Run Lola Run

Run Lola Run is a German film with has an absolutely amazing concept and almost lives up to it. Essentially the titular character has 20 minutes to make one hundred thousand marks. Unfortunately she is without a car or really any method of transport and has to you know, run to places. The reason she has to do this is her boyfriend lost all the money from a heist he helped pull, and now the crime boss wants his money, or the guy dies. It's a fairly compelling if generic motivation, and keeps it simple. The interesting twist is she runs this journey three times, each with slight differences which change the world and outcome around her enormously.

The film-making style is also interesting because to show these changes to the future there are numerous very brief montages showing what happens to the people she interacts with, though only the minor characters, the major characters' plots play out in real-time. Now the first two run-throughs of the film end disastrously, with one of the main character's dead but surprisingly the last ends fine for all involved. I say surprisingly because this is a German film, and they are not known for positive or uplifting endings, but this one is actually a happy ending. The protagonists don't even have to do anything terrible to get the money.

Another point that helps the film is the main character, who is entertaining to watch and is so determined to save her boyfriend that though their are only brief intermissions between the three 20 minute runs which showcase their relationship we understand their devotion. Also look at her hair, it's absolutely gorgeous. Due to her actions in the film and general appearance it is obvious that Faith from Mirror's Edge takes some inspiration, though Lola theoretically has no prior training or experience, and is just a normal girl who really wants to help her boyfriend. Also she weirdly has an almost supernatural ability to scream, which is brought up several times throughout the film.

A final point in the film's advantage is the incredible soundtrack which keeps up the frantic pace and speed of the film incredibly. It has a unique mix of German and English songs, and it complements the action incredibly well. Because of this the film feels like a combination of Crank and something like Falling Down, where an ordinary man is driven to extraordinary deeds  by incredibly unlikely circumstance. Of course it is a good deal more entertaining than Falling Down, though far from perfect.

That's not to say the movie is all good though, as it is periodically punctuated by awful animated segments. The quality of animation on these is just bad and it is questionable why the director put them in given how stylized and well done the normal segments are. The credits is one of these sequences and inspires little confidence for the actual film, despite its quality. The director's interesting style as well can lead to a kind of disjointed feel with all the different segments leaving out and adding parts seemingly at random.

Overall the film carries itself at a good pace, has decent characters with a very believable relationship between the two protagonists, and keeps the plot moving very quickly, though sometimes a little to quick. It is also a tad on the short side which is interesting given how packed with events the film is. Perhaps a little bit more time could have been devoted to the protagonists' lives outside of the twenty minute periods, but overall the pace works well, and it ends up ending right when it should.

The Avengers

The movie is great, amazing even. It is exactly what it was built up to be, and possibly even more. It is full to the brim with Whedonesque humor and amazing fight scenes, as well as good character development for those who didn't get their own movies, though doing less for those who did. The humor I think was quite possibly the best done part, with laughs at all the right moments, and none during the tense moments.

Loki works well as a villain in this movie only because he is clearly not the biggest threat, he is captured early on and shows that he is merely the one who opens the gate, the aliens are the true villains. This works especially well because we have seen him beaten before, whereas this new threat is untested, and when fighting earth's mightiest heroes they better be good.

As for the heroes themselves they were amazing, with the sheer power of Hulk and Thor shown extremely well in their fight scene, throwing around power that would cripple any lesser being. The Hulk I think is actually one of the best characters in the movie, because everyone is waiting for him to come out, but Banner still puts on a good performance and gives a good reason for not wanting him to. Iron Man is shown to be one of the most versatile if not most powerful members, dueling with Thor on almost equal footing, if only because ranged spam defeats melee. We got Captain America showing the power of a vibranium shield, and Hawkeye showing that an arrow can do a lot more than expected. The only one who kind of disappointed was Black Widow, but since she was out of her element it was fairly expected, and she still performed admirably.

Let me just say that Hawkeye actually works really well. Before I felt he would be clearly outclassed and be reduced to basic ranged support, but as a villain in the first half and competent spotter and precision damage worked really well, with explosive and EMP arrows allowing him to deal with robots. He also got a fair amount of characterization through Black Widow despite his little screen time. I mean previously he had what, like 1 minute in the Incredible Hulk? Samuel L. Jackson did everything that was expected of him, pulling off the all-knowing leader well, and delivering the cool confidence necessary for the role, I now know exactly why they chose him as the inspiration for Ultimate Nick.

The plot was solid, and the 2 and a half hours just don't seem quite enough to contain everything that was shown in the film. I don't know what to say, other than I'm not really familiar with the aliens they used, but I only really know the Skrull empire, so I don't know my Marvel aliens that well. They worked well as mooks, though it would have been nice if they had some big bruiser elites for the Hulk and the like to fight on sort of even terms. Also the Hulk is now officially invincible, in that a headshot while Banner did not kill him. Maybe he can be killed in Hulk form, but I seriously doubt it. So he will definitely be a foe of the Avengers at some point in the future, possibly at the end of 2.

I've got more to say but it'll be better organized in the morning. The long and short of it was the movie was amazing, and I have more faith in Joss Whedon than I did before, at least his scriptwriting prowess, and this is coming from someone that has loved everything he has previously done, excluding some seasons of Buffy and Angel. I don't like assigning numbers to reviews, but this is the closest to a perfect Avengers movie we'll ever seem, and it was beautiful.

The Raid is Fucking Awesome

I'm not simply going to parrot what everyone else has said, because that is what an honest review would be, stating how brutal and amazing the fight scenes are, how well put together it is, and how much action they manage to pack into 100 minutes. I want to look at what actually made it a better action movie than anything from the past 10 or so years. I'm not saying the Matrix is a better film than it, or a better action film, but it is definitely a contender, even if only in its own genre.

One of the most important factor in any film like this is the pacing, how much action to how much plot, or if you want to get really awesome integrate the plot into the fight scenes. The Raid has maybe 5 minutes to show us the characters and set up the basic plot, they're taking out a crime lord. We also get an establishing scene of our villain, calmly executing 5 dudes as he eats his breakfast. After this there is about 20 minutes of efficient SWAT team action, then a kid shouts "policia", and it all goes to hell. These opening bits are fairly tense, and builds up the anticipation for when the fighting actually starts.

Some members of the team get sniped, others are simply brought down by a horde of bullets, but it's basically a systematic destruction of the seemingly invincible team you'd seen previously, which just goes to show how badass the survivors are. The gunplay here is not the greatest, though it is not bad, but one of the scenes that happens next is probably the best in the film, and showcases why the whole thing works so well.

Our hero rookie is alone aside from a crippled soldier he had brought with him, when suddenly he is attacked by a huge number of people in a fairly close hallway, then he takes out a baton and a knife and effectively murders all of them. In most other action films, especially the neutered ones of recent times, he would simply use the baton beating them to unconsciousness, but here he brutally murders many of them, slicing across throats and stabbing in heads, because he needs to to survive. It's the desperation which is clearly shown by brutality, in effect the action helps to dictate characterization, it's not just action for actions sake. It is the same for the 'mad dog' character who tosses away a gun to fight with his hands, and ends the fight by breaking a guys neck in a display of incredible strength.

Finally the Raid works because it knows exactly what it is, and exactly when to interject humor. Action movies have pretty much always had comedy elements, but with a movie with so many tense moments like this it is difficult to know how much and when to use these elements, but the Raid manages it wonderfully. Just after an intense fight and falling out a window our protagonist arrives in a room with a woman doing drugs and she asks very simply 'who the hell was that' as he runs out of the room. Its moments like these where the incredibly deliberate pacing and expert knowledge of comedy that make the Raid great.

The Raid is quite simply the best action movie in a long time, because it is paced so expertly, something many films like the most recent Die Hard have missed, and it understands the brutality of violence, and doesn't shy away from it at all, only shying away for dramatic effect, not because it is scared. When a film is such pure adrenaline fueled action it has to be great or awful, and with great cinematography, and choreography the Raid manages to outperform all expectations and deliver in what may be one of the most intense fight scenes ever for its conclusion, and it does it without explosions.

A Beautiful Death

Continuing on from yesterday now I'll move on to the Heroic Bloodshed genre, something which is much more prevalent in Chinese cinema than it is in the States. There could be any number of reasons for this but one of the primary ones I believe is the cultural background, with loyalty as the key focus in many stories, something which is often deemed more important in Eastern culture than Western. I'll focus on John Woo's stuff because I know it best, but it applies to most of the genre.

So action movies centering on a personal story have more impact that ones which focus on armies taking down armies, but what if one man, or two mow down an enemy army? Well in the case of The Killer this is what happens, as a regretful assassin attempts one last job to pay for his love's eye surgery. He is opposed and later helped by a renegade cop, an archetypal loose cannon cop who cares more about getting the job done than the way he does it. These characters team up to take out a horde of mafia guys right at the end, and in a typical fight with doves and huge loads of bullets the opponents are defeated, though not without a personal loss by the protagonist. Actually the movie has a real downer of an ending, something which even the awesomeness of it doesn't really diminish.

But the themes it deals with, of betrayal and regret, and loyal friends, echoes throughout most genres, and makes the violence matter. The violence is the reason the movie was made, there is something almost dance like to it, especially some of the stunts that are pulled off like in the opening scene when the eponymous character shoots a mobster and uses him as a shield to fall in and take out some more guys. It is so well choreographed that we ignore reality for a while to watch the eloquent art. In general films of these types are less about the human struggle and more about the wider issues around it, and about the observation of death, and how even something so tragic can be so beautiful.

Another of Woo's films, perhaps his most famous ends on a much higher note, that is Hard Boiled. The last half an hour is essentially Die Hard but with much larger numbers and conflicts, and the protagonist is not alone inside the building. It is an effect fight scene, but loses some of the personal story that would make it a more relatable movie. Sure it's a nice looking movie with cool scenes, but it just doesn't resonate as well as some others like the above-mentioned The Killer. The focus is again on the action, this time at a slight detriment to the plot and characterization, with the main character as a Dirty Harry cop, the same as so many others from the genre. But though it may be predictable these movies continue to do well at the box office, and in audience's views.

Why do audiences enjoy seeing such violence, such terrible acts? Part is the desensitization due to the unspoken agreement that violence is okay but sex is not, that started right around when the Hayes code was finished. I don't know who or how or why they decided this but it has been that way forever in recent cinema, and will stay that way in any foreseeable future. Another part of it is the monkey-sphere, we don't care about the number of people that die because there are too many, we only care about those that the director intended us to, at least in most cases.

But ignoring the philosophical questions of why we appreciate others deaths lets look at some western equivalents, or at the least similar films. The style of Wire-fu and extremely choreographed fight scenes came into popularity due to the Matrix, and the sequels could never quite recreate the same feel, due in part to the same things as the Die Hard sequels. But the Matrix was heavily inspired by Hong Kong cinema, though it was actually significantly less bloody, kind of ignoring the whole bloodshed part of heroic bloodshed. The Matrix did something different with the characters though, making the protagonist a regular guy before it all started, creating a very different dynamic, and making the entry into the real world much more real for the audience, as they were as clueless as Neo.

Another reason that the Matrix worked so well was that Neo was not superman not yet, I mean in Reloaded a character actually commented that he was going 'superman' which is why he became less of a character and more of a caricature, unrelatable and merely a plot tool due to his immense power. In the first film he was just John McClaine, a guy who was good with guns and fighting skills, but nothing special to right at the end, where he pulled a Jesus, and when your main character becomes Jesus it really is time to end the series. So with Neo relatable people flocked to the theaters and a  whole new sub-genre was formed in the West, though it really was just stolen from the East. The same cool style of fighting is seen in other movies like Blade, or Underworld, movies where aesthetics overtakes substance.

The bloodshed part of the genre is actually taken somewhat by Tarantino, though he goes about it in a very different way than any other director. While he has not made a pure action flick yet, the Kill Bill movies come fairly close in delivering the same kind of action, though with swords instead of guns, thus emulating a different genre, though with obvious influences from John Woo. His mexican standoffs as well owe some to Woo, and other directors from the genre. There are certain scenes in Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction that have overt references, but later films like the Basterds have some as well.

So now I've looked at two sub-genres and I'm in no way done, because action movies cover a huge field, and show a lot more depth than meets the eye. I think I'll look at invincible heroes movies next, because they provide an interesting contrast to what I've already talked about, and are the frequent targets of criticism, and form the stereotypical action movie cliches.

Die Hard

Action films, they've become synonymous with mindless cinema which seeks nothing more than to deliver some explosions, with plot as an optional bonus. I have to say this actually really pisses me off, because action films can deliver themes just as well as any other genre, they simply have a different approach to it, with maybe a little too much focus on aesthetics. But I'm not going to pour through action films looking for deeper meanings, or something more than the entertainment that I actually go to the movies for, I'm just going to look at the various sub-genres of the thing, and what I like and dislike about them.

First and foremost I'm going to mention Die Hard, the best Christmas movie of all time. The reason I do this first is that it defined the genre from then on, with many films seeking to emulating and failing to capture what made the original so great. Even its sequels never lived up to the original, and that's because they missed the most fundamental thing about it. It's like seeing something that is popular, than trying to remake it with a different setting, it doesn't work if you don't understand why it's good, and how it was made, a copy and paste just results in a poor mans imitation. The key to the original Die Hard was scale, it was just one man against the world.

The world here of course is not the actual world, in fact it is pretty much just 12 terrorists, with a great leader in Alan Rickman. This is why it differed from other movies like much of what Seagal and Stallone put out. Even laughably good movies like Commando feature one guy mowing down a huge number of expendable goons, without names or personalities, they are merely there to die. Every person in Die Hard had a name, and a reason for dying. IT was a personal struggle on a scale that was entirely reasonable to the audience, I mean compared to the other heroes 12 guys was nothing, but it was a real struggle to the real person of John McClaine. Relatable is the key word here. We can't relate to superman, we can relate to Batman.

So what made Die Hard effective was the realism, not in the explosions or really the activities of the terrorists, but of the main character, of the scope, it meant every death meant something, one more of an increasingly difficult list. The other thing is that audiences love an underdog, with John outnumbered and outgunned, but with good old American determination he was able to take out an entire group of foreigners. There's a bit more to it than that, but the home team does so love to win, especially in a situation like that. This is one of the reasons that Live Free or Die Hard failed, ignoring the PG-13 version and watching the R cut, because it was on a scale that just wasn't relatable, I mean sure crashing a car into a helicopter is cool, but it just doesn't work on a human level, that's a superhuman.

There's a reason that the Spider-man is one of the most popular superheroes, because he has regular problems and so the audience empathizes with him. Empathy is extremely important in these kinds of situations. By most popular I mean highest grossing films, with his 3 in the top 4, only topped by the Dark Knight, which is somewhat different than the traditional superhero film. But back to the failings of Die hard 4, it was no longer a personal story, even though McClaine's daughter was on the line, we didn't care as much because it seemed more artificial. Explosions do not make a film, which is key to understanding the difference between good action films and bad. Die Hard had explosions, 4 was about the explosions, a very key difference. Not that you can't have the action as the reason the film is made, but there is a way to do that, and that is with the heroic bloodshed genre where the incredibly artistic violence is the focus and what gives the film its strength, for themes about loyalty and truth. But I'll get into that later.