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shonwynlewis
Reviews
Phantom Force (2004)
Can I have my hour back please?
Now this is a weird film! I've never before seen a made-for-TV movie give me two distinctly different experiences. For starters, the good...
The special effects are, as stated above, not just decent, they're pretty damn good! Especially the underwater sub sequences which are quite believable, and the spectral look of the main sub was nothing short of excellent. Which leads me to think the production values couldn't have been that bad if they'd spent so much on getting the effects just right.
The story as well was full of potential, which kept me tuned in for just about an hour to see how it would pan out. The premise kept me intrigued as it reminded me of a few similar movies, mostly Event Horizon.
...Oh God how I wished I WAS watching Event Horizon by the 55th minute! Whilst that is dark and brooding, this is light and fluffy - yes even the apparently gory scenes! The bit in the medilab was hilarious, after the apparently gruesome death the ex-cop came in and immediately said "no clear spot in the blood splatter, he was alone!" - Christ why isn't she on CSI? They'd solve their cases in a 30 minute slot instead! The opening sequence introducing Grieco was, almost without doubt, the biggest load of God-awful crap I've ever witnessed. For a moody, troubled, hard-as-nails, all-action hero he didn't half resemble a good solid piece of timber (make-up, mannerisms and dialogue!). The bad guy wasn't much better "put ze vomen in front of ze door" he says meanacingly in a dubbed fashion in front of the wobbly red immovable 10" thick steel door, 'oh God NO!' we scream, until we realise they go there fairly eagerly...and there's only three of them - actually there's only five hostages in total!! But glory of glories the special forces arrive, standing 3-4 feet behind the cardboardy-steel red tubes for cover, shooting from the hip with their magic bullets, you know, the ones that hit the bad guys in the shoulder and they die instantly! But I persevered and the following bit with the debriefing wasn't half-bad acted, and introduced the intriguing storyline quite well.
However, the character introductions were all over the place, they recruit the geek in the style of the movie S.W.A.T., then you expect to see the remainder of the crew introduced in the same fashion (a bit formulaic but whatever works!), which I'm sure was the scriptwriter's intension until he realised he'd spent too much time setting up the geek the blonde and Grieco. Hence the cringeworthy boardroom scene where the boss points at the 3 other new faces and basically says "oh yeah, you're also taking him, him and her with you!"...ridiculous considering the other 'her' was a fairly integral character due to her past experiences with 'bad mojo'.
After about an hour I noticed that the story wasn't exactly moving that much, they'd been on the sub for about 20 minutes and were in the process of fighting back a medieval horde with their hi-tec (or hi-tat!)plastic, made in Taiwan guns, but hadn't made any actual progress whatsoever, except emotionally between the two girls! There was no feeling of urgency at all, and there was a distinct feeling of 'cleanliness' and a severe lack of bodies around considering that the entire crew of 38 had apparently been massacred.
I've just lost an hour of my life to this film due to it's promising nature, which is what's so disappointing - it's OK if a movie's basically crap, you can just switch off, but this one promised to get going so many times but ultimately let me down through poor direction choices, wooden acting by the leads, and a terrible, terrible dialogue! In conclusion, don't watch this on a Saturday night, you'll cry as you'd have missed a night out on the town for it! Try a Monday or Tuesday night so you won't feel so bad about it! Promising movie, fairly good storyline, excellent special effects let down by a dodgy cast, direction and script. It may not have been the most expensive thing ever made, but judging by the high standard of the special effects, they had enough money available to have produced a much better quality product than what eventually materialised...by all means watch it, but it's your funeral!
War of the Worlds (2005)
A bit dodgy
Having really looked forward to this movie I must admit that it was simply a disappointment. Looking back after a few days of contemplation now, not as bad as I originally thought immediately after seeing it, but still a movie with a few major flaws and lazy scripting.
The problem here was that the 'family' storyline was just there to connect the action bits together, whereas Spielberg's intention was to make this a humanist story, so it should have been the most integral part of the film but you simply didn't care whether Cruise's character got wiped out or not! No real time was given to explore the characters, just present the basic situation and then 'bring on the aliens', it just felt so rushed, there was actually more character development in Independence Day!! Add to that his son's poorly explained disappearance over a hill into oblivion and his ridiculous reappearance at the end of the film (probably because it was essential that the next scene only featured Cruise and his daughter).
Rather than write a proper reason for their separation they gave Cruise a poorly thought out moral dilemma, let the son go and fight the aliens or let strangers take his daughter to safety!! The story was supposed to be an explanation of Cruise and his kids bonding as the journey progressed, however none of this happened - he never really got closer to either of them. And the payoff at the end when he 'triumphantly' arrived at his ex wife's parents' immaculately untouched doorstep was extremely poor! ...Another thing that bugged me as well, the aliens planted the machines under the earth even before mankind evolved. And as numerous characters throughout the film said, "They've been planning this extermination all along". But why would they plant the machines here to exterminate us later on when they didn't know we were going to be here in the first place...because the human race didn't exist yet!!! You see?? Stupid! Excellent special effects though!