VoML Postfilm Report: Fighting (2009)

TOP BILLED ACTORS
Channing Tatum, Terrence Howard, Zulay Henao, Luis Guzman, Brian J. White, Roger Guenveur Smith, Anthony DeSando, Peter Anthony Tambakis, Michael Rivera, Altagracia Guzman

DIRECTOR
Dito Montiel

3 POSITIVES

• The title is brilliant because let’s be honest, nothing says “this movie is about fighting” like Fighting. Think about it, how happy would you have been if the new GI Joe movie would have been called, GI Joe: Give us your money because we’re going to blow shit up, and we hired these name actors to mail it in.
  
• I’ll have to admit, I have a soft spot for Channing Tatum. There’s just something about those expressionless eyes. I loved him in A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints but after GI Joe I was a little down on him. Could he be that awful? No, he can’t be THAT awful. Take him for what he’s worth, he’s a charismatic and charming guy when he wants to be. I found him to be very likeable in this film and didn’t really get the sense that he wanted to be somewhere else like I did when watching the previously named film.
• The fighting scenes were actually pretty well done. Although frenetic and a bit dizzying at times, they looked like real fights. In real fights, guys don’t throw telegraphed round-houses and haymakers, sometimes guys get knocked out by water fountains.

3 NEGATIVES

• I spent the times in between fight scenes waiting for the next fight scene. The film needed a story line so they threw one together straight off the action movie checklist. Southern boy trying to make it in the big city, check. Cryptic allusions to a troubled past, check. A love interest, complete with awkward, hastily thrown together courtship scenes, check.
• The most glaring plot point weakness comes right at the beginning. Tatum’s character Shawn basically takes flea market level goods (Harry Potter vs the Hippopotamus) and peddles them to passersby on the street. Harvey's (Terrence Howard) band of merry thieves are set up in the same area and one of his shifty-eyed minions mills around Shawn’s goods. Well one thing leads to another and Shawn ends up in a fight with said minion. He gets tossed around a little, throws a few haymakers, and knocks the guy down. At that point he flees the scene. Somehow, that display leads Harvey to believe that Shawn can fight and he should be featured in underground bouts against the dregs of New York society. In some weird serendipitous moment, he runs into Harvey later the same night, Harvey asks him if he likes to fight and he agrees to fight for money. Well I don’t think I’m ruining the movie by saying that he wins a few fights. His fights are won in the weirdest ways possible; think of him as a mix between Rocky, Louden Swain from Vision Quest, and Tom Cruise’s character in Far and Away. He gets punched in the face a lot, falls on the ground a lot, but he’s got grit and he just wants it more than the other guy. What I’m getting at is, after watching his first frenzied brawl, Harvey was an idiot to think that he could beat good fighters. After watching his subsequent fights, he’s even a bigger idiot for thinking he could beat better fighters. I guess this all stems from my problems with the Rocky series. Yes, I love Rocky. But Rocky is one of the worst fighters I’ve ever seen. Shawn wasn’t quite as overmatched, but if I was a “two-bit hustler” just scraping by, I wouldn’t put my savings up, for or against a fighter like him.
• The ending was predictable at first, then way too unbelievable. You’ll know what I’m talking about if you see it. It was like the director said, let’s take everything we know about the characters and completely throw it out the window because this film needs the happiest ending possible.

BEST PERFORMANCE
Channing Tatum’s pecks, abs, and squared jaw. Without all of those, this film and his career would not be possible.

MOST UNDERRATED PERFORMANCE
I actually kind of liked Terrence Howard's character in this film. He has the hustler thing down.

HEY, IT'S THAT GUY...
Anthony DeSando who played Frank the dog walker from A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints. Brian J. White, Sylvester from Stomp the Yard. Altagracia Guzman, grandma from Raising Victor Vargas.

REMINDED ME OF...
Never Back Down, Rocky

SEE THIS INSTEAD...
Dito Montiel's first film, A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints, is a must see. Also look for David Mamet's Redbelt.

WOULD I PURCHASE IT? No

WOULD I WATCH IT IF I CAME ACROSS IT ON CABLE? Maybe

I WILL GIVE…
-PSon

VoML Post-film Report: Surveillance (2008)

TOP BILLED ACTORS
Bill Pullman, Julia Ormond, Pell James, Ryan Simpkins, Michael Ironside, Kent Harper, French Stewart, Cheri Oteri, Caroline Aaron, Gill Gayle

DIRECTOR
Jennifer Chambers Lynch

3 POSITIVES

• Bill Pullman and Julia Ormond both give good performances, playing characters unlike any they've ever portrayed.
  
• Movies like these are often about the twist and in this case, I did not see it coming until it was upon me. After the revelation, there is an interesting scene that presents a theory as to why the killers do what they do.
• I’m not a fan of horror movies because frankly I’m constantly worried about seeing something I can’t unsee, but I do appreciate the thriller/horror genre where the filmmaker uses tension to scare rather than constant violence and gore. The tension was kept up fairly well for much of this film. My heart was racing, not simply because I was disgusted (as I am with most modern horror films), but because I knew something bad was going to happen. The things these travelers did to keep themselves entertained (police officer and traveler alike) while traveling the lonely stretch of road we’ve all traveled only adds to the stress as we are left to think, “what horrible thing will happen to these people?” We know who was there and who survived but what happened to everybody else and who did it?

3 NEGATIVES

• I realize we’re talking about small town, middle of nowhere cops here but how did one police station manage to go 4 for 4 on hiring dipshit deputies. I’m assuming that the highway patrol manual for any of the 50 states doesn’t recommend shooting out tires of moving vehicles, harassing drivers with firearms, or dropping “whore” and “crackhead” bombs on victims of heinous crimes. Think Super Troopers minus comedy plus sadism.
• Somebody is going to have to explain the fateful van scene to me. I would be giving up too much to really talk about it, but there are too many unbelievable and unexplainable things happening in this scene to ignore. Even after mixing in shock, the idiocy of the troopers, and the Superhuman Psycho Corollary, I’m still at a loss.
• The interview scenes were way too choppy. 3 victims are interviewed by 3 different people (or groups of people) at the same time, with a Big Brother type viewing all 3 in a room with 3 monitors. I understand the use of flashbacks to tell each person’s story but the timing is confusing. They are all being interviewed at once, but each person’s flashback starts at the beginning of their day, long before their lives intersect. When the point of view shifts from one person to the other, it actually looks like those people are just sitting in a room, waiting their turn to tell their story. There isn’t any indication of how much time has passed throughout the entire interview process. Basically, the 3 interviews were a poorly constructed front to allow each person to tell their stories. We view the same string of events from each point of view, but people change their stories to take out everything that makes them look bad. However, as viewers we see what actually happened throughout, so no real doubt is left in our mind as to the actual chain of events. We aren’t seeing each story exactly as told, we are seeing them exactly as they happen. Had it been done the other way, the tension could have been ratcheted up as there would have been more of a “everybody is a suspect” feel to it. As is, I didn’t really have that feeling.

BEST PERFORMANCE
Bill Pullman as Sam Hallaway

MOST UNDERRATED PERFORMANCE
Julia Ormond as Elizabeth Anderson

HEY, IT'S THAT GUY...
French Stewart of Third Rock from the Sun as a highway patrolman (good). Cheri Oteri from SNL as a wife/mother on a vacation from hell (distracting).

REMINDED ME OF...
Funny Games, Rashomon

WOULD I PURCHASE IT? - No

WOULD I WATCH IT IF I CAME ACROSS IT ON CABLE? - No

I will give...

-PSon