Netflix: Robin Hood (2018)

AKA Robin Begins. This is an attempt to make the character of Robin Hood cool and modern and sexy. If that appeals to you then you should find enough to enjoy here. If you would much prefer your Robin Hood to be more like either Errol Flynn or the fox from the Disney animated version of the tale then I would suggest you move along.

Taron Egerton is our Robin here, accompanied back from his time at war by "John" (Jamie Foxx). Upon his return to England, Robin finds that his beloved Marian (Eve Hewson) has started another relationship with Will (Jamie Dornan), believing that Robin died overseas. He also finds the people being forced into poverty by the dastardly Sheriff of Nottingham (Ben Mendelsohn). Thus begins a campaign that turns into "rob from the rich to give to the poor". Robin makes many enemies, but he also maintains a few valuable allies, including Friar Tuck (Tim Minchin).

Although director Otto Bathurst has no other theatrically-released features to his credit, there's nothing here that shows him unsuited to this kind of thing. Whatever criticisms you might have about this film, and there are many things to be critical of, it at least makes decent use of a good cast to stop it from being anywhere near the actual nadir of blockbuster entertainment. The same can be said of writers Ben Chandler and David James Kelly. They may not be as sharp or clever as they think, but they're far from the worst offenders when it comes to the plotting and dialogue (although I could have really done without the narration basically telling us "you think you know the story of Robin Hood, but here's the REAL story as you've never seen it before").

There are a few decent action set-pieces, enough to make the 116-minute runtime feel just right, but your opinion of this may very well depend on how you feel about Robin Hood being given the bombastic style usually used with more modern action heroes. I'm still not sure if that in itself is a bad idea or if I was irritated by the times that overused the same tricks and effects.

Egerton is a good choice for the lead, having shown us before how well he can do the charming rogue figure. He's a great fit, and always believable, even as the stunts become wilder and more dangerous. Foxx is a fantastic partner for him, and seems equally capable in the inventive action beats. Hewson is an appropriately lovely Marian, Mendelsohn is an appropriately nasty Sheriff of Nottingham, and they complete a central quartet good enough to make up for the lethargic Dornan and a sorely mis-cast Minchin.

Arguably too old-fashioned in content for younger viewers and too modern and flashy for older viewers, I'm not surprised that this didn't set the box office alight when it was released. I wouldn't have minded if it did better though. I may not rush to rewatch it, and I'm not sure who in my friend circle I would recommend it to, but I'd prefer to watch a sequel to this than watch yet another Sony superhero movie.

6/10

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Netflix And Chill: Things Heard And Seen (2021)

If the past year or so has taught us anything, impact of a global pandemic aside, it is never to move in to a house with Amanda Seyfried. She just doesn't seem to have any luck with it. The biggest worry for most of us is watching the movers take our things in and out, and wincing if a beloved item of furniture is bumped and forced through a doorway that looks a bit too small for it. Seyfried seems to have a knack for finding haunted houses, which can make for a more nerve-wracking experience than sorting through bags to find the one that you stashed the bath towels in.

Seyfried plays Catherine Claire, a talented artist who has given up most of what she enjoys in life to support her husband, George (James Norton), and look after their young daughter, Franny (Ana Sophia Heger). Catherine also has an ongoing battle with an eating disorder, seems to be more susceptible to tales of spookiness, according to George, and looks to be a bit unhappy with her life. George, on the other hand, is feeling great about things. He's now the college professor he always wanted to be, he starts having an affair with a young local woman (Willis, played by Natalia Dyer), and his life is almost exactly as he wants it to be. George isn't really a nice man though, and a lot of his current situation may have been created by some cheating and manipulation.

Co-directed and co-written by Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini, adapting "All Things Cease To Appear", the novel by Elizabeth Brundage, it's no surprise to see that neither Berman nor Pulcini have any other horror movies in their main filmography. They deliver some great little chills throughout this movie, but they're more interested in showing the extensive damage in the relationship between Catherine and George, and how George has been causing this for a number of years, but it was easier to overlook when creating fault lines under the surface. You also get an ending that, while satisfying, actually moves away from delivering some better horror and supernatural twists.

Seyfried is as good as ever in the lead role, easy to root for as he gets angrier and tougher in the second half. Norton does well as someone it's easy to hate, starting with an air of entitlement and arrogance before becoming worse and worse. Heger doesn't get too much to do, but she certainly does decent work. Dyer is saddled with one of the weakest characters, but she does okay, Alex Neustaedter and Jack Gore are good as a couple of young brothers who come around to help at the house (and also lived there at one point), F. Murray Abraham is a welcome presence, and I hope this is the first of many more worthwhile film roles for the talented Rhea Seehorn. I should also mention the small role for Karen Allen, someone else I am always happy to see in anything.

It's not that Things Heard And Seen is bad, or boring. It does everything well enough, including an ending that focuses on details that were signposted elsewhere in the movie. I just can't help but think of the third act as a missed opportunity, for reasons I won't go into here (because of spoilers), and that makes me then think that the rest of the film could have been tweaked and improved here and there. It never really feels as if it does more than coast along, and Berman and Pulcini seem to steadfastly refuse to turn the screws when they have chances to ratchet up the tension. The end result is something that's decent, but also so safe that it's also a bit disappointing.

6/10

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Netflix And Chill: Dead Man Down (2013)

As prone to the whims of Netflix as many others who browse the service, I saw that Dead Man Down was on there are remembered that someone had once told me it wasn't a bad little crime thriller. It was, according to some of the ways I had seen it labelled, actually a neo-noir, which made this month as good a time as any to check it out. And whoever told me that it wasn't a bad little crime thriller was quite correct.

Colin Farrell plays a man working for crime boss Alphonse (Terrence Howard). These are bad people who do bad things. But Farrell has more secrets than most. And that allows him to end up in a position where he can be blackmailed by Beatrice (Noomi Rapace), a neighbour who wants suitable punishment to be administered to the man who disfigured her in a road accident. Farrell is working on a masterplan that is now due to be complicated, Rapace grows closer to him as they prepare to deliver the payback she feels that she needs, and Howard and his crew (including Darcy, played by Dominic Cooper) start to "draw the wagons into a circle" as they deal with someone trying to cause division and death among their ranks.

Perhaps wrongly marketed at the time of release, I recall a lot being made of the fact that this from the director of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo (which gave Rapace her star-making turn) and I think there was a trailer that emphasised some of the action moments, which is what trailers do. I liked The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, but didn't love it. And I wasn't willing to rush out and see Colin Farrell in another action thriller that wasted his talents in the middle of some bland mess. I believe others may have felt the same way (and we can all be thankful that we've had so many better performances from Farrell over the past decade since people stopped trying to sell him in those roles), but don't let that put you off.

Niels Arden Oplev does another good job in the director's chair, giving the film a similar look to his previous outing, but with more rays of light shining through here and there. The script, by J. H. Wyman, who has more experience with TV work than movies, is as good as it needs to be. Based around that old chestnut of "if you set out for revenge then you'd best dig room to serve two cold dishes", or something, the central pairing of Farrell and Rapace works well enough to have you worrying as it looks less and less likely that anything will lead to a happy ending.

Speaking of the two leads, they both do very good work here, even working at various times with various accents. It also helps a lot that the supporting cast has some great players mixed in. Howard and Cooper have large roles, but there are also smaller turns for Isabelle Huppert, F. Murray Abraham, and the always entertaining Armand Assante. A lot of the other cast members are generic gang member types, but that is perfectly fine when you are just waiting to see the bodycount go up and up on the way to a tense third act.

Not an easy film to assume that others will enjoy as much as I did, I still recommend checking it out. The 2-hour runtime flies by quickly enough, the familiar plot is handled well, and there are some surprisingly satisfying moments of violence as soon as the motivation for everything becomes clear.

7/10

You can buy the movie here.
American friends can pick it up here.

Last Action Hero (1993)

Not really a big success on initial release, Last Action Hero is one of those movies that I am glad to see get a bit of a second wind on shiny disc form. It always had fans, but I think that fanbase has grown steadily over the last decade and the film deserves it.

The film is, essentially, a cross between The Purple Rose Of Cairo and, well, any blockbuster action movie of the '80s and '90s. A young boy named Danny (Austin O'Brien) is given a magic ticket by his projectionist pal (Robert Prosky) that was apparently passed down years ago by one Harry Houdini. Danny spends as much time as possible in the cinema watching his movie idol, Jack Slater (Arnold Schwarzenegger), and this night is very special because his projectionist pal is allowing him to see a sneak preview screening of Jack Slater IV, hence the passing on of the magic ticket. Although not expecting the cinema ticket to do anything that's REALLY magical, Danny finds that he should never rule out the impossible when he finds himself transported to the world inside the movie. He has a lot of fun trying to explain to Jack Slater what is really going on (and Slater doesn't appreciate being told that he's a fictional character being played by a man with a name that he can't pronounce) while checking off all of the action genre cliches and also providing the police with some vital information thanks to the scenes he saw at the beginning of the movie. This annoys Benedict, a dangerous hitman played by Charles Dance, no end . . . . . . . . . . until Benedict starts to piece together the implausible scenario, and then gets the ticket for himself. The real world isn't ready for a collection of cinematic villains, but Benedict doesn't care. He plans to use the ticket to free the likes of Dracula, some zombies and even King Kong. First of all, however, he helps Ripper (Tom Noonan) escape. Ripper was the villain who caused the most pain for Jack Slater, and now he's encouraged to get his revenge by killing Arnold Schwarzenegger. Is this making sense?

Superb entertainment from start to finish, Last Action Hero is also consistently clever and so meta that it often looks like a serpentine creation in danger of eating its own tail. It was deemed by many back in 1993 as a smug, overblown action comedy that was trying to have its cake and eat it while those involved shouldn't have dared to bite the hand that had fed them over the years. Admittedly, it is a bit overblown in places, and overlong at just over two hours, but I can't think of a better time for this movie to have been made than when Arnie was at the height of his A-list action star status and director John McTiernan was known best as the man behind Die Hard and Predator (as opposed to the man who also gave us the Rollerball remake). Shane Black, who co-wrote the screenplay with David Arnott, would actually refine things slightly with his directorial debut, the superior Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, but this particular movie is a mix of big names, studio excess, a multitude of pop culture references and a foundation of real intelligence.

After a standard action movie opener, with tongue firmly in cheek, the film is one of two halves. In the first half, Danny enters the movie world and can spot the genre conventions, stereotypes and general Hollywood illusions, using it all to his advantage and not ever feeling TOO worried as he helps out Jack. In the second half, the movie characters enter the real world, OUR world, and this provides a bit more danger while also keeping the comedy running strong as unwitting characters take their time to find out that the movie rules no longer apply.

The main cast members all have a great time. Austin O'Brien is stuck playing a character who is a bit too cocky at times, but Arnie is getting to do what Arnie does best (on top of that, he also plays himself in a few scenes alongside his real wife of the time, Maria Shriver) while Charles Dance and Tom Noonan bring their effortless brilliance along to portray two very different types of villains. Robert Prosky is as wonderful as always in the role of the kindly projectionist, Mercedes Ruehl is good as Danny's worried mother and Bridgette Wilson shines in the relatively small role of Jack Slater's daughter. Elsewhere, Frank McRae is very funny as the constantly shouting Lieutenant Dekker, Anthony Quinn is a mobster, F. Murray Abraham is a policeman and Ian McKellen is Death. Yes, Death . . . . . . . from The Seventh Seal. Throw in cameos, however brief, from the likes of Sharon Stone, Robert Patrick, Chevy Chase, Jean Claude Van Damme, Joan Plowright, Tina Turner, Bobbie Brown, Angie Everhart, James Belushi and many more and you have the action genre movie equivalent of The Player. Which is no bad thing.

Working on two levels, because let us not forget that McTiernan IS a master action movie director and Schwarzenegger IS an action movie STAR, Last Action Hero does get to have its cake and eat it. Fans of standard action movies will find enough here to keep them amused, if they somehow don't get or appreciate the humour, while fans of the satirical premise will have a field day keeping up with the cliches and references. You can find subtlety and grace elsewhere, this is the only place to see Arnie giving a unique interpretation of Hamlet. Need I say more?

8/10

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