Lucy review

There seems to be a myth floating around Hollywood that humans only use 10% of their brain and the other 90% is basically not used at all. This is not even remotely true. We consciously use 10% of our brain for thinking and things like that. The other 90% is still in use. It's used for our subconscious mind and other things. It is not possible to 'unlock' this other part of our brain because it is already unlocked and in use. Even if we could somehow use this other 90% consciously, it certainly wouldn't give us godlike superpowers or even increase our memory and intelligence (like in the film Limitless). Luc Besson's newest film, Lucy, plays off of this age old myth about our brainpower and then takes it to extreme heights. It's really a ridiculous concept for a movie, but if you can get past that you may actually have some fun with the movie and really get something out of it. Scarlett Johansson plays the titular character here. She starts out as a seemingly vapid college girl studying abroad in Taiwan. Through a mix-up with her shady boyfriend, Lucy becomes a drug mule for a brutal Taiwanese boss and then in turn accidentally ingests the experimental drug she was supposed to be carrying. The drug allows her to slowly gain full access to her brain, which in turn gives her powers fit for Superman (Superwoman, rather) or a god. Lucy is in incredibly odd film. It's one half dumb Luc Besson action flick where the main characters traipse around in some foreign country getting in car chases and dodging bullets. It's also one half smart pseudo-philosophical science fiction film that tries to explain creation and the future of human evolution. It dabbles in interesting ideas but will occasionally stop for a gun fight with Taiwanese bad guys. Like I said, odd. But not all bad. Lucy was obviously heavily influenced by Stanley Kubrick's awesome 1968 classic, 2001: A Space Odyssey. Lucy begins with the Dawn of Man like Kubrick's film did, showing the first ape woman (also named Lucy). As the movie progresses, Scarlett Johansson's character becomes almost equivalent to the star baby at the end of 2001. A human who was been altered by an outside force (the monolith in 2001, the drugs in Lucy) and is now a god-like being who has been seemingly sent to save humanity and correct our oh-so-many problems. One thing I have to give massive credit to Besson for is not making this a movie that uses its head female star for nothing but eye candy and beating up bad guys. Too many action films (Kick-Ass 2 to name one) think making their head star a woman allows them to underwrite their characters and indulge in camouflage misogyny. Here, Besson focuses more on Lucy and her increasing intelligence and only uses the gangster subplot sparingly. I do applaud him for that. Another problem this movie could've run into is it being really bloated and drawn out. Instead, it's kept to a lean 90 minutes. This movie had the potential to be truly awful, I'm glad it was able to surpass all that. Yet, as I mentioned before, Lucy isn't without its issues. First off, it's completely illogical. But I already addressed that. There's also quite a few oversights plot wise that made me slap my forehead thinking "How could they not see that?".  It touched on a few different things that could've been really cool but doesn't really expand on them. As her knowledge increases, her humanity decreases. There's a part that hints that Lucy may want to keep her human emotional side. Unfortunately, Besson doesn't go into depth really at all. Despite it's many flaws, I found Lucy to be quite good. It's a really ambitious movie and somewhat succeeds on many fronts. It's no 2001: A Space Odyssey but I suppose it makes for a good pop action version of the film. Calling the movie stupid is easy and honestly a little unfair. For all its shortcomings, it really does make for a solid smart summer blockbuster. Hell, I'd say it's better than a lot of the blockbusters out in theaters this summer. Luc Besson has always annoyed me. I was never a huge fan of his films, but Lucy is a little different than most of his films and it shows he may have some real talent. I give Lucy 4.2 out of 5 stars. Don't forget to follow me on Twitter @WhitsMovies and like me on Facebook at Facebook.com/WhitsMovies. Happy Viewing everyone!   

3 Days to Kill review

Pauline Kael once said "Movies are so rarely great art that if we cannot appreciate great trash we have very little reason to be interested in them." 

She has a point. Unfortunately, 3 Days to Kill isn't great trash. It's just plain old trashy trash. What a shame. 3 Days to Kill is about an aging CIA hit-man named Ethan Renner (Kevin Costner) who gets cancer and is given three to five months to live. Luckily for him, if he's able to complete some assignments for the CIA, he'll be given some experimental cancer drug that may help him stay alive to see his estranged daughter (Hailee Steinfeld) and his wife (Connie Neilson). Before I get into the meat and potatoes of my review, let me get something straight. I am not a pompous, uppity, and overtly critical movie watcher. I always try to look for the good in films. I can enjoy a crappy movie. I'm even sort of a fan of dumb action flicks. Sure, they don't have much cinematic sustenance, but they can be a load of fun. I can enjoy stuff like Escape Plan and White House Down. Which is why I was somewhat looking forward to 3 Days to Kill. It was starring Kevin Costner. Costner's last action outing, Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit, was more than halfway decent. I was sure this would be the same brand of espionage-y fun. I was wrong. 3 Days to Kill was as much fun as death and taxes. It got off to a decent start with a classic spy vs. spy set up. Then it quickly became half cliche and very predictable spy movie and half boring melodrama. I tried really hard to like this movie, but it couldn't be done. Kevin Costner has the capacity to be the kind of action star Liam Neeson has become. Unfortunately, he seems content to "act" in garbage like this. I'm putting act in parentheses because all Costner did was walk around the movie with one expression on his face. It seemed as if Costner was just acting in this so he could get a paycheck and get out of there. I don't blame him. The movie has a lot more problems than just Costner's performance. This movie is directed by some guy named McG. The only other McG directed movie I've seen was Terminator Salvation. I should have known right then and there that this was going to be bad. I don't know who taught this guy how to direct action sequences, but they did an awful job. Whenever some "exciting" action is happening, it feels as if they handed the camera to someone having a seizure and told them to film the scene. The supposed awesome action sequences were irritating to look at and amatuerly filmed. I guess we should count ourselves lucky there isn't much action in this action movie. Most of the film revolves around Costner's character bonding with his daughter and dealing with family melodrama. The script is weak so the family melodrama isn't even interesting in the slightest. Teenager problems and daddy issues rarely make good movies. Especially if a certain movie is marketed as a cool action flick and is actually a mind numbing and syrupy family movie. I didn't go see 3 Days to Kill to watch Kevin Costner teach his teenage daughter how to ride a bike! I don't care who she goes to the prom with! I came for an action movie not a mediocre family togetherness piece of crap! The thing is, it really has nothing going for it. It's very poorly written. The plot is fairly cliche. (So-and-so foreign villain has a bomb and he's bad and you need to take him down like in every other action movie. Except a lot more boring!)he acting is sub par. The action sequences are frenetic and annoying. There are also several half-hearted attempts at jokes here. The jokes aren't funny. At all. The whole movie seems like someone had half a good idea and then gave up there. I wanted to like this, but after a while I could barely stand it. I'm sorry, but this was just bad. Maybe if it had been directed by John McTiernan or J.J. Abrams and written by someone halfway talented it could've been great. But instead it is the opposite of that. Trash. I give 3 Days to Kill 2 out of 5 stars. Take my advice; if you want to see a good action movie, rent Die Hard or the original RoboCop or something like that. Don't waste your money on this. Happy Viewing. You can follow me on Twitter @WhitsMovies and like me on Facebook at Facebook.com/WhitsMovies.             

Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit review

Sorry Chris Pine, no matter what, you'll never live up to Harrison Ford. That guy's shoes are just too big to fill.
Imagine if you took a Mission: Impossible movie, took out all the main characters except for Ethan Hunt, and then toned down everything a few notches. You would then basically have Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit. I'm not saying that's a bad thing, but I feel it's fairly accurate. The new Jack Ryan flick is about, well, Jack Ryan (Chris Pine). It starts with him in Oxford where he's studying economics, finding out about the 9/11 attacks. Then flashes forward a few years where Ryan is a Marine. He gets a bad injury in a helicopter crash and is put out of commission for a while. At rehab, he's approached by CIA director/agent guy, Thomas Harper (Kevin Costner). Harper is impressed by Ryan, and then invites him to join the CIA as in analyst. After some thought, Ryan decides to go for the job. He goes undercover at a Wall Street firm, looking for false accounts and stuff of that nature. He has a girlfriend named Cathy (Keira Knightley) and he makes a decent amount of money. Jack seems to be having a decent life. Then he has to go to Russia to check out some unknown and possibly dangerous accounts held under business baddie Viktor Cherevin (Kenneth Branagh). This is when Ryan is thrown head over heels into the spy world. Having to kill people, steal information, and lie. The stuff James Bond does with no problem. I don't think anyone had really high hopes for Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit. It's a reboot, released in January, based on a series of movies that weren't really barn burners themselves. Sure, Harrison Ford had a decent run, and The Hunt for Red October was pretty good, but the last version with Ben Affleck was just okay and the films never had a big following in the first place. The fact that the newest Jack Ryan film has even more than an ounce of originality is really a miracle. I didn't love Jack Ryan. It was really just okay, nothing truly special. Yet, as a fun little winter movie, Jack Ryan does everything it has to, and then some. Last year around this time, the newest Die Hard came out. The only thing that had to offer was being really disappointed in Bruce Willis. Too many action films that get released (I'm looking at you Fast & Furious 6) are just mediocre explosion shoot out fests with a generic plot. Jack Ryan, while occasionally cliche, has a very interesting and original story with an okay performance by Chris Pine. The evil scheme planned by Cherevin, involves buying up lots of American dollars and then dumping them as the dollar goes down and then doing some other confusing things that would basically leave America very, very poor. It would cause a second Great Depression. I have to give credit to director Branagh and writers David Koepp (who actually wrote the first Mission: Impossible) and Adam Cozad. I haven't seen this story before, and it's done quite well. While the film isn't groundbreaking in any way, it's nice to see a stripped down and slick action movie that isn't trying to be too grand or too convoluted. I enjoyed the film quite a bit. It's nowhere near great, but's it's exciting and fun. One major problem I had was the accents. Kenneth Branagh, who did a good job directing, put on a very cliche and awful Russian accent to play the villain. It sounded like an American trying to do a Russian accent, which is what it was. Which isn't a good thing. The British Keira Knightley does an equally bad American accent. She sounded like Sandra Bernhard mixed with a 6th grade girl. There's also a scene with Knightley and Pine in a hotel that felt very clunky, overly sappy, and just out of place. The rest of the movie had a fairly nice flow. Pine is capable as the hero. He throws out that assured cockiness he played in the Star Trek films, and takes up this cool patriotic persona. He does what needs to be done. He isn't amazing, but he's good. This Jack Ryan movie isn't fantastic. It doesn't do anything revolutionary. It even occasionally seems repetitive And it's not the best action movie I've seen in a while. Yet, it's interesting and fun. For a season of dismal releases. What more can you ask for? I give Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit 3.3 out of 5 stars. Happy Viewing. Remember you can follow me on Twitter @WhitsMovies and like me on Facebook at Facebook.com/WhitsMovies.            

Escape Plan review

Aren't these guys a little old to be doing any of this? I'm surprised none of them stopped the movie to pop an arthritis pill.
Mikael Hafstrom has never made a good movie in his entire career. His newest film, Escape Plan, isn't good. But it's not bad either. Ray Breslin (Sylvester Stallone) breaks out of prisons to see if they're 100% secure for a living. His newest assignment is an off-the-grid "unbreakable" prison code named, The Tomb. He's beaten, kidnapped, and thrown on a plane to this infamous super jail. It's obvious he was set up. So he quickly forms a friendship with Emil Rottmayer, (Arnold Schwarzenegger) and hatches an escape plan. Hence, the title of the movie.
When going to see Escape Plan, do not expect it to be a well written Oscar contender. Escape Plan isn't hiding what it really is. It's a no-holds-barred testosterone-fueled action flick. I mean any movie that boasts both Ahnuld and Rocky nowadays is probably going to be something like The Expendables 2. Even though I think Escape Plan is better than The Expendables 2, it's still incredibly dumb. Yet, it's also full of some really fun action. Then again, it's still a ridiculous movie. Nothing about this film makes a lot of sense, but the movie is honest about that. It's not hiding the fact that it's a brainless action blockbuster. It embraces the fact. Unlike say, Now You See Me which was trying to trick you into thinking it was a smart thriller when really it was a crappy action movie. That's the beauty of Escape Plan. Both you and the guys who made the movie know it's a "bad" movie, and that's what make sit so damn fun. Not everything is fun though. Sylvester Stallone is a very talented person. He wrote and starred in Rocky, and got two Oscar nods for that. Many people forget that he used to be a "good" actor. Hell, I thought his performance in First Blood was pretty good too. His performance (if that's what you want to call it) in Escape Plan is the equivalent of an emotionless boulder that punches people. Although I can't say I expected much considering what Stallone has been doing recently. Arnold on the other hand, completely hams it up here. Schwarzenegger is absolutely hilarious here. Yeah he kicks a lot of ass, but he also made me crack up. He was certainly the best part of the movie. At one point in the film Arnold Schwarzenegger has to smile. It is the single funniest facial expression I've ever seen. That smile made my day. I can't say the same for Stallone, unfortunately. The Italian Stallion's face is about as lively as a plank of wood the entire movie. Jim Caviezel has a role here as The Tomb's warden. He isn't great, but he plays it with a certain delicious villainy that's worthy of a Die Hard criminal. No acting awards here, but still not too bad. Escape Plan may be a mostly forgettable actioner. But it has a certain delightfulness and complication that makes this bullet-ridden movie so fun. I was actually thinking about seeing the Carrie remake instead if this. I'm glad I didn't. I figure I'd rather have fun at an exciting but stupid action movie than be pissed off at how the remake completely ruined the original. There are much better movies in theaters now that you should see before this like Prisoners and Captain Phillips, but if you wanna have fun killing two hours: Escape Plan is the movie to see. Just don't expect anything too philosophical and thought provoking. I give Escape Plan 3.4 out of 5 stars. Happy Viewing! You can follow me on Twitter @WhitsMovies and like me on Facebook at Facebook.com/WhitsMovies.