FILM: Ride Along 2
CAST: Ice Cube, Kevin Hart, Olivia Munn, Ken Jeong, Benjamin Bratt
DIRECTION: Tim Story
Watching the Ride Along films (this is the second installment in the buddy cop franchise) is an exercise in succumbing to Kevin Hart’s unique, manic charms.
By the end, it’s most likely you’ll be laughing at the antics of the bite-sized comic — whose style is reminiscent of an over-enthusiastic puppy nipping at your ankles — even if you’re not sure why. This is why Ice Cube is the perfect audience proxy as Hart’s tough and taciturn counterpart; while he initially wants to bat the irritating pup away, Hart’s persistence and moxie are difficult to resist.
Ride Along saw Cube as James Patton, a hard-boiled detective of few words, pressured by his sister Angie (Tika Sumpter) to take her boyfriend Ben (Hart) along for a ride, on which disastrous capers, and some unlikely detective work, ensued.
In Ride Along 2, directed again by Tim Story, James heads for parts south after a Fast and the Furious-style opener, in which he uncovers a mysterious USB drive from a drug dealer with a hacker’s calling card leading him Miami. You can guess who begs to go along for the ride again. This time, Ben’s a fresh police academy graduate, who’s a bit of an idiot-savant when it comes to law enforcement.
In South Beach, James and Ben link up with hacker AJ (a loopy Ken Jeong), and another tough homicide cop Maya Cruz (Olivia Munn). They make an odd foursome, with Ben and AJ bonding over their nerdy hobbies, and Maya and James sharing a similarly serious approach.
Jeong makes a surprisingly good foil for Hart — the two comedians both subvert the stereotypes of their outward appearances — balancing the qualities that make them less-than-macho with over-the-top braggadocio and ego.
AJ, the hacker, turns out to be quite the ladies man, and Ben has no qualms embracing his feminine side, whether it’s in his overzealous wedding planning or his choice of undergarment.
The plot itself is run-of-the-mill cop comedy stuff, with Benjamin Bratt delivering the villain role as a suave Miami heavyweight who’s smuggling drugs and other contraband. The story beats are well-trodden, the action sequences and visual effects nothing more than serviceable, if chaotic, but there’s fun to be had in Ride Along 2, thanks to Hart and Jeong, who play fast and loose with the tropes.
All Ben wants is to prove himself as a cop and a brother, but he doesn’t feel the need to change anything about his metrosexual nerd persona, finding strength in it. All those hours of video games somehow pay off.
Ride Along 2 takes quite a bit of time to pick up speed, and doesn’t have the verve and energy of the first film, but it has its moments, particularly when Hart hits the gas on his signature zingers. — TNS
Back to nursery
FILM: Kindergarten Cop
CAST: Dolph Lundgren, Fiona Vroom, Darla Taylor
DIRECTION: Don Michael Paul
In this sequel to the 1990 comedy film Kindergarten Cop, starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, a gruff FBI agent, assigned to recover sensitive stolen data, goes undercover as a nursery teacher, but the school’s liberal, politically correct environment is more than he bargained for.
In Kindergarten Cop 2, Dolph Lundgren plays a womanising (or so we hear) FBI agent who lives in a trailer by a lake where he spends all morning working out and all night cooking steaks. He and his partner, played by Bill Bellamy, need to find a flash drive holding sensitive FBI documents before it falls into the hands of a dangerous drug dealer-type.
For reasons that don’t really matter (though the film spends 25 minutes setting them up), that flash drive is hidden somewhere in an elementary school.
You know the drill. Dolph has to go undercover as a kindergarten teacher to see if any of these little brats know where the flash drive is. He also begins to fall in love with the school’s other kindergarten teacher.
What separates Kindergarten Cop 2 from its predecessor is the culture of this school. While Arnold’s movie mined laughs from seeing a tough muscle man unable to control a bunch of kids, this one builds on that humour by taking place in a highly liberal educational environment.
Of course, Dolph learns to love the kids eventually, and the movie loses this slight bit of edge, falling once again into a generic stroll through a plot you’ll have no trouble predicting. — NS
An engaging mystery
FILM: Backtrack
CAST: Adrien Brody, Sam Neill, Robin McLeavy
DIRECTION: Michael Petroni
Nothing haunts like the past; it’s a catchy tag line that attempts to sum up director Michael Petroni’s new film Backtrack, but there is more to this thriller than can be summed up in a single breath. What begins as a moody drama about a troubled psychotherapist quickly reveals itself as a deeper tale of supernatural intervention into the darker underbelly of human nature.
Peter Bower, played with wrenching emotional finesse by Adrien Brody, is struggling with the loss of his daughter while barely holding together his practice and his marriage. Bower blames himself for his daughter’s death, while not entirely clear on what happened exactly. When not in sessions with his own patients, Bower seeks counsel from fellow psychotherapist Duncan Stewart, played by Sam Neill, which only leads Bower further down the twisted rabbit hole that will become a truly unnerving revelation.
Backtrack is a ghost story of sorts, but at its core, the film is a highly internalised story of a man thrown up against his own emotions, his own inner demons, perhaps manifesting as tortured apparitions, or perhaps fuelling an unwelcome opening in himself to another level of perceiving the pain and grief that surrounds him on a daily basis. Whichever it is, the film merely suggests the possibility and leaves the audience to interpret the events as they unfold through our own filters.
The story truly shifts gears into an engaging, gripping mystery once a teenaged girl named Elizabeth Valentine shows up outside Bowers practice, unable or unwilling to speak. This sets Bowers off on a mission to understand driven by his own lack of certainty.
From here, the energy and pacing of the film picks up and never lets the viewer go. — TK
DVDs courtesy:
Saqr Entertainment Stores, Doha
..
