After enjoying Doomsday last night, we watched Dog Soldiers today. It’s been out a while so I’m just going to write a short little review. It’s gory, it’s a bit scary at the start, and it’s got some jumps. But it’s got a great thread of British humour all the way through it, and the individual scenes are all worthwhile.

There are some elements of the story that didn’t quite gel, but overall the story works really well. I loved the characters, I loved the Britishness and even though it’s not my kind of movie normally, I really enjoyed watching it a second time even though I knew what was coming.

If you’re looking for something to get your adrenaline going and make you laugh at the same time, you should get Dog Soldiers and turn off the lights.

Short review for this one. The freshness has gone, but the heart is still there. Shrek the Third is funny in parts, technically still impressive, but doesn’t add anything new to the franchise. Watch this if you’re a huge fan or have some free time to kill, or can watch it for free. Your kids will love it, and you’ll get a giggle and a good feeling.

Sometime in 2002 I saw Dog Soldiers. I’d never laughed that much during a horror flick, and I don’t really ‘do’ horror flicks, either I have an over-active imagination or I’m just a wuss, discuss after class. Anyway, I loved Dog Soldiers and was excited at the time to hear the British writer/director (Neil Marshall) was planning to make a trio of movies. That turned into dissapointment when I heard about The Descent, I knew that I really didn’t want to watch that one.

Then earlier this year I saw a trailer for Doomsday and thought it looked fun, and only later did I find out it’s the 3rd of the trio of movies that Neil planned, and that increased my anticipation. I didn’t manage to catch it at the cinema, but after seeing the trailer, reading one review and enjoying Dog Soldiers I bought it on DVD sure that I’d enjoy it.

I wasn’t disappointed. Doomsday is an unrepentant homage to Mad Max and Escape from LA/New York, a small twist of 28 weeks/days later and a hint of Reign of Fire thrown in for good measure. It’s not a serious movie, if you’re looking for something serious you need to look somewhere else. But it’s not a comedy either, it’s just a little bit over the top, that’s all!

In the not too distant future, Scotland is struck by a deadly virus and is quarantined and locked away behind a steel wall. Thirty years pass by, and the rest of the world assumes everyone north of the wall has died. Then the unthinkable happens and the virus returns, this time in London. There’s no choice but to send someone beyond the wall to see if there are any survivors and maybe a cure.

It’s a simple story, with some very minor twists (which are pretty obvious from the outset). The script isn’t elegant but it’s engaging, didn’t make me cringe and has some funny moments. The action sequences are superb, although some of the close quarters fighting is edited with some pretty swift cuts. It adds some style but I wonder what it was used to hide. None of the characters really stand out and step up beyond the cookie cutter description of them, but it doesn’t detract a great deal, this is never billed as a character story. There’s enough empathy with one or two of the characters to feel a bit of pain when they snuff it. I would have liked the film to be about 20 minutes longer and to show a little more interaction between some of the major players, but overall thought the pace was pretty good.

It’s a huge cliche, but it’s true to say this film won’t win any awards. It’s not as good as Dog Soldiers, but it’s hard not to enjoy the Britishness of the script and the dialog. It certainly pushes home (to me at least) how American the dialog in our regular staple of movies is (I know, obvious but I felt it was worth saying).

Overall I enjoyed the viewing experience, I had a few laughs, and the imagery in the movie was like an old friend. If you like apocolyptic sci-fi action fantasy comedy heroic action movies, you’ll like this!

This was my first Cohen Brothers movie, yeh I know, so many ‘good’ films I’ve not seen. I’ve never claimed to be an intelligent movie watcher, I enjoy escapism in the cinema and I’m bound to select movies that offer that. It’s not that I find movies which make you think unenjoyable, it’s just that habit causes me to pick certain films over others. But, I thought I’d buy No Country for Old Men and give it a shot, not least because I love Tommy Lee Jones.

The film is an adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s book of the same name. I’ve not read the book, but by all reports it’s a faithful adaptation, taking most (all?) of the movie dialog straight from the book. It tells the story of a Texas Sherriff (Tommy Lee Jones) trying to understand a drug-deal gone wrong, following the trail of the guy who’s running with the money (Josh Brolin) and the killer who is also chasing the cash (Javier Bardem).

It would be a mistake to think this movie is about either Brolin’s (Llewelyn Moss) character or Bardem’s (Anton Chigurh). It’s about Sheriff Ed Tom Bell, and how he is coping with a new kind of crime and a new kind of criminal since the increase in cross-border drug traffic with Mexico. Bell provides a voice over for various parts of the movie and the implication is he’s narrating the story, at least in part, and the claim therefore is that scenes in which Bell appears are presented as his view and skewed by his perception and his re-telling.

The overall pace of the movie is pretty slow, even when good guys are running from bad guys you get the feeling they’re taking their pretty littl’ time of it. Despite the pace it is gripping and every single scene moves the story forward in some way and is engaging. The dialog is first class and all the lead characters provide excellent performances. There is tension although the pace means it’s never quite edge of your seat tension, and it’s easy to empathise with Moss even if it’s not always easy to like him. Chigurh is enigmatic and obviously deadly, and every time he’s on screen you get a sense of how quietly insane he is, and how at risk anyone near him may be. Bell is understated, subtle and superb. There’s no hint of Marshal Samuel Gerard here, not even a glimpse.

And yet despite the obvious quality of everything, I was left dissapointed. In order to provide my opinion I’m going to need to spoil certain aspects of the plot, so if you’re planning to watch this movie, and don’t want the major plot elements spoiled, stop reading now.

The first three quarters of the movies focuses on a short period of time, or apparently short, during which Moss tries to evade Chigurh. Then suddenly time accelerates, and we see the death of Moss, his mother-in-law, his wife, Bell’s retirement and Chigur’s accident which must have taken place over a few weeks. Once we’re done with those, the movie ends, Bell retiring and discussing two dreams he’s had with his wife, obviously trying to cope with having lots of free time on his hands.

The actual end of the movie is abrupt and disorientating. That may be because I’m far too used to a certain style of movie ending, or it may be because I really didn’t grasp until after the end that the story is about Bell, and not in fact, about Moss and Chigurh. Perhaps I’m stupid and should have noticed it earlier, perhaps the movie is too subtle for me, maybe I’m not cut out to watch movies which don’t conform to the ‘hollywood’ standard of having some kind of end-game.

Reading online after I’d watched it revealed what I had missed, that it’s about Bell, that he’s narrating, that the scene towards the end in the motel room where Bell might or might not see Chigurh is pivotal and then the film is showing us the lie that Bell tells, that he never met Chigurh, never caught up with him. The dreams are a manifestation of this, telling us how Bell regrets he wasn’t strong enough, feels he has failed in his role, and worries how his father will view him.

I’m used to missing things in movies, subtle references, and I don’t mind having them pointed out, but when I miss what appears to be the very reason for the story to exist it’s dissapointing. I question whether I wasn’t paying enough attention, or whether I’m stupid.

However, there’s that old addage that if you have to explain a joke, maybe it was never funny. Of course, proponents of the joke would claim that some find it funny, and hence it shouldn’t need to be explained. I’m sure some people got the story on their first viewing, I’m sure others got it on their second or third, and I’m sure some people discussed it and worked it out with friends and felt satisfied. For me though, the movie watching experience is a totality of the watching period involved, I want to be satisfied at the end of it, happy that I understood, pleased with how it all turned out.

I don’t need happy endings, but I do absolutely need an ending that I understand.

No Country for Old Men is a technically briliant movie, with an amazing cast, engaging dialog and beautiful cinamatography. I might even watch it again. But I won’t look back at the time I spent watching it and think ‘that was enjoyable’ or ‘that was worth it’, just ‘that was dissapointing’. At any stage, I was on some level enjoying the watching experience, but as a total experience at the end, I was left wondering what it had been about and why.