The Green Hornet Review

The Green Hornet is a 3D movie based on the 1930s radio show and 60’s television show, directed by Michel Gondry.

Plot

We are introduced to Kevin Smith-like playboy slacker Britt Reid (played by Gen Y’s comedy slacker Seth Rogen ) who is the son of James Reid millionaire publisher of the Los Angeles newspaper The Daily Sentinel (played by the always awesome Tom Wilkinson). Once his father is found slain by an allergic reaction to a bee's sting, Britt finds himself at the head of a publishing company that he has no-idea how to run. After a burgeoning friendship with his father’s genius mechanic Kato (played by Asia super-pop-star Jay Chou), and an impromptu rescue mission of a damsel in distress, the duo decide to dedicate their lives to rid their city of gang-related crime, where wackiness ensues.......................

Review

The movie is surprisingly very funny. I could not help but laugh at the improvised comedic delivery of Seth Rogen as he plays his child-like exasperation reacting off of the radiating, effortless coolness of Kato. Seth’s energy and enthusiasm is enough for us to empathise with Kato: it is easy to see why such a straight-laced genius would fall for Seth’s enthusiasm and be allowed to be swept along for the ride as his side-kick / partner. The child-like wonder is akin to Adam Sandberg’s The Lonely Island’s frenetic amazement that they have winded up on a boat! This is a gag that is used throughout the movie, let alone the Green Hornet mythology itself – if Kato is the one literally doing all of the footwork, what does he need the Green Hornet for? The relationship is well established in the movie as it is shown that, however idiotic Britt Reid is presented, he is the ‘ideas’ man, whereas Kato is the practical genius. Britt comes up with the ludicrous ideas, unleashed via his stupidity, whereas Kato’s logical genius is his Achilles heel – he can only see the logical side of things, taking Captain Kirk’s ideas and putting them, Spock-like into reality. The yin and yang, the logical and artistic, the right and left hemispheres working perfectly well. It is also great to see what happens to the duo when they are separated, and how they cannot function without the other, falling back into their apathetic ruts from whence they came.

The action scenes are great. The first scene where the duo fights the would-be muggers is excellent, establishing the pairings working/crime-fighting relationship – The Green Hornet is the mouth, and Kato is the fists....and feet and demonstrated in the TV series. Gondry’s bag of visual tricks are well delivered here, delivering a fight reminiscent of The One and The Matrix while putting his own unique, fun spin on it.

There are plenty of nods to the Hornet’s previous incarnations, for instance The Green Hornet’s face mask from the 1940’s Green Hornet serial, Kato’s driving goggles and a sketch of Bruce Lee.

The movie falters however as soon as Seth puts on the The Green Hornet uniform. Instead of a heroic reveal a la Batman, Superman etc....Seth Rogen does not become the character, instead he is simply Seth Rogen wearing a mask. The 60’s television series was akin to the Batman television series although it was played straight and was actually very James Bond cool, especially with the incredibly cool Bruce Lee as Kato. Instead of looking into the character of the Green Hornet, Seth as star and co-writer simply bends the character to suit his on-screen slacker persona.

This movie’s script makes a conscious point to play AGAINST the ‘normal’ interpretation of the classic comic-book hero genre, even making references to the ‘problem’ with other comic-book heroes. The Green Hornet however is a 30’s invention spawned by The Shadow, The Lone Ranger and the same influences that gave birth to Batman. The Green Hornet has many similar facets as Batman: a death in the family leading to a ‘road to Damascus’ moment, a secret hangout, a contact within the police force, a mask, car and side-kick. The Green Hornet and Kato were even paired with the 60’s Batman TV show at one point. To have so many similarities in the first place and then try to play away from type within the same genre is an arrogant mistake.

From the second act, the movie derails. As soon as the duo are in their car, Kato asks The Green Hornet “where are we going?” to which the Green Hornet answers “I don’t know. I thought you knew.” This is a similar problem with the script: the duo become heroes for no real reason other than to have fun, and they get their act together before finding a goal or simply a reason for being. There simply isn't a plot to hang onto.

An action sequence during the day at a building site is also uninspired. The pair’s avatar’s, like Batman’s, do not ‘work’ during the day. To top it off, the unnecessarily convoluted plot and an illogical and muddled ending set-piece is disappointing when compared to the movie’s first fantastic action sequence. When Gondry is not directing a fight scene, the energy is left up to his improvisational comedy star to hit-and-miss the scene pretty much on his own.

The violence is also striking. The film is a cool comedy that young teens can really enjoy, complete with Iron-Man and Batman Begins gadgetry establishing the origins of a hero and his interrelationships with his team-members. Its fun stuff. However, scenes of explicit and cruel violence are quite jolting. The tone therefore is uneven. Digital stunt men are introduced under falling cars, objects and buildings. The camera then, unnecessarily, focuses-in on the dying men’s twitching limbs.

The ‘heroic’ finale is let down by vicious and cruel straight-up murders. I am uncomfortable with hero’s murdering their foe: Batman swore not to use guns or kill people due to his parents being gunned downed, but in the 1989 Batman, he has no problems blowing up a gang along with the Axis Chemical plant with a hand-grenade, dropping the Joker off of a cathedral after telling him “I’m going to kill you” or in Batman Returns shoving a stick of dynamite down a gang member's pants and then giving said gang member a sick smile before hurling him into an open sewer, leading to an explosion. Hell, even Christian Bale’s Batman tells the film’s uber villian in 2003’s Batman Begins “I’m not going to kill you, but I don’t have to save you” and lets the villian to his fate in a crashing train. However, in The Dark Knight, he saves Heath Ledger’s Joker from falling to his death...hmmmmmm............. Iron-Man even shot a group of men in a single shot, and then blew up a tank, presumably with a driver in it. He then reveals himself to be Tony Stark at film’s conclusion. I’m amazed that Iron-Man 2 was not subtitled “Dead Man Walking”. The heroic Optimus Prime in Transformers 2 goes out of his way to hunt and exterminate ‘evil’ Decepticons, and tells his opponent at films end to “give me your face” and then proceeds to rip his face....off. Bumblebee also rips the spine out of a Decepticon puma’s back, but that’s okay see...cause they’re ‘evil.’  It seems perhaps instead of all of these expensive gadgets, such ‘heroes’ should just take a leaf out of Death Wish, save a few bucks and just buy a gun.

Rating

I could go on further with what was lacking in the movie, suffice to say all in all, a very mixed effort. A sprawling, unguided comedy, with jolting Gondry camera tricks disturbing the balance. An unfortunately expected result from its troubled production history, something along the straight lines of the original television show or French short film would have been welcome.

2.5 Hornets out of 5

See what Rotten Tomatoes has to say, and check out the trailer!

Luke McWilliams February 2011

Tron Review

Tron is a 1982 science fiction movie written and directed by Steven Lisberger, starring Jeff Bridges

Plot

We meet Kevin Flynn (played by Jeff Bridges) who is trying to hack into his old place of work, the software company ENCOM. Ed Dillinger (played by David Warner) previously stole Flynn’s video-game designs and, passing them off as his own, scaled many rungs on the corporate ladder, becoming the company’s senior executive. While Flynn is searching the mainframe for evidence of Ed’s wrong doing, he is consistently blocked by the extremely oppressive authoritarian Master Control Program (MCP) that controls the mainframe.

ENCOM employees Alan Bradley (played by Bruce Boxleitner) and Lora Baines (played by Cindy Morgan) inform Flynn that Dillinger knows what he is up to and has thus tightened security clearances. Flynn manages to get his friends on board his mission and they all break into ENCOM so that he can get them into the system and place Brad’s security program “Tron” within it: a program which would monitor communications between the MCP and the outside work. Once inside the ENCOM lab however, the MCP takes control of a matter-digitising laser which is aimed at Flynn’s back where digital wackiness ensues..........................

Review

Tron was groundbreaking back in the 1980’s. The special effects incorporated classic animation, computer animation and live action elements using back-lighting techniques. It was extremely brave of Disney to take this project on as it was cutting edge: nobody had seen anything like this before and it was a risk. Similar to 2008’s Speed Racer, it was a hard film to define: was it live action or a cartoon? Even the Academy Awards snubbed the film for its special effects as they believe the production team “cheated” by using computers, of course now-a-days such CG use is the norm as it is relatively cheaper and safer.

Tron has excellent action sequences that are well paced and brilliantly realised: the light- cycles races and disk-battles are always coupled with a sense of urgency and danger, while all the while looking really cool with speed and glowing-ghosting of images leaving their trace across the screen.

The story of being sucked into a computer and playing along with the programs was a popular theme in the 80’s. The Star Wars two player arcade video game had a pilot and a shooter guiding its X-Wing through the Death Star with 3d vector graphics throwing themselves across the screen. It is with this influence amongst early video gaming verging on 3D that lead to the theme of playing inside the machine. The Last Star Fighter had its hero being lost in the story of his local arcade machine, an escape from his trailer park life. Unbeknownst to him, the arcade machine was actually a recruitment program which selects him to battle amongst the stars in his own space-ship.

At the time, video / arcade machines were a social venture, allowing players and viewers to be transported to a fantastical land. With the introduction of home consoles and desk-top computers, video-gaming became much more introverted whereas now, gaming can be done with a wealth of strangers online, albeit on your couch. Games however have now become so realistic, that the fantasy element has suffered. Instead of exploring other worlds with sci-fi technology, we are privy to stealing cars and participating in wars. It is interesting to note that early video-game movies which have placed their characters in the real world (Super Mario Brothers, The Wizard) suffered as a result, and that movies based on ‘realistic’ video-games underperform (Silent Hill, Alone in the Dark).

Tron shares a few religious philosophical themes usually reserved for a Manga film, particularly the religious belief in ‘users’: programmers responsible for their programs within the computer, god-like beings that, when descended into the Tron world, yield supernatural abilities.

The idea that programmers imprint their souls onto every piece of code that they write can be likened to any work that anyone does – a piece of us, our attention, our expertise and / or love is dedicated to every piece of work that we do, be it technical, artistic or caring for another. Tron represents this idea through using the actors playing the programmers to double-up and play their counterpart programs. This simple expression of this idea is executed perfectly, with soul imprints reacting to each other as they would in the ‘real’ world. This is a refreshing visual interpretation of the idea of what it means to be human compared to the verbose Ghost in the Shell. Kevin Flynn’s Clu program acts in the way I would have expected a ‘program’ to act – specific and robotic. However, ghosting of souls from programmers lead to a natural evolution of complexity to the programs having feelings and relationships, evolving beyond their ‘written’ purpose/destiny.

Disney excels at anthropomorphic characters, what with first giving a mouse a voice, then a dog, a duck and so on (heck, come to think of it they even did cars and furniture). Over time their characters started to look similar to their real-life counterparts, making their plight even more emotionally involving as we felt for them. Tron does keep this tradition going but with almost clairvoyant predictive clarity: in an era when computers where cold, beige pieces of furniture, Tron made us feel for programs: things designed to assist us, the real. Tron developed a social class but put a face to it as well, before Macintosh made computers a piece of high design, where people felt for tamagochi  pets and where computers emitted sounds of delight or disappointment with our actions.

Of course now we can design our computers and convergent devices to our tastes, leading to an emotional connection with them. Will Smith’s character asks a robot designer “why do you make them look like humans” in I, Robot. Why indeed. Where children were flushing their newly acquired clown fish down the toilets to free them and keeping all of their old toys from the rubbish, should we really be thinking twice before deleting a program or Word document? Oh..that’s right: Windows does ask you if you REALLY want to carry through with that action, along with an emotional beep.  

That being said, the plot and themes of Tron are tied in with programming theory and language. For a general audience member, let alone a child watching the film in the 1980’s where the internet didn’t exist and computers were more common taking up half a room in an office building, this may have been a bit daunting. In the computer tech-savvy millennium however, audiences should be able to follow this easily.

Rating

Obviously all of these themes and visual cues (especially comparing live circuit boards to a living city) were executed in the brilliant Matrix trilogy (which picked to death similar themed Manga films, of note Ghost in the Shell), encompassing many eastern themes and marrying them up perfectly with a wealth of psychology, philosophy, religion as represented through complex computer programming. Tron did it first, perhaps too soon for a general audience and therefore alienating itself. However the audience did select this movie through time and that is why it is now a cult classic.

Fun fast and flashy, this user gives Tron 4.5 disks out of 5

Check out what Rotten Tomatoes have to say, and check out the trailer!

 

Luke McWilliams,January 2011

Wild Target Review

Wild Target is a comedy based on the 1993 French film Cible Emouvante.

 

Plot

We are introduced to Victor Maynard (played by the usually brilliant Bill Nighy) who is a slightly older then middle-aged solitary assassin. Victor is extremely close to his retired killer mother who broaches upon the subject of legacy: if Victor does not continue the family line, who will inherit the family business? Soon he is given an assignment to dispatch the young and beautiful Rose (played by Emily Blunt). Unexpectedly sparing her life, Victor is soon on the run from his employer (played by the excellent Rupert Everett, a rival assassin (The Office's and soon to be Hobbit Martin Freeman ) and his mother as he is suddenly thrust into the role of protector of his would be crush / victim and a tag-along soon-to-be apprentice (played by Rupert Grint). Needless to say, stiff-upper-lip wackiness ensues.

 

Review

Movie trailers are made by companies that specialise in producing movie trailers. They are sent all cuts of footage and are free to use them in any way that they see fit. Usually, this is done even before a final edit is done on the movie, where sometimes footage seen in the trailer actually doesn’t make it in the film (Gwyneth Paltrow gave Iron Man’s mask a kiss before throwing it out of a plane, and The Transporter batted a missile away using a silver drinks tray, both unfortunately didn’t make the final cut!).

 

Movie trailer music is also a specialised industry. Music heard in the trailers are rarely part of the movie’s soundtrack, and this is why the same operatic theme used for the King-Kong trailer and The Fantastic Four were the same, and neither movie had it in their soundtrack. Basically, there is a lot of room to move to make a trailer extremely exciting and a limitless media to showcase your product to a wider audience.  With all this at hand, the trailer for Wild Target looked like an early 90’s trailer that you would fast-forward through on your VHS player and not look back. Unfortunately, this is just a taste of what was to come............

 

The movie starts off well as we are led to believe that the movie will be a strong, dark comedy, what with Bill Nighy’s character trying his best to dispatch Rose through a silent, stealthy deadly chase through a London street. Soon however, the usual romantic plot mechanisms kick into gear and this deliciously dark comedy turns into an awkward, flaccid experience.

It is quite uncomfortable watching Bill Nighey as the relatively extremely young Emily Blunt uses her feminine wiles on him. It is even more irksome when she suggests to him that his parental instincts directed at young Tony may be sexual. This is at least a clever sub-plot exploring Victor’s middle-age complex, but is dropped so quickly one has to wonder why it was introduced in the first place.

 

Even if one was to suspend their disbelief over the romantic coupling of Victor and Rose due to the age difference, it is hard to believe the character change in Rose: she starts off as a selfish, irritating Lolita type- bratty child, and then suddenly becomes a dow-eyed romantic. The abrupt clash of characterisation could be accepted as the onslaught of ‘true-love’, but to me it seemed forced and totally unconvincing.

 

The ending is incredibly lazy, as if the director himself wanted to end it as quickly and as painlessly as possible, knowing that the movie is a turkey, and it would be best to snuff it as quickly as possible.

 

Rating

It is good to see Martin Freeman in a different sort of role, Rupert Everet is always a pleasure and Rupert Grint is enjoyable. However, the sum-of-its parts is not enough to raise this above a pleasant, but missed opportunity of something more. Needless to say, the trailer to this movie was truly horrible, but unfortunately it had all the best parts in it.

 

2 out of 5 moustaches.

 

Check out what Rotten Tomatoes has to say, and see the trailer (which is actually different to the one screened in cinemas)!

Luke McWilliams, December 2010