“No Escape” – Or is there?

About halfway through No Escape, I was ready to walk out of the theater. Up to that point in the film, people were slaughtering other people with no explanation, Pierce Brosnan had vanished from the film, and the plot was nothing more than “Run, Owen, Run!” Basically, we were watching a snuff film with decent casting. The only thing keeping me in my seat was the knowledge that Brosnan had to show up at some point and, despite the seemingly pointless and definitely gratuitous violence, it was the tensest film I’d seen since 2013’s The Call. When Brosnan did finally show back up, the film finally reveals the WHY, as in “why is half the population of Laos (or Cambodia – the film intentionally omits what country this is happening in, but we know it borders Vietnam and it’s definitely not China) trying to kill Owen Wilson and his family” and I couldn’t have been more satisfied.

There’s a book called Confessions of an Economic Hitman by John Perkins that I’m pretty sure nobody in the theater had read besides me. The book is Perkins’ account of roughly thirty years working for the NSA as a consulting engineer for a firm called Chas. T. Main. He describes his job as visits to impoverished nations where he would provide inflated economic forecasts in order to convince them to borrow huge sums of money to build infrastructure. Of course, their economies would never grow as predicted, they would default on their loans, and the companies/countries they borrowed the money from would own them. In other words (Perkins’ words), empire building by America and its corporations. I know it sounds a bit conspiratorial – and if you read the book, you can decide for yourself how much you want to believe – but it’s the perfect premise for a movie. When the film is transitioning to the third act, Brosnan explains this very idea to Wilson, though Brosnan’s character is a bit of a mix of Perkins and a lethal spy (Perkins never claims to have any kind of training beyond engineering forecasts).

That’s the entire plot of the film and is more of a political-statement film than a simple thriller that seeks dead Americans. Getting back to the film itself, the most notable thing is the tension that never ratchets down from nail-biting ass-clencher. It’s right there in the title, No Escape – you really don’t know if Wilson’s family is going to survive or if some or all of them (Brosnan as well) are going to die. The movie is one tense scene after another, one close encounter followed by another, all the while dripping/spraying/covered in blood from the numerous brutal murders occurring just steps behind the family.

Perhaps just as notable is the performance put forth by Wilson. In playing a father (Jack) trying to protect his family in a serious thriller, Wilson shows that he is capable of playing more than just a charming doofus, even managing to weave that doofus into the role to slightly ease the tension every now and again. Lake Bell (playing his wife Annie) is just as convincing, as are the two kids playing their daughters (Sterling Jerins and Claire Geare as Lucy and Beeze, respectively). As opposed to most movies with families, these people are believable as kin and avoided many of the family clichés that Hollywood loves inserting into movies like this.

Kudos need also go to the writers, John and Drew Dowdle (John doubled as director). I’ve already mentioned the tension, but they also managed to make each character sympathetic, as well as the family as a whole. One scene in particular will stick in your mind – in one of the many places they hide, young Beeze whispers that she needs to pee. Annie and Jack exchange a quick glance of desperation, then Annie tells Beeze to go ahead and pee where she is (had this been a clichéd thriller, the parents would have tried convincing her to hold it until they were safe and Lucy would have teased her somehow). Beeze puts up a mild protest – that she isn’t a baby – and Annie and Jack assure her that it is okay this one time and that they love her. Beeze relents and puts on one of the saddest and pitiful faces you will ever see in a film. That little kid manages to look ashamed and embarrassed at what she is doing and if your heart doesn’t break a little right there (or a lot), you are dead inside.

After the film, the general consensus among my friends was that the movie was a solid B, but they had never heard of the book I mentioned. However, one of them had a much more visceral reaction to the film – he thought it was very good, but it made him a little disgusted at our country (and even more so after I explained the book to him). Regardless as to whether you believe our country does things like that, when a movie can have that kind of effect on a viewer, you know the filmmakers did something right.

Rating: Don’t ask for any of your money back and go read that book.

“Hitman: Agent 47” – And the summer popcorn season is officially over.

With the wreckage of Fantastic Four still burning brighter than Michael B. Jordan’s CGI flames and The Man From U.N.C.L.E. being ignored in favor of a biopic about three rappers, I can forgive you if you thought the summer popcorn movie season was already over. But as the kids go back to school and you remember how nice silence is, Hitman: Agent 47 is here to remind you that you haven’t mowed the lawn for more than a week. By the time August rolls around, three months of superheroes, gunshots, dinosaurs, terminators, and Adam Sandler’s annual atrocity have left your ears ringing, your eyes blurry, and your lawn a mess. The last thing you want to do is spend another two hours in a dark theater watching a movie in which the phrase “subdermal body-armor” is used more than once. Yes, you should trim the hedges while you’re at it.

Confession time – I am one of the few people who liked 2007’s Hitman. Mostly, it’s because of Timothy Olyphant, but I also thought the story was acceptable and Olga Kurylenko sure was nice to gawk at. But, it’s a classic “Movies for Me” flick – if you told me it was a stupid video game movie with a dumb, convoluted plot, my response would be “Ol-ga Kur-y-len-ko.” Going into Agent 47, I figured the best case scenario would be a Movie for Me and the worst case scenario would be Fantastic Four all over again. In other words, please let the summer popcorn season last just a smidge longer.

(Mild SPOILERS coming, though the previews spoil nearly everything if you watch them.)

For a movie entitled Hitman: Agent 47, you’d think the plot would revolve around the title character, but like Mad Max: Fury Road film, you’d be wrong (though at least Agent 47 actually gets to do some stuff, unlike Mad “I call shotgun” Max). Also like Fury Road, the main character is a woman, Katia (Hannah Ware). Katia is searching for a mysterious man (no points for guessing the man turns out to be her father), but is being hunted herself by Agent 47 (Rupert Friend) and John Smith (Zachary Quinto). After a bunch of killing and some chase scenes, we learn that Smith is working for the Syndicate, a company that also wants to find Katia’s father (Ciaran Hinds) because he is the only person that knows how to make agents (pronounced: Agents) like 47. During all of this, Agent 47 has a contract he must fulfill, which means somebody is going to die, but he also appears to be tasked with keeping the Syndicate from acquiring the Agent secret sauce.

(Note: if you are new to this franchise or the video games they came from, Agents are genetically modified assassins with heightened physical and mental abilities and no emotions. They also have bar codes burned into the back of their heads, are not allowed to grow hair, and may only wear red ties. No, I did not make up any of that.)

Like Hitman, I thought the plot of Agent 47 was adequate. What caught my attention more was that the casting consisted of two people I’d never heard of or seen, Zachary Quinto, that guy that always plays a European villain (Thomas Kretschmann), and Mance Rayder (Hinds) from Game of Thrones. No disrespect to Friend – he did a better than average job, but why wasn’t Olyphant cast again? It’s not like he’s got anything going on right now (not kidding – check out his IMDB page; it looks like he’s got some time now that Justified is done) and Hitman earned $100 million on a $25 million budget. Plus, old guy action stars are in right now, right (to be fair, Olyphant is a young 47)?

Besides the casting, there were a couple of other things that stuck in my head. The first is that Agent 47 isn’t as smart as the movie wants us to believe. A smart person would shoot the bad guy in the head after finding out said bad guy has body armor surgically implanted under his skin. However, even when Agent 47 has Smith on the ground and empties his magazine into Smith, not one bullet goes into Smith’s head. You can guess what happens next. The second thing – and one that is impossible not to raise an eyebrow at – is that Katia has Nicholas Cage’s power from Next. That’s right, she can see the future, but only the next two minutes worth (or at least the next 20 seconds or so). This convenient and unexplained superpower was used generously because why the hell not? This is an August action flick, you’ll take it and like it.

The final thing has no bearing on the film itself, but it’s possible I missed something important (like why Katia could see the future) due to a physical characteristic of Katia demanding all of my attention. Before I go on, I need to remind you that I’m a guy with functioning eyes, so you’ll forgive me for admiring a beautiful woman. There’s a scene in a hotel room where Katia is wearing a white tank top, having just come out of the shower. I don’t know if the room was just cold or they rubbed her down with a bag full of Otter Pops and pointed fans at her, but her nipples were practically bursting through her shirt. I’m really not trying to be crude here, but that’s not why I couldn’t look away. I couldn’t look away because one of her nipples appeared square. Maybe it was a trick of the light or fabric of her shirt, but if there was any dialogue during the scene, I don’t remember it. This same thing happened to me throughout Looper (Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s fake Bruce Willis jaw) and Maleficent (Angelina Jolie’s absurdly pointed cheekbones). Yes, I also get distracted by shiny things and squirrels.

The hardest thing to decide about this movie is where I’m going to put it in my year-end review. I didn’t think there was enough action, but that’s probably because the lulls between action scenes were filled with enough exposition to choke Tyrion Lannister. If you think I’m exaggerating, know that the beginning of the movie is literally a narrator telling us everything we need to know about Agents rather than just showing us the Agent program (FYI – this is lazy screenwriting 101). On the other hand, the action scenes were fairly unique (two words – jet engine) and the three main actors delivered sufficiently believable performances. I wouldn’t say it’s as good as the first Hitman, but it might just be entertaining enough to be a Movie for Me. Of course, maybe I’m just saying that because I’ve got a pretty big lawn threatening to swallow my child.

Rating: Ask for half of your money back and, please, someone find out what’s happened to Olyphant.

“Fantastic Four” – ZZZZZZzzzzzzz……

Here’s a little insight into predicting whether a movie will be good or not – if the production studio (20th Century Fox) puts an embargo on releasing reviews until two days before a movie (Fantastic Four) opens, and does not allow advanced screenings until two days before that same movie opens, it’s a pretty sure bet that the movie is going to be bad. And I don’t mean an entertaining kind of bad; I mean the kind of bad that makes kittens cry. I wouldn’t say the reboot of Fantastic Four is so bad you’d find it playing on the IMAX in hell’s theater (tonight, double-featuring Bridesmaids and After Earth and you have to walk through the uncleaned aisles barefoot to get to your seat), but there are definitely going to be some sniffling felines in your alley Friday on night.

In case you were wondering, “Didn’t they just make Fantastic Four a couple years ago?” the answer is yes, ten years ago (eight years ago for the sequel) and that is most definitely not enough time for people to forget how lousy both of them were (for the record, I liked Rise of the Silver Surfer, but yes, it was lousy). Like Spider-Man, a remake was done not because they thought they could do better, but because they had to do it within a certain number of years since Surfer or lose the movie rights back to Marvel. You’d think eight years would be enough time to write a decent script, especially given that there are 54 years worth of source material to mine from, but you’d be wrong. Really, really, really wrong.

(Note: From here out, the 2015 version will be referred to by title. Also, this movie was as rotten as the bottom of a dumpster, so SPOILERS!)

Simon Kinberg, Jeremy Slater, and Josh Trank are the credited writers of this offense to pens, pencils, and paper, but I’m going to focus on Trank because he doubled as director. You’re probably wondering where you’ve heard his name before, but you should stop trying because you probably haven’t. His only other movie directing/writing credit is for Chronicle (2012), and while it was a very good/successful movie, it wasn’t in theaters all that long (February releases will do that). And, I’m guessing you won’t hear from him again after this movie releases and bombs (and if I’m wrong, the terrorists have won).

In the technical sense of the word – plot – Fantastic Four has one. Five people get super powers, one turns evil, the other four fight him to save the Earth. Unfortunately, that plot takes up roughly ten minutes (which contains 100% of the action scenes) of a ninety minute movie. The other eighty minutes are filled with exposition and some of the worst character development you will ever see (and not just in movies). Incidentally, it might be the shortest superhero movie ever made while simultaneously feeling longer than a three-day cricket test match in Calcutta in August.

You can tell right off the bat that the movie is going to suck because it starts with eleven-year old Reed Richards building a teleporter in his garage after basically being called an idiot by his teacher. Seven years later (it’s now 2014 in the film) and eighteen-year old Reed (Miles Teller) has improved the design and is showing it off at his high school’s science fair. For contrivance’s sake, Franklin Storm (Reg E. Cathey) and his eighteen-year old adopted daughter, Sue (Kate Mara) – who just happen to be working on a government-sponsored, industrial-size version of the same device – chat with Miles and offer him a scholarship to the Baxter Institute to help them finish the device. As it turns out, Franklin runs the project, primarily employing teenage geniuses. This is where the movie obliterates your sense of disbelief because (a) why must they be teenagers and not just twenty-somethings? and (b) Teller is twenty-eight and Mara is thirty-two. I know casting choices do that all the time, but it’s impossible to believe Mara as a teenager after watching her get naked with Kevin Spacey in House of Cards.

The writing gets worse as the machine turns out to be a teleporter to a planet in another dimension rather than to somewhere else on Earth. Enter THE BIG, BAD GOVERNMENT and BIG, BAD BUSINESS EXECUTIVE (Tim Blake Nelson) who want to exploit Planet Zero (oh my god, is that really the best name Trank could come up with?!) for its resources (at least they don’t refer to them as Unobtanium). Reed, Sue’s brother, Johnny (Michael B. Jordan), and Victor von Doom (Toby Kebbell) decide to take a secret trip after being told they couldn’t, bringing along Reed’s childhood friend Ben Grimm (Jamie Bell) because, why not?

(Note: The project is government-backed and almost assuredly classified, yet Ben is allowed to waltz into the facility and laboratories because “he’s with Reed.” I’ve seen better security at a Starbucks.)

While on Zero, Victor stirs up a green energy cloud, it chases them, Victor falls in, and the rest barely escape, though all are mutated, including Sue, who was trying to bring them back to Earth. Keep in mind, this all happens around the one hour mark of the film. At this point, the movie shows us their powers, Reed wakes up and escapes the secret facility they were transferred to (Area 57, in another fit of creativity), but is captured a year later, rendering the seven minutes in between completely pointless. With the exception of Ben, Sue and Johnny aren’t even mad at him for leaving, and Ben gets over it quickly. Plus, Reed literally does nothing during that year except globe trot, so why bother having him leave at all?

The film winds down with the machine being rebuilt and an expedition bringing Victor back to Earth, where he immediately starts killing people. Victor goes back to Zero, opens a new portal to Earth, and starts sucking the matter from Earth to convert to energy on Zero. Why does Victor do this? I swear to you I’m not making this up – because humans are destroying the Earth and don’t deserve it, so he’s just going to destroy it all the way. I told you this was shitty writing.

The sad thing is just about anything would be better than what Trank and team shat out as their screenplay. First, they should have ditched the terrible opening with the children and just started with the team in the lab as actual grown-ups who have been of legal drinking age for more than a year (and give Ben an honest reason to be there for chrissakes). After the accident, it would have been more interesting to keep the four of them together, have them learn their powers and be used by the government as a tool, but have them all become resentful of being exploited. Then, in the climax, have them go on their final mission when something goes awry and Victor leaves the group. Wrap it up; end of movie. No big showdown between Victor and the others – that’s for another movie. FYI – it took me roughly three minutes to come up with that; they had EIGHT years.

Now, I want to go back to how poorly developed the characters were. In eighty minutes, we learn that Reed is really smart. Ben is not. Johnny is black and races crappy cars. Sue is white and does not race crappy cars (she also recognizes patterns; ooooooh). And Victor started the project as a child (apparently, only children are capable of inventing trans-dimensional wormhole machines) and gets mad at Reed for having a laugh with Sue. That’s it. No development of a relationship between Sue and Reed, an extremely weak relationship between Reed and Ben, and definitely no chemistry between any of them, especially between Sue and Johnny who are supposed to be siblings. Forget about the fact that she is white and he is black (a certain radio personality in Atlanta couldn’t); I’ve seen jurors act more familiar with each other than these two characters.

It should be obvious now that I thought this movie was full-on crap. Even with the red flags of the review embargos and eleventh hour screenings providing ample warning, going into the film my main thought was that it shouldn’t be too hard to improve upon the 2005 version; that it would at least be entertaining. I just didn’t think it would be possible to make a Fantastic Four movie with less action than Sister Act. But I was wrong. Really, really, really wrong.

Rating: The one thing I’m sure I’m not wrong about is that you should definitely ask for all of your money back and hope that Trank is never allowed near a summer blockbuster again.