Movie Review - The Fate of the Furious

The Fate of the Furious

Starring: Vin Diesel, Jason Statham, Dwayne Johnson, Michelle Rodriguez, Tyrese Gibson, Ludacris, Charlize Theron, Kurt Russell, Nathalie Emmanuel, Luke Evans, Elsa Pataky, Kristofer Hivju, Scott Eastwood, Helen Mirren, and more.

Directed by: F. Gary Gray Written by: Chris Morgan Based on characters created by: Gary Scott Thompson Cinematography by: Stephen F. Windon Music by: Brian Tyler

Premise: During his honeymoon in Cuba, Dom gets trapped by a mysterious woman. She's picked him specifically. And she's made sure to get something which will force him to choose to do things her way. First on her to-do list, get Dom to betray his family - that which he holds most dear. As the group tries to figure out why Dom has gone rogue, they get rounded up by Nobody. They want them to help find Dom but to also aid in putting a stop to Cipher's plans. (Rated PG-13)

Review:

1) Acting - Total Thumbs Up: Charlize Theron as Cipher was multi-layered and fun (in an evil, despicable way that is :P). Very much enjoyed watching her taunt Dom and act like she has all the answers; even as we see her struggling to understand how he can feel the things he feels. And looking a little jealous. Like I said - fun! Jason Stratham and Dwayne Johnson as Deckard and Hobbs look to have the most fun in the film. The in-joke/subliminal advertising for Moana was rather cute. Vin Diesel and Michelle Rodriguez speak volumes with glances. There's lots of witty banter and fun. Good job all!

2) Special Effects - Total Thumbs Up: As we've come to expect from the F&F series, there's a ton of special effects of all kinds. We've got engines catching on fire, crashes galore, subs, tanks, planes, explosions, and more! 

They did some cool stuff with the sub and the iced over lake. And the torpedoes? Sweet!

The "rain" in Manhattan was fabulous! The whole Manhattan section was divine. The fight on the plane was also super. Bullet holes galore. Add in Stratham and the "package," and you're in for a whole lot of fun! (So unexpected and yet so awesome! lol. My most favorite part of the film.)

3) Plot/Story - Thumbs Up: Science and physics always take a back seat in these movies. This time is no exception. EMP doesn't mean the same to these guys as it does to everyone else. lol. And though they cut away from the scene, there's still no way for that sub to get in the water! They do make it all look good, though! 

Even though it may hide their hands and faces, you do not go out onto the icefields in Russia without appropriate gear! Oh, you touched that bar with your bare hand outside in sub freezing temps? You just left a layer of skin stuck there. :P Sometimes I do wish they'd try a little harder to cover the easier things. 

Definite kudos on the little hints dropped here and there as to how Dom might not be quite as subdued as Cipher thinks he is. They do a replay to show the audience what they missed and a little more. So you won't miss anything, even if you do. :P I did like how they wove in a lot of people and history from the other films back into the plot. 

No real surprises in the plot, but still fun. Just watching all the insane destruction is half the entertainment. Add in some lovely fights, and voila! 

4) Stunts - Total Thumbs Up: There are a ton of gags! Between the fire, the ice, the bullets, the car and people chases, the hand-to-hand and the close weapons combat, the department was kept incredibly busy. Add in a little CGI, and the bar got raised a ton!

I have to mention that the fight at the prison was all levels of fun. A chase within a breakout, within a free for all. Nice! 

5) Locations/Cinematography - Total Thumbs Up: Lots of interesting sites in the film. Iceland, Cuba, Ohio, Georgia, New York, Germany, even a glacier! And the way they incorporate the names into the landscape is a nice trick. Some lovely spanning views of all the exotic places. 

Conclusion: The Fate of the Furious is fast and crazy and full of more cars and stunts than ever. It's enough to fill any action junkie's want list. :) Leave the laws of physics at the door, and strap in for a wild ride. 

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 (Hubby's Rating: Worth Full Price of Admission)

Movie Review - Mechanic: Resurrection

Mechanic: Resurrection

Starring: Jason Statham, Jessica Alba, Tommy Lee Jones, Michelle Yeoh, Sam Hazeldine, John Cenatiempo, Toby Eddington, Femi Elufowoju Jr., Anteo Quintavalle, Yayaying Rhatha Phongam, and more.

Directed by: Dennis Gansel Screenplay by: Philip Shelby and Tony Mosher Story by: Philip Shelby and Brian Pittman Based Upon Characters Created by: Lewis John Carlino and Rachel Long Cinematography by: Daniel Gottschalk Music by: Mark Isham

Premise: Having faked his own death, Bishop's been leading a normal life down in Rio. But someone from his past has tracked him down and he tries to blackmail him into killing three people. Bishop says no and escapes. Hiding out on a remote island in Thailand, he meets Gina. Someone else being blackmailed by the same man. It's time to make other plans. (Rated R)

Review:

1) Acting - Total Thumbs Up: Jason Statham does what he does well - flawless looking action. He excels at deadpan and brooding expressions mixed with quick glimpses of his inner self. Jessica Alba brings out a little humor and even smiles from the troubled Bishop. She also shows some spunk and isn't just a helpless female. Tommy Lee Jones is a hoot as Max Adams. 

2) Special Effects - Total Thumbs Up: Explosions, grenades, bullets, and more! The fight on the ship put bullet holes everywhere! 

A really neat effect is the effects of a chemical reaction Bishop tests for one of the jobs. Nice!

3) Plot/Story - Neutral: You don't expect a lot of plot from these types of actions films, but there are limits. Though they mention multiple times how important it is for the deaths look "natural", the first one has Bishop propping up the dead man in prayer. Using items to hold him up. Uhm, how would that look like a natural death to anyone? Especially with his drink all splattered on his clothes? And the bruises from a fight? Hello?

Somewhat soured the rest of the film for me. And it's a pity, as they get very creative on the jobs he pulls off! Which in its own way made the trouble worse since the guy is super intelligent and ends up doing a super stupid thing. (Which no one notices?) Ugh.

Crain's motivation wasn't well thought out either. Why wait so long to get revenge? There was no catalyst for it. Also, the whole "Father's Watch" bit didn't work. If Bishop was an orphan and was sold to a group to be trained to fight, they would have never let him keep the watch. I'd half expected it to have a GPS locator in it, so it would have some function, but they let that opportunity pass.

4) Stunts - Total Thumbs Up: All the stunt guys get a major workout on this one. There are a bunch of close quarters fighting and shooting. They looked great! The fight on the big boat was too fun to watch. And wait till the battle in the submarine bay. Sweet!

5) Locations/Cinematography - Total Thumbs Up: The locations for the film were all over the world - Bulgaria, Thailand, Australia, Brazil, and Malaysia. So there are a ton of gorgeous vistas and different architectures used to add flavor to the film. 

The cinematography was very well done - taking full advantage of most of the locations. The guys will definitely enjoy the lovely photography of Jessica Alba swimming in the clear waters in Thailand. :P

Conclusion: If you like tons of action, action, action - the Mechanic: Ressurection delivers. Plot and consistency wise? Not so much. 

Rating: 3 out of 5 (Hubby's Rating: Worth Full Price of Admission)

Movie Review - Furious 7

Furious 7

Starring: Vin Diesel, Paul Walker, Jason Statham, Michelle Rodriguez, Jordana Brewster, Tyrese Gibson, Ludacris, Dwayne Johnson, Lucas Black, Kurt Russell, Nathalie Emmanuel, Tony Jaa, Elsa Pataky, Eden Estrella, and more.

Directed by: James Wan Written by: Chris Morgan Based on Characters Created by: Gary Scott Thompson Cinematography by: Marc Spicer and Stephen F. Windon Music by: Brian Tyler

Premise: The older brother of a defeated foe has decided to wreck vengeance on Dom's team. Hobbs sends Mr. Nobody to help them out, since their new enemy, Deckard Shaw, is a trained assassin and covert ops specialist. Bur help comes at a price - the group needs to rescue a missing programer for them. If they do, Mr. Nobody has permission to let the team use a highly classified program to track Shaw down as well as give support. Only problem is, Shaw doesn't seem to want to wait that long to play with them. (Rated PG-13)

Review:

1) Acting - Total Thumbs Up: The main members of the well known cast are back. Though Paul Walker passed before the film was finished, the filmmakers were able to used past footage and members of his family to fill in the gaps. Paul will definitely be missed, but for anyone not knowing of his passing, they won't realize anything is amiss in the film. So kudos to the actors for smoothing out any holes and doing some one sided conversations to cover for their lost comrade. Family is what the Fast and Furious crew have always been about.

Watching Statham go toe to toe with Vin Diesel and Dwayne Johnson will make many hearts (those with and without testosterone) flutter. Talk about looks that can kill and snappy comebacks. Nice work guys!

Not to worry, the girls don't allow themselves to be left behind, with some great work coming from Michelle Rodriguez, Jordana Brewster, and newcomer, Nathalie Emmanuel.

Kurt Russell as Mr. Nobody was great! Kept you just a little insecure on whether or not he might be up to something. He made his own pile of comments and jabs. It was great to see him back on the big screen!

2) Special Effects - Total Thumbs Up: There were lots of awesome special effects, outstanding stunts, explosions, and car daring do! I sort of wish they'd not shown as many of them as they did in the previews, though. A couple of them would have had a lot more impact if they'd been left as a surprise - like the bus with the cliff and the car at Abu Dhabi.

I don't know if the airplane car drop scenes were a mixture of real and CGI, but dang they looked good! No idea how the heck you'd control or guide a car with chutes. All I know is it looked amazing!


3) Story/Plot - Neutral: The plot on this one is one of those that you don't want to look at too closely or it won't make sense or quite add up.

The storyline about Letty and Dom and them trying to work through her lack of past memories and the kinks it puts in their relationship worked rather well. When added to Brian and Mia's own unexpected issues now that he's a father, they made a nice mix. Family has been at the core of most of the Fast and Furious films, and this one, as the ending/tribute shows, is no different.

Most of the problems come from the other places. (Do not read further if you want your action and testosterone fest to go unsullied! You've been warned!) The fact Shaw somehow always knows where the group is and what they're doing, yet no one seems to wonder how the heck he's doing it or even that he's doing it - and never a even a hint of how he knows! (And you don't think therefore he might be expecting you to find him after you get God's Eye? REALLY? And that he might set a trap for you? So you BRING the only copy of God's Eye with YOU?!?! Add to that a missile armed helicopter and drone being brought from overseas by terrorists, and no one seems to notice their obvious breach of US airspace, or the fact the air force takes twenty plus minutes to even make their presence slightly felt while major havoc is wreaked in a major US City. Mr. Nobody's assistance/support seeming to vanish like smoke, even though he's not dead. Though the worst one was probably (despite the fact it did make for a great entrance!) the one with Hobbs and how he took care of the drone - the timing, especially since he couldn't see it, would have been virtually impossible to sync. (Yes, I can be a party pooper. :P)

Again, with a healthy dose of suspension of disbelief, the story does move well. But in general, it paled, in my opinion, to that of FF6's, on several levels.

There were some unexpected fun bits. The biggest  was a couple of repeating villains! Dom had Shaw from the start, then Brian picked up Kiet, and then the group also got tagged by Jakande as he went after Ramsey and whoever was with her. It was rather unexpected and added a bit of flavor, and gave the audience multiple points of a "payoff".

Some in-jokes were sprinkled here and there as well - both for Statham and Kurt Russell - those were fun.

4) Stunts - Total Thumbs Up: The hand to hand combat scenes are definitely worthwhile - even though they decided to do funky things here and there with the camera. Tony Jaa brought a little "Jackie Chan" flavor to the film and had several nice combat scenes.

Like I mentioned in the Special Effects section, it was too bad they gave away so many of the big stunt/special effects moments in the previews. There were plenty of other shots they could have shared to get people excited to come see it and left these to surprise the audience, thus ramping the excitement level even more. The car drop scene and the Abu Dhabi flying car scenes were definitely awesome.

5) Locations/Cinematography - Thumbs Up: The film covered several fantastic locations for mayhem. Abu Dhabi was a definite treat on several levels.

The opening scene where Shaw is visiting his younger sibling in London pans into a giant revelation as Statham and the camera move back from the hospital bed and he strides on through the hospital - major kudos for how that was laid out.

This being said, however, some of the gimmicky techniques got taken a little too far. I don't mind new angles and ways of making things seem fresh, but too many of these repeated back and forth over a short span of time, do not work well. Early on there's a section where the camera zooms in and then way out then back in then way out again that almost ruined the chase. Some odd sweeping shots on closeups then turning to another character and sweeping the shot in the opposite direction, back to back to back, was too much. A lot of the driving, fights, and action would have been just fine straight forward. It almost made it seem as if they were trying too hard?

Conclusion: Ignoring the plot holes and going in with a healthy dose of suspension of disbelief, Furious 7 will definitely entertain. (Though I didn't feel it was as good as FF6). Tons of eye candy for the guys - both female and four wheeled and then some. Lots of stunts and hand-to-hand combat. Plus an ending that will leave your eyes moist.

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 (Hubby's Rating: Worth Full Price to See Again)

Movie Review - The Expendables 2

The Expendables 2

Starring: Sylvester Stallone, Jason Statham, Jet Li, Dolph Lungdren, Chuck Norris, Jean-Claude Van Damme, Bruce Willis, Nan Yu, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Terry Crews, Randy Couture, Liam Hemsworth, Scott Adkins, Charisma Carpenter, and more...

Directed by: Simon West Screenplay by: Richard Wenk and Sylvester Stallone Story by: Ken Kaufman, David Agosto, and Richard Wenk Based on the characters by: David Callaham Cinematography by: Shelly Johnson Original Music by: Brian Tyler

Premise: When a supposedly easy mission turns bad and takes the life of one of their own, the Expendables won't rest until they've gotten revenge.

Review:

1) Acting - Thumbs Up: There wasn't much for most of the actors to act to, but what there was was well done. Stallone did a great  job. Van Damme was an awesomely nasty bad guy. It was definitely fun watching them all prancing about with guns blazing.

2) Special Effects - Total Thumbs Up: Great explosions! Tons of weapons fire during different parts of the film and they actually would run out of bullets, trying for a feeling of authenticity. It even had daring airplane lift offs and landings. Plenty of special effects entertainment for all.

3) Plot/Story - Neutral: The beginning of the film with the extraction/rescue plan was probably the best part of the whole movie. It truly showed the extent  of Expendables' skills. Then the story unfortunately turned into an unimaginative romp with too many winks to the audience with regards to in-jokes and other slipped in bits. Some were quite funny, but others fell flat. While seeing Chuck Norris was great, he got thrown in as a "Deus Ex Machina" at least once in the film. Some of  the others were also treated this way.

I was pretty miffed at the convenient way they got Jet Li's character to leave after the intro mission was over to make room for the character of Maggie. Though his 'fry pan' martial arts was totally enjoyable, it wasn't enough to make up for the big gap caused in the group with the departure of his character. It was almost as if the writers were afraid of having two characters doing martial arts. Which is silly as there can never be enough martial arts in an action film.

The jokes, like I said, were plentiful. Some were subtle, others were not. "Total Recall", "Die Hard", and even those online jokes about Chuck Norris made an appearance. I believe even the tattoo Van Damme wore as part if his 'bad guy' persona was an in-joke to one of his films.

4) Stunts - Total Thumbs Up: Great stunts. Kudos to the stuntmen standing in for our favorite older action heroes, especially during the final battle sequence. The only sequence with any issues was during the forced plane landing. The area of danger with Magggie was done in super shaky cam. Rather than add to the danger, it made the sequence incredibly difficult to see, making it lose any impact on the viewer of the possible loss of the new teammate.

5) Locations/Cinematography - Thumbs Up: Lots of foreign locations and interesting places were in the film. I especially enjoyed the cool structure of the mountain mines in Russia.

Conclusion: "Expendables 2" delivers on a ton of action, explosions, and gun play, but the plot left a lot to be desired. I didn't personally feel it came close to the original in overall satisfaction. But it definitely was awesome seeing all those big action stars on the big screen again.

Rating: 3 out of 5 (Hubby's Rating: Worth Seeing for Matinee)

Movie Review - Killer Elite

Killer Elite

Starring: Jason Statham, Clive Owen, Robert De Niro, Dominic Purcell, Aden Young, Yvonne Stahovski, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, and more...

Directed by: Gary McKendry Screenplay by: Matt Sherring Based on the Book The Feather-Men by: Ranulph Fiennes

Premise: An ex-assassin comes out of retirement to save the life of his mentor, who's refused to finish a job he took on once he found out the details. While Danny tries to fix things, matters get even more complicated as his actions spark the attention of an ex-SAS officer, called Spike. (Rated R.)

Review: I must admit that while I'd seen a preview for this, I'd not worked up much enthusiasm to see it. Thankfully, it was better than it looked and turned out to be a pretty intense good time. This film is NOT FOR KIDS. While the gore is minimal, the violence itself is high, and some of the subject matter mature.


The first job that sets up the scenario for what is to come later had a major flaw, but ignoring that, the rest makes for a fun and actually somewhat complicated film. Having recently completed Deus Ex Human Revolution made this even more fun as it was the same type of complicated political, greed, back-stabbing type situation (minus the augmentations and robots). :P

Lovely explosions and gun play. Some of the assassination set-ups were truly sweet. Also some nice hand to hand action. And some of the best Chair Fu I've seen in some time. The plot moves along at a nice pace, with minimal hiccups.

Some really nice scenery and flavors from myriad locations like Australia, Wales, and Jordan. The acting was good as well, Mr De Niro even getting a very sweet scene towards the end. Plot shows the deep complexity of true life regarding good guys and bad guys and the pawns used by those above. A total blast for filling in any cravings for shooting, fighting, and chasing.


Rating: 3.75 out of 5 (Hubby's Rating: Worth full price of admission)