CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE

CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE is a disappointingly piss-poor action-comedy from the director of the infinitely more amusing and heart-warming WE'RE THE MILLERS, Rawson Marshall Thurber. It stars Dwayne Johnson as a formerly fat bullied schoolkid turned muscle-bound CIA agent accused of killing his partner (Aaron Johnson) and stealing secret files.  He turns up at the house of a former high school jock (Kevin Hart) now living a banal suburban life as an accountant.  At first, his friend appears to be naive and lovable, but then morphs into something seemingly scary and unhinged, before Hart's character realises that he's actually being framed.  High-jinks ensue.  The problem with this film is that a cameo from Jason Bateman apart, it's not really that funny, and there's no convincing relationship between the two male leads as there was with, say, 21 JUMP STREET.  The result is a film that plods along in a fairly banal way, culminating in a high school reunion that's meant to be cathartic for the former fat kid. But even this wannabe emotional and uplifting moment falls flat. One to avoid. 

CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE has a running time of 107 minutes and is rated PG-13. The film is on global release.

SAN ANDREAS

SAN ANDREAS is a hokey but surprisingly effective earthquake disaster movie.  Dwayne Johnson plays an all-round nice guy father who happens to work a helicopter in LA Fire and Rescue.  His ex-wife (Carla Gugino) is currently living with a rich real estate developer (Ioan Gruffudd) but as with all nice family in peril films, we learn that they didn't really divorce because they hate each other and the rich guy is evil.  They have a spunky daughter (Alexandra Daddario) who hooks up with a junior nice guy Brit played by Hugo Johnstone-Burt and his regulation adorable kid brother. And so the movie unravels in a very predictable way. Hero-dad first has to save mum from LA earthquake, then save kids from San Francisco earthquake and tsunami. Meanwhile we have Paul Giamatti as the earnest desperate-to-warn-everyone scientist Archie Punjabi as the journo who helps get his message out.

It's hokey because the good guys are good and the bad guy is bad and it's all about family. But even thought the story holds no real surprises the disaster scenes are effectively done and there was no small tension in the big set pieces.   Overall, I can see why the movie was popular and I think it comes down to the fact that Dwayne Johnson is just very likeable in a hulking earnest way and without the wise-ass ironic jokiness that has become the norm for Hollywood protagonists. Overall, this is well put together wholesome family fare.

SAN ANDREAS has a running time of PG-13 and is rated 114 minutes.  The movie is on global release.

PAIN & GAIN

You can listen to a podcast review of this movie here, or subscribe to Bina007 Movie Reviews in iTunes.

It feels like we're in the midst of a run of movies about people whose sense of reality and entitlement is so out of whack that they they think they have the right to the fruits of the American Dream without, you know, actually working for it - people so ingrained with popular culture that their only frame of reference are movie heists and getaways.  In this latest instalment  we get Marky Mark and The Rock in PAIN & GAIN - a movie based on the true story of three bodybuilders who decided to kidnap, torture and extort one rich clients at their local gym. The selling point of the flick is meant to be the dark comedy of seeing these movie-obsessed idiots mess up again and again, and succeed - when they succeed - almost by accident.

Man, this movie started off so well - full of gonzo energy and whacky humour.  I loved Mark Wahlberg's intensity and his character Daniel Lugo's earnest stupidity.  And I thought this was arguably Dwayne Johnson's finest performance as the ex-con turned evangelical Christian turned reluctant kidnapper, Paul Doyle. I even liked the usually rather anonymous Anthony Mackie as their sidekick, Adrian Doorball, whose steroid abuse had led to impotence, but also his marriage to a naive nurse played by a more muted Rebel Wilson.  These guys had real camaraderie and were so incompetent I was willing them to succeed.  And of course, in real life as in the movie, they were counting on the straight up douchey-ness of their victim (Tony Shalhoub) to make sure the police wouldn't get involved.

But the movie goes downhill in its second halve.  As the body count ticks up our whacky kidnappers become less likeable and - a real problem for this film - the screenwriters Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely - just can't sustain the hyper-ludicrous gonzo humour that this movie promised in its opening act.  Barring a truly surreal and memorable scene of the Rock barbecuing body parts while trying to chat up the neighbours, the second half was a real police procedural drag, that even Ed Harris' super-stylish private investigator couldn't save.  We needed to see more of the Rock - his transformation from evangelist to coke-head was superb - his best performance on record - and less of the procedural.  In general, this movie needed to get way more surreal - way more Nic Cage crazy.

So, a tale of two halves, but for all that, PAIN & GAIN is without doubt Michael Bay's best film since BAD BOYS. (Admittedly the benchmark isn't high.)  I far prefer Bay in his lower budget (I won't insult indie film-makers by saying low budget) movies, where he's more focussed on buddy-comedy and character than high-octane humourless misogynistic fare.  You can tell he's having fun with this flick. And kudos also to his cinematographer Ben Seresin (WORLD WAR Z) who uses a mix of DV and celluloid to create an amped-up hyper-colourful 1990s Miami, that takes us from the glossy mansions to derelict warehouses and manages to capture the coked-up craziness of a kidnap gone bad.  There's a particular sequence in a suburban home where his fluid style and use of body cameras is absolutely breathtaking. 

PAIN & GAIN has a running time of 129 minutes and is rated R in the USA and 15 in the UK.

PAIN & GAIN was released earlier this year in the USA, Bahrain, Egypt, Kuwait, Lebanon, Russia, USA, Canada, Croatia, Bulgaria, Estonia, Romania, Slovenia, Georgia, Mexico, Bosnia, Serbia, Iceland, Lithuania, Norway, Macedonia, Turkey and Italy. It opened earlier this month in Hungary, Singapore, Belgium, Australia, New Zealand, Finland, Austria, Germany, Israel, the Netherlands and Switzerland, Portugal, Thailand, Brazil and South Africa.  The movie opens on August 30th in Ireland, Poland, Spain and the UK; on September 5th in Denmark; on September 6th in Colombia, Panama and Taiwan; on September 11th in France; on September 12th in Chile and Peru; on September 13th in Cyprus and Sweden; and on September 19th in Argentina.

PLANET 51 - harmless, disposable fun

PLANET 51 is the Meg Ryan of kids animation. It's not flashy, ground-breaking or breath-taking. Rather, it's harmless, banal, and mildy amusing in parts. As Christmas entertainment for bored kids, you could fare worse, but this is no TOY STORY.

The concept is clever. Instead of aliens invading earth, with all the predictable genre-defining consequences, earthlings invade an alien planet. Or rather, a narcissistic astronaut (voiced by Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson) lands on a planet of little green men and women. The kicker is that the aliens are just as versed in pop culture and B-movies, and are just as petrified of the "alien" as we would be. In fact, one of the most memorable and endearing things about this film is the beautiful and witty translation of the look of late 1950s/early 1960s small-town America to the alien planet.

Unfortunately, the story doesn't really live up to the concept, because there really isn't one. The astronaut lands, gets separated from his ship, hides out with our alien teen hero (Justin Long) and then tries to get back to his ship. On the way, his robot (a dead ringer for Wall-E) tries to hook up with him and his alien helper tries to hook up with a hot alien chick (Jessica Biel). The problem is that the guy we're meant to empathise with as our hero is pretty whiny and dull, and the other person we might empathise with, the astronaut, is an insufferable bore. It's never good when the little robot has more personality than the hero. (As a sidenote, I also don't get why Dwayne Johnson couldn't have voiced a coloured astronaut?)

So, where does that leave us? PLANET 51 works well as a namecheck of alien invasion classics, and adults will get a certain kick out of that. There's probably enough slapstick humour, not to mention the cute robot, and that'll keep the kids happy. Happy, but in a sort of disposable, single-serving way.

PLANET 51 was released in November in the US, Malaysia, Peru, Russia, Ukraine, Canada, Italy, Argentina, Georgia, Greece, Kazakhstan, Brazil, Cyprus, Mexico and Spain. It opened earlier in December in the Philippines, Germany, Kuwait, Portugal, Iceland, the UK, Australia, Israel, New Zealand, Singapore, Bulgaria, Panama and Venezuela. It opens tomorrow in Turkey and on December 31st in Slovenia. It opens in Finland on January 1st, in the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Sweden on January 14th. It opens in France on February 3rd and in Belgium and the Netherlands on February 10th.

GET SMART - mis-fire

GET SMART is a big-budget Hollywood remake of the old US TV series in which a clutz secret agent called Maxwell Smart was helped by his beautiful, competent, partner, Agent 99. In this new version, the writers decided to make Smart actually quite clever, and a decent, charming guy to boot. Agent 99 is also a little softer round the edges and despite the wide age difference between the actors - Steve Carrell and Anne Hathaway - they actually have good chemistry. I like that Smart and Agent 99 are a better match for each other and bought into their relationship. Sadly, everything around that central relationship is pretty weak, ripping on Bond movies and ENTRAPMENT. The plot is thin, and aside from location work in Russia, it's all very pedestrian. Alan Arkin and Hiro from HEROES are wasted in small roles, and Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson needs to progress beyond this material. On the whole, one for DVD at best.

GET SMART was released in June in Bolivia, Chile, Greece, Peru, the Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, Thailand, Brazil, India, Panama, Taiwan, the US, Argentina, Indonesia, Australia, New Zealand, Puerto Rico, Colombia, Mexico, Uruguay and Venezuela. It was released in July in Italy, Kuwait, Estonia, Romania, Austria, Germany, Russia, Spain and Hong Kong. GET SMART is currently on release in Hong Kong, Portugal, Egypt, Iceland, Israel, the Netherlands, Hungary and the UK. It goes on release next weekend in Croatia, Denmark, Finland and Sweden. It opens in September in Belgium, Norway, France and Japan.

Random DVD Round-Up 4 - SOUTHLAND TALES

SOUTHLAND TALES is Richard Kelly's satire on post 9-11 US society. It's a paranoid fantasy about a USA destroyed by the four things: terrorism; the government's anti-liberal response to it; the vulgarity of popular culture; and environment degradation. Sadly, Kelly isn't up to synthesising all these concerns into a definitive take on contemporary angst. Rather, he has created an ambitious, fleetingly interesting, but overwhelmingly baggy, messy and pretentious film.

The movie is a rag-bag of inter-twining stories all played out in Kelly's alternate USA in 2008. A terrorist nuclear attack has wiped out Texas and prompted the US government to turn the US into a police state. Meanwhile, the energy crisis has been solved by a company that harnesses wave power to produce energy, the side-effect of which is to slow down the rotation of the earth and cause a warp in the space-time continuum. Against this back-drop we focus on three characters. The Rock plays a Schwarzenegger-like actor suffering from amnesia, trying to make sense of it all. He's being exploited by a porn star turned cultural commentator, Krysta Now (Sarah Michelle Gellar). Meanwhile, Seann William Scott plays a police officer, on the trail of Marxist radicals and his alternate self. All these characters are being messed up warps in the space-time continuum caused by environmental degradation.

The resulting film is a mess. And not in the way that Terry Gilliam's BRAZIL is a mess, but touched by genius, and therefore a cult film. SOUTHLAND TALES is misconceived. "State of the nation" content is better suited to the format of the novel. Novels like THE BONFIRE OF THE VANITIES or VANITY FAIR can take their time and build up a coherent narrative. My proposition is that the feature film is fundamentally unsuited to this kind of artistic endeavour.

SOUTHLAND TALES played Cannes 2006 to a disastrous reception. It was then put on extremely limited release in the UK and US in winter 2007. It is available on DVD in the theatrical release cut.

GRIDIRON GANG - perfectly respectable sports flick

GRIDIRON GANG is a perfectly respectable, uplifting and engaging biopic about a chap called Sean Porter. Porter tooks listless, warring kids in a juvenile detention centre and turned them into a disciplined, united sports team. There are no bangs and whistles here. This is as straightforward as a redemption-through-sports flick can get. Thera are no artificial obstacles or attempts to get down with the kids. But the whole exercise is well shot and well acted, not least by Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, who proves that there's more to him than the muscle-head image.

GRIDIRON GANG was released in the US in autumn 2006 and in the UK in spring 2007. It is available on DVD.

Justifiably overlooked DVD of the month - RENO 9-11 MIAMI

Let's give RENO 911 MIAMI the benefit of the doubt and say that it's the latest in a long line of funny TV shows that spawn pathetically unfunny movies. In fairness, I've never seen the Comedy Central original but judging from the movie it's a sort of mockumentary about ineffectual rozzers in Reno. The ne plus ultra of this genre is, I suppose, THE OFFICE, which creates genuine humour from close observation of the minutiae of real life. It's so close to reality that it actually makes you cringe. RENO 911 MIAMI, on the other hand, is very broad and rather lazy in its humour. Instead of exposing the little habits of the ordinary people we work with, the movie creates freakish stereotypes. And the stereotypes are very dated and borderline offensive. So, we have the supposedly hillarious concept that a camp gay man could be a cop. We have a sub-Carry On "joke" about a slutty, big-chested female cop. The hispanic characters is "obviously" a drug-dealing Tony Montana spoof. And we have a black woman wearing a prosthetic big ass. I mean, seriously people, did the 1990s never happen?

RENO 911 MIAMI was released in the US, USA, Australa, New Zealand, Spain, France, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, the Netherlands, Belgium and Singapore earlier this year. It is available on DVD.

DOOM - Why outsource the blowing up of shit?

DOOM is a decent first person shooter video game that has been, for reasons unclear to much of the Western hemisphere, transformed at great expense into one of the most pointless movies ever made. Pointless because seeing The Rock blow shit up is clearly less satisfying than blowing shit up yourself, especially given the fact that the graphics in most video games are better than the CGI effects we get here. Admittedly, if the screenwriters had actually bothered to give the movie a plot or decent characters, it could have been a more satisfying entertainment experience than playing the game itself. But they haven't so it isn't. 

There are four very slight redeeming features to this movie. 1. Guys get to see the blonde Bond girl from "Die Another Day" run around a lot. 2. Girls get to see Eomer from Lord of the Rings open a can of whoopass. 3. We also have the nostalgia trip of seeing that cheeky Yank from kids TV show The Press Gang playing a character called Pinky. 4. Oh yes, and let me not understate the unintentional comedy value of seeing The Rock lovingly handle his "big gun." 

DOOM went on general release in the US in October where it failed to make even half of its budget before dropping down the charts. Since then it has failed to earn money in Germany and France. It opened in the UK yesterday and I trust that the Great British Public will also consign it to the trashcan of shame.