(2012) [Trailer]
Director: Gareth Evans (IMDB)
I was talking with someone a few months ago about how tired I was of seeing villains in films and on television nonchalantly eating while simultaneously talking to someone that they were trying to intimidate or while performing a horrific act. I presume that this juxtaposition of the mundane and the violent is intended to be disturbing. Maybe it was the first 3-4 times I saw it, but now it has become a cliché. Over the past couple of years noodles have been more the food of choice— second only to the old standby, fruit, which is either chomped on with relish or sliced menacingly. I was watching Justified a few weeks ago and a villain ate noodles seemingly without a care in the world only to highlight what a cold sociopathic person he was. The actor pulled it off well but I was kind of turned-off by yet another bad guy eating. I began to fear for the quality of the movie when, just a few minutes after it began, there was an introductory scene with the main villain eating noodles. What the hell! I guess the evil antagonist eating is the new walking coolly away from an explosion without looking back. To make matters worse, much later in the movie we have another scene with the main villain and he is eating again. What, you may ask, was he eating? Of course, he was slicing a piece of fruit. I have never seen a movie use the trope twice. This was certainly a microcosm of the movie: it didn’t have any new ideas and so it copied those of others. It was a mindless, wholly unengaging exercise in something hardly worth creating.
The plot was minimal. The dialogue was scant. The character development was non-existent. I have a real problem with movies that don’t deem it necessary to create three dimensional, or even compelling, characters. As a filmmaker, if you don’t give me a reason to care for (or at least be interested in) the characters, then I have no investment in the movie. I don’t care what happens; I don’t care who lives or dies; I don’t want to watch your movie. Even the iconic thoughtless action movies of the 80’s gave us leads with charisma or a reason to root for the hero. As for the protagonist of this film, we know little about him: he’s a rookie, he’s a cop, he has a wife, he has a brother, and there is nothing distinct about his personality. He could have died and been replaced with any of the 18 or so police officers in the movie and absolutely nothing would have changed.
There was a fleeting scene at the outset of the movie in which we see him waking up for work and observe that he is married…I don’t think we were even afforded a clear view of the wife’s face. I guess the presence of his significant other is short-hand for the fact that he is a good guy: he’s married after all and nobody who is married is anything less than a person with honor and moral fortitude. I am sure that none of those bodies that piled up over the course of the movie had spouses…they were single…fuck those guys…now let's get back to cheering on our romantically committed hero. I guess that the existence of the wife also ups the stakes because we want them to return to each others' loving embrace: ala a war hero who, upon returning from the front, will be reunited with his best girl. However, we don’t have any sense of their relationship. We are given no glimpse into the profundity of their connection; we don’t even get to see what kind of rapport that they have with one another. Their relationship is a vague construct and we are expected to project onto these blank slates. No thanks. Later in the movie, the filmmaker wants to further up the ante so we see via a few out of context celluloid frames that the hero’s wife is pregnant. I guess we are supposed to be even more invested because, should he die, his unborn child will be fatherless. Thanks moviemaker for so subtly telling me why I should care. The problem, though, is that I didn’t. As such, for me, there was no interest in the outcome of this movie. Accordingly, I started to pick it apart. I noticed some mediocre directing, several continuity errors, poor staging, intermittently amateurish cinematography, and unconvincing, unimaginative, repetitive foley work. Every punch that landed sounded like a hammer hitting some drywall. I was also disappointed with the use of space and the sense of place. The movie has as its primary set piece a large building but you never have a good sense of the layout of building or why it’s so difficult to escape. I won’t go into my other complaints as this movie doesn’t deserve that much consideration. All this being said, much of the action was well choreographed and there was some topnotch movie martial arts on display. Sure, the bad guys came one after the other and there were levels (very videogame-like) but some of the one-on-one fights were interesting…others not so much.
As an aside, I was eventually so uninvested in the movie that I became distracted every time the highest ranking police officer who set up the raid was on screen. I thought he bore a striking resemblance to Mr. Kruger from Seinfeld. Further, both had thoughts of shuffling off this mortal coil at their own hands. For those of you who don’t know, the actor who played Mr. Kruger tried to kill himself about a month ago. Coincidence…I think not.
I wanted to like this movie…I really did. I didn’t see it amongst a museum crowd, as did Mr. Williams. My audience was 99% male and thoroughly engaged in the movie. It was an ideal setting to get caught up in some ass kicking, adrenaline pumping action but, alas, I was not carried away by the torrent of testosterone in the room. The theater was packed and there were only two women in attendance. People in the theater exclaimed and giggled like schoolboys whenever something particularly violent happened. Some members of the crowd were so boisterous that they were more entertaining than the movie. [I would like to take a moment to thank the African American gentleman in the crowd…your vocalized enthusiasm for cinema was splendid and I only wish that I could be so uninhibited and joyous.] Another guy would occasionally laugh maniacally a acts of violence and his girlfriend eventually yelled at him saying that he was “sick” and that “there was something wrong” with him. The audience was so much more entertaining than the movie.
The plot elements, what little there was, were strikingly similar to other movies. The clichés were innumerable. Did I mention that there are brothers? One is an officer of the law and the other is a member of the criminal organization that the police are trying to take down. Brother versus brother on the opposite sides of a brutal struggle. Where does one’s loyalty lie? This film offered nothing new and, in my estimation, has been way over-hyped. I am not philosophically opposed to shallow action movies. When done well, they can be enjoyable for what they are. This, however, was not a movie that fully lived up to the potential of its genre.
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