Unstoppable

First Hit: Anything with Denzel Washington is good but this film hangs on the border of not being good.

We know the ending as soon as the film begins. Yes this is typical Hollywood action fare but there is hope because there are some great looks and lines by Denzel.

In Unstoppable Washington plays Frank a 28 year veteran of driving trains. He knows his stuff. His partner for the day is Will (played by Chris Pine) who is a newbie, fully distracted because his wife wants a restraining order against him, and has basically failed at most things he’s done in the past.

Two lazy mindless railroad yard employees are ordered to move a train while they are taking yet another break. They don’t hook up the air brakes, they don’t set the switches in the cab correctly, and the only person in the cab jumps out thinking he can throw a switch and get back into the cab.

We all know the answer, the train gets loose and it is at full throttle heading for Stanton, PA on its own with no driver and at high speed. In Stanton there is a dangerous curve which no train can make at more than 25 miles an hour or it crashes into the middle of town and some oil storage containers.

This curve creates the motive for multiple attempts to stop the train. The senior company men care less about lives and safety of people and more about the money that will be lost if they have to derail the train so they make stupid decisions.

After we wade through their failed attempts to stop the train, including derailing it, Frank and Will come to the rescue by catching up to it from behind and slowing down the moving bomb and along the way they become better people.

Washington is wonderful as Frank the 28 year veteran who is wise and caring about who he is and his work. Pine is adequate as the lost Will. I never got that his acting brought realness to his character’s story. Rosario Dawson as Connie, who runs the yard where the runaway train departs from, is good at being commanding in this predominantly male environment. Tony Scott directed this in Tony Scott fashion where the action is big and the story obvious. Mark Bomback wrote the script and there are some good lines but the story is obvious from beginning to end.

Overall: A enjoyable rental film for a family evening viewing.

RED

First Hit: A silly fun film which showed off the quirkiness of some great actors.

I like films like RED which are a farce but reasonably put together enough to make it fun. I like when the implausible is made plausible enough so that I can sit back and just go for the ride. RED is one such film.

Is any of it plausible? No, but that isn’t the point. The point is to create enough of a plot with some writing which fit the actors range, yet move them enough outside their norm to make it enjoyable.

Frank Moses (played by Bruce Willis) is a retired CIA spook who, years ago, happened to be on a mission in Guatemala where the current Vice President got himself skewed by giving favors to a corporate executive named Alexander Dunning (played by Richard Dreyfuss).

The story begins to leak and a reporter is killed as are others who were on the mission. Moses was on the mission and is now being hunted. He innocently gets hooked up with a Social Security Claims associate named Sarah Ross (played by Mary-Louise Parker) because he likes the sound of her voice over the phone but meeting Moses means she is hunted as well.

To get out of this mess Moses finds others who were on the same mission in Guatemala to warm them that a CIA operative is out to kill them because they know the Vice President’s past. There is Joe Matheson (played by Morgan Freeman) who is dying of cancer, has nothing else to live for and thinks stopping these useless deaths is important.

Then there is Marvin Boggs (played by John Malkovich) who is paranoid, thinks the government is always after him and may mistakenly think a particular person is out to kill him but is often times right. These people are joined by Victoria (played by Helen Mirren) who is steely eyed and ready to kill someone at the drop of a hat (just to keep her finger in the pie).

All these older CIA covert operations people (RED Retired Extremely Dangerous) are out to expose the truth because if they don’t the current CIA will kill them.

Willis is great with his typical sarcastic wit conjuring up a way to resolve the crisis he finds himself. Dreyfuss is fine as the man behind the scenes with money and the stings which are pulling on the VP and soon to be President. Parker is a perfect fit as the girl living in Kansas City who’s never seen or done anything in her life as she gets pulled into the espionage mess and enjoys the change of life. Freeman is perfect as the sound thinker and always ready to do the right thing for the team even if it means pulling a trigger or being on the other end of the bullet. Malkovich is perfect as the right on the edge guy who spent many of his early years in the Army’s LSD program. Mirren was funny in her out of character role firing machine guns and wasting other’s lives. For fun Ernest Borgnine the CIA deep dark records keeper is a joy to see again. Jon and Eric Hoeber wrote this in a funny tongue-in-cheek sort of way while Robert Schwentke made the best of his actors and a tight script that moved things along in a silly funny sort of way.

Overall: It was a romp, easy to watch, predictable and engaging.

Scott Pilgrim vs. the World

First Hit: Inventive filmmaking and acting made this a thoroughly enjoyable experience.

I like when people take some risks. Edgar Wright took the story written by Michael Bacall, Bryan Lee O’Malley and Wright, himself, and turned it into a visual reality based on the combination of comic book graphics and real life.

Like in the very old days of TV Batman, Wright’s team used graphics in expressing actions and words while adding interesting patterns of staging and lighting to this story. Telephone rings and you see “rrrriiiiinnnngggg” super imposed on a wall or table. People fly through the air like they do in amazing Asian martial arts fighting scenes. Edgy music adds a powerful punch to the background visuals and adds to the fun and enjoyment of this film.

And I just loved the names of the characters including: Pilgrim (played by Michael Cera) who is in a band named Sex Bob Ombs, had an old girlfriend name Kim Pine (played by Alison Pill) that broke his heart (he was pining for her), finds Knives Chau (played by Ellen Wong) who is a high school girl who likes Pilgrim and cuts to the chase, runs into Ramona Flowers (played by Mary Elizabeth Winstead) whom he falls in love with immediately and she changes hair color weekly, and discovers that to hang with Ramona he must defeat her seven evil ex’s.

The band members’ names are Stephen Stills (played by Mark Webber), Young Neil (played by Johnny Simmons) and Julie Powers on drums (played by Aubrey Plaza). When the band gets invited to play a "battle of the bands", Pilgrim also has to defeat the seven ex’s if he wants to keep his new girlfriend. In these scenes he is a martial arts master and as soon as he conquers an evil ex, a pinball score rises over the ex’s head and the person turns to coins (a payoff).

All through this, there are other amusing and funny moments as the story unfolds. There are lessons to learn for all the characters and the film is fun to watch. It has a level of freshness to it that felt like I was seeing something interesting on the screen that didn't measure its worth by how big the explosion had to be.

Cera is still playing the nerdy boy with some smarts which he occasionally uses. He plays this role often and someday he might want to try something totally different. Wong was fabulous as Knives. She captured the character extremely well. Winstead was also very strong as Ramona. Pill was good as the previous girlfriend who broke Pilgrim’s heart. Webber, Simmons and Plaza were great as band members who put up with and supported Pilgrim through the adventure. Kieran Culkin was fabulous as Pilgrim’s gay roommate. Wright directed with film with fun and an eye for color and scenes which spoke clearly.

Overall: Not sure I’d like to see a lot of films shot this way, but when one comes along that is this well crafted, it is definitely worth it.

The Other Guys

First Hit: An insipidly lost film with little direction and a hopeless story.

I’ve mentioned this before that I don’t think Will Ferrell is much as an actor and somewhat bankrupted as a comedian. That is a given. But what was a good actor like Mark Wahlberg thinking by being in this film?

The writing by Adam McKay and Chris Henchy was completely lost, had no focus, and devoid of a meaningful subject and worse as comedy.

The opening sequences with Samuel L. Jackson and Dwayne Johnson were mildly amusing as a spoof on super-hero cops, but then to have them jump off building and commit suicide while in pursuit of criminals was totally lost on me. What was the point of this?

The Other Guys, who are the wanna be cops in the squad room, was totally a misrepresentation of anything cops do, or don’t do, and if it was supposed to be ironic it totally missed the mark. Terry Hoitz (played by Wahlberg) is a damaged cop because he mistakenly shot Derek Jeter in the leg and now the whole city of New York hates and reviles him.

His partner Allen Gamble (played by Ferrell) was a desk cop, who worked in accounting, but now has to be a real detective and risk himself on the streets. They are a mismatched partnership and don’t get along.

There are a few moments of real laughter as they display their differences, but mostly they go through this film mugging and pretending to work on a case together. The aspect that all beautiful women are attracted to Gamble falls flat and is nowhere believable.

The story line that they tracking down a racketeer is only reasonable because Gamble worked in the accounting department, nothing else works.

Ferrell cannot act. The difference between a good comedian acting as a straight man and a bad one is to watch Steve Carell in his latest film and watch Ferrell in this one; night and day. Carell is great and Ferrell is insipid. Wahlberg must be having a crisis of confidence to take on this film. He is can be a very good actor but here he must be just picking up a paycheck. It was nice to see Michael Keaton again on the screen in the role as Ferrell’s and Wahlberg’s boss. Jackson and Johnson are a good team together and their egos work well. Maybe the film needed to focus on them. McKay co-wrote and directed this mess and if he gets to direct another film he better be watched over by someone who knows something about film making.

Overall: This film is useless at all levels.

Salt

First Hit: Despite Jolie’s strong acting and excellent execution, the ending was predictable and telegraphed.

For a film to be suspenseful it has to be set up that way. It has to keep the audience wondering what will happen and make them believe what they are seeing is really the truth. Salt was not set up to do this.

I’d be surprised if anyone in the theater thought for one minute, that Salt (played by Angelina Jolie) would turn out to be a die-hard Russian spy wanting to kill the President of the US. With that resting in one’s mind from the get go, how could one buy into the story on the screen? I didn't.

Therefore the film became one about; can this obvious story be told well and would the acting and action be engaging? To those questions the answer is yes, it was engaging and it was fun to watch.

The story is about a Russian man named Vassily Orlov (played by Daniel Olbrychski and Daniel Pearce) who wants to cause havoc in the world because he prefers the cold war fight between the U.S.A. and U.S.S.R. of the 1950's and 1960's to the present day friendship. To keep that old battle alive he kidnaps young kids in Russia and trains them to be obedient killers and spies.

Salt, who is a US Russian diplomat’s daughter, is one of them. To carry out his plan he sends these well trained people into the US to live their lives and to be ready to march on his orders to perform the covert functions they were trained to deliver.

Jolie is good and keeps the whole film interesting. She is both athletic and beautiful. You believe she can to all the things she does in the film; from beating the crap out of people to saving the world from total destruction. Liev Schreiber as Jolie’s boss Ted Winter is strong as the man who cares but also has his own secret. Chiwetel Ejiofor, as Peabody the government agent overseeing the problem of spies, is his usual strong self. Olbrychski is great as the Russian activist who wants the world to be different than it is. Phillip Noyce did well with the given script but the problem is that the script is too obvious to work as a suspenseful thriller.

Overall: It is entertaining in an action sort of way but it is not suspenseful as the ending becomes glaringly obvious as the film rolls.