Accidental Statham Fest
Mar. 11th, 2010 06:14 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
redfiona99So, as I said on Sunday, Channel 5 are having 'Statham Sunday' for the next few weeks.
This week's film was 'War' (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0499556/), which actually picks up in the last quarter, possibly because that's when they finally give Jet Li something to do other than be a bad ass mofo, not that he doesn't do that well.
Because, for the first hour at least, this is a very flat film. They painted Rogue spectacularly darkly, because he blows up dogs.
So far and so obvious and quite dull. I was reduced to trying to decide if it was actually San Francisco or Vancouver pretending to be SF.
And then you get the twist, which is unobvious and not cheating. In the most genius way (we'll just ignore how a FBIee got ninja assasin skills). Because it plays with the audiences expectations, because of course Rogue would blow away Joe Schmoe FBI agent, and of course Crawford isn't the mole because he's played by Jason Statham, and he's going after the bad guys like a man possessed, except of course, both of the above aren't true and they play it in a way that makes sense in context.
I'm not sure that the awesomeness of the last quarter make up for the rest of it, but I'm sure how else they could have done the first part. Definitely some tightening needed though.
Then I saw Crank.
You are all well aware of my dislike of shaky cam. I did not like this film because of this. And the screaming misanthropy and, in short, bad film!
This week's film was 'War' (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0499556/), which actually picks up in the last quarter, possibly because that's when they finally give Jet Li something to do other than be a bad ass mofo, not that he doesn't do that well.
Because, for the first hour at least, this is a very flat film. They painted Rogue spectacularly darkly, because he blows up dogs.
So far and so obvious and quite dull. I was reduced to trying to decide if it was actually San Francisco or Vancouver pretending to be SF.
And then you get the twist, which is unobvious and not cheating. In the most genius way (we'll just ignore how a FBIee got ninja assasin skills). Because it plays with the audiences expectations, because of course Rogue would blow away Joe Schmoe FBI agent, and of course Crawford isn't the mole because he's played by Jason Statham, and he's going after the bad guys like a man possessed, except of course, both of the above aren't true and they play it in a way that makes sense in context.
I'm not sure that the awesomeness of the last quarter make up for the rest of it, but I'm sure how else they could have done the first part. Definitely some tightening needed though.
Then I saw Crank.
You are all well aware of my dislike of shaky cam. I did not like this film because of this. And the screaming misanthropy and, in short, bad film!
