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Reviews
Forever Strong (2008)
They bastardized rugby!
First off just let me say that I live in South Africa where rugby is our biggest sport by far, and our national side, the Springboks, have won the Rugby World Cup twice, so it's quite a big deal over here. I've played all my life and I'm shocked at the poor attention to detail in this movie! At first I thought it had the potential to be a great movie considering the cast of Neal McDonough, Nick Ferris, Gary Cole and Sean Astin for goodness sake, but it turned out to be a mockery of the sport. They basically mashed it together with your normal everyday American Football movie.
My first problem is that this movie supposedly captures the values of rugby, but the discipline or should I say the total lack thereof during the games are contradictory to this. In the final it looks more like an NFL game with Penning being tackled of the ball numerous times, in front of the referee...that would've immediately led to a couple of red cards, because foul play like that would never go unpunished in by a referee, of that I can assure you! You'd also not be able to find a coach in world rugby who would have so little control over his team. Any coach would take a dump on a players head if he intentionally stiff arms an opposing player or double teams him like they did in the final...red card and certain suspension, full stop.
Secondly, it's absurd that a coach would take a brand new player, who has played wing all of his life I gather, move him to hooker which is a highly specialized position and say that it's for the good of the TEAM?! What?! Hooker is a highly specialized position in the front row where you have to be able to scrum extremely well and preferably be able to throw the ball in at line-out time, which Penning NEVER does for some or other reason. By moving a wing to hooker without any extensive long term training it would firstly lead to your team's demise at scrum time & secondly the poor kid would probably break his neck! How is that good for the team I ask you? Finally, the overall high emotional pitch of the movie is way too much, because even though rugby is a great sport, and it builds great friendships & team spirit, it rarely gets that out of hand & corny. I've seen true-life football drama's with less emotion than this movie & it turned out great, but in this one Sean's (Penning) acting skills is dragged way too far and the movie attempts too force an emotional response out of the audience, which ends up being boring and hard to watch at times.
Hollywood have made some great sports movies over the years, but next time they venture into a sport which has just recently picked up in the states, they should try and do their homework & maybe get some experts into the fray.
DO IT RIGHT OR DON'T DO IT AT ALL!
Punisher: War Zone (2008)
Ray Stevenson was born to be the punisher!
In a lot of ways Punisher: Warzone is better than the first movie, but in certain ways also worse.
Firstly, let me just say that Ray Stevenson doesn't just look exactly like the punisher, but his whole attitude and the way he carries himself, fits the role perfectly. His character showed emotion when needed, but not too much, which I think is correct. If you look at the time line in the story, it's much further down the line than the first movie & since the guy's been killing not stop for 4 years, one would think that he has hardened to the murder of his family and that his whole lifestyle has changed him. This is exactly what's happened in this movie, although I am a fan of internal struggles withing character, especially when they are confronted with their own darkness, I understand why they didn't focus on that too much.
The action in the movie is sick, but I did get the feeling that Castle was too dominant at times, I mean the criminals kinda sucked! The only guy that gave him a little trouble was Jigsaw's brother and he got killed off rather suddenly in the end. This is where I feel the first movie was better, since Castle constantly struggled through battles, which is much more realistic, since the chance of "Max Payne-ing" your way through one conflict after another, without at least being shot someplace other than your torso, is VERY SLIM! They should've made the villains a bit better, as for Jigsaw himself, he was utterly useless and never really posed a threat to anyone, except to the guy he stuck with a broken wineglass...
All in all, I think they really have something to work with, the movie is much darker and has the gore one would associate with a Punisher movie, so hopefully they'll build on this. Get Ray Stevenson back for the sequel and expand on the story a bit, with deadly villains this time, plzzzz! =)