Movie Night

The Wife was going to be gone for several hours tonight, so I popped in Pirates of the Caribbean 2: Dead Man’s Chest for the kids. I already caught this one in the theater, and while it seemed to go quicker this time, I generally had the same impression: good follow-up, great effects, nice hook for the sequel, but the over-the-top action scenes are a little too much.

I still had time to kill, so I popped one in for me. I selected Natural City, which I bought on a whim at Best Buy a while back. The cover had blurbs praising it as Korea’s answer to The Matrix and references to Blade Runner. The cover packaging certainly captured the look, so I tossed some cash at the register monkey and took it home.

Wow, what a snoozer. You’ve got a Blade Runner cop in love with a replicant cyborg that will “expire” in three days. To prolong her life, he’s going to kidnap a Korean hottie because her DNA is compatible with the cyborg’s memory chip and he can transfer its memories into the hottie. Unfortunately the crazy androgynous doctor who knows how to do the procedure has been arrested and an evil combat cyborg is planning a doublecross.

My first problem is the character’s bum (and not an endearing one), has no personality, and seems to make decisions at random rather than follow any kind of motivation. My second problem is the cyborg has no personality. There’s nothing to fall in love with, she’s just kind of there. Next the bad guy has a whopping two major scenes, and has almost no dialog, just prolonged fighting. Like the cyborg chick, he’s just kind of there. Throw in more talking heads and pointless artsy scenes than action and you’ve got what amounts to a pretty dud. Even the ending makes no sense as, once again, the cop seems to make a decision with no other reason than the wind is blowing from the north. The only comparison I could see to The Matrix were the fight scenes, but they were weak knock-offs at best and mostly done in slow motion.

Oh, and remember the giant blimp advertising off-world trips in Blade Runner? This flick has a giant space cruise ship doing the same thing.
I couldn’t well go to bed with that piece of crap stuck in my brain, so I cracked open Running Scared (the Paul Walker crime flick, not the old Billy Crystal/Gregory Hines dramedy) to scrub it away. It did a damn good job of it. They should retitle this one Oleg’s Bad Night. Is there anything else that can happen to this poor kid? Junkies, pimps, child molesters, mobsters… it’s insane.

But it’s fun. They get a little too stylish with the jump cuts, hard edits, and slick rewinds, and the misfortune piled upon misfortune is largely coincidence-driven, but it’s so much fun and the characters are so cool that it’s all forgiveable. There were a couple scenes that really ramped up the tension. I can see why it seems to be more of a cult/DVD hit and didn’t see much box office.

I can take or leave Paul Walker, but at least he ditches the pretty-boy looks in this one. And you can’t go wrong with Karel Roden and Chazz Palminteri, even if they did have smaller roles. Roden gets to be the crazy Russian again, and Palminteri is a crooked cop. His voice is unmistakeable behind a ski mask in the opening sequence. To round things out, we get a rather nice scene with Vera Farmiga early on (yum), and they even throw in a scene in a strip club.

And yes, Mom and Mom-in-law, the children were in bed long before Running Scared hit the DVD player.

Not a productive night by any stretch, but one I needed. I may as well get the laziness out of the way now as I’ll have most of next week free for clackety-clack at the keyboard.