The Sufficiency of Cute

Posted on February 21, 2012 by tomfortuna

 

“This Means War” is one of those movies that is watchable because the concept and the stars hold so much potential – that not even a disastrous directing job can’t totally screw it up.

Love triangles of course have always worked. And with Reese Witherspoon in the middle of the mix, this battle between two likeable, up and coming male stars, Chris Pine and Tom Hardy, has plenty of character charm that almost overcomes the unfathomable directorial execution. I mean, if Captain Kirk and Batman, our heroes current franchises, can’t have fun tussling over a perky blonde, what’s a director, or a Hollywood movie, worth?

Pine and Hardy are a battling duo of CIA agents who go too far on an undercover assignment as the movie opens. They are exiled to Los Angeles for no apparent reason and have nothing better to do than try to find a woman marry. Enter Reese Witherspoon, a bitter marketing expert who’s just been unceremoniously dumped by the boyfriend she moved to LA to marry, but can’t seem unable not to run into on the street.

Her best friend is Chelsea Handler — who prattles away with a misguided, but oh so wise commentary on married life. Every one of these actors is adept at comedy, and the film does have enough love leery, funny moments, but just barely.

Apparently afraid that absurdity and wit couldn’t carry the day, “This Means War” actually has the two guys go to war over Reese. They know they’re chasing the same woman; she doesn’t. A lot of cat and mouse stuff would have sufficed for action. Instead, they go all creepy with total surveillance of one another’s dating adventures — at CIA’s expense.

With the whole Los Angeles CIA operation dedicated to seeing who Reese would sleep with first, one might think some CIA higher up would catch on and shut all this foolishness down. No, it just goes on and on – until a German terrorist saves the plot from total incredulity. Until his return, the movie actually seems realistic if for no other reason than there was not a manical killer in every other scene.  When he appears again, it all just falls apart. But thankfully the movie’s almost over and you get to cheer when Reese picks her guy. There is no real surprise in this, but you’ll be happy as long as you don’t think about it too much.

Jealousy of course is the most common of movie emotions. We can all relate — because the stakes in play are true love, and everyone’s done dumb things in the name of love. McG, the director, just directs everything like a music video and misses all the nuances of emotion that would make this movie satisfying, and far more funny. When he cuts a scene like an action movie, you repeatedly feel you’d  rather see a love is absurd reaction shot. This happens time and time again.

But then Reese smiles something perky, Chris Pine plays Don Juan, and Tom Hardy pouts like a lovelorn romantic.  Hollywood usually provides some sort of romantic comedy around Valentine’s Day, and this will suffice. With a better director, it just would have been so much more fun.

 

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Denzel’s Always a Safe Bet

Posted on February 20, 2012 by tomfortuna

“Safe House” with Denzel Washington and Ryan Reynolds is a safe bet for good, spy thriller entertainment. Denzel’s been on a recent roll with movies about positive heroes in “The Book of Eli,” “Unstoppable,” and “The Taking of Pelham 1-2-3.” He’s stepped away from the ultimate evil of “Training Day” and given us all something to cheer about.

Denzel Washington’s character here, “Tobin Frost,” is a rouge CIA agent on a mission to expose malfeasance that corrupts apparently every spy agency across the globe. He’s been underground for ten years, but he’s forced to enter a U.S. Embassy in South Africa in order to save himself from bad guys who want to keep the evildoers within the agencies safe.

Ryan Reynolds plays a new CIA agent in charge of the safe house to which Denzel is sent for interrogation. Reynolds is bored with his lonely assignment and has fallen in love with a beautiful French woman studying in South Africa. When Denzel shows up and CIA agents begin to interrogate him about his activities during his lost years, the bad guys who forced Denzel into the embassy show up and mow down the interrogation team. Reynolds escapes with Denzel, determined to keep him in CIA control.

Denzel of course just wants to escape from Reynolds and go underground again. Back at the CIA’s Langely headquarters, everyone knows there must be a betrayer in their midst, or the bad guys wouldn’t have shown up at the safe house.  Thereby begins the usual CIA cat and mouse paranoia game well played by Sam Shephard, Vera Farmiga and Brendan Gleeson. The fact that the ultimate villain is within the CIA itself is standard espionage movie plot these days, but at least we have three well acted characters to choose from before the ultimate acts of betrayal give the true villain away.

With Denzel and Reynolds entertainingly on the run as they try to reach another safe house, we enter standard “Training Day” territory as well – except with a twist. Denzel isn’t trying to show Reynolds how to be bad here, he’s trying to show him how to maintain his integrity and not lose his soul. This character arc actually plays out rather effectively – as Reynolds goes from untested careerist to good hearted action hero killing machine. This transformation might be a little slow by comic book action standards, but some warm and interesting moments play out between the two stars along the way.

Newcomer director Daniel Espinosa shoots this like a European film which makes it more interesting than it ordinarily might be. Ryan Reynolds struggles to hold his own acting wise against Denzel but he does a credible job as a good hearted guy who expected the CIA to be an up and up operation. A sad part of the casting is Vera Farmiga as a CIA executive. It’s a relatively minor role for a very talented actress who many hope might someday rise to the status of Meryl Streep.

You’ll never be bored during this film unless you’re an unrelenting action junkie: the acting more than papers over the slow spots. And besides, Denzel’s always worth the price of admission.

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The Blotter Test

Posted on February 20, 2012 by tomfortuna

 

“Contraband” is a caper movie for action fans who don’t require much believability and will settle for a good action packed ride in the dark.

 A crucial moment in the movie involves Mark Walhberg, the movie’s good guy/bad guy star, walking right out of the back door of a counterfeit kingpin’s heavily defended lair – right into a drugstore to find a bottle of iodine. Returning through that undefended back door, Walhberg finds the counterfeit bills he’s come to Panama to smuggle not to be of sufficient quality — when he tests the bills with the iodine. And thereby begins a parade of one plot twist after another — until a preposterous fairy tale ending.

Walhberg and the movie make us care about his character– by hitting us over the head about how this is all about family. He used to be a top smuggler in the Port of New Orleans. Now he’s a hard working burglar alarm installer with a beautiful wife, Kate Beckinsale, and two cute kids under five.

Unfortunately, Kate has a younger brother who’s just had to throw a drug kingpin’s cocaine overboard, so as not to be caught by Custom’s agents. The apparent owner of the cocaine, Giovanni Ribisi, wants the street value of the cocaine to be covered, or he will kill Kate’s brother. Wahlberg makes himself responsible for this – even though he and his family might get killed. Most of us would have probably thrown the brother-in-law overboard ourselves. But, as it turns out, Wahlberg’s bored with the good life and seems to want to emulate his father who’s serving hard time.

For Wahlberg, importing counterfeit bills to pay off his brother-in-law’s debt is one thing; importing cocaine is another – or so it seems for a while. Of course, this being a dark crime movie, Walberg’s best friend played by Ben Foster is somehow behind all this. Apparently, he’s gotten over his head with metrosexual remodeling costs of his French Quarter digs — while he’s also been running a Mafia backed freight hauling business. We’ve of course seen all these circles within circles before.

Movies like this live on grimy atmosphere, car chases and gun fights, and New Orleans has never looked quite so bleak. Most of the film occurs on a grim container hauling ship as it plies the waves between Louisiana and Panama, and back again. A good shootout in Panama City shows us what slums are really like as local police with armored vehicles can’t keep Walhberg from completing his mission of mercy. And Wahlberg repeatedly gets to show us how clever his character is – though you’ll probably wonder how such a clever guy has such a dumb brother-in-law and such sleazy friends.

In the end, most of the tension is provided by a comatose Beckinsale – which is probably not the best recommendation for an action movie. By the time a rabbit is pulled out of a hat in the end to provide a happy ending, you’ll have gotten use to the clunky magic tricks that keep this moving along. Now remember the iodine and wonder why no one had used some to disinfect the clichés in the script, and thereby have a script worthy of a real police blotter.

 

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Paranoia Runs Deep

Posted on February 20, 2012 by tomfortuna

 

“Haywire” is another “set up” movie in a recent run of similar films: that is, thrillers where the crime is being committed against the hero — who is being conveniently framed for a crime they didn’t commit, but a crime everyone will believe they could have committed. Don’t expect big explosions here, however, just tough gritty fun. This is what life is probably like to be a modern mercenary, and the picture isn’t very pretty, but it certainly worth a look.

Here, the hero, or more appropriately, the heroine, is “Mallory Kane” played well be a beautiful and physically assured newcomer, Gina Carano. She does her own stunts – which mostly involve karate like fights that you could believably find yourself in if you were a well trained spy.

With the last name of “Kane,” as in “Cain and Abel,” no doubt, Mallory is a natural suspect for betraying her family or friends. Emotionally cold and world weary, she is clearly comfortable with duplicity. She is someone you should be paranoid about. Her duplicity is doubled up as she works for a shadowy mercenary operation working for the government.  And she slept with boss, Ewan McGregor, a while ago, and regrets it now, but not much. She also apparently slept with her most recent partner in crime, Channing Tatum.

She tells this all to her father, Bill Paxton, without blushing. He is an ex-Marine now war correspondent who knows better than to ask too many questions. Michael Douglas might or might not be a respectable government agent; the same goes for Antonio Banderas. When Mallory is offered a chance to go straight  and clear her record, she opts out for revenge against whoever set her up.

We are meant to believe she’s never killed anyone but bad guys, so when she is framed for the murder of a good guy, you’ve got to wonder if anyone really thought this through. But the stellar cast and sure footed direction by Stephen Soderberg never really give you a chance to think about this…much. When you do, it might occur to you that this is another clue regarding the incompetence of the government, or the screenwriters. Whichever’s the case, it’s the kind of flaw that occurs in a not great movie.

“Haywire” gives you too much time to wonder about the issues of trust, or the lack thereof. When she kidnaps a young guy from a café to save her own life, she trusts him – and almost gets him killed. He of course shouldn’t trust her and that hurts the film. You have to wonder why this guy isn’t paranoid.

One suspects this is more about Stephen Soderberg’s life in Hollywood, than real life. Extremely well made in the technical sense, “Haywire” doesn’t try for profundity: it goes for what a cold cruel world this is, and that’s it. It’s January after all, so the film is well placed. And you’ll leave the theater being glad you have an ordinary life, and don’t have to be paranoid all the time.

t

 

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The Edge of Black and White

Posted on February 20, 2012 by tomfortuna

“The Woman in Black” creaks along like two great, classic black and while horror films, “The Rocking Horse Winner” and “Psycho.” In the first, there’s a creaky demented rocking horse: in the second, there’s a creaking rocking chair; both have a woman in black and children in danger.

And while you’ll jump out of your seat two or three times in the just released film, you might very well wish this one were in black and white as well. Many of the best Hitchcock films are black and white: there’s something about how a film without color enters the brain like a nightmare in the making. You put more of your heart and mind into it because it looks strange, and these films get to be spare and still deeply moving. “The Woman in Black” is in dark lush color, however, but it’s just hard to really lose yourself in it as very little happens besides a creaking house and a creaking rocking chair amid the often gruesome images of dead children.

Part of the problem is Daniel Radcliff – otherwise known as Harry Potter. He’s really a good actor, but looking now in his mid-twenties as he moves around the movie’s spooky mansion, he looks like he’s in a sequel to his epic franchise — instead of in a stand-alone movie meant to reintroduce him to audiences. And, truth be told, he probably needs to age about five more years to be taken seriously as a man.

Here he’s brooding over the loss of his young wife in childbirth and has a five year old son. That’s a long time to brood as a young lawyer with a son, and you never really get the sense that the character’s neurotic enough to suffer that much. This creates a big problem, especially with the ending.

With his solicitor job on the line due to his unending grief, he’s sent to the north of England to settle a troubled estate. The town doesn’t want him there, but he insists on going to the creepy mansion on an bogged in island set just off the coast. We soon learn that the town’s children often die because the former mistress of the mansion was betrayed by her sister, and her son was lost due to her neglectful husband. As “a woman scorned” movie, however, this also doesn’t quite stand up either. She never speaks just lurks in shadows. You don’t care for her plight and the children’s deaths seem gratuitous.

Radcliff is befriended by a lugubrious rich guy with an estate. His wife takes dinner knives and carves in the table when her dead son comes up. You can’t help but wonder why they just don’t burn the woman in black’s mansion down. 

This is technically a well done film, and that applies to Radcliff’s performance as well, but maybe this film is just too slick a transition from Harry Potter. For cheap thrill seekers, however, there are several spine tingling moments worth the price of admission, but for a movie about ghosts, there is just no spirit.

 

 

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When the Zoo Comes Home

Posted on February 20, 2012 by tomfortuna

 

“We Bought a Zoo” is a fine family drama that oddly suffers from the same basic flaw as “War Horse.” Both of these this big holiday movies about animals don’t seem to really care about the animals; rather, the furry creatures are used like props for important human tales. This being said, “We Bought a Zoo” is a better family film because it knows how real families work, and doesn’t try to be a profound human statement with a horse who can’t talk. Put another way:  There was genius in “Mr. Ed.”

Matt Damon is the star and dad of “We Bought a Zoo.” He’s packed on a few pounds for this role and actually seems like a real life family hero, not a superhero slumming in softer material.  He’s always good at the romantic roles and here makes a believable husband who’s just lost the love of his life. He has a cute smart talking daughter who looks like she’s seven and talks likes she’s Oprah — and a bitter teenage son thrust into early adulthood who interprets that as an excuse to be an artistic juvenile delinquent.

If all three of those characters seemed clichéd to you, you’ve hit on the problem with this film: you can see every emotional moment coming at you from a mile away, like a lion on the savannah. You’ll have to have a hard heart if you don’t cry, but you’ll no doubt feel more than a little manipulated – just like in “Warhorse.”

To escape his family’s suffering over the death of his wife, Matt Damon reverts to his character as a hard charging journalist – except this time he takes his two kids along. When he decides to buy a new house to chase the memories away, nothing satisfies him until he finds a dilapidated farm house that’s accompanied by a small zoo. If Matt doesn’t buy it, the animals and caretakers will be out of jobs. Boo-hoo, boo-hoo.: he’s glad to set himself up for more pain.

The fact that Scarlett Johansson is the head caretaker poses a problem for the filmmakers however. How could those two not fall in love at first sight? This is a movie after all. So, Damon doesn’t even meet the staff until after he moves in. Sure, yeah, that’s how life works. But at least he doesn’t look like a lonely guy on the make until late in the film. This gives Damon a chance to play a romantic who will never get over the loss of the love of his life – which is another improbability for a guy that handsome.

While his daughter just says cute things laced with wisdom, Damon wars unrelentingly with his teenage son. This is quite effective and becomes the emotional center of the film to good effect. Fathers and sons often act this way and that makes their resolution heartfelt – though overly contrived.

And what about the animals? They are afterthoughts here – except that the father and son bond over a dying tiger who represents their grief hobbled emotional lives. The tigers are just props — like the horse in “Warhorse” is just a prop in an emotional journey that reunites a father and a son.

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Breaking Dawn, Breaking Down

Posted on February 20, 2012 by tomfortuna

“Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn” – Breaking Down

The latest and next to last installment of the “Twilight Saga” is like Thanksgiving without a turkey. If you’re a distant couple back in your hometown for a traditional holiday dinner, you get all the melodrama of the two unlikeable families you only try to see once a year– without the excuse to take a long, tryptophan induced nap when it’s all over, so you can avoid the family bickering.

But you’ll come back next year anyway to see another battle and the “Twilight” finale – because like the heroes here, Bella, Edward and Jacob, you love the concept of undying love so, so much, you’re a glutton for punishment. Let’s all hope and pray, therefore, that the filmmakers decide to give us the respect we deserve and put some meat on the plate next time.

Lest we forget: this is a movie about an unhappy high school senior torn between a vampire and a werewolf. These usually disreputable dates are distinguished in the “Twilight” universe as better than mere humans — because these beasts mate for life. Given that, you’re supposed to embrace the fact they suck blood and ravage strangers.

The last installment of the saga left us on the edge of our seats with Bella agreeing to marry Edward, the vampire. The beginning of this film delivers the actual wedding which comes bedecked with a canopy of white flowers like a shroud over a corpse. It’s the most upbeat moment in the film.

Edward and Bella try to enjoy themselves, but they are of course breaking the laws of this universe: humans and vampires are not supposed to mate. The human guests don’t know Edward and his family are vampires, so everyone else has a good time and pretends not to notice the other vampires oddly bleached hair and Louis XIV skin. Jacob, the werewolf, shows up late and proves yet again to be a better choice for Bella. Like Jacob at the wedding, the issue of Bella’s wisdom has long worn out its welcome.

Then the honeymooners are off to an island to consummate what must be the most extended foreplay in the history of the movies. “Gone With the Wind” has nothing on this romantic melodrama.  Then our lovers play chess: yes, chess. Edward is fearful of the consequences of their lovemaking. His dread is well placed: Bella immediately gets pregnant. The baby tries to kill her from the inside out – in a minor key of the “Alien” franchise. Then we take a final twist into even more forbidden love – because the moviemakers had to do something nasty with Jacob.

All of this could have been accomplished in forty-five minutes or less – with a nifty, spellbinding wrap up. As it is, everything here is drawn out in soft pornographic slow motion for Part Two. The ending here is the most joyless birth in film history – that one fears must set up the baby’s own franchise. She after all is twilight. We dutifully await that climax, bloodlessly.

A woman caught between a love for two men is one of our most reliable plot setups. The love triangle works here because of the stars: Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson and Taylor Lautner. The audience has gone so far as to break into “Team Edward” and “Team Jacob.” The odd thing is that there is no “Team Bella” who makes this all believable. If you’re a fan, go see this. If you’re not a fan, go see this. Turkey or no turkey, this is at least something worthy to argue about over Thanksgiving dinner.

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A Dragon Without Teeth

Posted on February 20, 2012 by tomfortuna

 

An odd thing happened in translation to the new film “The Girl with the Dragon Tatoo.” From the original Swedish novel to the original Swedish adaptation, this American adaptation somehow lost the dragon’s t teeth.

That outcome might be the perfect Hollywood response to the lurid and some might say outlandish original book – in a writing adventure that travels from modern novel to post-modernist crime movie. However, for those who have traveled with the girl before, you’ll probably be disappointed and relieved.

 Here, under the always watchful eye of the usually outlandish director David Fincher who brought us the unforgettable “Seven,” we get the sense of a movie watching a movie watching a book. The film to film adaptation is just that sterile, that uninvolved in the original material’s intent. The edges have been sanded off that robs the movie of its punch.

Then again, it has now become acceptable grandma material — for all those grandmas out there who love the crime procedurals that over populate TV. Watching “The Girl with the Dragon Tatoo” might actually watching CBS – with two especially brutal rape scenes thrown in. You could always just close your eyes, then open them again as detectives unwrap the layers of a forty year old mystery.

Here, Daniel Craig plays Mikael Blomkvist, a crusading Swedish investigative reporter just convicted of libeling a suspect industrialist. Mikael believes in truth. Oh, Oh. It will be no surprise when it turns out that he was framed. Since he needs to take time off from his now failing magazine, Mikael is hired by Christopher Plummer to investigate the decades old mystery of the disappearance of his niece.

Sweden’s premier industrialist, Plummer’s family, the Vangers, lives on an island near the North Pole, but no one here is Santa Claus. While the family is spread out in mansions across the frosty island, almost none of them talk to one another. The family matriarch likes it that way. Mikael, of course, eventually runs into an investigative dead end. There’s a game of cat and mouse afoot, and the film does a nice job of giving you clues to the ultimate villain – just like on TV.

Meanwhile, we have been travelling along with Rooney Mara playing a twenty-three year with the infamous dragon tattoo and piercings, Lisabeth Salander. She is out on parole for a dastardly act of revenge as a ten year old girl.  She has a pervert for a parole officer. But she has also done the research on Mikael Blomkvist for Christopher Plummer before he would hire Blomkvist.

Blomkvist learns about this and finds the fact that Lisabeth knows more about him than anyone else intriguing. He also hopes to gain insight from her about his young daughter. Lisabeth can research anything with a computer in her knapsack as she rides her motorbike through blizzards.

In the end, this is a taut thriller about perversity at all levels of society – which makes it strangely enough like watching cable TV. In the years since the original, renowned Steig Larrson novels and their successful Swedish  film adaptations, our culture seems to have caught up with them. If you’re a crime story enthusiast, go see this – knowing it’s possibly a too entertaining take to have any teeth. 

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Where Has the Mystery Gone?

Posted on February 20, 2012 by tomfortuna

The Sherlock Holmes franchise has always been based on intricate mysteries and the witty banter of Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson. Here, in the second installment of the newest movie take on these venerable characters, “Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows,” we get thrilling banter between the entertaining stars Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law, and less than thrilling action sequences amid some lush period but down and dirty London and Paris locations.

The banter between Holmes and Watson is good enough for the price of a ticket anytime and anywhere, just don’t expect the thrill ride of the first film with these two actors. The director Guy Ritchie has thereby now proven for the second time in his career that he is a one hit wonder.  His first film, “Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels,” was never followed up by anything worthwhile for over ten years. And, now, after the white hot excitement of his first Holmes’ film, Ritchie turns in a lackluster directing performance that once again might stop his career in its tracks.

His lackadaisical attitude here almost stops this film dead in its tracks — after the best sequence in the film on a train hurtling through the British countryside. We can be grateful that Robert Downey Jr. has such fun playing the weirdo Holmes in drag here, and that Jude Law has such fun playing the straight man to this nonsense.  This is a buddy picture, after all, which more than once pushes that concept to the border of bad taste. But that’s the fun part, isn’t it?

In the beginning, the plot revolves around Watson getting married, and Holmes doing almost everything he can to make sure Watson doesn’t get to the church on time. This is preceded by the murder of Holmes’s double crossing girlfriend, Irene Adler, by the ever nefarious but always respectable Dr. Moriarty. Never has a love interest been dispatched with less angst – until of course Watson’s new wife is pushed out of a train by Holmes – for her own safety, of course.

There is no real crime here to investigate – beyond standard issue military industrial complex issues. This is by and large a cat and mouse game between Holmes and Moriarty played out in the dismal European sunshine that preceded the First World War. With Irene Adler gone, we are treated to a gypsy fortune teller  -as Holme’s brother takes care of Watson’s new wife by parading plumply naked before her. An Archduke gets murdered in the middle of the film, but by that point, the plot hardly even matters.

Somehow but not soon enough, we end up in the heart of the German Kaiser’s pre-war industrial war machine, and then in a castle plastered on the side of a Swiss Mountain. With a waterfall running like a river just below the parapets, the castle is the site of a peace conference. Dr. Moriarty wants to start a war because he’s cornered the market on munitions. Gee, where have we seen that before?

If you like Holmes and Watson, if you like Downey Jr. and Jude Law, go see this and lose track of time for a couple hours. Blame Guy Ritchie for the lackluster moments, because the characters and actors are first rate. And who can follow a real Sherlock Holmes’ plot anyhow?

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All Jacked Up

Posted on February 20, 2012 by tomfortuna

“Real Steel” () like real life, actual steel takes a long time to take shape. And if you’ve ever been to a steel foundry, you’ll know that they are noisy, brutal places that deliver a product essential to our way of life. The same goes for this movie – that in the end pays off with a father / son story where they defeat the odds by standing tall and not forgetting who they are. We need that message today more than ever, so you’ll forgive this movie many flaws and cheer and tear up in the end.

Unfortunately, this movie – like its steel robots — almost teeters over and falls on its face time and time again. The fight scenes between the battling robots are spectacular; the fight scenes between the father and son are almost too much to bear – and not in a good way.

Set in the near future, Hugh Jackman plays “Charlie Kenton” as perhaps an obnoxious, insufferable Texan who believes his killer smile allows him to cheat and swindle everyone in his path — because he just can’t stop shooting himself in the foot. He could have been a boxing contender, but men have been replaced by robots in the ring. If one might speculate as to the reason for this, it would undoubtedly be to get Charlie to shut up before he became the next Muhamed Ali.

Charlie’s latest failures are interrupted by the news that his ex has died and left him in line to have custody of his son — whose birth he can’t quite remember. That son “Max” is played by newcomer Dakota Goyo — as an eleven year old with an attitude as bad as his dad’s.  The kid rightly takes offense at Charlie’s efforts to sell him to his aunt. But the kid snarls so much you would think the aunt would sell him to Charlie. If there’s a remake of “The Bad Seed” in the works, the kid’s perfect casting. Unfortunately, we’re supposed to like him here.

To make us feel that both father and son must have some redeeming value, Evangeline Lilly plays “Bailey Tallet” as a woman Charlie puts upon – due to the fact that he can live at her father’s gym for free while she fixes the robots he recklessly destroys. This is more bromance than romance oddly enough – but she gives the only really believable knockout performance in the film.

The villains are an Olga Fonda as an evil Russian promoter of a super robot named “Zeus” and his creator, a taciturn Japanese genius, “Tak Mashido” played by Karl Yune. The seeming fakeness of their stage names mirrors their performances which seem to be going for an evocation of the Red Scare and the Yellow Menace in an attempt to make green – as in money. They pout and stare a lot. You’re supposed to be afraid for the robots.

Lay most of this near disaster at the feat of the director Shawn Levy – who bathes the film in a warm glow that always seems out of place. It’s like a “Rocky” movie shot to resemble “The Wizard of Oz.” Shawn’s spent most of his career in television and seems to have forgotten that obnoxious TV characters and set ups don’t translate well to the big screen.

Nevertheless, in the end, this critic had tears in his eyes. There’s just something about a fight movie against the odds. And after the first hour, the characters pretty much shut up and let the star robot, “Atom,” steal the show. He neither speaks nor smiles, but his eyes tell you he thinks he deserves Hugh Jackman’s salary. And he does. Go see this for well meaning action – just know you’ll have to more forgiving as film fans that either Charlie or Max are as characters.  

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