Work has been hectic, but I did take a well deserved off in the last week of 2013. Got to catch three action movies on DVD torrent. They were the usual Hollywood action movies with bomb blasts, guns blazing, and high tempo music.
Act of Valor : This movie was released in 2012, but funny thing, I didn't see any marketing trailers to promote it. It could very well be the best action movie from 2012, a high octane action movie about the US Special Forces (SEALS), and a their fictional pursuit of a terrorist and smuggler. It depicts modern warfare, the age of calculated attacks and zero risks. And if the action and weapons displayed here is real, man, the US Army has gone light years ahead of the rest of the world. They have used real Army SEALs for the action scenes, real people who have been trained and seen action. Frankly, the guys can’t act. But you don’t need actors to aim and shoot weapons and go into tactical formations.
My favourite action sequence is the first one, the rescue mission in the middle of a Mexican rain forest. The last time I saw such an engaging sequence was in the Bruce Willis movie Tears of the Sun. A 7 member SEAL team HALO drop into the jungle to rescue a kidnapped CIA Official. The way they stalk and follow the enemy, the long distance weapons they use, there is also a remote controlled reconnaissance glider, the hovercrafts the second team uses to arrive….mind-blowing ! The extract is done with zero causalities, and Columbian cartel has no idea how hit them. Man, one view and I can safely say, the Indian army has light-years to travel to reach this kind of sophistication.
Captain Phillips : Paul Greengrass’s 2013 movie about the MAERSK Alabama hijacking by Somalian pirates started creating Oscar buzz on release. Now I am not a big fan of Paul’s shaky drunken camera-man style cinematography, it was controlled in the Bourne series movies he directed, but got worse with GreenZone. But anyway, the DVD rip on torrent was of high quality and good sound as well, so ..here goes.
Tom Hanks plays Captain Richard Phillips, the captain of the merchant ship Alabama, which gets hijacked by pirates off the coast of Somalia. The screenplay is tight, the acting top notch. We get to see that the life of pirates and the ship crew are worlds apart. The pirates are driven by poverty to steal, their living conditions pitiable, but all of them surprisingly speak very good English ! Phillips tries to evade, but then gives up when the pirates board, and uses his training to keep the crew safe and the ship unusable. After a lot of cat and mouse games between the pirates and the crew, the pirates are able to take Phillips hostage and escape in a life boat. They plan to hold him ransom for money, not contend with the money Phillips was offering them to walk away.
The ship’s call for help is answered by big brother US Navy, who promptly dispatch a SEAL team to use any means to control the situation. From this point onwards, we know for sure the pirates will be caught/killed, yet it was interesting to see Phillips trying to negotiate and talk his life out of the pirates.
The best scene is undoubtedly the one towards the end, when Phillips is rescued and being treated for trauma on the US destroyer. Tom brilliantly portrays how the captain is shaken and affected to the core by they ordeal, he wants to cry out his pains, and laugh out of gratitude at the same time, yet he tries to remain composed because he is the captain after all.
Elysium : Jason Bourne is back, but this time in the future. Elysium is the next of Neil Blomkap’s movie about a dystopian and ravaged future earth, and the story of one man who wants to bring down the corrupted politics. Matt Damon is one of my favourite actors, few people can pull off a action sequence as convincing as him. Matt plays Max, who always questioned the divide between rich and poor, was once a criminal, but now is a reformed wage worker at a robot factory. In 2154, two classes of people exist: the very wealthy, who live on a huge and luxurious Stanford torus-style space station called Elysium, and the poor who live on an overpopulated, devastated Earth. While residents on Earth are policed by ruthless robots, Elysium's citizens live in comfort and regularly use bed-sized medical devices called Med-Bays to keep them free of disease and injury. An accident at the plant exposes Max to a lethal dose of radiation, giving him only five days to live.
Max, knowing his only chance for survival is a Med-Bay, seeks help from notorious smuggler to reach Elysium, and is pursued by Kruger, a sleeper agent played by Sharlto Copey. Max is weak from the radiation poisoning, so he is outfitted with an exoskeleton which gives him superhuman strength. What begins with a manhunt on earth , ends with a one on one showdown on Elysium between Kruger and Max.
Amazing. That’s my word for the special affects. Simply Amazing. Everything from the rich affluent lifestyle depicted on Elysium, to the futuristic weapons depicted, to the exoskeleton powering both the leads, this could very well be the action movie of 2013.
But I hated the ending. Why did Max have to die ? I hate movies which depict a messiah. They could have very well found a way to keep him alive, this is the future, after all. Max went on the fight to save himself, but ended up saving everyone stuck on earth. Also, what about the future from then on ? Can’t the Elysium mainframe be reset to how it was and go back ? Won’t the powers think of something ?
I am not saying anything about Jodie Foster, cause I think her role was wasted in the movie. She did not bring anything new to the table, anybody could have played a female dictator like she did.
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