Many of the frights and jumps are half psychological, and the story does such a decent job of enrapturing you that you fall for every little shadow and creak

Film Review

Title: The Woman in Black

Directed By James Watkins

Stars: Daniel Radcliffe, Janet McTeer and Ciarán Hinds

Studio: Alliance/CBS Films

Running Time: 95 Minutes

Release Date: February 3, 2012

Reviewed By Adam A. Donaldson

I get the feeling that Daniel Radcliffe’s first conversation with his agent after Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 wrapped went something like this:

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Man on a Ledge begins with a good premise, but quickly devolves into an overindulgent mess.

Film Review

Film: Man on a Ledge

Starring: Sam Worthington, Elizabeth Banks, Jamie Bell, Ed Harris

Director: Asger Leth

Studio: Summit Entertainment

Released: January 27, 2012

Reviewed by Lindsay Marshall (Toronto)

For a film with such a simple title, Man on a Ledge quickly becomes trite and convoluted, despite an intriguing basic premise. While the story has some potential, it becomes a total wash of clichéd New Yorkers, robbers and good cop/bad cop, trying to grind some sense into a lackluster script.

Sam Worthington plays Nick Cassidy, an ex-police officer, who was collared and put in jail after allegedly stealing a $40 million diamond (because they couldn’t think of anything possibly more unoriginal for Cassidy to steal), from entrepreneur David Englander, played by Ed Harris, in full Donald Trump-impersonation mode, right down to the hair (this is not a compliment). Cassidy claims that he is innocent, and asserts that he was framed by Englander to collect the insurance.

In an unbearable meandering and exploration of events, we learn that Cassidy has been in jail, and managed to escape when attending his father’s funeral (and surely doing his family name extremely proud at the same time). From there, he logically did what was next, and that was climbing out on a ledge on the 21^st floor of the famous Roosevelt Hotel in New York City, immediately attracting the attention of hundreds of jaded New Yorkers.  The chant, “Jump! Jump!” gets tossed around a lot, women swoon, people wave, and you begin to wonder if all potential suicide-jumpers in NYC are treated as such. Emergency crews quickly descend upon the area, but as Cassidy preens upon his precipice, it becomes obvious that he’s up to something.

Unbeknownst to the police, Cassidy’s brother Joey (Jamie Bell), and his girlfriend accomplice Angie (Genesis Rodriguez), are using Nick’s scene across the street as a diversion while they retrieve the real diamond – unstolen, as Nick continually claims – from Englander’s state of the art vault. This means they have to jump through some lofty hoops, as they drill through walls, descend elevator shafts and use some plain tomfoolery to get to their final goal – a humongous steel vault that appears as impenetrable as Alcatraz.

It’s unfortunate that the film quickly dissolves into idiocy, because the basis and storyline did hold some promise. The diversion of Nick atop a skyscraper, threatening to leap at any time, would likely suit the perfect crime of robbing a high-security vault, for an item of such unimaginable value. But it becomes hard to believe that the rag-tag team of Joey and his stereotypical hispanic girlfriend Angie would be able to open a tuna can, much less a vault, belonging to a multi-millionaire. Angie’s breasts are her main tool of both seduction and espionage, in the Mission: Impossible for dummies break-in attempt.

Worthington carries the majority of the film, as he vacillates between growling indignation, and unemotional pleading to convince everyone he’s innocent, while running through a number of questionable accents. It’s not exactly clear where the Aussie’s character is meant to be from. A host of other actors come into the overdone fray, all likely wishing they’d chosen a different script. Elizabeth Banks plays negotiator Lydia Mercer, whom Cassidy demands to see, and we sympathize with her momentarily as we learn that her last job, talking a cop off the Brooklyn Bridge, didn’t end well. Edward Burns plays an arrogant detective, whose sole use is mostly to throw out some witty puns, such as “Bon appétit!” when Cassidy is brought his “last meal.” His surly front is the most interesting or necessary thing to know about his character, and most of the others in the film.

Kyra Sedgwick is one of the few who seems to be in on the joke of the laughable script, written by Pablo F. Fenjves. She plays tough-as-nails New York City news reporter Suzy Morales, reporting live from the scene. She shoves her microphones into people’s faces with enthusiasm, and gives the camera puppy-dog eyes while both condemning and supporting Cassidy.

You name the heist-film cliché, and it’s in this film and used half-to-death. The sexy accomplice? Check. Tons of gadgets? Check. The uneasy question about how on earth Joey Cassidy obtains said sexy accomplice and slew of expensive gadgets? Check. The good cop/bad cop routine that boils beneath the surface is explored only in a burst of admissions from various sources, so by the end, you’re still not entirely sure why this man is on the ledge. The tagline for the film is, “You can only push an innocent man so far.” Someone forgot to tell these people that you can only make an audience believe so much, before you descend into unintelligible froth.

Man on a Ledge begins with a good premise, but quickly devolves into an overindulgent mess, that the audience has great difficulty identifying with. What could have been an exciting, edge-of-your-seat thriller instead makes you wish that Worthington would jump off the ledge already, and put us all out of our misery. It could have been a much shorter film if he had, and many of these actors could have happily wiped this one off their slates.  

Film Review

Title: Underworld: Awakening

Directed By Måns Mårlind and Björn Stein

Stars: Kate Beckinsale, Stephen Rea, Michael Ealy, Theo James, India Eisley

Studio: Sony/Screen Gems

Release Date: January 20, 2012

Running Time: 88 Minutes

Reviewed By Adam A. Donaldson

I congratulate the makers of Underworld: Awakening for being able to make a mountain out of a molehill; from the humble elevator pitch of “Romeo and Juliet with vampires and werewolves” comes one of the most densely packed mythologies of modern movie franchises covering fantasy, action, sci-fi, horror, and borderline homages to the bondage subculture. The films are a proverbial genre frappé, carried mostly on the notion that fan boys would watch Kate Beckinsale reading the phone book if she were dressed head to toe in skin tight leather and firing a big, damn gun.

In the series fourth outing, Underworld, like action franchise cousin Mission: Impossible, proves that age ain’t nothing but a number. The action scenes are brisk, well-executed and enthralling, and Beckinsale proves that after a break of a couple years from kicking any kind of butt that she can still stab, shoot, throw ninja stars and set off explosives with the best of them. In other words if you don’t like loud noises, monsters, death metal, and assorted on-screen carnage, this is not the movie for you. Reversely, if you’re looking for a movie with coherent storytelling, thoughtful characters and logical pacing, this is not the film for you either.

A couple of years ago, there was a film released called Ultraviolet about a future world where a virus turned ordinary people into superhumans who were then hunted and killed by an evil medical research company. In this uncertain time, one rebellious female warrior refused to go down without a fight and struggled to protect a child that both sides wanted dead, but who had the power to end the war. I only bring this up because Underworld: Awakening follows almost exactly the same plotline.

Taking place in the not too distant future, the secret war between vampires and Lycans (werewolves, remember) has become a not-so secret war where the human race is trying to rid the world of both immortal species. Captured by the obviously evil Antigen, vampire warrior goddess Selene (Beckinsale) has been cryogenically frozen and studied for over 12 years, when the breakout of “Subject 2” causes the release of Selene as well. Caught up in the new normal of the world, Selene seeks to get to the bottom of Antigen’s true purpose, copes with the revelation of “Subject 2” being her daughter Eve (India Eisley), and looks really, really good while fighting some new bad guy every five minutes.

The sheer brazenness of these films, which act as though coherent storytelling and practical character motivation is a luxury of script-writing, is something I rather enjoy. For instance, when Eve reveals that she’s really Selene’s previously unknown daughter it’s in the midst of a car chase, the human detective investigating the resurgence in supernatural activity seems to disappear from the plot for an hour, and Michael, the werewolf hybrid played by Scott Speedman who was so central to the plot of the first two films, appears only briefly and is played by a stand in. Granted, Underworld isn’t a Tolkien-esque tome filled with back story and detail, but I believe there is a minimum amount of work necessarily to at least build your world in three dimensions.

The technical edge this film has over the previous instalments is that it’s screening in 3-D and in IMAX. Now I didn’t see it in IMAX, so maybe that makes a difference, but watching an Underworld film in 3-D is an experience in squinting. It’s not good when you give up on the 3-D glasses and watch the film without them about 50 per cent of the time. If you have similar issues with 3-D, maybe only where the glasses for the action scenes, but I will say that one sequence where heroes let off a grenade of silver powder to take out a group of bad wolves looked amazing in 3-D. Seeing the little specs of silver dance out from the screen was almost worth the 3-D surcharge. Almost.

I also think that Swedish directors Måns Mårlind and Björn Stein have a better idea of what an Underworld is supposed to be, but that idea is putting emphasis on action and cool looking effects over a substantive script. Still, it’s an improvement considering that past films have had aspirations of Shakespeare and Puzo, but it also means you hiring decent actors who get wasted. Stephen Rea as the head of Antigen looks downright unsure what he’s doing on this film, and Canadian actor Kris Holden-Ried, who plays a werewolf weekly on the hit Showcase series on Lost Girl, deserved a, ahem, meatier part.

But despite everything I just wrote, most of which being arm chair quarterbacking post game, I still walked out of Underworld Awakening feeling moderately satisfied. It is what it is, Kate Beckinsale in skin tight leather fighting monsters for an hour and a half. If only all movies were this self-aware.