Greetings and Salutations.
Many long years ago I had a website, filmtroll.com where I reviewed action movies and what I call Ass-Kick Films. I currently write for the wonderful anti-American Idol Website Votefortheworst.com. As an avowed action movie fan, heavy metal acolyte and sports aficianado, my spending too much time watching and thinking about Idol has started to make me feel less than manly. Since writing about Idol has brought me many more readers than I ever did at Filmtroll I know what people like, namely Paula Abdul drunk jokes and explaining why singers A, B and C suck. But in order to keep my sanity I am announcing the Filmtroll's triumphant return to the internet.
What are Ass-Kick Films? Well, pull up a chair and sit for a while. Let me tell you.
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The Ass-Kick Film Beginnings.
Hollywood always had it's manly movie stars. Guys' guys that men admired and women swooned over. Clark Gable, Erroll Flynn, James Cagney. Manly dudes who made manly films, but were known to star in a lovey-dovey movie for women every once in a while, like Gone With The Wind and... Okay, not that many chick films, that's why I love those guys.
Then came John Wayne. The Duke built an entire film career starring in Westerns (the manliest of movie genres) and War Films (nearly as manly.) Movies for men and by men. In fact in the history of cinema no woman has ever purchased a ticket for a John Wayne film. True fact. Just a quick look at a list of John Wayne character names is a primer in manliness... Duke, Rusty, Quirt, Wedge, Genghis and Rooster. Can you name ANY modern actor that could pull of that resume? Can you name ANY modern actor that could pull off playing a guy named Duke, not once but SIX different times in six different movies? I didn't think so.
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The '80s -- The Ass-Kick film glory years.
Skipping over 50 years of movie history to get to the gist of my history, I just want to mention some other Ass-Kick Film legends: Clint Eastwood, Charles Bronson, Steve McQueen, Bruce Lee, Woody Strode, Robert Mitchum and Lee Marvin. There are many more, but I intend to discuss each of them in detail in the near future.
Anyhow, I point to 1982 as a banner year for Ass-Kick films. Sure the biggest hits featured a weepy alien, Dustin Hoffman in a dress and Big Dick Gere getting his ass handed to him by Louis Gossett Jr., but some of the milestone '80s action movies also premiered.
Rocky III -- Stallone getting his ass handed to him by Mr. T.
Star Trek II -- William Shatner getting his ass handed to him by Ricardo Montalban.
48 Hours -- First Cop Buddy film.
First Blood -- Manly survivalist Rambo whupping ass on redneck cops and David Caruso.
Firefox -- Clint flying a super fighter jet.
The Dark Crystal -- First Ass-Kicking Muppet film.
Tron -- First Ass-Kick Video Game film.
Quest for Fire -- First Ass-Kick Caveman Film.
The Road Warrior -- Greatest Post-Apocalyptic Ass-Kick film (and an all time great Ass-Kick film)
Blade Runner -- Man, this year was awesome.
Oh, and a little film that I consider one of the all-time great Ass-Kick Films... Conan The Barbarian. It's also the first starring role for the King of the '80s Ass-Kick Film... Ah-nold.
With Conan The Barbarian, Arnold Schwarzenegger started his reign of terror, bringing his brand of brawny ultra-violent thrillers that dominated the box office. He launched the era of Action Movies featuring any actor with muscles and an accent, and became the biggest movie star on the planet. But his influence was greater than that. Action movies began to stretch the boundaries of what violence was permitted in films. I'm no gore-fiend, but if a guy gets shot and you want the audience to feel any impact from the violence he needs to do more than clutch his chest and keel over.
Yeah, growing up in 1982 was pretty good.
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The Downward Spiral of Ass-Kick Films.
During the '80s and '90s the action movie was the king of the box office. The top movie stars had names like Arnold, Sylvester, Jean-Claude and Chow. The biggest movies featured guns, manly dudes with guns, and other guys with guns shooting at the manly dudes. I was in hog heaven.
But in 1993 Something strange happened. Arnold made an action film and it flopped. Last Action Hero was Arnold's first box office disappointment after 10 years of nearly unbroken success. After that something in Arnold changed. Possibly sensing an end to his film career one day, and contemplating his run for public office in the near future Arnold stopped pushing the envelope of violent action in his action movies. Feeling the pressure to always outdo himself Arnold hit a wall. After 1993 he started doubting himself and taking on less adventurous scripts, and ironically this led to worse and worse films. The nadir of his career was the one-two punch of awful kiddie films Jingle All The Way and Batman and Robin. Suddenly Arnold was no longer invincible. In his next two films he embraced his Christianity (once again looking ahead to politics) and made the truly terrible double-bill of Christian Sci-Fi dreck, End of Days and The 6th Day. Then he got a face lift. He made an attempted return to form with Collateral Damage and Terminator 3 but his heart wasn't in it. And you know, that face lift thing kind of killed his manly credibility. Now he's Governor of my home state of Coll-ee-for-ya.
There was another earthquake that rocked the manly action film industry. In 1994 a movie featuring a fancy lad and a sassy, tough-talking chick who fall in love while riding the bus was the surprise hit of the year. Speed featured Keenu (misspelling intentional) as the "Action" hero who get this, disarms bombs. He doesn't SET them. To add further insult to injury, Keenu drives a bus and a sled, has trouble beating the fat, aged, one-armed Dennis Hopper in a fist fight AND Keenu doesn't shoot ANYBODY the entire film or visit a titty bar. What a crock.
The Wuss-Kick film was born.
Sure True Lies was still the #3 movie of 1994 raking in $146 million at the Box Office but Speed was not far behind with $121, and while True Lies also cost $115 mil, Speed's budget was a meager $30 mil. Yeah, anyone who could do math knew the days of Arnold's awesomness were numbered. The studio heads who earned billions of dollars by riding the brawny backs of the action movie stars asked themselves, "Why do we need to pay the Arnold's and Sylvester's of the world their $20 million asking fee when we can cast nancy-boys with shiny locks who make a fraction of the salary of the Big Guns?"
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Rise of the Wuss-Kick Film
For some reason Hollywood Movie execs decided that they would screw up a perfect formula. "Men see movies. Men love action movies... Why don't we make action movies for GIRLS. We'll make even MORE money." Following on the heels of Speed were such Wuss-Kick film hits as:
Goldeneye -- Fey Irishman Pierce Brosnan is James Bond.
Waterworld -- Big Kev Costner has webbed feet, and drinks his own pee. And Dennis Hopper once again is supposed to be a threatening bad guy.
Bad Boys -- Will Smith and Martin Lawrence play bickering cops and life partners in Michael Bay's devastation of the Buddy Cop film.
Mission Impossible -- Tom Cruise pretends to be a superspy as he limp-wristedly slaps villains without mussing his perfect hair.
And the movie that signalled the end of the Manly Ass-Kick film as we know it:
Charlies Angels -- Because who better to kick ass than four foot tall Drew Barrymore and gawky dancer Cameron Diaz? Lucy Liu also deserves blame as an unbelievable action star, but gets a reprieve because of Kill Bill.
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The Return of The Ass-Kick film.
Which brings us up to the present. Despite Hollywood's best efforts, dudes didn't stop going to see movies, they just stopped going to see action movies. And for the most part they stopped making great Ass-Kick films. The permissiveness in violence that '80s action movies began continued in horror films, and that moribund genre returned with a vengeance. Now the #1 dude movies were torture-porn films like Saw. But I'm not a horror fan and Horror films provide a different emotional thrill than Ass-Kick films. A faceless, unstoppable killer picking off nubile teens is not really my idea of Ass-Kicking. A horror film where the victims fight back is kind of defeating it's own purpose. The heroes of horror films are supposed to die, not perform feats of courage and daring.
So where does that leave us? For a good chunk of the '00s, up to 2009 the action movie was subsumed into the revived and incredibly popular Comic Book movie genre. The heroes have powers, but they have weaknesses too, and they fight diabolical villains. In fact the point of most Comic Book movies IS the ass-kicking.
Notable New Breed of Ass-Kick films:
Lord of the Rings -- Fantasy Ass-Kicking, a direct descendent of the Conan films.
Matrix -- I know, Keenu kicks ass, finally. First Sci-Fi/kung fu/Ass-kick film.
Miami Vice -- Brutally violent, but awesome re-imagining of the '80s action TV show.
Bourne Identity -- I know, on paper it's hard to buy Matt Damon as a superspy kicking ass, but to quote The 40 Year Old Virgin "Y'know, I always thought that Matt Damon was like a Streisand, but he's rocking the shit in this one!"
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The Future of Ass-Kick films.
2008 was a pretty good year for Ass-Kick films. Iron Man and The Dark Night brought the Comic Book movie to a new level of quality and popularity. The Wrestler was not just the best Ass-Kick drama of the year, it was the greatest wrestling movie of all time. Gran Torino features a septuagenarian Clint Eastwood still Kicking Ass. Kung Fu Panda was an Ass-Kick kiddie cartoon. Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace feature a rugged brute of a James Bond in Daniel Craig that harkens back to the hard-boiled Ass-Kicking spy of the Ian Fleming novels. The Inredible Hulk -- Okay, that one was pretty wussy. Hollywood still put out it's fair share of wuss-kick films... ahem, Twilight. But it showed that Ass-Kick films are still viable and are still getting made. Huzzah!
I was entertained by this week's Taken, an old-fashioned Ass-Kick film starring Liam Neeson. And I'm looking forward to The Watchmen, and I'm still trying to catch a screening of Pathfinder featuring Vikings vs. Aliens. I mean, Vikings versus Aliens... what's manlier than that?
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Thanks for enduring my rambling dissertation and predilection for RANDOM capitaliztions and run-on sentences. That's just how I write.
So, I guess in summation.... I'm excited about movies again, and even more importantly I'm excited to write about them again. Now if you're excited about reading mey writing about them again, then we've got synergy.
Yeargh!!!
---Chan
Showing posts with label Ass-Kick film review. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ass-Kick film review. Show all posts
Saturday, January 31
Taken -- Ass-Kick Review
ASS-KICK REVIEW – Taken
Taken is a nasty little thriller with modest ambitions and professional execution.
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Taken has many hallmarks of Ass-Kick B-Moviedom. 1) A generic but hard-nosed title. 2) A mid-January release date (the traditional dumping ground for the Hollywood studios.) 3) A long in the tooth 2nd tier star. 4) A twist on the traditional hard-boiled rescue plot. 5) Luc Besson’s name in the credits. That is not to say that all of those are BAD things. I love Ass-Kick B-movies.
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Let’s discuss these elements in order:
1) Taken –a pretty good but forgettable title. It’s a no nonsense thriller about a superspy hunting down his missing daughter on the mean streets of Paris. It’s definitely inspired by Frantic another Euro-thriller starring a long in the tooth FIRST tier star (Harrison Ford) playing a doctor looking for his missing wife on the mean streets of Paris. The key difference is that Frantic was directed by the legendary Roman Polanski. I’m not saying that Taken director Pierre Morel isn’t in the same league as Roman Polanski, but… okay, yeah I am saying that Pierre Morel isn’t in the same league as Roman Polanski. Far fewer statutory rape convictions, though.
A quick check at imdb shows that Pierre was the cinematographer on stylish but silly French action films like The Transporter starring Jason Statham, Unleashed AKA Danny The Dog starring Jet Li and War starring Jason Statham AND Jet Li. Taken is a better title and a better film than both of those, and much, MUCH better than District B-13 the futuristic parkour actioner that Pierre directed. District B-13 sounds like a city zoning regulation and its a strong contender for the worst film title of all time. I haven’t seen it yet, but if the title is any indication of film quality then Taken steals it’s girlfriend and kicks sand in it’s face.
2) Mid-January Release Date – Taken doesn’t have the budget or brand recognition of say Wolverine or Transformers 2 which are traditional big budget summer movies. I wouldn’t be surprised if Taken turns out to be better than both of those, but only time will tell.
3) The Long in the Tooth Star is Liam Neeson. I love Liam but he’s looking puffier these days and he has a really dubious haircut (bad dye job and fluttery bangs) that is distracting for most of the film. I prefer Ass-Kick heroes who have no use for hair-care products or better yet, have no hair. Liam is also 5 years removed from Batman Begins and 10 years removed from Star Wars 1. Like Harrison Ford he’s becoming less convincing as a bad-ass kill-master by the decade. Still, Liam has a strong presence and a no-B.S. acting approach that suits the material here.
[Note: For the worst action movie hair I have to nominate Straight-To-Video Steven Seagal who has a glued on triangular felt widow’s peak that makes him resemble The Count from Sesame Street. It’s just bizarre. Bonus mullet in this photo.]
http://www.abc.net.au/reslib/200708/r169359_633785.jpg
4) Plot – In a comically short time a teenage girl is kidnapped about four minutes after landing in Paris and Taken to some dank euro-dungeon where bad things will likely happen to her. Her dad, an Ex-Secret Government Agent will stop at nothing to rescue her from those rat-bastard Albanians that made her Taken. Yeah, that’s right, the Albanians are the villains this time. So it's the standard race against time rescue plot, but the treat of the movie is watching a highly-trained superspy karate-chopping scumbag Albanian dudes in their Adam’s apples. The Jason Bourne movies are another obvious influence in style and plotting.
5) Luc Besson started his career directing art-house thrillers and really earned his Ass-Kick gold stars with Le Femme Nikita and Leon The Professional. Since then he’s directed less frequently with crap like that terrible Joan Of Arc movie. No, not that one, the other one. And Arthur and the Invisibles. I didn’t see it, but it’s a kid’s movie about magical fairies or something. Needless to say that will continue to go unseen by me. Lately Luc has become the French Michael Bay, producing an endless stream of bad action movies. Any French movie with kung fu and guns and not featuring smoldering hot French babes smoking and talking about sex is probably Luc’s. Taken is one of his best films in years.
ASS-KICK EVALUATION: Taken definitely pays off it’s Ass-Kick premise with Liam as an unstoppable force mowing through armies of ugly Albanian dudes. I liked how he keeps collecting guns from his fallen opponents. However, for such a violent film it’s pretty bloodless. I guess the French sensors don’t mind how many guys you shoot or cripple, just don’t show any bloody consequences. Also, Liam is a little too unstoppable. He barely gets a scratch through most of the movie. He’s like The Terminator in a natty suit. There’s a perfunctory scene where Liam gets handcuffed and roughed up, but even that doesn’t phase him for long.
Also, I know this is going to come as a shock to fans of Ass-Kick films, but I’m not really impressed by car chases. Sure, once in a while one comes along that blows me away—Bullitt, French Connection, Batman Begins but for the most part they’re repetitive and predictable. Luc loves car chases, producing an entire movie series around them, Taxi 1,2,3,4. My Ass-Kick Philosophy doesn’t revel in twisting metal and broken glass, otherwise every Michael Bay film would be an instant classic. I'm more interested in the Ass-Kick emotion (the thrill sensation) and empathy for the characters in said car chase. Also the filmmakers didn’t have the budget so we don’t actually SEE much car-to-car contact, and there are two unconvincing and tension-free scenes with Liam driving up the wrong in traffic. Clearly they didn’t steal ENOUGH from the Jason Bourne movies.
There is one scene that damages the movie for me. There's a scene of Neeson torturing a criminal to get information that was uncomfortable for the wrong reasons. It’s justified in the story because Liam is running out of time and needs the information at all costs. But in a movie that’s pure escapism it's unsettling to root for our hero’s torturing skills. It’s just bad taste in this post-Guantanamo-War On Terror age, and in a film this silly and weightless it's not justified.
FINAL ANALYSIS: A modest, entertaining little thriller that shows what a good actor can do with a solid Ass-Kick premise. Steven Seagal would die for a premise this good. Expect him to star in “Taken to Kill” coming out sometime next week.
Taken is a nasty little thriller with modest ambitions and professional execution.
-----------------------------
Taken has many hallmarks of Ass-Kick B-Moviedom. 1) A generic but hard-nosed title. 2) A mid-January release date (the traditional dumping ground for the Hollywood studios.) 3) A long in the tooth 2nd tier star. 4) A twist on the traditional hard-boiled rescue plot. 5) Luc Besson’s name in the credits. That is not to say that all of those are BAD things. I love Ass-Kick B-movies.
-----------------------------
Let’s discuss these elements in order:
1) Taken –a pretty good but forgettable title. It’s a no nonsense thriller about a superspy hunting down his missing daughter on the mean streets of Paris. It’s definitely inspired by Frantic another Euro-thriller starring a long in the tooth FIRST tier star (Harrison Ford) playing a doctor looking for his missing wife on the mean streets of Paris. The key difference is that Frantic was directed by the legendary Roman Polanski. I’m not saying that Taken director Pierre Morel isn’t in the same league as Roman Polanski, but… okay, yeah I am saying that Pierre Morel isn’t in the same league as Roman Polanski. Far fewer statutory rape convictions, though.
A quick check at imdb shows that Pierre was the cinematographer on stylish but silly French action films like The Transporter starring Jason Statham, Unleashed AKA Danny The Dog starring Jet Li and War starring Jason Statham AND Jet Li. Taken is a better title and a better film than both of those, and much, MUCH better than District B-13 the futuristic parkour actioner that Pierre directed. District B-13 sounds like a city zoning regulation and its a strong contender for the worst film title of all time. I haven’t seen it yet, but if the title is any indication of film quality then Taken steals it’s girlfriend and kicks sand in it’s face.
2) Mid-January Release Date – Taken doesn’t have the budget or brand recognition of say Wolverine or Transformers 2 which are traditional big budget summer movies. I wouldn’t be surprised if Taken turns out to be better than both of those, but only time will tell.
3) The Long in the Tooth Star is Liam Neeson. I love Liam but he’s looking puffier these days and he has a really dubious haircut (bad dye job and fluttery bangs) that is distracting for most of the film. I prefer Ass-Kick heroes who have no use for hair-care products or better yet, have no hair. Liam is also 5 years removed from Batman Begins and 10 years removed from Star Wars 1. Like Harrison Ford he’s becoming less convincing as a bad-ass kill-master by the decade. Still, Liam has a strong presence and a no-B.S. acting approach that suits the material here.
[Note: For the worst action movie hair I have to nominate Straight-To-Video Steven Seagal who has a glued on triangular felt widow’s peak that makes him resemble The Count from Sesame Street. It’s just bizarre. Bonus mullet in this photo.]
http://www.abc.net.au/reslib/200708/r169359_633785.jpg
4) Plot – In a comically short time a teenage girl is kidnapped about four minutes after landing in Paris and Taken to some dank euro-dungeon where bad things will likely happen to her. Her dad, an Ex-Secret Government Agent will stop at nothing to rescue her from those rat-bastard Albanians that made her Taken. Yeah, that’s right, the Albanians are the villains this time. So it's the standard race against time rescue plot, but the treat of the movie is watching a highly-trained superspy karate-chopping scumbag Albanian dudes in their Adam’s apples. The Jason Bourne movies are another obvious influence in style and plotting.
5) Luc Besson started his career directing art-house thrillers and really earned his Ass-Kick gold stars with Le Femme Nikita and Leon The Professional. Since then he’s directed less frequently with crap like that terrible Joan Of Arc movie. No, not that one, the other one. And Arthur and the Invisibles. I didn’t see it, but it’s a kid’s movie about magical fairies or something. Needless to say that will continue to go unseen by me. Lately Luc has become the French Michael Bay, producing an endless stream of bad action movies. Any French movie with kung fu and guns and not featuring smoldering hot French babes smoking and talking about sex is probably Luc’s. Taken is one of his best films in years.
ASS-KICK EVALUATION: Taken definitely pays off it’s Ass-Kick premise with Liam as an unstoppable force mowing through armies of ugly Albanian dudes. I liked how he keeps collecting guns from his fallen opponents. However, for such a violent film it’s pretty bloodless. I guess the French sensors don’t mind how many guys you shoot or cripple, just don’t show any bloody consequences. Also, Liam is a little too unstoppable. He barely gets a scratch through most of the movie. He’s like The Terminator in a natty suit. There’s a perfunctory scene where Liam gets handcuffed and roughed up, but even that doesn’t phase him for long.
Also, I know this is going to come as a shock to fans of Ass-Kick films, but I’m not really impressed by car chases. Sure, once in a while one comes along that blows me away—Bullitt, French Connection, Batman Begins but for the most part they’re repetitive and predictable. Luc loves car chases, producing an entire movie series around them, Taxi 1,2,3,4. My Ass-Kick Philosophy doesn’t revel in twisting metal and broken glass, otherwise every Michael Bay film would be an instant classic. I'm more interested in the Ass-Kick emotion (the thrill sensation) and empathy for the characters in said car chase. Also the filmmakers didn’t have the budget so we don’t actually SEE much car-to-car contact, and there are two unconvincing and tension-free scenes with Liam driving up the wrong in traffic. Clearly they didn’t steal ENOUGH from the Jason Bourne movies.
There is one scene that damages the movie for me. There's a scene of Neeson torturing a criminal to get information that was uncomfortable for the wrong reasons. It’s justified in the story because Liam is running out of time and needs the information at all costs. But in a movie that’s pure escapism it's unsettling to root for our hero’s torturing skills. It’s just bad taste in this post-Guantanamo-War On Terror age, and in a film this silly and weightless it's not justified.
FINAL ANALYSIS: A modest, entertaining little thriller that shows what a good actor can do with a solid Ass-Kick premise. Steven Seagal would die for a premise this good. Expect him to star in “Taken to Kill” coming out sometime next week.
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