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Bad Boys for Life

48/100
Martin Lawrence and Will Smith in Bad Boys for Life

Will Smith and Martin Lawrence are definitely too old for this shit, which doesn’t stop them from trying to reclaim their 1990s buddy-cop swagger in Bad Boys for Life, a belated threequel that trades in outrageous mayhem for the more street-smart brand of personal combat apparently favored by Belgian directors Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah, aka Adil and Bilall. The bones of the story are pretty familiar: aging cop Marcus Burnett (Lawrence) is looking forward to retirement, a fate worse than death for his cocky partner Mike Lowrey (Smith), who mocks Burnett’s increasingly grandfatherly vibes. Just as the two men agree to arbitrate Burnett’s retirement date via the results of an impromptu foot race on the streets of Miami, Lowrey is gunned down by an assassin on a black motorcycle. Once Lowrey recovers, he’s bent on revenge, but his faithful sidekick Burnett wants out of the game entirely. What will it take to bring these bad boys back together … for life? Continue reading →

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Haywire

Haywire opens with a scene in which Mallory Kane (the retired mixed-martial-arts fighter Gina Carano), an erstwhile member of a private contractor’s elite, government-sponsored fighting force, has a tense meeting with Aaron (Channing Tatum), a beefy colleague who’s come to retrieve her from the field. Before the inevitable beatdown ensues — she’s gone rogue after being double-crossed by her boss, so she’s obviously not going anywhere without a fight — it becomes apparent that this isn’t your typical action programmer. The tip-off isn’t in what you see, but what you hear. Or, rather, what you don’t hear. The two leads converse in near-complete silence, as if they’re floating in space instead of sitting in an upstate diner. The waitress says a few words, meekly, but the expected sound bed of dishes clanking and walla FX is conspicuously absent.

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District 13: Ultimatum

Cyril Raffaelli and David Belle in <em>District 13: Ultimatum</em>

District 13: Ultimatum is at its best and silliest in the opening reels, which place French supercop Damien Tomaso (the lanky, bald Cyril Raffaelli, who’s also the film’s stunt coordinator) in a chaotic undercover assignment — he’s in the back room of a nightclub, decked out in a dress with a peekaboo ass and masquerading as a kind of courtesan to a Chinese drug kingpin. When his backup arrives, all hell breaks loose. The sequence is staged with tongue tucked firmly in cheek — the contrast between Raffaelli’s muscular, manly frame and that of his obvious female body-double is faintly hilarious — but it more or less brings the goods, staging an extended martial-arts fight that plays as an affectionate tribute to Jackie Chan in his prime. In other words, props matter, from the stepladder that brings the pain when villains are slammed into it to the priceless Van Gogh painting that Tomaso employs as a delicate weapon at his disposal. You’ll laugh, you’ll wince. It’s a good time.

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The Hurt Locker

74/100

The Hurt Locker opens in medias res, depicting a trio of soldiers working on the streets of Iraq. The movie doesn’t stop to explain what they’re up to or put their actions in context. The audience is left to infer the circumstance, but it’s not hard to imagine the scenario. Judging from the cutting and the jumpy handheld camera style, we’re looking at a tense situation. That robot rolling around by remote control, poking at a pile of refuse, is probably looking for a bomb. And when the robot breaks down and one of the men starts suiting up like Sigourney Weaver in the last scene of Alien, it’s a sure bet he’s about to play a game of red-wire/black-wire with a scary chunk of explosives. The tension is heightened, actually, by the fact that the movie has just begun. These characters are interchangeable and, because the movie has yet to present us with a formal protagonist, potentially expendable. That’s how director Kathryn Bigelow gets way ahead of her audience in this film’s very first sequence. Barely five minutes into her movie and already I was cowering in my theater seat, terrified that something was about to blow.

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Opium and the Kung Fu Master

<span class="title">Opium and the Kung Fu Master</span>Released in 1984, this widescreen actionfest/drug-addiction drama was the final film of only three directed by longtime action choreographer Tang Chia — and one of the last films ever released by the legendary Shaw Brothers movie studio, which in its heyday made dozens of movies every year but by this time was struggling to keep up with the popular trends ushered in by Bruce Lee and expanded upon by Jackie Chan and friends.

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Sonny Chiba’s Dragon Princess

Crummy by mainstream standards, this low-budget martial-arts programmer has lots of charm, starting with the opening shot depicting the inside of a church with saloon-style swinging doors banging against the wind and dust outside, and Tarantino fans will make note of some of the source elements he appropriated for his Kill Bill revenge pastiche. But the real attraction here is Yumi Higaki, playing a talented but reluctant martial-arts disciple seeking payback for injuries to the body and pride of her master (Sonny Chiba, in an extended cameo at the film’s beginning). I had seen her previously in Sister Street Fighter, released two years earlier, but her poise and confidence has improved here. A prototype for any number of femme videogame ass-kickers, from Chun Li down the line, she has an overgrown-kid look to her that makes her determination and eventual triumph in the violent coming-of-age scenario more rousing.

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Eagle Eye

36/100

On reflection: this review may contain SPOILERS. Proceed at your own risk.

As a child of the 1970s and 1980s, I was imprinted early on with various doomsday scenarios that could ensue when an artificial intelligence became smart enough to outfox the humans who created it. In 2001: A Space Odyssey, it started killing astronauts. In Demon Seed, it raped Julie Christie. In WarGames, it nearly started World War III. So watching Eagle Eye — dopey as it is — is a little like coming home. This sci-fi thriller is all about a monstrous, HAL 9000-like supercomputer that collates information gathered under the auspices of the Patriot Act, becomes self-aware, and, upon reflection on the collateral damage caused by America’s reckless “war on terror,” decides, essentially, to effect regime change in the U.S. As an election-year riff on current events, it’s moderately clever, even though it has no nerve whatsoever. (Last year’s Shooter had more guts.) But I can’t stress enough how goofy it is. The climax is essentially the Get Smart movie played with a straight face. That’s Eagle Eye‘s biggest problem. DJ Caruso has enjoyably preposterous material — it’s sort of like Live Free or Die Hard for the left wing — and he approaches it with a portentousness that kills the fun.

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