Review Category: Movie

Review: John Dies at the End / Cert: 15 / Director: Don Coscarelli / Screenplay: Don Coscarelli / Starring: Chase Williamson, Rob Mayes, Paul Giamatti / Release Date: March 22nd

Going into John Dies at the End, if you’ve read the book by David Wong (who writes for Cracked.com) then you know what you‘re in for. If not, you’re in for a bizarre treat, and don’t worry – the title won’t spoil your enjoyment.

The film centres around the very un-dynamic duo of David (Williamson) and the eponymous John (Mayes) who are a paranormal elimination team – think the Winchester brothers from Supernatural. They find themselves mixed up with a drug called Soy Sauce which, once ingested, allows the user to see and experience things that they should just not be able to. This in turn leads to our protagonists lurching from one misadventure to another. They have to fight an adversary that is made up entirely of meat from a chest freezer; consider whether an axe that has had both its head and shaft replaced is still the same axe that beheaded a man; travel to another dimension to defeat an otherworldly being and try to stay alive long enough to save the world.

David serves as a narrator of sorts, relaying his story to a reporter, Arnie Blondstone (Giamatti), in a restaurant. The incredulous interviewer finds it understandably difficult to stomach David’s tall tales, but he humours him nonetheless. John takes the drug and appears to die, but comes back from the dead to assist David with his investigations into a strange Jamaican man and his struggles with the police who are trying to stop him from finding out the truth. Which it transpires, is that Korrok, a demon from another dimension, wants to know how to cross inter-dimensional planes. Via what appear to be small fly like parasites, bodies are being taken over in our world so that Korrok can become more knowledgeable.

Luckily they’re not in this alone. They have the occasional assistance of Marconi, a stage performer. Also on hand – pardon the pun – is one-handed Amy, who is able to open doors to other dimensions in abandoned shopping malls with her other, ghostly hand. Oh, and let’s not forget Molly, a dog who turns up at the right moments to help when all looks lost.

It all wobbles nicely on the edge of absurdity without quite tipping over, and there are enough moments of lucid humour to make it worth your time. The leads have their eyebrows arched so highly throughout that you fear they might stay like that if the wind ever changed. Everything on show here is totally crazy (as you would expect from Coscarelli, who brought us the Phantasm series as well as Bubba Ho-Tep), but then again it’s amazing that anyone would manage to squeeze an even slightly coherent movie out of the source material. There is a decent supporting cast with the usual dependable performances from the likes of Doug Jones and Clancy Brown. The only thing that lets the film down is the fact that large chunks of the book have been missed out entirely, but that’s down to running time and budget. If you wanted to try and sum this up in a neat little package, we have two words for you: cult classic.

Expected Rating: 7 out of 10

Actual Rating:

Review: Stoker / Cert: 18 / Director: Park Chan-wook / Screenplay: Wentworth Miller, Erin Cressida Wilson / Starring: Mia Wasikowska, Nicole Kidman, Matthew Goode / Release Date: March 1st

Keeping with his usual dark themes, South Korean director Park Chan-wook (Oldboy) makes an assured American debut with this stunning psycho thriller – a cruel, calculated coming of age story that glides elegantly through topics of sexual awakening and fractured family values. It pushes all the right buttons; paying homage to Hitchcock whilst having a distinct, chilling ambience all of its own.

India Stoker is cocooned in a hollow existence, flitting between the woods and a high school where she has no friends. Her only comfort is her close relationship with her father, so when he dies on her eighteenth birthday in a terrible accident, her world crumbles around her and she reacts in the most frightful of ways. India possesses the ability to hear what others cannot, something she has in common with her mysterious Uncle Charlie who comes a-calling after her father’s funeral. The similarities between the two don’t end there; both possess piercing eyes, attract unwanted attention and harbour sordid secrets.

As scripted by Prison Break‘s Wentworth Miller and contributing writer Erin Cressida Wilson (Secretary), India’s move into womanhood is shrouded in confusion and melodrama, with dark tendencies coiling up like poison ivy. She has a fondness for hunting and shies away from human contact, preferring the companionship of her natural surroundings. Wasikowska plays the beguiling leading lady perfectly, as does Kidman as India’s mother – a battered lush who wanders the corridors of her house craving sexual closeness, whilst Goode’s Charlie lurks in the background ready to pounce.

These pitch-perfect performances are complemented by Park’s ability to create a pulsating, tense atmosphere against a stunning backdrop. The eerie, empty house they all inhabit illuminates this family’s wicked web of incestuous desire, India shrinking into its giant furniture in the manner of Alice in Wonderland, its dark and muted décor contrasting beautifully with the balmy, sun-soaked greenery of the woods she prowls, an outward manifestation of her savage blooming. The characters’ silence speaks volumes whilst the chill of classical piano generates waves of intense emotion – loneliness, fear, rage and hysteria.

Park Chan-wook’s bold breakthrough into American cinema surpasses many others who have tried to tread similar territory – provocative, explicit and intense material expertly handled by a modern master.

Expected Rating: 8 out of 10

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Review: Much Ado About Nothing / Director: Joss Whedon / Screenplay: Joss Whedon, William Shakespeare / Starring: Amy Acker, Alexis Denisof, Nathan Fillion, Reed Diamond, Jillian Morgese, Tom Lenk, Sean Maher, Clark Gregg, Fran Cranz, Emma Bates, Ashley Johnson / Release Date: June 14th

Generally speaking, when a director is contractually forced to take a week off between wrapping on a big-budget movie and beginning the edit, they head to the beach for some much-needed R&R. They don’t gather up their mates to film a black-and-white Shakespeare adaptation in their own home. But Joss Whedon rarely does what you expect – which is something the viewing public should be very grateful for.

His Shakespeare adaptation of choice was Much Ado About Nothing, an odd romcom that lurches close to tragedy at one point. To sum it up as best as you can sum up a Shakespeare play, Much Ado is the tale of stubborn, argumentative would-be lovers Beatrice and Benedick, against a backdrop of plotting princes and thwarted young love. In many ways Much Ado is the ideal Shakespeare project for Whedon, given that Beatrice is something of a proto feminist, railing against a society that traps her in the feminine role. “O, God, that I were a man! I would eat his heart in the market place” she spits, in one of the play’s best lines. The play has its faults, and ones which a modern setting tend to exacerbate. Claudio and Hero’s semi-arranged marriage makes it hard to root for them in the period setting, but it’s impossible to root for them in the modern day.

Despite the inherent problems within the text, Whedon largely makes the modern setting work for him. Beatrice and Benedick’s romance is just as enjoyably spiky and relevant in the present day as it was in the 16th century, and the modern era allows Whedon to bring a bucket load of sexy to the table. Beatrice and Benedick’s tension now has its roots in a drunken one night stand, while Don John’s partner-in-crime Conrade has been gender-swapped, making the two plotters lovers rather than friends.

Among the cast are a host of faces that will be familiar to any long-term Whedon fans. Agent Coulson himself Clark Gregg and Dollhouse’s Reed Diamond here work with Whedon for only the second time, and both deliver excellent performances, with Diamond in particular bringing a great naturalism to the sometimes-tricky Shakespearian dialogue in his role as the Prince Don Pedro.

Longer-running Whedon alumni are also dotted liberally throughout the film, in almost all the important roles. Firefly and Serenity stars Nathan Fillion and Sean Maher play the fool and the villain respectively. Fillion’s comic timing was never in any doubt so his excellent performance as the self-important Dogberry comes as no surprise. Maher, however, makes for a far better villain that you might expect – his Don John is sly, smart, contained and sexy. I’d like to see him cast as a Black Hat more often.

Buffy’s Tom Lenk forms the other half of Fillion’s comedy double-act while Fran Kranz of Dollhouse and The Cabin in the Woods continues to surprise. He does comedy so well that it’s easy to forget that he can do far more than that. However, he and Jillian Morgese, the newcomer playing Hero (and who is the absolute spitting image of Amy Acker, whose cousin she plays here), are both constrained by the limitation of their characters and their hard-to-believe love story.

The lead roles of Beatrice and Benedick are, of course, played by former Angel lovers Amy Acker and Alexis Denisof, both of whom have appeared in their fair share of Whedon projects. Acker was last seen in The Cabin in the Woods, while Denisof was hidden under layers of prosthetics as The Other in The Avengers. Denisof is a seasoned Shakespearian actor, even performing with the RSC in the UK. Despite that, his casting feels like the biggest misstep of the film. He’s not quite sexy or smart enough, he’s not the charming chancer that the script tells us he is. He’s a talented comedic actor and happy to make a fool of himself (remember Wesley’s dance skills in Angel?) but he plays the comedy a tiny bit too broad at times.

On the other side of the equation, though, it’s perfectly clear why Benedick would be in love with Beatrice. Amy Acker brings a luminous intelligence to the role. Her Beatrice is playful and sophisticated, even when pratfalling, and has a quiet air of melancholy under all her merriness (it’s never explained, after all, why Beatrice lives with her uncle and not her own family). She balances light humour and the power of Beatrice’s frustration at being constrained by society beautifully. It’s a performance that deserves to bring her to the attention of directors who, really, should have noticed her long ago.

The comedy always works better than the tragedy in performances of Much Ado and Whedon’s production is no different. His talent for directing an ensemble cast leads to generally excellent performances across the board, and distributes the weight of the story with ease. Much of the adaptation was filmed in Whedon’s own house, which has so many convenient nooks and vantage points that it’s hard not to wonder if he bought it with an eye on one day making a movie there. The whole film looks gorgeous, despite the miniscule budget, and the naturalistic tone and style helps make the text more accessible to Shakespeare-phobes. Be warned, though, Much Ado is a clever and wordy play, despite Whedon’s judicious editing. So if you struggled to follow Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet, then Much Ado About Nothing might be a little bit intimidating. The best thing to do is just go with it, and rely on Whedon’s storytelling skills to fill in the bits that have gotten a bit lost in translation since the late 1500s. Shakespeare nuts, though, and Whedon nuts, will love it.

Expected Rating: 8 out of 10

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Review: Hansel & Gretel – Witch Hunters / Cert: 15 / Director: Tommy Wirkola / Screenplay: Tommy Wirkola / Starring: Jeremy Renner, Gemma Arterton, Famke Janssen / Release Date: February 27th

What an exciting concept for a film: Hansel and Gretel all grown up, and using their expertise and ingenuity to wreak revenge on witchkind. Unfortunately, the magic has been lost along the way and soured into a dull, unimaginative mess confused at what sort of audience it is aiming for. Director Tommy Wirkola, who showed promise in Dead Snow, falls victim to the Hollywood machine in this overproduced and shoddy attempt at giving a new twist to a much-loved fairy tale.

A crafty trio of witches headed up by the malevolent Muriel (Famke Janssen with a frightfully filthy mouth) are gathering children to sacrifice in time for the rising of the next blood moon. Thankfully, Hansel and Gretel are on the hunt and a bloody chase ensues. Jeremy Renner and Gemma Arterton are on autopilot here, doling out ineffective one-liners, darting around aimlessly whilst unveiling mysteries about witches that in the many years of their profession seem to have only just come to light. Their general uselessness as uncovering things in a timely manner makes them seem stupid, and talking of stupid, how about the coincidence that the cottage where they were taken prisoner as children just happens to be only a few miles outside the town where they live? Meanwhile, a love story with absolutely no build-up apart from a discussion about Hansel’s diabetes and a saucy swimming scene just infuriates. It’s a case of too many characters and ill thought out storylines spoiling the witches’ broth.

On the bright side, some of the set design is excellent, including the neon-coloured witch lair we are introduced to early on, and a sweet relationship between Gretel and a troll named Edward brings some light relief to what is otherwise a sickly potion of violent revenge, sexual innuendo and gore. The reasoning behind Edward’s soft spot for Gretel is never explained but then again there are quite a few loose ends here. As you would expect, the ending points to the beginning of a franchise that will hopefully never be.

The 3D adds nothing except a few arrows shot directly into your field of vision, plus it darkens the screen, making the action murky. This stinky cauldron of a film doesn’t even fall into the ‘so bad it’s good’ category as the fun has been stripped away in favour of silly, over-stylised fight scenes. In its attempt to mix horror, humour and action, it fails miserably.

Expected Rating: 7 out of 10

Actual Rating:

Review: The King of Pigs / Cert: 15 / Director: Yeun Sang-ho / Screenplay: Yeun Sang-ho / Starring: Yak Ik-june, Kim Khobbi / Release Date: Out Now

It’s a not exactly a new theme, the misery of schooldays, but here’s a film that makes it seem as sickeningly forceful and immediate as a punch to the breadbasket on a freezing cold playground. This Manwha (Korean anime) sees two troubled adults, bespectacled bankrupt Hwang Kyung-min and failed writer Jung Jong-suk, getting together after fifteen years to mull over painful memories of their first grade. And we’re not just talking about some stolen lunch money.

If you thought the comp you went to was bad, think again. This place has to be the worst fictional school since Dotheboys Hall in Nicholas Nickleby. Largely devoid, it would seem, of teachers, it’s run (somewhat in the manner of a traditional English boarding school) by a hierarchy of top students from rich families (dogs) who lord it over everyone else (the pigs of the title). The slightest thing can incur humiliating repercussions – Jong-suk goes in one day inadvertently wearing a pair of jeans meant for girls, and he’s publicly branded as a ‘fag’ and all but sexually assaulted by the class supremo.

There’s one person who resists this oppressive regime – long-haired rebel Kim Chul, whose mean right hook sends the bullies sprawling. He’s an inspirational and charismatic figure, with a disturbing message: “We need to be monsters if we don’t want to keep living like losers.” Even he, though, can’t do anything about supine teachers who turn a blind eye to what’s going on or the brutal inequalities of society at large. As the tension between dogs and pigs heightens, he becomes a warped Christ figure prepared to sacrifice himself for his beliefs, the two boys his wary and unworthy disciples.

Writer/director Yeun Sang-ho’s feature debut is like a hard-hitting cross between If, Kes, Old Boy and Crow’s Zero, with imagery and themes transplanted from Lord of the Flies into a setting of urban blight. The animation makes a virtue of ugliness, the character design all mean eyes and piranha mouths, the colour palette tending to faecal reddish-browns and muddy yellows. It paints a horribly dark picture of a society where there’s a sharp line between winners and losers and physical abuse is everywhere. Kyung-min and Jong-suk are all too convincing as they vacillate between futile rage and despairing cowardice, and Kim Chul is a mesmerising anti-hero, a kind of mini-Bruce Lee in looks and the one beautiful thing in the whole story.

This is filmmaking that seethes with anger and a wholesale rejection of everything it lays its eyes on. About as pleasant as a dead leg, yes, but exhilarating in its passionate negativity.

Expected Rating: 7 out of 10

Actual Rating:

 

Review: Warm Bodies / Cert: 12A / Director: Jonathan Levine / Screenplay: Jonathan Levine/ Starring: Nicholas Hoult, Teresa Palmer, John Malkovich, Rob Corddry / Release Date: Out Now

Fears that Jonathan Levine’s film version of Isaac Marion’s quirky romantic horror novel Warm Bodies might turn into some insipid zombie Twilight knock-off are mercifully unfounded. Levene’s movie is an amusing, affectionate and largely non-threatening love story set against the unlikely backdrop of a zombie apocalypse. On the downside, it also comes across as a bit underpowered and anaemic, its jokes never quite funny enough and its ultimate message of redemption and salvation and everyone just getting along a little too sickly for many palettes. But look at that 12A certificate; what did you expect, The Walking Dead?

R (Hoult) – he’s forgotten his real name and anything about his former life – is a zombie shuffling aimlessly around a devastated airport terminal along with hundreds of other undead. An attack by human survivors leads to R meeting up with the terrified Julie (Palmer) after he’s eaten her boyfriend’s brains and ingested his memories. Despite being dead, R is smitten and he takes it upon himself to keep Julie safe, smuggling her aboard an abandoned aircraft he’s turned into a makeshift home and protecting her from his fellow zombies and the degenerate, skeletal ‘bonies’ which the undead eventually devolve into. Slowly R begins to reconnect with his lost humanity and Julie discovers that being dead doesn’t necessarily mean an end to being human.

Hoult’s a triumph as zombie R; his dialogue is full of grunts and half-formed words and he masters the zombie shuffle with aplomb. But his relationship with Julie – she’s a forgiving kind of girl considering R devoured her loving boyfriend’s brain – tends to drag the film down and the resulting gags (including a rather obvious Romeo and Juliet balcony parody) are rarely as sharp as they need to be. John Malkovich is underused as Julie’s trigger-happy Dad and the ‘bonies’, better-animated CGI zombies reminiscent of the ‘vampires’ from I Am Legend, are a decent threat exterminated all too easily.

Warm Bodies deserves some kudos for managing to pull off the difficult ‘feelgood horror movie’ trick but in the end there’s a certain irony in the fact that a film whose main protagonist has severe communication difficulties struggles to realise the potential so clearly present in its clever and original storyline.

Expected Rating: 6 out of 10

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Review: Mama / Cert: 15 / Director: Andrés Muschietti / Screenplay: Neil Cross, Andrés Muschietti, Barbara Muschietti / Starring: Jessica Chastain, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, Megan Charpentier, Daniel Kash / Release Date: February 22nd

Guillermo del Toro exec produced this eerie fairytale exploring the lengths a mother will go to to protect her kids, and it gets more than a pinch of his dark brand of fairy dust. Contorted limbs. Creepy kids. Bleeding black walls birthing slithering moths. All that, and you also have J-horror-style spirit effects and Jessica Chastain (enjoying a moment in the wake of Zero Dark Thirty) as a bass-playing Goth. Even if the ideas it broaches aren’t fully investigated, Mama is a sensory feast and certainly del Toro-fying enough to be worth the price of a cinema ticket.

In the middle of the recession, a father is driven to the edge by the collapse of his company. He abducts his two daughters and abandons them in a cabin in the woods (where else?), where they endure a feral existence protected by a mysterious spirit mother, the Mama of the title. When the girls are finally recovered five years later, they are alive and well but alarmingly devolved. We’re talking growls, Nell-like grunts and (with the aid of some slightly OTT digital FX) scary-fast animalistic movements. All a bit off-putting, but nonetheless they are rehabilitated by earnest psychologist Dr. Dreyfuss (Kash, who gets some choice psycho-babble dialogue), so they can live with their uncle (Coster-Waldau) and his girlfriend, Annabel (Chastain).

From there on, the focus is on Chastain’s metamorphosis from unwilling babysitter to a veritable she-lion of a protectress as she investigates the mystery behind the girls’ strange behaviour. Who are they singing lullabies to at night and what are they hiding in the closet?

Suspense takes a hit thanks to the early reveal of the mother spirit, but Mama’s antics keep you entertained, and there are some nice twists and turns as Annabel uncovers the spirit’s backstory. A disconcerting atmosphere is brewed up though Antonio Riestra’s excellent camerawork and sets whose every coign seems to seethe with things waiting to jump out at you – all building to a number of well-paced scares. But what really grips your attention is the power struggle between these two strong matriarchs, in a storyline which raises intriguing (if largely unresolved) questions about the nature of parenting. True, it all feels a little diluted and Hollywood-ized compared to the original 2008 short on which this feature is based, but director Andrés Muschietti easily creates enough ambience to keep you lapping up the film like it’s mother’s milk.

Expected Rating: 8 out of 10

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Review: Sleep Tight / Cert: 15 / Director: Jaume Balaguero / Screenplay: Alberto Marini / Starring: Luis Tosar, Marta Etura, Alberto San Juan / Release Date: March 1st

Sleep Tight sees director Jaume Balaguero return to his preferred Barcelona stamping ground (although you’d be hard-pressed to tell; most of the movie is set indoors) following his success with 2. But whereas the those pictures were unashamed all-out horror movies full of killer zombies and jump-in-your-seat scares, Sleep Tight is much more of a psychological experiment in terror, a film rooted in a world that may be all too real for many viewers and depicting a situation which may seem uncomfortably believable. Sleep Tight dials down the obvious crowd-pleasing horror stereotypes and allows Balaguero to craft an eerie, edgy thriller which is more interested in unnerving and unsettling its audience than in turning it into a gibbering wreck.

Cesar (Tosar) is a balding, early middle-aged man working as the concierge in a smart apartment building in Barcelona. He’s an efficient, unassuming chap and he’s largely unnoticed by most of the building’s residents. But he’s a loner, a man troubled and tormented by the stifling mundanity and lack of forward motion in his life. He’s polite and pleasant, he visits his ailing mother in hospital – but in Clara, a lively young girl in one of his apartments, he has a secret obsession. He bombards her with anonymous text messages declaring his love, he sends her letters – and at night, when she goes to sleep, he’s lying under her bed with a bottle of chloroform and a headful of unpleasant intentions. Cesar watches dispassionately as Clara starts to become ill as a result of his nocturnal activities and when he engineers a cockroach infestation of her apartment he seizes the chance to get deeper into her world than ever before. But when Clara brings home Marcus, her lover, Cesar’s obsession sends him over the edge and his fragile world slowly spins out of control.

Sleep Tight is a beautifully paced, atmospheric slow-burn of a movie and it’s not hard to spot the Hitchcock influences in the story of a plausible, yet dangerous man and his understated, but possibly fundamentally important, relationship with a mother who can’t communicate with him. Balageuro brilliantly ekes out the film’s growing sense of unease and even though we know that Cesar is a seriously troubled man we can’t help feeling some sympathy for him, almost to the point that we want him to evade discovery even as the net closes in around him: a little girl in the apartment opposite Clara’s knows exactly what he’s up to and yet uses her knowledge to bribe him, and the scene where Cesar is trapped in Clara’s apartment when she unexpectedly brings home her boyfriend is almost unbearably tense. Sleep Tight stumbles across the tightrope of implausibility in its last half-hour but fortunately never takes a fatal dive. Gripping and claustrophobic, it troubles its audience without resorting to too much shallow blood-letting and as a consequence it’s a damn sight more effective and memorable than most of the derivative cheapjack horror/thrillers which normally waste too much of our valuable time. Sleep Tight is haunting, original and likely to give those of a very nervous disposition a sleepless night or two.

Expected rating: 6 out of 10

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Review: Hitchcock / Cert: 12A / Director: Sacha Gervasi / Screenplay: John J. McLaughlin / Starring: Anthony Hopkins, Helen Mirren, Scarlett Johansson, Danny Huston, Michael Wincott / Release Date: February 8th

Coming not too long after the BBC/HBO film, The Girl (shown in the UK over Christmas), this big screen biopic has Hopkins don the fat suit and idiosyncrasies of the great director.

It’s 1959; Hitch and his wife, Alma Reville (Mirren) are forced to remortgage their house in order to make the film version of Robert Bloch’s Psycho, a book the director believes in so much he buys up every copy, rendering it unavailable to the general public. Bloch’s story was, of course, influenced by the notorious Ed Gein (Wincott), whom we see dispatching his brother in the pre-credits sequence. Promptly followed, aptly, by a droll Hitch introduction in the style of his ’50s TV show (complete with his Funeral March of a Marionette signature tune). As well as the struggles Hitch had with the studio over his decision to make the film (hence financing it himself), there are censorship arguments and his suspicion that Alma may be having an affair with another writer to contend with.

History has proved that Psycho was a major turning point in Hitch’s career, and while he would only complete a handful of films thereafter, his legend would continue to grow. There’s a special frisson, then, in glimpsing the man in the act of creating the legend. So, while we may have all read about him wielding the knife during the famous shower scene, seeing it depicted is still deeply unsettling (especially as it’s one of a number of times where Hopkins slips into Lecter mode). Hopkins does an admirable job with the mannered way in which Hitch spoke, but doesn’t quite occupy the role as much as he should, although his portrayal is less demonizing than Toby Jones’ brilliant turn in The Girl. Mirren is the star of this production, giving Alma the gravitas she deserved, as Hitch’s rock and inspiration. The (fictional) subplot of the affair is just a device to show his jealous side, but at least it stops short of being a hatchet job. However, the swipes at Anthony Perkins’ (James D’Arcy, who is perfect in the role) private life (“you may call me Hitch, hold the cock”) are cheap. The fantasy sequences of Hitch conversing with Gein are crass and out of place outside the aforementioned prologue, and the unmistakable Danny Elfman score is overshadowed once Bernard Herrmann’s screaming strings cut in.

Rather than a revealing biopic about the great man, we get an entertaining, if flawed, look at the making of a classic film, and as director Gervasi’s mainstream feature debut (after the fabulous Anvil – The Story of Anvil) it’s a step in the right direction.

Expected Rating: 8 out of 10

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Review: The Last Stand / Cert: 15 / Director: Jee-woon Kim / Screenplay: Andrew Knauer, Jeffrey Nachmanoff, George Nolfi / Starring: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Eduardo Noriega, Forest Whitaker / Release Date: January 25th

He’s back! His stint in politics over, Arnie saddles up for action once again in this high-octane film that will please his long-term fans and maybe even earn him a few new ones.

Sentenced to death row, underworld drug kingpin Gabriel Cortez (Noriega) escapes an FBI detail headed by Agent John Bannister (Whitaker). To make matters worse, he’s taken a female agent, (Genesis Rodriguez) hostage and has an army of ex-commandos protecting his journey towards freedom across the Nevada and Arizona deserts and into Mexico in a stolen prototype stealth car. Unfortunately, he has to pass through the quiet border town of Sommerton, Arizona, where ex-LAPD detective Ray Owens (Schwarzenegger) is the eagle-eyed sheriff. Hasta la vista, baddies!

The story is by-the-numbers stuff that’s been done many times before, but Jee-woon Kim (The Good, the Bad and the Weird) still manages to deliver an entertaining ’80s-inspired film with a touch of American International Pictures ’70s movies thrown in. Moving things along briskly throughout the entire 107 minutes, the Korean director choreographs more than enough explosions, shoot-’em-ups and novel twists to keep the audience gripped, and if you can overlook a few plot holes you could drive Arnie’s Humvee through, it’s a pretty decent way of spending a Friday night.

After being stuck behind a desk all these years, Arnie looks a little seasoned in a Clint Eastwood-ish way, but that’s not a bad thing. Luiz Guzman, Rodrigo Santoro, Zach Gilford, Jamie Alexander and Harry Dean Stanton round out the cast with some good scenes and amusing dialogue, and there’s a standout turn from Johnny Knoxville as a quirky antique arms collector (love to know if he did his own stunt during one harrowing sequence involving a lamp post).

Whatever you think of Arnie’s two terms as the Governator, he’s been missed in action-adventure films, and The Last Stand proves that this is where he belongs.

Expected Rating: 5 out of 10

Actual Rating: