Bovie Movie

Star Wars meets Ben-Hur in director Danny Cannon’s imaginatively over-the-top science-fiction rendering of the celebrated 2000 AD comic-strip hero. In the future, the world has formed into densely populated Mega Cities with the Cursed Earth being the uninhabitable region lying between them. Law and order is maintained by a fleet of elite officers who are judge, jury and executioner rolled into one, and Judge Dredd (Sylvester Stallone) is the most prolific of the brigade. This is how fans like their Stallone served up best — without subtlety, monosyllabic, biceps bulging and in constant action. Judge Dredd is easily the actor’s best role since Rocky, and Cannon blends him into the futuristic frenzy with satisfying skill. Diane Lane as Judge Hershey, the romantic judge with a conscience, has some excellent moments, and Armand Assante puts in a fine performance of manic evil as a villain with a secret. Cannon continually accents the spark and humour of the comic, while ensuring the visuals are always spectacular and epic. Frequently stunning and always exciting, Judge Dredd is an underrated fantasy gem, full of flash, plenty of bang and packing a considerable wallop. 

There was no doubt after Shallow Grave that the arrival of director Danny Boyle, producer Andrew Macdonald and doctor-turned-writer John Hodge on the British film scene was a major cause for celebration. However, it was the trio’s follow-up — this devastatingly comic and tragic look at youth culture and its recreational habits — that put them firmly on the international map. Unapologetic and hard-hitting, Irvine Welsh’s controversial bestseller is brought to the screen as a dazzling assault on the senses. Fiercely original and provocative, this shocker focuses on the disintegrating friendship of four Edinburgh lads as they embark on an endless drugs and petty-crime bender. In a true masterstroke, the harrowing and bleak subject matter is presented as a hilariously funny walk on the wild side, with no moral stance taken or punches pulled. Ewan McGregor is absolutely brilliant as smart-aleck junkie Renton, and Robert Carlyle gives a stunning performance as the violent Begbie. This is a savagely sophisticated work and a landmark British classic. 

The surprise bombing of Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941 was a major event in US history (awakening the sleeping giant and all that), but this attempt to capture it on screen by the big-thinking producer/director team of Jerry Bruckheimer and Michael Bay (The Rock, Armageddon) is a huge disappointment. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the actual attack, which forms the middle act of the film’s bloated three hours, is an amazing spectacle — it’s almost worth the obscene $135-million budget. However, sheer cinematic power is undermined by our total lack of empathy for any of the cardboard cut-out characters who populate Bay’s advert-like world of slow-motion and colour filters (and baseball-playing kids to signify America — yes, we get it). Weaknesses of plot and characterisation are only amplified by the film’s unwieldy size and patriotic portent, and the script is toe-curlingly bad. Bruckheimer and Bay presumably think their love story and wartime heroics are charmingly old-fashioned. They have clearly not studied Casablanca or From Here to Eternity. 

One would’ve thought that Guy Ritchie would have shied away from replicating Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels after the glut of British gangster movies that followed its success. Sadly not. Although Snatch has its merits — among them originality and the talents of Brad Pitt, Benicio Del Toro, and Jasons Statham and Flemyng — the diamond heist and East End Mob plot are just more of the same. Gangs, cheeky chappies, bare-knuckle boxing and cameos from Vinnie Jones and Mike Reid merge into a “seen it all before” mix. Ritchie can direct, but perhaps he should get someone else to write the material. 

An impressive cast is totally wasted in this ludicrous and offensive farce. Estranged brothers Daniel (Matthew Macfadyen) and Robert (Rupert Graves) are reunited for their father’s funeral. Their extended — and dysfunctional — family, which includes Keeley Hawes, Jane Asher and Kris Marshall, comes together for the event. After a mysterious stranger (Peter Dinklage) with sinister motives appears, skeletons soon begin to fall from closets, and nothing and no-one is spared embarrassment in the ensuing “hilarity”. There are some particularly repellent and vulgar scenes involving veteran actor Peter Vaughan, but the rest of the film is hardly highbrow, with hallucinogenic drugs, nudity and dead bodies all making an appearance. Director Frank Oz (Bowfinger, What about Bob?) really should have known better. 

Following on swiftly from the release of Behind Enemy Lines, here’s another noisy, gung-ho modern war movie. However, the fact that this film is based on the disastrous 1993 “Battle of Mogadishu” in Somalia does not temper its flag-waving, pro-American militarism. The film’s poster tagline “Leave no man behind” disguises what was a strategic American mess as chest-beating melodrama — in reality, 18 Americans were killed, as were hundreds of Somalis during a 15-hour firefight. That it should come from a British director is the surprise, though to his credit Ridley Scott has cast many non-Americans in prominent roles — an underused Ewan McGregor, an impressive Jason Isaacs, comic turn Ewen Bremner and charismatic Eric Bana. It’s sensitive, cool-headed and intelligent for a Jerry Bruckheimer movie, but for all of Scott’s incredible technical skill — you really do feel as if you are there — the battle scenes lack identifiable characters and there is scant insight into the Somalian conflict. In a post-11-September world, its call for “heroes” makes it little more than a recruitment film. 

Jackie Chan returns to the Victorian England setting of Shanghai Knights for this comedic take on Jules Verne’s much-loved adventure. The film follows the exploits of inventor Phileas Fogg (Steve Coogan) and his valet, Passepartout (Chan), as they endeavour to circumnavigate the globe in record time to win a wager set by the villainous Lord Kelvin (Jim Broadbent), the head of the Royal Academy of Science. Chan delivers his trademark martial arts rough and tumble along the way, but a redundant subplot involving a stolen jade Buddha only serves to slow the action down. The broad comedy is perhaps more suited to Chan’s pratfalls than Coogan’s wit, but their travels provide enough eye candy and big-name cameos (including Owen and Luke Wilson and Arnold Schwarzenegger) to help pass the time on this otherwise laboured journey.