Random DVD Round-Up - NEED FOR SPEED

NEED FOR SPEED is so much macho bullshit it makes the FAST & FURIOUS franchise look like the Ingmar Bergman of car-racing flicks.  We're in the sort of clumsy, asinine movie-making that epitomises THE EXPENDABLES except without the self-knowing irony. Some lazy reviewers have argued that you shouldn't expect better from a movie based on a video-game, but that's to do video games a disservice. The simple fact is that ex-stunt driver and director Scott Waugh only knows how to direct by pasting together action set-pieces  and scriptwriters John and George Gatins (REAL STEEL) have either no interest in or no talent for depicting real human emotion.  

TERMINATOR SALVATION - a lovely little walking toaster of your very own

TERMINATOR SALVATION is a technically well-made, visually interesting addition to the franchise. Problem is, the plot and character ideas are so ill-developed that the action sequences lose all meaning and dissolve into one long roar of sound and fury.

All if which is a great shame, because director McG (of CHARLIE'S ANGELS fame) clearly had aspirations for greatness, citing influences from THE GREAT ESCAPE to Cormac McCarthy's grim post-apocalyptic novel, THE ROAD. The colour and design of this film is sombre and the mood serious. We have shots of a concrete building collapsing on itself and white dust billowing over the wreckage - an image straight from 9-11. We have scenes of humanity turned savage, fighting over food and fuel. The only wink to the in-joke of the franchise comes late in.

The set-up of the film is promising but squandered. Christian Bale takes on the role of John Connor, prophesied leader of the Resistance against Skynet - the sentient defense machine that launched a pre-emptive strike against humanity on Judgment Day. Terminator robots were designed and sent back in time to kill Connor, his mother and his father with no success. Radical rethinking was required. Skynet creates a Cylon - half human, half android - a Terminator with a real heart. The stage is set for brilliant drama. How far can the Cylon have free will, and counter his programming to destroy the humans? In what sense can a woman really fall in love with a man who is half-robot? These are some of the questions that were explored with great insight and wit in the re-imagined BATTLESTAR GALACTICA.

But TERMINATOR SALVATION is only interested in these questions insofar as they provide breathing room between the set-piece action sequences. Time and again, we have rushed, superficial scenes that hint at deeper questions but never give them room to develop. Thus, resistance fighter Blair Williams (Moon Bloodgood, weak performance) falls for the Cylon who saved her life, and risks her own life to set him free. All this is essayed in five minutes and one scene of laughably Mills & Boon dialogue. Later in the film, the Cylon confronts his creators and asserts his humanity. Sam Worthington gives a good performance despite his inability to hold down an American accent, but we soon jump back to Christian Bale's attack on Skynet HQ.

And what about Christian Bale? His involvement with this film will no doubt be remembered for his ill-tempered attack on the Director of Photography, replayed to the masses on Youtube. This draws attention away from the fact that he has turned in a very mediocre performance in a thankless role. As in the THE DARK KNIGHT, he seems to think that adopting a growling deep voice conveys profundity and authority. And, as in THE DARK KNIGHT, he is upstaged by another actor, for this is really Sam Worthington's film. Maybe Bale just wasn't inspired by a character that is basically one-dimensional. There is an argument that if you were raised by your mother to be the saviour of humanity you WOULD be earnest, single-minded and dull. But, Connor should be charismatic - and when asking the Resistance to commit mutiny - he should sound more convincing, more inspiring than he does. Anton Yelchin, as Connor's teenage father-to-be, Kyle Reese, has more charisma, and indeed, more screen presence, than Bale.

All of this speaks to the weakness of the script overall - as evidenced by the numerous re-writes. Let's only hope they do a better job on the already announced, McG-helmed, TERMINATOR 5.

TERMINATOR SAVLATION is on release everywhere but Japan, where it opens next week, and Mexico, where it opens on July 31st.

SEMI-PRO - Ricardian cinema

Will Ferrell was a hysterically funny bit-part player in frat-pack comedy, OLD SCHOOL. And in ANCHORMAN: THE LEGEND OF RON BURGUNDY, he got a showcase for his very special brand of comedy. Ferrell typically plays middle-aged men clinging onto the last vestiges of some earlier minor league fame. They are desperate, emotionally vulnerable men who act like spoiled children when real life catches up with them. They can be vicious and mean to their best friends and alienate their loved ones. But somehow these freaks always redeem themselves and come out smiling. I use the word freak advisedly. Ferrell's signature style is to selflessly embarass himself in the pursuit of a cheap laugh. No costume is too ludicrous - no nude scene over-looked. It's as though he is so deperate to raise a laugh that he throws himself onto the mercy of the audience. "Okay, what I'm doing here may be pretty lame, and you may have seen it in every other film I ever made, but I'm trying so very hard, pleeeeeeeeeease love me!"

The problem is this: Will Ferrell has been in so many films spoofing the 1970s that his movies now strike me as stale, cynical, lazy cash-ins. I haven't genuinely belly-laughed at a Ferrell movie in years. On the other hand, you can't damn his movies completely. After all, his attention to the costume and production design and his willingness to whip himself up into hysteria is, well, admirable.

The sad truth is that I have a lot of respect for Ferrell, but his movies have been delivering diminishing returns to the £10 ticket price ever since ANCHORMAN. And let's face it, why do you need him return to the screen as a semi-pro basketball player doing basically exactly the same schtick as he did as a racing car driver or weatherman? Ferrell is a great actor. It's time that producers and script-writers rose to the challenge and gave him a new outlet for that talent. Otherwise he's going to turn into a sad pastiche of himself.

SEMI-PRO is on release in the UK and USA. It opens in Iceland on March 7th; in Singapore on March 20th; in Australia on April 3rd; in France on May 14th and in the Netherlands on May 22nd.