Day: April 26, 2012

Why the hell is Channing Tatum in so many Romance based movies?

A guy who’s face that screams out “Big dumb strong man” doesn’t seem to be romance movie material. Or at least once every awhile. But damn. I feel like that is 2/3 of his movies.

In The Vow, not only is he the main male lead, he is kind of the only romantic character in the movie. So weird.

You can tell, because there are no pictures of anyone else out in the rain.

The movie begins with Tatum and Rachel McAdams, driving at night with lots of snow. Aw, they are married. How sweet. Rachel has to leave, so she unbuckles, but before getting out of that car, she gets her kiss on. And then a truck slams into the back of their car, and she goes out the window.

What the heck!

Yeah it sucks. Then she gets into a coma, and well, some amnesia happens. She forgets the last few years of her life, but not everything. Definitely everything involving her husband. What does she remember?

Going to law school, being close to her parents (Sam Neill and Jessica Lange), and being engaged to someone else. What?! Her old fiance, Scott Speedman, whom she left to move to the city and find her own way.

Tatum has a hard enough time providing evidence that she ever even loved him (in the form of a voice mail and their wedding video (and their vows!)). He is all weird and different, and she doesn’t like the idea of living with a stranger. She also finds it odd that he doesn’t seem to know her family well. What if he is just an intense stalker and going to kill her?

What she doesn’t know is why she ever left her home, her rich life style, law school, and fiance, to move to the city, become a sculptor, and you know, fall in love with Tatum and stuff. None of her family feel like bringing it up either, not even her sister , Jessica McNamee, who is also about to get married.

Will she ever remember her past? Or will she be all, whatever.

There is an amnesia clause in vows, right?

So, somehow this ended up being a decent romance movie. I’d imagine losing someone you loved (and who loved you back) would suck, especially if it was via amnesia. Especially if she used to be an entirely different person, who also was kind of a bitch. Understandably, at least. No one likes not knowing anyone around them.

This is based off of a real couple, and even given a factoid based off what happened at the end. The ending to the movie? Well, I thought it was kind of a let down. I guess they wanted to go away from a more obvious turn of events so we wouldn’t guess what happens. But still. Eh.

But the beginning, starting with the accident, and flash backs to when they met and their marriage? That was all very cute. But Tatum’s character is a total dumbass, who does a few things that are quite horrible in the movie, and that was also annoying to watch.

And then again? Some other things were not. Sooo….Yeah.

I definitively had Repo Men on the shelf for over a year before finally watching it. Why? Because I thought the plot would be obvious. I thought it would be lame action.

I also knew that the Repo! The Genetic Opera had also existed, even though I hadn’t seen it yet. Just didn’t like two movies having similar dystopian futures, despite their (now knowing) very different plots.

But hey. Lets not judge it before we watch it. That’d be horrible.

But the action does look quite shocking.

Jude Law is a repo man! Not really too scary, but he does you know, go collect organs from people who are behind on their payments by a certain time. He is required to ask them if they want an ambulance, but normally doe when they are knocked out. Not that it matters. If they are losing their heart, an ambulance wont really be able to help. His wife, Carice van Houten, wants him to stop (because its kind of mean) and move to sales. Yes, switch to giving the organs (and bad contracts) versus taking them. Pay is worse, but at least hours are stable.

Either way, on his supposed last extract before he was going to switch, a crazy explosion happened and left him badly hurt. So something happens, can you guess? You can totally guess. He gets a new heart from the company. Yet has the same exact guidelines as a normal person, thanks to Liev Schreiber, his boss. This pisses him off, and thinks it is a death sentence. His partner, Forest Whitaker, tries to get him back on the job and collecting, but Jude can’t will himself to kill others anymore.

Knowing his time is up soon, Jude finds himself in a colony of people hiding out with organs. He meets John Leguizamo, who i a surgeon himself, but only takes away the organs from other people. He also meets Alice Braga, a girl who has been on the run forever, and has dozens of expired organs. Once his time is up, needless to say none of his former workmates want to go after him, but in the end it has to be Forest.

What then occurs is their attempts at both escape from the country and clearing their organs from their record book, so they can escape to a foreign beach and live carefree for the rest of their days.

Not to mention some intense ass-kickery.

Despite the kind of obvious turn of events, I was still thinking it was a pretty decent movie. But the last twenty or so minutes? That shit was amazing. The action was intense, the drama was intense. The ending? I was definitely surprised by it, and made the movie much better. It answered all of my questions, and was not at all what I was expecting.

Well done ending. Pretty sure its worthy enough to be the only reason to watch it.