RIGHTEOUS KILL * *
Cert 15 101 mins
The moment the film opens with a black and white video of Robert De Niro’s veteran NYPD detective Turk apparently confessing to being the vigilante Poetry Killer responsible for the murder of 14 lowlifes over the past 30 years, the whiff of red herring will be unmistakable.
As the film progresses and you’re told he and long time partner Rooster (Al Pacino) framed a guy years earlier when he walked free from a rape case, when he threatens another acquitted rapist who subsequently turns up dead along with various other dealers, pimps and so forth, all with one of the killer’s trademark doggerel verses on their corpse, the smell starts to get unbearable.
The fact that he likes rough sex with forensic specialist Corelli (Carla Gugino) and, brought in to help with the investigations, junior detectives Perez and Riley (John Leguizamo and Donny Wahlberg) instantly suspect the killer’s a cop while Turk is overly insistent that he isn’t, and you don’t need a sat-nav to realise you’re being misdirected.
So, faced with a glaringly predictable reveal and ending, what’s the point in bothering with this pedestrian thriller? Frankly, very little. It’s been flagged up as the first time Pacino and De Niro share any substantial screen time, but while they toss the banter and rhythms around like pros, there was far more dynamic in those six minutes over a cup of coffee in Heat than the entire running time of their mediocre, often self-parodying teaming here.
Given director Jon Avnet was previously responsible for US box office bomb 88 Minutes (due to open here next week), arguably Pacino’s worst film since Revolution, it’s hard to fathom what would entice him to repeat the experience.
Maybe the screenplay by Inside Man’s Russell Gewirtz read better on the page, maybe it was the opportunity to play off De Niro, maybe it was just the cheque. Whatever the reason both his subdued (until the final ridiculous moments) performance and De Niro’s familiar tough guy intensity are ill-served by the poor pacing, convoluted plotting and slack suspense of a film that, were it not for them, would barely rate as straight to DVD fodder.
DEATH RACE * * *
Cert 15 105 mins
Back in 1975, producer Roger Corman and director Paul Bartel made Death Race 2000, a violent, camply humorous political satire set in a dystopian future fascist society where drivers, headed up by David Carradine and Sylvester Stallone, take part in a gladiatorial government-instigated three-stage transcontinental road race in heavily armoured cars, scoring points for the number of kills along the way.
Thirty-three years later, with Corman back as one of seven producers, Paul W.S Andersen has ditched the satire, ramped up the violence and relocated the race to the confines of an island prison for a remake set in 2012. The question of camp humour rather depends on your sensibilities.
Little time’s wasted setting things up. Laid off when the steel works close, Jensen Ames (Jason Statham) sees his wife killed by a masked man and finds himself convicted of her murder, sentenced to life in the hell hole of Terminal Island, the privately owned penal institution from where the Death Race is televised to pay per view audiences. Given the world’s in economic meltdown, quite where all the money comes from is never explained.
The place is run by ruthless warden Hennessy (Joan Allen) who quickly makes it plain she’s not someone you want to mess with. She also offers Ames the chance to go free and be reunited with his infant daughter. Named for the classic car, as a former race driver himself, all he has to do is take the place of her masked prize gladiator Frankenstein (briefly voiced by Carradine, who took the role in the original) who, unbeknownst to the general prison population, has died after his last race skirmish with Bible-reading gay rival Machine Gun Joe (Tyrese Gibson).
Race rules say that if you win five in a row, you get your freedom, and Frankenstein has already notched up four; making the next competition a lucrative must-see. Naturally, Hennessy – who’s building a secret addition to the demolition derby – has no intention of keeping her end of the bargain, but then Ames is no pushover either. “You wanted a monster,” he growls. “Well, now you’ve got one.”
Little bits of plot manage to seep in here and there (it turns out his wife’s killer is one of his fellow-con competitors) while Ian McShane is on hand for some droll comic relief as Frankenstein’s supermechanic Coach and Natalie Martinez is contrivedly written to provide some sexiness in as Ames’ female navigator, but otherwise Anderson just focuses on being loud and fast. As with Alien vs. Predator, he’s not too bothered about the scenes being coherent, just as long as rubber burns, things blow up and the no-name support cast get to die bloody deaths.
As such, it’s certainly not boring and makes no pretensions to be anything other than what it is, even if they appear to have run out of money when it came to the anticlimactic final escape.
Impressively pumped-up, a gravelly-voiced Statham looks good and plays the dumb action with the same knowing wink he brought to Transporter, while Allen is clearly having fun slumming it as the ice-hearted venomous Hennessy. Despite informing Ames that she has ‘issues’ with bad language, she also gets to deliver one of the most inventively hilarious expletive-riddled nonsensical threats in the history of cinema.
Its, often quite literally, a car crash of a movie. But as with all car crashes, you’ll find it hard to look away.
TAKEN * * *
Cert 15 93 mins
‘They have taken his daughter. He will hunt them. He will find them. And he will kill them.’, that’s what it says on the poster and that’s exactly what you get. He is Liam Neeson, a retired CIA special ops agent whose job cost him his marriage (to Famke Janssen) and growing up quality time with his daughter. That’ll be now spoiled teenager Kim (Maggie Grace) who plays on his desire to make up for things by getting him to agree to her taking a European trip with her friend Amanda. And who They?
They’re the gang of Albanian sex-traffikers who kidnap the girls on arrival in Paris, drug them up and then hand them over to be auctioned off as sex slaves to rich Arabs. Dad’s got just 96 hours to save them,
Basically, that’s all you need to know. It’s also the entire plot. Calling in various favours, Neeson jets off to France, quickly proves a headache for the local authorities, tracks down the kidnappers, disposes of them and moves on to sort out the king pin behind the ring. And he never even takes his shirt off.
Bookended by a cameo from singer Holly Valance as the pop diva Neeson rescues from a deranged stalker, dialogue’s kept to a minimum. But then there’s little room for it anyway between the shoot-outs, chases, fights and racial stereotyping. This may sound like some B movie exploitation shoot-em up and, directed by District 13’s Pierre Morel and co-written by Luc Besson, that’s exactly what it is.
It may prompt unintentional laughter in places, but with Neeson tremendous as the taciturn man of action (watch your back Daniel Craig) who’ll calmly shoot a colleague’s wife in the leg if he thinks he’s being given the run-around, and a pace that doesn’t give you time to ponder the unlikely coincidences and plot holes, it’s the best of this year’s guilty pleasures.
REDBELT * * *
Cert 15 99 mins
A martial arts movie isn’t exactly something you’d expect from David Mamet, a playwright-screenwriter-director whose CV includes controversial sexual harassment drama Oleanna, Glengarry Glen Ross and The Postman Always Rings Twice.
But then, a substantial amount of his work involves con artists, naive victims and examinations of masculinity and codes of honour, and that’s certainly true here too.
Gulf War vet Mike Terry (Chiwetel Ejiofor) runs defensive Jiu-Jitsu academy in LA, his self-righteous idealism refusing to compromise by taking part in commercial competition.
The place is struggling financially with Brazilian wife Sondra (Alice Braga) dipping into her own business to keep it afloat.
Then one night, sent to beg a loan off his shady fight promoter brother-in-law, Terry rescues action movie star Chet Frank (Tim Allen) from a bar brawl.
Suddenly he’s Chet’s new best friend, he and the missus are invited over for dinner and Chet’s producer Jerry (Joe Mantegna) says they want him on board as fight adviser for their new war movie. Things look bright.
But then Terry discovers he’s been stitched up and a random handicap system he’s devised for training has been ripped off by Jerry, who’s now Bruno’s new partner, and is to be used in a forthcoming televised battle of the champions.
When, down to a subplot involving troubled attorney Laura (Emily Mortimer), cop prize student Joe (Max Martini), a stolen watch and an unreported incident with a gun and a plate glass window, legal redress becomes unviable, Terry’s only way out of debt is to take part in the fight’s warm up bouts.
As screenplays go, it’s all a bit confused as to the hows and whys behind Mamet’s recurring themes of self-deception, hubris and personal integrity versus moral compromise while his trademark stylised dialogue feels a little out of place in several of the character’s mouths. But Ejiofor is tremendous in putting over Terry’s combination of vulnerability, pride and dignity while Mamet, having studied Jiu-Jitsu for five years, ensures the mixed martial arts fights and climactic showdown are far more realistic than the slickly edited fakery of Never Back Down.
