Movie Review: Snakes On A Plane (2006)

Genre: Horror Comedy  

Director: David R. Ellis  

Starring: Samuel L. Jackson, Julianna Margulies  

Running Time: 106 minutes  

 

Synopsis: FBI Agent Neville Flynn (Samuel L. Jackson) is escorting star witness Sean Jones (Nathan Phillips) on a commercial flight from Hawaii to Los Angeles. But to eliminate the witness, brutal crime boss Eddie Kim has arranged a cargo of deadly snakes to be unleashed mid-air, forcing Flynn and flight attendant Claire (Julianna Margulies) to improvise a frantic survival plan.

What Works Well: This purpose-designed B-movie embraces campiness from title to credits, and offers exactly what the tin says: a none-too serious horror adventure where laughs and groans occupy adjacent economy class seats. The snakes come in all shapes, sizes, and colours, but thankfully Samuel L. Jackson is aware the predators are either rubber or computer-generated, and cuts through the carnage with nothing-can-touch-me vibes. 

What Does Not Work As Well: The premise just needs to be mindlessly accepted: securing, packing, then releasing hundreds of killer snakes onto a plane is a decidedly over-complicated murder method. There are no other plot points, as director David R. Ellis calibrates the mortality rate to achieve a respectable running time. The snake-eye-view green perspective is more muddled than threatening, and the assembled passengers ready to be poisoned or swallowed never rise above snake snack status.

Conclusion: A flight filled with hit and hiss moments.



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Movie Review: Paradise Road (1997)

A World War Two prison camp drama, Paradise Road places western women under the custody of brutal Japanese captors and then cues up every well-worn prison camp cliché.

It's early in 1942 and British-controlled Singapore unexpectedly falls to the advancing Japanese army. Western women and children are hurriedly evacuated by sea out of the city, but Japanese air force bombers catch up with their vessel and sink it. Survivors swim to shore and find themselves on the island of Sumatra. They are soon captured and imprisoned by the occupying Japanese troops.

The women at the camp include stubborn British diplomat's wife Adrienne (Glenn Close); kindly missionary Margaret (Pauline Collins); American socialite Topsy (Julianna Marguiles); German Jew Dr. Verstak (Frances McDormand); young Australian nurse Susan (Cate Blanchett); and the beautiful Rosemary (Jennifer Ehle), whose husband is also interned in a nearby prison for men.

Life in the women's prison camp is tough, with the sadistic Japanese guards often deploying torture and intimidation to control the women. They are forced to work as slaves in the fields, while medical supplies and food are scarce. To lift the women's spirits, Adrienne and Margaret decide to organize the women into a choir. The singing gradually brings the women together, but the war appears endless and there are more agonies to come.

Directed by Bruce Beresford and inspired by real events, Paradise Road is a story of survival under enormous physical and emotional stress. While the women's ordeal is undoubtedly harrowing, this life-as-a-prisoner-of-the-Japanese-is-hell territory has been very well explored in previous movies, and Beresford struggles to add anything new. The prisoners' greatest act of defiance is creating a choir; brave and moving as their actions were, women sitting and singing is not terrific material for a movie experience.

To fill the seemingly endless two hours of running time, Beresford defaults to a tired formula of alternating scenes of mistreatment with long sequences of the women...talking. The Japanese guards all demonstrate vicious behaviour and do the usual amount of screaming and foaming at the mouth. The talking scenes contain the expected mixture of bonding, mistrust and encouragement. As is typical of the subgenre, when prisoners are given little to do except play victims, the drama never gains traction. Big fights break out over a bar of soap. There are apparently children in the camp but they are rarely mentioned. A dog is also among the survivors, and gets a few tangential mentions as a drain on scarce resources.

The performances are solid but unspectacular. Frances McDormand comes closest to etching a memorable character, but only because the heavily accented Dr. Verstak is portrayed with almost cartoonish stand-offishness. At the end of the film little that is original is learned about any of the women; their personalities are sketched in during the opening lavish banquet scene at the luxurious Raffles hotel, and then barely evolve.

Paradise Road leads to hell, but it's a disappointingly familiar place.

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Movie Review: The Newton Boys (1998)

Based on real events, The Newton Boys is a lighthearted drama about a band of brothers from rural Texas who robbed banks at will without hurting anyone in the early 1920s. Despite decent style, the movie never moves beyond perfunctory "good old boys" elements.

In rural Texas, Willis Newton (Matthew McConaughey) comes from a family of horse trainers. Recently released from prison for a crime he claims not to have committed, Willis joins career criminals Slim (Charles Gunning) and Glassock (Dwight Yoakam) in what proves to be a botched daytime bank robbery. Willis decides he can do better leading his own gang, and buys a list of bank safes that can be exploded open with nitroglycerin. He adopts the attitude that the banks and insurance companies are all corrupt, and that he is just a small thief stealing from bigger thieves.

Working with Glassock and eventually recruiting his brothers Joe (Skeet Ulrich), Jesse (Ethan Hawke) and Dock (Vincent D'Onofrio), the Newton Boys successfully hit a succession of banks in various cities, all at night, and with plenty of guns but minimal violence. Willis meets and falls in love with Louise (Julianna Margulies) and tries to reinvent himself as an honest oilman, but has to admit that he is better at crime than anything else. But with the banks strengthening their safe security, the robberies start to get more complicated.

Director Richard Linklater tries his hand at a period piece, and does not do so well. The Newton Boys aims at a Bonnie And Clyde vibe without the violence, but instead delivers a frivolous piece celebrating charismatic hold-ups by characters who remain caricatures. There is plenty of 1920s style on display and the film generally looks attractive, but in the absence of depth behind the costumes, it devolves into a repetitive series of robberies by faceless and interchangeable men. The film is not helped by a cluttered cast that features plenty of side characters, including criminals, bankers, insurance agents and law enforcement types who come and go while contributing little.

The context and motivations start and stop with Willis Newton's Robin Hood-inspired philosophy that it's alright to rob banks because banks are corrupt and insurance companies anyway need robberies to sustain their business. It's a simple message for times that were perhaps simpler, but it's insufficient to sustain the film's two hours. The rest of the Newtons range from the charming Jesse (an animated Ethan Hawke) to the worrywart Jess and lughead Dock, and they all remain barely defined people, generally standing aside as the safes blow open with loud bangs.

There are a few good set pieces, including a particularly chaotic money-transfer hold-up in Toronto that descends into a well-executed farce. The romance elements fare much worse, with Louise easily falling under Willis' sweet talking spell and deluding herself that he is a businessman. Once she confronts the truth, Louise's role becomes to whine incessantly for her man to stop doing what he does best.

With jovial bluegrass music adding to the sense of flippancy, The Newton Boys is flighty film that unfortunately fails to impress.

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Movie Review: Ghost Ship (2002)

A horror movie that mixes gore with suspense, Ghost Ship cannot fully overcome an identity crisis. There is reasonable talent in the cast and kernels of intriguing ideas in the script, but too much time is wasted decapitating bodies and skulking around dark corners rather than exploring the ghost themes and developing the creepy psychological elements.

In 1962, passengers enjoying lavish entertainment on board the Italian luxury liner Antonia Graza suffer a horrible fate: a taut thin wire chord is unleashed like a blade, slicing through bodies and heads, causing mass death by dismemberment. Katie (Emily Browning), a young girl travelling alone, survives the carnage.

Forty years pass. Murphy (Gabriel Byrne) is the captain of the Anchorage-based salvage tugboat Arctic Warrior and her scrappy crew, including Epps (Julianna Margulies) and Greer (Isaiah Washington). They are approached by Jack (Desmond Harrington), a small plane pilot who has spotted a large vessel floating aimlessly in the Bering Sea. Jack joins the Arctic Warrior crew and they soon intercept the mystery ship, which turns out to be the Antonia Graza. When the salvagers board the abandoned ship, it does not take long for eerie things to start happening. 

With Robert Zemeckis and Joel Silver among the co-producers, Ghost Ship had some Hollywood heavyweights behind it. But the push towards greater commercial potential appears to have also resulted in a significant shift away from the more subtle psychological suspense journey initially planned and towards a more shocks-and-blood narrative, with the final product falling into the cracks between two sub-genres.

The better moments are undoubtedly the calm but chilling encounters between the salvage team members and the on-board ghosts. The scenes between Epps and Katie; Murphy and the Italian captain; and Greer and the sultry lounge singer are gratifying ghost encounters tapping into fragile human psychology. Epps has no family of her own and Katie is a metaphorical daughter. Murphy's career is stalled at the tugboat level, with alcohol issues a likely cause; he gets to share a drink with the captain of a bygone era's grand luxury liner. And Greer is about to get married: the passion he feels for the seductive singer is the farewell to his old life.

Despite some good visual moments delivered by director Steve Beck and the best effort of Margulies and Byrne, Ghost Ship is hampered by significant levels of triteness. There are gruesome deaths aplenty, grotesquely deformed bodies hidden behind closed doors, and endless stock scenes of search lights peering into dark shadows within the bowels of the massive ship.

Ghost Ship eventually sails away quietly, leaving faint memories of what could have been a good movie.

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