Random DVD Round-Up 1 - FROM PARIS WITH LOVE

To my mind, the greatest tragedy of the Bush presidency was that the image America projected of itself was a crude caricature of all that was great in the idea of America. A country founded on lofty principles had descended into populist, xenophobic, knee-jerk foreign policy, and with figures like Sarah Palin and media outlets such as Fox News, was portraying itself as a country that gloried in its own ignorance - where a stubborn refusal to see the complexity of an issue was lauded as homespun wisdom.

The problem with playing with such caricatures (as I am sure many of the more savvy in Washington were consciously doing) is that others may take you at face value. And for every American who thinks of the French as cheese-eating surrender monkeys, and the average Pakistani as a terrorist-harbouring rag-head, there's a Frenchman and a Pakistani who believes that Americans are basically coming straight out of TEAM AMERICA: WORLD POLICE with a cultural chauvinism and gun-totin' agenda that is as abhorrent as it is (I hope) mistaken.

If cinema reflects the times in which we live, FROM PARIS WITH LOVE is, then, a fascinating cultural artefact. A movie financed by a US studio, starring a major US movie star, in which a US secret agent comes to Paris to chase down a Pakistani terrorist cell that is pushing coke to launder money. (Presumably they have never heard of Liechtenstein). The French are impotent, bereaucratic fools; the Chinese are drug-dealers; the Pakistanis are terrorists; and the brave heroic Yanks are there to save the day, with their Jack-Bauer-inspired brand of summary justice. In a scene that could come from a Glenn Beck wet-dream, at the end of the film, the Ivy-League-educated protagonist, James Reece, overcomes his squeamishness about killing people to join up with his buddy Charlie Wax in a campaign of killing "bad guys".

And so, ladies and gentlemen, we have stepped through the looking glass. A Frenchman, Luc Besson, is peddling back to American mainstream cinema a vision of American chauvinism. I can't decide whether this is particularly insidious or just brilliant business.

The basic mechanics of the movie are the same as in most other Luc Besson-penned movies. As in TAKEN, a hard-ass American (John Travolta) comes to Paris to kick some Muslim terrorist ass. As in the TRANSPORTER movies, there will be a lot of driving really really fast through busy streets and some loud explosions. There will also be a lot of swearing and the occasional line that's trying to be as iconic as Arnie in TERMINATOR. (Is there any reason for John Travolta's character to be called Charlie Wax except to allow a lame KARATE KID joke? And for that matter, did they only cast John Travolta so that they could reference a Royale with Cheese?)

Still, for all that, I can't deny that FROM PARIS WITH LOVE zipped along at a pace, and wasn't as painfully shit as Besson's ANGEL-A. The stunts are fine; the car chases through the streets of Paris exhilarating; and John Travolta chews up the scenery. I even liked Jonathan Rhys Meyers as his square side-kick, Reece. In the one scene where Meyers gets to act - when he sees himself in a mirror covered in blood and his to react to his new life - he actually looks pretty convincing. The key point is that this movie is firmly in the B-grade of action flicks. It's treading well-worn ground and dripping in faintly offensive cliché. That they're being peddled by a Frenchman is about the most interesting thing about the whole enterprise.

FROM PARIS WITH LOVE was released in Spring 2010 and is available on DVD and on iTunes.

Additional tags: Frederic Thoraval, David Buckley, Richard Durden, Kasia Smutniak

TAKEN - 24 the movie

TAKEN is a slick, quick thriller that sticks in the throat. Liam Neeson plays a Jack-Bauer-like US special ops agent whose daughter, Kim, is like Kim Bauer, kidnapped. This being a piece of neo-con agit-prop, the kidnappers don’t have a grudge against her father, or indeed, stepfather, either of which would’ve been interesting. Rather, the kidnappers are improbably traffickers in sex slaves who have decided that their business model would be more profitable if they kidnapped rich young tourists rather than duping poor East Europeans. Now, I can see why this might save on “transport costs” but surely if you and some complicit French rozzers are running a sex-trafficking business you’d rather not attract the attention of rich, angry Yanquis parents putting pressure on the local cops via an irate US embassy?

At any rate, after half an hour of mooning over his sappy daughter, Liam Neeson jumps on a plane and heads to Paris where he single-handedly uncovers the plot and discovers his daughter while killing and torturing lots of cheese-eating surrender monkeys and evil rapist towel-heads. Yes, yes, in this world, every Frenchman carries a baguette under his arm and every Muslim want to rape young Americans. In short, TAKEN is a film whose tone and content are lifted straight out of 24 and whose entire world-view was so roundly mocked in TEAM AMERICA: WORLD POLICE. I can’t quite believe that Liam Neeson agreed to star in such xenophobic, derivative drivel.

TAKEN was released earlier this year in France, Israel, China, South Korea, Belgium, the Netherlands, Turkey, Spain, Australia, Italy, Poland, New Zealand, Chile, Peru, Argentina, Russia, Thailand, Mexico and Venezuela. It opens this weekend in the UK and Portugal and next weekend in Austria and Brazil. It opens in the USA on January 23rd 2009 and in Germany on February 5th.

Random DVD Round-Up 1 - TRANSPORTER

I'm so intrigued by the idea that Louis Leterrier would be given THE INCREDIBLE HULK to direct, that I've been going back and re-watching his previous work. What is there to suggest that he'll be able to handle the sensitive emotional content of the Hulk story, or be able to take on a strong-minded actor like Ed Norton?

A week or so ago I watched TRANSPORTER 2 and was entertained by the mindless slick car chases and combat scenes. Of course, the dialogue and emotional content were laughable but there was something endearing about the fact that the film-makers weren't even aiming for quality. At least they gave us a lot of funny one-liners as compensation.

TRANSPORTER is the lesser film. It was a cheap action film still looking for the hook that would seal its style. Jason Statham's cool-as-a-cucumber no-questions-asked driver isn't quite as hard, rule-oriented or laconic as in the sequel. His damsel in distress can barely speak English and is pure eye-candy, whereas in 2 they try to up the emotional anti by giving her a kid. So we've gone from a quick shag to quasi-fatherhood. The baddies are pretty two-dimensional in both flicks. You get a hint of homo-eroticism in 1 when Wall Street touches our hero's gloved hand. In 2, once again, its higher stakes, with lots of buff body-building.

Ultimately these movies have to be judged on how slick the action is. TRANSPORTER has some cool chase scenes in some very choice cars, and you get a bit of the computer-game like action sequences. But there's nothing as stylised nor as imaginative as the sequel.

So, TRANSPORTER makes for a decent enough action flick - perfect for DVD and pizza night. It hinted it, but hadn't crystallised the camp comic potential of the sequel, or indeed the proposed threequel. What's more, cool action aside, there's no hint of whether Leterrier will be able to pull off the emotional depth of a BATMAN BEGINS when he reimagines HULK this summer.

TRANSPORTER was originally released in 2002 and is widely available on DVD.

WAR - what is it good for? Absolutely nothing.

The title of this review is pretty lame and obvious, but not as lame and obvious as Philip G Atwell's directorial debut. Jason Statham plays an American cop out to avenge his partner's death at the hands of a Triad assassin played by Jet Li. Statham's accent is caught somewhere between West Hollywood and Billericay. Li moves through the movie barely uttering a word. Neither is particularly charismatic. The fight scenes are decently choreographed but that doesn't make up for the unimaginative dialogue and formulaic structure. Admittely, there is a neat plot twist near the end of the film, but by that point I was so alienated by proceedings, I couldn't have cared less.

WAR was released in most countries in Autumn 2007. It opens in South Korea on February 28th and is also available on DVD.

DISTRICT 13/BANLIEUE 13 - guns, cars, violence, insults!

DISTRICT 13 takes its name from a super-rough Parisien suburb. We are asked to imagine that in four year’s time (the movie is notionally set in 2010, although it is resolutely NOT a sci-fi movie) the district will have become entirely over-run by a drug-lord called Taha. Taha keeps a private army and ammo supply big enough to march on the government should he so choose. The government decides that it is incapable of policing the area and builds a wall around i, literally making it a ghetto. The movie takes a look at what happens when an idealistic guy and his hard-as-nails sister mess with the drug-lord, not to mention an under-cover cop on the hunt for a missing bomb.

Clearly, DISTRICT 13 is not a “great film” whatever that may mean, but it does get a lot of the basics right. It has memorably eccentric characters – bent cops, dumb-ass gangsters and an especially colourful underground Casino owner. It has a tight, linear plot that uses all the conventions of the gangster-thriller but gives them a couple of cool twists. It has awesome fight scenes similar to those in ONG BAK – high-amp physical dexterity rather than too much CGI or wire-fu. And to cap it all off, the sound-track is kind of like a French version of the Chemical Brothers. At the best of times, it feels like the coolest video game you ever played. And if violent video games aren’t your thing, you should probably give this a miss.

In a summer of wanky over-blown dull-as-tooth-ache blockbusters it is nice to get back to some superficial slick violence at last. DISTRICT 13 delivers just that. Sure, it may pull its punch with a slushy final five, but at least it has the humility to get its bad bits over quickly. Jerry Bruckheimer should take note.

DISTRICT 13/BANLIEUE 13 opened in France back in 2004 and has been on release practically everywhere since. It is available on Region 3 DVD and is also playing at cinemas in the UK.