Pathos amid the carnage
By Roger Moore
FILM: Olympus Has Fallen
CAST: Gerard Butler, Aaron Eckhart, Angela Bassett, Melissa Leo, Rick Yune, Morgan Freeman, Radha Mitchell
DIRECTION: Antoine Fuqua
Bystanders and tourists, soldiers, cops and Secret Service agents fall by the score in this movie about the unthinkable — a terrorist ground assault on Washington, DC. (Hollywood provided two such “unthinkable” assaults this year, with White House Down, released in June.)
This is Die Hard in the White House, with Gerard Butler manfully manning up as Mike Banning, the lone Secret Service Agent survivor after terrorists take over the White House and seize the president and most of the cabinet.
Not without a fight, of course. This president (Aaron Eckhart) boxes. And wait’ll you see the presidential head-butt.
Banning is a former White House detail member, on the outs because of a life-or-death decision he made months before. When the gunship sweeps over DC, when ordinary Asian tourists turn out to be terrorists, when innocent garbage trucks turn into tanks, Mike’s the man of the moment — dashing back inside his old stomping grounds, where a mastermind (Rick Yune of Die Another Day and The Man with the Iron Fists) tells the chairman of the Joint Chiefs (Robert Forster) and speaker of the House (Morgan Freeman): “I am the man in control of your White House.”
Banning is the only guy who can get to the fortified presidential bunker where the hostages are. He proceeds to stab, shoot and strangle his way through legions of terrorists, quipping in his updates as he shows off his trophies, by phone, to the rest of the government, which can only ask “Is he alive?” about Mike’s latest catch.
Butler is fine in this part, which demands little more of him than an ability to change magazines like he’s done it before. Many times. Mike has skills, which works against this Die Hard. This isn’t John McClane, ordinary cop in over his head. Mike Banning has “special forces” on his resume, which robs the picture of some of its suspense.
But there’s pathos here, amid the carnage. A good cast (Melissa Leo is a feisty secretary of defence) does what it can with a tin-eared script, making us care who lives and who dies. As an interesting side story, Mike’s wife (Radha Mitchell) is a nurse who deals with the carnage of America’s darkest day in an overwhelmed hospital emergency room.
Better thrillers make more of the whole shaky state of command in such calamities, wavering over terrorist demands, stringing out the suspense and playing up the clock ticking down toward whatever nuclear doomsday awaits should our hero fail.
Director Antoine Fuqua (Shooter) is plainly dealing with a script that shortchanges all that, and he’s not good enough to overcome it.
For all the bursts of blood, the gunplay and execution-style head-shots that punctuate scores of deaths, it’s hard to see Olympus Has Fallen (that’s Secret Service code) as much more than another movie manifestation of a first-person shooter video game. America has become a head-shot nation, and its thrillers are the poorer for it.— MCT
Even stone-cold criminals have moms
By Rene Rodriguez
FILM: Pieta
CAST: Lee Jung-jin Lee, Cho Min-soo, Woo Ki-Hong Woo, Kang Eunjin.
DIRECTION: Ki-duk Kim
Kang-do (Lee Jung-jin), the blank-faced protagonist of Pieta, is a collector for a loan shark who charges outrageous interest: Borrow $3,000, say, and you’ll have to pay back $30,000 in three months. Since most of the clients, who live in an industrial slum in Cheonggyecheon, South Korea, can rarely afford to settle their debts, Kang-do uses heavy machinery to cripple them in some way — taking a foot or a hand or an arm, just enough for their work insurance policies to cover the injury, so they can pay what they owe.
Living alone in a small apartment, with no apparent friends or family, the 30-year-old Kang-do devotes himself entirely to his job.
Then a woman (Cho Min-soo) shows up at his door, claiming to be the mother who abandoned him as a child. At first, Kang-do wants nothing to do with her. But the woman persists, gradually insinuating herself into his world until his heart softens and he lets her into his life.
Pieta was written and directed by Ki-duk Kim, who favours a quiet, reflective style (his previous films include 3-Iron, about two young lovers who never say a word to each other, and Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter ... and Spring, about an old monk teaching his young disciple on a floating temple). Although Pieta sounds violent, the camera always looks away from the carnage — there’s barely any blood in the film — suggesting more than it shows.
The film’s true subject is the undying love of a mother for her son. Like many South Korean films, revenge is a major theme here, although the way Kim handles it is particularly subtle and surprising: It sneaks up.
Guilt and redemption also play key roles in the story, which follows the transformation of a man who initially expresses his affection for his mom by asking her “Anyone you want me to kill?” and later is excited when she shows up with a birthday cake for him. Love, or even the semblance of love, changes him.
Pieta occasionally ventures into dark territory, and it ends with an unforgettable image of heartbreaking horror — the ultimate redemption. But Kim, ever the humanist, never loses sight of the value of life and the perils of growing inured to the suffering of others. — The Miami Herald/MCT
Monkey business
FILM: Flying Monkeys
CAST: Vincent Ventresca, Boni Yanagisawa, Mike Kimmel
DIRECTION: Robert Grasmere
A plane is carrying some questionable cargo to America. Wang (Alvin Chon), one of the pilots, hears some strange noises from the back and has his colleague check it out. He is killed by some strange winged creature. Wang goes to check it out and sees the dead body of the other pilot and the creature. No problem! He gets back to the cockpit and on landing, delivers the cargo, which looks a normal monkey to Rudy (Matt Cook), a pet store owner.
We then meet Joan (Maika Monroe) who is graduating from high school and her always late father James (Vincent Ventresca). She is upset and to try and make her happy James goes to a pet store and buys her a monkey who she names Skippy.
Everything seems fine until Joan’s boyfriend Jason (Zac Waggener) leaves her after tiff. Later that night Skippy turns into the winged creature, kills Jason and the next morning Skippy is back to being the normal monkey. Will anyone realise that Skippy is a shape shifter or will everyone die?
The acting of Flying Monkeys is as poor as its premise. Stale and lifeless, the cast go about their work as if in a hurry to finish the charade and go home. The CG is equally terrible.— DN
(DVDs courtesy: Saqr Entertainment Stores, Doha)
