While this movie may not be as offensively rancid as the atrocity known as Crank, it’s another action movie for the sake of action. It has some great stuff in it, to be sure, but it fails more than it succeeds. Ridiculous scarcely covers the description of this movie. Just once, I’d like to see an action movie like this where the henchmen are even remotely good shots. One often wonders if they are even holding their guns in the correct direction to miss so completely on so many clear shots.

Writing: There actually is a little bit of a plot to this one, and it does feature a modicum of character development. That’s not to say that this is a character of any particular note. But compared to pieces of steaming crap like Crank or other underachievers of the genre like the Transporter films, this is Shakespeare.

Production: Some of the action scenes are well staged with some fun stuff done for humor’s sake. Unlike many films of the style, the humor is pulled off a little better in this movie, particularly the tongue-in-cheek type material. Then there are the visual effects, which are for the most part terrible. There’s a sky diving sequence that is cringe-worthy terrible. I know they are in no way going for realistic with much of it, but it’s bad in a way that makes you want to look away.

Cast: Here’s the key highlight to the movie. Clive Owen is channeling his darker characters from the likes of Sin City and filtering them through his “Driver” character from the old BMW short films (”The Hire”), where he got his start. Interestingly, it’s BMW cars that he drives around again in this film, which surely must be a reference to his previous work in those short films (which are superior to this movie, as they were made by some talented directors and crews). Then we have Paul Giamatti, who is fantastic in this film, and easily elevates his role beyond what it should be on the page. Somebody should get him to play this kind of role again, in a superior film. As much as Monica Bellucci tries, she can’t quite make her role work. It’s the most stereotypical of roles, despite the somewhat unusual job she has. She’s a talented actress, as can be witnessed in the likes of Tears Of The Sun, and it’s kind of sad to see her saddled with such a thankless role.

Music: Here’s one of the worst aspects of the film. If it isn’t the metal source cues being used over a number of the action scenes, it’s the score lifting other action scores or songs by prominent electronic music artists. There’s a grossly obvious lift of Paul Oakenfold’s song Ready Steady Go to score one of the action scenes. I know Paul Haslinger is better than that, and to be fair there are a handful of moments where his score does work OK. None of it works particularly great.

This entry was posted on Monday, September 10th, 2007 at 3:22 am and is filed under Movie Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.