Heat

It’s a couple of weeks since I watched this (for the first time) on DVD, but I think it’s taken that long for my opinion to fully ferment in my head. I’m not sure where I’d heard that this was ‘a great classic movie’, but I had heard it, and when I went on a reduced-price amazon dvd purchasing spree I picked this one up along the way.

It was already reasonably late, but I wanted to watch a movie to wind down before bed – and I made an obvious school boy error, I didn’t check the running time. At around three hours, this is not a movie to just drop into before you go to sleep, and I have to admit that towards the end I was willing it to finish.

Heat takes a look at a cat and mouse hunt between a top quality thief (De Niro) and a top quality cop (Pacino) and includes a look at their lives and how they live them. It’s not an action movie, although it has some action scenes but those scenes are incidental to the movie. It’s really a character movie, trying to give us an insight into how the two main characters are similar in so many ways, dedicated to what they do at the expense of their own personal relationships.

It’s entertaining, given the right amount of free time it’s worth watching, but it’s not something I enjoyed on a great level. Some scenes feel contrived (the only scene in which Pacino and De Niro are both on-screen at the same time is entirely contrived), some sections aren’t entirely believable which is essential since the movie tries to portray a real-true-to-life grit, the characters around Pacino and De Niro are flat and under-developed. The action isn’t very explosive, and the pace is slow and uneven.

Pacino’s character is so over the top that you wonder how he didn’t burst a blood vessel with all the constant shouting. De Niro’s character is the only person in the movie with whom I could empathise on any level, and that results in dissapointment during several scenes where you want the character to be more than he can ever be. However, De Niro’s character and performance makes it worth watching this movie at least once.

Overall this movie is too long and too focussed on giving Pacino and De Niro a platform to show off. All the flaws add up to a feeling of confusion because it is obviously a high quality movie, and on a technically level demonstrates that quality, but the screenplay doesn’t manage to step up to the plate.

Heat

Heat is overly long, unrealistic and obviously (re-)designed to provide a platform for Pacino and De Niro to square off against each other, resulting in a disappointing overall experience despite the obvious underlying technical quality of this production.

full review …

Without a Trace ….

We’ve been Sky+ing Without a Trace for a little while now and bought the first season on DVD a while back, since we never saw it. Just finished watching the last episodes tonight (been watching them over the last week and a bit) and it’s pretty good.

Some of the episodes leave you a little unfulfilled, but that’s probably because there can’t always be a satisfactory conclusion to missing person’s cases, but there are some pretty emotional episodes and it doesn’t feel too contrived (my main complaint about a lot of ‘crime’ drama). I can recommend them, and I think I’m going to go and buy the season 2 boxed set right now 🙂

Jumper

Jumper is such a shame, a movie that could have been so good, and yet turned out to be so vacant. It’s a promisingly simple concept, young kid finds he can teleport about, uses it to have fun, discovers it has consequences, meets a girl, runs from the bad guys. Usually I enjoy simple concepts done well, small casts and a tight plot.

But Jumper is vacant and flat. It’s 88 minutes of average prologue. Oh it’s reasonably exciting, and the action scenes are done well, some of them pretty nice. But the characters are underdeveloped, the story is far too short, and the small cast is both tiny and uninteresting.

Samuel L. Jackson is totally wasted, and the best performance is from Jamie Bell. There’s no serious tension and despite the amount of time spent setting things up, no real feeling of concern about whether the characters live or die. It’s essentially a prologue and setup for a sequel, which is a real shame.

Dissapointing.

Half way through 2008 …

… six months to go.

The Incredible Hulk, Wanted, Hancock, Hellboy II, Journey to the Centre of the Earth (maybe), The Dark Knight, The Lost Boys 2 (straight to DVD), The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (maybe), Babylon A.D. (maybe), City of Ember (maybe).

Lots to watch.

Iron Man

It would be wrong to say that Hollywood only delivers big blockbusting movies that appeal to the lesser emotions, but it would be right to say that sometimes Hollywood manages to deliver big blockbuster movies that are gripping, visually impressive and exciting to watch. Iron Man is really entertaining.

Iron Man avoids the mistakes of so many comic book conversions and bad sci-fi movies. The story is simple and yet engaging, that simplicity ensures there aren’t any moments where you wonder what happened, what’s going on or why something is happening. That simplicity also provides a good structure to keep the story moving at all times with a good pace. The effects don’t obliterate the excellent performances from the main cast either. Downey’s performance is superb, full of charisma and character. Maybe he’s a little over the top, but this is a comic book hero.

So anyway, it’s exhilerating, interesting and exciting, the visuals are stunning and crisp and the sound track was moving and thrilling. I really enjoyed Paltrow’s performance as a counter-point to Downey. There aren’t any huge guffs in the plot, we know who the good guys are and we find out who the bad guys are, and righteous justice is delivered to all who deserve it.

A visual feast, without being overly busy on-screen, and thoroughly entertaining.