The Protector

Posted on September 7, 2006 at 11:55 am

Lowest Recommended Age:	High School
MPAA Rating:	Rated R for pervasive strong violence and some sexual content.
Profanity:	Some strong language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	None
Violence/ Scariness:	Contains several deaths by combat and gunshot. Many of the gunshot deaths are startling and unexpected
Diversity Issues:	Strong characters of diverse backgrounds, both good and bad guys, though only men are physically strong
Date Released to Theaters:	2006
Date Released to DVD:	2007
Amazon.com ASIN:	B000I0RNWU

Martial arts actor Tony Jaa’s follow-up to his breakout performance, 2003’s Ong-bak, could be called Kill Bill with a conscience. The violence is so pervasive that viewers can’t help but become increasingly desensitized, and there’s a clear attention to style that results in some brilliant scenes dripping with flair and fashion. But where directors like Quentin Tarantino revel in the
gratuitousness of their films’ guts and gore, Prachya Pinkaew, director of The Protector, seems unwilling to have a bloody mess without a message.

The result, as can be guessed, is a rather conflicted film. Its personality lies somewhere between the story-book
sincerity of The NeverEnding Story and the slash-happy wantonness of Tarantino, resulting in an unclear message and an ambiguous intended
audience (children will identify with the bond between Kham and his elephant, but will likely be disturbed by the violent images and unexpected deaths).

The premise is both absurd and intricate — boiled down, the plot is that Kham (Jaa) follows the thieves who have murdered his father and also stolen his father’s elephant to Australia. With the exception of a few pastoral scenes and the
pivotal moment when the elephant-stealing takes place, most of the film is set in a dark underbelly of Australia, where meetings are held in backrooms and basements and life is corrupt, depraved, and cheap. With Kham’s arrival, this underbelly becomes the backdrop for
a battle between good and evil.

Kham, with his respect for the “old-ways” and his
appreciation of friendship and loyalty, kicks and screams his way
through countless enemies. He’s no less violent than his
counterparts, yet it’s made abundantly clear that he’s fighting
for “honorable” reasons — mainly fighting on behalf of those who
have been wronged and cannot fight for themselves — while the
enemies are unmistakably driven by greed, power, and selfishness.

But let’s face it, this film is not about the plot. It is about the fight scenes. Jaa’s signature is performing without tricks of any kind — no wires, no sped-up cameras, no special effects. He is his own special effect and his ability and speed is astonishing.

Parents should know that this film is exceptionally
violent, and that while some aspects of the plot notably its themes
of friendship, loyalty, and passion — are suitable for young
children, there are many elements of the film that are not.
Characters are killed in unexpected and brutal ways, and violence is
the first resort in conflict resolution. The physical combat
overshadows the relatively mild language, but nudity and sexual images with very
disturbing contexts are strong in some scenes.

Families who see this film should discuss what Kham is
fighting for, and how, although combat and injuring others is
portrayed as “cool,” there are ways of impressing others with
physical strength that make physical injury a last resort. For
daughters and sons interested in martial arts, Parents might suggest
forms that focus on self-defense, confidence and evasion of contact.
Families might also discuss the film’s villains, and talk about what
paths they could have chosen that would have been more virtuous and
rewarding.

Families who enjoy this film might also enjoy Ong-bak,
as well as Jet-Li and Jackie Chan films and the ultra-violent, Tarantino’s films,
notably Kill Bill and Kill Bill 2. For more light-hearted fare, families will enjoy
Stephen Chow’s films, especially Shaolin Soccer.

Hollywoodland

Posted on September 4, 2006 at 12:00 pm

B-

Lowest Recommended Age:	High School
MPAA Rating:	Rated R for language, some violence and sexual content.
Profanity:	Some very strong language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Drinking, smoking
Violence/ Scariness:	Graphic violence, question of suicide or murder, character gets beat up badly
Diversity Issues:	None
Date Released to Theaters:	2006
Date Released to DVD:	2007
Amazon.com ASIN:	B000KWZ7JC

Is there a more heartbreakingly unsolveable mystery than a suicide? The only person who really knows what happened is gone. Even if we find out the how, we who are left behind will always wonder why. Those who are still here have made a decision to live. Whether or not we have ever explicitly considered Hamlet’s question, “to be or not to be,” the option is always there, and there is a dreadful fascination with those who made the other choice. Were they braver? Wiser? Were they disturbed? Was there something anyone could have said or done to change their minds?

In 1959, George Reeves, one of the biggest stars of the early days of television, committed suicide. Reeves played Superman and was a hero to the first generation of kids to grow up with television. He was a brand new kind of superstar. But his very ubiquity as Superman made it difficult for casting directors to see him in any other role. Finally, in dispair over his lack of professional prospects, he shot himself.

But like many other Hollywood deaths, from Virginia Rappe to Thomas Ince to Paul Bern to The Black Dahlia, speculation about a possible cover-up has led to one or more movies “inspired by” real events.

It is Hollywood, after all, or Hollywoodland, as the famous sign originally read. The name of a modest housing development has now become a word that means glamour and fantasy. Both make us wonder — could anyone who was famous in Hollywood want to die? And if someone wanted a cover-up, isn’t Hollywood the place where they know how to make us believe whatever they want us to?

There is some symbolism, maybe some irony in Reeves’ famous role being the split character of both Superman and his mild-mannered secret identity, reporter Clark Kent. Anyone in Hollywood can be both Kent and Superman. When we meet Reeves (Ben Affleck, looking beefy), trying to get his picture taken at a glamorous nightclub. Like every other aspiring actor, he thinks that inside him there is a star waiting to be born. He has just appeared in a very small part in the biggest movie ever made, Gone With the Wind. He thinks he is on the brink of having his dream come true.

He begins an affair with an older woman (Diane Lane), the wife of a studio executive. And he gets a job in television. He thinks it is silly, but it becomes enormously successful, and he is so identified with the role that no one else will hire him. His one big break, a part in a very important film, falls apart when a test audience won’t buy him in another part.

Is that a reason to die? Reeves’ mother hires a private detective (Adrien Brody) to find out. But there are those who do not want him asking questions. And he has his own problems.

The film evokes the time beautifully, with meticulously chosen sets, costumes, and music. The re-creations of the old “Superman” television show are especially well handled, both the behind-the scenes moments (a red and blue costume would not photograph properly in black and white) and the cheerfully cheesy show itself. The brief scene with Affleck as Reeves as Superman as Kent is so true to the original that viewers old enough to remember watching it in its original broadcast will expect it to be followed by commercials for Maypo and Pepsodent.

The performances are outstanding. Lane is exquisite at showing conflicting motives and emotions. She is a woman both sure of her beauty and honest that it is on the wane, comfortable being sexually agressive but wanting to be wooed. Affleck, relieved of the burden of being a leading man, is gratefully enigmatic. What does Reeves want? To be an artist? To be a star? To be married? Is he talented? Is he smart? Affleck and the script let us wonder if Reeves himself could have answered those questions.

But that ambiguity is both the movie’s strength and its weakness. The movie fails in trying to make Reeves’ story a big metaphor, and the attempts to find some parallels in the story of the detective’s own troubles is only a distraction. The characters are too remote to make us care about their tawdry problems. Like the audiences he looked down on, we’d rather see Reeves play Superman.

Parents should know that this movie has a great deal of mature material, beginning with its theme of suicide, with graphic and disturbing images. There are explicit sexual references and situations, including adultery. Characters drink and smoke and use very strong language. There are graphic scenes of violence, including a character who is badly injured by thugs.

Families who see this movie should talk about how everyone — not just actors — must learn to find a balance between what we want and what we can get, who we are and who others want us to be.

Families who enjoy this movie will also enjoy Sunset Boulevard, L.A. Confidential and Chinatown (the last two with very mature material).

The Wicker Man

Posted on September 1, 2006 at 2:54 pm

F+

Lowest Recommended Age:	High School
MPAA Rating:	Rated PG-13 for disturbing images and violence, language and thematic issues.
Profanity:	Some strong language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Prescription drugs
Violence/ Scariness:	Very scary images and abrupt and startling moments of terror. Sudden, high-speed crashes, dead bodies and mutilation
Diversity Issues:	Diverse communities, paganism
Date Released to Theaters:	2006
Date Released to DVD:	2007
Amazon.com ASIN:	B000FUF6QS

Fans of the original The Wicker Man appreciate the film for many reasons: Its dichotomy of paganism and Christianity, its skillful use of Celtic folk music, its eerie and overbearing ambience. Although some might find it slow, disturbing, and at times absurd, it is redeemed by a general sense that the actors and filmmakers felt a genuine passion about setting a mood, posing philosophical questions, and making the audience feel and think. Somehow, with the mystery and horror meant to achieve a higher goal than just shock and alarm, so it’s not a total enigma — on some levels, anyway — why some consider the 1973 film a “classic.”

A classic remake, on the other hand, tends to be an oxymoron. Unless classic is used as a sarcastic term, and remake in the most derogatory sense of the word, which, in the case of director Neil LaBute’s version seems entirely appropriate.

While the original relies on an impending sense of doom to carry viewers to the chilling end, the remake piles on a steady steam of violence, flashes of very disturbing and shocking images, and outbursts of nonsensical emotion to give the film weight. The gimmicky horror-flick conventions ultimately drag the film to a screeching halt when it becomes clear that no deeper meaning will be found and no redemption attained. Most bizarre, however, is the film’s attempt at humor. Comic relief to break the tension in the action/horror genre is not uncommon — take, for example, Lake Placid, Anaconda, and to recent extremes Snakes on a Plane — but this film’s almost slapstick stunts, most courtesy of star Nicholas Cage, have no continuity or context. Most of the concepts presented — such as human sacrifice, betrayal, murder of one’s own family members, and mutilation — have no place alongside desperate attempts to garner laughter at the absurdity of life.

Ultimately, even as the film leaves viewers with a terrible and horrific final scene, the audience leaves questioning not the meanings of evil and murder in our society but the validity of a film that puts such concepts on display with no greater purpose or goal.

Parents should know that this film has many highly disturbing images and presents upsetting concepts such as human sacrifice and torture. In one scene, a car blows up with a mother and daughter inside, and in another a young girl is tied to a tree with the implication that she is to be killed as a sacrificial offering. The individual relationships in this film are meant to shock and awe, such as a woman deceiving her ex-fiance to his death and a daughter lighting the fire that is used to kill her father.Many images are as shocking as they are memorable, and impressionable children and adults alike may be left with highly unpleasant images in their mind.

Some main themes of the film include a female-dominant society (in this case, unfortunately tied to the negativity of the film) and betrayal of loved ones. Families should discuss the meaning of community, and what makes some communities healthy and some oppressive. Families should also talk about different cultures and societies, and what makes our societies and others prosper or fail.

Families who enjoyed this film might also enjoy 1973’s Soylent Green, and the original Wicker Man of the same year.

Crank

Posted on September 1, 2006 at 2:49 pm

B-

Lowest Recommended Age:	Mature High Schooler
MPAA Rating:	Rated R for strong violence, pervasive language, sexuality, nudity and drug use.
Profanity:	Very strong language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Drinking, smoking, street and pharmaceutical drugs
Violence/ Scariness:	Extreme, intense, graphic, and grisly violence, guns, knives, fighting, torture, many characters injured and killed
Diversity Issues:	Diverse characters
Date Released to Theaters:	2006
Date Released to DVD:	2007
Amazon.com ASIN:	B000K7UBSO

Crank — as in the highly potent and highly agitating street drug, as in cranked up, as in dizzying cuts and swoops with the camera to replicate a disorienting strung-out high followed by an even more disorienting and strung-out crash.

Actually, it begins with the crash. Chev Chelios (Jason Statham) wakes up feeling like death, which turns out to be just about right. According to a DVD left for him, he has been injected with poison and has about one hour left to live. But Chev is a guy who knows how to fill an hour. He needs to get his revenge, say goodbye to his girlfriend, and look very, very hard for a loophole.

And he has to do it at full speed. The poison he’s taken can be slowed down if he can keep his adrenaline pumping. You might think that just knowing you’ve been poisoned and racing around trying to find the guy who did it before it kicks in would be enough to keep the fight-or-flight juices going, but Chev finds a way to kick it up a notch with just about everything available, from cocaine to sex to defibrillator paddles and a waffle iron as he races around in real time, crashing his car through a shopping mall, trying to get a shot of epinephrine from a hospital, and knocking his girlfriend’s purse out of her hands so she won’t notice that he’s knocking off some baddies as she retrieves her keys and lipstick.

Statham’s coolness is always a treat to watch and the movie has some great set-pieces and action sequences. But it overdoes the gallows humor (okay, you slice a guy’s gun hand off with a meat cleaver, maybe the hand will still be on the gun when you pick it up, but do you have to keep it on while you shoot and then throw the hand at a guy?). Amy Smart brings a lovely slow vibe counterpoint as Chev’s warm-hearted but clueless girlfriend, even when she is called upon to participate in a bizarre sex scene in front of fascinated crowd inlcuding a schoolbus of girls in uniforms. Country star Dwight Yoakum is terrific as Chev’s unschockable doctor. But as the body count mounts up, the story runs out of ideas, and it goes from crank to crummy.

Parents should know that this movie has non-stop and very graphic and grisly violence. Not only is a man’s hand sliced off, the hand is still holding the gun when it is picked up, it gets thrown at someone, and it is later displayed on a table. There are guns and knives, car crashes, punches, head butts, and kicks, a guy gets thrown off a building, another guy gets tortured and killed, and of course the main character is poisoned. Characters drink, smoke, and abuse street and pharmaceutical drugs, and they use very strong and crude language, including the n-word (used humorously to refer to a white man). There are explicit sexual references and situations and sexual and non-sexual nudity.

Families who see this movie should talk about what their priorities would be if they had one hour to live.

Families who enjoy this movie will also enjoy the 1950 version of D.O.A., about a man who must solve his own murder before the poison kills him, and the 1988 remake with Dennis Quaid. They will also enjoy Speed, Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels, and Snatch.

Snakes on a Plane

Posted on August 18, 2006 at 4:13 pm

Lowest Recommended Age:	Mature High Schooler
MPAA Rating:	Rated R for language, a scene of sexuality and drug use, and intense sequences of terror and violence.
Profanity:	Some very strong language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Drinking
Violence/ Scariness:	Extreme, intense, and graphic peril and violence, many injured and killed
Diversity Issues:	Diverse characters
Date Released to Theaters:	2006
Date Released to DVD:	2006
Amazon.com ASIN:	B000JBXHQY

If there’s ever an Oscar for truth in titling, it will go to “Snakes on a Plane.” As zillions of internet fans have noted for months, that says it all. This is the snakiest plane movie and the planeiest snake movie ever made.

The credits list four screenwriters, and I imagine they divided it up like this: “I’ll make a list of places on the plane the snakes will be found, you make a list of body parts they can bite — be sure to include them all, you make a list of items on a plane that can be used as weapons, and you make a list of things that can go wrong on a plane that will make it even more dangerous. Go ahead, throw in a thunderstorm! And don’t forget a big, juicy product placement. Okay, everyone ready — GO!”

There wasn’t much need to make a list of, for example, characters. They just took a couple from every airplane disaster movie: the children traveling alone, the supercilious British guy, the pretty girl with the yappy little dog in her purse, the fat lady with a flask of booze, the kick-boxing champion, the newlyweds with a husband nervous about air travel, the flight attendant on her last trip before starting law school, a germophobic rap star with his entourage, oh, and of course, the tough FBI agents escorting a witness who is going to testify against a very, very bad man.

And there wasn’t much need to write dialogue, with all the suggestions from the internet fans. Yes, the line the fans insisted on is in the film (though clearly a reshoot inserted after principle photography), and a very excited audience joyfully recited along. There was a lot of applause for the snake-o-vision, too, green-tinged shots from the snake’s point of view.

It’s basically a movie about two questions:

1. What is the meaning of life? Oh, sorry, wrong movie. I meant to say, how many places can snakes be on a plane and how many places on a body can they bite? Answer: all of them

2. What items on a plane can be used to combat, destroy, and barricade oneself from snakes? Answer: More than you’d think

These days, when shampoo and cologne are too dangerous to take onboard, it almost feels like a relief to have an over-the-top airplane scarefest like this. There’s a particular reference to current restrictions, as an FBI agent (Samuel L. Jackson) is looking for something sharp and all the flight attendant can offer him is a plastic “spork.”

Jackson strikes exactly the right note, never winking at the camera, simply delivering full-on star power and clearly enjoying himself immensely. Director David Ellis expertly maintains the tension, stopping for some resolution — or even a laugh — now and then. It does not take itself too seriously, but it takes its obligation to entertain seriously and, as far as movies about snakes on a plane go, it’s hard to imagine a better ride.

Parents should know that this is a very graphic, intense, and violent movie with many gross injuries and horrible deaths. A child and a baby are in peril and a dog and many, many snakes are killed. Characters use some very strong language. There is brief nudity and a sexual situation. Characters drink alcohol. A strength of the movie is the portrayal of strong, loyal, and capable diverse characters and women and a sly reversal of gender expectations.

Families who see this movie should talk about how it became an internet phenomenon, with the audience playing a role in determining the movie’s content and even its title.

Families who enjoy this film will also enjoy Die Hard: With a Vengeance (also starring Jackson), 16 Blocks, and Arachnophobia as well as airborne classics like Airport, The High and the Mighty, and Airplane!. For more on this movie, see my blog posts here and here. And if you’ve seen it already or don’t mind spoilers, see this post with a link to the Slate podcast discussion, too.