War Machine: Badly built

War Machine (2026) • View trailer

2.5 stars (out of five); rated R, for profanity and strong, gory violence

Available via: Netflix

By Derrick Bang

Alan Ritchson can’t be blamed for parlaying his success on television’s Reacher into a bigger career, but he needs to be more selective.

 

Surely he can do better than director Patrick Hughes’ laughably ludicrous, hyper-violent sci-fi cartoon.

 

With an unstoppable, massive killing machine pursuing rapidly, Staff Sergeant 81
(Alan Ritchson) does his best to save himself and his badly injured companion
(Stephan James)

In fairness, Hughes and co-scripter James Beaufort establish a reasonably solid first act. A prologue, set in Kandahar, Afghanistan, introduces an unnamed Staff Sergeant (Ritchson), who arrives with a support team to help a broken-down convoy under the command of his younger brother (Jai Courtney). The two are tightly bonded, and discuss a long-ago promise to apply to the Army Ranger program.

That conversation doesn’t get far; the Americans are hit by Taliban insurgents, and everybody is killed except the Staff Sergeant.

 

Two years pass. The Staff Sergeant is among a large cluster of hopeful recruits who enter the Ranger Assessment Selection Program, at a Colorado training base supervised by Sergeant Major Sheridan (Dennis Quaid) and First Sergeant Torres (Esai Morales). Everybody is assigned a number, by which we know them from this point forward; the Staff Sergeant becomes 81.

 

He carries baggage, both physical — a lingering knee injury, inflicted during the Taliban strike — and mental. He’s withdrawn, and refuses to socialize with the others (perfect for Ritchson’s signature bottled-up emotions). He also suffers from PTSD nightmares, blaming himself for having failed to save his brother.

 

Some of 81’s fellow trainees stand out, starting with 7 (Stephan James), sensitive to this big guy’s issues, but with a perceptive gaze that suggests he knows something of the man’s past. 15 (Blake Richardson) is a wisecracking smart-mouth; 44 (Alex King) is a plucky young woman who keeps up with the guys.

 

That’s about it, in terms of development; Hughes and Beaufort don’t care enough to give any of these characters a back-story, or even much of a personality.

 

The training sessions are punishing, with Ritchson’s driven 81 often outdoing everybody else. But Sheridan and Torres worry about his mental state, and his refusal to accept a command position. As a “last chance,” they make him team leader during the final “death march” exercise: a simulated mission in the nearby mountainous forest.

 

Meanwhile, ongoing radio reports have described an asteroid-like object approaching Earth, then orbiting and breaking off into pieces.

Honest Thief: Routine, but enjoyable

Honest Thief (2020) • View trailer

Three stars. Rated PG-13, for violence, crude references and brief profanity

By Derrick Bang

The Taken series — starting with the first one, back in 2008 — turned Liam Neeson into an action hero, which he has embraced enthusiastically.

 

And who can blame him? Strike while the iron is hot.

 

Forced to go on the run with Tom (Liam Neeson), whom she suddenly realizes has been
concealing a lot about himself, Annie (Kate Walsh) begins to worry about her own
life expectancy.

Director Mark Williams’ Honest Thief — available via Amazon Prime — is an unremarkable, cookie-cutter thriller; even so, Neeson brings his customary dignified gravitas to the project.

 

The script, by Williams and Steve Allrich, is pure formula: a reasonable set-up, a despicable villain, a token (brief) car chase, familiar co-stars, a cute dog and a satisfying conclusion. All told, it’s a reasonable way to spend 99 minutes on a mindless Friday evening.

 

Boston-based Tom Dolan (Neeson) has been a master thief for years, carefully sussing out banks with older, easy-to-crack vaults. The smoothness of his one-man jobs has seen him dubbed the “In-and-Out Bandit” — a moniker he loathes — by the media and FBI agents who’ve never gotten anywhere near nailing him.

 

Dolan has amassed $9 million … but, oddly, hasn’t spent a penny. His motivation, we eventually learn, leans more toward retribution than avarice.

 

He has a chance encounter with Annie Wilkins (Kate Walsh, refreshingly age-appropriate), a clerk at the storage facility where he hides his ill-gotten gains. They banter briefly; the room’s atmosphere shifts.

 

Flash-forward one year.

 

Tom and Annie are a solid item, and he has given up on bank jobs, but nonetheless feels guilty about having to conceal his larcenous past. (One wonders what he has told her, in terms of how he earns a living, but this script doesn’t worry about such details.) He therefore decides to negotiate a trade: He’ll turn himself into the FBI, and return all the money, in exchange for a lenient sentence with visitation rights.

 

Enter local FBI Chief Sam Baker (Robert Patrick) and agent Sean Meyers (Jeffrey Donovan), who take Tom’s phone call. They don’t initially believe him, because they’ve been hearing from all manner of nut-jobs who claim to be the In-and-Out Bandit. 

 

The irony here is amusing: Tom wants to come clean, but can’t.

 

Storm Boy: A touching little fable

Storm Boy (2019) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rated PG, for dramatic intensity
By Derrick Bang

This lovingly mounted, deeply moving Australian drama brought back memories of The Snow Goose.

When Mike (Finn Little) is accompanied by his three foundling friends during a visit to the
nearby village, folks can't help staring. (Wouldn't you?)

I was 15 when director Patrick Garland’s poignant adaptation of Paul Gallico’s 1941 novella aired as a Hallmark Hall of Fame special in November 1971; the final scenes left me shattered for weeks. Seeing it again, decades later — much better able to understand the Dunkirk element — I was moved anew, identifying more this time with Richard Harris’ Philip Rhayader, than with young Jenny Agutter’s Fritha.

All this came tumbling back while enjoying director Shawn Seet’s equally sensitive handling of Colin Thiele’s 1963 children’s book. Storm Boy — both the original story, and this beautifully structured film — has the magical, slightly other-worldly atmosphere of a fairy tale, while at the same time being grounded in real-world disputes as relevant today, as they were half a century ago.

Seet and scripter Justin Monjo have added a framing device, to bring the story into the modern era; this liberty doesn’t detract at all from Thiele’s original narrative, and in fact serves as a reminder that the battle between industry and environment — even now — too frequently favors the former.

Successful retired businessman Michael Kingley (Geoffrey Rush) has returned briefly as a senior director on his company’s board, for a meeting that will determine whether a mining company can base its operation in Western Australia’s Pilbara. The vote seems a foregone conclusion, much to the dismay of Michael’s environmentally impassioned 17-year-old granddaughter, Maddy (Morgana Davies).

But then, an odd — almost supernatural — event: A sudden, massive storm shatters one of the board room windows, delaying the vote by a day. Michael returns to the house he’s temporarily sharing with Maddy’s family; perhaps more eerily, he briefly sees a trio of pelicans that … well … aren’t there. Sensing his unease, Maddy questions him: Michael obligingly relates the story of his quite unusual childhood.

And, thus, we’re transported back to the late 1950s, where cinematographer Bruce Young so gorgeously captures the sweeping majesty and isolation of South Australia’s Coorong, and its 90-Mile Beach: a coastal wilderness where young Mike (11-year-old Finn Little, in a winning feature debut) lives in a rustic bungalow with his reclusive father, known as Hideaway Tom (Jai Courtney). He keeps them in supplies by catching fish and selling them in the nearby village; young Mike — whom everybody calls “Storm Boy” — helps as best he can. 

Schooling is limited to reading aloud from William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, with Mike’s father gently correcting pronunciation errors.

Suicide Squad: Great premise, uneven execution

Suicide Squad (2016) • View trailer 
3.5 stars. Rated PG-13, for violence, dramatic intensity, disturbing behavior, suggestive content and brief profanity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 8.5.16

E.M. Nathanson deserves the credit, and nobody has the faintest idea who he is.

He wrote the best-selling 1965 WWII thriller, The Dirty Dozen, which director Robert Aldrich turned into a crackling action film two years later. With the template firmly established — that of disgraced convict soldiers sent on a suicide mission, with the promise of commuted sentences for any survivors — numerous books and films have “borrowed” the premise, often to crowd-pleasing results.

Col. Rick Flag (Joel Kinnaman, center top) has his hands full, trying to control the behavior
of his misfit squad: clockwise from upper right, Deadshot (Will Smith), Captain Boomerang
(Jai Courtney), Katana (Karen Fukuhara), Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie) and Killer Croc
(Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje)

Those crowds include comic book readers, particularly with the 2007 re-boot of this concept in DC’s Superman universe.

And why not? Bad guys always get the best lines, and there’s no questioning the vicarious thrill of watching villains allowed to behave reprehensibly.

As one of this new film’s characters impertinently explains, following a minor transgression: “We’re bad guys. It’s what we do.”

The audaciously irreverent big-screen adaptation of Suicide Squad has plenty of snarky allure, in great part thanks to Margot Robbie’s captivating star turn as the sexy, salacious and gleefully homicidal Harley Quinn. As any longtime comic book fan will attest, Robbie nails the character, with all of her cherubic, psychopathic charisma. Harley revels in her over-the-top awfulness, and Robbie embraces the role with lustful fury.

Comic book movies very rarely get remembered by Academy voters, but this one should; Robbie’s performance here makes the movie.

She gets a strong assist from Will Smith, doing an equally fine job with the more difficult role of Floyd Lawton, better known as ace assassin Deadshot. Most of the time, Lawton has no problem with killing at the behest of the highest bidder, but he hates being viewed in a negative light by his estranged but still devoted adolescent daughter, Zoe (Shailyn Pierre-Dixon, touching in a brief performance).

Smith, as a result, must navigate the more delicate waters of a conflicted soul: a bad guy who might possess a shred of nobility.

But we’re getting ahead of things. To the plot:

As the next installment in DC movie continuity, Suicide Squad — directed and scripted by David Ayer — takes place in the aftermath of early spring’s Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice, which concluded as Big Blue was dealt a mortal blow by a Kryptonite spear. The U.S. government, in something of a panic, worries how a world without Superman could defeat the next hyper-powered adversary.

Terminator Genisys: Out of time

Terminator Genisys (2015) • View trailer 
2.5 stars. Rated PG-13, for relentless sci-fi violence and gunplay, partial nudity and fleeting profanity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 7.3.15

Not since the original five-cycle Planet of the Apes films, between 1968 and ’73, has a franchise attempted to cycle itself so intricately. Terminator scripters Laeta Kalogridis and Patrick Lussier deserve credit for an ambitious attempt here, tackling multiple time periods — and alternate timeline realities — in an effort to slot this newest entry into What Has Gone Before, while also (more or less) re-telling the whole wild ’n’ crazy story from the beginning.

Surrounded by an impressive cache of military weaponry they'll never get to use, our
heroes — from left, Sarah (Emilia Clarke), "Pops" (Arnold Schwarzenegger) and Kyle (Jai
Courtney) — concoct a half-baked scheme to destroy an evil master computer complex
before it can wreak havoc on the entire world.

Sadly — and as often is the case, with sloppy time travel sagas — things get so convoluted that the result becomes confusing and, ultimately, pointless. The situation clearly has gotten out of hand when characters spend the entire third act explaining each new twist to each other (and, by extension, to us). Rarely has a film indulged in so much blatant, tedious said-bookism.

Part of the problem is the labyrinthine degree to which this franchise has been expanded (often not for the better) by outside parties, most notably extended story arcs by six different comic book publishers, dating back to 1988. No single new film could satisfy a mythos that has grown so convoluted.

On top of which, director Alan Taylor has absolutely no sense of pacing. He simply yanks his cast from one deafening CGI action scene to the next, with no attempt to build suspense or inject any sense of actual drama. The result is massive, messy and noisy: a 125-minute cartoon that has none of the heart — or intelligence — that made director James Cameron’s first two films so memorable, back in 1984 and ’91.

This is simply a pinball machine, with its little spheres — our heroes — whacked and bounced from one crazed menace to another, somehow (miraculously!) surviving each encounter, physical laws and human frailty be damned.

That said, this new big-screen Terminator chapter — the fifth — does have one secret weapon: the same bright, shining star who also highlighted Cameron’s entries: Arnold Schwarzenegger. Far from the over-the-hill relic that many fans may have feared, the big guy owns this film. He’s well employed, granted some droll one-liners and sight gags, and has solid camera presence.

On top of which, Kalogridis and Lussier come up with a genuinely clever explanation for why Schwarzenegger’s good-guy T-800 android has aged so much, since its first appearance in 1991.

So ... take a deep breath, and pay attention. Ready?

Insurgent: Incomprehensible

Insurgent (2015) • View trailer 
2.5 stars. Rated PG-13, for intense action and violence, mild sensuality and fleeting profanity
By Derrick Bang

They’re all blending together.

Dystopian, post-apocalyptic societies cobbled together after some undefined catastrophe, and ruled by corrupt aristocratic elites; resourceful teenage rebels, blessed with special talents, determined to destroy the system, and forced to undergo cruel, violent and flat-out weird mental and/or physical trials; lots of running, jumping, shooting, and killing; the frequently shed tears.

Having been captured by Candor supervisor Jack Kang (Daniel Dae Kim, left), Tris
(Shailene Woodley) and Four (Theo James, center) propose a "trial by truth" to verify that
they're not civilization-destroying traitors, as has been claimed by the (genuinely) evil
Erudite leader.

I no longer know whether I’m watching the next installment of The Hunger Games, the Divergent series, or The Maze Runner.

And, frankly, I’m losing interest. Been there, endured that.

Sadly, the just-released Insurgent bears the brunt of my apathy, thanks primarily to the clumsy, tin-eared script credited to Brian Duffield, Akiva Goldsman and Mark Bomback. They’re a poor substitute for Evan Daugherty and Vanessa Taylor, who did a far superior adaptation of last year’s Divergent, the first film in Veronica Roth’s trilogy.

This new film resembles Roth’s second novel in little more than name; great, gaping chunks of exposition and numerous supporting characters have been lost or ignored, and significant plot points have been changed beyond recognition. Not that the narrative has much of a plot to begin with; this film is little more than running and fighting, whether in environments real or imagined.

Indeed, the latter crop up so frequently that it becomes difficult to distinguish whether Tris (Shailene Woodley) is in genuine danger, or being victimized by one of the evil “SIM” (simulation) environments, or whether we’re once again being suckered by another of her own nightmares.

The latter are particularly irritating cheats, and director Robert Schwentke opens with just such a sucker play: a rather blatant indication of the highly disappointing film to follow.

All of which is a shame, because Woodley gave us a particularly plucky, intelligent and engaging Tris in the first film: a heroine worthy of our respect and admiration, as she rallied when confronted by the truth of the world in which she lived. She’s much less admirable in this second outing, reduced to an insecure, reckless and weepy shadow of her former self.

I understand that this is driven, to a great degree, by the subtext in Roth’s second novel: Tris has become plagued by self-doubt, worried that she’s a “curse” to anybody foolish enough to befriend or love her. The crux of her evolution, in this saga’s second chapter, is the necessity of overcoming such anxiety: rejecting this doom-laden view of herself.

Unfortunately, Schwentke overplays the “despair” card; Woodley’s Tris cries too often, and our impatience soon overwhelms all else ... much the way we groaned over how Jennifer Lawrence’s Katniss became so uncharacteristically impotent, in The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1. That just felt contrived and wrong, and the same is true here.

Unbroken: A bit underwhelming

Unbroken (2014) • View trailer 
3.5 stars. Rated PG-13, for war violence, brutality and fleeting profanity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 12.26.14

Depicting the human spirit’s strength and indomitable resolve can be a tough sell in the visual realm of the big screen, because so much of that ability is an inward, fundamentally mental challenge.

Dismayed to have come to the direct attention of sadistic concentration camp guard
Mutsuhiro Watanabe (Takamasa Ishihara, right), Louis Zamperini (Jack O'Connell)
is subjected to a series of increasingly brutal and humiliating ordeals.

And yet we’ve been blessed, this month, by two powerful films that convey precisely that heroic struggle: the first one devoted to a quiet academic who refused to yield — Stephen Hawking, in The Theory of Everything — and now the equally authentic saga of a scrappy athlete driven by equal measures of grit and stubborn fury.

As with Eddie Redmayne’s bravura performance in Theory, director Angelina Jolie’s adaptation of author Laura Hillenbrand’s Unbroken is fueled by equally riveting work from British actor Jack O’Connell, whose until-now obscurity on these shores is certain to vanish forever. O’Connell is the heart, soul and raw guts of this film, and he achieves the near impossible: He genuinely makes us believe that fresh-faced, Southern California-based Italian immigrant Louis Zamperini could have survived — nay, triumphed over — a series of heart-stopping ordeals that clearly would have felled, and killed, lesser men.

Hillenbrand is the meticulous biographer who in 2001 dazzled readers with her first book: Seabiscuit: An American Legend, which went on to become an equally popular 2003 film. Hillenbrand acknowledges that her research into that famed horse frequently uncovered references to another famous Californian who “could give Seabiscuit a run for his money.” That led to an eight-year “chat” with Zamperini, but only by phone; Hillenbrand didn’t want to meet him in the flesh until after her second book was published.

Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience and Redemption hit bookstores in 2010, subsequently spending 185 weeks on the New York Times hardcover best-seller list. It was a natural for film adaptation, and therein lay the challenge: how to bring Zamperini’s amazing story to cinema.

Jolie’s smartest move was casting O’Connell in the lead role, and the young actor absolutely rewards her faith. But while Jolie clearly approached this project with both passion and sensitivity, her directorial touch is too remote: We often feel like distant observers, rather than being intimately connected with these men, and their plight.

Divergent: Solid sci-fi teen melodrama

Divergent (2014) • View trailer 
3.5 stars. Rating: PG-13, for action, violence, dramatic intensity and mild sensuality
By Derrick Bang

Veronica Roth’s fans should be pleased.

Scripters Evan Daugherty and Vanessa Taylor have done an impressive job, condensing the author’s debut novel for its big-screen adaptation; it’s not easy fitting 487 pages into a 139-minute film. Director Neil Burger (The Illusionist) also deserves credit for guiding a solid cast through a deft blend of character angst and action set-pieces.

As a night of capture-the-flag war games commences, Tris (Shailene Woodley) climbs
an abandoned Ferris wheel in order to secure a superior vantage point, while Four
(Theo James) trails behind. Tris has a lot to prove, having disobeyed orders to join
this late-evening exercise.

Divergent is a polished, well-executed sci-fi melodrama that should have no trouble tapping into the fan base that has devoured the adventures of Harry Potter, Bella Swan and Katniss Everdeen.

Indeed, I deem this first cinematic installment of Roth’s trilogy noticeably superior to the first big-screen chapters of the Twilight and Hunger Games series; Daugherty and Taylor are far better at establishing back-story, and laying the groundwork for the gradually building suspense. By the same token, Roth’s cynical, cautionary take on human nature seems more probable than the gladiatorial nonsense at the heart of Hunger Games, which I’ve always found a rather unlikely pill to swallow.

But the dissolution of a so-called utopian society, due to the greed of one faction? Goodness, we know that to be psychologically sound, and it’s even happening today, in this country; we need look no further than the unchecked avarice of our current one percent.

Casting also plays a significant role, of course, and Divergent also satisfies in that respect. The core young actors are well suited to their respective roles, with star-on-the-rise Shailene Woodley admirably anchoring the narrative.

The story is set in an unspecified future, following some sort of war or cataclysm that has rendered much of the United States uninhabitable (so we’re told). What’s left of the city of Chicago has been re-built into a working civilization that is divided into five factions: Abnegation, for kind, selfless souls who place society above their own interests; Amity, for the peaceful farmers who work the land; Candor, occupied by those who value honesty above all else; Dauntless, the warrior caste that maintains peace and defends the city’s perimeter; and Erudite, for the intelligent researchers who develop and maintain all technological advances.

Upon reaching their 16th birthday, all children take an unusual “aptitude” test, to determine which faction best suits them. Those results aside, they’re allowed to select any faction during the subsequent “Choosing Day.” While most children adhere to the faction of their birth, Choosing Day always delivers a few surprises.

And, once having made this decision, it’s irrevocable. Even if young adults decide that they’re unsuited to their enclave of choice, they cannot change; at best, they can become “factionless” (i.e. homeless street-dwellers).

If this sounds a bit like Harry Potter’s sorting hat and Hogwarts’ four houses ... well, yes, that’s obvious. But Roth’s take on this process is far more intriguing from a psychological standpoint, since it revolves around the struggle between aptitude and free will.

A Good Day to Die Hard: A bad way to spend an evening

A Good Day to Die Hard (2013) • View trailer 
Two stars. Rating: R, for profanity and relentless violence
By Derrick Bang

The results of the 2013 Geezer Action Flick trifecta are in, and the winner remains the first contestant out of the gate: Arnold Schwarzenegger, who displayed the good sense to insist upon solid supporting characters and a reasonably logical script in The Last Stand, while poking good-natured fun at his own advanced age.

Let's go do what we do best, John McClane (Bruce Willis, left) cheerfully advises long-
estranged son Jack (Jai Courtney). What they do best always involves lots of running,
jumping and gunplay, which rarely musses their hair. Ah, the life of a movie star in a
laughably stupid action flick...

Sylvester Stallone remains dead last, his laughably stiff granite features unable to breathe any life into Bullet to the Head, a tawdry, nasty excuse for tasteless, tawdry brutality.

Which brings us to Bruce Willis, only marginally better than Stallone, due to an impressively stupid script that eschews any semblance of plot logic, while wreaking havoc with the natural laws of physics and numerous other well-known areas of science.

Hollywood has made an art of brain-dead displays of mayhem, but A Good Day to Die Hard may be in a class all its own. I can’t recall ever seeing so much personal property destroyed during the course of a 97-minute movie, and I’m certain this display of wretched excess sets a new record for smashed, crushed and otherwise mangled moving vehicles.

Mind you, the human bodies involved in all this carnage should be reduced to pulped hamburger dozens of times over, and yet everybody — good guys and bad — somehow survives multi-story falls, endless hails of bullets, hard landings within construction sites, shard-laden plunges through plate-glass windows, and accelerated spins into the air during highway pile-ups involving multiple vehicles (no air bags in sight) ... with no more than a few scratches and minor contusions.

Really, Willis should just acknowledge the obvious and don the blue uniform and red cape. At least that would explain his character’s apparent invulnerability.

Have you noticed, over time, how the military-grade weapons used in movies of this nature have gotten larger, faster and deadlier ... and all concerned still can’t hit the broad side of a barn? Not even armor-piercing sniper rifles can draw a bead on Willis’ immortal John McClane, and if that isn’t silly enough, he’s also able to avoid batteries from Russian Mi:24 and Mi:26 attack helicopters, as if engaged in nothing more troublesome than a spirited round of dodgeball.

It reaches a point — rapidly, in this flick — when all the on-screen carnage just becomes silly and tiresome. Even for a live-action cartoon, Skip Woods’ mess of a script goes way beyond dumb.

When one despicable fellow confronts our hero while smiling and chomping on a carrot — an affectation apparently intended to display the villain’s bad-ass nature — I honestly expected him to say “What’s up, John?”

Heck, that would have drawn a more generous laugh than any of the clumsy lines that pass for humor in this mess.