Daily Archives: September 2, 2008

Washing that Mummy out of My Brain

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It always annoys when my friends say something like: “I could have told you that,” after I report that some movie really sucked.  No, no you couldn’t have told me that.  Sure, the Mummy III: Tomb of Jet Li Phoning It In looked bad.  There were many warning signs.  But these friends would have said the same thing about Hitman, or Tank Girl, or Blade III: Trinity.  Say what you will, I enjoyed those movies.  I loved all three Resident Evil movies.  I savored the badness (and the cage scene) that was BloodRayne.  Would you deny me those pleasures?  So I take a lot of chances.  Sometimes, as with Babylon A.D., I get about what expect, a flawed movie with derivative elements and some good action.  Even the bad ending didn’t ruin it for me.

But sometimes I get the third Mummy movie.  It’s not so much bad as it is tired.  The almost ritualistic character portrayals using every old trope and stale piece of dialog dragged down the small moments in which the action actually worked.  I love Jet Li, and I like Brendan Frazier.  But neither of them showed up for this movie.  Surrounded by CGI badness, they read through the exhausting dialog with no hope of adding anything fresh to it.  Retired hero misses action.  Father has problems expressing approval of son.  Evil emperor wants to take over world.  (what to good emperors do?)

Fortunately I had already downloaded the unrated version of Hitman on my PS3.  I got home, feeling like I needed to bath in something to get that “Mummy-to-far” feeling out of my system, I started watching this hyper-cool, intense action flick, in which the characters actually seem to care about what they are doing.  Though the reviewers generally have gone negative Hitman, it’s really a lot of fun.

Why Does Boondock Saints Get so Much Love?

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Like Donnie Darko, Boondock Saints seems to receive affection, adoration, even passion far in excess of any value in the movie itself. I’d heard about Boondock Saints from many sources, compelling me to not only put in my Netflix list, but move it up near the top. It’s based on a graphic novel, and there have been some pretty good movies come out of that genre. But this movie kind of hints at why that shouldn’t work.

Many parts of the movie are fun to watch. William Dafoe turns in another “Walken -1″ performance as a gay FBI agent who channels at crime scenes. He is oddly disconnected from the FBI, instead running a group of local policemen, one of whom also tries to channel but with far less success. He’s quirky. Possibly homophobic.  Then he gets quirkier, dresses in drag, and tries to exude tenderness.

The McManus brothers are two good-looking Irish kids who work in a meat-packing plant, yet speak about ten languages.  This is never explained.  At some point, with little motivation except some apparently private religion, they go all Travis Bickle on bad guys, except with much more smoothness, coolness, and moral clarity.

Then there’s this guy, who is supposed to be the baddest assassin ever.  The beast.  Except that he’s also played as a cartoonish yokel.  With long beard, six guns, long-coat and hat.

The only character who isn’t some flat cartoon is poor ‘Funny Man’ Rocco.  He’s a stupid guy, but at least he suffers and changes through the movie.

The story-telling style would be interesting if you’re in film school, but probably only in a basic course.  The story advances to a point, stops, then skips to the consequences.  William Dafoe does his channeling explanation of the scene, then we go back and see how it really happened.  It’s just arty enough to keep the Donnie Darko crowd happy.

In the end, I don’t know what people really like about this movie.  The coolness is destroyed by the beast character, the moral undercurrents were better explored in any of a dozen revenge movies.  The action is passable, and motivation is hokey.  I’d offer a theory, but I really don’t get it.