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Reviews
Bad Boys II (2003)
Execrable
Where to start?
I knew this film was going to be silly. That's what I liked about the first one. A Buddy-Buddy film like Lethal Weapon but younger and cooler.
Bad Boys 2 though... is a stinking pile of s***e. Not just bad but awful. I didn't expect a plot but between the explosions, enough ammo to take care of the whole of Miami and the motherf***in' whining of the leads there wasn't a shred of plot. Not a bit. If the plot was a coat moths would starve on it.
This is not to say that it is just the plot that stinks, oh no I could cope with that, the effects were just pointless. They are no longer about the film but about effects crews trying to compete in some gore\explosion pissing competition. The Matrix Reloaded had car chase. People were impressed. So BB2 had to have a car chase. On this one has to be bigger. Will Smith is going to drive his Ferrari between cars that a being throw from the back of a transport. Why? Because they can. Because I'm supposed to be awed by this. Has anybody who works on these films ever seen a REAL car chase? I guess not.
Hang on though, in this film ONE car chase is not enough. But this time what can we do to freshen it a little make it more exciting? I KNOW let's have them chase a van with corpses in it which then slide out of the back of said van and Will just runs over them! One comically has her head roll away! Oh my aching sides how good is that? Answer? It's not. It's tragic. Why bother having an exciting chase a la Ronin when you can just have wide open roads and throw obstacles in the way instead?
What else? Ah yes, the gun fights! Ammo, loud bangs, Will and Martin roll around a bit and the only time when one of them gets hit is when it's 'funny' to do so. I realise that they are the stars but when things get ramped up this far then it goes beyond the point where you can suspend your belief and just becomes plain stupid.
Three names that are in this film should have warned me. I didn't think I should have know. Don Simpson\Jerry Bruckheimer Productions and Michael Bay. *Shakes head* I just should have learnt by now. Don Simpson is dead and he's still getting credit for execrable s***e. Poor sod.
Don't go to this film. If a Black Hole opened up in my garden tomorrow it wouldn't suck as much as this movie.
X2 (2003)
The series has evolved...
After the character establishment that was the first movie now comes the serious work of getting down to the nitty gritty.
Without a doubt the casting of Alan Cumming as Nightcrawler was spot on. He vies with Wolverine as who is going to steal each scene the most. I thought Wolverine was great in the first one and that nobody could capture their character so well (though most of the others do a bloody good job too) but along comes Cumming and knocks me for six!
Not a bad story, though Marvel purists will notice that they have taken liberties with certain characters (but then, don't we always? ;-) ). But even as somebody who can spot these admittedly geeky flaws (or maybe not flaws per se but shall we say, continuity lapses), I was blown away.
I can't imagine them not doing an X3 but with such a cast on-board it's going to be tough to get them all together again, especially when somebody like Rebecca Romjin-Stamos admitted she didn't want to do it because of the make-up but had to because she had signed a contract. In the end I think she admitted that she enjoyed it, if only because Cumming had to suffer too and misery loves company.
I doubt she would do another if she doesn't have to. Which would be a shame but not the end of the world.
All in all a great action film and still the undisputed champion of Comic-to-film conversions.
Die Another Day (2002)
Ah, Mr Bond!
It's a James Bond film, what exactly are you expecting?
Big explosions? Check
Beautiful women? Check (Pike is even nicer than Berry!)
A car to die for? Check - It's an Aston Martin!
The plot is pure Bond with baddies that are bigger than life and madder than a hatter. Bond is as hard as nails but also cool too. Toby Stephens, despite being the youngest actor to play a Bond baddie is top notch and as for an ex-CK model Rick Yune, he is shaping up nicely as an actor with his playing of Zao.
So is it perfect? No.
There one or two dodgy SFX and Madonna's theme is crap in the extreme. Her cameo is pointless too. There is no film on the planet she can't cheapen.
But on the plus side John Cleese is a great 'Q' and the humour is much better than recent outings.
It's Bond, what are you expecting? Just enjoy it.
S1m0ne (2002)
Utter Tosh
It's quite obvious that somebody at a studio was think about his\her new film and decided that it would be much easier if they could just magic up a new star rather than pay an existing one.
This must have been the thought that brought this utter crap of a film to our screens. A wafer thin concept on which was hung one of the worst movies ever. It was overly sentimental; it was full of poor technology and barely qualifies as a satire because frankly it would be an insult to satirist to consider it one.
Pacino spends the whole time running around looking dishevelled holding his head (probably wondering how he got there and what sort of damage this is going to do to his reputation). Somehow we are supposed to accept that people love this person that he has created (with half a hard disk and no computer knowledge whatsoever) so much that they ignore the quite obvious fact that she is not real. It's infuriatingly bad. Oh and naturally, the pre-pubescent teen daughter can recover the work of genius of whom it took years to create. With a couple of keystrokes. How do we know this? Because virtually every time we see here she is using a laptop. Oh of course! It's so obvious.
Jason Schwartzman was wasted. Rachael Richards (or Anna Green or whatever she is calling herself now) on the other hand, is perfect as S1m0ne a vacuous mannequin with no talent without somebody to operate her. Life imitating art can be so spooky.
This is a truly an awful movie and urge everybody to avoid this like the plague.