When I first read that Don’t Breathe caused quite a stir at SXSW earlier this year, I have to admit that I was a bit skeptical. Trust me for I am from Texas and I have spent a lot of time in Austin and I know of what I speak: it’s not that hard to create a stir in Austin. In fact, the main appeal of Austin is that practically everything leads to a stir.
But then I watched the trailer and wow, is it intense! The film tells the story of three teenagers who make the mistake of attempting to rob a blind man. The blind man is played by Stephen Lang and, considering that his character was one of the worst things about Avatar, it’s kind of nice to see that Lang may have finally gotten a role worthy of his menacing talent.
Haywire was an action film that came out in 2011. It briefly got a lot of attention because it starred MMA fighter Gina Carano in her feature film debut and it was directed by Steven Soderbergh. I have to admit that I didn’t care much for Haywire. Some of that is because Gina Carano herself didn’t seem to be a very good actress but my main issue with the film was with Steven Soderbergh. Don’t get me wrong — I know that Soderbergh can be a genius. However, he’s also a remarkably pretentious filmmaker. Sometimes that pretension works, like with The Girlfriend Experience. But, in the case of Haywire, all the pretension served to do was to make a thin story even more annoying.
John Stockwell, on the other hand, is a director who is the very opposite of pretentious. Whereas Soderbergh often makes genre films that try too hard to be art, Stockwell makes genre films that are so unapologetic about being genre that they often become art despite themselves. Stockwell may never be as acclaimed as Soderbergh but, on the whole, he’s a much more consistent filmmaker.
Take In The Blood for instance. In the Blood came out earlier this year, got thoroughly mediocre reviews, and disappeared from theaters pretty quickly. When I watched it last night, I had very low expectations.
But you know what?
In the Blood isn’t bad.
In fact, it’s a perfectly entertaining and, ultimately, rather empowering film.
In In The Blood, Gina Carano plays Ava. Ava, we quickly learn, has led a difficult life. Raised in extreme poverty by a father who taught her early how to fight and how to defend herself, Ava is a former drug addict. When she goes to rehab, she meets and falls in love with fellow addict Derek (Cam Gigandet). Once they’re both clean, Ava and Derek marry despite the concerns of Derek’s wealthy father (Treat Williams).
For their honeymoon, Derek and Ava go to the type of Caribbean island where bad things always happen in movies like In The Blood. They meet Manny (Ismael Cruz Cordova), who agrees to be their guide on the island. One night, Manny takes them out to a club where Ava ends up getting into a huge fight with literally everyone on the dance floor, including a local gangster played by Danny Trejo. The next morning, Manny takes them zip lining but Derek ends up plunging from the zip line and crashing down to the ground below. He’s rushed to the hospital where he promptly vanishes.
Despite being ordered to return to America by police chief Luis Guzman, Ava is determined to figure out what has happened to her husband and she’s willing to beat up the entire island to do it…
Obviously inspired (much like almost every other low-budget action film released over the past few years) by Taken, In The Blood is a familiar but enjoyable burst of pulp fiction. As opposed to Soderbergh’s approach to Haywire, Stockwell doesn’t worry about trying to disguise the genre roots of In The Blood. Instead, he simply tells the story and he tells it well. In The Blood is a film that’s full of beautiful island scenery, villainous character actors, and enjoyable melodramatic dialogue. The pace never falters and the action is exciting. In a few years, the club fight scene will be remembered as a classic of action cinema.
And best of all, Gina Carano kicks ass! In The Blood gives her a chance to show what she can actually do when she has a director who is willing to get out of her way. As opposed to Haywire, where she often seemed to get lost amongst all of Soderbergh’s showy techniques, Gina Carano gives a confident and determined performance in In The Blood. After having to sit through countless action films where every female character is either a victim or a pawn, there is something so wonderful about seeing a movie where a woman gets to do something more than whimper and beg. Regardless of how predictable the film’s plot may be, the fact that it’s a woman — as opposed to a man — who is getting to kick ass (and look good while doing it!) serves to make In The Blood something of a minor masterpiece of the pulp imagination.
If nothing else, In The Blood shows that sometimes it’s best to keep things simple.
Weekend was busy, but still found time to catch a few favorite flicks on TV. One of these happened to be the classic early 90’s western Tombstone starring Kurt Russell and Val Kilmer. I already profiled my favorite scene from this film awhile back, but as I watched the film again I realized there was another sequence that totally made the film for me.
So, the latest “Scenes I Love’ once again comes from Tombstone and it does a great job in showing the darker and vengeful side of Wyatt Earp as played by Kurt Russell. The first scene I loved about this film was more about the cool, calm and badass Wyatt Earp who can spot a bullshitter, blowhard, coward from a miles away. This scene shows Earp in his scary, God’s Wrath mode as he begins his vendetta ride against the Clantons and the Cowboys.
Just love the look of fire and brimstone from Russell’s eyes as he confronts a cowed Ike Clanton and lets him know what he has planned for his clan and group. Better yet, in addition to Kilmer’s Doc Holliday, we also see a younger Michael Rooker aka Merle Dixon. He plays one of the members in Earp’s posse.
In 1982 the duo of John Milius (director) and Arnold Schwarzenneger (actor) brought to the big-screen the first film adaptation of the classic, pulp character of Conan the Cimmerian by Robert E. Howard. The Milius-Schwarzenneger Conan the Barbarian was an instant hit and classic. It also made Schwarzenneger into an A-list superstar who would rule the 80’s and 90’s. This film was followed up by a lesser quality, though fun in its own way, sequel in 1984 with Conan the Destroyer. Milius saw this franchise as a trilogy with the third and final film to be called Conan the Conqueror. But a sort of blacklisting of Milius as a filmmaker and Schwarzenneger moving onto other projects killed the planned third film. The start of the new millenium saw an interest in restarting the third film, but after countless delays and changes in filmmakers and stars the project was once again shelved.
In 2010, the franchise which launched an Austrian-bodybuilder into superstardom was finally greenlit, but this time around it would be a reboot of the series with the film hewing coser to Robert E. Howard’s creation and world-building than the Milius version of 1982. To bring Conan the Cimmerian to life would be Hawaiian-Irish Jason Momoa (of Stargate Atlantis and Game of Thrones fame) with German-filmmaker Marcus Nispel taking on the directing reins. The film’s trio of writers (Thomas Dean Donnelly, Joshua Oppenheimer and Sean Hood) would literally take the world of the Hyborian Age which Howard had meticulously created for his Conan character and use that as the basis for this reboot.
Conan the Barbarian begins with a surprising introductory narration of the world of the Hyborian Age by none other than Morgan Freeman. This narration was one clue that while this film wouldn’t and shouldn’t be seen as thought-provoking and award-season fare it looks to try anything and everything to make it fun and relevant. The film succeeds in this respect in its own way. As we see Conan come into the world as a baby born of battle in the most literal way. It’s not often we see on the big-screen a pregnant mother delivering her child by way of battlefield C-section. From this moment forward this film will wallow in the bloody carnage and machismo-fueled world of Robert E. Howard to the nth degree.
The film’s Conan as played by Leo Howard as the younger version then to Jason Momoa as the adult version looks to be different than the Schwarzenneger one. While Momoa was still quite the physical specimen on the screen he also exuded a sense of fluid, athleticism like that of a sleek jungle cat whereas Arnold’s Conan was more of the big cat of the savannah. The stand out performance in the film comes from both Leo Howard (quite ferocious as the young Conan) and Momoa. The film lives or dies on whether we believe these two actors as the characters they inhabit. Not once during the near 2-hour running time do we not believe these two as Conan.
Conan the Barbarian as a film does have several weaknesses which could derail it for me. For one, the story itself is quite cliched as we see the typical hero’s journey coinciding with the goal of saving the world from an almost cartoonish villain (Stephen Lang clearly having fun as the warlord Khalar Zym) with an equally cartoonish sidekick (Rose McGowan who seemed out of place as Zym’s witch-daughter Marique). The story’s plot seems more geared like a video game where each sequence was there to put Conan in the best way possible to do what he does best and that’s kill enemies by the score and do it with bloody panache.
While the film will definitely not score very well with many people I think they will do so as they compare it to the original Milius film. I think the mistake they also will use as an excuse to not like the film is that it’s dumb and loud. I, for one, thought I would feel the same, but as I watched the film I acknowledged those very same criticisms, saw the flaws, but in the end I still enjoyed the film for what it was: an almost gleeful, throwback to the 80’s sword-and-sorcery exploitation film that tried to cash in on the success of the original Conan the Barbarian.
Nispel’s film may not stand the test of time as the original, but in the end he made a film that actually stayed true to the pulpy origins of the character (Robert E. Howard was never known as a subtle writer and this film reveled in his blunt-way of writing). This Conan the Barbarian was several steps above the usual sword-and-sorcery stuff which the SyFy Channel seems to churn out by the dozen each year and it’s steps below that of the original. What it does share with the 1982 film is a sense of fun even if it’s at the expense of story and character and at times I’m fine with that. Not everything has to be Inception or Pride and Prejudice.
1982 saw the release of one of the most iconic fantasy films ever with the John Milius and Arnold Schwarzenneger collaboration, Conan the Barbarian. There was a follow-up sequel that wasn’t as great as the first, but still did well enough that down the year there was talk of a third film to finish off the Schwarzenneger Conan trilogy. It never happened as the project continued to be shelved year after year until even Arnold himself backed out and thought a third film was never in the cards.
This trailer suggests otherwise though it’s more of a reboot to the Conan film franchise and sticks much closer to the character and world created by it’s creator Robert E. Howard. This film is directed by German filmmaker Marcus Nispel whose body of work tends to be in the genre arena like the remake of Texas Chainsaw Massacre to the Viking-Indians mashup story, Pathfinder. There’s also to be a new Conan in the form of Jason Momoa (who played the character of Ronan in the long-running scifi tv series, Stargate Atlantis) who is currently gaining some fans outside of his Stargate work due to his casting as the mighty Khal Drogo in HBO’s critically-acclaimed and very popular fantasy series, Game of Thrones.
This Conan the Barbarian remake looks to return the character to it’s Age of Hyboria roots. The trailer gives ample evidence of the film using much of the fantasy world Robert E. Howard created with long-lost civilizations, evil warlords, sorcery and, of course, fantastic monsters. While the trailer doesn’t show just how well Jason Momoa acts as the character Conan it does show that he fits the role the way Howard originally wrote him. While still having a muscled physique this Conan also is more agile and lithe than the Schwarzenneger iteration.
Conan the Barbarian is set for an August 19, 2011 release on both 2D and 3D screens.
Through the Shattered Lens 