Bovie Movie

The car’s the star in this boys-and-their-toys action drama that, unfortunately, has too little action to cover for the absence of plot. Nicolas Cage plays a reformed car thief who agrees to pull off an impossible job — steal 50 top-of-the-range cars in four nights — for bad guy Christopher Eccleston, in return for his brother Giovanni Ribisi’s life. Cage ropes in his old crew — including ex-flame Angelina Jolie and silent-but-deadly Vinnie Jones — for the job, but it’s over an hour before we get any stealing or crashing of any description. There’s a nice chase at the end, but the deficiencies in the storyline drive it headfirst into a cul-de-sac of unrealised tension. 

Stories by sci-fi writer Isaac Asimov provide the inspiration for this futuristic action thriller, set in Chicago in the year 2035 when robots have been fully integrated into society, occupying the positions of trusted servant and menial worker. Asimov’s laws of robotics state that a robot may not allow a human to come to harm. When a top scientist from the US Robotics corporation turns up dead, Detective Del Spooner (Will Smith) suspects the involvement of a prototype that may not be bound by the laws that govern its brethren. Smith gives a charismatic performance in this blockbusting sci-fi, which succeeds chiefly because of the use of CGI, blending the robots seamlessly into the human environment. As a meditation on whether robots are capable of human emotions, this may not delve as deeply as AI: Artificial Intelligence or Blade Runner, but director Alex Proyas keeps the action racing along with enough invention and thrills to make this well worth the ride. 

Viewed as a fairy tale about the American Dream, this Capra-esque fish-out-of-water whimsy provides some affecting comedy drama, but it doesn’t fully convince thanks to director Steven Spielberg’s reluctance to confront harsh realities. Tom Hanks is superb as the eastern European who becomes trapped in visa hell after a military coup in his native Krakozhia means his country is no longer recognised by the US government. Stranded indefinitely at JFK airport, he learns English from TV, eats leftover fast food, finds work renovating the building, falls for ditzy flight attendant Catherine Zeta-Jones and is harassed by Stanley Tucci’s power-hungry official. While the performances are appealing, Spielberg relies too heavily on the airport-terminal-as-microcosm-of-society angle and the saccharine sentimentality gets piled on as the credibility decreases. If you can suspend your disbelief, then great, but if you can’t, beware. 

The first major feature film to be adapted from an internet cartoon, this satire-cum-spoof stars comedian Eddie Griffin as a leather-clad, Afro-sporting secret agent who’s recruited by an organisation called The Brotherhood. His arch-enemy is The Man, a white racist megalomaniac who brainwashes a black general into giving up his presidential ambitions in favour of opening a chain of chicken restaurants. Undercover Brother attempts to poke fun at white perceptions of black culture while celebrating the glories of blaxploitation movies and 1970s fashions and music, and there are some neat touches in this vein — the Brotherhood’s dopey white intern is a product of affirmative action. Overall, though, many of the jokes are just too stale to work and it suffers in comparison to the similarly themed Austin Powers movies.