Reviewed by James Holloway
"Freedom. Country. Honor. Passion. To save his best friend, one man must risk everything he loves."
Directed by Shekhar Kapur
Starring Heath Ledger, Kate Hudson, Djimon Hounsou and Wes Bentley
BMM Keywords: Laughable racial stereotypes, Boring, Senseless waste of solid potential
This is like the seventh movie based on A.E.W Mason's 1902 adventure novel,
so there must be material in there somewhere that works. So. Heath Ledger
is Harry, a dashing young blade who loses his bottle when he finds out that
his regiment is going to be shipped overseas to fight the forces of the Madhist
uprising in the Sudan. He resigns his commission, and his three mates (but
not steadfast best buddy Wes Bentley, oh no) give him white feathers as a
symbol of his cowardice. His fiancee Ethne gives him one as well: DISSED!
I could be misremembering that, actually. Anyway, overcome with shame and
disowned by his father (Tim Pigott-Smith, who knows a thing or two about
colonialism, I should say), Harry heads out for Egypt with the intent of
... doing ... something. Along the way a bunch of meaningless incident gets
him lost in the desert. He hooks up with rugged native Djimon Hounsou, and
they catch up with the regiment just as it's getting its ass whupped by the
sneaky Madhists (there's more to it than this -- which is actually part of
the problem). Oh dear! Jack (Bentley's guy is called Jack. The others have
nicknames and names and things, but I just think of them as Wide Mouthed
Guy, Stiff Upper Lip Guy, and Trench -- his name, even!) is blinded and Harry
ships him home, then goes tearassing off to Omdurman to rescue Trench, who's
been locked up by the baddies. He rescues him, once again with the aid of
Hounsou. Actually, Djimon does most of the rescuing. Meanwhile, Jack and
Ethne are falling in love. Or, uh, maybe not. And Harry's dad learns to love
him again. And then maybe he and Ethne get back together. I guess.
Well, there are really two -- or maybe three -- separate problems.
It's ramshackle. Picaresque adventure stories tend to be like that, but usually you have to have a hero who's competent or likeable. "Good-looking" won't cut it in a film like this, I don't think.
Probably the battle bit. And even then it was kind of confusing. And really not long enough.
Production values: All right. Battles, costumes, deserts. 5
Dialogue and performances: Hmmm. Leads cast for looks. Djimon Hounsou does the best he can with, basically, Tonto. 15
Plot and execution: Jumbled. 15
Randomness: High; a lot of stuff happens, all right, but not all of it with much in the way of motivation. 16
Waste of potential: Obviously people liked the novel. And one or more of the previous filmed attempts. No excuse. 15
Reviewed by Simon Drake
Directed by Kazuho Mitsota
Starring Hideaki Nitani, Naoko Kobo and Hiroshi Ninami
“Space age narco agents in underwater bust”
Ace mountaineer/cartographer Harold Atari is captured by
an evil criminal organisation called “Q” so the U.N call in the help of Mighty
Jack to find him and bring him in. Mighty Jack is a six person team lead by the
lethargic Colonel Yabuki and his band of hapless idiots that traverse the globe
in their flying submarine (which is indeed yellow!) battling against
cat-stroking supervillains with maniacal laughs.
Harold Atari is taken to a tropical island where he’s locked
in a room with a wooden door guarded by one inept hench-idiot and tortured with
a sunbed by a cat-stroking supervillain who’s quite fond of extreme close ups
whilst laughing maniacally. After Atari confesses after three seconds of intense
tanning he finds that there’s a radio transmitter/tracking device in his shoe
given to him by Mighty Jack (although they only gave him a jacket in the
flashback…and didn’t even tell him about the gizmo hidden within!) and triggers
it. This leads Mighty Jack to him and despite the one guard and balsa wood
doors, Jerry, the hapless womanising Mighty Jack spy gets captured anyway and is
subsequently rescued by Captain Roger. Jerry is sent back to the sub for being a
complete prat thereby leaving it up to Roger and Atari to shoot up a computer
bank for some reason. Then they all fly off, blow up a random flying machine
that’s following them “Take that CNN!”…Then do a U-turn and blow up the island.
It turns out Harold Atari is in fact a Commander and is now in charge of Mighty
Jack.
Now as if that wasn’t confusing enough, the storyline
suddenly changes to a completely different plot leading me to believe the
producers simply (and rather badly) edited together two episodes. The second
plot is about a crazed evil German called Fritz Von Mueller who has a molecular
altering dashboard mounted gun that can turn anything into ice. So obviously the
first place he uses his ice forming superweapon on is a base in…erm…the
Antarctic. Because, you know…there’s not much ice and erm…he’s evil you see.
Anyway after several boring and thoroughly confusing scenes
involving French folk singer politicians and double crossing travel writers it
all ends with Hans shagging a suitcase until it blows up and kills him (no
really!), an exploding underground lair and then the cat seems to shoot the
supervillain.
As you can probably guess from the plot synopsis it’s a
James Bond rip off from Japan that makes bugger all sense. The acting is in the
‘Joey from Friends’ calibre which is obvious even before the lame dubbing, and
the characters are the worst kind of stereotype; hapless womaniser, smooth spy,
evil German called Fritz…and the old classic, the cat stroking übervillain.
The model effects footage look as if they are swept up from
the editing room floor after the Stingray team had disregarded them as being too
unrealistic. As for the groovy 60’s music, however cool Theremins sound they are
completely inappropriate for your average action rescue scenes…that also goes
for ukuleles used to score submarine skirmishes.
It’s kind of a laugh to watch, especially if you’ve seen Austin Powers. However it’s pretty painful filmmaking.
Just really, really bizarre.
Probably the ‘aqua team’ rescue…which is in fact two scuba Action Men in a bath.
Production Values – This is what you get when you have a stack of old Gerry Andersen stock footage, a couple of spaceship corridors and some shiny costumes. And then get the Beach Boys to do the soundtrack. 19
Dialogue and performance – As it’s dubbed, the dialogue could have started out completely different but this version is really poor, all Bondian spy talk and Star Trek techno speak. The acting is lame, with hilarious dramatic pauses and British dubbing. 17
Plot and execution – Lazy eyed psycho trying to take over the world from his underground lair, by way of the most confusing convoluted route know by cartographers. Directed in much the same way. 18
Randomness – Killer cats, exploding secretaries, flying submarines…It’s like Monty Python making a James Bond film with a ukulele. 20
Waste of potential – The best Japanese Bond film about a crime solving unit in a flying submarine I’ve ever seen. I just hope Mike Myers has watched it. 11
*
"Prepare for the end."
Directed by Peter Hyams
Starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, Gabriel Byrne, Robin Tunney and Kevin Pollack
BMM Keywords: So bad it's good, Jesuit commandos, 'Did I mention I'm evil?'
A girl born under the sign of the Occulus Dei (Eye of God)
is prophesied to be the chosen bride of Satan, mother of the antichrist, blah,
blah, blah. While the Vatican debates whether to try and save her or kill her,
the international Satanic conspiracy are all over this business like ugly on an
iguana, setting one of their own as the midwife and consecrating the kid to the
Dark One within minutes of birth.
Twenty-some years on, on the eve of the millennium, young
Christine York (Tunney) is plagued by visions, and a Wall Street broker (Byrne)
gets possessed by an invisible angel and goes strange. Now the devil incarnate,
he goes forth to gather his minions, get laid and claim his bride in the hour
before midnight on New Year's Eve.
Enter Jericho Caine (Schwarzenegger), suicidal but
still-mighty ex-cop turned bodyguard and his sidekick, Chicago (Pollack).
Hired to protect the broker, Caine's day goes weird when a priest named
Thomas Aquinas takes a shot at his principal. Pursuing the case for no reason whatsoever
- especially since the principal has already gone missing - and hampering police investigation in the meanwhile, Caine tracks down Christine
and saves her from a pack of Renegade Vatican Masonic Ninja Jesuits.
There follows a series of Satanic shenanigans in which Caine
repeatedly refuses to accept that his puny mortal weapons have no effect on the
Devil. He resists the temptation to hand over the girl in exchange for his
murdered family's restoration, but is suckered when his detonated buddy appears
miraculously unscathed and thus gets himself crucified.
Recovering very quickly, Caine takes out a temple full of
Satanists with heavy weapons, blows up the Devil's host body and faces his true
form down in a church. The Devil possesses Caine, but by asking God to give him
strength Caine is able to throw himself on the incredibly sharp sword held by a
statue of St Michael just at the storke of midnight. As he dies, he sees his
family beckon to him.
Aww.
End of Days' main problem is its sheer, unutterable
stupidity. The plot hinges on everybody, from the Pope to the head Satanist to
Jericho Caine being a big dummy. The Vatican, despite vast funds and an
international organisation, are way behind in this game. The Satanists, despite
years of preparation and a massive head start, can't complete the relatively
simple assignment of getting one girl to the right place at the right time. Even
the Devil, despite having all the moves, can't score.
I guess part of the Satanists' problem is that they're too
busy being gratuitously evil - seducing children, corrupting justice and
generally doing the metaphysical equivalent of pissing in the font - to have any
really good contingency plans, such as say escape tunnels. It's also never
explained why - for example - since they've been raising Christine throughout
her period of moral education, they didn't just teach her that she was the
predestined bride of Satan and Queen of the World. Even if she had to be some
kind of innocent, you'd think they could have worked it so Satan rescued her
from the Renegade Vatican Masonic Ninja Jesuits, after which he'd be in like
Flynn.
Oh, and the whole 666=1999 was a hoot.
In a word, the usual suspects. Byrne and Pollack are the
real top billers here, but the supporting cast is wonderfully sincere and even
Arnie comes off well. The acting here is really very good, so it's just a shame
the script is so very, very stupid.
The effects are also pretty good, with the highlight being
the Devil as a floaty, invisible angel and the nadir the Devil as unconvincing
horn-ed beasty.
And did we mention: Renegade Vatican Masonic Ninja Jesuits?
Well, to be fair this was one of the real gems of the pre- and immediately post-millennial boom of 'Book of Revelations' Y2K movies. Now, in part this is because all the rest were so appalling, but End of Days rattles on at a cracking pace, never seems to take itself too seriously, and besides; where else can you see Miriam Margolyes beating the tar out of Schwarzenegger?
The clergy explain to Jericho that in dreams numbers often
appear upside down and back to front, so that the Number of the Beast, 666,
actually refers to the year of his release; 1999.
Apparently numbers in dreams also miss off the '1'.
Alternatively the Renegade Vatican Masonic Ninja Jesuits
busting into Christine's house to kill her and insisting on giving her the Last
Rites first.
Production values - Top-notch, with the exception of the crappy devil at the end there. Almost scrapes in very low indeed, but there's just that element of naffness which can't be ignored. 6
Dialogue and performances - A number of rather talented people - and Rod Steiger - give it their all in this movie, acting their little hearts out, bless their cotton socks. Even Arnie can be seen - once or twice - to emote. Sadly, the script isn't quite up to this standard, but it's better than your standard action flick fare, and at least Arnie doesn't dispatch Satan with a corny kiss-off line. "Hey Satan; go to Hell!" 9
Plot and execution - Oof. What gives here? The plot is a flimsy tissue held together by coincidence and rank stupidity on the part of pretty much all concerned. Still, the direction maintains a certain pace. 14
Randomness - Remember how I said the plot is held together by coincidence? Well, there's your randomness. Plus, if Renegade Vatican Masonic Ninja Jesuits aren't random, I don't know what is. 16
Waste of potential - As noted, one of the very best apocalyptic action thrillers of its time. If only they'd given it a little thought. 7