The UrbanWire

It’s not a good sign when the guy sitting next to you in a movie has the plot figured out 30 minutes in.

It’s even worse when the movie in question is Salt, with its stellar cast and packed action.

Angelina Jolie plays the title character in this female version of the Bourne movies. She’s a CIA agent accused of being a sleeper agent from Russia and her mission is to kill the Russian president in order to start a war.

This sparks a series of nearly impossible action sequences including her constructing a rocket launcher out of a fire extinguisher, jumping from vehicle to vehicle on the highway or take down hordes of highly-trained men, never mind the fact that this woman barely weighs 50kg.

The plot then brings you on what it wishes was a rollercoaster ride to seek answers about Salt’s loyalty, but really, it’s not that fun when you know exactly where the turns and dips are.

Another thing that doesn’t endear this movie to you is the lack of emotion. Salt, much like the actor playing her, is larger than life and she apparently doesn’t need emotion. It stops the audience from feeling for her, something that random flashbacks of her and her husband doesn’t rectify.

Loopholes are common in this film, as well as a lack of explanation. The filmmakers only explain to you the true nature of Salt’s job 10 minutes into the film, as though they expect the audience to know because they should have seen all the trailers because of Jolie’s star power.

Despite the shortcomings, this movie still is relatable to American audiences due to the recent US-Russian spy fiasco, whether it raises awareness or feeds paranoia is another matter beyond this movie review. Furthermore, this movie could also a not-so-subtle attempt to make a mockery of the FBI, CIA and Secret Service, given the way Salt defeats them as though it’s another training exercise before making her way into a bunker below the White House.

Or maybe we’re reading too much into what is meant to be just another action movie.

And it’s Angelina Jolie after all.

Title: Salt
Opens: Aug 5
Duration: 100 minutes
Language: English
Rating: ★★✭✩✩
Genre: Action, Thriller
Director: Phillip Noyce
Cast: Angelina Jolie, Liev Schreiber, Chiwetel Ejiofor

Following the trend of video game movies such as Dead or Alive, Resident Evil: Extinction and Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li, comes director Dwight H. Little‘s latest offering, Tekken.

The world is in chaos after the collapse of the governmental system, and power is now in the hands of a few giant corporations, the strongest of which is the Mishima Zaibatsu.

Every so often, they host the Iron Fist Tournament, or Tekken, which gathers fighters from each corporation for a hugely-publicised superiority fight.

Enter the protagonist, Jin Kazama (Jon Foo), a street-smart kid toughened by years of oppression by the Mishima Zaibatsu.

He vows to kill Heihachi Mishima (Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa), the head of the Mishima Zaibatsu, after the corporation kills his mother (and trainer) Jun Kazama (Tamlyn Tomita), incidentally an ex-Iron Fist Fighter, in a raid.

What Jin doesn’t realise, but something all Tekken fans should know, is that Heihachi is his grandfather. In the midst of this, Jin’s father, Kazuya Mishima (Ian Anthony Dale), is trying to overthrow Heihachi and take over the Mishima Zaibatsu for himself.

However, the only way to get to Heihachi is to win the Iron Fist Tournament. Together with mentor Steve Fox (Luke Goss), Jin battles through the rankings against foes such as Spanish show-boater Miguel (Roger Huerta), armor-clad samurai Yoshimitsu (Gary Ray Stearns) and the Iron Fist ex-champ, Brian Fury (Gary Daniels).

Along the way, he forms a romance with Christie Monteiro (Kelly Overton), a scantily clad Brazilian fighter whose job is to add sex appeal to every scene. She does it pretty well.

This is where the movie loses points. The characters were unfaithful to their video game counterparts and were woefully underdeveloped. Many existed just to be knocked out or killed, including Russian Sambo fighter Sergei Dragunov (Anton Kasabov) and Brazilian Capoeira expert Eddy Gordo (Lateef Crowder).

I had a major gripe with sisters Anna (Marian Zapico) and Nina (Candice Hillebrand) Williams’ relationship. They were hired by womanizer Kazuya Mishima for their… let’s just say assets, and also fought side-by-side as Kazuya’s ad hoc assassins.

But wait a minute. Aren’t the Williams sisters supposed to be mortal enemies? To top it all off, Anna doesn’t have a single line in the movie, and didn’t fight once in the tournament.

It’s sad to see this pair, with rich, deep-seeded parts in the Tekken universe, reduced to mere call girls and henchmen in the movie.

Despite the movie being primarily an action movie, the fight scenes are often more confusing than exciting. You’ll notice that every fight scene is made up of choppy, giddily shot camerawork, which is meant to disguise the fact that the actors just can’t hold your attention with their moves. In other words, the actors can’t fight.

Jin’s fighting, in particular, is pretty laughable. All of Jin’s fights go like this – he gets beaten senseless by whomever he’s fighting, but will suddenly have a flashback about what his dear deceased mother taught him about fighting.

Somehow, he will draw on that often-unrelated sliver of memory to defeat his opponent, who never has the bloody good sense to finish Jin off while he’s lying on the ground.

All in all, Tekken would have been a good show, with a fairly entertaining storyline and plenty of (albeit rather poorly executed) action scenes, if only it didn’t have the game’s richly developed characters and storyline to deal with. Not to mention the Tekken’s legions of fans, each with high expectations that the movie just can’t live up to.

Title: Tekken
Opening Date: 29 July 2010
Duration: 93 Minutes
Language: English
Genre: Action, Video Game
Directed by: Dwight H. Little
Starring: Jon Foo, Ian Anthony Dale, Kelly Overton
Rating: ★★✩✩✩

George Romero seems to be like the zombies he films. Over 40 years of making zombie films, and the man just keeps trudging on. Though not directed by Romero, his influence as executive producer for The Crazies is duly felt. Instead, the US$20 million production (relatively low by Hollywood standards) is helmed by the still unproven Breck Eisner.

Does Breck Eisner, whose only big name theatrical release was 2005’s disastrous Sahara, called by Los Angeles Times ‘one of the biggest financial flops in Hollywood history’, deliver?

The Crazies is miles better than Sahara, that’s for sure. A remake of the 1973 film by the same name, the film stars Timothy Olyphant, Radha Mitchell and Joe Anderson, as residents in the small fictional town of Ogden Marsh, Pierce County, Iowa. An unfortunate accident causes the town’s water supply to be contaminated with a virus which slowly drives the infected town residents crazy, hence the title.

The Crazies starts off with a languid pace, slowly introducing the various characters involved. The original 1973 The Crazies had both the viewpoints of the military and the townsfolk involved, but smartly, in the 2010 remake Eisner only retains the viewpoint of the townsfolk. By getting rid of the viewpoint of the military, the military becomes a villain, as well as making the virus more mysterious without the explanations given in the military’s viewpoint.

Reminiscent of his previous roles as police sheriffs in the short lived Deadwood television series, as well as the currently airing Justified, Olyphant plays David Dutten, the local sheriff of a small town.

The town’s idyllic peace is shattered by the police shooting of Rory Hamill (Mike Hickman), a well known drunkard who has been battling alcoholism for years. However, upon analyzing the corpse, the blood test comes back negative for blood alcohol content, mystifying Dutten.

Meanwhile, his wife Judy Dutten (Radha Mitchell), the town doctor, is confronted with a case of a resident behaving strangely. Cases of townsfolk attacking and killing other people eventually become widespread and all that comes to a head when the military step in, quarantining the entire town. As the movie progresses, Dutten and his wife, together with Russell Clank (Joe Anderson), the deputy sheriff try to escape the town, facing obstacles like the military and the infected townsfolk along the way.

Unfortunately, The Crazies does not live up to its thriller promises. Cliched events like someone shooting an infected just in the nick of time before one of the main characters are killed are aplenty.

In fact, the only time I flinched during the movie was when a bone saw was skittering along the floor, threatening to clatter its way onto Dutten’s nether regions. Scenes with the infected were just typical zombie fare, with the difference that the infected are not dead, but merely incredibly savage and bloodthirsty humans with veins popping out.

Furthermore, it feels like the filmmakers could have done a lot more with The Crazies. has. For example, in a scene, Dutten and his wife discover that the military are not only killing the infected, but also innocent uninfected townsfolk. In the hands of more skillful directors and writers, the scene could have been a lot more impactful, instead of just showing us the dead bodies and a horrified look by Dutten.

With the NC-16 rating, I would have expected a lot more emotionally and morally disturbing content, instead of just merely splashing blood, gore and a couple of vulgarities sprinkled here and there.

Still, The Crazies is not a bad movie, just cliched and nothing we haven’t seen before. It’s hard to recommend The Crazies in light of the more solid Inception and other movies currently in theaters right now.

Title: The Crazies
Opens: July 22
Duration: 101 minutes
Language: English
Rating: ★★★☆☆
Genre: Horror, Thriller
Director: Breck Eisner
Cast: Timothy Olyphant, Radha Mitchell, Joe Anderson