An action movie with a very cool approach, a fantastic cast, and a script that redefines the word “mess.”

Writing: Barry Levy gets his first credited writing gig for this movie. Either he’s a hack writer that should be booted from the industry immediately, or somebody royally tinkered with his original script. With such a neat structural hook to play with, the script does so little with it. There’s a couple nice reveals, and a couple nice interplays. But there’s SO much that is either completely pointless or makes absolutely zero sense that one can’t help wonder what the heck happened. The bad guys are not only left a complete mystery, but are pretty much completely undefined. There’s kidnapping involved, I guess. There’s some romantic double-cross going on, I think. These people are doing this for some cause or another, perhaps. Then there’s betrayal from the inside happening for absolutely no discernable reason whatsoever. And don’t get me started on the flacid attempt to use the sitation to bomb some foreign location or another (that sub-plot falls so flat, it’s downright perplexing). The writing team at 24 needed to take a pass at doctoring this script up to a functional level from a character perspective. Motivations and character aside, at least the action and interplay is pretty well staged.

Production: Some top notch action production really helps drag the lousy script up to a functional level. This movie must have gone through a tormentual editing process, trying to make sense of things (well, of the things that even have a remote chance of making sense). That is, to make it logistically come together. Cinematography is pretty dynamic, though it could have used a bit better hand held camera work in some moments. Still, minor complaints are the only thing I would come up with.

Cast: How they talked this cast into the movie based on a script would be beyond me. Still, the cast gives it their all, and they do actually manage to make it work. Dennis Quaid is excellent as the central figure in the puzzle, and he does help hold it all together. William Hurt is a nice bit of casting as the President, though his story is muddled enough to make it tough for any actor to make work. Still, he manages. Matthew Fox must have had some kind of backstory for his character that he worked with from an acting perspective, cause he manages to make a character that has absolutely zero motivational reasoning still seem to work. Sigourney Weaver is always great, and she brings an added dimension to a character that is little more than a functional piece of a puzzle. Then there’s Forest Whitaker, playing the only kind of character that I think he can work in - a total flake. And he’s doing his best dimwitted acting in this role, appropriately, I guess. How somebody would come up with this character in the middle of all this is a bit weird, but Whitaker sure fits the bill.

Music: Atli Örvarsson is a composer I’d never heard of previously, with a handful of TV credits to his name, but he comes through with a pretty good action score. It’s got a nice edge to it. It may fall into a few of the trappings of the modern action score, but it works rather well anyway.

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 22nd, 2008 at 10:10 pm 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.