Bovie Movie

With this sci-fi offering, Dark Star and The Thing director John Carpenter has been reduced to repeating his own movies. Set in the year 2176, this has feisty cop Melanie Ballard (Natasha Henstridge) arrive at an isolated Martian mining town to transport notorious killer “Desolation” Williams (Ice Cube) to a high-security prison. The colonists are being possessed by the spooks of the title and transformed into zombies that look as threatening as refugees from a Kiss reunion concert. These Martian living dead then swarm in a siege hugely reminiscent of Carpenter’s Assault on Precinct 13 — itself a homage to Howard Hawks’s classic 1959 western Rio Bravo. There are moments of tension thanks to the director’s self-penned soundtrack and the rusty-red hues in which everything is bathed. But there are no real surprises here, leaving only regrets that such a talented director is responsible. 

Co-directors Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor betray their roots in commercials with this nonstop barrage of flashy tricks and breakneck action in which visual and narrative absurdity vie with each other on an insanely epic scale. Trash antihero icon Jason Statham (The Transporter) plays a retired hitman injected with poison. If he slows down for a second he’ll die — something that must not happen until he’s slain the LA crime syndicate responsible. To keep his adrenaline up he ingests every drug going and, in a hilarious highlight, has public sex in Chinatown with girlfriend Amy Smart. It’s Speed with a man instead of a bus, and nothing is sacred or even realistic — from Statham performing motorcycle stunts naked to calmly using his mobile while freefalling through the air. As fun bad movies go, this split-screen, hyper-kinetic comic strip revs up the entertainment value to lunatic “anything goes” levels. Taken seriously, however, the violent and vulgar distraction stops stone dead. 

As his horror sequel Final Destination 2 demonstrated, director David R Ellis knows how to do suspense. So it’s surprising that this blackly comic action thriller is never quite as tense as it should be. The opening scenes are gripping, with science teacher and mother Kim Basinger the victim of a brutal kidnap, but her chief abductor Jason Statham is too weak a villain for us to believe she’s in real jeopardy. Without this essential element, subsequent events are hard to swallow, as young slacker Chris Evans races to save Basinger after she randomly calls his mobile using the remains of a shattered phone. Yet, while story writer Larry Cohen put the same “stay on the line” concept to better use in Phone Booth, here there’s a plethora of car chases and shoot-outs to add to the mix. Consequently, even as the film becomes increasingly preposterous, there’s enough to enjoy, not least solid turns from Basinger, Evans and the ever-reliable William H Macy. 

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. 

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. 

Vinnie Jones doesn’t stray too far from home for his first leading role, working with several of Guy Ritchie’s Lock, Stock company including Snatch producer Matthew Vaughn and an ex-footballer-turned-jailbird role. But what this remake of Robert Aldrich’s 1974 movie The Mean Machine — remember, ex-football pro Burt Reynolds trained his fellow convicts to take on the guards — really misses is Ritchie himself, since first-time director Barry Skolnick and his writers lack the creativity and vitality of Madonna’s film-making husband. That said, if you can overlook the rather thin characters and simplistic plot, the film’s final third — an ill-tempered soccer match between warders and inmates — is very well filmed and highly entertaining. Jones isn’t bad in a made-to-measure role, though the movie’s best moments involve Jason Statham’s maverick keeper and Jason Flemyng’s unconventional commentator. Definitely one for the boys. 

Writer/director Guy Ritchie (with a little help from Luc Besson) has strayed from his accessible Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels to concoct an eye-catching if intellectually overblown game of criminal cat and mouse. A bearded Jason Statham stars as Jake Green, a gangster who vows vengeance after a prison stint covering for his weirdly monikered boss Dorothy Macha — enthusiastically overplayed by Ray Liotta. But Green ends up in the hands of two vicious loan sharks (Vincent Pastore from The Sopranos and rapper André Benjamin from Outkast) who may or may not have their own agenda. Quoting from Machiavelli and using the rules of chess as a metaphor for surviving in the world of crime probably sounded good on paper. But what unfolds here is a pretentious and repetitive substitute for a coherent plot as Green’s identity — and the storyline as a whole — slides into a lukewarm intellectual smorgasbord. 

In Miami, the professional driver Frank Martin is working temporarily for the Billings family, transporting their son Jack while his driver is on vacation. Mr. Billings is an important member of the government and Mrs. Audrey Billings trusts on Frank, who promises to protect the boy. When Jack is kidnapped by a mercenary hired by the Colombian cartels, Frank faces the criminals and the Miami police force trying to rescue the kid. When the boy returns to his family, Jack discloses the real and lethal intention of the abduction of Jack.

Lock, Stock’s Jason Statham plays second fiddle to a battery of special effects in this brainless high voltage action thriller. He plays the cool criminal driver who’s paid to transport cargo — human, or otherwise — with no questions asked. When he violates his code by looking in one of the “packages” and discovers a Chinese girl (Shu Qi), he’s forced to go on the run from his employers and the police. Amid all the posturing macho extravagance (car chases, mega-explosive stunt work), there’s also a bizarre oil wrestling sequence, and one extraordinary moment where Statham kisses his enemy underwater to steal his breath! Clearly, action is all that counts here and the plot (something about Chinese immigrants and the slave trade) seems the last thing on director Corey Yuen’s mind.