Sudden Death.

Review #2510: Sudden Death.

Cast:

Jean-Claude Van Damme (Darren McCord), Powers Boothe (Joshua Foss), Raymond J. Barry (U.S. Vice President Daniel Bender), Dorian Harewood (Matthew Hallmark), Whittni Wright (Emily McCord), Ross Malinger (Tyler McCord), Michael Gaston (Hickey), Faith Minton (Carla), Paul Mochnick (Andrew Ferrara), Audra Lindley (Angeline Ferrara), and Jack Erdie (Scratch) Directed by Peter Hyams (#233 - 2010: The Year We Make Contact, #326 - Timecop, #2477 - A Sound of Thunder)

Review: 

"I was not a hockey fan. I had not been to a hockey game before. I started to do research, and then I started to watch the Penguins play. I began to realize the unbelievable athleticism involved, and the violence involved and the speed of that puck. Hockey is better in the arena than it is on television. It’s a phenomenal sport."

What better day to do a movie about hockey than a few days after the United States of America managed to beat the odds and win the gold medal in hockey (and in true gender equality: the men and women each won*)? What better time to see a movie that could basically be thought of as an ad for a hockey team? The original story came from Karen Baldwin, an aspiring actress who became part of a producing firm with her husband Howard, which basically came on the side of sports ownership, as the Baldwins were among the owners of the Pittsburgh Penguins (as was the case from 1992-1998*). At the time, the team played in the Civic Arena, and the unique roof of the venue that could open up apparently led to Karen thinking about the possibility of doing "something like Die Hard in a hockey arena", which also matched with a story the Baldwins had tried to do about a Soviet goaltender trying to defect because they were wearing a mask; Gene Quintano then wrote the screenplay. When Peter Hyams (not exactly a hockey fan at the time) was approached, he was astounded to see the Baldwins willing to do a movie with so much action in their own venue (he proceeded to suggest a fight scene with a killer dressed up as the team mascot). Of course, the 1994-95 league lockout hindered them in getting the proper filming for crowds, and a good variety of the hockey action ended up being the work of local hockey players (while Mike Lange and Paul Steigerwald provided commentary). As the second collaboration between Hyams and Jean-Claude Van Damme (after Timecop), the movie was a mild success at the time while becoming a rental favorite. 

It does kind of boggle the mind to have your hockey team be part of a movie that has the following: the team mascot getting into a fight with the lead hero (before getting brutally killed), team security basically being humiliated at all costs (mayhem after every period ends no less), and, to top it all, the lead villain wearing Penguins gear right before he dies in "death by helicopter stalling". Of course, the funniest thing is the movie just...ends, because I could only wonder how a hockey game continues after all that. For a movie that freely cribs from Die Hard, except with trying to disarm bombs, it is quite fascinating to see it all play out (right down to a henchman playing Doom), unless one doesn't like violence in their action movie - the body count on this film of people who die is actually considerable, jeez.. This was a movie that had both of its hero and villain cast because other people rejected it (Sylvester Stallone and James Woods, for example) and yet each manage to have a ball with the roles presented here, mostly in the case of Boothe, who has tremendous alacrity to engage with the mayhem without just having it mosey on by. Van Damme may never have really been a great action star in terms of variety, but he at least was still committed enough in physicality to at least make it worthwhile to see him kick the hell out of someone dressed up as a mascot. As much as it would be nice to have some presence from the hostages besides cursory interest from Barry, the movie doesn't hesitate in just going with the mayhem. The maneuvering of the plot does not exactly gel completely with reality (bomb detonations are to be delayed by the onset of overtime because, well, I guess even terrorists wanted to make sure they didn't miss the finale before blowing it up?), but the movie manages to move its machinery for 110 minutes without treating the audience as if they were entitled to be liked for the sake of being liked. You either buy what it is selling (complete with rooftop action for the climax) or you just wash it away quickly. As a whole, Hyams shot and directed a decent little film that basically maneuvers itself the way you would hope for a wind-up action movie in an era where cribbing from others was fine as long as you had some craftsmanship behind it. It's not a great movie, but being good enough is fine anyway.

Overall, I give it 7 out of 10 stars.

Movie Night presents: Song of the day

*It should be noted that Howard Baldwin was behind the change of the iconic Penguins logo for, well, a loser logo that never won anything when it was around because...merchandising. Also he called the old logo a "pigeon". Just goes to show that rich people really do sometimes have no taste at all.

*I mean this with only a lit bit of venom towards the sore losers towards how the men's/women's hockey games went: Suck it Canada! 

A Sound of Thunder.

Review #2477: A Sound of Thunder.

Cast: 

Edward Burns (Travis Ryer), Catherine McCormack (Sonia Rand), David Oyelowo (Marcus Payne), Ben Kingsley (Charles Hatton), Jemima Rooper (Jenny Krase), Wilfried Hochholdinger (Dr. Lucas), August Zirner (Clay Derris), Corey Johnson (Christian Middleton), Heike Makatsch (Alicia Wallenbeck), Armin Rohde (John Wallenbeck), and William Armstrong (Ted Eckels) Directed by Peter Hyams (#233 - 2010: The Year We Make Contact, #326 - Timecop)

Review: 

Hey, ever read A Sound of Thunder? Well, there were rumblings of making a film adaptation of Ray Bradbury's short story of the same name (as originally published in 1952) since at least 2000, when Renny Harlin and Pierce Brosnan were tapped to work on it for Franchise Pictures, with Thomas Dean Donnelly and Joshua Oppenheimer tapped to write the script (Gregory Poirier later worked on the screenplay to get credit with the duo, known for co-adapting Sahara). They wanted to fast-track production before a possible actor strike, but the following year saw Harlin taken out for Peter Hyams and eventually Edward Burns was cast over Brosnan, who wanted re-writes. Franchise Pictures went down under during post-production, which got in the way of a movie that was meant to be $55 million. In 2004, Franchise filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. The movie was being filmed in Prague when an actual flood hit the area that saw re-scheduling and a post-production that went on for nearly two years. Previsualized software (and sub-contracted work) was used to basically save time what became a nightmare. This was the 18th feature film for Peter Hyams, who had previously started the 2000s off with The Musketeer (2001), which didn't exactly rock the world. After this, he made two more movies: Beyond a Reasonable Doubt (2009), a movie that may actually have even less of a reputation than this movie, and Enemies Closer (2013), a film that had a limited US release; the then-66 year old also shot for Universal Soldier: Regeneration (2009), as directed by his son.

In the future of 2055...people spend money to go back in time to wait for a guy to tell them when they can shoot a dinosaur dead. Sure. It almost seems too easy to say this movie is really, really bad. There's something to be said about a movie that talks about "time waves" and "Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle" with the confidence that audiences would just accept the malarkey that comes across for a mess in both visuals and as a time travel movie. What you get here is a bland movie, one that has a handful of bad green screen effects and dopey-looking creature effects that would've seemed ripe for an Irwin Allen movie. But even if the effects were magical or invoked some sort of interest, it was not going to override the lack of an interesting story that can't really evoke the Bradbury story. The original story wasn't really much besides saying "careful about stepping on something, otherwise everything goes to hell because, that insect was important millions of years ago" (the name of the story came from the firing of a rifle), but here you get a movie where for whatever reason the changes to the timeline happen from wave to wave that makes plants and stuff grow weirdly. All from a mess-up where trying to shoot up a dinosaur that was planned to die (notice how shooting the gun doesn't have an effect on the stuff around the dinosaur). With how the characters have to go on a trip to see who messed up with the stepped-on thing, I wonder if someone watched The Warriors a bit too much. It also lacks an interesting hero or villain to really latch on to, and that's even with the presence of a white-haired Kingsley. Burns might as well be transparent with how he brings nothing to the table as the lead focus: there isn't a sense of guilt or adventure to anything he goes through, and McCormack can't actually make the consequences of time travel seem compelling either. You would think Kingsley would know better than to do stuff like this, but between him trying to be "funny" here and a "villain" in BloodRayne (2005), I suppose money does win out. The others don't end up any better, mostly being used to basically serve as fodder (given that the ending never seems in doubt, obviously the dead-count is back to zero). There just isn't anything to laugh with in terms of humor or anything to really gawk at for interest, and the climax is all about...using a few seconds to say the right thing and save the insect. As a whole, even when knowing that the film took years and years to actually realize its vision, there is no slice of hope to be found here with how bland and uninvolving it all is.

Overall, I give it 2 out of 10 stars.

Next up: Twisted Pair.

Movie Night: Timecop.

Review #326: Timecop.

Cast
Jean-Claude Van Damme (Max Walker), Mia Sara (Melissa Walker), Ron Silver (Aaron McComb), Bruce McGill (Eugene Matuzak), and Gloria Reuben (Sarah Fielding) Directed by Peter Hyams (#233 - 2010)

Review
Ah yes, I finally get to talk about Mr. Van Damme. If you thought Schwarzenegger was the only one from another country that I would ever review...Actually, I thought wrong. Oops. This is apparently based off a comic book (Let's seem that's like the 25th or...Nope, 26th), and it kinda shows. It feels a bit like Terminator for some odd reason which is nearly forgotten due to the strangely complicated plot and action. So if I understand right it's about a man trying to stop a supposed bad guy in the oh so future of 2004 (and 1994 as well), but...okay. It sometimes is interesting and it sometimes has some sort of decent action, and Van Damme does a decent job, not horrible, even if it feels awkward. It's an odd film, somewhat understandable and somewhat okay.

Overall, I give it 6 out of 10 stars.

Movie Night: 2010.

Review #233: 2010.

Cast
Roy Scheider (Heywood Floyd), John Lithgow (Dr. Walter Curnow), Helen Mirren (Tanya Kirbuk), Bob Balaban (Dr. Chandra), Keir Dullea (Dave Bowman), and Douglas Rain (HAL 9000) Directed by Peter Hyams.

Review
It has been a while since I have discussed 2001: A Space Odyssey. So let me give a little discussion here. It's one of those films to describe it a few words: Grand. Special. Thought-provoking. Epic in scale. Effects-galore. Classic. As for 2010, what would the be the words to describe it? I'll say that later, but anyway, the film is an adaptation of the novel 2010: Odyssey Two, which was a continuation of the movie (It's weird saying this...) The performances are alright, conveying well. Dullea and Rain return, 16 years after 2001 to reprise their performances here, which works out well. While it isn't as thought provoking as 2001, it does has enough flares of thrill and skill (and strangely recounting the events of the first one) to make you watch it on its own without much stigma. Now then, what would I describe this film in a few words? Decent-looking. Some interest. Decent. 1984 (literally). And there we go.

Overall, I give it 8 out of 10 stars.