Bovie Movie

Sci-fi action films don’t come any more simplistic than this offering from James Wong (writer and director of the highly entertaining Final Destination). Aware that the sole purpose of this sort of “high concept” crowd-pleaser is to provide maximum entertainment, Wong goes all out to deliver an exhilarating, nonstop adrenalin rush, unfettered by misplaced intellectual pretension. Once the preserve of Schwarzenegger and Stallone, the testosterone-charged lead role is here claimed by Hong Kong action star Jet Li. He gets to battle himself in his portrayal of two martial arts whirlwinds — one, a killer moving between parallel universes in order to murder his alter egos; the other, a Los Angeles police officer who’s the last intergalactic double and next intended victim. Wong is a celluloid magpie, mixing the style of Total Recall and Timecop with the fights and special effects of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and The Matrix. While this means there’s no real innovation or surprise, it does ensure that jaw-droppingly extreme set pieces punctuate this wildly over-the-top but effective joy ride. 

Jet Li takes his first starring role in a US movie here, playing an ex-cop convict who flees to America to avenge the death of his brother and gets entangled in a Mob war. During his investigation, he continually mixes with the daughter (played by singer Aaliyah) of the rival gang’s head thug, yet the film-makers are too cowardly to take the interracial relationship beyond mere friendliness. Even for an American movie, the martial arts sequences are very badly choreographed, and there is far more hip-hop music and lingo than either plot or action. Fortunately, Anthony Anderson provides some welcome comic relief as a dim-witted henchman. 

With its treasure hunters and American Civil War backstory, Sahara prompts obvious comparison with the 2004 release National Treasure. But this also belongs to a long literary and cinematic tradition that includes Allan Quatermain, Indiana Jones and the stories of Kipling. Here the hero is author Clive Cussler’s creation Dirk Pitt (Matthew McConaughey), an adventurer and salvage expert who stumbles across evidence that a long-lost Civil War battleship may have ended up in the desert in West Africa. Along for the ride are Steve Zahn as Pitt’s sidekick, and Penélope Cruz as a World Health Organisation doctor investigating a possible plague outbreak. Throw in a local dictator, Tuareg tribesmen and the odd camel, and you have the convoluted and at times incomprehensible plot. However, the action sequences are impressive, the locations and villains suitably exotic, and the whole thing remains good fun when taken with a large pinch of salt. 

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. 

Tony Scott takes his overblown style of film-making to new levels of superficiality in this frenetic action thriller. Scripted by Donnie Darko director Richard Kelly, it’s inspired by the true story of the late Domino Harvey (played by Keira Knightley), the daughter of actor Laurence Harvey, who swapped her privileged life for the dangers of bounty hunting. Yet despite the astonishing source material, only the barest factual bones are incorporated. Instead, Scott offers a male-oriented fantasy in which Domino and her reprobate colleagues (including Mickey Rourke) get dragged into a deadly case involving the Mafia and the FBI, while being filmed for their own reality TV show. The initial set-up is slick and exciting, with Knightley enjoyably tongue-in-cheek as the sultry bad girl. Unfortunately, the characters and plotline remain frustratingly underdeveloped, overshadowed by Scott’s grating obsession with visual experimentation that makes even his hyperkinetic Man on Fire look sedate. 

In this entertaining remake of a 1956 Glenn Ford thriller, Mel Gibson stars as a maverick tycoon who must decide whether to pay a $2 million ransom for his kidnapped son or take the law into his own hands. There are no prizes for guessing the Die Hard-style avenue Gibson takes, but his method of action is an interesting one. The film suffers overall under Ron Howard’s unusually starchy direction and Rene Russo is wasted as Gibson’s concerned wife, but Gary Sinise gives his villainous Terminator-like role a few wry twists. Lower your expectations and this overplayed urban combat drama will reward with a few tense moments.