I watched Ong-Bak: The Thai Warrior the other night and enjoyed it. Tony Jaa seems to defy gravity and the big set pieces were well constructed and entertaining, and, I think, there was little use of wires to manufacture the illusion (though I may be proved wrong). One chase scene through the Bangkok streets was excellently orchestrated and a Tuk-Tuk chase scene was a lot of fun. Pure genre flick–nothing necessarily original–and though it lacks the audacious high style of Kung Fu Hustle, I would argue this modest tale of rural values overcoming urban corruption has a lot more heart.
Also saw Godard’s Weekend. Wow! What a wacky piece of cinematic deconstruction. Was this meant to be a comedy or did Godard really believe he was sticking it to the man (i.e. corporate everything)? It plays like farce and is so far-fetched and over the top that I couldn’t help but enjoy it a little. That being said, it is about as subtle as a brick turd in Bill Gates’ driveway.
I liked this too, and I have certainly read that Tony Jaa does it all himself, without wires or special effects. Whatever style of Thai fighting is being used lends itself well to his freewheeling style. It is vastly more graphic in its violence than Kung Fu Hustle, and the director seemed to want to replay each hit in slow motion a couple of times. The sidekick was annoying, but I suppose that is the purpose of sidekicks, and at least they killed him off, which is rare.
At the risk of lowering the tone of the blog, I have to put in a good word for Transporter 2. Just plain old fun, with several scenes so incredible that the audience laughed out loud, some very impressive martial arts in the Jackie Chan mode (using hosepipes or whatever comes to hand to fight off endless streams of bad guys), true sociopaths for villains, and enough humor to leaven the fare. Jason Strathan is developing a little of what made Bruce Willis so effective in Die Hard’s I and II, but in a stripped down form. It will be appropriate if he manages to escape the long, dark shadow of Guy Ritchie. Fun, fun, fun, after a summer of not much fun.
Ask Reynolds about Godard’s Weekend. Wasn’t it a topic of discussion in Kincaid’s comedy seminar, part II? I’d also love to hear Reynolds talk about “The Tick.”
thanks for the “transporter 2” mention chris. i am a huge fan of crappy action movies. by “fan” i mean “connoisseur”. will check it out soon. however, i must add that the first film’s gender politics bothered me: this is par for the course with anything luc besson related, of course, but just a little too much erotic charge from women’s bodies in pain. is the sequel any better in that regard?
I’m afraid that this one is just as bad, actually worse because Besson uses a woman to play one of the sociopathic evildoers, and the one that most enjoys (giving and receiving) pain. There must be club somewhere where a director can do this and then turn around and say “look, I made the woman a sadist, see it’s a feminist film.” That said, the action sequences rock…
I’m in France at the moment and just saw “Kiss Kiss Bang Bang.” I’ll post on it when I get back and can find a keyboard with a recognizable layout.
just finished ong-bak. chris, transporter 2 better be better than this. jeff, i don’t really get the distinction you make between this and kung fu hustle. it seems to me that movie far more cogently posits community against brutality, and blends its thematic and stylistic concerns very cleverly. this has some fun fight sequences, yes, but that’s about it. it is also extremely jingoistic.
and the chase scenes you mention are far more creatively done in jackie chan’s early 80s movies–before he broke all the bones in his body. chan’s downplaying of masculinity and strength in his movies is what makes them so successful. this is just a van damme movie with a thai hero. there’s something to be said for that switch, no doubt, but i don’t know if there’s very much more to be said for this movie.
just watched transporter 2–much better than the first one. which is not to say that it is anything more than disposable, logic-free entertainment. gender issues less repugnant in this film–what is it, however, with luc besson and women with heavy running dark eye-makeup? poor matthew modine–his career is over.
Not having delved into any Jackie Chan movies . . . ever, I can appreciate the fact that what I found to be fun and entertaining was derivative as hell. I really don’t care much for martial arts films in general though I have a very fond memory of my dad taking me and my little brother to see Enter the Dragon during its first American release (71? 72?). So, I really can’t back up my reaction to Ong-Bak except I found it more entertaining than the repetitive, pomo aesthetics of Kung Fu Hustle (which I loved for the first twenty minutes or so but then its fizzy, Busby Berkeley aesthetics flattened out into something amusingly tedious).
Just watched ‘Transporter 3’ and glory be, Arnab, the female lead has black eyeshadow that drips down her face when she cries; it is like a seal of authenticity from Besson, just in case you suspect it is a cheap knock-off of his franchise.
It’s enjoyable, if a little slower-paced than its predecessors. The martial arts scenes are as well choreographed as usual (if cut a little faster). Statham is beginning to look a little like the heir to Jackie Chan in his inventiveness in using everyday objects in combat. The villain is Robert Knepper who reminds me in this of Lance Henriksen, circa ‘Hard Target’: absolute confidence in his plan even as everything around him turns to shit. A couple of good car chases, though I’d still take Jason Bourne in a Mini over Jason Statham in an Audi. As usual, the best parts involve François Berléand as our friendly Marseilles cop; I especially enjoyed his take on the gloominess of Russian literature. Spoiled only by the the ludicrousness of Valentina (Natalya Rudakova).
Ong Bak 3 is unbelievably, incredibly bad. Just unwatchable. I fast-forwarded through 80% of it pausing only to watch the far too infrequent fight scenes. They have constructed a superstructure of broad meaning on top of the martial arts sequences — something about conflict between assorted kings, a human crow (Brandon Lee?), healing through meditation, Christ knows what else — and long, long minutes go by in which nothing whatsoever happens. And Tony Jaa is not aging well. He spends most of the movie with long matted hair and a beard to cover his ragged features.
Why do film-makers insist on taking the purity of a classic action film (the first Die Hard, the first District B13, the first Lethal Weapon, etc) and larding up the sequels with attempts at meaning beyond the choreography of bullets and fists?
chris, you’re way more hardcore than me: i couldn’t even make it through the first one.
SuckerPunch: Wow, I was disappointed. I don’t get the point of the sadism and misogyny in this thing. Molestation, torture, rape and prostitution take up the bulk of the movie, and let’s not forget lobotomization, which is introduced in the first act and hangs over the rest of the movie like a stiletto heel waiting to drop.
It’s enough to make me not enjoy watching four hot women (and one homely one) run around in tight clothes shooting everything and blowing shit up.
That part I dug. The first fight scene is excellent against giant samurai robots. There are also steam-powered Nazi zombies, orcs in catapults, fire-breathing dragons, dirigible warfare, exploding church ruins, and lots of knives. I thought that was going to be the whole movie actually. It’s not at all. The bulk of it is needlessly bleak, sickening and dreadful. By the time the fourth fantasy set-piece ramped up I was tired of the whole thing, and didn’t even care about the robots with a bomb on a train on a moon of Saturn set to blow up when it reaches the city.
Spoiler:
It blows up. The whole city is destroyed. Two of the heroines are shot in the head. And the girl gets lobotomized. The end.
I appreciate you seeing this so we don’t have to. I gotta admit: “steam-powered Nazi zombies” still produces a reflexive scan of my local movie times. I was pretty sure that this looked asinine, which is dandy, but if it’s mean, too…. screw that. Has Snyder made a good movie? I didn’t mind his Dawn of the Dead remake, but the rest of his films have been dreck. He’s got oodles more style than Michael Bay, but at least Bay is on occasion entertaining.
There’s no comparison to my mind. Bay is far and away the worst successful filmmaker working today. Snyder is nowhere near that level of incompetence – or sheer disinterest in such peripherals as “acting” and “characters.”
His Watchmen was bloodless, but I believe he was trapped by the idea that he should not mess with the book. Never saw 300 – I wanted to wait for a version with hot chicks. So when I thought he made that, I that laid down my bucks and got ready to be entertained. It’s like he hit me in the stomach when I was really wasn’t expecting it.
I wasn’t trying to get at competence; I think we agree on assessments–Bay makes a ridiculous hash, and Snyder is seeking in each film to define as fully as he can a whole world, visually and narratively coherent. What I was trying to get at is that, for all his painstaking attentions, Snyder’s work is as dull as dishwater. Bay can achieve something that is hamburger, but can be palatable….
ah hell, it’s like arguing about your preferences regarding macaroni and cheese. Snyder’s using rotini, and a delicate Jarlsberg sauce, with a sprig of parsley. Bay is stirring in the orange powder over elbow macaroni. Either way, it ain’t much of a meal.
Under the quick takes heading: Paul is worth renting, but it lacks the delirious fun of Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz. The jokes are mostly too obvious, but there is also some sly stuff enlivened by a deadpan Jason Bateman. I’m still waiting for the authentic third part of the Blood and Ice Cream trilogy.
I almost went for a new post, but I haven’t much time, and my read on Doug Liman’s Fair Game is brief, and mixed. Its first half is really strong, particularly as it traces the ways that intelligence is gathered. (I was even surprised–I’d thought its focus was all after the release of Plame’s name to the press, but that assholishness doesn’t occur ’til late in the Game.) Where it stumbles is in its depiction of the other side, which is minimal and cartoonish. I’m okay with Scooter Libby as a tool, but he’s a thin device here, collapsed into a few character traits (tilted head, rooster walk, self-importance) and given no insight. (Karl Rove is simply fat and sweaty.) Sean Penn’s Joe Wilson is also a little thin, or maybe I just got stuck on the impersonation–always thinking, hey that’s Sean Penn with a Joe Wilson haircut.
But the first bit is indeed very good, and I think Naomi Watts smartly underplays Plame.
Fair Game. Entertaining enough and not as ideologically loaded as I thought it might be (doesn’t mean right wingers will be rapt with attention). What got me was how the narrative trajectory is structured around Joe Wilson’s character (and Sean Penn’s performance; and, yes, his hair deserves an award of its own). At the beginning Ambassador Wilson is something of an emasculated male while his wife runs around the globe playing James Bond. Her “outing” has less to do with her safety than it does with those marginalized figures (in particular, an Iraqi woman physician) whose trust in Plame compromises their lives and the lives of their families. But Joe . . . Joe grows more powerful as he sets out to right the wrongs of the Bush administration and their violation of his wife’s “true” identity. This is marked by three speeches or presentations he delivers over the course the film. The first at Boston University is sparsely attended to say the least. Seemingly, no one wants to hear him speak. By the end of the film he is filling the house. His voice and his journey is privileged, and I thought that to be an odd thing for a film about a woman who was a high-ranking CIA spy.
Sharp points.