Showing posts with label camilla belle. Show all posts
Showing posts with label camilla belle. Show all posts

Friday, 1 February 2013

Push (2009)

A decent cast and decent premise are both wasted in this unexciting, muddled, and inevitably inconsequential, superhero movie from writer David Bourla and director Paul McGuigan.

Chris Evans plays Nick Gant, a young man who has the power of telekinesis, even if he is still learning how to use it. His life is thrown into chaos when he's approached by Cassie Holmes (Dakota Fanning), a young woman who can see into the future. Cassie needs his help catch another person with super-powers (Kira Hudson, played by Camilla Belle) and to set a chain of events in motion that will eventually lead to her rescuing her mother from the government officials keeping her captive. There's a high probability that Chris and Cassie could die, as Cassie keeps pointing out, but she tries to remain hopeful that they can succeed in their quest while avoiding the attention of other talented individuals. Xiaolu Li plays another young woman who can see into the future, although she's better at it than Cassie, and Henry Carver (Djimon Hounsou) is an agent determined to retrieve Kira for the benefit of the organisation that he works for.

Sounds like fun? Telekinesis and seeing the future? I've not even mentioned the talent that Kira has for being able to push thoughts, suggestions and false memories into the mind of anyone not mentally prepared to defend against such a sneak attack. Or the guys who can shout/scream so loudly that they can kill people and break glass. Even more fun, right? Wrong.

Push just never delivers, it never rises up to what it could be - an enjoyable adventure featuring folk who never made the cut for X-Men (and don't take that as a highly disparaging remark, I'm a huge fan of Chris Evans and he's the main reason I was able to find this film reasonably enjoyable).

This is mostly due to the poor script and lacklustre direction, but it doesn't help that the majority of the cast, aside from Evans, Fanning and Hounsou, are so forgettable. Camilla Belle is especially disappointing in her role, failing to liven up a character not written all that well in the first place and the least said about those two shouting/screaming guys, the better.

When Bourla plotted out the movie he obviously thought he was being clever and unconventional when he was, in fact, simply being annoying and dull. The plot, twists and turns and all, makes little sense and ends up having no real purpose. It's almost as if the whole thing exists just to set up a sequel that never happened.

The filmmakers may have thought it commendable that they made a movie focused on characters over action, but they forgot to make the characters interesting enough for that approach to work. It's a shame because the potential was there for something much better. This is simply average, at best.

5/10

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Push-Blu-ray-Chris-Evans/dp/B00206U5XO/ref=sr_1_2?s=dvd&ie=UTF8&qid=1359128027&sr=1-2



Wednesday, 21 September 2011

The Patriot (1998)

Based loosely on a novel, "The Last Canadian", by William Heine, The Patriot starts off as something quite unique for a Steven Seagal movie. Well, actually, that's not true. It starts off with the usual preposterous mix of gravitas and wisdom that ol' woodenhead always tries to give himself but then it turns into a killer virus movie. What the hell?

Seagal is a wise cowpoke who can heal animals with his wonderful selection of homemade remedies but, wouldn’t you just know it, he can also apply those healing hands to people too, making him a very popular doctor in his town. When a killer virus is released in the town (the kind of nasty stuff that Seagal worked with in the past before arguing with his superiors and trying to have a quiet life) then it soon becomes clear that one man may be the best hope to find a cure. And, somehow, his young daughter is keeping the germs at bay, making herself valuable to the baddies who released the virus without realising that the antidote didn’t work.

Seeing Seagal as a man of medicine is a bizarre experience. You initially wonder just what the hell he’s playing at before thinking that other action stars try to stretch themselves so why can’t Seagal . . . . . . . . . before returning to the main thought of “what the hell is he playing at?”

Thankfully, this doctor is just as handy with his fists as he is with a petri dish and microscope. There are only one or two action sequences throughout the movie but they’re not too bad. They’re certainly a lot better than the scenes showing Seagal to be a wise, mystical and benevolent healer of those around him. And better than most of the scenes between Seagal and the young girl playing his daughter (Camilla Belle, all too believable as a young Seagalina thanks to her wooden acting and expressionless face). 
 
This is a movie that just shouldn’t be any good at all but somehow provides a lot of unintentional laughs and simple entertainment in places. The cast are mostly unknowns so there’s no added reason to watch this unless you want to see a movie in which Seagal sticks a spike IN SOMEONE’S HEAD one moment before smiling at his daughter while flowers fall around them the next. You think I’m joking? Watch this for yourself and enjoy. Hell, I admit that I was intermittently entertained but perhaps not in the way that director Dean Semler intended.

5/10

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