REVIEW: The Raid

The action film. Explosions. Fighting. Guns. Death. Destruction.
It extends across the world and it can break all language barriers, for if an action film can deliver on the promises above, then who needs to know what's going on with the minimal "plot" to care?

That is exactly where The Raid succeeds (or The Raid: Redemption in the USA - goodness knows why it's got some weird sequel type subtitle?!) It doesn't really matter what the plot is, why the SWAT team are raiding the tower block (see what I did there?!) or why so many men are kicking the hell out of each other... Because, The Raid is a near perfect poetic love story to all action films that have come before it (especially films like Die Hard and Rambo.)

But how do you advertise a foreign film to a mass audience? Well, you make sure that there is absolutely no dialogue in the trailer... at all, of course! Take a look at the trailer for The Raid again here! You'll see that it manages to showcase the macho violence, but fail to even hint that it's a foreign language film.
Clever, eh?

If you're really bothered, the film follows rookie SWAT team member, Rama (Iko Uwais) under the command of Jaka (Jos Taslim) and corrupt Lieutenant Wahyu (Pierre Gruno). They are tasked with the mission to take down crime lord Tama (Ray Sahetapy) and his two main henchmen Andi (Donny Alamsyah) - the brains behind Tama's decisions - and Mad Dog (Yayan Ruhain) - the muscles (and sheer craziness) behind Tama's decisions. However, what stands between the SWAT team and Tama are "30 floors of hell" and the residents of the tower block, who just so happen to all work for Tama too.
That is the basics of the entire plot - it revolves simply around the SWAT team vs. crime lord scenario. The plot does throw in some twists and turns along the way - largely predictable ones involving the corrupt Lieutenant and the connection between protagonist Rama and Andi (the brains). However, the film really shines with it's fight scenes... and there are plenty of them on display here.

The action/fight scenes really are the film's highlight. It uses martial arts for the majority of them and what happens on the screen before us is simply breathtaking in parts. It looks stunning. It looks amazing. It looks... beautiful. The fight scenes are some of the most tightly choreographed pieces of cinema I have seen in a long time - not the choreographed type that involves flying through the air and hanging on wires... oh no!
The hand-held direction of the camera and the bleak cinematography help contribute to creating a really gritty and intense atmosphere, which seems to perfectly off-set the well rehearsed fight scenes. While the fight scenes do teeter on the edge of being an exploitation style - there are men thrown out of windows, men being shot in the head in a glorious close-up, a man hit over the head with a hammer and finally, a man being half decapitated on a broken door - the film's style, and the fact that the camera never really lingers on too much of the gore, means that the film avoids this. Sure, the film is gory (and very worthy of it's 18 rating in the UK), but it never really gets as bad as horror films as, let's say... Hostel or Saw.

Another massive positive in the film is the direction. At times, it's completely immersive and really feels as if we are there in the middle of the fights. While the hand-held style helped create this, it's really down to inventive filming choices - like the camera jumping through a hole in the floor as the protagonist does so in the middle of a battle or the camera shot where the camera falls out of the window with the protagonist as he does so.
The fight scenes are also slickly edited together, which means that they never seem to get dull (even though there is a lot of fighting in the film. This is also helped by the inventive fights and kills that occur on screen, like the aforementioned door kill or the finale fight between Rama and Mad Dog involving a fluorescent lighting tube to the neck!

If you haven't guessed so far, this is definitely a film shamelessly being plugged to males. While there is no gratuitous nudity on-screen, the sheer amount of violence on-screen certainly makes up for that.

The only flaw I can think of with The Raid is that it is a very simple story being told. While it was an interesting plot device that the whole tower works for Tama and the developing relationship between Rama and Andi was needed to create tension in the third act, nothing felt completely developed.

When Tama finally receives his comeuppance, it's a little underwhelming. Andi doesn't feel like he has a full character arc to change his outlook on life. We expect that Rama will be the one to live until the end.

If The Raid was to throw a few more curveballs at us, it could have been perfect. If we were to learn a bit more about Tama, his history and how he became so powerful, he would have been an even more formidable antagonist. If Rama and Andi would have had their backstory explained just that little bit more, there would have been an even more tense third act.

However, having said all that, it's a minor gripe in what is an almost perfect love letter to the action films of yesteryear. Bruce Willis needs to hang up his wife-beater vest and Sylvester Stallone needs to put away his hunting knife, because the Indonesians (along with Gareth Evans - a Welsh-born filmmaker!) are now in town and they really know how to create an action film!

**** / *****

REVIEW: Marvel's Avengers Assemble

The art of a great ensemble film is to get the balance just right. It's a difficult task, because in any ordinary film, there is that time to develop the protagonist and to help us get to know them quite well and more importantly, to care for them.
With an ensemble film, this is obviously different considering that multiple protagonists are being presented to the audience. Do you try and pick one out of the bunch for the audience to root for? Or, do you try and equally share screen time for all of the multiple protagonists? It's a difficult ask to provide enough exposition on a character and their backstory without making it seem repetitive or have too much "down time" in the film (especially when the film is a big summer action "popcorn" film.)

Marvel's Avengers Assemble (or more simply, Marvel's The Avengers for everywhere else) brings together Marvel Comic's titans, Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.), Captain America (Chris Evans), The Hulk (Mark Ruffalo) and Thor (Chris Hemsworth) alongside sidekicks the Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) and Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner). Their mission is to save the world (of course) from Thor's evil brother, Loki (Tom Hiddleston) who has stolen the Tesseract, a power source with the capability to destroy our world, and his army of the Chitauri, an alien race who have Galaxy domination in mind. And it just so happens that our world just happens to stand in their way of achieving this. However, the Avengers are hardly team players and once they are assembled, they must argue with each other about what's right, especially when it's revealed that Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) may be hiding something from them about the Tesseract, before they can even think about taking down Loki.

Now, Marvel's Avengers Assemble was another one of most most anticipated films on 2012 because... well, because I'm a bit of a comic book film fan. I did have my reservations though, especially with how the film will deal with bringing so many different superheroes together, and in some ways, my reservations were right. While the film wastes hardly any time with bringing the four superheroes together, it doesn't do very well with equally developing them. Iron Man seems to be brought to the forefront of the group, along with The Hulk, but even so, neither of them are really given much emotional depth to develop them as characters. Iron Man goes through the whole, "I don't work well in a team" to then leading the final sacrifice at the end to save New York City, but it doesn't really seem to change him as a character. Also, we learn that The Hulk has learned to harness his ability to transform because he is "always angry", but what is he always angry about?!

The biggest surprises however comes from Captain America and Thor. Both are really put to the background and are given little, if anything at all, to develop them as characters or make us care about them as the audience. Captain America has Chris Evan's moody pout to try and draw us into his inner turmoil, but what was his conflict?! It's hinted at that he is still stuck in the 1940s with short one liners ("The last time I was in Germany I met a man just like you, and we didn't see eye to eye either" - or something like that, I'm paraphrasing here!) but it's nothing that can really draw us in or that can be shown on screen very well.

And as for Thor... Well considering it was his own brother, Loki who was the main antagonist of the story, his character is given the least of all to deal with. There is a bit more of the brotherly conflict between the two, but nothing different at all than from what we saw in Thor. Loki is still angry at Thor for casting him out of his realm and Thor jokingly remarks that Loki is adopted, but there was nothing else for him to do except swing his hammer and try to look beautiful with his long golden locks...

Having said all of that, Marvel's Avengers Assemble is not all bad. It definitely delivers on the mindless action that we expect from summer blockbusters. While there is a little lull in the middle of the film between all of the action scenes, the near crash of the Helicarrier (a massive flying aircraft carrier) and the final battle in New York City more than make up for it.
However, there wasn't any tension in any of the battle scenes. With a lot of sequels already in Pre-Production for Iron Man, The Hulk, Captain America and Thor, you just know that Marvel would not kill off, or majorly wound, any of it's signature cash cows... sorry, I mean signature creations. Despite this, the action set pieces were really nice to look at and crafted together very well - particularly the shot that flies us across New York City in the midst of the battle between the Avengers and the Chitauri, showing how each of our heroes is fighting off the alien race.

A final shining star in the film was it's use of comedy. From a Helicarrier worker playing on space invaders when they should be working, to The Hulk "hulk smashing" Loki into oblivion before a big epic "final showdown" can take place, to Bruce Banner arriving calmly and neatly on a motorbike in the middle of the New York City destruction. Just me that found that last one amusing? OK then... They just provided welcome comedic relief in the middle of the death and destruction of New York City.

So, while Marvel's Avengers Assemble is not all bad, it definitely could have been a lot better. While it did a good job of bringing all the superheroes together, it then seemed to not know what to do with them once it did so.

**½ / *****

REVIEW: Piranha 3DD

What were 3D films made for? A completely immersive experience that blurs the edges between the edge of the cinema screen and our real life? An added sense of realism so that it feels like we are really there in the story being told to us?
Or is it for us to had 3D bouncing boobies on the big cinema screen?!
I can already tell that this review is going to make me feel cheap, but I'm really going to embrace it. I'm a (fairly) young lad, so why shouldn't I champion a film when it so unashamedly markets itself to a young male audience?

From the trailer alone, where a pair of Double D's come bouncing towards the screen in super slow-motion, you should know exactly what kind of film Piranha 3DD is...

The plot (if you're really that bothered) revolves around Maddy (Danielle Panabaker) returning to her home town (from College? It's not really made clear.) Her Mother has passed away, so she is left to live with her Step-Father, Chet (David Koechner) who has decided to make the family business, an outdoor water park, into a sleezy "adults only"pool lifeguarded by strippers. Maddy isn't happy, but that's the least of her worries as she soon realises that the prehistoric piranhas from Lake Victoria (the town from the first film that is just down the road in this film) are back! What follows is the inevitable build-up to a piranha take-over in the pool, right on opening day...

Like I said, Piranha 3DD knows exactly what kind of film it is, and the fact that it is directed by John Gulager should give genre fans a pretty big nod towards this. To be fair, Gulager is both a blessing and a curse for the film, because while he does firmly root the film into "brain dead" fun, anyone familiar with the Feast sequels which he directed (Feast II: Sloppy Seconds and Feast III: The Happy Finish) will know that he can be a bit of a cheap hack.
Fortunately, Piranha 3DD doesn't get half as bad as either of the Feast sequels, but the directing is pretty bland throughout.  It doesn't help that the story doesn't really get out of second gear - the gore isn't half as bad as the first film and the nudity is also pretty tame, considering the first film had cast a load of porn star extras.
In this regard, the biggest let-down of the film was probably the big finale involving the piranha attack at the swimming pool. It's largely left to people taking aaaages to run out of the pool, thrashing on the surface and then seeing blood in the water. No, I'm not a gorehound, but the Spring Break attack in the first film, Piranha 3D was almost genius. Seeing airhead stuck-up teenagers being ripped to shreds was kind of satisfying. In Piranha 3DD, we mainly have innocent families and only a few strippers to see get attacked. Sure, we having idiot characters that we want to see bite it - namely Chet and Kyle (Chris Zylka) who is leaching after Maddy for most of the film - but neither of them come remotely close to being devoured by the piranhas.

However, where the film shines is in it's comedy (and it's boobs - creepy guy comment I know... forgive me). This is not a serious film at all and it barely attempts to build any tension - except maybe a scene involving Maddy and her friend Shelby (Katrina Bowden) who are attacked by the piranha on a small dock. But once again, cameos by Mr Goodman (Christopher Lloyd) and Deputy Fallon (Ving Rhames) really steal the show. Goodman is once again the crazy scientist who reveals more about the evolution of the piranhas and Fallon is now resigned to a wheelchair, due to having his legs bitten off in the first film. "Bring me mah legs!" is in there (from the trailer) and his fear of the water is also pretty funny.
There is also a scene that involves a baby piranha living inside a female victim before biting the end of a penis off during a sex scene in the biggest safe sex advert I think I have ever seen in a film (but then again, I haven't seen the film Teeth...) It's cringe-worthy but also pretty funny - but then again, maybe it's the male orientated humour of finding anything to do with bodily functions quite funny.

So, overall, if you enjoyed Piranha 3D, it's pretty safe to say that you will have a good time during Piranha 3DD. For the first time, I think I'm going to say that the 3D effects were pretty decent, compared to the crappy post-conversion of the first film. This one only really had one rubbish double blurred 3D moment (the bouncing Double D's surely helped the 3D out though... leachy comment number 2.)
Certain parts of the film are a bit of a let-down - mainly the gore and the nudity, considering this film was rated 18, it didn't really feel like a completely cheap B-Movie like the first one did...

Oh, and keep your eye out for a crappy over-the-top ending scene like in the first film. Let's just say, the fish are evolving (James Cameron, I'm looking at you..!)

**½ / *****

REVIEW: Silent House

Are we truly safe anymore? Is there anywhere that we can go without feeling alienated or where we cannot be dragged from the safe existence that we know? There have been many home invasion films that deal with complete strangers breaking into someones house and terrorising them, either for fun (The Strangers, Funny Games) or for revenge/a grudge (Cherry Tree Lane, Straw Dogs). I mean, if we cannot be safe in our own homes, there where can we escape the danger out there and live comfortably and secure?

That is what the home invasion horror film plays on and there have been many successful films over the years that have used this concept very well. Like any horror film concept, it could be argued that it has been overused slightly, but I must admit, the simple fear that our four walls that we live in can be broken into and violated by someone else who has no right to be there is still pretty scary.

The film, Silent House, revolves around Sarah (Elizabeth Olsen) - yes, the sister of the ever-annoying 90s twin super sensation, the Olsen twins. Y'know, Mary-Kate and Ashley - who is clearing out her old summer house with her Father, John (Adam Trese) and her Uncle, Peter (Eric Sheffer Stevens). The house is boarded up from the inside (no one has lived there for a while) and the only light comes from candles and little electric lamps that they carry around - spooky! The film title is deceiving, because once Sarah and her Father are left to their own devices to clear up the house, we start to hear creaks, moans and bangs that couldn't possibly come from anything else except someone else... from inside the house.

One of the major strengths for the film is the acting. While the Father and the Uncle are not given much screen time to develop their characters, we pretty much spend the entire 85 minutes (approximately!) with Sarah, so she better be someone who we give a damn about! I can safely say that I was very impressed with Elizabeth Olsen - it's not really fair to compare her to her older twin sisters, because she really does hold this film on her own. When we are there with her holding her breath so the stalker doesn't hear her and when we see her fretting over her injured Father, she made us believe her situation. Sure, some of the time she falls into the Horror character cliche, (like, why walk around the house when you think someone is there with you? Surely you would just run for it?!) but it's nothing that can be overlooked when you see the pure terror on her face as she is stalked and the realisation that comes to her when she realises what's going on.

Now, apart from the end twist (more on that later!) the film's plot is pretty standard stuff. However, one quick look at the film's tagline ('Real Fear... In Real Time') and watching the first 10 minutes of the film, you realise that the film's style is quite different. It's filmed entirely to look like it's one single take - no edits, no slick cuts, no skipping any of the downtime in the house. Instead, we are introduced to the character of Sarah, and we literally never leave her side from the time that she walks into the house to the point at the end where she is desperate to get out.
Now, for the first 10 minutes it took me some getting used to. The filmmakers decided to use hand-held camera style (instead of a nice smooth stedi-cam) and they also decided to use a really shallow depth-of-field (a nice look of having the background/foreground out of focus and only one small part of the frame in focus) and have the focus keep coming in and going out. My eyes struggled to see what was in the frame (this was particularly bad during daytime scenes when you could see more.) The bad focus coupled with the hand-held camera style meant that I didn't know what I was supposed to be looking at. Having said that, the style really came into it's own during the darkened scenes inside the house, as the depth of field seemed to be used to much better effect and the hand-held camera really helped support the mood when Sarah was being chased around the house - before all the tension, the hand-held style just felt redundant.
Now, the one take style really seemed to add something to the film. Like I said before, it felt like we never really left Sarah's side throughout the entire film. Without getting too "Film School" in my review, the camera in a film is meant to represent the audience's Point-Of-View (POV) as to what happens in the film. With a completely unbroken and unedited shot, it really felt like we were there with her from the beginning until the end. The camera really seemed to take a personality of it's own (and replicated what I would do it the same situation). For example, when Sarah went to investigate a knock at the front door, while she went out to investigate the strange noise, the camera stayed inside and "hid" behind the door, peeking through the crack to look at what Sarah was doing. At another point in the film, the camera held back a couple of times, while Sarah went on ahead to investigate the strange noise.

Now, for the twist ending. Obviously, I don't want to give too much away at all, but let's just say that by the third act of the film, you realise that this isn't just your average home invasion film. We are given clues - Sarah doesn't remember much from her childhood at the holiday home, there are polaroid pictures left around the house (but we never see what they are of) and Sarah keeps having visions of a ghostly pale little girl. But what does it all mean? Let's just say, Sarah seems to have some unfinished business. There, is that mysterious enough without giving too much away?
What I will say though is that once the film's "twist" is revealed, all the horror and tension was sapped out of the film immediately. It just wasn't scary anymore. The film seemed to be too preoccupied with explaining everything as a motive and the person stalking the house just wasn't scary anymore. I didn't really feel cheated by the ending, it just felt a bit lazy - like when you were at primary school and you thought writing "... and it was allllll a dream!" was a brilliant way to end your story!
The ending to Silent House just felt like it was underdeveloped, a little cheap and left quite a few unanswered questions.

So, overall Silent House is a pretty solid home invasion horror film and uses the "one shot, no edits, real time horror" gimmick really well. It feels immersive, it's pretty tense and as an audience it feels like we cannot escape the house either alongside Sarah. It's just a shame that a kind of lame ending lets the film down from a decent build up in the first two acts.

***½ / *****

REVIEW: American Pie: Reunion

I'm going to be honest, when I was doing my "films to look forward to in 2012" post at the beginning of the year, American Pie: Reunion was not one that was very high on my list. I was a bit confused by it - a sequel to an original film that was released 13 years ago with the same gross-out/teenage humour aimed at a now more grown-up and mature audience. How was the film going to work? Well, I can safely say that I was wrong. American Pie: Reunion is definitely a film aimed at those of us who have grown up with the original films (not those redundant Straight-to-DVD releases) and was a film full of nostalgia and fun. While watching it, I couldn't help but think back to where I was thirteen years ago, when the first film was released...

If you care, the film brings back all of the favourites from the first film, Jim (Jason Biggs), Michelle (Alyson Hannigan), Oz (Chris Klein), Finch (Eddie Kaye Thomas), Kevin (Thomas Ian Nicholas), Stifler (Seann William Scott), Vicky (Tara Reid), Heather (Mena Suvari), Stifler's Mom (Jennifer Coolidge), Jim's Dad (Eugene Levy), MILF Guy #2 (John Cho)....... and so on. The film is full of nostalgia and concerns the characters revisiting old hotspots from their high school days and comparing their teenage lives to that of modern day teenagers. Of course, it wouldn't be American Pie if they didn't get themselves into silly situations (like Jim having to return his half naked 18 year old neighbour without her parent's noticing), but the film also has a heart to it (mostly, scenes between Jim and his Dad where they talk about the passing of his Mom and even more relationship/sexual advice!)

By looking at the cast, and the damn good job they did of getting near enough every actor and supporting actor back for this film, you would think that the film is a strong ensemble piece, like the first film was. However, that's the one downfall for Reunion. The film focuses heavily on the main five boys, Jim, Oz, Finch, Kevin and Stifler (who really steals the show in most scenes), but kind of leaves the others (especially the girls) relegated to the sidelines. Some supporting actors, most notably Nadia (Shannon Elizabeth), Jessica (Natasha Lyonne) and Sherman (Chris Owen) are just given screen time amounting to about 30 seconds each. Some of it is really blink-and-you'll-miss-it kind of stuff or something there to just put a smile on your face.

The main issue with only focussing on the five main boy is that we miss some of the girls stuff, which is what made the first American Pie great and produced some of the best comedy - we see how deluded boys can be with their sexual conquests while the girls were more grounded and sentimental. In Reunion, there is some major drama missing when Jim and Michelle fall out, because we only really see Jim's side and don't truly understand how much it has upset Michelle.

Now, you may be thinking - what the hell is he going on about?! This is American Pie!

Of course it is. And despite having a new team behind the latest film, it does not fall flat with any of the comedy or light-hearted moments. Stifler stole the show most of the times with his brain-dead reasoning - the best example being when he decides to completely trash some young teenagers jet ski's because...? Well, "because they splashed us."

The boys get up to their usual awkward moments as well - the main one that I have already highlighted involving Jim and his half-naked next door neighbour. However, what made me enjoy the film the most was just how "feel-good" it was - it really reminded me of those days when I was younger when I would just sit and watch one of the original American Pie films to just switch off and put myself in a good mood.  Basically, like I've said before, it was just a really good nostalgia trip while I was watching it in the cinema. As the characters on-screen reminisced about their time in high-school, I found myself thinking the same afterwards about my own time in school and college. I kind of feel old now, but it really is a good feeling to have looking back fondly at past memories.

So, overall I was completely wrong about my doubts over American Pie: Reunion. It has made me want to sit back down and watch the original films (and maybe American Pie: The Wedding, if I have time.) While it is nowhere near a perfect film, it's one to just sit back, relax and let the good times roll to.

*** / *****