Stars Andy Lau, Tony Yang, Shu Qi, Zhang Jingchu with Jean Reno and Eric Tsang Directed by Stephan Fung The heist film is often a fun and entertaining time in the cinema (really looking forward to Logan Lucky at this time), especially when it’s done right. I’ve enjoyed fares such as How To Steal A Million (1966), Who’s Minding the Mint? (1967), The Italian Job (1969 and 2003), Refifi (1955) even the likes of Now You See Me (2013), Fast Five (2011) and Mission: Impossible (1996) or Once a Thief (1991, NOT the 1996 TV movie) which this movie is based on. Like in the John Woo flick, a bunch of thieves pull off a heist as a form of revenge, although the catch in that one was that Chow Yun-Fatt’s character was in a wheelchair and still trying to pull off a heist. Here, the leader is Zhang (Andy Lan) who was betrayed and sent to prison for stealing a piece of a three-part treasure. Coming out five years later, he’s got French cop Pierre (Jean Reno) on his case while he picks up where he left off and goes after the two remaining pieces of the treasure, Zhang’s technical cohort is Po (Tony Yang), there’s a transport guy who sometimes turns up when convenient, and a new member, Red (Shu Qi), an obvious wild card. Their boss is Kong, played by Eric Tsang. This being a China/Hong Kong flick, the technical aspects of the heist are way off the improbability charts, and yet, ridiculously fun (spider-bots, fingerprint-copying corset). The action and direction are good enough to not rely on too much CGI effects, even when they’re obvious. The use of real locations is a nice treat too. Andy Lau generally breezes through the movie with ease, playing off his co-stars with aplomb, getting fairly good chemistry with Jean Reno. He carries the movie with easy charm as you’d expect from Hong Kong’s hardest working performer (4 movies this year so far, with 6 in the last year alone, including an appearance in the Jackie Chan adventure, Railroad Tigers, and a role in The Great Wall opposite Matt Damon). Shu Qi might be the other internationally recognised star (The Transporter (2002), Journey to the West (2013), The Assassin (2015) among many more) and she continues to never be the damsel and holding her own against her male teammates. While it is lacking in terms of fisticuffs, the action comes more from the chases, with a spectacular set-pieces through the streets of Marseilles. There isn’t much complexity to the plot and the streamlined story serves to entertain without much ado about anything else. It’s not quite up there with the John Woo flick, but it does the job to keep one entertained. Most of these romps usually are since you're technically rooting for the bad guys. Rating: ***1/2 / 5 Find the best online deals here. | Barnes and Noble | Google Play Store | Book Depository Discover more about the books here. Please Support.
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Stars Idris Elba, Matthew McConaughey, Tom Taylor, Katheryn Winnick, Caludia Kim, Abbey Lee, Fran Kranz, with Dennis Haysbert and Jackie Earle Haley Directed Nikolaj Arcel Even if you have peripheral knowledge of the The Dark Tower books, that there are seven of them all written by the prolific Stephen King, the story of adapting books to the big screen would suggest this was not going to be that much of a faithful adaptation. There was no way this would hew anywhere close to the book. At least, I wasn’t expecting anything to resemble anything in the books. The nature of the books, the scope of the world, wouldn’t allow a direct adaptation to fit one cinematic film, much less one coming in at a very slim 89 minutes (not counting one of the slowest credits crawl I’ve seen in a very long while). Sure, we get the doorways, or portals here, that skip us from one world to the next, but there is far mores specificity here to cater to that issue. But then, we’re only spending time in two worlds perhaps for sake of simplifying things. We have our nasty bad guy in black (Matthew McConaughey) who wants to destroy The Dark Tower that protects all worlds from the darkness beyond. Then we have our good guy Gunslinger (Idris Elba) who’s meant to protect the Tower, but he’s out for vengeance because the bad guy killed his dad (Dennis Haysbert). That’s all the movie is, really. Again, a simplification for a far more complex relationship between the Gunslinger and The Man in Black. All this, we get to witness through the eyes of Jake Chambers (Tom Taylor) who is essentially our guide into this supposed crazy multi-world adventure. Fans of King’s work will find much to drool over from the mention of Jake’s ’shine’ to a red toy car to a few other bits and bobs strewn across the story. The Dark Tower series of books ties many of King’s other books together, essentially a multiverse, and perhaps trying to present all that on screen in a single movie may have muddled the story. Then again, some of the earlier adaptation of King’s stories were tied together by the mere mention of “The Shop” from the likes of Firestarter to The Lawnmower Man and even TV mini-series like Golden Years and The Stand. Performance-wise, the stars do as much as they can with their characters even if whatever motive that drives them is missing or dismissed in the most cavalier ways. Elba is best described as stoic, and nothing else as the weight of guilt bears down on Roland Deschain, the Gunslinger. Matthew McConaughey strides and broods with a singular purpose that defines his ‘evil’, to bring down the Tower using children. While his power can be scary like making people stop breathing at command, it isn’t fully exploited in exploration like when he tells a sweet little girl to ‘hate’… then all we get are some dark eyes and a scowly face, but nothing after that. Missed opportunity, or leaving it to the imagination of the audience? While Tom Taylor does his best against the heavyweight stars he shares the screen with, others, such as Jackie Earle Haley, who can be supremely menacing and scary given the right material, feel underused. And material is a major factor here. Director Nikolaj Arcel seems to have a nice visual eye in giving the two worlds their own disparate feel. At the same time, there is also nothing particularly extraordinary about either world, nothing betrayed from King’s prose in describing the worlds of The Dark Tower. I can’t help thinking if having four writers might have been too much or if they wore down their consultant, Robin Furth (master of all Dark Tower lore, who plotted out the excellent Dark Tower comics for Marvel Comics) into letting them do what they wanted. Seems unlikely tho. Then you have to wonder if keeping the story slim is more to serve the upcoming TV series, but given the way the movie concluded, it also seems unlikely. So it’s hard to determine what the plan was. By slimming down the movie to just this singular basic plot, it simply introduces the audience to the idea of the Dark Tower, its purpose, its enemies and its guardian… and that’s all. In that, it’s serviceable entertainment that plays out like a typical western on a sci-fi plateau rather than fantasy. We get at least three major action set-pieces that might entertain a typical viewer with a finale that is somehow appropriate and yet a massive disservice to the overall mythos. We simply end up with caricatures of what are supposed to be much deeper characters, going through the motions. If this were some TV movie on some cable channel, it'd be above average or passable. With the star power here, it feels lacking for what might have been an epic adventure. Still, perhaps it’s better to check you brains at the door in this case, and enjoy the ride. Take it as a movie and there’s entertainment to be had, but if you’re a fan of the books, you’d be hard-pressed to justify certain choices made by the production team, torn between enjoying it because this movie exist and keeping your brain from agreeing that something has gone a bit wrong with the overall saga here. Given the scope of the books, maybe TV is the better medium for this. Rating: **/5 Find the best online deals here. | Barnes and Noble | Google Play Store | Book Depository Discover more about the books here. Please Support. |
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