Review Roundup: January Dumping Ground Edition

What am I going to do, not use the greatest .gif of all time?

Time for a particularly dreary edition of the Review Roundup, in which I collect short reactions to various films I was too lazy to reflect on in great detail. Sure, I have time to write ridiculous things like my Movie 43 monstrosity, but when it comes to actually discussing films sincerely I guess I'm just too busy getting through my last semester of college. At least, that’s my excuse for now. We’ll see what it is in a couple months. Anyway, look below for thoughts on Gangster Squad, The Last Stand, Parker, Bullet to the Head and Warm Bodies. Ah, January. You cinematic dumpster, you.

Gangster Squad

Dir: Ruben Fleischer

Once the wheels of Gangster Squad started turning a little while back, it looked like it had the potential to be Ruben Fleischer’s big breakthrough into prestige filmmaking. He had already given us the terrifically fun Zombieland and the perfectly alright comedy 30 Minutes or Less, but a Los Angeles gangster film starring Sean Penn certainly seemed to suggest that he was taking his career to the next level. Then things started to go very, very wrong. First the trailer came out, and the movie simply looked like L.A. Confidential as imagined by Zack Snyder. Then, the film was delayed and went through reshoots after the movie theater shooting in Aurora, Colorado rendered a key sequence insensitive.

The buzz only grew worse from there, until it was ultimately thrown into theaters in early January. It was met with savage reviews and absolutely no box office, and this is not just because they had to remove that pesky movie theater scene. Watching the film, it’s a little strange this was ever meant to be released during prestige season in the first place. This is a dumb-as-nails gangster film that bows to every single cliché and has no regard for such cinematic qualities as “nuance.” In telling the tale of a select few L.A. cops who are recruited to work outside the law and take down Penn’s notorious gangster Mickey Cohen. This requires many beatings, shootings and explosions, and it all culminates in a bloody showdown in the lobby of a luxury hotel.

For the most part, none of this is the fault of the actors, who all seem to think they’re in a far more respectable movie than the game of gangster karaoke that Gangster Squad turned out to be. The script by Will Beall isn’t too intelligent in and of itself, but Fleischer’s touch does nothing to elevate the material. If anything, he overloads it with so much slickness and too-cool-for-school style that any grittiness the story may have once had has long since disappeared. Fleischer knows what he’s doing behind the camera, and he’s done too much good work in the past to be dismissed because of this film alone. Perhaps he’s better off in the world of stylized action comedies, because if Gangster Squad is any indication, once you remove the “comedy” the brains seem to evaporate along with it.

Grade: C-

The Last Stand

Dir: Kim Ji-woon

What a strange little film The Last Stand is, and much of that has to do with the eclectic collection of misfits involved with the film’s creation. Directed by Korean genre mastermind Kim Ji-Woon, The Last Stand stars Arnold Schwarzenegger in his first post-governorship starring role as a small-town American sheriff who takes matters into his own hands when an escaped drug lord makes a run for the Mexican border. Johnny Knoxville shows up as the town’s gun enthusiast/crazy person, Zach Gilford of Friday Night Lights and Luis Guzman play police officers under Schwarzenegger’s command, and Peter Stormare chooses to use one of the most ridiculous accents in recent cinematic history. Both in spite of and because of all this, The Last Stand becomes the truly entertaining piece of garbage it aspires to be. When I voluntarily see a movie in January, this is exactly the kind of nonsense I sign up for. I don’t have much more to say on the matter, but if you’re a fan of solid action direction, ridiculous governator one-liners and a ton of practical squibs, then The Last Stand is well worth your time.

Grade: B

Parker

Dir: Taylor Hackford

No one seems more content with where Jason Statham’s career is right now than Jason Statham himself, and Parker seems like further proof that he has no interest in leaving his comfort zone anytime soon. In the past I’ve been fine with his formula, since it has usually yielded some entertaining albeit disposable action films over the past few years. Unfortunately, Parker doesn’t quite have a hold on what makes a Statham film so fun to behold. There are some fun action and fight scenes, but the Parker character himself doesn’t do much for me, and pretty much whenever the characters open their mouths the result isn’t all that impressive to behold.

Parker begins impressively with a heist scene involving the Ohio State Fair, which was filmed just down the street from where I lay my head at night. (Is that a useless piece of information? You betcha.) If the rest of the movie was as well-done, I might have stayed on board. The bad news is the exact opposite happens, and the characters almost immediately start spouting expository dialogue, and after an attempt to kill Statham’s eponymous character goes wrong, he immediately sets out for revenge. This plot takes way too long to get going, and the film makes the vital mistake of introducing us to various characters that have almost nothing to do with anything. One of these is Statham’s girlfriend Claire (Emma Booth), who just straight up disappears once the climax starts rolling.

Other extraneous characters include Jennifer Lopez’s real estate agent, which is a completely worthless part that Lopez is actually able to elevate quite a bit, and Parker’s mentor Hurley (Nick Nolte). Parker also wins the award for Weirdest Use of Bobby Cannavale, as he shows up in maybe two and a half scenes as a cop who has eyes for Lopez. The only people who matter to this movie are Parker and his three old robbery colleagues played by Michael Chiklis, Wendell Pierce and Clifton Collins Jr. Just about everything else exists to have no payoff. I’d be lying if I said that Parker didn’t have its moments—just about every Statham movie does—but even a dumb heist thriller like this needs to be moderately intelligent. This movie is about 45 percent quality actioner, 55 percent pure dead air. The ratio needs to be just a bit better than that.

Grade: C+

Bullet to the Head

Dir: Walter Hill

I can say this with absolute certainly: Walter Hill has created close to the best possible version of his script for Bullet to the Head. It has absolutely zero business being as watchable and compelling as it is, even if it still struggles to justify its own existence. If you sit back and imagine an R-rated action film about an assassin played by Sylvester Stallone who teams up with a goody-two-shoes detective (Sung Kang) to take down a few villainous mobsters and their assassin played by Jason Momoa, you probably come pretty close to what this movie winds up being. What makes it rather watchable is Hill’s direction, and he is able to take what should be routine combat scenes and make them both brutal and exciting. Everything else is by-the-book, and it can occasionally be actively bad—the editing is mysterious at best, and the duo of Stallone and Kang creates negative chemistry—but like The Last Stand, anyone who chooses to see this movie on purpose will likely get precisely what they paid for. It all depends on how appealing you find the prospect of Stallone and Momoa getting in an axe fight.

Grade: B-

Warm Bodies

Dir: Jonathan Levine

If there was ever a zombie movie that zombie purists would want nothing to do with, it is Warm Bodies, the new film from 50/50 director Jonathan Levine. First and foremost, it is about a zombie that is slowly brought back to life because he falls in love with a pretty girl. Also, zombies in this movie regularly talk and sometimes even run. (There is a breed of second-level zombies called “boneys” that pretty much do nothing but run around.) Many will also dis Warm Bodies because of a couple broad, superficial similarities to the Twilight series, but luckily for me I care about none of this. Warm Bodies is actually a pretty darn fun movie that is hampered only by a second half that occasionally goes into plot autopilot. In the scenes where the movie is only interested in hanging out, it becomes one of the year’s early highlights.

Warm Bodies is one of the first starring vehicles for Nicholas Hoult, who can be seen in the upcoming Jack the Giant Slayer. He is R, a zombie who wanders the local airport and occasionally has “conversations” with his best friend Marcus (Rob Corddry). When a group of young humans come a-lookin’ for medication, R and his zombie friends rush in and start eating brains. R just happens to eat the brain of Perry (Dave Franco), who is the boyfriend of Julie (Teresa Palmer). R absorbs Perry’s feelings about Julie, grabs her, and takes her back to the airport where he tries to protect her from the dangers outside. He is not successful, and this eventually leads to a confrontation with a group of humans led by Julie’s father (John Malkovich).

From a plot perspective, this movie goes precisely all the places you expect it to go. That is a problem, especially when it comes to the obvious feel-good resolution. Less of the problem: the scenes between R and Julie, which are all sweet and funny in equal measure. The first half of Warm Bodies is truly enjoyable, and it never gets better than when the audience just gets to sit back and watch the zombie male and the human female try to coexist. It doesn’t make quite as much sense as it could, sure, but Levine is quite skilled at making us buy into this whole situation. It may not hold many surprises, but Warm Bodies works wonderfully as a smart and genuinely funny crowd-pleaser.

Grade: B+