Home » Movies

Movies

District 13: Ultimatum
By Scott Mendelson

The original District 13 was not a particularly great movie, but it was a true original and had much to admire. It contained a doozy of a first act, style to spare, and a genuinely angry political subtext at its core. Much of the film's appeal came from its use of 'parkour', a martial art form that stressed evasive action via adapting one's body to the environment. In practice, it gave way to several scenes of stars David Belle (the creator of parkour) and Cyril Raffaelli hopping off walls, flying through open holes, and contorting themselves in any which way in order to save the proverbial day. While the film inexplicably put its two major action scenes in the first act of the picture, the remainder of the film got by on slimy villains and its grimy depiction of a nearly apocalyptic French ghetto. Unfortunately, this sequel coasts by on even less than that, as the villains are bland, quirky supporting characters are non-existent, and the action scenes are surprisingly lacking, both in quantity and quality.

A token amount of plot - Two years after the events of the first film, the government's promise to reform District 13 and retake it from the ruling drug gangs has been hollow at best. Corrupt officials are attempting to use the unrest as an excuse to demolish the area and allow the private corporation Harriburton to rebuild, allowing both sides to profit handsomely. When an apparent execution of several police officers by drug-lords is caught on film, riots break out between the police and the local residents. Before hero cop Damien Tomosso (Cyril Raffaelli) can even become suspicious, he is framed on a bogus drug charge and forced to call in the aid of the vigilante Leito (David Belle). Can the two enemies turned partners reunite and save the district from complete demolition?

While the details are a little different, you'll notice that the core narrative of District 13: Ultimatum is basically the same as the first picture. Once again runner Leito and fighter Tomasso must team up and prevent government forces from blowing up the crime-stricken projects. Once again corrupt politicians decide to simply nuke the place and start over rather than attempt to bring reform to the blighted community. The real-world politics at play are as front-and-center as the last film, and the Iraq occupation is even explicitly mentioned this time around. There are certainly parallels to the destruction and attempted renovation of New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina as well, but that particular parable is left unstated. The only real twist in the story is the addition of a noble French president who caves in to his corrupt advisers at the first sign of trouble. Whether intentional or not, Philippe Torreton's idealistic but seemingly weak French president will certainly strike a chord with progressives currently disappointed with the Bush/Cheney-like policies of US President Barack Obama.

While the film's politics are certainly noteworthy, most audience members will not be viewing District 13: Ultimatum for a lesson in leftist disappointment at the state of world affairs. Unfortunately, the action beats in this sequel are shockingly flat and mainly unexciting. While the first film opened with a stunning foot chase that left audiences in awe (which was copied almost beat for beat in the pilot episode of Chuck), this sequel opens with a half-hearted jog. While the first film ended its first act with an incredible fight scene/shoot-out in a casino, this film ends its first act with a bland retread where Tomasso again leads a sting that leads to a mass arrest that leads to a major fight scene. But the pace is languid and the choreography is completely uninspired (the main gimmick, involving the protection of a priceless painting, has been done in several Jackie Chan pictures). Unlike many sequels that copy the original but improve upon the set-pieces, the action scenes in this second chapter are actually less impressive and less exciting than the first film. While individual stunts are occasionally impressive, a distressing majority of the action scenes are basically either Leito running in a straight line (on the ground) from villains or Tomasso walking around beating up nameless henchmen or fellow police officers. There is a bit more action overall in this chapter (the first film basically climaxed at the forty-five minute mark), the quality is below the original District 13.

When a film that is built upon the promise of world-class stunt work and eye-popping action scenes fails to deliver on both counts, it's tough to recommend the picture on any real level. Fans of the first film will certainly get some amusement out of seeing the two stars back in action (no one else from the first film returns) and the politically-inclined will enjoy seeing their frustrations played out in a somewhat mainstream entertainment, the movie is a disappointing in the core areas that justifies its existence. Ironically, it opens in limited theatrical release on the same day as the wide release of From Paris With Love, which is directed by the original District 13's helmer, Pierre Morel. We can only hope that the world of French action films do not disappoint twice in one day.

Grade C

'THE WOLFMAN'
SITTING THROUGH THIS IS A CURSE
By Sean Chavel

After The Wolfman you would very much start to think that a full moon was every night, night after night, or that a screenplay can mandate sun and moon cycles as it pleases. But that is just one of many, many mistakes that this latest creature feature makes. It is far less crucial to its failure than its inability to make you concerned about its characters.
This is a movie where Benicio del Toro ("Traffic") and Anthony Hopkins ("Meet Joe Black") play father and son Talbot, both infected in one time or another; with… let's just say a curse. They inhabit England in the late 1800's, with dad the head of a castle manor that hasn't been swept on the inside since the birth of mops and brooms. Somebody hire a professional leaf blower.

But enough about housekeeping. How about the awful film editing? And I rarely say anything about film editing. The editing is so poorly arranged that in one scene I could not tell whether Hopkins was locking in or locking out del Toro from the perils of the night. The editing is so poorly punctuated that when del Toro has "visions" it is right out of a Japanese horror movie. The editing is so poorly executed that the final duel between beasts is a haphazard mess where we can't tell who is shredding who.

In this sunless world that the movie portrays the one luminary is Emily Blunt who as the love interest is more astute at reading the torn behavioral cycles of del Toro than anyone else is. Blunt is one of these beauties that sees the inner beauty in others. The larger secondary cast are disposable and featureless personalities, with the exception of Hugo Weaving ("The Matrix") as the detective who speaks his lines as if he knows he is the only one who could really be in charge.

Front and center, del Toro is a classic mumbler but that doesn't begin to explain why he is so dull. The problem is with this leviathan actor is that he is only threatening when he plays an all-out madman with no soul (see "The Hunted"), but when he attempts pathos and sensitivity in a torn character he is not sterling nor compelling. Hopkins blabbers on with pseudo-intellectual diatribes, dispersing rhetoric with no rhythm or cadence, and the result is observing a thespian actor putting on a lazy performance.

Action and scares are inauthentic because we hear a manufactured ripping sound on the soundtrack while the wolfman raises his paws. That's right, he mostly just lifts his paws up and down, and then you see blood squirt everywhere. You would think that his claws were made of buzzsaws. More story and technical hooey: When Hopkins' manor catches on fire he appears non-chalant about it all as if he predicts the outcome within a couple of minutes won't make the slightest difference.

The only thing that keeps this film from being a complete disaster is the fact that the photographic effects of shadows and fog, as implemented in scenes both of forest and city cobblestone, are rather nifty. That's something, because the make-up effects (by Rick Baker no less) are not even that nifty. The Talbot transformation to wolfman is done well and more than adequately so, but come on, it's nothing new.

'VALENTINE'S DAY'
FEELS LIKE A RASH
By Sean Chavel

Right off the bat the problem with Valentine's Day, other than there are too many characters than the film can handle, is that there seems to be more storylines of jilted love than there are stories of actual love running through its intersections. Talk about traffic overload. In a movie loaded with stars, you stop counting smooches and start counting how many limited minutes each actor has in the film.

For the guys, Ashton Kutcher seems to be running through most of the intersections - popping in and out of other member's storylines - perhaps because he is the supreme florist of Los Angeles and on Valentine's Day everybody needs flowers. If Kutcher is the coach, then the guys on the bench include Bradley Cooper, Eric Dane, Patrick Dempsey, Hector Elizondo, Jamie Foxx, Topher Grace, Taylor Lautner, and George Lopez. Watch out - one of these guys is an irredeemable slimeball (I guessed right within four and a half minutes into the film). And then one of these actors makes a surprise coming out announcement that he is gay. Somehow this kind of announcement is becoming obligatory in large-ensemble romantic comedies.

For the pink team, Kathy Bates never once gets a Valentine but she's definitely a coach for at least two characters. On the bench the roster includes Jessica Alba, Jessica Biel, Jennifer Garner, Anne Hathaway, Queen Latifah, Shirley MacLaine, Emma Roberts, Julia Roberts and Taylor Swift as an airhead. I am not criticizing Swift in her acting debut, she's really playing an airhead. That is not contestable. The rest of these girls are playing hopeless romantics, commitment-phobes or possess some kind of reputation-affecting secret - one of them for instance is an adult phone sex operator who speaks in lots of pseudo-sexy crooked accents.

There are no milestones in this rather cookie-cutter romantic comedy that just happens to be a bigger, puffier cookie made without any magical addicting ingredients. Except that one character must set a record for fastest roundtrip flight from Los Angeles to San Francisco and back again in order to spite a cheater in the nick of time. Bradley Cooper and Julia Roberts must have both underwent Hollywood's easiest film shoot with their participation, playing seatmates on an airplane. Then you have a competition as to whether any of the girls are more neurotic than Topher Grace. But I see here that this is no longer a discussion about milestones.

As if the standard generic story treatment for an all-star cast isn't enough of a letdown, how about further lousy news that Los Angeles seems to have been photographed through a smog filter. Romantic comedies should be photographed in bright and glossy colors, and in not in such the muggy processed look that this film has been given.

Still the Cupid inside me wants to go out of the way to give out MVP honors to Jamie Foxx as the coolest dude in the cast this time playing a TV reporter, and Jennifer Garner as a Miss Old-Fashioned type looking very adorable as a grade school teacher. But let's get to some generic and bland audience demographics. The girls will enjoy this film certainly more than the boys who will want to go off and watch sports somewhere. Let's just not compare this to the ultimate Valentine-ensemble "Love Actually" (2003). That's a movie for everybody.

Must-See Star Turns at the Geffen Theatre
By Gerry Furth-Sides

The new Geffen Theatre season has two worthy plays for audiences to see. Steel on a wire, actor Ed Harris with his unnerving ice blue eyes and chilled voice is powerful and magnetic on the screen. So imagine him talking to you in person. Well, don't imagine, just go to see him in writer-director Neil LaBute's revised Wrecks. Attending the colloquy after a performance in the intimate theatre and he confirms to your face that he was "looking to you and others in the audience for a reaction."

To say this intense experience is captivating is an understatement, and at times it subdues the humor of the show, as Harris laments. In it, brand new widower, Ed, coffin in view, tells the story in an 80-minute monologue about his wonderful but complicated marriage, which he labels "a love story." And that it is, indeed, a love story with a twist at the end that leaves the audience gasping and that afterward demands examination for the clues leading up to it.

Harris is mind-boggling, from the moment he comes out, cigarette in hand, and comments naturally, as he checks in with the audience, "it's just so hard to quit." So it was astonishing when Harris comments about LaBute's writing, "easy to hear but hard to say." A former star athlete, Harris is marvelous when he prances around, mimicking a housewife carrying in a casserole or falling- splat- on his back regaling us with a story about a fight.
The play is a reminder that Harris, ever the intelligent individualistic whether playing, John Glenn in The Right Stuff or the painter, Pollock, or the zany cowboy in Fools for Love, has such depth and wonderful sense of humor and masculinity that he illuminates the stage or screen in a sensual and appealing way It is why even his smaller movies are memorable, whether Milk Money or Empire Falls.

LaBute describes the slyly devoted husband of Wreck best when he praises Harris's "coiled performance" as a man with "a fury in him."

The second play showing at the Geffen celebrates Margot Mason. Margot has always been a commanding name among characters (think Bette Davis in All About Eve) and in the Geffen main theatre, and Annette Bening takes charge at Margot Mason, power house feminist writer with writer's block, and who starts off the evening in her pretty country retreat with an expletive. The audience roars, and it never gets quiet after that in Joanna Murray-Smith's The Female of the Specie, ably directed by Randall Arney, until the curtain comes down.

Within minutes nonconformist instructor, Molly Rivers (Marritt Wever), walks onstage, gun in hand to turn Margot's world upside down, just as the author had turned her life inside out by influencing her mother to commit suicide clutching one of her books. Oh my, the girl with the gun is the unmistakable annoying underling and curse of the Edie Falco character who store scenes on Showtime's "Nurse Jackie" Showtime last season. Again, is instantaneously recognizable just by her self-deprecating grimace punctuated by clenched lips.

And it gets better after that. Just as Bening begins to make headway defending herself as the bravely righteous and soul-searching if egotistical Mason, in walks her married daughter, Tess, (married and therefore a feminist disappointment), Mireille Enos of Big Love) to side with Molly. Her monologue about walking out on her children brings down the house. So does the macho taxi driver Frank's monologue about his marriage later on.

The ever-strong presence, Julian Sands as Theo, Margot's gay publisher, adds another layer to the plot as his role to Margot's daughter is revealed even as Mason rethinks aloud not only her weaknesses as a writer and mother, but how to get another book out of them.

Again, there's a shock at the end leaves the audience gasping and laughing as the play ends a split second later. Both plays are "must-see." For more information and tickets, visit www.geffenplayhouse.com.

back to top