Terminator Salvation

Why isn't "Terminator: Salvation" the accepted rendering of this film's title? I don't really get that. Anyway, despite a number of factors working against it, I found this movie to be reasonably watchable rather than completely terrible. I understand that that's not exactly high praise, though for something by McG it kind of is. Despite its plot making the absolute minimum of logical sense, and the fact that it completely ignores much of what we learned from the other movies, and that the very idea of a PG-13 Terminator movie seems abhorrent, I did manage to wring some enjoyment out of its one hundred and ten minutes. Yeah, the story has holes, but they're just more obvious when you compare them to some of the impossible scenarios in the other movies. Yeah, it conveniently forgets some things we knew about the machines and the war in the future, but the series stopped following its own rules long ago. I don't want to sound like I'm praising it too much, because it's not very good at all, but I didn't hate it.

I mean, let's be real. It's weird how these Terminators seem immune to molten steel yet vulnerable to bullets, but the series is so inconsistent about what can and can't kill these machines and what they're made out of that it hardly matters at this point. The fact that all those sweet laser weapons are missing is disconcerting, but it sort of wouldn't match the aesthetic they were going for if they were there, and it is after all ten years before the flashbacks from the first two movies. Maybe they just haven't been invented yet. I found it easiest to get some fun out of the movie when I was just watching it as an apocalyptic, very loud action film, and ignoring its blasphemies against the more beloved entries in the series. I actually thought McG did some good stuff here and there. Visually, it really captures the future war thing in places, with some extended takes that really pushed the desperate nature of the fighting. Of course, the performances he got from some of the cast are another story.

There's quite a few recognizable faces in this movie, and not many do much to distinguish themselves. Christian Bale, ostensibly but not really the main character, is decent as usual, though you can make a case he wasn't really trying terribly hard here. I appreciate that Sam Worthington has the look and physique of a more old school action hero, but in two big roles he hasn't really done that much. Someone should just give him a part he can freely use his Aussie accent in. Michael Ironside gets to push himself not very hard at all in a typical hardass authority role, which is always fun, and Helena Bonham Carter is creepy enough in a multifaceted part. I liked Anton Yelchin as Chekov in Star Trek (even more than Walter Koenig, honestly), but he can't save a poorly written, teenage version of Kyle Reese from damaging the character's legacy a bit. There's a few other notable people here and there, but not much to say about them.

And there's really not much to say about the rest of the film. There's some decent action and effects for the first two thirds, and then it sort of comes off the rails in the final act as the plot gets less and less believable. Really, the most offensive part of the whole project is how it plays around with what's already been established by superior works, but for whatever reason I found that relatively easy to ignore. Certainly watchable, but just as easily avoided.

Wanted

I haven't seen either of Bekmambetov's "Watch" action/fantasy/whatever films, but I guess they were somehow interesting enough to find success outside of Russia and get him a job in Hollywood. I can't really say I'm that impressed by his storytelling skills, but he sure knows how to make an over-the-top action scene. Wanted is (apparently very loosely) based on a comic published by Top Cow and written by Mark Millar, whose work I also haven't experienced but has done well enough for me to have heard of him. It (the movie) is about a loser whose life changes when he finds out he's inherited his father's abilities as an elite assassin and is brought into a secret guild that carries out hits around the globe. It's quite a while before he really gets into that though, as a lot of time is spent showing how much of a loser he is. A lot of the focus is at the office where he works, with some really unfunny scenes about how much he hates his fat boss and dirtbag friend. The narration by James McAvoy is really bad, especially in these early scenes, where you can see him and the writing straining very hard to be clever but failing at every turn. I was glad when he left that and got into killing people.

McAvoy and Angelina Jolie are featured in most of the action, and they have a pretty decent chemistry on camera. She's sexy as she always is, and he seems a little out of place starring in a movie like this but doesn't do a bad job overall. Morgan Freeman is the leader of the assassins, and does the typical wise old man thing he always does, and towards the end his character gets more interesting and funnier. Common makes another acting appearance, although the actual acting he does is minimal and I think he's just there because his face looks cool. There are many other mildly interesting characters, and the middle of the movie is a bunch of McAvoy getting his ass kicked and partaking in some entertaining missions before the big one, avenging his father's killer. It's around this point that they start throwing out plot twists like they're party favors, and it's not long before the final big violent sequence with lots of running, shooting, absurd curving of bullets, and exploding rats. The very end makes one final attempt at too-cool-for-school humor, and then there's the credits to a very mediocre movie. While it usually pretty dumb, the filming and visual effects in the action scenes make it easily watchable for fans of the genre. If you think you'd like it from the previews, you're probably right.

Smokin' Aces

I checked this out for roughly the same reasons as the last two movies, but it's not really that similar to them. Carnahan's script tries very desperately to be smart and stylish, although it only partially succeeds at times. There are a lot of different characters with similar amounts of screen time, and it was a little difficult to even say who the stars were, so I just went with the two "good" guy feds. I think Ryan Reynolds should probably stick with comedy. Part of me wants to say he's fine in a serous role, but I think that's really just thinking he can grow a pretty nice beard. Ray Liotta never did that much with his career after Goodfellas, although he always seems to do a good job when he appears. Plenty of other large and small names make appearances, from Ben Affleck to Jason Bateman to Jeremy Piven to Andy Garcia and a bunch of people you probably don't know by name but recognize when you see them. Common and Alicia Keys also make their acting debuts, and they're not bad enough that I'd want to make a lame comment about sticking to their music careers.

All of these characters lead to a lot of craziness that could turn into a jumbled mess, although it never does. Basically, Smokin' Aces is a movie about a couple of FBI guys going to pick up Piven's character (nicknamed "Aces"), a mob witness, before a plethora of hitmen descend on him to pick up the seven figure reward on his head. They all want to smoke Aces. Get it? Chaos ensues, with lots of shooting and stabbing happening everywhere all over a casino. It's over the top most of the time, with hookers running around, sniper rifles so powerful they can knock you over, and a trio called the Tremors adding plate armor and chainsaws to the mix. A bunch of fairly entertaining stuff happens with the requisite subterfuge and betrayal before the rug is pulled out with a plot twist after all the action's died down. A few plot points seem a little vague, but it's a decent enough story in the end. The movie's never as thoroughly entertaining as it obviously wants to be, but it wasn't too bad. If anything, it does well balancing all the pieces it throws in the air.