Movie Review: Bat*21 (1988)

Genre: Vietnam War Drama  
Director: Peter Markle  
Starring: Gene Hackman, Danny Glover, Jerry Reed  

Running Time: 105 minutes  

Synopsis: During the Vietnam War, Lieutenant Colonel Iceal Hambleton (Gene Hackman) parachutes into enemy territory when his reconnaissance plane is shot down. Hambleton is a veteran intelligence officer, and the North Vietnamese prioritize his capture. He makes radio contact with forward air patrol Captain Bartholomew "Birddog" Clark (Danny Glover), flying a Cessna. Birddog becomes Hambleton's main contact with the outside world as he navigates in enemy territory over several days and the army struggles to mount a rescue mission. A looming massive American air strike in the area adds time pressure.

What Works Well: Based on actual events, the story of a war-time rescue under enemy fire enjoys themes of friendship, survival, and most effectively, the difference between the brutality of up-close combat and the comparatively serene world of an intelligence officer far from the front lines. Gene Hackman and Danny Glover establish a remote cockpit-to-ground rapport, and both actors convey the weight of their ordeal through lived-in performances. Director Peter Markle maintains control of the material with no superfluous scenes and a focus on capturing the rigours of a jungle warfare environment, and capably weaves in the improvised golf course code Hambleton used to communicate his arduous travel path.

What Does Not Work As Well: The enemy perspective is non-existent, and this is a men's-only world with no female roles. The climax goes over-the-top in layering on improbabilities, then keeps looking for more.

Key Quote:

Birddog (over the radio to Hambleton): Let's get the basic relationship down... I'm the lifeguard, you're the drowning man. If you relax, I can bring you to shore. If you fight me, then I'll have to slap you around.



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Movie Review: Dreamgirls (2006)

A musical drama, Dreamgirls is a glitzy rags to riches story infused with powerful singing and overheated passions.

In Detroit of the 1960s, car dealer and part-time music promoter Curtis Taylor (Jamie Foxx) spots energetic amateur trio The Dreamettes, consisting of temperamental lead singer Effie (Jennifer Hudson), patient Deena (Beyoncé Knowles), and good-natured Lorrell (Anika Noni Rose). They perform music written by Effie's talented brother C.C. (Keith Robinson). Curtis signs the trio as background vocalists for soul star and rampant womanizer Jimmy "Thunder" Early (Eddie Murphy).

Curtis is eager to develop new sounds and grow the group's appeal with white audiences. He changes their name to the Dreams and turns them into headliners. He also designates Deena as the lead, much to Effie's disappointment. The group achieves huge success into the 1970s, with Deena and Curtis becoming a power couple and Lorrell maintaining a long-term relationship with Early. But Effie cannot accept her back-up role, and internal divisions threaten to tear the group apart.

An adaptation of the hit Broadway musical by Henry Krieger (music) and Tom Eyen (lyrics), Dreamgirls is unofficially but obviously based on the story of The Supremes, Diana Ross, and Motown Records. Written and directed by Bill Condon, the movie struts with confidence stemming from the close-to-real-life grand drama, and sparkles with colour, costumes, hairdos, and stage lights for a mostly exhilarating 130 minutes.

Tracing the formation and breakthrough of The Dreams up to Effie's departure, the first half is by far the stronger part of the film. The drive to success carries the scrappy but unified energy of underdogs taking on the music world, powered by the group's innocent nothing-to-lose ambition and Curtis' more machiavellian vision.

In contrast, the second half fragments into separate and less compelling narratives, the major characters navigating different trajectories. Effie struggles to rediscover herself; Jimmy Early spirals towards the industry's scrapheap, his love life competing with his career for wreckage awards; Curtis and Deena are wealthy beyond their dreams but also increasingly miserable, his attempts to turn her into a movie star a stuck-in-place sideshow. Happily, most of the threads are gathered up in time for the rousing final show. 

The cast finds a pleasing balance between acting and singing talent, with Eddie Murphy a standout presence. Jennifer Hudson's committed singing sometimes crosses over into barely controlled shouting, but overall the performance numbers, while numerous, are kept reasonably short. Jamie Foxx provides a business-focused anchor, and the cast also includes Danny Glover as Early's old-fashioned first manager. 

Dreamgirls is a dream-big-but-beware-the-pitfalls story, familiar for sure but attractively mounted with an abundance of glamour and glitter.

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Movie Review: Witness (1985)

A romance and crime drama, Witness soulfully explores a quiet way of life by combining a slow-burning love affair with a sketched-in police corruption case.

Recently widowed Rachel Lapp (Kelly McGillis) is a member of the Amish community near Lancaster, Pennsylvania. While on a trip to Philadelphia, her eight-year-old son Samuel (Lukas Haas) is the only witness to an undercover cop's murder in a train station washroom. Philadelphia Police Detective John Book (Harrison Ford) investigates and uncovers internal corruption involving Chief Paul Schaeffer (Josef Sommer) and Lieutenant James McFee (Danny Glover). 

Book is shot and wounded in an assassination attempt. He flees to Lancaster, where Rachel nurses him back to health and gradually they fall in love. Amish elder and Rachel's father-in-law Eli (Jan Rubeš) disapproves of the romance, while local Amish man Daniel (Alexander Godunov) also has his eyes set on Rachel. Meanwhile, Schaeffer and McFee close in, eager to eliminate the witness.

The setting-the-stage opening sequence is a beautiful reveal of Amish traditions, and the opening murder drips with tension and hints at Samuel's resourcefulness. But really, the crime-and-corruption story within Witness is the equivalent of narrative bookends, and receives about as much serious attention as trinkets on a dusty shelf. Director Peter Weir is dismissive in his handling of police procedures: John Book stuffs young Samuel and his mom in a police car and exposes them at close quarters to a potential suspect; then unceremoniously stashes mother and child at his sister's house.

Weir is in a hurry to get to the story's core, which is Book's recuperation in the heart of Amish country. Here John Seale's wistful cinematography captures idyllic sun-kissed hills as a backdrop to a seemingly forbidden romance between the urbane cop and the Amish widow. The movie's pace drops to match the longing stares and horse-and-buggy aesthetics of a community humbly choosing to freeze time somewhere in the 1800s. The middle act culminates in a rousing raise-the-barn sequence, boisterous dancing replaced by respectful appreciation for hard labour.

The tender central romance works beautifully because Harrison Ford yields to his vulnerable side, and Kelly McGillis conveys a thousand words with one glance; their chemistry builds to a respectable simmer. Jan Rubeš as the crusty Eli keeps a watchful eye on the lovers, while Lukas Haas as the clever Samuel disappears for a long stretch while the adults engage in adult activity.

Towards the end Weir remembers there is a crime story to wrap up, and the climax is a cobbled together shotgun fight at the Amish corral. Witness knows the real sparks only fly when the guns fall quiet and hormones run riot.



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Movie Review: Shooter (2007)

A high-energy action thriller, Shooter is full of ridiculous plot holes but nevertheless delivers slick entertainment.

On an unsanctioned mission in Ethiopia, expert sniper Gunnery Sergeant Bob Lee Swagger (Mark Wahlberg) provides cover for a covert US forces mission. The assignment ends in disarray and Swagger's spotter Donnie is killed. Disillusioned, Swagger leaves the military and goes into seclusion in rural Wyoming. Three years later, Colonel Isaac Johnson (Danny Glover) manages to recruit Swagger for a special assignment to counter a threat to assassinate the President.

But Swagger was really lured in to be the patsy, and on the day of the would-be assassination in Philadelphia he is framed, shot, and barely escapes with his life. A nationwide manhunt is launched. Rookie FBI Special Agent Nick Memphis (Michael Peña) is one of the few to suspect Swagger was framed. Meanwhile, Swagger seeks refuge with Donnie's widow Sarah (Kate Mara), and starts to uncover a conspiracy deep within the government centred on Senator Meachum (Ned Beatty).

Directed by Antoine Fuqua, Shooter delivers enough quality to allow mindless enjoyment of an almost laughable story. A stellar cast, a flashy visual style, and a stoic, indestructible and patriotic hero brought to life by Mark Wahlberg all help. The action scenes are sustained and generally coherent, and the bad guys lining up against Swagger are worthy: treacherous, powerful and deeply entrenched in modern-day pragmatic geopolitical meddling. The sniper jargon also sounds legitimate to the untrained ear.

Which is all good, because on the negative side Swagger had to be a particular kind of momentarily stupid not to notice the jaws of a Kennedyesque assassination conspiracy plot snapping tight around his ankles. And once he goes on the run, the film becomes a blur of overlapping groan-inducing developments, characters traveling around the country with dizzying speed and no respect for a national manhunt. When a late climax arrives and Swagger has to explain his actions to a room full of men-in-suits, the lack of any due process or discipline around the proceedings is chuckle worthy.

But of course Swagger gets the upper hand in every skirmish (and the skirmishes arrive at the rate of one every few minutes), and his cool-under-pressure, one-step-ahead-of-the-bad-guys persona is comfortingly familiar. Most of the dialogue is basic, macho-infused actionspeak, and rarely gets in the way.

Fuqua's expertise is constructing few-against-many and mostly silent action set-pieces, and Shooter is at its best when Swagger infiltrates his enemies' hideouts and strongholds and dishes out the special brand of revenge reserved for action heroes seeking personal justice. American evildoers can plot the destruction of entire third world villages and suffer no consequences, but beware landing on the wrong side of one brooding sharpshooter.

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Movie Review: Predator 2 (1990)

A science fiction gory action thriller, Predator 2 moves the setting from the jungle to Los Angeles and loses much of the original's identity in the process.

It's the near future of 1997. On the streets of Los Angeles, heavily armed Colombian and Jamaican drug gangs battle in the open, with the police force caught in the middle, outmanned and outgunned. Lieutenant Mike Harrigan (Danny Glover) and his small team consisting of Detective Danny Archuleta (Ruben Blades) and Detective Leona Cantrell (Maria Conchita Alonso) do their best, but are stunned when one gunbattle ends with the inexplicable ritual slaughter of many gang members.

A powerful alien predator is on the loose, targeting anyone with a weapon, and possessing advanced killing tools and the ability to bend light to appear invisible. With the situation on the street spiralling out of control, new recruit Detective Jerry Lambert (Bill Paxton) joins Harrigan's crew, while the federal government sends in Special Agent Peter Keyes (Gary Busey) and his team to assert control. Keyes and Harrigan immediately clash, but the slaughter continues.

With Arnold Schwarzenegger passing on the sequel, the franchise loses its biggest draw. Danny Glover is an adequate replacement, but does not come close to projecting the necessary charisma or sheer physical stature and stamina needed to confront the alien hunter. As a result, Predator 2 seeps credibility the closer it trundles towards the one-on-one climax.

In the run-up to the final showdown, the film is more urban action thriller with plenty of gore than a science fiction horror film. Director Stephen Hopkins stages several high octane battle scenes as an out of control drug war grips Los Angeles, with the Predator stealthily claiming victims according to his own honourable terms of combat. Plenty of noisy energy fills the screen as the body count mounts and buckets of blood ooze onto the floor and splatter the walls, but nothing distinguishes the film from most other bullet-rich movies willing to uncork bloodshed.

The subplot of federal forces arriving on the scene to take control of the streets cues plenty of reciprocal and sweaty hissing between Glover's Harrigan and Busey's Keyes, but the tension between the two men is largely wasted.

Predator 2 is not bad at anything it does; just comprehensively undistinguished.

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Movie Review: Grand Canyon (1991)

A multi-story drama about race relations, the fragility of life, the ties that bind and growing societal chasms, Grand Canyon explores the remnants of the American Dream but is never as profound as it hopes to be.

In Los Angeles, immigration lawyer Mack (Kevin Kline) experiences a late night car breakdown in a bad part of town. Black tow truck driver Simon (Danny Glover) arrives just in time to prevent Mack being mugged by five black gang members. Simon's sister Deborah (Tina Lifford) lives in the same neighbourhood, and her son Otis is getting sucked into the gang lifestyle. While out on a jog Mack's wife Claire (Mary McDonnell) stumbles upon a baby abandoned in the bushes. She takes care of the infant for nine hours before Mack arrives home and insists that they call the police.

Mack's friend Davis (Steve Martin), an action film producer, is shot in the thigh during a violent mugging, and announces that he will henceforth be shunning violence on film in favour of life-affirming movies. At his office, Mack is avoiding the attention of intern Dee (Mary Louise Parker). The had a one night stand that she took seriously, but he wants no further involvement. Mack reaches out to Simon and tries to find a way to express his gratitude and return the favour, while Claire starts proceedings to become the foster parent for the abandoned baby.

An exploration of a supposedly enlightened fabric gradually fraying, Grand Canyon stares at often ignored emotional, physical and urban scars. Directed and co-written by Lawrence Kasdan, the film is halfway successful to making its point: human life is relatively insignificant in the overall scheme of things, and anyway beneath a thin veneer of civility, families and communities are on the cusp of collapse. The clumsy density of disturbing things happening to a few people undermines the intended flow.

The suburb where Mack and Claire seemingly live an idyllic life is also a place where scary hobos hang out and people abandon babies in bushes. Their marriage appears ideal: but in reality he has cheated and she is unhinged as her motherhood phase comes to an end. The inner city is beyond salvation, Mack's mugging a white man's taste of what kids like Otis are experiencing every day. Even the glitzy world of Hollywood is not immune: Davis is shot for an ironic taste of his own medicine.

Kasdan counterbalances the fear mongering with the evolving relationship between Mack and Simon. Mack makes the effort, Simon responds and a friendship is born, although it remains an extremely awkward step across the racial divide: Mack arranges a blind date for Simon with co-worker Jane (Alfre Woodard), but only because they happen to be the only two black people Mack knows by name.

The film suffers from an overeagerness to appear weighty, the dialogue often overburdened with meaningful conflict at the television drama level, Mack seemingly unable to go one day without yet another serious encounter. Kasdan also succumbs to the obvious symbolism apparent in the film's title, including inserting shots of menacing helicopters whirring over Los Angeles at too-frequent intervals.

The stellar cast performs with the expected level of expressive solemnity, Danny Glover emerging with one of his career best roles as a seen-it-all tow truck driver possessing astute observations on the ways of the world.

Intelligent but just a touch too smug, Grand Canyon carves an interesting but sometimes shallow path.

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The Movies Of Danny Glover

All movies starring Danny Glover and reviewed on the Ace Black Movie Blog are linked below:

Escape From Alcatraz (1979)

Iceman (1984)

Places In The Heart (1984)

Witness (1985)

Silverado (1985)

Lethal Weapon (1987)

Bat*21 (1988)

Predator 2 (1990)

Grand Canyon (1991)

Maverick (1994, uncredited cameo)

Switchback (1997)

The Rainmaker (1997, uncredited)

The Royal Tenenbaums (2001)

Dreamgirls (2006)

Shooter (2007)

Blindness (2008)

2012 (2009)

All Ace Black Movie Blog reviews are here.
The Movie Star Index is here.

Movie Review: Places In The Heart (1984)

A feel good drama, Places In The Heart celebrates the human spirit through the simple story of a widow determined to thrive.

Rural Texas in 1935, the depth of the Great Depression. Edna Spalding (Sally Field) is suddenly widowed when her police officer husband is accidentally shot and killed by a drunk, leaving her to care for their large farm and two young children. Edna receives moral support from her sister Margaret (Lindsay Crouse), who does not know that her husband Wayne (Ed Harris) is carrying on a passionate affair with married local woman Viola (Amy Madigan).

Threatened with foreclosure by banker Mr. Denby (Lane Smith), Edna accepts help from drifter Moses (Danny Glover), a black man who claims that he can create a revenue-generating cotton plantation on her farm. Edna also takes in the blind Mr. Will (John Malkovich) as a boarder to raise some money. Despite the price of cotton plummeting, enormous pressure to sell the farm, rampant community racism against Moses, and nature's fury, Edna pushes ahead, determined to not give up on her land or her family.

Directed and written by Robert Benton, Places In The Heart is a slice of rural life, where the struggle for economic survival shatters class, race, and gender divides. The film may be a hopelessly optimistic parable in its portrayal of a woman in the 1930s staring down the depression, the bankers, the racists, physical disabilities and mother nature to turn her life around, but there is no denying the uplifting and well-intentioned energy coursing through Edna's story.

With beautiful period sets and Néstor Almendros cinematography glorifying the landscape, the film plays with themes of trust and betrayal. Once her husband is killed Edna is forced to trust first Moses, a drifter and thief, and then Mr. Will, a blind man much more likely to be a hindrance than a help. They will need to prove their worth, and the film revels in contrasting Moses and Will's contributions to Edna's life with the individuals who should be her more natural allies: healthy white men in the form of the banker Mr. Denby and the cotton merchant W.E. Simmons (Jay Patterson).

Benton's script includes a substantial subplot involving the illicit affair between Wayne and Viola, at the expense of Edna's sister Margaret. The story of a marriage under tremendous stress adds to the texture of the community and the themes of trust and betrayal, and Viola's fury at Wayne's continued affection for his wife contributes an uncommon cutting edge. But Edna's story of endurance never fully meshes with the turmoil in her sister's life, and the two plots occasionally trip over each other.

Sally Field won her second Best Actress Academy Award for her portrayal of Edna, and its a solid enough performance, more robust than spectacular. Field reaches an early highlight when Edna is forced to confront punishing her young son, a distasteful duty previously performed by her husband. Field captures the horror of a mother coming to terms with what it means to physically abuse a child, ticking off one more thing that will now change in her family's life.

Wisely, Benton is capable of removing the rose coloured glasses when needed. While Edna's journey carries an eternally positive trajectory, the film avoids the temptation to neatly tie up all the loose ends. There are troubles aplenty scattered in the unforgiving southern landscape, and the only certainty is continued interaction between what is sincerely labelled good and evil. Places In The Heart ends with a beautifully mystical moment, an unlikely gathering where human judgement is deferred in favour of a greater communion.

Breathing deeply from the complexities and mysteries of life, Places In The Heart emits a warm, soft glow.

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Movie Review: Switchback (1997)

A serial murderer action mystery, Switchback dips its toes in a multitude of genres and ultimately fails to find a firm foundation.

At a typical suburban home, a babysitter is murdered and a child abducted. Separately, in Texas, Sheriff Buck Olmstead (R. Lee Ermey) is dealing with a nasty double murder at a motel room, plus an impending election challenge from his rival Jack McGinnis (William Fichtner). Meanwhile, on lonely rural backroads, Bob Goodall (Danny Glover) picks up mysterious hitchhiker Lane Dixon (Jared Leto), and then saves him from a beating at a redneck bar. FBI agent Frank Lacrosse (Dennis Quaid) shows up to investigate the motel murders, believing them to be the work of an elusive knife-wielding serial murderer that Frank has been chasing for a long time.

After initially clashing, Buck gradually believes Frank's hunch that the serial killer is nearby, and the connection to the babysitter murder and child abduction is revealed. Bob and Lane strike up a friendship, with Lane demonstrating his sharp abilities with a knife to save the life of a choking restaurant patron, and Bob seemingly on friendly terms with every bar owner, motel keeper and train engineer in the Texas backwaters. With Buck heading for a defeat in his reelection campaign, Frank revealing his true agenda, and more FBI agents descending on the scene, the killer strikes again as a showdown on board a train looms large.

Written and directed by Jeb Stuart (best known for writing Die Hard and The Fugitive), Switchback is character rich and has no shortage of ambition and ideas, but is never able to pull together a cohesive, compelling narrative. Combining slasher-horror scenes, a serial killer mystery, rural small-town politics, agents following their personal agenda plus an action-packed (but mindless) climax on-board a speeding train, Switchback bounces around looking for a theme or structure, and instead finds fragments of ideas which don't quite fit together.

It does not help that there are plenty of critical plot holes. This is a script that demands plenty of coincidences to work, with the final, supposedly carefully planned showdown between killer and pursuer only taking place after frantic and unlikely stumbling through the snow by all parties, with several spectacularly overturned cars thrown into the bargain.

Worse is the absence of any meaningful backstory for the serial killer. Switchback is to be commended for spending plenty of time with the perpetrator of all the murders, both before and after his identity is revealed, but it is time mostly wasted. Why this man kills is never explained.

With no shortage of intriguing characters populating rough and ready Texas locations, the performances oscillate between miscast and intriguing. Dennis Quaid appears rather uninterested as the sombre agent Frank Lacrosse, tortured by dark secrets of his own. Danny Glover is almost too jovial but certainly memorable as Bob, the traveler who knows everyone by name. Jared Leto is intensely magnetic as the young hitchhiker Lane with a disproportionately dark past. R. Lee Ermey and William Fichtner add plenty of colour as sheriffs dueling in both law enforcement and politics. For whatever reason, Stuart does not come up with any major roles for women in his sprawling script.

Switchback is not bad; just unfortunately clumsy, a case of too many ideas backing into each other.

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Movie Review: Silverado (1985)

A valiant attempt to revitalize the Western, Silverado packs in all the genre elements but lacks the required subtlety and sophistication to craft a memorable experience.

In the wild west, Emmett (Scott Glenn) shoots dead four assailant trying to kill him. He then saves the life of Paden (Kevin Kline), who had been left to die in the desert, and the two men join forces and make their way to the town of Turley. Emmett helps his brother Jake (Kevin Costner) escape from the clutches of sheriff Langston (John Cleese), while Paden renews acquaintances with Cobb (Brian Dennehy), his former riding partner. Emmett, Paden and Jake then team up with Mal (Danny Glover), a black cowboy and expert marksman who was driven out of Turley.

The four men head to the town of Silverado, and on the way rescue a wagon train of settlers from bandits. Hannah (Rosanna Arquette), a member of the wagon train, is soon widowed and catches the eye of both Paden and Emmet. In Silverado Emmet and his new friends walk into the middle of a land dispute where Emmett's past will catch up with him, a professional gambler (Jeff Goldblum) will complicate matters, Paden will have to confront Cobb again, Mal reconnects with his father and sister, old scores are settled, and new lives are started.

Despite featuring a dream cast and boasting Kevin Costner's breakthrough role, Silverado is merely competent. The film's fundamental weakness is a simplistic good versus evil narrative that, while enjoyable as a straightforward romp, recalls the genre's earliest era, where characters were all good or all bad with no place for shadows of complexity. Silverado pretends that the 1960s and 1970s never happened when it comes to the genre's evolution, maybe in an attempt to reach out to a younger 1980s audience just looking to cheer on the good guys without straining any mental muscles.

Also contributing to Silverado's problems is a sprawling script, written by director Lawrence Kasdan and his brother Mark, that attempts to cover too much territory. The film bounces from one set-piece to another searching for all the traditional genre elements and squeezing them in, whether they belong or not, and extending the running length to a wholly unnecessary 133 minutes.

Thrown into the mix are the strangers who become allies, the canyon ambush, the wagon train in danger, the land dispute with ruthless cattlemen, the revenge story across generations, the black cowboy fighting racism, the father/son bonding, the saloon confrontation, the good girl forced to become a whore, the corrupt law officers, the expert marksman and the quick draw, the mysterious gambler, and the final shootout on the dusty main street. Silverado lines them all up and ticks them off a master checklist in what becomes an eye rolling exercise in unfocussed and soulless filmmaking.

With so much going on the characters remain superficial, the heroes and bad guys defined as such and growing only in the most predictable directions, as the film rushes to the next derivative climax. Some of the characters, including Rosanna Arquette's Hannah and Jeff Goldblum's Calvin, are quite poorly underwritten.

On the positive side, Silverado projects and maintains a jovial attitude thanks mainly to Kevin Kline's performance. Without veering into comic territory, Kline injects just enough dry humour to ensure that the film avoids taking itself too seriously. Scott Glenn, in a rare but welcome starring role, provides the counterbalance as quieter, more intense presence. Costner is a bundle of barely controlled youthful energy in a vivacious performance that launched him on a charisma-fuelled career.

Kasdan and cinematographer John Bailey bathe the film in bright yellows to create an upbeat, sun-drenched visual aesthetic, and the sets recreating Western towns are intricate if a little too polished. And the air of good intentions and professional delivery permeates the movie, with the galaxy of stars clearly having fun but also doing a fine job of bringing the disparate characters to life, Brian Dennehy a standout as the gruff Sheriff Cobb profiting from the business of being the law.

In pursuing a long-shot resurrection of a much loved genre, Silverado is difficult to dislike but also infuriatingly naive.

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Movie Review: Lethal Weapon (1987)

A cop buddy movie that benefits enormously from one of the most eccentric and memorable police officers created for the screen.

Los Angeles Detective Martin Riggs (Mel Gibson) is depressed, suicidal, utterly unpredictable, and a deadly former military sharp shooter. In the hands of screenwriter Shane Black and director Richard Donner, Riggs is also somehow real. Edgy, unconventional and dangerous, but never straying into ridiculous territory. The film rides smoothly in Riggs' slipstream, as he and straight-laced, 50-year-old partner Detective Roger Murtaugh (Danny Glover) set their sights on breaking up a ruthless drug cartel. Glover as Murtaugh, a middle-aged family man comfortably settled in the suburbs, is the perfect antithesis and foil for Gibson's Riggs.

The baddest of the bad guys is the menacing Gary Busey as the terrifically named Mr. Joshua. Also formerly in the military, he is in charge of removing any threats to the drug-running cartel, and soon this means eliminating Riggs and Murtaugh -- or going after the latter's family, which proves easier. The film does not shy away from a gritty side, with Mr. Joshua and his goons torturing Riggs, and a fairly vicious but unnecessary final martial arts duel between the two.

Lethal Weapon cannot fully escape the relatively narrow constraints of the genre, and creaks due to some shallowness in the secondary acting talent. But the movie mixes good action with a streak of mean humour, and maintains a reasonable pace that allows the stars to shine and safeguards against whiplash.

There is a smoothness and assuredness to the movie that comes from Gibson, Glover and Busey perfectly fitting into their characters, and Donner directing briskly and with an eye to respecting the characters and maximizing the advantage of having such a strong cast. Credit also to Shane Black, who, at 23 years of age, wrote a fearless script that created a franchise and consolidated Gibson's star status.

Lethal Weapon spawned three direct sequels and numerous imitators, and set the standard for cop buddy movies. It was often imitated, but rarely equaled or bettered.

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Movie Review: 2012 (2009)

Disaster movies don't come any bigger than the end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it, and 2012 imagines this scenario by unleashing modern day cinematic pyrotechnics to full effect.

Some intense solar flares are cooking the Earth's core. In the year 2012, our globe goes into melt-down mode, and it's pretty much the end of civilization. Massive earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and tsunamis are unleashed throughout the world on mostly unsuspecting earthlings. The continents shift, and the north and south poles relocate. It's all pretty unsettling stuff.

World governments, including the US President (Danny Glover) and a geologist Dr. Adrian Helmsley (Chiwetel Ejiofor), have had little time to prepare a plan for the survival of the human species. They've nevertheless secretly conjured up massive ark-like vessels secretly built near the Himalayan mountains, to save the lives of selected scientists, politicians, and those who can afford to buy their way on-board.

Jackson Curtis (John Cusack), a limousine driver with a failed marriage and a flamed-out career as a writer, trips over a doomsday merchant (Woody Harrelson, deliciously over the top and appropriately on top of a mountain), stumbles upon the truth, and desperately races to save himself, his former wife (Amanda Peet) and kids.

2012 does not pretend to be anything other than a rollercoaster thrill ride, an epic disaster movie built on a foundation of deliriously effective special effects. Director Robert Emmerich conjures up scenes of destruction on a massive scale, lovingly crafted and demonstrating the state-of-the-art in computer generated visuals.

As a movie, 2012 unfortunately wades straight into Hollywood cliche swampland, with arduous debates about who deserves to be saved, some superfluous characters making the briefest of appearances and mostly just cluttering up the film, and a cringe-inducing climax in which a heroic sacrifice is sacrificed at the altar of guaranteed syrup-heavy happy endings.

With no major stars demanding a huge share of screen time, Cusack and Ejiofor provide a solid tandem to keep the action moving, Cusack from everyman's perspective and Ejiofor from inside the government bunkers. 2012 also offers a throwback to the disaster movies of old where actors well past their best-by date populated minor characters. George Segal and Stephen McHattie stumble past the screen here on their way to a welcome pay-cheque.

If the world is going to end, it may as well be spectacular, and 2012 presents an entertaining-enough vision of God hitting the "reset" button.

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