LIMITLESS- Review

After the last few weeks of bombardment from Battle Los Angeles and No Strings Attached, a quick fix of intelligence sounds just as appealing to me as it does to Bradley Cooper's character in the new sci-fi thriller Limitless. Chuck in the fact that he's a struggling writer who quickly gets stressed out when more stuff comes into his life, and it could have been made for me.

Eddie is our hero's name, and it's purely by chance that he's fixed up with an experimental drug called NZT, by his scummy ex-brother-in-law. NZT is a transparent tablet, about the size of an aspirin, but its consumption stimulates the receptors of the human brain and boosts the body's access to its potential. Eddie begins quaffing pills right away, little realising the price of his newfound intelligence.

For a while, Limitless was reminding me of Fight Club, in places replicating that film's dark humour, mode of storytelling, and overwhelming righteous anger at The Way Things Are. Certainly, it is to Bradley Cooper what Fight Club was to Brad Pitt, giving Cooper a chance to really work his acting chops and open him up to a second appraisal after the frat comedies and romcoms he's made his name in. And while we're talking about Cooper, I was very impressed at how he convinced me as a loser just as much as he convinced as the successful and handsome bloke he really is, later on in the film. But it took a while longer for me to twig exactly what the film reminded me of as a whole, and that's Unbreakable.

NZT effectively makes Eddie into a man of superhuman intelligence, not only able to recall everything he has ever learned and apply it to his current life but also capable of learning new things at an exponential rate. If they'd wanted to take it that way, the filmmakers could have made this a superhero origin story. But while Bruce Willis' character in Unbreakable was a suburban Superman, his invulnerability seemingly natural, Eddie's powers are fuelled by narcotics, but more pertinently, using hypothetical science that messes with nature, in the view of fuddy-duddy conservative Hollywood.

So it's a Faustian tale, and thusly, the pitfalls of addiction are thoroughly examined. As you might expect of a pill sourced from a random acquaintance with a history of being an unreliable drug dealing bastard, it has chemical faults that manifest themselves in the course of Eddie's addiction, but that's not all. The title is Limitless, but Eddie's intellectual omnipotence isn't immune to other people. While you can anticipate the greed of others or, as the film puts it, the human tendency to overreach, you can't always stop external forces from messing up your life.

Director Neil Burger pulls off a great bit of visual storytelling in representing Eddie's addiction. In the beginning of the story, the visuals are bleached, drab and milky. When Eddie first swallows that clear pill and lets it take effect, the world brightens up, illuminated by sunshine and broadened by a wide-angle lens that allows him to see everything in front of him. In a period where he goes cold turkey, it's drab and milky again, but still clear. And once he's fixed up again, that sunshine starts to look awful bright. Blinding, even. The effects don't change, but the context does, and it's very clever stuff.

But unfortunately, the limits of the film aren't just within the story- they're outside of it too, in the script and in the production. With a great head of momentum building between Eddie's successes and his addiction to the drug, the film ultimately doesn't have enough in it to give us a strong conclusion. It does that thing that annoyed me in The Adjustment Bureau, of jumping forward in time, but these scenes feels after the fact in the wake of the climactic scenes preceding it. As is human nature then, the film overreaches.

This is where the comedown begins. You gradually begin to realise that the film isn't as clever as it thinks, or indeed, as clever as you thought up until that point. The high of the earlier part of the film begins to dissipate, and coming down allows you to realise, as you plummet towards the credits and then walk out of the cinema, that you can't account for certain plotholes. Is that subplot really not going to come back? Is that really it for that character? Wait, what was that all about? And one of the early highlights of the movie, when Eddie outright asks the audience what they would do in his situation, given the risk, is negated by the way the film closes the book on any persistent ambiguities about the pros and cons of NZT.

Another recent Faust-inspired movie, Philip Ridley's Heartless, had more heart than the title would suggest. Similarly, Limitless is a good film, but one with more inhibitions than either its title or its pacey swagger would suggest. I was enthralled enough by the premise and Bradley Cooper's performance to give it a rock-solid recommendation, and I stand by that. However, its inconsistencies and its closed-minded conclusion mean that ironically, it's a film for which you might need to leave your brain at the door, if only to avoid the subsequent comedown.

Limitless is now showing in cinemas nationwide.
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If you've seen Limitless, why not share your comments below? And yes, I know Robert DeNiro was in this too. When he gives an interesting performance, I'll have something to say.

I'm Mark the mad prophet, and until next time, don't watch anything I wouldn't watch.

LITTLE FOCKERS- Review

In doing my reading around the film before I wrote this review of Little Fockers, I realised it's been six years since Meet the Fockers was released. I was much younger, and that film was quite funny, then. Now, it doesn't really hold up, and making me feel old just compounds the crimes of this worse sequel, in my view.

The Fockers of the title aren't that big a part of the plot, but they're Henry and Samantha Focker, the young twin children of Greg and Pam. With big plans for their upcoming fifth birthday celebration, Greg's father-in-law Jack Byrnes suffers a minor heart attack. His pride and legacy on the line, he begins training Greg to take over as the patriarch of the family in case Jack's heart condition should worsen. Does that sound funny? Hell, does it even sound like a narrative?

Let's name and shame the greatest offender in Little Fockers right off the bat- it's Dustin Hoffman. One of the first bits of news that came out about this long gestating sequel was that Hoffman wouldn't be returning as Greg's father Bernie Focker because the script they were going ahead with wasn't good enough. I like Dustin Hoffman, and can admire that decision. That he eventually consented to reshoots, inserting him so clumsily into the film that he might as well have been composited into scenes with a green screen shoot, means only one thing- they offered him the right amount of money.

For everyone else in the cast, I can believe that it wasn't the money. The script is terrible, but I could see this as a rainy afternoon movie. Not as in the kind of film audiences like to watch when the weather is bad and there's nothing on telly, but a film that these actors would resort to if they were stuck without anything else to do and wanted to revisit a formula that worked in the past. Look at this cast! Ben Stiller, Robert DeNiro, Owen Wilson, Barbra Streisand, Blythe Danner and Teri Polo all return, and Jessica Alba and Laura Dern sort of stand around smiling for the camera, and you have to wonder why this film exists.

Robert DeNiro really needs talking to. This is his second film on the trot that co-stars Jessica Alba, and it's getting embarrassing. Just because The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle is still his rock bottom, it doesn't mean that he shouldn't be trying harder than this. Jack Byrnes, like all of the other characters in the Fockers canon, is a character who does not grow, or develop. He is crabby, he mistrusts Greg, he gets into various misunderstandings, realises the error of his ways and appears to come out of things wiser. Except he just resets to zero at the beginning of the next sequel.

Thankfully, it's difficult to imagine Little Fockers doing well enough for anyone to demand another outing for the Fockers and their extended family. It's less a film and more like a TV sketch show spin-off, based on the first two films. It takes those characters and completely divorces cause from effect in its narrative construction, and gives us a series of comedy skits rather than a film. They must have some amazing jokes to justify the existence of this thing, right? Wrong.

This film is not funny. What it is, however, is repetitive. It repeats itself as much as the previous two instalments. Have you seen the trailer for this thing? Jack calls Greg to tell him that he needs Greg to take over as the Byrnes family patriarch, and become... and there's a pause, just to allow you to prepare yourself for the orgasmic hilarity of this joke. And after the pause, he says... the Godfocker. Well if your sides split hearing that exchange in the trailer, you'd better bring spare pants when you see the whole film, because the very next thing Greg says is "The Godfocker?" And then Jack reiterates, for the cheap seats and says... "The Godfocker."

It wasn't funny once. It was not funny the third time. And Little Fockers is the third time out for a franchise that outstays its welcome with the Godfocker exchange, with over 70 minutes left of almost mirthless flim-flam to enjoy. It made me smirk two or three times, but so disconnected is its script that every time we go down a thread that might potentially be very funny, we cut away to find out what Owen Wilson's doing to earn that sweet sequel salary. Dustin Hoffman almost made me laugh once, but I was still too upset with him to enjoy it. It's a weak end to the series, to say the least, because I don't know that it is the end, but if I at least say it is, it might come true.

Little Fockers is now showing in cinemas nationwide.
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If you've seen Little Fockers, why not share your comments below? If you do ask for a fourth Focker film, and that comes to pass, I'm coming to get you.

I'm Mark the mad prophet, and until next time, don't watch anything I wouldn't watch.

South of the Border... - MACHETE Review

Seen the above? That's as much fun as you can have with Machete. After the relative failure of the Planet Terror and Death Proof double bill grindhouse throwback, Robert Rodriguez returns to cod-exploitation with a feature length version of one of the fake trailers produced for the earlier films. Specifically, Machete- pronounced with a solid "ch" and not "sh". Ma-shete, Machete- let's call the whole thing off.

The plot is much as it appears in the trailer. They fuck with the wrong Mexican when They frame ex-federale Machete for an assassination attempt on a senator with a hard line on immigration. For the feature length version, Rodriguez contrives that They are on the senator's own staff, plotting to start a war between America and Mexican illegal immigrants. At what point in the trailer above did you find yourself looking forward to the social subtext to be had in a film called Machete?

I'm not one to complain that a film doesn't need a story. There are far too many films without good stories for me to ever legitimately grouse about that. The problem is that what I just called a social subtext is more like the entire film. I understand entirely that it's a thorny political issue in America, and that Rodriguez is probably taking a cue from his buddy Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds, doing what that film did for Jewish wish fulfilment in the context of relations between the US and Mexico. Remembering how Basterds was both serious and funny by turns as well as being a step away from Tarantino's own half of the Grindhouse twofer, this one falls considerably short of the mark.

I almost wonder which came first- the desire to make a statement on these issues, or the idea for the spoof trailer in Grindhouse. On the evidence of the feature, it was almost certainly the latter. It all seems like a massively over-elaborate conflation from a trailer that made us laugh in the spirit it was intended, but which can't be sustained over 100 minutes. Believe me, Machete outstays its welcome so much that it feels a hell of a lot longer.

In the way of Planet Terror, Machete doesn't even convince as exploitation, but then it's not trying as hard. Aside from the abominable CGI blood effects, there's none of the deliberately spoiled looking film-stock feel of the previous effort. What does return is the smuggery about all the recognisable actors in on the joke, but it returns in a fashion as over-the-top as it's possible to be. Jessica Alba, Robert DeNiro and Lindsay Lohan could all have been excised from the overly busy story at script stage, and like the overblown sense of political relevance added to the original gag of the trailer, their roles probably inflated massively after these casting coups were made.

You can't really fail completely when adapting an idea as enjoyable as the one in that trailer though, and Machete is not without one or two iconic action moments to make it worthwhile. Danny Trejo is often a joy to watch in the lead role, which only makes it more annoying when the myriad peripheral plot points crowd him off-screen for minutes at a time. Cheech Marin, Jeff Fahey and Michelle Rodriguez are all very game too, but likewise, there's not enough of them. It's a film that seems padded to fill 100 minutes when it could have comfortably been better at 70-80 minutes of its better moments, instead of the diluted version we got.

Machete seems to have been hijacked by the desire to spoonfeed a political message to the action-loving audience. The trouble is that in presuming this message to be a bitter pill, it becomes dumbed down to the extent that no one can really see the point for all of the red-splattered, limb-chopping, boob-bouncing action. It's over crowded to a fatal degree, and it really is a case where less would have been considerably more. Luckily, less already is more- that trailer's just up there, if you want to watch it again. If it's proper exploitation fun you want, Black Dynamite's finally coming to DVD, very soon.

Machete is now showing in cinemas nationwide.
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If you've seen Machete, why not share your comments below? If you're wondering where that title's going, it'll all become clear tomorrow. To quote Black Dynamite, "I threw that shit before I walked in the room!"

I'm Mark the mad prophet, and until next time, don't watch anything I wouldn't watch.