John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum

First Hit: Entertaining, full of unbelievable action, and an excellent setup for Chapter 4.

One can only enter the theater knowing you're going to see lots of shooting, hand to hand combat and knife fighting. This film doesn’t fail at delivering this.

When we last saw Mr. Wick (Keanu Reeves) in Chapter 2, John had broken the rules of the Continental Hotel and Winston (Ian McShane), proprietor, was ready to put out a contract on Wick’s life.

This is where Chapter 3 opens. John is running through New York City, looking for a place to hide from the assassins that are ready to kill him for the $14M that is being offered for his extermination.

There is a countdown, and when the 6:00 PM execution time happens, the world seems to be after Wick. In this world, assassins are everywhere. Yes, I only gave glancing thought to this real-world possibility because this is an unreal world story, and even your neighbor is an assassin.

The ludicrousness of many of the fights Wick gets into and wins was out loud laughable (which I and others did) but no less engaging. Yes, some of the choreography was a little stiff with people hesitating for the next lunge, thrust or throw but it was delightful.

That, for me, is the point of this series of films. It is full of entertainment, has little basis in reality and is not presented to make a point. These films make Wick a voice of a man who was drawn back into the violent life, he left for a woman and subsequently a dog (“it’s not just a puppy.”) and now is fighting for his survival.

All the scenes are shot in dark tones, there are few daylight scenes. This aside, I liked many of the sets, from Bowery King’s (Laurence Fishburne) building basement and pigeon coops to the elegance of the Continental Hotel, and all are sets in darkened tones.

Reeves was fun to watch, but as I watched him run, especially at the beginning of the film, I found his running labored and slightly awkward. However, his quips along the way were great, and he only continues to develop and mine this character for pure entertainment. Halle Berry, as Sofia, was fun as the person who owed Wick a favor. Her dogs were a fun part of her scenes. McShane was perfect as the Continental’s proprietor. His role was expanded for this film and will be an integral part of the next. Fishbourne as the elegant Bowery King was memorable. His presence is critical here and will be in the next chapter. Mark Dacascos as Zero, the assassin the High Table uses as the principle assassin to take down Wick, was excellent. Asia Kate Dillon as the High Table’s Adjudicator was good. There wasn’t enough background of her to give me the impression she held all the cards she projected she held. This meant she had to build credibility in this role with her actions, dialogue, and screen presence, and she pulled it off. There’s an authority in her look that makes this role work. Lance Reddick (as Charon, the hotel’s desk man) expanded his previous role to become an excellent protector of the hotel, Winston, and Wick. Derek Kolstad and Shay Hatten wrote an action-oriented script that brought out more of the principal characters. Chad Stahelski directed this film in a way that kept the story and feel of the past films while propelling it into the future.

Overall: This film is a world of its own, and it works as entertainment.

Woman at War

First Hit: A quirky and compelling story about one woman’s fight against the destruction of her homeland, Iceland.

Halla (Halldora Geirharosdottir) is a music choir teacher, and she conducts her choir group in singing native Icelandic songs of joy. However, she’s also a deeply committed activist who is willing to put her life on the line to stop Rio Tinto aluminum plant from producing products that harm the environment.

This plant is located in the rugged highlands of her native country and to stop its production Halla finds ways of shorting out the electric power grid used to run the plant.

This is how the film opens: Halla using a bow and arrow to short the high voltage electrical lines feeding the plant. Then we follow her escape and evade the government’s helicopters which are searching for the person or group of people destroying the factory’s electrical power source.

Then she shows up, well-dressed and out of her rugged clothing, to teach her choir students light-hearted songs. One of the choir member’s Baldvin (Jorundur Ragnarsson) is a member of the government, and he is working closely with Halla to fight the intrusion of this Chinese company into their Icelandic culture. They are cautious when they speak together, as noted by how they put their cell phones in the refrigerator each time they meet to talk strategy of Hella’s next actions.

During an escape from the government helicopters, Hella finds herself on the farm of Sveinbjorn (Johann Siguroarson). He lives alone and calls his dog “Woman.” Sizing up Hella, he decides to help her escape the agents that are looking for her.

Sveinbjorn and Hella develop a trust and friendship which is developed throughout the remaining part of the film. This is a lovely part of the story. Hella also has a sister, Asa (also played by Geirharosdottir), who teaches meditation and yoga.

Four years earlier, both Asa and Hella had applied to become adoptive parents. And just when Hella’s activist events are becoming more involved, she gets a letter and telephone call that there is a young Ukrainian girl ready for her to adopt.

The rest of the film takes us on the conflicted ride of Hella the activist versus Hella the soon to be a mother and letting us see how she attempts to reconcile the difficulties of doing both. It is a wonderful ride, as all the players have an active influence in her next steps.

The quirkiness of the story is added to by a three-piece band that arrives and is staged prominently in particular scenes to add an odd emphasis to each scene. Additionally, there is a three-girl chorus dressed in traditional clothing, that pop-up in scenes to give flavor to the scene’s importance. However, it is the odd interjection of Juan Camillo (Juan Camillo Roman Estrada) a Spanish man traveling through Iceland on his bicycle that brings both unusual enjoyment and how it doesn’t always pay to be in a particular place at a specific time.

I loved seeing the stark ruggedness of the Icelandic countryside, and it was beautifully shot by the cinematographer. The story was wonderfully paced, and the point of one person having an impact was clearly made.

Geirharosdottir was fantastic as both Hella and Asa. She embodied the strength and determination of Hella’s character and the more subtle spiritual aspect of Asa. Ragnarsson was excellent of the partially paranoid government operative who wanted to support Hella’s war against the aluminum company. Siguroarson was amazing. I loved his character and presence in the film. He embodied the single well-entrenched farmer who loved the land he worked as well as the compassion for Hella’s mission. Estrada was wonderful in his role as a sort of an accidental tourist. Olafur Egilsson and Benedikt Erlingsson wrote a very original screenplay. Erlingsson directed this quirky film with aplomb, and the ending was perfect to the cause.

Overall: This film will stay with me as it was both enjoyable and pointedly purposeful.

Hotel Mumbai

First Hit: It was interesting enough from a historical perspective but didn’t engage because it was a predictable and a known story.

When this attack happened, India was caught off guard. The real-life consequences of not having the type of policing or counterterrorism task force required to deal with the this coordinated assault was that it caused at least 174 deaths.

In November of 2008, ten members of Lashkar-e-Taiba terrorist group executed a coordinated attack on Hindus in twelve locations throughout Mumbai, the financial center of India. The attack lasted four days. This film shows brief scenes of the shootings from some of the other locations, however the main target was The Taj Mahal Palace Hotel. This is a five-star hotel where the guest is king, and this is where most of scenes are filmed.

The terrorists are coaxed on, and being guided by, a voice on the phone through the headsets worn by the men. He encourages them to kill anyone they see without mercy. However, he’s also looking for these men to take western prisoners for “negotiating purposes.” The audience knows there won’t be real negotiations and the captured will die.

Among the captured are David (Armie Hammer) who is married to Zahra (Nazanin Boniadi). The are traveling with their young baby who’s being taken care of by their nanny, Sally (Tilda Cobham-Hervey).

The film makes an emphatic point of the ruthlessness of the machine gun armed terrorists by having them coldly shoot anyone they see. They attempt kill anyone who moves, except for the few they want to capture and hold to gain additional publicity because they are prominent or wealthy figures.

One of the captured is Vasili (Jason Isaacs) who is a former Russian special forces specialist. His redeeming scene is when he ferociously bites the achilleas of one of the terrorists.

However, the main star of this film is Arjun (Dev Patel) who works in the hotel as a waiter. He’s a Sikh which comes into play later in the story. He and the head chef Oberol (Anupam Kher) attempt to save some of the hotel’s guest from being killed by hiding them in a exclusive room with only one public way in. The story is about how these people were saved.

Overall, Patel was good in this role. One outstanding scene was the way he explained his Sikh hair covering to one of the concerned and ill-informed guests. Kher was excellent as the Head Chef in holding to his belief that the hotel’s “guests are god.” Hammer was good as the American who was married to a Muslim woman. His desire to protect his family was spot on. Boniadi was wonderful as Hammer’s wife. When she starts saying prayers in front of the terrorists, it becomes very tense — one of the best scenes in the film. Cobham-Hervey was outstanding as the nanny. She felt very genuine in her desire to protect the child from harm. Isaacs was very good as the overindulgent selfish Russian operative who finally does something for someone else. The entire cadre of actors playing the terrorists did a sublime job of making sure they were cold hearted and unrelenting in their role of killing people for a golden ticket to heaven. John Collee and Anthony Maras wrote a interesting script. Maras directed this film which included actual scenes from the actual attack.

Overall: I wasn’t as captured or engaged as I thought I might be.

The Hummingbird Project

First Hit: Jessie Eisenberg brings intensity to his roles, and in this film it adds to an already time driven story about speed.

Vincent Zaleski (Eisenberg) is a Wall Street trader. He’s focused on high frequency trading. Response times of the systems he works on is paramount.

He works for Eva Torres (Salma Hayek) who is relentless and ruthless. Her opening scenes makes this point. It is in these scenes, we get to also know Vincent’s brother Anton (Alexander Skarsgard) who is a coding and engineering genius.

Anton and two others work for Eva in the capacity of trying to reduce the response times of getting and sending trading quotes. Each of the three have separate projects including microwave transmissions which seems to have in insurmountable problem.

Vincent and Anton are convinced that if they can run optic fiber cable from the centralized data center in Kansas to their office in New York, then will be able to realize an advantage by getting quotes milliseconds before other traders and thereby getting an advantage. The goal is to get the data 1 millisecond faster than anyone else. That millisecond is equal to one flap of a hummingbird’s wing (hence the title).

The cost of drilling a completely straight hole ten feet underground from Kansas to New York is expensive, but with the right investor, one who sees the advantage, they could make hundreds of millions of dollars each year for a couple of years when their technology advantage would become obsolete.

Convinced of the possibilities, Vincent finds Bryan Taylor (Frank Schorpion) who’s known to make risky investments. After persuading Taylor to finance the project, Vincent and Anton quit working for Eva. In a ranting scene when they tell her, she vows to retaliate.

To help them drill this straight, twelve-hundred-mile tube ten feet underground, they hire Mark Vega (Michael Mando) who is a genius in his own right. His stories about the places he’s drilled are fascinating.

The rest of the film is about the trials and tribulations of this project, Vincent’s discovery that he’s very ill, Anton’s amazing focus, and Anton’s wife’s patience.

The over-the-top scenes of Eva threatening the two men, especially Anton were engaging to watch. When they hire Ophelia Troller (Ayisha Issa) to figure out how to drill through government land in the Appalachian Mountains, it gets even more complex and interesting.

However, one of my favorite scenes is when Anton is drilling a hole in a file cabinet and his amazingly patient wife comes in and tells him to quiet down. I loved this interaction and the whole scene.

Ultimately, there has to be a race, and Eva hires someone who thinks he can figure out the microwave solution that will be faster and less expensive. The race is on.

Eisenberg was intensely perfect for this role. His fast-talking drive and focus fit this role. His action and reaction to hearing about his cancer was thoughtful. Skarsgard was outstanding as Vincent’s savant like programmer engineer brother. I thought he nailed the role. Hayek was sublimely vicious. She was strong in portraying the win at all costs attitude of the leader of a high frequency trading company. Schorpion was strong as the risky investor. Issa was amazing as the woman who could get them through the mountain. Mando was outstanding as the project manager for the whole project. He was extremely effective in making me believe he knew what he was doing. Kim Nguyen wrote and directed this film. I thought the script was strong and the acting excellent. However, somewhere along the way it became a little tedious and maybe that is because of the intense energy brought by the roles and actors was so overbearing.

Overall: This was a good film and might have been more engaging if they’d taken the time to demonstrate more clearly the advantage of a 1 millisecond advantage in high frequency trading.

Us

First Hit: Started off OK, but then became a contrived, overburdened, and almost laughable story.

I was a fan of Jordan Peele’s Get Out. However, here the characters felt pressed in their roles and the premise and ending was apparent to me early on.

The ability to keep the audience focused on one thing while using sleight of hand to set us up for a surprise is what this film is about. However, when the crowning moment appears and I sat there and said to myself, “yeah, that was expected,” it didn’t work.

Us didn’t work for me because Adelaide Wilson (Lupita Nyong’o also plays Red) was a little too odd from the beginning. Her looks and way of being stood out a too much.

The set-up from her going into the house of mirrors as a child and being adversely affected wasn’t strong enough to make me buy her subsequent adult behavior. Therefore I started trying to figure out why is she was the way she was — darkly edgy.

The story is, that as a child, Adelaide enters a house of mirrors and gets scared. We are to believe this had a profound effect on her. Then we meet her later in life married to Gabe (Winston Duke also plays Abraham). They have two children Zora and Jason (Shahadi Wright Joseph and Evan Alex respectively). On a family vacation, they decide to take a day trip to Santa Cruz. Adelaide doesn’t want to go because this is where the house of mirrors, where she was frightened in as a child, is located.

Events, with Jason wandering off at the Santa Cruz beach near the house of mirrors, spark’s a visit from their dark underworld counterparts.

The story gets more complex by adding in their friends Josh and Kitty Tyler (Tim Heidecker and Elizabeth Moss respectively) and their twin daughters Becca and Lindsey (Cali Sheldon and Noelle Sheldon respectively).

The underworld expansion and counterpoint to each of the characters were mildly entertaining.

Nyong’o telegraphed the part more than I would have liked. I’m not sure whether this was at Peele’s direction or her interpretation. Regardless, outside of a few strong scenes, I didn’t buy it. Duke had some funny scenes, like his first foyer in his boat, but his role didn’t work for me and I didn’t think he and Nyong’o worked as a couple. It just didn’t seem to fit. Joseph was probably the best thing in the film. When she got in the driver’s seat of the car and insisted in driving, and when she took the golf club in hand, the audience knew she meant business. She was excellent. Alex was good as the son, however, the mask fixation didn’t work for me, and I understand why it was part of the role. Heidecker and Moss were strong in their supportive roles. Peele both wrote and directed this film and for the most part it didn’t work. It made me wonder if he’ll fall into the same trap as M. Night Shyamalan; create a wonderful first film and then slowly fall into the abyss of ever increasingly bad films.

Overall: This film was failure of suspense, thrill, and horror.