Andytaken Reviews

Carter (2022)

Couldn't finish it.

[3/10 · 27 October 2022]

It looked an interesting film, and I'm quite a fan of Korean cinema so sat down to give it a watch. After a few minutes I was thinking "hmmm this director has used ALL the angles they learned at college." 15minutes later I gathered they was going for a "One shot" movie but holy S#%t the cuts and use of drone/cgi was extremely gratuitous.

So it's a John Wick or Hardcore-esque action flick with some virus nonsense side plot, however you see from the very first fight the main character is involved in that he is NEVER in danger, The opening fight scene is "Carter" naked fighting circa 30-60 gangsters with bladed weapons and not a single cut on him, additionally they had him down as a CIA agent and I think they got CIA agent mixed up with like the elite of the elite soldiers. The other CIA agents that have clear shots at him from 10meters away miss wildly and so I can only guess they didn't get the same training.

I tried to soldier on through with the movie, accepting that this is the style they are going for and the hero is godlike but there was nothing to enjoy from the movie so I ended up having to turn it off.

The editing is in the fashion of a one shot but changes angles so often it almost feels like "Taken" or "Bourne Identity" levels of incoherence.

The Pentaverate (2022)

Austin Powers it ain't!

[4/10 · 8 May 2022]

This is like if someone told the jokes of Austin Powers to one person, and then that person told them same jokes to someone else and that person then tried to write said jokes. This is borderline painful to watch at points and mildly inoffensive at others.

As someone that enjoyed the majority of what Mike Myers has done before I can honestly say this is very subpar.

I found that the more enjoyable parts were without Mike Myers and he is unfortunately 90% of the show. The story is rushed, absurd(not necessarily a bad thing) and seriously lacking in structure. There are attempts at world building then they just skip ahead of half of it Key creates a fix for global warming and it's never spoken of again or acknowledged.

Comedy is subjective and so some may find this amusing but those claiming it's a 1 or its a 10 are just over the top. This is not a 10 not even close on a subjective level and it's not the worst thing you'll ever see.

There is an air of Pratchian to this story especially in the intro dialogue where it feels very Discoworld-esque inspired but even fails that outside of the intro.

Positives - The interesting cameo's of the other stars (though most of them pretty much play themselves). I would have liked to see more of Keys character and story line.

Negatives - Keegan Key and Ken Jeong as basically Keegan Key and ken Jeong in most roles they've ever done.

Story is rushed Story had potential but it was like that had to submit it in one night Vast majority of the jokes are toilet humour and flat ones at that.

The 3rd wall breaking done is too on the nose.

The biggest disappointment is that there was a decent premise here for a longer series.

Bleeding Steel (2017)

As a JC Fan it hurts me how bad this movie is.

[2/10 · 7 January 2020]

Let me start by stating I'm a life long Jackie Chan fan and have watched all of his films even bit part and cameo appearances over the course of 30 years and as a rule would usually not have a bad word said about him or his films. However...

Like someone else had put in a review I actually came here half way through the film to check how this was being received as I was honestly struggling to get through the film.

***Mild spoiler*** The film starts with a standard plot a cop(special agent), dying daughter, opening exaggerated shoot out scene with some power ranger style bad guy which is where it introduces you to the Sci-Fi element of the film if you want to call it that. That was the first 15 mins and you'll see JC again for a brief fight scene about 10 minutes later and not again until an HOUR into the movie! This film has an awful plot and terrible dialogue so bad that it would make your budget look Oscar worthy in comparison. Even the humour which doesn't actually come from our hero is like kids show level. The twists are so obvious it's not worth calling them twists.

Now as I mentioned I'm a huge JC fan, I love the man and his movies but I can admit he has some weak films with weak plots and sub-par acting however JC can generally carry those film due to his humour, action and general likeability. another questionable choice is the sound design, I get dubbing the Mandarin speaking actors but some of the English actors were even dubbed. Simply every aspect of the film feels so cheap. Jackie has spent decades displaying the right way to film action especially fight scenes and Leo Zhang decided to forego that process and go for generic shaky/slow-mo shots. I won't even go in to the CGI just know that they even CGI'd in a photograph and that didn't even look realistic.

I came here at the middle of the film frustrated at how bad the film was and i'm now at the end of the film just disappointed JC put his name to this. If you love Jackie like most of us do then do yourself a favour and skip this, once a classic of his instead.