I went to go see this the weekend before last with my friend Ryan. For those who don't know, Ryan is where I stole a lot of my fake bravado from and he clearly does that whole act better than I do.
First thing I need to criticize is the title, or rather myself for going to see a movie like this. You can tell the plot for the writers went as far in pre-production as the title of the movie and that's it. That was their entire inspiration for the entire film. I bet the pitch meeting went something like, "Hey we should put that dude from Avatar who is actually a pretty decent actor in yet another really terrible role where he's a guy standing on a ledge of a huge building!"
They don't get around to explaining any single solitary major plot detail til roughly 40 minutes in. I understand you want to create suspense, writers, but leaving the audience in the dark on what should be outlined from the get-go is not the way to do it. The audience shouldn't be wondering why this guy is out on the ledge if he's the protagonist. I'm going to ahead and spoil it for you: He was imprisoned for 2 years for a crime he didn't commit.
Yes, something that simple is not explained to you until 40 minutes into the movie. What the hell, right? The details of the crime are actually kind of a neat premise (the bad guy pinned this other guy for stealing his $30 million dollar diamond which he still actually has so he could sell it himself and still maintain face in the public eye) but by the time it's revealed, they already lost the audience.
The guy is out on the ledge to begin with just as a distraction while his brother and brother's girlfriend go to steal the diamond for reals in order to prove this guy's innocence. Okay, whatever. It's dramatic and is therefore very Hollywood so I'll give that a pass. However, the brother and girlfriend are going to steal a $30 million dollar diamond that has like... the single sorriest excuse for a security system ever. Air vents big enough for a person to crawl through, check. Easily beatable cameras, check. They beat a heat sensor by spraying it with a fire extinguisher. I've never seen a fire extinguisher shoot liquid nitrogen before, but I guess that's what the writers for this movie think is inside.
And then they have these crazy gadgets and explosive to break into the vault itself. This is the kind of shit the Impossible Mission Force wishes they had, and a guy recently escaped from prison, his poor as hell brother and his girlfriend somehow have the hook-ups to get their hands on this kind of technology? The dude before getting arrested was just a cop, too. It's not like the police have this kind of stuff handy.
I feel bad for the actors. It was fairly well acted, truth be told. Except for one character, who does all this crazy, backhanded mysterious stuff then has a random act of selflessness at the end that gets him killed.
The part that just totally killed the experience for me was the whole extinguisher beating a heat detector, as I previously mentioned. That was probably 50 minutes into the movie, which is a really poor time to start dropping ridiculous things into it. Up until that point, nothing had happened that required the audience to suspend disbelief. It isn't long after this segment we're basically asked to expect a huge corrupt corporation has terrible security and some people who don't have a dime to their name have Batman gadgets. Oh, and at one point he leaps off the building to no harm at all on one of those giant mattress thingies they use, and no one thinks to apprehend the guy. He just kind of rolls off and charges toward the reason he jumps down.
You think by now I'd learn not to go see movies where the entire premise of the film is outlined in the title. At least "Snakes on a Plane" was intentionally bad. This one is just sorry.
I laughed a lot while reading this. HOWEVER, I must disagree with you on the Sam Worthington being a decent "actor". Yes, I put the quotes around actor. I, personally, am baffled at how he keeps getting major motion picture roles. I feel like his presence has ruined every movie he's been in. Is this his fault? Well he's a terrible actor, but he also lands these horrible roles...like in Terminator Salvation. I'm sorry, I want to hear about John Connor and Kyle Reese, not random robot dude who shows up out of nowhere and is the main character. Why do I care about his story? Ok, that's beside the point....the point is he ends up in roles that ruin movies (most of the time).
ReplyDeleteAlso, I'm not alone in thinking this way: http://www.cracked.com/funny-4723-sam-worthington/
Now as for the above mentioned movie. I didn't go see it, nor will I. Like I said, I dislike Sam Worthington....also, the movie just looked terrible. As for their plot...I'm not sure how this screenplay got sod to a studio. You need to know major plot factors by page 10 of a screenplay, or a studio exec will stop caring. If they were only 10 pages into the story and it was 40 minutes long, that meanst their screenplay was about 20 to 30 pages long. Clearly someone dropped the ball on this, and millions of dollars were spent turning this into a movie. So sad.
Thanks for the review though, I now am confirmed in my belief, Sam Worthington never stars in a movie I'd like to see.
Nicole, go read the comments left in the section on that cracked article. Seems there are more people coming to Worthington's defense than to his detriment (although not for his acting skills.) I am not going to blame the actor for getting stuck in terribly scripted nonsensical roles, is my point. I don't hate the guy or think he's a tragically bad actor, but man he sure does get stuck in crap roles.
ReplyDeleteActually, I suggest you DO go see this, and bring along a friend with the same cynical viewpoint. It's a lot of fun to trash it as you watch, really.