andertonian Reviews

Lucky Number Slevin (2006)

Who cares?

[1/10 · 29 March 2006]

Lucky Number Slevin starts out innocently enough. Mr. Goodkat (Bruce Willis as Bruce Willis) introduces the film with some snappy lines, smoothly finds itself in an exposition with some more witty dialogue from Slevin (Josh Hartnett) and the slightly obnoxious Lindsey (Lucy Liu), a couple of gangsters break in and threaten Slevin - with clever style.

If that sounds condescending, it should. Lucky Number Slevin is clearly a product of the Pulp Fiction generation, and like its brethren, it lacks absolutely everything that made Pulp Fiction appealing in the first place. Characters toss off pop culture-enhanced monologues, regardless of actual character. Toss motivations out the window, these gangsters are classy! Even worse, the pop culture references are so forced, so unnecessary, just so... bad (Slevin and Lindsey's discussion on James Bond is the worst thing I've heard at the movies this year).

The direction is horribly confused. It is comical? Is it serious? There is no clarity in what the atmosphere is supposed to convey, so you can't connect to the situations. Well, that and the fact that Slevin also has some particularly dreadful pacing, culminating in a seemingly hour-long plot twist revelation, where the twist is revealed by detailing every little thing about the story. Scenes are repeated. There are nauseating jump-cuts. You learn more about the story than you care to know. Hell, you know more about the story than you do about the actual plot progression, if there was any at the endpoint. And that's how it ends. It just does.

Experiment (2005)

Yeah, I left exhausted, alright.

[3/10 · 25 March 2006]

I was unfortunate enough to catch a screening of Experiment at the Phoenix Film Festival, although I'll be honored to be the first on IMDb to warn you all of what you'd be getting into if you were to see it.

A woman named Anna (Georgina French) wakes up in the middle of the street in Prague (where I'm assuming it was shot for cost reasons - first bad sign) without knowledge of her identity or even what language she speaks. Somewhere else in the city, a man named Morgan (John Hopkins) does the same. It all appears to be part of an experiment involving Stefan (Andrew Byron - utterly awful, in case I don't get to him later in the review) and Joseph (Nick Simons).

The writing is simply awful, and the film has an awkward, shifty pace that ruins the mystery before it even has a chance to start. Some of the concepts here aren't completely bad - Anna and Morgan struggle with learning their own language in a completely foreign country, although the dialog and performances amount to confused stuttering that drags already unnecessary scenes out. There's an air of cheapness about the whole thing - the leaders of the experiment literally run the project out of somebody's basement (ridiculous when we learn how high up it goes), and in one hilarious moment, an attempted rapist gets up and walks out of the room after being knocked down by Anna. Very nonchalantly.

When the actual plot is revealed in the last half-hour, the film starts to move - too late for those who wisely walked out, although they weren't missing much. Somehow the story shifts to an assassination attempt on the Prime Minister, which has nothing to do with the events that inevitably take place, and only seems to have been added to make the movie seem more epic and important. Instead, it's stupid and kind of funny. There's a predictable twist ending that brings absolutely no closure to the whole mess, and you're left with 90 wasted minutes. Don't let me forget to mention that the film had no lighting. Not low lighting for atmosphere, not dim lighting, but no lighting. At all. It's almost as if the filmmakers wanted to put you to sleep.

If I have anything good to say, David Gant was pleasantly over the top as the mastermind behind the whole project, there's a nice pair of breasts, and the theme that is revealed in about the last fifteen minutes of the movie in a tossed-off manner of the fallacies of love & trust was pretty neat and I'd like to see it implemented in a good movie next time.

Boo.

Excessive Force (1993)

Hilarious! Oh, and Lance Henriksen!

[7/10 · 5 August 2005]

Written by Thomas Ian Griffith. Doesn't that just say it all? Thomas Ian Griffith plays Terry McCain, a cop out to bring the local mob, run by Sal DiMarco (Burt Young), to it's knees! But Terry McCain uses EXCESSIVE FORCE to meet his needs, and in the beginning of the movie, we hear Terry lambasted for his use of EXCESSIVE FORCE. The chief of police, Devlin (the always-brilliant-in-not-so-brilliant-movies Lance Henriksen), tells McCain that he's out of line! He's a loose cannon! When the mob kills McCain's partner, he's out for JUSTICE! And he'll use EXCESSIVE FORCE! And KARATE KICKS!

I laughed pretty hard at a lot of the lines and scenarios. We learn early on that not only is McCain an ass-kicking martial arts master, but a jazz aficionado and an expert piano player! He's also good buddies with Jake (James Earl Jones), a jazz bar owner. Jake and McCain bring the voodoo! That's character development only the great Thomas Ian Griffith could come up with! Griffith plays McCain like you'd expect, with less acting and more stuntwork. Tony Todd is charismatic as Griffith's buddy Frankie, but his screen time is pretty limited. Both Burt Young and James Earl Jones look embarrassed, and the former phoning in his performance to the least of his ability. This leaves Henriksen, whose every line as the crooked police chief was taken out of the book of lines for the crooked police chief, but he delivers them in a completely untypical way. His first appearance is when he informs Griffith that he's a loose cannon, but he does it with such class you'll almost forget you're watching a movie called "Excessive Force". Then the camera pans over to Thomas Ian Griffith. Henriksen goes the extra mile in his performance by making Devlin truly an unlikeable bad guy in a movie with really lame good guys. If good acting in a bad movie is not enough for you, there's a point when he casually remarks, "Well boys, looks like we're going to have to kick some ass." That this line was written is bad, but the way Lance breezes through it, without a smirk or hint of embarrassment? Alone, it's worth your money. Give this man an honorary Oscar, already.

It shouldn't be any surprise that Henriksen carries a bad movie, and this is a bad movie, no doubt about it. Every line, plot twist, and character is taken right out of the book of Seagal. So is it entertaining? Of course it is! Henriksen gets a lot of screen time, the action sequences are in abundance, and the writing is terrible. It's not quite the unexpected masterpiece of Hard Target, but if you watched Hard to Kill and giggled like a school girl at the line "I'll take you to the bank... the blood bank", then this movie's worth your 90 minutes.

Rapid Exchange (2003 Video)

Not quite that rapid...

[4/10 · 3 August 2005]

The only reason any of the hundred or so users watched this movie was because they belong to the crew, were friends to the crew, or were obsessive fans of either Lance Henriksen or Lorenzo Lamas. I personally follow the "cult of Lance", so I was disappointed to see that despite being the headliner, it's in name only. Playing rich criminal Newcastle, Lance is a joy to watch but all of his screen time is relegated to the beginning of the movie. Newcastle sets up a 747 heist which includes Ketchum (Lamas) and a bunch of forgettable characters. The biggest shock to this viewer was that the pre-heist scenes were not all that bad. With the exception of somewhat obnoxious and rather confused looking Aviva Gale, who times every line with the finesse of a grade school play actress, acting was decent all around, and none of the lines really made me cringe.

But once the heist occurs, the movie falls asleep. Not only is their plan the most ridiculous thing ever captured on film, but it's dragged out for far too long. This isn't a very deep movie, and you have to fill out your 90 minutes, but these scenes are so boring I nearly nodded off at two in the afternoon. One particular sequence in which we watch each and every one of the characters perform the same task over and over again is especially difficult to get through. The movie's name is "Rapid Exchange", but the exchange is far from rapid - it's overlong and bloated to extremes. Perhaps it would have worked if any of the characters had real personalities, but come on, there's only so much you can ask out of a straight-to-video movie airing of Showtime Extreme.

Thankfully, there are several laughs, intentional and unintentional (Lorenzo Lamas is seemingly a master of disguise, which makes for a couple of incredibly bizarre scenarios), and Lance returns in the film's end, albeit for a brief period of time. It's a bad movie, and I probably didn't have to tell you that myself, but it's far from the worst thing I've ever seen. I wouldn't put it too high on the list of Henriksen films, since he's been in some real gems with greater screen time, and either way the movie loses a lot of steam once the heist begins, but the best thing I can say for Rapid Exchange is that the last two films I watched before it were the mainstream Hostage and the overrated, pretentious Crash - and this was better than both.