No. 254 : The Jackal (1997)

 

The Jackal at the IMDb

With the new Eddie Redmayne TV series of this classic tale garnering great reviews, I rewatched the 1973 original. That was as good as I’d remembered it, and this led me to watching this 1997 remake. Huge mistake! I say ‘remake’ but there are curious credits that note the film is ‘inspired by the 1973 screenplay’ and Wikipedia reveals that author Frederick Forsyth and director Fred Zinnemann didn’t endorse this effort. Indeed, original Jackal Edward Fox, also turned down a cameo, so the film looks like a tainted effort from the start.

 

The picture opens with a raid on some Russian gangsters. Somewhat implausibly, my favourite actor Mister Sidney Poitier, is in charge with some joint operation nonsense shovelled into explain his place in a Moscow dust up. Things go south and a prominent mobster is killed. This doesn’t land well with his brother who demands high level retribution.

 

We see him meeting with Bruce Willis’s Jackal and a deal of $70 million is agreed for a hit. It’s kept deliberately unclear as to who the target is, but you can bet your boots it’s not the FBI director that is dangled before us!

 

Bruce tries to look enigmatic and sinister but comes across as mildly constipated, He has a hotline set up for tips and sets about his mission. He finds an unlikely forger in a young black woman who he tips a few quid - £500 for a bunch of documents does seem pretty cheap – even in 1997! He also orders a big gun using a clunky voice interface on his computer in a scene that may have been impressive once, but just looks ridiculous now, what with Ali Express and all.

 

Unlike the original, when a thin gun that could be hidden in a set of crutches is used, Bruce’s gun is massive and needs a mini van to cart it about. Subtle this is not. He employs Jack Black’s tech genius, yes really, to build him a big mount for his gun, but Jack makes the unwise decision to blackmail Bruce and gets turned into a colander for his troubles.

 

Elsewhere the investigation is on and the Feds have nothing apart from a rumour that IRA terrorist Declan Mulqueen may have seen him once. They head to the prison and meet the Irish terrorist. Wouldn’t you know it’s Richard Gere, in a performance what must be to Irish people what Dick Van Dyke is to Cockneys. Gere goes full ‘Bejeezus’ and is soon helping the Feds for some vague concessions to his situation in jail.

 

Bruce manages to evade all his pursuers, including a pointless group of hijackers, who are after his gun. An excuse for some more killings and explosions, I guess. He also raids the dress up box to show off his fantastic range including fat delivery man, stoner surfer and gay seducer. He’s equally awful and unbelievable in each.

 

As we meander to a climax the true target is revealed, and the countdown is on. Who will win the day and who will get away?

 

This was a terrible film full of 90’s excess and noise. Willis made a pitiful Jackal with all of Edward Fox’s subtlety replaced with a dress up box and a script deserving of the cat’s litter box only.

There was no sense of urgency, and the detection angle was weak. A scar faced lady Russian character tried to add a bit of suspense and a personal angle, but she just got shoved to the side as Willis and Gere took turns to chew the scenery.

 

A good cast was wasted with JK Simmons showing up as a second banana agent and Leslie Phillips, who offered dodgy banking services, meriting only a single scene. The climax with Willis’ gunship mini van was a laugh, with the bored looking Bruce sitting on a bench with a laptop and joystick controlling this, and garnering no attention whatsoever from a seemingly on high alert security service.

 

The finale was drawn out with a long chase through the subway tunnels before the day of the Jackal finally ended, but only after a predictable resurrection.

There is a lot to like here but sadly it’s mainly laughing at the film’s awfulness, it’s unbelievable plot and more outrageous accents.

THE Tag Line : Stick with the original - 45%

 

No.216 : The Chameleon (2010)

The Chameleon at the IMDb

Sometimes you see a story on the news and think ‘That’ll make an interesting film!’. Other times you go with ‘mmm, that’s interesting, I wonder if ‘Tipping Point is on?’ This film falls squarely into the second category. It’s a decent set up, based on a true story, but not a lot happens and things panned out pretty much as I expected from the off.

The film tries to be interesting by jumping about with the narrative timeline but ultimately it’s about someone faking an identity and getting caught doing it. There are the motivations of the various characters to consider, such  as to how they allowed this to happen but ultimately, who cares? The films tries and fails to inject some drama and insight into proceedings but it ends up with all the excitement of a ‘Crimewatch’ re-enactment.

The films opens in 2006 with Famke Janssen’s FBI agent trawling the bayou in Louisiana, presumably for a body. Before anything happens we jump back to 2000 and a boy being found in the street claiming he had escaped from kidnappers who had held him since 1996. He says he is an American boy who had gone missing in 1996 and, given he knows the names of all of the missing boy’s family, he is reinstated to them.

The sister greets him with open arms, the brother less so. The mother, played by a scuzzy Ellen Barkin, isn’t keen at first but soon starts to confide in her ‘son‘. No one seems to worry about the boy’s change in appearance or his new French accent and no one apart from Janssen who smells a rat. She thinks the brother killed his missing sibling and his acceptance of this interloper is proof that he has something to hide. Sister and mother both have their own issues and this new transplant offers an answer to some of their problems.

After an hour Janssen, like the viewer, gets bored of all the hanging around and arranges a DNA test which proves the missing son is in fact a serial French con man, who has multiple identities. He gets charged with the impersonation but can his new foothold in the family generate any new leads into the case of the missing boy? Before long we are back at the bayou where we started - will something get resolved at last?

I wasn’t impressed by this film and had nothing invested in any of the paper thin characters. Druggie Mum Barkin was like Seymour Skinner’s Mum accepting Armin Tamzarian into her home despite all the evidence to the contrary. The sister , who was an awful actor, was just plain needy and the violent and  potentially murderous brother carried all the threat of a Teletubby.

Famke had a thankless task going through the detective motions and you have to wonder why they bothered. We knew from the start he was a big faker and even though it was a true story it beggared belief that the police would accept the ‘missing’ boy’s story at face value, especially as all his knowledge of ‘his’ family was freely available on the internet.

I think the story would have been better served as a documentary, as the dramatic elements  that were introduced didn’t take and stuck out like a sore thumb. If you need to know about this thin tale I’d recommend the Wikipedia page over this dull 90 minute hash of the facts.

THE Tag Line - He Came, He Faked He Went Away -  45%

No.194 : The Strangers (2008)

The Strangers at the IMDb

This film opens with a caption saying that there are 1.3 million crimes of violence a year in America and that this film is ‘inspired by true events’. Off the bat we know that our own fears of being murdered will be played on and that they have basically made everything up. Just as well really as it’s nasty and pointless film that you’d hope would never happen in reality. But probably does.

We get a brief preamble of two boys entering a blood soaked house  - we can’t see any bodies but carnage has ensued. It is soon apparent that this is a flash forward…

Kirsten and James arrive home late after a night out. They drive a Volvo so we know that they are safety conscious and middle class. They arrive in silence and a flashback tells us that James proposed at their night out and she didn’t accept. Despite it being 4am they stick on some records and have a drink.

A knock on the door is the first sign that all is not well. A woman asks for someone they don’t know and we wonder if this was just a test to see if anyone is in. James goes out to get Kirsten some cigarettes and whilst he’s gone the door knocking continues. More sinister things happen such as a broken smoke alarm is found put back together and a man with a bag on his head is seen at the window.

James is initially sceptical but starts to buy in when his car gets trashed and his lost mobile phone shows up on the counter. He gets his father’s shotgun and the pair hide out in a back room -predictably the phone lines are down and the mobiles aren’t working.

Unfortunately for him, James’ friend Dennis Reynolds shows up and is promptly shot in the face. This doesn’t put off your bag and mask wearing bad guys however, with the three of them now revealed and in the house. Our heroes try to make it to a barn that has a radio but soon the pair are tied to some chars and, worryingly, the bad guys take off their masks. Who will survive? Why are they doing this and have I locked the door?

This film was all about the tension with every long period of silence ended with a scream or a jump scare. I find this very annoying and the screeching Liv Tyler, in the lead, lost any empathy from me long before the end. I didn’t like that there was no motivation from the bad guys and that they were simply just psychos. Even that is an assumption as we barely hear them talk and they are little more than devices for our characters to run away from.

It’s a common flaw in films like this that the bad guys have second sight - they always know what window to stand at and when to jump out of the way just as the character turns around. Just once I’d love to see one stub his toe and shout as he’s silently stalking the hero.

The violence was pretty nasty and I could see this film doing well in a darkened cinema with all the scares in full surround sound. There just wasn’t any substance. It takes about 15 minutes to start properly and only lasts 75 minutes in total. Even with just an hour of action it seems padded with the whole quest of getting to the radio in the barn seeming pointless and proving to be so.

If you like a good home invasion film check out ‘The Desperate Hours’. This one was just desperate.

THE Tag Line : There’s Somebody at the Door!  45%

No.185 : The Guvnors (2014)

The Guvnors at the IMDb

Another episode of Alan Partridge’s ‘Bad Slags’ now as we visit one of England’s finest sink estates and watch people carving each other up.

The film opens with two men confronting each other with one demanding the other shoots him. There’s the usual nonsense about street cred and respect before we dissolve to ‘1 month before’. Oh good, a non-linear narrative - this one takes about an hour to unwind so you could really just fast forward it and you wouldn’t miss much.

We meet Adam, a scarred youth of mixed race who runs the local estate. Not in a civic amenities sense, more that he’s in charge of the brawling and the drugs. Someone has blabbed to the cops so he carries out a public slashing with his soon to be signature move with a Stanley knife. He’s concerned that he isn’t getting the respect he deserves and hates hearing about ‘The Guvnors’ a group of football hooligans from 20 years ago.

Meanwhile city worker Mitch is having problems of his own. His workers are obsessed with street fight videos on Youtube and his own son is a right wee prick who bullies his classmates. It turns out that Mitch was the leader of the Guvnors but left 20 years ago when he fell in love.

Adam’s gang decide on flexing their muscles in the Guvnors’ old pub but end up getting handed their asses by retired gym owner Mickey, played by an unrecognisable David Essex. Essex enjoys a brief moment of viral video success but soon the feral youth are at his door and jumping on his head.

The police are ineffective - possibly because they have home made uniforms and possibly because they have recruited comedian Richard Blackwood for some unfathomable reason. It’s therefore up to the Guvnors to reclaim the streets and to avenge Essex. Will it all end in tears? You betcha!

This was a terrible offering but to be honest I did enjoy the ‘what cliché next’ game that the film offers throughout. I also enjoyed its aspirations, looking as it did to set what was essentially a squalid street brawl as something from a Greek Tragedy. There were efforts made with the sepia toned flashbacks being a nice touch, although ‘Wembley Stadium‘ looked like the local dog track. The eulogising of the Guvnors was a mistake as they just came across as a bunch of self satisfied thugs despite efforts to make them look like the less bad option for the estate.

The feral youth were no better. The lead villain Adam, who was played by someone out of Rizzle Kicks (apparently) was very poor. He’s slightly built and talked very slowly. I’m sure that was to give him some menace and gravitas but he just came across as a slow learner who’d won a competition to be in a film.

The big twist of a dynastic struggle was signalled from far off and the massed pitched battle finale made ‘Game of Thrones’ look like, well, Game of Thrones. The themes of trying to escape your past, destiny and fate were all touched upon, but soon set aside in favour of another whack over the head with a house brick.

I imagine the target audience for this film would lap up the sadistic violence and hooliganism but it made me just want a shower as the credits rolled. A guilty pleasure or just plain guilty of making a bunch of scumbags look like heroes? Second one.

The Tag Line : Complete With Anchorman Style Pitched Battle!  45%

No.181 : The Alibi (2006)

The Alibi at the IMDb

As a fan of most things Coogan, I was hoping that I’d unearthed a hidden gem here from 2006. Alas it’s a dud and rightly forgotten.

Steve plays Ray Elliott a slick businessman who operates a high end organisation that supplies alibis to cheating spouses. We open with him meeting with regular client James Brolin who is a happy customer, so much so that he recommends the outfit to his son, Cyclops off ‘X-Men’.

The set up seems unnecessarily complex with operators intercepting calls and operatives checking into hotels in the client’s names with identities switched. Of course the elaborate scheme immediately comes undone, with Cyclops’s girlfriend dying during some kinky sex. There’s no suggestion of murder so I don’t know why they can’t just say it was an accident, which it was. That’s not a plot however, so what follows is a lot of convoluted encounters that makes the whole mess more complicated than Mensa running an episode of ‘3-2-1’.

Near the start of the film we see Steve employ Rebecca Romijn and he explains the operation to her as well as to us, the unconvinced viewers. It seems however that Rebecca may have her own agenda. Meanwhile, Brolin hires Sam Elliott to whack Steve to protect Cyclops, whilst Sam’s daughter Selma Blair fancies Steve and plans an assignation with him. We also get John Leguizamo, in some ill advised corn rows, as the real boyfriend of Cyclops’ date and some side plot about Coogan’s unseen partner ‘Jack’ who may or may not exist.

The various players meander their way towards a big showdown at a hotel which is maybe played for laughs, but I wasn’t sure. They did go for farce and to be fair it couldn’t have been more farcical if Ronnie Corbett had shown up with his trousers at his ankles.

There were a few signs early on that this was a troubled production. Two directors isn’t a good start nor is narration to tell you what’s going on - show, don’t say! There was also a lot of fast edits and call backs, and the whole enterprise was just plain confusing.

I get that they were trying to make some sort of commentary on social mores but it just came across as a lot of random stuff loosely patched together into an incoherent narrative.

Coogan tries hard but he seemed out of his depth in the leading man role, and it was a mistake to have Romijn as his love interest as she towered above him. Usually reliable heavy weights like Brolin, Elliott and Lezguizamo were given precious little to do, and what they got was a poor use of their talents.

You didn’t care for Ray and his sleazy business and at the end the big reveal was met by me with a resounding ‘so what’? It was also a bit tame also for a film about adultery, with everyone keeping their underwear on and swearing kept to a minimum. These seemed strange choices, and you have to wonder what audience they were actually aiming for?

My guess is that the end product was the result of massive cuts and reediting that led to the voice over and short 86 minute run time. There may have been a decent film here at one point, but it certainly wasn’t the one that oozed shamefully onto my DVD player.

The Tag Line : Make an excuse not to watch -  45%

No.154 : The Rezort (2015)

The Rezort at the IMDb

Don’t worry spelling pedants, the title is correct. The ‘Z’ stands for ‘Zombie’ and there are plenty in this British survival horror.

The film opens with a large and annoying media dump. For some reason all the clips are overlaid with static and a lot of jerky cuts. I guess this is to make you uncomfortable and edgey, but for me it was just irritating. I was worried that the whole thing was going to be a ‘found footage’ affair but thankfully it changed to a conventional film after the title card.

We learn that it has been seven years since an epidemic that caused the dead to come alive and eat the living. So far, so very predictable. Despite the loss of 2 billion people the government deem it appropriate to leave one island off the coast of Africa full of the undead, so that the rich can enjoy holidays shooting them up. It seems a daft concept, but is there another plan afoot that would explain, if not exactly justify the risk?

We meet the usual cavalcade of misfits who go through the orientation before being allowed out into the island. This obviously allows the viewer to know what’s going on and to anticipate the pitfalls, which come on plenty and often.

Strangely for a resort that caters for rich asshole hunters none of our crew want to be there. We meet a single women who was dumped at the alter and is using the non-refundable ticket herself. We also get some team gamers who won a competition and a dull woman and her Irish boyfriend who have less life that most of the island’s inhabitants.

 The big star is the enigmatic Dougray Scott who may be mysterious or he may have forgotten his script. We’re not sure why he’s there (bad agent?) but he does have a bigger gun than everyone else so we know he’s to be taken seriously.

As is the law for any futuristic theme park things soon go awry with one visitor’s attempts to steal some files for a refugee agency causing a virus to infect the system and quickly close down all the security protocols. They do this from an underground bunker that was nicked wholesale from ‘Westworld’.

Strangely the manacles on the zombies are computer controlled and once these are off the undead go on a neck biting rampage. Still it’ll be OK - the island zombies or ‘shufflers’ have been there for seven years and are slow - only fresh ones can run about a bit. Wait, were are these speedy zombies coming from? Is there an even more nefarious scheme in place? As our diminishing band of heroes trek across the island to safety we wonder if the plot is as obvious as first flagged and will we all learn to care just a little bit before the inevitable conclusion?

This was a decent slice of hokum but it offered nothing new to an already overloaded genre. The attempts to layer in a bit of social commentary were heavy handed with the blue teddy bear taking the role of the red coat in ‘Schindler’s List’. Obviously it would be hard to mirror that film’s level of gravitas when you have a bunch of Z listers running about screaming as a never ending hoard of zombies jump out from every corner.

Having Scott carry the film was a mistake as he had no charisma at all. He wasn’t burdened with any backstory at all and, although tasty with his sniper rifle, he had little to do except lead the chase to the exit - a path no doubt mirrored by all unlucky enough to see this dud in the cinema.

There was the fun of seeing every other theme park and zombie film ever made homaged with ‘28 Weeks Later’ getting a few nods along with ‘Jurassic Park’ and ‘Westworld’ - film and TV versions.

It was competently made but I had zero interest in any of the dull characters - apart from ‘Marty’ off ’Lead Balloon’ - wondered what he’d been up to!

The ending was clearly meant to make us think and revalue our own morals, but frankly when you set your film in a zombie theme park you are asking a lot of your audience if you want anything more than the odd grunt and lack of dribble.

Risible nonsense with a moral high ground that hardly befits the brain dead premise. ‘eat brainnsss?’ need to have one first!

The TAG Line -  World War Zzzzzzzz  45%

No.137 : The Bargee (1964)

The Bargee at the IMDb

I found this film on an obscure satellite channel and it does seem something of an unknown given it has fewer than 300 ratings on IMDb. This is a bit of a surprise given the stellar British cast and the writing team of Galton & Simpson who gave us Steptoe & Son and Hancock, starring Will Smith. Having viewed the film however, I am happy to let it resubmerge itself in the canal of mediocrity. It was really dull and apart from a game of ‘it’s that guy out of…’ it doesn’t have much to offer.

Part of that is down to the era in which it was made. Released in 1964 things hadn’t quite started swinging in the sixties yet, and the glory days of the 1970’s sex comedy starring Robin Asquith were still many years away. This one does try to be a bit cheeky and risqué but it gets bogged down in a moral maze and a selection of house coats that are anything but sexy.

Anyway our hero Hemel  as played by Harry H. Corbett, is named solely for a weak joke about being born in Hemel Hemstead - this allowed for an obvious zinger  about being born somewhere else with an even worse name and this weak gag meant he was stuck with the unlikely moniker for the rest of the film.

Hemel works the canals, slowly transporting goods up and down the country, with his cleverly named cousin Ronnie, played by Ronnie Barker. Where do they get their ideas?! There is a prescient scene at the start where the man at the docks says that the industry is winding down and that a young man like Hemel (Corbett was 39 at the time and looks 50) should get out now. This advice falls on deaf ears as Hemel has a power of shagging to do. Or ‘get some dinners’ as they coyly put it.

He has a girl at every lock and sends postcards ahead to them heralding his visits. All the girls think they are the one and are desperate for the oily rag and bone, er,  canal man to marry them. Ronnie is not so lucky and bemoans that he always gets the ugly ones. Mirrors were not in common use until 1965. Hemel’s first date goes wrong when the ‘beautiful girl’ he plans on meeting is in fact an ancient looking bar maid with a massive bouffant. Hemel gets his dinner but when she finds out about his other girls she chases him up the canal as his boat put-puts along at 2 m.p.h.

The long dull stretches of sailing up the canals and navigating locks are made even more dull with their encounters with Eric Sykes who plays an annoying man in a cabin cruiser. He plays the part well; that is to say he is really annoying in every scene he is in.

The film slowly meanders to the main action which involves Hemel getting a girl and Ronnie taking care of her over protective Dad down the pub. After they leave we learn the girl is pregnant and the Dad starts a siege at the lock. Soon the entire occupancy of The garret Club has shown up and our likely lads are nearing the lock on their return journey. Will Hemel come clean and start a new life away from his boats? Or will the new wife add to her general humiliation and set sail with him?

This film started OK but it spluttered to a halt as soon as Eric Sykes hoved into view, and never got back into gear again. The values of the film were all over the shop - I guessed the men were supposed to like Hemel and envy his free and easy life style. As it was he just came across as an unlikeable creep. Barker was poor too as the illiterate cousin who needs the captions on his girlie mags read out to him. His part was wafer thin and you can see why he started to write his own stuff.

The saving grace of the film was in the bit parts with people like Derek Nimmo, Richard Briers, Arthur off ’On the Buses’ and Mr Barraclough all showing up in a variety of stereotype roles.

The pacing of the film was awful with lots of scenes running well beyond their sell by date. The siege at the lock went on for so long that one of the characters had to go for a crap half way through!

At nearly two hours there was probably enough here for a decent one hour TV episode - adverts included. It was a bit of an oddity with a sex crazed deviant having to work against 60’s censorship and ankle length skirts, and failing miserably to offer any titillation whatsoever.


THE Tagline : Don’t touch this with a ten foot bargee pole. 45%

No.108 : The Reef (2010)

The Reef at the IMDb

 You know all those films you’ve seen about a group of sexy youths stranded at sea and who are plagued by a big shark? Well, here’s another one.

A group of four Australian twenty-somethings take off in a fancy boat to have a look at an idyllic island off The Great Barrier Reef. Their slightly older deckhand, who looks like Moxey off ‘Auf Wiedersehen Pet’,  does the heavy lifting as the two guys and two girls frolic about on the sand for five minutes. They quickly realise that their boat is in danger of running aground due to the tide but manage to get back on board in a scene that offers no peril whatsoever but a few bikini shots for those so inclined.

They decide to head back but as night falls they are all awakened as the boat capsizes due to the hull being ripped open by the coral reef. They all manage to escape the craft and soon assess their options from the upturned hull - stay with the boat or swim for safety. The leader of the group wants to swim but Moxey who “knows these waters” advises caution. I think he was trying to sound like a wise old sea salt but looked more like he was missing from a German building site.

The four pretty people decide to leave Moxie in the boat with the distress beacon and head off on the ten mile swim with a cut in half boogie board between them. As you’d expect things quickly go wrong as a portentous dead turtle signals trouble ahead. Can you guess what it is yet? Well if you’ve looked at the poster you’ll have gathered the trouble is in the shape of a big fraggin’ shark.

True to form the four youths are slowly whittled down by the shark who is either reading the script or just a bit hungry. Who will survive? Will that woman ever stop screaming and is the boat insured?

This was an OK ‘Based on True Events’ film but I bet my synopsis is longer than the plot pitched to the studio. If you’ve looked at the poster you’d be able to guess almost every event and there is really nothing here to recommend it over the superior ‘Open Water’ or even ‘Open water 2 : Adrift’. The attempts at characterisation were perfunctory at best with one pair a brother and sister with the added baggage of a former pair of lovers reunited for the trip. There were some touching moments of bonding and sacrifice but for the most part you are tapping your watch waiting for the shark to show up.

The five members of the cast were fine but there wasn’t much for them to do apart from scream a lot. The leader, who looks like former Rangers striker Nacho Novo, had the most to do in keeping the group together but the two womens’ scripts must have read ‘Aaaaarrrghhhh!’ for 20 pages.

The shark was well realised and the IMDb states it was a real one. You can see the joins as it bashes through our heroes however and the kills were a bit soft, mostly happening underwater with a change of the water colour the only clue that you are one more body closer to the end.

The film ends somewhat abruptly with a couple of captions serving to end the story and whether this was due to budget constraints or the magic 90 minutes being hit I’ve no idea - I’m not that bothered either way! It was competently made and had enough to have me stay to the conclusion but it was just so familiar and unmemorable that I’ll probably see it again in a year and be unaware I’ve been there before.

THE Tag Line - Don’t Lay Your Hands On a Copy. 45%

No.92 : The Marauders (1955)

The Marauders at the IMDb

Low key western action now in ‘The Marauders’  from 1955, a film with the distinction of starring no one I’ve ever heard of.

We open with a man stopping at a remote ranch looking for water. This is grudgingly given before he’s told to bugger off. Clearly this is a ranch owned by a social misfit or by a rancher experiencing troubles from the local cattle baron. It turned out to be the latter.

Our man is a homesteader who has the rights to settle where he likes. This is against the wishes of the poor sod who actually owns the place and understandably he wants the squatter out. He enlists the help of ‘the general’ a Confederate officer who now works as a bookkeeper and has illusions of being a great military tactician. They plot to take the ranch but meanwhile the rancher is showing his usual hospitality to a thirsty family. Sadly for them they don’t bugger off in time and they are soon holed up in the ranch as the bad guys make their play.

Luckily the ranch is at the bottom of a steep cliff and is easy to defend. The cattle baron is quickly dispatched but his nutty bookkeeper decides to rally his motley band of marauders to take the homestead. Fortunately the sheltering family all turn out to be solid shorts and soon they are assisting the defence so much so that the marauders think there is an army hiding in the small shack.

The bad guys plot like Wylie Coyote on acid but, like their inspiration, they are doomed to fail as they are outsmarted at each turn. The bookkeeper isn’t happy with developments and destroys the water supply meaning his men must secure the cabin or die of thirst. Can they get what’s rightfully theirs or will the squatter’s law of the jungle win the day? Will the precocious child survive and will the loss of Daddy mean the end of the rancher’s lonely nights?

This was a totally forgettable western that probably took a little longer than its 80 minutes running time to actually shoot. The characters were thinly drawn with the baddie bookkeeper with the English accent the only one with any colour. Sadly this colour was mostly brown as his sneering and conniving didn’t convince and he was as hammy as a bacon sandwich. The rest of the ‘Marauders’ were faceless nobodies although at least they kept the tradition of having one of them being a Mexican with a big sombrero.

The central relationship between the rancher and the wife was also thinly drawn with her largely unaffected when her husband ran off leaving her and her boy with their kidnapper. Although she gives him a small wound she’s quickly in line doing the womanly stuff like cooking the dinner and loading the guns. The boy wasn’t as bad as some but he grated all the same and sadly missed out on a grisly death.

If there was any subtext intended about the ideas of freedom or liberty I missed them as this just came across as a lazy script bashed out by someone who had a loan of some horses and cowboy hats for the weekend. Even the usual saving graces of great settings or elaborate gun fights were missing and the whole enterprise was instantly forgettable.

THE Tag Line : 80 minute eviction - Western Style  45%

No.85 : The ‘Burbs (1989)

The 'Burbs at the IMDb

Off to the suburbs now as we take a look at this horror comedy staring Tom Hanks and directed by ‘Gremlins’ helmer Joe Dante. Sounds a sure fire winner? ‘Fraid the ‘Burbs isn’t worth the effort.

Hanks plays  his usual likeable every man character, who on this occasion is called ‘Ray’. He’s married to Princess Leia and is looking forward to a week off at home. Leia is worried he’ll go nuts in their quiet cul-de-sac but we’re pretty sure all sorts of exciting stuff is going on behind the net curtains. They don’t show this exciting stuff however and rely on a dog shitting on someone’s lawn to get a feeble laugh - two if you count the man trodding in the mess five minutes later.

The neighbours are your predictable collection of kooks with Bruce Dern leading the way as a military nut with an unfeasibly attractive wife. For your money you also get Corey Feldman off ‘The Goonies’ and some other assorted and forgettable oddballs.

The pressure of suburbia soon gets to our principals, but while they are at each other’s throats they realise that the new neighbours who moved in a month ago have yet to tend their yard. This mild observation leads to more suspicions and paranoia and before long the gang are convinced a fully fledged cannibal cult have moved in.

They get little satisfaction from the householder but that’s little surprise given he’s the lead Nazi from ‘The Blues Brothers’. With the mania reaching fever pitch our heroes plan a mission to break in to their home and investigate the weird goings on while Feldman hosts a house party so he and his friends can observe the doubtless wacky conclusion.

This was a really dull effort that only succeeded if its intention was to show how dull life in the suburbs can be. The slow build up lasted a full hour and the tension never got above ‘don’t care’. It was clear from the off that the mysterious happenings would have a reasonable explanation and once it all goes explosive it’s equally predictable that a wrong foot is on the cards, otherwise our heroes will end up in the clink.

Part of the issue for me was that the film never left the same few houses. Of course this claustrophobia is part of the plan but it just makes the whole enterprise seem small scale and unimportant. The plot where the foreign neighbours were thought to be eating people was absurd from the off but not in a funny way. Why Hanks didn’t spend his week off getting Leia out of her frumpy outfits and into her ‘Jabba’  bikini instead of raking through bins was never explored.

Bruce Dern was passable doing his usual ‘mania’ bit but Hanks phoned in his performance from very far away. The plot was too thin to sustain the film and although the last half hour brought some explosions and a some surprises they felt unearned as all empathy towards the characters had been lost long ago.

The seismic shift in pace towards the end and the unfolding revelations looked like frantic rewrites that failed to save this laugh and gore free horror comedy.

THE Tag Line ‘ ‘Burbs Fails to Disturb or amuse  45%

No.2 : The Shadow (1994)

The Shadow at the IMDb

In 1930’s New York the bad guys better watch themselves or they may just get laughed at by our titular hero - and he’s the one running about in a cape and a floppy hat.

The film opens with Alec Baldwin in a bad wig being all diabolical in China. Somehow he’s an opium lord with a gaggle of henchmen and a pretty strict employee welfare policy. After ignoring a threat he’s bundled off by some monks who train him up to be a good guy. Their theory is that as a bad guy he knows how bad guys think and therefore will be more effective - would of served them right if he’d ran off with their cash box.

After a time and money saving story scroll we land in New York seven years later in the midst of a gang land rub out. The bad guys are slow about their business and this give The Shadow plenty of time to fanny about and laugh a lot. The victim is saved and very grateful, but not one to do a favour for nothing The Shadow demands that he now does his bidding as one of his network of agents - it didn’t say what would happen if he told The Shadow to bugger off - it’s not like he asked to be saved or anything. He also gives all of his helpers a red ring - the dirty bastard.

Back in his playboy millionaire guise of Lamont Cranston The Shadow shows off his two great talents - telling people to forget things and pulling the ladies - surprised he bothers to do any Shadow stuff at all.

Meanwhile back at the museum a mysterious package has arrived from the east and as everyone who works in a museum knows, that’s got to be bad news. Of course it turns out to be a recently revitalised Genghis Khan who also has the power to tell people to do stuff. The strings are being pulled from behind the scenes, or more correctly from behind a big bill board, and soon the city is being held to ransom with only the Shadow and his pals able to save the day. Will funny haired Ian McKellen’s bomb blow up everything? Probably not as you might have guessed.

This is a right old mess of a film with few things to recommend it. For a start it doesn’t seem to know if it’s a comedy or a thriller with seemingly straight scenes being unintentionally funny and the lighter moments being dull and overly earnest.

The cast is pretty good but Tim Curry and Ian McKellen are criminally underused. Baldwin is mostly dreadful but to be fair he does get some awful dialogue and has to play twin roles both of which are rotten. As the playboy he’s a below par Bruce Wayne who every so often speaks in a stern voice with dramatic music cues when he wants things done or forgotten. As The Shadow he does deep bellowing voice that‘s meant to sound threatening and mysterious but comes across as a bit camp.

The Shadow himself is a poor hero with his powers of moving quickly and laughing a lot never going to set the screen alight. His motivations are never really explained and it seems it’s all down to ‘a monk told me to’. It looked a lot more fun being a drug lord.

The proto-cgi is bad with the teleporting monk and flying dagger especially ropey. The city looks quite good in places but in many scene the use of sets and matte paintings is painfully obvious. The plot is all over the place and I kept losing track of who was good, who was bad, who was being controlled and who was miscast.

The dramatic finale with Ian McKellen’s dotty scientist trying to diffuse a bomb on a countdown as The Shadow fights his nemesis was strangely played for laughs with an never worse McKellen failing to raise a smile as the colour blind boffin looking for a green wire to snip.

The film was directed by ‘Highlander’ helmer Russell Mulcahy who seems to have done little since on the big screen and we all must be thankful for that. Ultimately I think the film failed as the hero was poorly defined and set against a baddie with the same powers as him - where’s the fun in that? If you must have a THE superhero The Rocketer, The Spirit and The Phantom must be better bets …stay tuned!

THE Tag Line : The Shadow Blows! 45%