Point Break.

Review #2520: Point Break.

Cast: 

Keanu Reeves (FBI Agent Johnny Utah), Patrick Swayze (Bodhi), Gary Busey (FBI Agent Angelo Pappas), Lori Petty (Tyler Ann Endicott), John C. McGinley (FBI Director Ben Harp), James LeGros (Roach), John Philbin (Nathaniel), Bojesse Christopher (Grommet), Lee Tergesen (Rosie), Vincent Klyn (Lupton 'Warchild' Pittman), Chris Pedersen ('Bunker' Weiss), Dave Olson (Archbold), Anthony Kiedis (Tone), and Galyn Gorg (Margarita) Directed by Kathryn Bigelow (#1258 - K-19: The Widowmaker, #1548 - The Hurt Locker, #1820 - The Loveless, #2188 - Near Dark, #2361 - Blue Steel, #2494 - Strange Days)

Review: 

“Thrill-seeking adrenaline addicts have always fascinated me. The idea seems to be that it’s not until you risk your humanness that you feel most human. Not until you risk all awareness do you gain awareness.”

Sure, it feels right. The original idea of the film came from Rick King, who wondered about surfers who robbed banks. King had directed Prayer of the Rollerboys (1990), which was written by W. Peter Iliff, who once was waiting tables in his late twenties before becoming a screenwriter. Iliff's original screenplay (under the working title Johnny Utah) actually had bounced around for much of the late 1980s (Ridley Scott was at one point tapped before pre-production didn't go anywhere) before eventually falling into the hands of Lawrence Gordon and his company that went with Kathryn Bigelow to direct. Bigelow, alongside her then-husband James Cameron did re-writes for a production draft (one particular moment that Cameron came up with was the main character jumping out of a plane without a parachute); in short, it wasn't a movie crafted by one person but through a variety of influences (Cameron, for whatever reason, recently expressed a bit of bitterness over not getting a writer's credit). Made on a budget of $24 million, the movie was a decent enough with audiences at the time of release and it attracted enough of a following that someone made a "reality-play" parody (which premiered in Seattle in 2003) of the film that has a new unrehearsed actor play the lead role and read lines from cue-cards (various people have attended performances such as Busey, Petty, and even Bigelow). A remake was released in 2015, which was shot/directed by Ericson Core with Édgar Ramírez and Luke Bracey playing the lead roles, and a TV adaptation has been floating around for a few months.

Well, you either live for the ride, or the waves will just splash you away. The whole "initiation into a group by a cop" thing wasn't completely mined out by this point (as evidenced by say, The Fast and the Furious [2001] a decade later), but the best thing about the movie is that it just coasts on the amount of casual energy it has with its cast and action. The folks here play the whole thing as straight as you can play it even with folks being named "Johnny Utah" going from former football players to FBI agents (in fairness, Charles Tillman actually did go from former NFL player to federal agent, so there's that) to go along with people who are all in their own varying levels of inner balance*. Reeves was the one that Bigelow defended despite studio doubts, and, yeah, he makes for a good pairing with Swayze in that type of bond that basically goes past the usual cat-and-mouse game that comes with these types of movies. You've got vulnerability and the yearning to actually do something on one side with Reeves and the eclectic confidence that comes from someone who aims to be the master of their own domain (spiritually, literally, whatever). All will drift onto the other side, so why not try to aim for the ultimate thrill when doing so? The rest of the cast* are fairly charming in their aims for a film that takes things casually, whether that means a few chuckles at the strait-laced McGinley or the odd duck straight man nature of Busey (see, he doesn't always play louts or the heavy). Call it whatever you want (one label that has been floated around is "wet Western"), call it a movie about finding a soul within riding the waves of the frontier that is the sea, the important part is that it is a pretty neat thriller at the end of the day. It packs enough heat within its 122-minute runtime that coasts in the air with skydiving, on the ground with one particular chase scene and in the water for, well, various moments to try and capture the feeling of surfing (I myself can't say stuff about water besides trips to the waterpark). It even has an ending like a Western with the culmination of one perhaps finding a soul within the waves. For a movie as stimulating in its curiosity for high-octane interest as this one is, you will probably have a good time with a film that has managed to get to 35 years with relative ease.

Overall, I give it 8 out of 10 stars.

Song of the day!

*There are apparently people who find a homoerotic subtext to the film in the same sense that people try to do that for Top Gun. Truth be told, I wish people had half as much time to use on Strange Days, which is the far more interesting Bigelow movie of the 1990s. Seriously, go see it.

*My balance is trying to hide my desire to be wrapped up on an island with a lady just like Lori Petty's character. What a character, especially with that hair.

Strange Days.

Review #2494: Strange Days.

Cast: 

Ralph Fiennes (Lenny Nero), Angela Bassett (Lornette "Mace" Mason), Juliette Lewis (Faith Justin), Tom Sizemore (Max Peltier), Michael Wincott (Philo Gant), Vincent D'Onofrio (Burton Steckler), Glenn Plummer (Jeriko One), Brigitte Bako (Iris), Richard Edson (Tick), William Fichtner (Dwayne Engelman), and Josef Sommer (Palmer Strickland) Directed by Kathryn Bigelow (#1258 - K-19: The Widowmaker, #1548 - The Hurt Locker, #1820 - The Loveless, #2188 - Near Dark, #2361 - Blue Steel)

Review: 

"Well, I don’t see Strange Days as a pure action genre piece. I think of it as a character-driven piece. It’s got a tremendous amount of dialogue and story—at one point we thought of it as science fiction as if written by David Mamet. The pauses in Strange Days are motivated more by story and character than by the need to linger on the mise-en-scène. That’s not to say we don’t fill every frame; your eye wanders outward to this complex environment that the principal characters don’t bother to acknowledge. They take it for granted that there’s an ad hoc revolution taking place, a civil war."

Inadvertently, I stumbled onto this movie when looking around for further movies involving Kathryn Bigelow. This was her fifth film as a director that just happened to be in between Point Break (1991) and The Weight of Water (2000). It came around after years of script development from James Cameron, who first envisioned it in 1985 and apparently wrote it mind for Bigelow (incidentally, they were once married) to direct it. They then collaborated on working the elements that interested them into the film, with Bigelow striving for grit while Cameron strove for the romance that resulted in a treatment. The treatment was then worked by Jay Cocks into a script that happened to get developed around the time of the Rodney King beating and the L.A. riots (incidentally, Bigelow was involved with the city cleanup). Cameron was more involved with the effects than being on set as a producer (he noted he visited the set just twice as a co-producer), particularly with wondering how the opening scene would look like in showing someone being part of a robbery that sees them swarmed by cops to see one run up a staircase and then have a jump from a ledge that had special cameras and rigs for it. This film and True Lies (1994) were part of a deal between 20th Century Fox. Set in the then future year of 1999 on December 30 and December 31, the movie was released in October of 1995 and somehow flopped with audiences, making less than half of its $42 million budget*, but there is a slight cult audience for the film.

  

Okay, so here's one: an electronic device (SQUID: Superconducting QUantum Interference Device) that lets you experience recorded memories and physical sensations of other people that happens to have little discs for storage (older film lovers might remember that interfacing oneself to record their sensations on tape for others to experience came a bit earlier with Brainstorm [1983], although that dealt with the military trying to get their hands on it). Memories were meant to fade, particularly when doomsday or redemption is on the line. This is a fascinating film that is hard to really piece down as belonging to any one genre, mainly because it makes the mark for sci-fi thriller just as much as it does belong to the noir genre, complete with plenty to astound the audience with beyond its violence. Sure, maybe we aren't all looking upon the world with VR headsets, but our fascination with technology is a strange one when you consider where "parasocial" has evolved to in the last couple of years with how now we can see any type of "living" to stream on a phone you can hold in your hand. People probably are isolated now more than ever, particularly in what we "see" and "feel", and there is something amusing in parts for what the film shows in how people use and don't use SQUID, specifically with the lead two characters. Fiennes (cast in the wake of being nominated for an Academy Award for Schindler's List instead of Andy Garcia) makes for a fascinating conman, one who is particularly vulnerable and fascinating because of how he eventually lands up in the quest to do the hardest thing one might think of: learning to let the past go and actually move forward. There's more to life than being a two-bit pathetic person, and he makes it a curious one to actually emphasize with. Of course, it is Bassett who provides the key moral center of the film, one who is just as handy in asserting herself (such as with a fist) as she is someone clearly desiring to see someone actually make a leap forward with her (as one does with arguably the biggest hero of the film). Sizemore and Lewis might seem outmatched within the confines of basically being in a noir (right down to the latter singing like a femme fatale might do), but I liked both of them in what they provide in their odd duck qualities that think people can be used up just like a beverage to eventually see go by the wayside. The 145-minute runtime leads to plenty of buildup for what type of world would have such a device go around even if someone might use it on a person dying of sexual assault, for example (also disturbing is a scene showing someone going brain dead from amplified signals). Sure, it might hit a ray of hope for its climax that may only work best as if one was watching a fable close itself down, but there is something to be had about a movie that seems to want to remind us to actually get real beyond being looped in playback. As a whole, Strange Days is a curious film in its desire to show the weird world of voyeurism within the confines of a dystopian future that may very well seem a bit familiar to those viewing the world with their eyes and ears nowadays. It deserved better than where it landed in 1995 and should be looked at by all the curious ones out there for its dazzling execution.

Overall, I give it 9 out of 10 stars.

See you in 2026.

*In comparison, in its first full week (it was limited on the first week) of release, the movie was beaten out by newcomers such as Jade and the Scarlet Letter to go along with the popular movie of the week again with Seven. And yeah, Get Shorty was the week after that.

Blue Steel (1990).

Review #2361: Blue Steel.

Cast: 

Jamie Lee Curtis (Officer Megan Turner), Ron Silver (Eugene Hunt), Clancy Brown (Detective Nick Mann), Elizabeth Peña (Tracy Perez), Louise Fletcher (Shirley Turner), Philip Bosco (Frank Turner), Richard Jenkins (Dawson), Kevin Dunn (Assistant Chief Stanley Hoyt), and Tom Sizemore (Robber) Directed by Kathryn Bigelow (#1258 - K-19: The Widowmaker, #1548 - The Hurt Locker, #1820 - The Loveless, #2188 - Near Dark)

Review: 

"What was interesting to me was kind of a heretical, irreverent look at a particular moment in time. You have this woman who's a police officer. And believe it or not, that was very difficult to get made because the police officer was a woman. I was asked to make her a man, and then we could get financing. I said no, the whole point of making this was that she was a woman. It seems so strange today to think of that as being an obstacle, but it was a big obstacle."

The road for what became Bigelow's third feature film is a tricky one. According to Bigelow, Universal Pictures had tried to develop a movie that would be about gangs in East Harlem that had her interested in writing and directing that had come after Walter Hill had been in the process of setting up a producing deal there around the time of Streets of Fire. Years later, Oliver Stone apparently was interested in doing a project but about South LA gangs...and then he got involved in Salvador and Platoon while she did Near Dark. Long story short, Stone liked that film and was interested in doing whatever she wanted to do next, complete with being producer, and Bigelow sent him, well, the script for Blue Steel, which eventually came around with Stone and Edward Pressman producing. I wonder who exactly came up with what in the script for the film, since Bigelow shares the writing credit with Eric Red; they had previously written Near Dark (1987) together, although Red has apparently labeled the script as basically a "female version of The Hitcher". Apparently, the climax of the film (you know, the gun fight) would've had Curtis nude, but she said no to that, being quoted as saying "Everyone would be watching my breasts flopping around instead of watching the scene." Bigelow in the past was quoted as having an interest in "treading on familiar territory", describing Blue Steel as a "mutation that maybe implies a different genre". The movie was released by MGM in the wake of Vestron Pictures' impending doom as a company, and the movie made a small amount of money while Bigelow next directed with Point Break (1991).

Some reviews of the time compared the movie to Halloween (1978) because of the whole boogeyman thing and having Curtis, I guess, but I don't seem to remember the part in the earlier film where the lead became a cop. But what we do have is a weird movie, one that is entertaining but stupefying in its execution to varying levels of effectiveness that tries to play two different angles: the plight of a (woman) cop that has to come to terms with who they really are when faced with rough surroundings...and also a nut that has an obsession with her and, well, things that lead him to want to shoot again and again. Technically speaking, the movie is kinetically interesting in general action while dragging along at 102 minutes to a conclusion that will befuddle the viewer in its certain positioning (ambiguity or overwrought, you might wonder) while seeming digging new ways to throw itself in melodrama. But how many films do we let certain things fall by the wayside because of our relative enjoyment, anyway? Is it nitpicking to wonder where the line should be drawn with a movie where a robbery takes place but somehow the guy in the front of it thought he saw a knife rather than, well a gun*. But Curtis does hold the film together with a generally tense performance that shows the struggle that arises with her position that only is solid when she essentially plays nice in the box she is constrained to, and that's without even mentioning her interactions with the other side of the coin of someone trapped in the strange world of struggling with their position and place. We the audience know what we know, so if someone can badger her about her method the way they do in one particular scene, imagine how is in an actual active scenario. If you're not with her and her charm that comes through even in the plight around her, then, well, the rest of the film goes down with her, for better or worse. Silver is mostly effective in evoking tension, albeit with a few obvious beats (bad enough he carves names into bullets, does he need to have voices in his head and also spout lines about death?) to go with the newfound power of a gun, which I'm sure could be interpreted in different ways**. The scenes the two share with each other are curious enough to make a worthy enough cat-and-mouse game to a certain point, being more interesting in the start and close rather than the holding down that comes with stretching things out. Brown moseys about with a casual charm, albeit with late usefulness in the long run, since it is more a movie of doubts and moods that might as well be a dreary dream. You don't exactly get much time to spend with Bosco and Fletcher[*] besides the bare minimum that comes with semi-resolved (?) family tension either. By the time the movie moves to its endgame around Wall Street, you have a movie that is frantic enough to possibly override the inevitable quibbles because it has a committed director and star that want to make an entertaining thriller. In a sea of varying effectiveness when it comes to women-leading action movies, Blue Steel is at least a solid enough recommendation to seek out for the ride it goes on in the curiosity about the nature of power and, well, the thrills.

Overall, I give it 7 out of 10 stars.

*I don't want to pick all the way to hell, but probably the most ridiculous idea is that our lead comes to her parents, sees a fresh bruise on her mom, arrests her dad but decides in the middle of a conversation with him in the back of the car to just...let him off with a warning to not be who he is anymore. Or something. 

**Something something Freud something something penis. Actually, I wish my memory was a bit better, because I swear it isn't too particularly hard to find a movie about someone finding a gun and deciding to mosey around the city with it. Instead, I keep wondering why I haven't watched Gun Crazy.

[*] Bosco was a Tony Award winning actor for 1989, while Fletcher, well, you know her Academy Award-winning role in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, but for me, her performances as Kai Winn on the massively underrated Star Trek: Deep Space Nine was probably just as cool.

Near Dark.

Review #2188: Near Dark.

Cast: 

Adrian Pasdar (Caleb Colton), Jenny Wright (Mae), Lance Henriksen (Jesse Hooker), Bill Paxton (Severen), Jenette Goldstein (Diamondback), Joshua John Miller (Homer), Marcie Leeds (Sarah Colton), and Tim Thomerson (Loy Colton) Directed by Kathryn Bigelow (#1258 - K-19: The Widowmaker, #1548 - The Hurt Locker, #1820 - The Loveless)

Review: 

I'm sure you can see the familiar tropes here: one wants to make a certain kind of genre movie but when they can't get the funding or interest for it, they find themselves framing it a different way. Eric Red (writer of one previous film with 1986's The Hitcher) and Kathryn Bigelow wanted to do a Western, but they found a lack of interest in making that sort of genre film, which eventually led them to the idea of think outside the box to make a horror-Western graft that attracted attention. The script was done on spec, which helped in having Bigelow to be the one to direct it rather than anyone else. It was made on a budget of $5 million but had considerably less attention paid to it when compared to that other movie about vampires in a small town for 1987 in The Lost Boys (incidentally, that film also featured a son of Jason Miller in Jason Patric). It was distributed by the DeLaurentiis Entertainment Group (as headlined by Dino De Laurentiis that had a place in North Carolina), which went under two years after the release of this film. While Bigelow went six years between The Loveless and this film, her next film would come out in less time with Blue Steel (1990), which she wrote with Red.

This is the kind of film that strips the vampire to the most basic of elements, ones that you don't see fangs or them being affected by religious objects (guns seem more like pellets to them) because the sun and the consequences of love and attraction is more than enough. One won't find anything Gothic here, unless one finds music by Tangerine Dream in that array (no). The vampires are basically gunslingers that happen to love the night while harassing would-be prey. It is a lean 95-minute runtime, packed with entertainment value when it comes to the clashes of a would-be father figure and reality. Honestly, it seems like a toss-up to say whether this one is the better vampire film of its year, but one can at least enjoy either film with their sense of handling the clash of communities, with our lead not exactly being the clear hero type (really one wouldn't be too off to be reminded of The Searchers, albeit in a smaller timeframe). One is watching a wolf pack of grimy people that would be grimy regardless of the vampirism. And it all starts because of one act of being bit by a woman. Pasdar thus has the interesting double-act of being a focus that wants as little to do with vampirism as one could possibly do because, well, it isn't his way as a country boy in a den of experienced bloodsuckers. Pasdar and Wright make for a shaky pairing because of course they would be shaky when it comes to coercions and trying to live down certain choices that grow bigger throughout the film. That scene of Pasdar trying to run down to the van with a cover, flames and all, is quite breathtaking to see when it comes to making choices and sticking with them. Apparently, Henriksen, in costume, would go around picking up hitchhikers to prepare for the role, which is meant to be a vampire old enough to fight for the Confederacy. He chews up this role for all of the charismatic menace possible, a "father of the night" that would fit the most within horror or the Western genres. Of course, the other big presence is Paxton, who is having a ball as a vampire could possibly have when it comes to practically playing with his food, such as the scene where he gets into a momentary fight with a tough guy that has him "choking" before he takes the time to steal some sunglasses and muse about hating eating folks who are unshaved. He just knows the buttons to push when it comes to conniving century-old presences that don't need much backstory to convey chaos. Rounding out the cast is Goldstein and Miller, with the latter indeed being a child actor playing a vampire that is quite creepy. I appreciate the film for maintaining steady pacing in the tension in trying to affirm just where they belong and making the choice of where to stand when the sun is about to rise. Bigelow's second effort as a filmmaker is a solid one, packed with a few thrills for the horror and western parameters that deserved better for its time - no better time to see some frontier terror in the dark.

Overall, I give it 8 out of 10 stars.

The Loveless.

Review #1820: The Loveless.

Cast: 

Willem Dafoe (Vance), Marin Kanter (Telena), Robert Gordon (Davis), J. Don Ferguson (Tarver), Tina L'Hotsky (Sportster Debbie), Lawrence Matarese, and Danny Rosen (Ricky). Written and Directed by Kathryn Bigelow (#1258 - K-19: The Widowmaker and #1548 - The Hurt Locker) and Monty Montgomery.

Review: 

"I guess if I had to single out a theme for what I've been up to, I'd say it's some sort of journey to explore film's potential to be kinetic. This probably started unconsciously, but it's there in one way or another in all my movies. I'm always trying to squeeze the most energy out of the frame."

Yes, this is a directing duo each making their first ever film, but we both know that Kathryn Bigelow is the drawing presence when it comes to examining a director in the first stages of a dutiful career, particularly with the way that her career has moved in the past four decades. Before she became a filmmaker, the California native studied painting at the San Francisco Art Institute and film scholarship/criticism at Columbia University, and it was in the latter place that she met Monty Montgomery (incidentally, he would later co-produce Wild at Heart, which featured Dafoe). Bigelow's first film was a short called The Set-Up, which dealt with two men beating each other up while two professors deconstruct it. Through resources of the Museum of Modern Art's Film Study Center and a small town in Georgia, the movie was shot in 25 days. The original titles for the film were "U.S. 17" before "Breakdown" (as shown on the festival circuit in 1981), and then the final title (upon its premiere in New York in 1984). Probably the easiest comparison one could make is The Wild One (1953), since that film also features a small town that encounters a motorcycle gang with a charismatic lead, although you might see traces of an imitation of an American International Pictures film (like The Wild Angels). As such, the movie has arthouse sensibilities with touches that make it set around the late 1950s/1960. 

Well, there is a distinct outlier in the cast: This was the first starring role for Dafoe (a founder of the experimental theater group in The Wooster Group and someone briefly seen in Heaven's Gate the previous year). Gordon is actually more known for his neo-rockabilly singing, and he is responsible for the music in the film. Ferguson was a thirty-year actor with a handful of character roles while also being a NCAA Basketball Tournament referee for a number of years. This was the first of four Kanter roles, and L'Hotsky was a Downtown New York personality. It might not be a surprise that this film was not a particular success among the independent circuit (to the point where one can see three different release years for this film depending on the premiere from 1981 to 1984). It certainly won't be the ideal feature for everyone, because it is more of an art feature with brooding and quiet glances than anything, where action is only what you can speculate to be action, complete with select voiceovers for a film that has some presentation of "who are the real outlaws" or something. In short: the movie proves just fine, if only because its curiosity factor manages to override the decaying sense of patience one could have if they don't find the retro feel to their liking (besides, the attempt at retro hasn't exactly gone away, but Bigelow has clearly found her distinct edges in action). Dafoe is undoubtedly the highlight, if only because one can see the potential there with such a brooding actor that is distinct from the very second you see him in the opening, having a volatile presence that seeps into scenes in all the right senses that makes the movie better than it should be. Of course, the others aren't too far behind. Kanter has a vulnerable presence that invites curiosity within minimal choice words, one that lingers with Dafoe for the moments on screen together with apt patience. Gordon and the other members of the biker group aren't exactly packed with many words, but they fit the casual nature required from this pastiche requirement. Ferguson does just fine with slimy qualities that stoke a necessary chill that seems unstrapped by time. It can be a breezy or slow 85-minute stroll when it comes to this film, but I found it inviting enough in the small lunges one sees from a biker movie that has the promise of improvement for its director (not Montgomery, who shifted to producing). As such, it might not be the easiest recommendation, but if one wants to see an early showcase for both Bigelow and Dafoe with a quiet brooding experience of being on the road, you probably won't go wrong there.

Overall, I give it 7 out of 10 stars.

Next Time: The Decline of Western Civilization Part II: The Metal Years (1988).

The Hurt Locker.

Review #1549: The Hurt Locker.

Cast: 
Jeremy Renner (Sergeant Sergeant William James), Anthony Mackie (Sergeant J. T. Sanborn), Brian Geraghty (Specialist Owen Eldridge), Guy Pearce (Staff Sergeant Matthew Thompson), Christian Camargo (Lieutenant Colonel John Cambridge), David Morse (Colonel Reed), Ralph Fiennes (Contractor Team Leader), Evangeline Lilly (Connie James), and Christopher Sayegh (Beckham) Directed by Kathryn Bigelow (#1258 - K-19: The Widowmaker)

Review: 
"War's dirty little secret is that some men love it. I'm trying to unpack why, to look at what it means to be a hero in the context of 21st-century combat."

The artist can come from anywhere, whether for film or beyond that, no matter how much time it takes to develop their craft or find a following with viewers. Kathryn Bigelow gradually found a place within cinema with her style of handling action cinema. She had actually started out originally striving for study in fine art (specifically painting), graduating from the San Francisco Art Institute in 1972. She spent a few years as a starving artist, being involved with conceptual art, and appearing in a few short films, but she subsequently entered Columbia University to study theory and criticism in the film program, stating film as becoming "the interchange where all these ideas were intersecting.”, and she started making her own short films with The Set-Up in 1978 (while noting the two films that opened up her landscape to film being The Wild Bunch and Mean Streets in their irreverence and intensity). Since beginning her feature career with The Loveless (1981), Bigelow has directed a variety of genres that generally deal with violence or thrills of some kind,, which resulted in a diverse quality of films that ranged from cult films like Near Dark (1987), to hit action films like Point Break (1991) to ones that did not find enough audience appeal like K-19: The Widowmaker (2002) for a career of so far ten films in a career of nearly four decades.

For this film, she wanted to do the film on her own control with less-known actors (the ones you would associate as name actors in Fiennes and Pearce are here less than ten minutes, and even less for Morse) and filming in the Middle East (which was done in Jordan), which would entail some extremely hot conditions for its crew (particularly for those wearing bomb-proof Kevlar. For me, the only thing that I was really curious about was to see how it fared in its dealings with war and the people around it in the context of its decade (particularly within world events). The film was written by Mark Boal, a journalist that previously had one of his articles turned into a film that he co-wrote with In the Valley of Elah (2007). Boal was embedded with troops and bomb squads for a time in 2004 in Iraq, and he used those observations and interviews to make the script, and he would also serve as a co-producer. What we have here is a film wrapped in tension and careful planning for people who move toward danger rather than run from it. In that sense, Renner does quite well in his reckless edge that suits the desire to stay on the pulse that feeds upon the pressure on his hands with calm conviction. Mackie goes along with well-mannered effectiveness in the simple act of trying to maintain oneself under pressure that might also resonate in some way with perspective like Renner if one thinks about it in some way. Geraghty certainly ranks as the reserved one of the main group, but he holds his own in trying to maintain one's sense of self with the unpredictability and brazen nature of what happens in these fragmented moments here. It wraps itself in modern warfare with fair conviction in capturing what is necessary in intricate experiences with our main trio of actors that resembles documentary-style filmmaking at times without becoming spectacle for the sake of it or wrapped up in fervor of too many message-making - leaving it to the viewer for better or worse. Its a fragmented film, wrapped with its trio with occasional perspective to the surroundings around them while focusing on the circumstances (and tensions) that wind them up instead. In this case, I would say it makes a good experience in ferocity for 131 minutes that captures the drive necessary in some way to carry on with its tour of service without becoming consumed in macho fervor that connects the dots in sobering interest for adrenaline-laced perspective that makes a useful curiosity for its time as a middle-ground winner.

Overall, I give it 8 out of 10 stars.

K-19: The Widowmaker.

Review #1258: K-19: The Widowmaker.

Cast: 
Harrison Ford (Captain 2nd Rank Alexei Vostrikov), Liam Neeson (Captain 3rd Rank Mikhail "Misha" Polenin), Peter Sarsgaard (Lieutenant Vadim Radtchenko), Joss Ackland (Marshal Zolentsov), John Shrapnel (Admiral Bratyeev), Donald Sumpter (Captain 3rd Rank Gennadi Savran), Tim Woodward (Vice-Admiral Konstantin Partonov), Steve Nicolson (Captain 3rd Rank Yuri Demichev), Ravil Isyanov (Captain 3rd Rank Igor Suslov), Christian Camargo (Petty Officer Pavel Loktev), and George Anton (Captain-Lieutenant Konstantin Poliansky) Directed and Produced by Kathryn Bigelow.

Review: 
I could make up a sentence about how tense submarine dramas can be when done right, but I can't really say I have watched many of them. Sure, I have watched films with submarines before (like Fantastic Voyage), but the only submarine film I have covered was The Hunt for Red October (1990). Honestly, the urge to watch this film has never really been high, but sometimes you just have to get rid of the non-obvious picks so it never ever needs to linger on the shelf uncovered, especially for such a meh month like August. Is there anything interesting one could say about this film? Well...at least you can see the ambition (i.e money spent) jump at you on screen. As annoying as it may seem to note its box office failure (making only $65 million on a $90 million budget, with one production company being the National Geographic Society), it does become evident not too long into its run-time why this wasn't a big hit. Ford and Neeson can only do so much with a film that just does the bare minimum with garnering tense entertainment. It weebles and wobbles for 138 minutes, playing a game of tension and reaching stalemate more times than garnering overall victory. There are other ways of spending two hours, and this ranks as a middling option. One can be really wishy-washy about a film that just isn't energetic enough to really heap praise over nor crow about.

One thing I can note is the fact that the set of the sub is actually the same size of the real K-19 sub this film is loosely adapting from, complete with narrow corridors. Even if the film isn't completely accurate to historical facts involving the real K-19 (whose nickname upon the accident was actually Hiroshima), at least it can be said that this isn't a complete embarrassment to the real crew members that were on the ship, who had objected to the initial script (with the resulting script revisions also resulting in changing the names of the crew). At least the sub action seems pretty authentic, which can go hand in hand with the radiation effects. Ford and Neeson play off each other fairly well with what they are given - you may not get to really know these two beyond just being the heads on a cursed ship, but at least they seem fairly interested to be there - with ensuing attempts at Russian accents seeming okay. The other members of the cast are fine, if not really anything to write home about more than a sentence or two, with Sarsgaard showing fair promise at least. If one knows about a historical event (and its participants) more than just a search on the Internet, does it help in the enjoyment (or the opposite) of the film adaptation? It certainly seems a bit interesting to take a subject that didn't really have much notoriety due to the crew not being able to speak on the matter for decades and try to make something worthy for film, for better or worse. There isn't any shoehorned characters there for the sake of being there, and it holds itself up as a film without being too contrived even during its climax and epilogue scene. If the film makes you care what could happen to these characters in the sub, then it surely has done the job of making worthy entertainment. If the shoe fits, surely you could have a fine time with this one. If it doesn't do that (as is the case with me), try another film.

Overall, I give it 6 out of 10 stars.