Alita: Battle Angel (2019)

Hey, I am as surprised as you might be to be saying this, but maybe more people should check out Alita: Battle Angel. It's not necessarily going to become your new favourite movie, it's certainly not going to placate you if you've been spending some time recently seeking out quality cinema with great actors delivering ear-tickling dialogue, but it's a fantastic bit of escapist fun, set in a world full of cool little details and wonderful production design.

The film starts off with Christoph Waltz, playing a Dr. Dyson Ido (and his surgical work now involves a lot of engineering or robotic parts), finding a discarded cyborg body that he then rebuilds and reactivates. The cyborg is Alita (Rosa Salazar), a young woman who strives to remember her past, and who ends up having a number of much bigger cyborgs tasked with ending her life.

Based on a manga (Gunnm AKA Battle Angel Alita) by Yukito Kishiro, Alita: Battle Angel comes to the screen courtesy of a screenplay by James Cameron and Laeta Kalogridis and direction from Robert Rodriguez. As ridiculous as it may seem, considering some of their achievements throughout their careers, none of these names are the draw they once were. People tend to actively mistrust Cameron nowadays, with good reason, considering how many times he has done his bit to sell us on Terminator sequels of ever-diminishing quality. Everyone is on good form here though, and it's refreshing to see Rodriguez back at the helm of something that is looking forward rather than trying to emulate the past (he does the latter well, but it's a well he's gone back to a few too many times throughout his career).

The cast help to sell everything, especially Salazar in a role that transforms her into the wide-eyed central character and Waltz as the fallible human who kicks things off. Jennifer Connelly and Mahershala Ali are enjoyable as the people who are manipulating events to direct Alita towards dangerous confrontations, Keean Johnson is the pretty male/potential love interest, and a couple of the main mean cyborgs are played entertainingly enough by Ed Skrein and Jackie Earle Haley.

But don't go thinking I am praising this as a near-perfect cinematic experience. While it delivers on the eye candy, and it really does (I was relieved to see that Rodriguez could still do well with action scenes), it's also full of good quality cheese. The script is silly and clunky, especially in the few moments in which it tries to have characters showing some real emotions. It's easy to forgive, however, as we're taken from one gorgeous sequence to the next (whether it's just a crowded street scene or a violent sporting tournament).

I'm not sure if we'll ever get any other instalments after this one, it didn't seem to do as well as expected at the box office, but I do know that I'll try to catch them on the big screen if we do. For sci-fi action blockbusters that enjoy pretending they have some depth to them, this is one of the better examples we've had in recent years.

7/10

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Sci-Fi September: RoboCop (2014)

Despite my love for the original movie, and my worry at the sanitisation of the material in an attempt to reach a wider audience, I was willing to give this new version of RoboCop a shot, I really was. Let's be honest, despite the intense violence of the original movie, the main character was eventually watered down and repackaged for kids anyway, in everything from TV shows to action figures to computer games. Yes, I have fond memories of that side-scrolling shooter that I played on my chunky little ZX Spectrum, and I'm sure many others of my generation have similar recollections.

Anyway, here's the thing, RoboCop starts off quite well. It's taking a different tack from the original movie, deciding to focus more on the idea of free will than the struggle between man and machine parts, although that also plays a big part in the film. Joel Kinnaman is the main character, Officer Murphy. He is seriously injured when he gets too close to some major criminals, and OCP gain permission from his wife (Abbie Cornish) to give him a second chance to live, albeit in a robotic shell that will house the small remains of his organic body. Gary Oldman is the doctor in charge of the project, Michael Keaton is the man looking for a return on his invested money, and Jackie Earle Haley simply seems intent on appearing in as many piss-poor remakes as possible.

Jose Padilha is a great director, he has some titles that are well worth checking out, but I won't list his filmography here. Unfortunately, you wouldn't know that from his work here. He's saddled with a lame script by Joshua Zetumer, Edward Neumeier, and Michael Miner, but that's not really an excuse for how badly he starts to fumble and drop the ball after the first 20-30 minutes. A sequence showing RoboCop going through an evaluation test, accompanied by a Focus song, Hocus Pocus, holds up as the first major low. It's bloodless, unexciting, messy, and far too similar to just watching a videogame, albeit one far more advanced than my ZX Spectrum games. And most of the scenes that come along afterwards just stick to that level.

Kinnaman is far too bland in the lead role, unfortunately, and Cornish is stuck with the same motivation for 80% of the movie - to get near her husband and feel that he's still the man she knew and loved for so long. Thankfully, there are other performances that help to make the whole thing bearable. Samuel L. Jackson is a lot of fun as an opinionated TV presenter, Jay Baruchel is enjoyable in a small role, and Haley actually does his best with the character he's given. But it's Keaton and Oldman who are the undoubted highlights, with the former able to rise above shallow characterisation simply thanks to his natural charisma, and the latter benefitting from the fact that he has the best character in the whole film. He may do what he's told by Keaton, but it's always clear that he struggles with his own urge to help his fellow man.

As everything meanders to an unexciting, and entirely predictable, finale it's all too easy to start agreeing with the many people who cursed the movie before it was even released. Many expected the worst, due to the rating and redesign of the central character. They got it. We all got it. This is a stinker. So bad that I wouldn't even recommend buying it for a dollar.

3/10

http://www.amazon.com/Robocop-Blu-ray-Joel-Kinnaman/dp/B00JL6L4WC/ref=sr_1_3?s=movies-tv&ie=UTF8&qid=1411245934&sr=1-3&keywords=robocop