Tag: adventure

Jason Statham: Furious 7 Game Changer

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Jason Statham is the epitome of badass. The Fast and Furious film franchise is the epicenter of ridiculously thrilling action. It’s about time these unstoppable forces met.

In case you have been stuck in an art house film gallery for the past 13 years, The F&F films have taken Hollywood and its audience by storm, turning improbable stunts into a viciously kinetic artform. People try writing them off as childish, hollow and pointless, and they miss all the fun in the game. These are action showcases and if you don’t mind a little family values with your hot rod cars and testosterone packed punches, you may be “furious” enough for Dominic Toretto(Vin Diesel) and his adventures. Jason Statham walking into this pleasure town of chaos is icing on the cake and could make Furious 7 the best in the series.

The 47 year old action star made a blood thirsty cameo appearance at the tail end of Fast & Furious 6 as Deckard Shaw, the revenge seeking older bro of Luke Evans’ crippled baddie Owen Shaw. I don’t know about you but the moment Owen spouted off to Dom about “my brother said you live by a code”, I immediately thought of Statham and his Transporter films. That was the cookie crumble hint being dropped at your feet.

Statham’s cameo also tied the franchise together, placing the Tokyo events in their proper spot and lighting a match on the seventh edition, which takes matters back to Los Angeles before jumpstarting the engine to luxurious places like Abu Dhabi. Director James Wan,taking over for Justin Lin after four films, walked into a treasures chest of action heroes. A buffet of kickass lethal enough to challenge the Persian army(minus the skirts, add tank tops). Why Statham? Well, why the hell do you drink coffee every morning? A dose of Statham is perfect for this world.

Let’s look at the prerequisites to enter the Furious world:

*Bald.

*Badass.

*Muscle bound.

*Good in a fight.

*Cool voice full of one liners.

*Looks good in a suit and tank top

*Very Bald.

Statham passes all tests with flying colors and adds something else. An authentic action star. With no offense to the Rock and Diesel, Statham does this shit for a living and can throw a kick with a smile as fast as he hosts Saturday Night Live or growls for the fans. Statham is the guy who works out with stunt crews in an LA gym and has a framed bullseye in his kitchen. Statham is working out while you are thinking about working out. He is working out while you eat donuts and while you gobble up fast food. He is working on his martial arts when you are thinking about enrolling for a green belt at the local karate class. He lives, breathes and shits action hero bravado. His head is the shape of a bullet and his voice is charming yet sinister.

The juiciest part of his dive here into the fast cars zone is he has never played a villain before. His characters have been far from gracious good souls, but he’s always fought the good fight on film….until now. Statham steps into the action in a big way here. Judging from the eye watering trailers, he gets to tangle with Dwayne Johnson in an office and Diesel on a roof with steel car parts. He also gets to walk into a party in a high rise building and fire a gun into the air ala The Joker in The Dark Knight. Statham is a show stopping presence on film. When I left a Statham film last year and had to use the restroom, I ran into an older film fan as I washed my hands. I asked him about the action banger we just watched in the same auditorium and regarding the British actor, the man simply said “He is something else”. You’re damn right he is. Statham is a special member of the No Bueno Crew.

Furious 7 is special for many reasons, many of them surrounding the late star, Paul Walker. “Pablo”, as Diesel calls his deceased friend, has starred in all seven films. Losing him was the equivalent of a heart losing a fair amount of blood. The engines running dry without as much oil and the transmission failing a few times on a Nissan Skyline. Walker wasn’t the guy you left the movies talking about, but he was also something the films couldn’t live without. The innocent action hero at the center of chaos who also happened to be a great guy in the real world. This film will be a celebration of his work on the film and his life in general. It will also be a celebration of glorious action hero nostalgia, with Statham walking around kicking over trash cans of lighter fluid and lighting the streets with mayhem.

The specialty of the franchise is getting bigger with each film. This stunt crew goes big or stays home. The Fast Five entered Johnson’s hulking agent, Hobbs. Statham was teased in the following film and makes a grand entrance in Friday’s clash. When fanboys talk about wet dreams and cinematic collisions, Jason Statham and Fast/Furious franchise ranks near the top of the list. This is the thing that rolls off the tongue at 130 in the morning as you finish an order of tacos and blurt to your friend, “Bro, it would be mad sick if that Statham did one of these movies.” The Furious team is fearless and turns dreamy scenarios into realities.

Show some self respect and check out Furious 7 this week on Blu Ray or DVD. It doesn’t matter if you haven’t seen the previous six films. This about true action appreciation. If you want realism, turn on the Sundance Channel. If you want balls out visually wasted cinema, buy a ticket for this movie. This is a stand alone adventure and will be given the proper tasting when Toretto answers that phone on his porch and hears a familiar British voice.

“Dominic Toretto. You don’t know me..but you’re about to.”

Jason Statham has arrived, ladies and gentlemen. He was born fast and is furious when he sleeps. Jason Statham. Those two words alone should get your ass in a seat.

Man From U.N.C.L.E is cool summer jazz

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Writer/director Guy Ritchie’s abilities have ripened well with age. While Snatch remains his masterpiece, his latest adventure, the “adapted” Man From UNCLE, shows how consistent he has gotten and how finely he has crafted his movie making ways. The film lays into you like a cool jazz tune. You may not think it was made for you, but you will smile and enjoy it.

Before I tell you the particulars, let’s take a brief moment to discuss the plot. Napoleon Solo(Henry Cavill, sleek, suave and muscled) is the CIA’s best agent/spy and he must join forces with a stern Russian KGB tank(Armie Hammer, not sucking for once) in order to track down some hot dame’s uncle, who supposedly knows the wherabouts to some nuclear warheads. Enough with the dull stuff. What worked?

The cast is aces. Cavill proves here he is more than a superhero, putting the “S” in suave. From the moment we see this handsome devil in a suit walking towards customs with a “I’m cool and you are not” glare, this much is known. When Cavill retires the cape, he will have his hands full with work. Maybe play someone called 007. Who knows? His future is bright and Solo proves he has some range to play with.

This is the first time I liked Hammer in anything, who up until this flick was only suited to play a piece of cardboard that moved and talked. Lone Ranger? Vomit. J. Edgar? Lost. Here, playing a fighting machine yet vulnerable man with a few secrets of his own, Hammer gets to unleash a little personality and displays a pretty decent Russian tongue. He shouldn’t join a Moscow steam room anytime soon, but he acquits himself well here. In other words, he didn’t stink up the joint.

The beautiful woman who makes the men run in circles here is Alicia Vikander, and if you weren’t paying attention earlier this year, she was the sophisticated robot in Ex Machina. Here, she toys with Hammer’s Prom King sledge hammer and trades barbs with Cavill’s slick agent like she’s been playing in the British Embassy cool school for years. If you didn’t know her name before this film, you will now. She joins Rogue Nation’s Rebecca Ferguson in the “pay attention to me now” train of thought.

The soundtrack is money here, perfectly placing in blues, jazz and hipster knee rattling tracks that never let the action overwhelm or the pace slow down too fast. You may want to get a hold of Daniel Pemberton’s wise guy score that never stops beating your ears up with easy joy.

Ritchie and Lionel Wigram’s script has enough historical reference(Russians, Americans, Nuclear warheads, the 1960’s) to mix in with its wild banging martini of an action flick that clears credibility by a few nose hairs.

The action is ripped from a comic book but has just enough realism to keep you from rolling your eyes. If James Bond had a sense of humor, he’d live in this world. And yes, you are not mistaken…that is Hugh Grant acting again and doing it quite well here as the one of the top suits playing these men of action like he has a remote control in his hand.

Ritchie doesn’t break any new ground here, but he crafted a fine action adventure with a tongue in cheek attitude about it. It’s like he mixed a few spices together that hadn’t been put together before and most of it tasted good. If you don’t take it too seriously or expect to be blown away, Man from U.N.C.L.E. may just put a smile on your face.

I know I’ll be in line for a sequel if these make believe jokers work together again.

Tom Cruise makes “Rogue Nation” feel fresh

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Mission 5Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation‘s sign outside reads like this. Welcome to the Tom Cruise show. Your mission, if you choose to accept it, is to walk into Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation without an ounce of cynicism or pre-existing opinion of Cruise’s off screen persona and just enjoy a good old fashioned spy flick.

Let me tell you right now. The reason these films work so well, no matter the director, is the star. The face on the poster. The man carrying all the marbles and the boulders of pressure on this summer blockbuster scale. Cruise doesn’t just do his own fight scenes. He also hangs off the side of departing airplanes as they take off. He also rides motorcycles around roads hanging off steep cliffs. He also dives into large bodies or water and does all this at the ripe age of 50. When I think of Cruise and Mission Impossible films, the pursuit of authenticity comes to mind. He wants to make it as real as possible and he wants the audience to have as much fun as he did filming it.

The plot isn’t too distracting and has just the right amount of juice dripping from the grill at this cinematic barbecue. Cruise’s IMF team(Jeremy Renner, Simon Pegg, Ving Rhames) are being hunted by a rogue “Syndicate”, who wish to destroy the unit and also make a lot of money in the process. This is a film where the bad guy isn’t really noteworthy. He’s got an accent, a nasally voice and an ability to tuck the bottom part of his face into a snarl. He wants to take Cruise’s Hunt down and do it all flashy like, which makes for amazingly rendered action sequences.

You don’t come to a Mission Impossible film to be wooed by Oscar caliber acting. You want to see what these guys do this time. They didn’t disappoint. Writer/Director Christopher McQuarrie(who wrote a past Mission film and is the creator of Usual Suspects) ups the ante here with Cruise and company. Leading up to the release, the scene where Cruise literally hangs off the side of a plane carried all the energy of the marketing campaign. That stunt is pretty cool and sets off the pre-credits sequence. It pales in comparison to the other stunts.

The sequence that takes the cake is a scene where Hunt dives into a government facility that is guarded by 100 feet of concrete and protected by a pool of water that whips around like a hurricane when you are in it. Hunt’s desperate plea to extract a chip, card or whatever is revealed slowly and raises the stakes as the three minute timer on his watch counts down. Folks, we all fear drowning but what the filmmakers do here is create a truly harrowing yet fun experience. We are sucking the oxygen out of our own lungs watching Hunt try to dangle.

The motorcycle chase is filmed extremely well, and all the gun fights sound authentic, ringing off a Michael Mann like echo in your ears. It’s almost as if the Fast and Furious gang challenged Cruise and company to create the most outrageous action set pieces, and the veterans just winked and went to town. I’m sorry, Vin Diesel, but when it comes to real action stunt work, Cruise has you beat big boy.

Rogue Nation is just smart enough to make us forget about the outlandish stunts, plot threads and somewhat uneven pacing at times. It’s alert, confident and delivers the goods you come to expect when seeing the trailer.

The cast is cool as silk, with Renner and Baldwin providing some levity with biting one liners and humor. It’sRebecca Ferg good to see Rhames back and Pegg is always a reliable comedic presence. The steal here though is newcomer Rebecca Ferguson, a gorgeous Swede who takes turns helping and betraying Hunt’s crew. Ferguson isn’t just a pretty face. She’s athletic enough to fulfill the action duties and has a naturally beautiful body that doesn’t seem anything overly fancy or anywhere near ordinary. Whether she’s climbing up her opponents to wrap her legs around their neck and stab them in the chest or she is racing on a motorcycle, Ferguson holds her own and then some and her co-stars know it. There’s something about a pretty lady with an European accent who can throw a punch and take one as well that just knocks me out. You’ve been warned, Emily Blunt and Kate Beckinsale.

While it’s not as polished as the first one or as slick as the last, this 5th round of Mission Impossible daredevil work is a worthy piece of summer entertainment. Whenever the plot starts to spin out of control and everybody is wearing fake masks and throwing kicks and shooting all over, Cruise grounds it all with his hard work and dedication to the character and the series. He’s a thinking man’s action hero and is all the fuel this Mission needs.

Also, Rebecca Ferguson doesn’t hurt.