action adventure

OVERLORD

Cert 18 110mins Stars 4

Zombie Nazi’s make a frontal assault on the senses and take the Second World War to a new level of hell in this full-blooded action horror.

With a knowingly uproarious tone, it’s a brain-splatting, gut-ripping blood-drenched thriller which isn’t for the faint of heart or weak of stomach.

British born actor, Jovan Adepo, is one of a team of paratroopers whose deadly mission behind enemy lines in France is to help enable the Allies’ 1944 D-Day landing goes to plan.

However the radio mast they must destroy is above a heavily-guarded church crypt, where Nazi scientists are attempting to create a breed of ‘thousand-year’ soldiers of super-human strength. 

Fortunately help comes from Mathilde Ollivier’s glamorous local who has the Germans hot under the collar and is burning for revenge.

Being produced by Star Trek’s J.J. Abrams gives this a big screen sweep and gloss, and though it’s arguably in bad taste, it’s also a great deal of over-the-top fun.

MORTAL ENGINES

Cert 12A Stars 3

The latest blockbuster to rumble across the big screen from the makers of The Lord of the Rings trilogy is surprisingly clunky and run of the mill.

Adapted from a series of books by Brit author Philip Reeve it’s a steampunk sci-fi fantasy epic set 1000 years into the future on an apocalyptic Earth.

Icelandic actress Hera Hilmar plays a young orphan bent on revenging her mother’s death and becomes involved in a fiendish plot to unleash centuries old technology with the power to destroy the world.

Her target is Hugo Weaving’s duplicitous patrician, who’s geared to driving London to a brighter future.

Tremendously designed and rendered in faultless CGI throughout, it’s a world where Europeans inhabit cities resting on ginormous armoured vehicles which prey on smaller mechanical towns for scarce materials such as fuel and salt.

There are sea-travelling prison towns on crab-like legs, small scavenger villages and a floating hot air balloon metropolis, while in the Asiatic east a static settlement sits behind a huge wall, and is presented as a fortified Shangri-la.

However the inspired premise is crushed beneath the wheels of misfiring storytelling, which has clanking dialogue, comedy and romance which barely register and is bereft of a sense of time or distance.

London is a giant tank thundering across Europe, flattening opposition and scooping up resources for it’s over-privileged upper classes, but this abundant wealth of satirical possibilities is wasted.

Despite determined efforts by the actors to provide emotional fuel, they’re too often squandered as grist for the towering spectacle.

Plus Hilmar’s nominal central role is squeezed out of focus by a bevy of subplots and not particularly interesting characters.

The best of which are Stephen Lang’s undead cyborg, who takes the story into an agreeably dark place, but it’s all too quickly back-pedalled from in favour of more family friendly action scenes.

And despite some game playing by Irishman, Robert Sheehan, his lowly historian and wannabe aviator is required to bridge an awkward divide between romantic lead and comic support.

With it’s strong Antipodean accent in front and behind the camera, this too often feels like an enormously souped up riff on Mad Max, but one with a fraction of the dynamism.

 

 

ROBIN HOOD (2018)

Cert 12A 116mins Stars 1

This brain-numbingly awful re-imagining of my favourite legendary outlaw is a mythological medieval mess.

A shoddy riff on Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight, it sacrifices coherent fun for blundering action and a grab-bag of styles, and feels as if it’s been adapted from a Batman video game.

The plot at least is familiar with Robin returning to Nottingham from the Crusades to find his mansion destroyed and the peasants taxed to high heaven.

Whether Lord of Locksley or the outlaw known as ‘the Hood’, Taron Egerton’s geezerish Robin is smug and charmless as the Kingsman star fails to convince as either to the manor born, or an inspirational man of the people.

Meanwhile Eve Howson, the daughter of U2 singer, Bono,  plays Marion, and struggles with everyone to rise above the woeful script.

Unfathomably stupid and unforgivably dull, it’s an abomination worse than Guy Ritchie’s King Arthur, and as bad as 2015’s Assassin’s Creed, wildly misfiring and always off target.

HELLBOY (2019)

Cert 15 121mins Stars 2

Unrepentant for its blood-splattered gore, this comic book comedy horror reboot is brash, noisy and violent, reflecting the demonic character at the heart of the CGI-heavy action.

Under deadening layers of makeup, actor David Harbour tries manfully to bring life to Hellboy, a truculent government field agent attempting to prevent Milla Jovovich’s resurrected fifth century sorceress from starting the apocalypse.

Though as she wants to save us all from the hell of Reality TV, I don’t think she’s all that evil.

Rattling around England in pursuit of a decent script, Hellboy is accompanied by Sasha Lane’s very modern fortune teller, and a SWAT team leader with a secret agenda of his own.

As Hellboy’s adoptive father and boss of the US paranormal research bureau where Hellboy works, Ian McShane uses every ounce of his foul-mouthed and scene-stealing experience to bring energy and humour to this frequently flat exercise.

This is a very different beast to Hellboy’s previous cinematic incarnation in a pair of films from over a decade ago. Original director and writer, Guillermo del Toro, bailed out and went off to win Oscars for his fishy romance, The Shape of Water.

And fans of his elegant and stylish version will be horrified by way director, Neil Marshall, brings a much more action-orientated approach.

Clearly the genial Geordie was watching the same video nasties I saw growing up, and indulges his taste for gory thrills first seen in his 2002 werewolf debut, Dog Soldiers.

Throwing in an army of demons, flaming weapons, shoot-outs and Scouser Stephen Graham as a half-human warthog, it’s evident Marshall shares with Terry Gilliam a love of fairytales and Arthurian legend as well as a gleeful taste for the grotesque. 

But there’s little tension or chemistry, the CGI looks cheap, and the hardworking editing disguises a lot of sins, leaving this to feel more like purgatory than a hellish good time.

 

MEN IN BLACK: INTERNATIONAL

Cert 12A 114mins Stars 3

This big budget sci-fi action comedy sequel to Will Smith’s 1990’s blockbuster trilogy offers plenty of glossy CGI action but is surprisingly a little beige beneath the surface.

Fresh from starring in mega Marvel superhero smash, Avengers: Endgame, Chris ‘Thor’ Hemsworth and Tessa ‘Valkyrie’ Thompson step into shoes of Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones as galaxy defending secret agents.

They’re armed with memory altering gizmos, lots of shiny laser weapons and of course the essential black sunglasses, as they encounter lots of small, cute aliens, plenty of large, tentacled, angry ones, and those that change from one to another.

Star of the show  is the warm and watchable Tessa Thompson, who plays a computer hacker recruited by Emma Thompson’s boss of the Men In Black organisation, and given the codename, Agent M.

She’s sent to London to team with Hemsworth’s agent H, where the duo’s mission to protect an alien dignitary goes horribly wrong.

A mole is suspected in the MIB, and the most powerful weapon in the universe is being sought by a species of warmongering aliens, the Hive.

Very much written as a spy caper, it merrily riffs on the world of superspy James Bond with Hemsworth very knowingly playing the hard-drinking womaniser as comically arrogant, reckless, a bit dim and vaguely inept.

And it’s complete with glamorous international locations, flash cars, gadgets, and a beautiful femme fatale in the shape of Rebecca Ferguson’s intergalactic arms dealer. Plus Kumail Nanjiani adds a lot of humour voicing a pint-sized alien called Pawny.

F. Gary Gray directed 2017’s eighth instalment of the Fast and the Furious franchise, and despite rocketing his cast about the globe he can’t get the pace here up to a similar speed.

Will Smith’s swagger is a big miss and script should be sharper, but the natural easy chemistry of its attractive stars prevent the film from crashing to Earth.

 

ALADDIN (2019)

Cert PG 128 mins Stars 4

Will Smith unleashes his magic charm in Disney’s confident, colourful and crowd-pleasing live action remake of their 1992 classic Oscar winning musical animation.

Hollywood’s once biggest star delivers a larger than life performance as the giant magic genie of the lamp, and burns charisma, warmth and heartfelt maturity in the role originally played by the comic, Robin Williams.

The story very closely follows the original, with street thief Aladdin teaming up with a genie to win the heart of the princess Jasmine and help save the desert kingdom of Agrabah from the unfettered ambition of Marwan Kenzari’s villainous vizier, Jafar.

Unlike Tim Burton’s lumbering Dumbo remake, this is full of fun, excitement and of course glorious songs, with fresh sparkle given to the diamond tunes of ‘Friend Like Me’ and ‘A Whole New World’, with ‘Prince Ali’ is delivered in grand show-stopping style.

Mena Massoud is an earnest and endearing romantic lead as Aladdin, and is game for the thankless task of playing the straight man to not just Smith and the rest of the human cast, but a flying carpet and the adorable monkey, Abu.

I wish his opposite number Naomi Scott, had more to do as Jasmine, but she makes the most of her screen time with constant bridling at the constraints of her gilded cage existence in a star-making performance.

She has enjoyable chemistry with Nasim Pedrad’s handmaiden and knocks her solo song out of the park. ‘Speechless’ is one of two new numbers, and is an assertive anthem about challenging authority which Scott delivers with impressively fierce defiance.

Director Guy Ritchie desperate for a hit as his last box office success was nearly a decade ago, with the second of his and Robert Downey, Jr.’s Sherlock Holmes adventures, so it’s  a canny movie to style the climax in the CGI manner of a Marvel superhero film.

This rarely feels like a Ritchie movie and whether you consider that a good thing, he’s certainly put a shift in with this huge production, which sees him successfully negotiate the different demands of action, romance, comedy, special effects and big song and dance numbers.

The two eight year olds I took to the screening had a great time even though they aren’t familiar with the original animated version, or with Smith’s lengthy TV, music or movie career, and he’s certainly won two new fans of the next generation.

And as Smith swaggers into silver screen musical theatre, it’s great to see the Fresh Prince discover a whole new jam.

MORTAL ENGINES

Cert 12A 128mins Stars 3

The latest blockbuster from the makers of The Lord of the Rings trilogy is surprisingly clunky and run of the mill as it rumbles across the big screen.

Adapted from a series of books by Brit author Philip Reeve with tremendous design and faultless CGI, it’s a steampunk sci-fi fantasy epic set 1000 years into the future on an apocalyptic Earth.

European cities are now ginormous armoured vehicles which prey on smaller mechanical towns for scarce materials such as fuel and salt.

However this inspired premise is crushed beneath the wheels of the misfiring storytelling which has clanking dialogue and no sense of time or distance while the comedy and romance barely register.

Icelandic actress Hera Hilmar does her best as an orphaned outcast intent on murdering Hugo Weaving’s duplicitous patrician, while he’ll stop at nothing to drive London to a brighter future.

Despite the actors determined efforts to provide emotional fuel, they’re too often squandered as grist for the towering spectacle.

BLACK ’47

Cert 15 100mins Stars 4

The Western is bracingly invigorated with this bitter, brutal and brilliant Irish revenge thriller which swaps the Wild West desert for Ireland’s bleak midwinter of 1847.

When a soldier returns home from fighting for the British overseas, he finds the remains of his family in desperate circumstances due to the potato famine and the despotic land clearances of the English aristocracy.

It’s an impressively physical and taciturn performance by Aussie actor, James Frecheville, as the veteran, Martin Feeney, who begins to wage a one-man war across the land and has his sights set on Jim Broadbent’s callously indifferent lord of the manor.

Meanwhile Freddie Fox’s foppish sergeant is sent to hunt down Martin, and recruits Hugo Weaving’s disgraced policeman, who is also a former army colleague of the renegade.

During the course of his personal vendetta, Martin’s patriotic shift is clear from his use of his native Irish language, and those caught in his violent wake also experience a political radicalisation.

One such example is Barry Keoghan’s squaddie, whose conscience-driven actions suggests the working classes on either side of the Irish Sea have a great deal of common cause against the English landed gentry.

Adopting a suitably spartan style, director Lance Daly brings a harsh mournful beauty and mythic overtones to the magnificently photographed epic landscapes, while not forgetting to feature plenty of shoot-outs and horse rides.

A lean script doesn’t waste a word of dialogue is full of contemporary concerns such as bigotry, torture, the clash of religions and a refugee crisis. It also includes moments of gallows humour and there’s a novel use for a pig’s head, which even the English members of today’s broadminded political elite would shy away from.

Though lacking the romance, melodrama or grandstanding speeches of Mel Gibson’s Oscar winner, this is very much an Irish Braveheart, and is intense, timely and terrific.

THE MEG

Cert 12A 113mins Stars 4

It’s man versus megalodon in this enjoyably silly slick and glossy action adventure.

Jason Statham experiences a sinking feeling when a prehistoric giant shark is discovered at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean.

The Brit star plays a retired rescue diver with a ropey reputation called Jonas, presumably in homage to the biblical who was swallowed by a huge whale.

Jonas realises he’s going to need a bigger boat if he’s to save the crew of a stricken submersible, lost off the China coast 11 miles underwater and faced with the 23 metre long hungry behemoth.

Various characters become fish bait as greed and self interest compete with bravery and noble sacrifice.

With the script merrily splicing Steven Spielberg’s 1975 masterpiece, Jaws, with his Jurrasic Park franchise, the big budget CGI and an international cast are designed to give this fishy tale a global appeal.

And with Statham being a former member of the British diving team, he’s completely at home when up to his neck in watery thrills.

Plus he’s well-practised at delivering outrageous lines with the straightest of faces. The film would be sunk without him.

Most impressively of all he swims against the tide of accepted wisdom by being adept at acting with animals and  children, establishing a lovely rapport with the cute-as-a-button ten year-old, Shuya Sophia Cai.

Her on-screen mother is Chinese superstar Li Bingbing, who is a strong foil for Statham, with equal screen time and action scenes of her own.

There are monstrous squids, schools of sharks, and holidaymakers oblivious to the peril of the cast spouting some of the best so-bad-it’s-good dialogue of the year.

This is knowingly broad not deep entertainment, a giant bite of popcorn fun which is totally jawsome.

JOHN WICK: CHAPTER 2

Director: Chad Stahelski (2017) BBFC cert: 15

Keanu Reeves’ career blasts back into black as the sharp suited assassin in this blistering thriller sequel.

It’s a super stylish, extraordinarily violent action spectacular which offers non stop ferocious thrills.

With little fanfare the first film tore through cinema back in 2014, shooting up the box office charts and killing the competition.

It delivered a much needed hit for the ever popular star who was once again in great need of a boost. Reeves has been quite since then but there’s no ignoring him here.

We pick up where the first finished. Having avenged his pet dog and recovered his car from the Russian gangsters who stole it, the multilingual hitman, Wick, is once again looking forward to a peaceful retirement.

But Riccardo Scamarcio’s powerful Italian crime lord makes Wick and offer he can’t refuse. As the villainous, ambitious and smooth talking Santino D’Antonio, he needs his own sister assassinated and Wick owes him a blood debt.

However if Wick succeeds, it will allow D’Antonio to takeover not just Rome, but Wick’s hometown of New York.

The relentless barrage of action sequences combine the sleek sophistication of the James Bond series, the elegant sumptuous design of vampire flicks and the dynamic violence of Asian martial arts movies.

Enabling the short fused Wick to burn the candle at both ends is an armoury of guns, the most cool car, a wardrobe of gorgeous suits, and residence at a chain of high end hotels.

The inventive violence takes place on subways, in catacombs and at parties, ending with a showdown in Central Park.

British actors Ian McShane and Peter Serafinowicz add a touch of class. Reeves’ co-star from The Matrix movies, Laurence Fishburne brings the menace.

The Hollywood union of stuntmen has long agitated for an Oscar to be established to honour their work. If one were to be awarded, the stunt team here would be a shoo in for the thorough shoe-ing their members receive here.

For what they accomplish, I hope their danger money was on double time.

★★★★☆

@ChrisHunneysett