Y'know, snarky comments about Liam Neeson as an alcoholic estranged father, punching and shooting people in a leather jacket are becoming almost as clichéd as films featuring Liam Neeson as an alcoholic estranged father, punching and shooting people in a leather jacket. Although despite today's neatly-timed announcement*1, Liam shows no sign of stopping just now, so I don't see why I should either.
Mr Neeson's latest (well…) offering bestows upon him the honour of The Opening Line. As he lies bleeding and surrounded by shrubbery, his sonorous transatlantic grumble delivers the absolute gem, "I've done terrible things in my life… things for which I can never be forgiven", with either an over-indulgence of self-awareness, or none whatsoever. I can't be sure which it is. Poor Liam is on autopilot for the entire movie, and Joel (Robocop) Kinnaman can't seem to muster the likeability required to be An Actual Protagonist. The screenplay makes no attempt to offer us anyone else to really root for, so it's just a case of sitting back and watching the claret.
The plot of the film takes place over the course of 16 hours, and the episodic nature of the father/son adventure does make it feel a bit like a mission-arc from Grand Theft Auto (complete with expository cut-scenes, naturally). The script itself seems to have been compiled by a computer working from a database of action-movie catchphrases and platitudes, hoping that the mumbling of the actors will fudge the audience's aural déjà vu. Strangely, one of the best scenes is the downtown New York chase, in which Neeson tries to ram the patrol-car of corrupt police officers off the road. Coincidentally, it's also a scene with almost no dialogue for four minutes.
Despite my moaning, Run All Night isn't 'awful'. As bullet-ridden action-thrillers go, it's actually on the better side of alright until dear old Liam keeps playing His Film Character. He's supported by Ed Harris (who can't seem to believe what he's doing), Joel Kinnaman (see above) and Boyd Holbrook, who puts in a reasonably interesting turn until he's killed in the first act (that's a plot point. It's in the trailer. It's not a spoiler.) The cast are so elderly, listless, or elderly and listless that Common*2 has to be drafted in during the second act to do some of the heavy lifting (and in fairness, Liam and Common duelling with flaming table-legs was rather nice, I thought).
Despite some interesting stylised transitions between scenes, there's really very little here that you haven't seen before. The film doesn't do anything too badly, it just doesn't do anything new. Although it doesn't really promise to, either. And when you're asking people to hand over a tenner to watch it? That's going to be a stumbling block.
With a smarter script and more inspired casting, Run All Night could have been just the thing. As it stands, it's another also-ran in the Liam Neeson box set of mediocrity.
Actual fact: Run All Night's distributor, Warner Bros UK, have thought long and hard, and decided that a 15-rated violent revenge-thriller should be preceded by the trailers for Home, Spongebob and Cinderella. No, seriously. Who the hell do they think is watching this movie? Well, me, evidently since I plan on watching at least two of those three movies. Although I was going to anyway, so…
Oh, and by all means write your screenplay and call your hardened, grizzled mob-boss Shawn Maguire. But whenever he gets mentioned, I'll be thinking of Sean Maguire. Threat-central, yeah.
Not really, if I'm being honest.
Unless you star in the film, I can't see that you'll want to watch it more than once. Rental, it is.
Well I doubt it'll be in Ed Harris' obituary-reel, somehow.
It probably does, actually.
Not really.
There isn't. For shame.
Run All Night stars Qui-Gon Jinn himself, Liam Neeson, of course.
*1 Seriously though, "two years"? John Candy died and they were releasing 'his last film' for the next five years. Two years of Neeson actioners is like a decade in human-years, or something.
*2 He's one of those rapper-actors, I think. He's generally used as background-scowling in movies, but he's pretty good in this. Certainly better at action-movies than the rest of the cast, anyway.
DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.
Big Hero 6 (2D / second-pass)
Cert: PG / 114 mins / Dir. Don Hall & Chris Williams / Trailer
What an amazing film. Messrs Hall & Williams' animated buddy/superhero flick goes from strength to strength, and I suspect I left slightly too long a gap between my first viewing when the film was still in its UK preview status, and catching it on general release*1. The memory of how much fun Big Hero 6 is was still prominent in my memory, but I'd somehow forgotten that the film's sentimental core was quite this strong.
What I'm saying is that rather than have my eyes filling up at a couple of points near the end, I spent most of the first half of the film on the verge of blubbing, as emotional bookmarks were placed that would be referred back to later. These call-forwards make re-watching the film massively rewarding, and I confess that I was so wrapped up in the story of Hiro, Tadashi and Baymax that I didn't notice any of the visual Easter-eggs. Even the ones which I knew were there.
Despite by words below*1, there really is no equivalent to watching a film like Big Hero 6 on a massive cinema-screen with full surround sound (yes, I know your television's great, but your living-room wasn't designed for watching movies in the way that a cinema is). Go and see this at the flicks while you've still got the option; you'll thank me for it.
Best bit: after the closing credits - which seem far longer than they are because a) four distinct pieces of music play behind them, and b) animated works always have more names attached by virtue of the film-making process, - the post-credits scene played out in all its glory and Mrs Blackout turned to me and wryly commented "I can't believe you made me sit through all those names for that".
Y'know, as if this isn't the finest cinematic coda that's ever existed :P
It is, but see my rant*1, below.
Buy.
It does.
It does.
*looks over glasses*.
Still didn't hear one, and I was listening out for it this time. Although as I was even more wrapped up in the film than last time, who knows?
The voice of Baymax, Scott Adsit, appeared in 2010's Last Night, a film starring Keira Knightley (handmaiden Sabé in The Phantom Menace).
*1 Seriously Disney, you have to sort your release-schedules out. Big Hero 6 is a great movie, and you want as many people to see it as possible. As a fan of the film and a fan of cinema in general, this is also what I want. When the movie opened in the US on November 7th 2014 to critical and audience acclaim, geeks around the world took notice. This created a bit of buzz. Buzz is good. The general release date for the UK was 30th January, the best part of 3 months later.
The gap between the US and UK releases was enough to get people hyped for the film, but it was also enough for pristine copies to start appearing illegally online. What this means, in actual real financial terms, is that rather than families or groups of viewers spending £10+ each to see the film at their local multiplex, they could watch it in flawless HD at home for free, before it was even showing at the cinema. And I this is the case, because I know three separate groups of people who did just that. And these aren't 'people who never go to the cinema'; they're casual visitors who just didn't want to wait for something that everyone (including Disney) has told them is awesome.
Can I condone it? Of course not.
Can I condemn it, when I've been the one telling them how fantastic the film is after seeing it on its 'preview weekend'? Hardly.
This scenario is the very reason that global-release dates started appearing in the early 2000s. It's especially important now, as the gap between theatrical, VOD and home-releases constantly shrinks. You need to understand Disney, that most of your cinema-going audience has no particular loyalty to either the studio, the film nor the cinema itself. If the audience can save the money on the film and spend it on another outing; they'll do just that.
You know how autocomplete works, don't you Disney? It's basically an input-box's habit of remembering earlier search queries and offering the most frequent ones in response to a partially typed entry. This is the actual Google autocomplete for the UK release date of Big Hero 6:
Your may not think that your staggered release pattern is having an adverse affect on box office returns, Disney, but it's making a joke of your reputation.
[/rant]
DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.
Big Hero 6 (3D)
Cert: PG / 114 mins / Dir. Don Hall & Chris Williams / Trailer
And so, the UK finally gets its sweaty paws on Disney's latest offering - a re-tooling of the Marvel comic Big Hero 6 (think of a Manga mashup between Teen Titans and Robocop). The film follows 14yr old Hiro and the inflatable medical robot that his older brother designed, Baymax, as they team up with a team of students from the robotics engineering lab of San Fransokyo university, to stop a mysterious villain unleashing chaos with an army of stolen microbots…
Sound over the top? Of course it bloody does, and it's that excess which makes the film what it is; a heart-warming, adrenaline-pumping, tear-welling*1 adventure yarn. The film is every bit as Pixar-gorgeous as you'd expect - 3D included - and is crammed with all the Easter-eggs you could wish for (including the severed head of Wall-E's Eve, and the best Stan Lee cameo you'll see this year*2).
Big Hero 6's story doesn't always flow as organically as it did in its spiritual predecessor, Wreck-It Ralph, and a couple of the major plot points are telegraphed fairly heavily, but that didn't hamper my enjoyment one iota. There's a built-in animated short before the film titled Feast, which is every bit as charming as its fore-runners Paper Man and The Blue Umbrella, and will set you in the perfect frame of mind for the film to come...
…And yes, you have to stay until the end of the credits. It's only an extra five-minutes, and you'll thank me (or more importantly, Disney) for it.
It is, yes.
Buy it, because the re-watch value in this movie is going to be enormous.
Most of the cast are new to me I'm afraid, but I love their work here.
It does, indeed.
Just a little. No more, though.
Didn't hear one this time, but I'll keep an ear out for it when I re-watch the film.
Jamie Chung, the voice of Go Go, had a role in 2011's Sucker Punch, as did a certain Oscar Isaac, who appears later this year in Star Wars: The Force Awakens.
*1 Yes, I did a little cry. Okay yes, twice. They were happy cries, not sad cries. No, you shut up.
*2 And with Age of UltronandAnt-Man on the horizon, you know we're in for at least two…
DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.
