James McAvoy and Angelina Jolie
Yup, they pick who to kill from a 'magical loom'. No joke. Maybe I am getting too old to really enjoy these kinds of nonsensical action movies. Don't get me wrong, I like action movies. I enjoy the "turn off brain, watch the chaos - isn't this fun?" part of it. However, a lot of the recent action movies are not enjoyable to me. Why? Well, they have turned into silly cartoon versions of movies where the laws of any science are completely tossed out the window and reality is a joke.
Let's take this movie as an example. Yes, James McAvoy is the son of an assassin who is then trained to be an assassin. I don't care HOW much training you get for your entire life - you can't be trained to override the laws of physics. They are LAWS. So, you can't shoot a bullet in a circle and have it enter 6 different peoples heads, around that circle - and keep going - to kill every single one of them. First of all, hello, the bullet is traveling in a circle. Second of all, velocity and momentum changes as an object hits other objects - in many situations, trajectory will change too. None of this applies in this, supposedly normal, but yet superhuman assassin training camp.
I just can't get into that. Is it that I am getting too old? Maybe.
It reminded me of the movie "Crank" that I saw recently. They similarly did crazy stuff that couldn't have been possible, but they did it with a wink and a nod, making fun of themselves knowing they were defying all logic and all laws. It wasn't serious and wasn't meant to be. That was OK with me. However, this was supposed to be an in-your-face, cool action thriller. You know, with a group of assassins that get their assignment from ... a loom. Uh huh.
Unless you have a huge crush on Angelina Jolie or just a die-hard comic book, action film fan - totally skip this. The few fun parts (mainly where MacAvoy tells off his horrible boss) are not worth all the frustration you feel when watching the totally implausible rest of the movie.
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2 comments:
or maybe if you have a huge crush on James mcEvoy. He is dreamy that Tom Lefroy/Atonement guy.
I agree, I'm getting tired of the Matrix style action scenes, too. Every once in a while I watch Raiders of the Lost Arc and think how awesome it is without any of that CG crap.
Jenny - I can't believe you hit on the two movies I thought about when writing this review.
I had originally wrote "I blame the Matrix" but took the line out because I didn't want a debate about me thinking the Matrix was a bad film. It wasn't, but it definitely started this "who can out CG the other" crap.
Secondly, I watched Raiders with my nephew at Christmas and I wrote that I wished we had those kind of true action/adventure movies again. Not all computer generated action, but real action where it feels like real danger. Then I took it out because I was trying to stay more on point about the movie I was discussing.
Gosh, you totally ran around in my brain to come up with both comments I took out of the review before posting. That is freaky. I will boggle over that one all weekend.
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