Day: February 29, 2012

Assassination Games

You will walk away disappointed by this review. Mostly because that is the feeling I got when I “walked away form” Assassination Games.

Seriously, gross.

JCVD
JCVD would do anything for a quick buck. Mostly because he is poor now.

Jean-Claude Van Damme is a killer for hire. He likes making that money. Scott Adkins used to be, but left the killing game once a drug cartel person got back at him and put his wife in a coma. He was mad. But then a contract goes out for the death of the drug cartel guy.

Oh man! One guy wants to kill him for money. The other for revenge. But with corrupt Interpol agents and other stuff in their way, the two assassins must join forces to take down the cartel.

Shoot that shit
Very exciting action shots!

So uh, if I set this up right, you will have noticed something from the pictures. Something yellow. Films love doing that shit now a days, applying a color tint to everything, to try and set up a certain emotion. The shit that costs them practically nothing more, and is supposed to help set the film a certain way so that they don’t have to spend as much time working up a plot or actually having a set that fits. To me, this yellow shit made the whole film look like a jar of urine. Shitty urine.

I watched the whole movie and found the plot hard to describe, because of how boring/dumb it was. The cinematography was awful, and the acting was barely noticeable. To find the plot you had to swim through the mass amounts of yellow, and you might not care anymore at that point.

I know, this review will make me seem like I hated it because it was yellow. But it was also bad.

Bad and yellow.

0 out of 4.

The Quiet

Hooray! With the review of The Quiet, I finally get to have at least one review for every letter of the alphabet! To be fair, I thought this movie also came out in 2007. Damn it. I just really didn’t feel like watching The Queen (it is also outside of my range).

Pretty birds
Also the stars of this movie are bit more attractive than the star of The Queen.

The movie is told from the point of view of Dot, played by Camilla Belle. Why is she so quiet? Oh because she is deaf/mute. Sucks! She can read lips though. After her dad dies she goes to live with her godparents, Martin Donovan and Edie Falco, and their daughter, Elisha Cuthbert. How handy that they are around the same age!

Well no one cares about Dot at her new school. Cheerleaders make fun of her, including a younger Katy Mixon. Yet somehow, star football player Shawn Ashmore (of course, that is all he did in his roles) develops feelings towards her.

So whats the point of the movie? Oh, just some father/daughter rape plot line. Not just a one time thing, it is implied that it has been happening for years. The mom might know about it, explaining why she is on tons of pills and a zombie (not a real zombie). But what about Dot. Does she have her own secrets? Yes. Yes she does.

Flynn uncomfortable
Flynn gets uncomfortable when incest is involved.

Turns out people are horrible, dirty things. A lot of people in private love telling Dot their secrets when she can’t read their lips. Feels good to get things off their chest to someone when they cant understand/hear/know you are talking at all. Which is good for creepy monologues.

Lot of comparisons also to Beethoven in this movie, since Dot plays the piano. Kind of weird, but the deepness they tried to convey didn’t really happen.

Overall I was interested in the story. I think the movie went on a bit too long after a big climatic part. Always a drag, when they don’t know how to end a movie really. Took a little bit to actually get going too. Typical high school scenes abundant (a dance, school lunch seating problems, snoddy cheerleaders, a biology lab involving a dissection). Obviously Camilla Belle isn’t also deaf/mute, but she did a good job “not reacting” to things around her based off of noise.

Watch? Not watch? Do what you want. I will note I really thought the cover said Eliza Dushku. I think about 30 minutes in I realized that she wasn’t coming. Whoops.

2 out of 4.