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Entourage: Mini-Review

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Adrian Grenier

Movie fame may be fleeting for the Entourage guys

C-The HBO series Entourage ran for eight seasons and 96 episodes. By the end of that time, critics and even most fans agreed that the show had run out of ideas and creative energy. Series creator Doug Ellin has spent the last four years getting the big screen version of Entourage ready but, unfortunately, he seems to have spent more time arranging celebrity cameos and bikini shots than coming up with a fresh story.

The movie takes place shortly after the series ends. Actor Vinnie Chase (Adrian Grenier) has been signed by new studio head Ari Gold (Jeremy Piven) to star in and direct a major film, but the movie is badly over budget and the Texas oilman (Billy Bob Thornton) financing the film gets nervous. Vinnie’s pals are nervous too. Eric (Kevin Connolly) is about to become a daddy, Turtle (Jerry Ferrara) wants to date MMA champ Ronda Rousey, and Johnny Drama (Kevin Dillon) is worried that his role in brother Vinnie’s film may get cut. 

Unless you’re a fan of the HBO series, the above synopsis may not make much sense, and that’s part of Entourage‘s problem. It’s not so much a film about the movie industry, à la Robert Altman‘s The Player, as about four guys who have now struck it rich and whose “problems” involving celebrities and incredibly beautiful women will not resonate with the rest of us. The parts of Entourage that are about the film industry are still clever and even wickedly funny at times, especially Haley Joel Osment in his best adult role as Thornton’s son who shows up to check up on the progress of Vinnie’s movie. Jeremy Piven also displays touches of his Emmy-winning form here as well. As for the rest, the other subplots could appear, minus the profanity and nudity but with more actual jokes, on any network sitcom. At one point in Entourage, Liam Neeson gives Ari the finger. By the end of the movie, those who weren’t fans of the TV series will probably feel as if they’ve been given the finger as well.
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The Gunman: Mini-Review

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Sean Penn

You won’t see Sean Penn accepting an Oscar for The Gunman next year

CAt the age of 54, Sean Penn has apparently decided to follow in Liam Neeson‘s footsteps and become an aging, anguished action hero. Penn’s The Gunman is a film Neeson could easily have made, and it’s directed by Pierre Morel, who helmed Neeson’s first foray into this genre, Taken. It’s doubtful that Penn will fare as well as Neeson did, however, thanks in large part to a heavy-handed script.

Penn plays the title character in The Gunman, Jim Terrier, a former security contractor/covert op, While working in the Congo eight years earlier, Jim assassinated a government official on behalf of the mining concerns that hired his company. He has tried to make up for his past by working on humanitarian projects in the Congo, but now, he finds himself the target of a shadowy conspiracy determined to erase all record of the assassination plot. When Jim goes to Spain to get information from his former contact, Felix (Javier Bardem), he learns that Felix has married Jim’s old girlfriend Annie (Jasmine Trinca) and is working with the conspirators. Soon, Jim and Annie are reunited and on the run.

The Gunman could have been a solidly entertaining 90-minute thriller. Penn is in incredible shape (he appears shirtless on multiple occasions), and Morel stages the action scenes quite well. However, the script (which Penn co-wrote) is intent on hammering home its political points and dwelling on Jim’s need for atonement over and over. To make matters worse, Morel completely misuses Penn’s two most talented co-stars. Javier Bardem goes wildly overboard as Felix, although, to be fair, the character as written makes no sense whatsoever. Then, late in the movie, Idris Elba shows up as an Interpol agent whose only function is to tell Jim a ridiculous parable about building a treehouse. The result is a movie that gets sidetracked repeatedly when it should be building momentum. As an action film, The Gunman fires a few too many blanks to recommend.
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Run All Night: Mini-Review

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Liam Neeson

Liam Neeson plays pretty much the same role in Run All NIght as in his last six films

B-Liam Neeson isn’t the first action hero to remake the same movie over and over; just look at Bruce Willis. However, he is the first to turn into an action start overnight in his late 50’s with a ready-made persona for his roles. Run All Night features the third version of essentially the same Neeson character to hit the theaters in the last six months. 

The prototypical Neeson character is a world-weary professional man of action, usually with a drinking problem, few if any friends, and a gloomy outlook on life. In Run All Night, he’s an alcoholic former hitman living on the charity of his only friend, reformed mob boss Shawn Maguire (Ed Harris). Jimmy’s son Mike (Joel Kinnaman) wants nothing to do with his father, but the two wind up on the run together when Jimmy kills Shawn’s son Danny (Boyd Holbrook) to stop him from hurting Mike. Everyone is now chasing them, including the cops (led by Vincent D’Onofrio) and a smooth hitman (Common) Shawn has hired.

Run All Night has many of the same plot elements as Neeson’s last few films, and, indeed, too many scenes feel overly familiar. But it’s not merely a by-the-numbers action film. Instead, the script by Brad Ingelsby tries to create a genuine friendship between Shawn and Jimmy that makes its destruction sad (albeit in the Irish tragic sense). In addition to Neeson and Harris, the supporting cast has a number of seasoned pros who take their roles seriously as well. Further, director Jaume Collet-Serra keeps the action moving quite efficiently (although his staging of a couple of fist fights leaves something to be desired). All in all, Run All Night has more going for it than most of Neeson’s recent work and allows the audience to admire Neeson and Harris playing off each other.
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Why Is Taken 3 Such a Bad Action Movie?

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Liam Neeson

Liam Neeson’s Taken 3 was not a hit with the critics.

The most popular film at the box office last week was Liam Neeson‘s Taken 3, which took in almost $40 million in its first three days. It did not, however, take in the nation’s critics, only 11% of whom rated it favorably (Silver Screen Videos was not among that 11%). Although the critics had lots of reasons to dislike the movie, one common theme was the nearly universal loathing of the film’s confusing, headache-inducing action scenes.

Specifically, the movie’s big set piece is a freeway chase scene about halfway through the film that is one of the worst examples of the genre that I can recall. Sheila O’Malley of RogerEbert.com summed it up as follows: 

The number of cuts per scene is astronomical, ensuring that the audience never gets a chance to orient itself in the environment, or, for that matter, care about what is happening. … In one car chase scene, involving multiple police cars, an 18-wheeler, and the various commuters on the road, a car commandeered by Mills ends up driving the wrong way down a crowded freeway. At least I think that’s what I was seeing. The coked-up editing makes it impossible to tell… Effective car chase scenes involve care in the execution: it’s not enough to show a car flipping over in slo-mo, surrounding it with 100 quick edits designed to disorient. Ironically, that approach ends up making it look like the movie is trying too hard.Sheila O'Malley

I don’t have access to clips of the car chase scene. But I can show you a similar chase scene from the previous movie in the series, Taken 2, also directed by Olivier Megaton:

 


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Taken 3: Mini-Review

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Liam Neeson

Liam Neeson stars in Taken 3

C- Liam Neeson is back for the third time as former CIA agent Bryan Mills turned vengeful ex-husband and father in Taken 3. This time, none of his loved ones have been kidnapped; instead, ex-wife Lenore (Famke Janssen) is murdered, and he’s the prime suspect. For once, Mills actually has an interesting adversary, but it’s not any of the Russian mobsters who actually killed Lenore, or the master criminal, whose identity is fairly easy to guess. Instead, it’s the cop chasing Mills, Forest Whitaker, who’s a lot smarter than cops in movies like this typically are. Whitaker has a lot of fun with the role, and Neeson, as usual, is believably tough as Mills.

Unfortunately, the action scenes in Taken 3 are a mess. Director Olivier Megaton uses lightning fast edits and shaky camera work to a headache-inducing fault, and it’s impossible to tell what’s going on in most of the action scenes. Usually in this type of movie, the action scenes make the film somewhat worth watching despite the ridiculous plot. Here, viewers hope the action scenes end quickly so they can see more of Neeson and Whitaker. Our full review of Taken 3 is now available on Silver Screen Cinema.
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