a New York Times obituary writer, for a final quest to track down Sara, while Sara tricks her best friend Eve (Molly Shannon) to join on her on a trip to New York. With Jonathan and Halley's wedding day fast approaching, it's a race against time for the separated lovers to try and find each other again.

Directed by Peter Chelsom as a piece of whimsy with a dash of humour sprinkled on destiny's mischievousness, Serendipity announces its intentions in the title and never wavers from playing with the theme of fate dropping little hints at all the forks in the road of life. With the final outcome never in doubt, the film is playfully built on the little coincidences and seemingly random happenstances that may be harmless trivia or a grand indication of what decision is next needed.

An old Paul Newman film poster, a signed book given as a gift, an engagement ring that doesn't quite fit, a store receipt found inside a glove years after the purchase, a signed five dollar bill, a storefront converted to a bridal shop: little events could just be little events, or life-altering signposts urging a dramatic change in direction. The Marc Klein script cleverly keeps Jonathan and Sara in charge of all that they do in life. Fate is not imposed on them, but rather it provides them with what they need to reach their destination, or not, depending on how they interpret the available clues.

The lovers spend most of the film apart, an often troublesome plot device. And the two central characters are barely rounded, with their occupations and lives outside the romance context barely probed. But John Cusack and Kate Beckinsale overcome the separation with dedicated performances that convey genuine longing and a profound belief that the few hours Jonathan and Sara spent together were an introduction to something much more meaningful.

In support, Jeremy Piven and Molly Shannon do well to fill the void, providing Cusack and Beckinsale with foils to play against. Eugene Levy lets loose as a hilariously annoying store clerk who is both infuriating and helpful as Jonathan desperately tries to track down Sara.

New York City at Christmas time and a soundtrack of romantic songs add to the film's charm. Serendipity never threatens to tax the intellect, but it does brighten up the heart with a satisfyingly warm glow.

All Ace Black Blog Movie Reviews are here.