“The Gunman” – Mess with the bull and you’ll get the horns (or Welcome to the gun show!).

If you’re wondering why this isn’t a review of the movie people will actually be watching this weekend – Insurgent – it’s because Insurgent wasn’t being screened by the agency that puts on the screenings I go to. For some reason, the agency stopped screening movies produced by Lionsgate a while back, so our choices this week were The Gunman and whatever I felt like watching at home. But, come on – are you telling me you’re not interested in Sean Penn’s first try as an action star at age 54? If your answer is no, just lie to me.

The easiest comparison to make here is that Sean Penn is trying to duplicate the late-life action success of someone like Liam Neeson. Many critics have already made this exact comparison because their memories are so short (or so bad) that they forgot that Liam Neeson didn’t experience his breakout with Taken. Sean Penn never played a Jedi or the villain in a Batman movie prior to The Gunman, but Neeson’s been in action movies his entire career, including playing the lead in Rob Roy in 1995. Neeson was already an action name well before Taken, whereas Penn made his name before The Gunman playing roles in dramatic Oscar-bait movies. My point is that Penn is starting from square one, and convincing us he’s more Jason Bourne than Harvey Milk is a much bigger task than Neeson convincing us he’s an ass-kicking father after playing an ass-kicking master villain.

(Note: many critics are also making the comparison because Pierre Morel directed Taken as well as The Gunman, as if Morel was responsible for Liam Neeson’s success. Morel has directed a grand total of four movies, including The Gunman, and The Gunman is the only one not written and produced by Luc Besson. Taken is the only one that wasn’t a flop, so our only conclusion here is that many critics are morons.)

Now here’s the fun part – Penn got a screenwriting credit for The Gunman (along with Don MacPherson and Pete Travis), so when I bash this movie for having clichéd, convoluted, and bad writing, Penn can’t hide behind the writers, because he is one. And by bad writing, I’m talking rejected-Die Hard 5-scripts bad. Just last week, in my review of Run All Night (speaking of Liam Neeson), I talked about action movie tropes, specifically the one where the villain expends all of his resources to eliminate a perceived threat that isn’t a threat until the villain tries to eliminate it. In other words, the villain would have gone on undisturbed had he just left things alone. If you didn’t quite follow my thoughts then, The Gunman provides a textbook case of this stupefying trope.

(SPOILERS are coming, but you’re going to watch Insurgent anyway, so what do you care?)

Penn plays Jim Terrier, an ex-special forces soldier, now working for mining companies and is providing protection for their operations in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The film begins with a montage of news reports regarding the exploitation of African countries for their minerals, so we think this movie might focus on that as the main premise, but that’s just a trick. The movie is really about how many times Penn gets to take his shirt off to show us how ripped he made his 54-year old body. It must work because he also has a girlfriend, Annie (Jasmine Trinca), that his friend and associate, Felix (Javier Bardem), openly and obviously lusts after (including while they are sitting together at dinner). Jim either doesn’t notice or doesn’t care because Felix looks like a middle-aged tax accountant who is the reason why kids are starving in Africa.

Late one night, we find out that Jim is more than just a glorified security guard. Jim and three others have been tasked by Felix (and his corporate overlords) with assassinating the Congolese Minister of Mining because the Minister was going to cancel all mining contracts in the country. Stipulated in Jim and team’s contract is that whomever of them actually pulls the trigger must leave the country forever (they literally tell us about the contract and this clause later in the movie). We’re only ten minutes into this movie and the first giant “BWAAAAA?!” occurs. Can someone please explain to me why only the shooter has to leave the country? Or why he has to leave the country at all? And the answer can’t be ‘plot contrivance’ because I already know that. As a further contrivance, Felix is the one who gets to designate the shooter and when he chooses Jim, Jim says “I figured it would be me.” I thought this meant that Jim did know about Felix’s obsession with Annie, but then Jim adds “take care of Annie for me.” Wait, why can’t Annie go with Jim? Why can’t Jim tell Annie that he has to leave? Won’t Annie notice that Jim disappears immediately following the assassination of the minister? How did this movie get that stupid, that fast?

But, wait it gets worse. After the assassination, the movie cuts to eight years later and Jim is back working in the Congo. At this point, he’s retired from security/assassination and his helping Congolese villages drill wells, when three guys show up to kill him. This is the first chance we get to see Penn kick some ass and I have to say that it’s actually pretty good. If this movie has one positive note, it’s that Penn IS believable as the latest old-guy action star. Sadly, the plot intervenes and we are thrust back into stupidity.

After dispatching his would-be assassins, Jim flies to London to talk to his old team lead, Cox (Mark Rylance), to tell Cox about the attempt on Jim’s life and to ask for help on figuring out who put the hit out in the first place. He is worried that Cox and the other two teammates from eight years earlier are also in danger. Then, Jim tracks down Felix and we see that Annie and Felix are now married. Jim isn’t surprised by this and spends some time stalking Annie, then goes to talk to Felix. Felix accuses him of wanting to win Annie back and the second giant “BWAAAAA?!” occurs. It’s been eight years and Jim never went back for Annie, plus he asks Felix what he knows about the assassination attempt. Jim doesn’t even accuse Felix of orchestrating the original assassination to steal Annie, so why is Felix so concerned about it now? Oh, right – check out Jim’s gun show.

At this point, we’re meant to believe that Felix is the mastermind and he did it for the girl, but then why would he wait eight years to try to kill Jim? And, since we’re asking (and Felix isn’t the mastermind), why did the real mastermind wait eight years to kill the team? Nothing is ever said throughout the movie to explain why it suddenly became necessary to kill the men behind the Congolese minister’s assassination after so much time had passed. We do find out that Felix was helping the real villain, but Felix is also a loose end that needs to be tied up. So, by default (aka Felix’s brains escaping from his skull), Jim wins Annie back. The good news is that the half-assed love triangle is put to rest. The bad news is that this movie still had half of its two-hour running time remaining, leaving plenty of time for more action movie clichés. Sadly, none of them involves seeing Annie topless because Penn took up the entire allotment.

Because they didn’t want this movie to be exactly like an 80’s action flick, Penn and the writers added a little wrinkle to Jim’s character – post-concussion syndrome. There is an entire scene devoted to Jim getting a brain scan and the doctor explaining Jim’s condition to him while Jim’s friend Stanley (Ray Winstone) looks on in concern. Long story short, the condition causes memory loss, headaches, seizures, wobbly legs, vomiting blood, sex with French women, and villain monologues and will get worse if he experiences any more head trauma. No, I didn’t make up any of that and yes, “BWAAAAA?!” They might as well have shoved a stick of Kryptonite up Jim’s ass for all the subtlety of this plot contrivance.

The movie continues on its clichéd, predictable path with a climax that takes place in a bullfighting arena in Spain and lasts about four hours. Jim threatens the bad guy with the release of evidence tying said bad guy to the old assassination, so they agree to an exchange at the arena – Annie for the evidence. Obviously, the bad guy is going to welch on the deal and while the baddie’s henchmen are duking it out with Jim, Annie makes a run for it. This being a terrible script, Annie does not yell for help, no spectator even reacts to her or the bad guy chasing her (through the crowded seats no less), no cops or security are ever seen (even though Jim called in Interpol to help), and the bullfighting continues even though Annie and the villain JUMP INTO THE ARENA. We are so far beyond “BWAAAAA?!” that it’s just “bwaa…meh” by now.

Rating: Ask for all but two dollars back and ask yourself how a guy named Penn could write something so bad.

“Run All Night” – Killing tropes.

As I sat through the screening of Run All Night, I couldn’t stop thinking about how some movie tropes just won’t die, even if they are so dumb it hurts to see or hear them. The most obvious one is the MacGuffin – an object of seeming importance that ends up not actually mattering to the plot, but which exists solely to move the plot forward. My favorite example of a MacGuffin is from an episode of The Big Bang Theory in which Amy points out to Sheldon that Indiana Jones is not important to the plot of Raiders of the Lost Ark. Yes, a MacGuffin can be a person (just ask the kid in the show Evolution who dies in the episode immediately following the 13-episode rescue attempt of that kid), but I digress. Run All Night does not include an obvious MacGuffin, but does feature two of the more maddening tropes of some action flicks.

(Note: By the end of the next two paragraphs, you’re going to think I hated this movie – I didn’t – but just hear me out. Also, mild SPOILERS.)

The first trope is the character that Liam Neeson plays – Jimmy Conlon. Jimmy is an ex-hitman for Sean Maguire (Ed Harris), a drunk, and has an estranged family (a son). Naturally, he’s the hero of the film. Given the characters Neeson played in the Taken series and Non-Stop, this isn’t exactly a stretch, but Jimmy is far from the only action hero to have this background (or one extremely similar). John McClain, Martin Riggs – I’m sure you can name half a dozen more before you finish this sentence. My point is that it’s almost entirely unnecessary. I get that the writer is doing it so the hero can redeem himself, but does the audience really care? You’re not rooting for McClain to redeem himself, you’re rooting for him to save the hostages and kill the bad guys. He doesn’t need the extra motivation that redemption offers. The same goes for Jimmy in Run All Night; the entire plot is Jimmy trying to keep Sean (and Sean’s men) from killing Jimmy’s son, Michael (Joel Kinnaman), and Michael’s family. Since Michael is not a criminal, mentors kids in boxing, and has a pregnant wife and two daughters, we want Jimmy to succeed. It doesn’t matter that he’s a drunk or a bad father because his son and family are what’s at stake. If anything, making Jimmy a drunk makes it harder to suspend your disbelief because he turns into a lethal and precise killing machine just a couple of hours after ruining Christmas for Sean’s family as a falling-down drunk, foul-mouthed Santa Claus. Yes, I wish I was making that up.

I realize I just spent a lot of words about a relatively minor bad trope, so here’s the second one – why would a crime boss be so adamant about avenging (or protecting) a son who is one more screw-up away from being shot by dad himself? This one’s a much bigger deal because it’s what drives the entire plot of Run All Night. I couldn’t help but be annoyed by this because I was just as annoyed with it in last year’s John Wick because it was equally as mind-boggling. If you’ve seen the previews for Run All Night, you know that Sean wants to kill Michael because Jimmy killed Sean’s son, Danny (Boyd Holbrook), because Danny was about to Michael. What you didn’t see in the previews is that Danny wanted to kill Michael because Michael saw Danny kill two Albanian drug dealers. Those drug dealers were going to kill Danny because Sean refused to partner with the drug dealers, even though Danny promised the drug dealers that Sean would partner with them. After rebuffing the dealers, but before all the killing starts, Sean tells Danny that he’s tired of cleaning up Danny’s messes and that Danny will have to deal with this on his own. In other words, Sean is sending Danny to his death, so why does he get so bent out of shape when Danny actually dies? If Sean was so hell-bent on avenging his son’s death, why didn’t he send a couple of men to follow Danny and kill the Albanians in the event they kill his son? Sean even acknowledges to Jimmy that he told Danny to stay away from Michael, all but admitting that Jimmy had no choice but to kill Danny. But, in the words of Sean himself – “you know how this has to end Jimmy.” Yes we do, because another standard action movie trope is for the bad guy to throw all of his resources at defeating the good guy, even when his reason for doing so makes little to no sense, and will result in the complete destruction of his kingdom.

Despite those tired tropes, nearly the rest of the writing is tight (didn’t see that one coming, did you?), resulting in a very solid action flick. With the exception of a magical escape from an apartment building in one scene and every cop in New York City being crooked except for Detective Harding (Vincent D’Onofrio), the movie moves along nicely and leaves no loose ends by the time the credits roll. There’s a pretty good car chase scene, plenty of ass-kicking from Neeson, and the first good villain (Harris) in a Neeson movie since Patrick Wilson in 2010’s The A-Team. It’s also the best Neeson-fronted movie we’ve seen since the original Taken back in 2008. I just wish those tropes would die as easily as everyone who tries to kill the child of a Neeson character.

Rating: Ask for two dollars back, one for each trope.

“Chappie” – Gansta’ robot?

A lot of different things went through my mind in the twenty-four hours or so after I watched Chappie, so if this review seems somewhat scattered or completely crazy, don’t say I didn’t warn you. If I don’t get them all out of my head, they’ll pop into my conscious thinking at random times like the middle of the night or during staff meetings, although it’s not like I really have to pay attention during staff meetings. But, since I like to sleep, let’s do this.

Obviously, the first thing that comes to mind with Chappie is that it was written (with Terri Tatchell) and directed by Neill Blomkamp. If you are not familiar with Blomkamp’s work, he is responsible for the fantastic District 9 (also co-written by Tatchell) and the not so fantastic Elysium (not co-written by Tatchell). A couple of interesting notes here – (1) Terri Tatchell is Blomkamp’s wife, (2) of the three films, Elysium is the only one not based on a Blomkamp short film, and (3) Tatchell appears to be a vital component to writing a good movie. And, yes, Chappie is a good movie, or at least a better movie than Elysium.

The second thing is a funny debate that started with Gravity – what is science fiction? Before Gravity, people automatically called any movie with outer space in it science fiction, even if it featured no science (or bad science). Gravity was so bad in its depiction of science that a lot of people referred to it as either an action drama or an action fantasy. I happen to be one of those people – just because a movie takes place in outer space, doesn’t make it science fiction. That would be like saying any movie that takes place in the forest or features non-human creatures is a nature movie. Would you say Twilight is nature fiction? Chappie is a great example of science fiction. Yes, sentient robots are currently just a fantasy, but we are actively trying to create exactly that right now (and it’s scaring the bejeezus out of a lot of people). That’s the science part.

The third thing is innovations in filmmaking. After watching the Oscars – and all of the people who vote on them – continue their annual tradition of pretending every movie not debuted at a film festival doesn’t exist (“here’s your token special effects award, Interstellar”), I realized that we’re in an incredible time of innovation in movies. In the last twenty years, we’ve seen bullet-time, immersive 3-D (Avatar only), quantum leaps in animation (thank you, Dreamworks and Pixar), IMAX (non-documentaries), and staggeringly improved CGI. But maybe the best innovation is motion capture. Back when Rise of the Planet of the Apes came out, I said that Andy Serkis should have won an Oscar for his performance as Caesar and I stand by that (that guy from The Artist – Jean Dujardin – won it for a silent film). In Chappie, we have another incredible motion capture performance, this time from Sharlto Copley as Chappie, sure to be ignored as hard as Serkis was, in favor of whoever stars in whatever biopics are coming out this year.

(Unrelated note: When Eddie Redmayne was announced as this year’s winner for Best Lead Actor as Dr. Stephen Hawking in The Theory of Everything, my immediate thought was that he should give it back for whatever the hell he thought he was doing in Jupiter Ascending).

The next thing I thought about was how Chappie was like a cross between Short Circuit and Robocop, but with amazing special effects (mild SPOILERS coming up, but nothing that will ruin the movie for you). If you’ve seen the previews for Chappie, you probably already noticed this. Like Number “Johnny” 5, Chappie starts his existence as a weaponized robot, comes alive, must learn about the world, learns that humans lie, and must avoid being destroyed by a maniacal military guy (Hugh Jackman) and other deadly robots. There’s even a creator (Deon) of the sentient robot (in Chappie’s case, Dev Patel) who defies his employer to help the robot. The Robocop similarities are mostly visual (a large bipedal, tank-ish robot and the concept of a robotic police force in a crumbling city) because Robocop wasn’t exactly brimming with deeper meaning or allegory.

Speaking of Hugh Jackman, it was great to see him play against type as the villain in Chappie. Most actors aren’t talented enough to make you forget their other hero/villain roles, but Jackman is so convincing as the greedy, power-hungry, asshole villain, Vincent Moore, that you never once think of him as Wolverine. All you can think is that you hope Chappie crushes Moore’s windpipe like a beer can before the credits roll. Aside from that, I also couldn’t stop laughing at the ridiculous way they made Jackman look. Picture Steve Irwin (the Crocodile Hunter), but with huge muscles and shorter bangs. Yes, that includes mullet and khaki shorts. Now, picture that guy walking around an office filled with cubicles and try not to snort your drink out through your nose.

Because of the social commentary found in Blomkamp’s other movies (apartheid, class warfare), the final thing I thought about – and the one I spent the most time on – was what Blomkamp was trying to TELL us this time around. This is also where I spent time thinking about the plot and realizing that it was not particularly good. The problem is that Blomkamp was attempting a commentary on what it means to be human, what the soul is, and how impressionable children are while setting the movie in a plot focusing on a small group of criminals who want to rob an armored car. That clanking sound you hear is your brain trying to process that last sentence.

Their plan centers around kidnapping Deon because they believe the robots have a remote off switch (they don’t) and accidentally discover he has a dissembled robot in his car. They force him to build the robot, name him Chappie, then try to teach Chappie to fire a gun and act like a gangster. Compounding that is Moore having an inner tantrum over the CEO (Sigourney Weaver) refusing to increase his funding in favor of Deon’s robots and the CEO simultaneously refusing to allow Deon to test his new artificial intelligence because Deon said the robot could write poetry. Incidentally, the CEO outright dismissing AI was the most confusing thing that happened in this movie. How bad of a CEO do you have to be to dismiss a technology that would make billions (if not trillions) of dollars? And if Deon’s robots are so successful and cost effective, why is Moore’s project not completely mothballed and defunded? It’s poetic justice that an ex-military nut (Moore) ends up destroying their entire business – she earned it. It’s bad writing like this that is earning Chappie’s 22% Rotten Tomatoes score.

If you can get past the movie’s surface plot being junk and the screenplay’s repeated emphasis on details that never come back into play, you’ll end up enjoying the meat of the movie revolving around Chappie and his growth and learning. As shallow as the story and most of the characters are, the Chappie character is extremely well-developed, and to a lesser extent, so is his mommy (the lone female in the gang). The film isn’t close to as good as District 9, but it is a better flick than Elysium simply because of its scaled back world. I just wish Blomkamp and wife had spent more time fleshing out a better plot and less time tricking out Chappie.

Rating: Ask for two dollars back and remember to vote motion capture.