Incredibles 2

Year 10, Day 270 - 9/27/18 - Movie #3,065 - VIEWED ON 7/21/18.  

BEFORE: As I write this, I'm just five films into my Summer Rock Concert chain, between the two films centered on Jimi Hendrix, so I'm going to have to watch this one, write the review, and wait for a chance to link to it.  I've got a spot in mind, but it won't come around until September, some time right before Halloween.  I also want to see another superhero film, "Ant-Man and the Wasp", while it's in theaters, and then I think I'm done seeing things on the big screen for this year.  By the time "Venom" comes out on October 5, I'll be out of Woody Harrelson movies, and I don't think I'll be able to link to it.  October will probably be all booked up anyway.  Sorry about that - but I've done really well this year in going to the theater and finding a way to work those films in to my chain, even if sometimes I had to sit on the review for a month or two.  I hate posting out of order, but if I don't go within the first few weeks of a film's release, it could disappear from theaters and then my plans get shot to hell.

Samuel L. Jackson carries over from "Kingsman: The Golden Circle" - umm, I hope.

THE PLOT: Bob Parr, aka Mr. Incredible, is left to care for the kids while Helen is out saving the world as Elastigirl.

AFTER: Before the screening of "Incredibles 2" (in addition to 6 previews for horrible upcoming kids movies like "Wreck-It Ralph 2" and a completely unnecessary re-working of "The Grinch Who Stole Christmas"), and about a dozen commercials, further delay was created by the inclusion of the new Pixar short "Bao", which is the story of a Chinese woman who makes a dumpling that comes to life, and she raises it like a child.  People are creaming over this short, and it may even win an Oscar - stranger things have happened - but I just didn't get it.  It was confusing as all hell - it wasn't made clear to me that this woman was already a mother of an adult son, and it also wasn't clear whether she was imagining the dumpling coming to life, or whether the dumpling really did gain sentience, or whether her reality was merging with fantasy, or what.  There's a storytelling fail somewhere in there, but I don't want to let that encroach on my opinion of "Incredibles 2".  Shorts don't count toward my year-end total, anyway.

Then the start of the film was further delayed by a message from the film's creators and stars, to explain the 14-year delay between the first "Incredibles" movie and the sequel, while thanking the audience for their patronage and patience.  This was completely unnecessary, because movies take time, especially animated ones, and all the fans KNOW this, so no apology is needed.  Nobody wants a film studio to put out an inferior product, or to rush a story to meet some arbitrary, non-existent deadline, so it takes as long as it takes.  Screw the fans, because I had to wait between 1983 and 1999 for a new "Star Wars" film, that's even longer, and nobody apologized to ME when "The Phantom Menace" was released.  Suck it up, you babies.  You get what you get when Disney makes it.

But speaking of story points that don't work, "Incredibles 2" makes fun of New Math, an approach to grade-school mathematics that had a very brief lifespan in the 1960's.  The gag appeared in the previews for this film, and that worried me a great deal - kids today are just not going to know what "New Math" is, because it's no longer being taught, it doesn't exist any more.  Didn't anyone at Pixar research this point?  The only people who are going to find this funny are people who studied math before I was born, which means it's aimed at the GRANDparents in the audience, not even the parents.  If the humor's not going to land on the majority of viewers, why not find something that will?  If it seems like a joke's not going to work (and it doesn't) then find another way.

After complaining about this, a friend pointed out to me that this film might be SET in the 1960's, which is a conclusion one might draw from the whole design of the film - the furniture, the cars, they give off this sort of Neo-future vibe that sort of correlates to the late 1960's or early 1970's, perhaps to invoke that sort of Adam West "Batman" take on superheroes.  But this doesn't really explain things, either, because this is also a world where there are mag-lev trains and electric motorcycles, and hydrofoils and other things that didn't exist in the 1960's.  So now I don't know WHEN this story is supposed to take place, but essentially it takes place in "story time", which is whenever it needs to happen.  Still, I prefer things that are a bit more clear.  (Like the name "Screenslaver" is a pun based on "screensaver", but those didn't exist until what, the 1980's?  Also, nobody said the words "telecommunications corporation" in the 1960's, they still said "phone company".)

But there's a lot to like here, I just wanted to get the negative bits out of the way first.  My wife went with me to the movies and she had a great time, laughing a lot at the antics of super-powered baby Jack-Jack, and most of the time, she doesn't even LIKE babies.  There's a whole ton of action, twists that even I didn't see coming, and mostly I liked the family-based drama, even when those things were the slowest bits of the movie.

Separating the family here into two parts made sense - while Elastigirl is off being a superhero working high-profile cases (even though that's technically illegal) the rest of the family is essentially still a unit, with Bob and Violet each being focuses of the story.  Bob because he has to play "house-husband" for the first time (this also plants the family dynamic back in the 1960's, great, more antiquated "Mr. Mom" stuff...) and Violet because she's romantically interested in a boy for the first time.  By limiting the plot to two storylines that are bound to re-connect with each other, the film avoids the problems seen in "Despicable Me 3", where there were so many daughters that the story didn't know what to do with them all, so they just stuck one in a field, waiting for a unicorn, in a thread that never paid off.  But then, there's a bit of that problem here, too, because they don't really give Dash anything notable to do in this film, outside of the superhero stuff.

At first "Incredibles 2" seems like a giant step forward for women's rights, with the Mom working and the Dad staying home, but since his character HATES it, and at first is no good at it, it really isn't - because his default setting is "Men should work, women should stay home" and nobody corrects him to say it doesn't have to be that way.  And then when it gives the teenage daughter (who for some reason now looks older than her parents) something to do, it's all about a boy, not any hobby, interest or talent that she could develop on her own.  Nope, the only thing teen girls do is think about teen boys - isn't that another stereotype that should fall by the wayside?   (Now to be really progressive, she could have been attracted to another girl, but that's a different movie...).

It's also too bad that the story relies so heavily on hypnotism, which continues to foster the belief in our culture that there is such a thing that exists.  It just doesn't, and everything performed by hypnotists in stage shows is based on deception or parlor tricks.  There are trance states and meditative techniques that may help people relax or quit smoking, but the movie-style of hypnotism only exists in fiction.  It's too bad that the story couldn't have been written without this crutch, also frequently used in comic books - though they've started to find other ways to achieve the same result.  Instead of "hypnotizing" Captain America to turn evil a couple years ago, someone used a Cosmic Cube to change the time-stream, so that Cap was "always" a sleeper agent for HYDRA.  It's a long way to go to achieve a similar story point, and it might be more outlandish in the long run, but at least it doesn't fool people into thinking hypnotism is real. Again, it just feels like some writer was just too lazy to check - .

As my wife pointed out, the plot point of having superheroes outlawed and hunted gives "The Incredibles" a setting similar to the one that the "X-Men" frequent.  And their powers and family-based structure riffs on the "Fantastic Four", one has strength like The Thing, one has invisibility/force-field powers like Invisible Woman, one stretches like Mr. Fantastic and the baby sometimes has fire-based powers like Human Torch.  All this makes me wonder if Disney bought Marvel several years back so there would never be a lawsuit about this.  I mean, why would one division of the company sue another?

Ah, but I still haven't said many good things about this movie yet - sorry, maybe I'm still feeling disgusted from those previews for "Wreck-It Ralph 2" and "The Grinch" (not to mention "How to Train Your Dragon 3" which isn't coming out unti MARCH 2019...).  The action sequences are very, very good here, the opening one where the Incredibles battle the Underminer, and the middle one where Elastigirl tries to stop the train.  The end one on the hydrofoil boat was a little too complicated, but still counts as a big, giant, thrill-ride sort of thing.  And this is where the movie really MOVED, so many things going on, but even then, the passing of the kid ("You babysit" "No, YOU babysit") still felt a little tedious.

I also liked the debate over whether it's OK to break the law in order to change the law - this debate about vigilantism should come up in superhero movies even more often than it does.  It's there in the background in "Avengers" films and "Batman v. Superman", but they all just sort of gloss over it. Here it's a thorny issue, especially when trying to justify Helen's actions to a couple of kids who can't see the logic in it.  This could be very important to today's kids when you look at our current political scene, the President and Congress passing all kinds of wacky executive orders and legislation these days, and today's kids are going to be tomorrow's voters, and hopefully they'll help select people who will work for positive change, and not just undo whatever the last President did out of spite.

I'm on break now until October 1, when I'll kick off my horror-based programming - 21 films this year, and it'll be a mix of both recent films and classic monster movies.  Yes, some are left over from last year's TCM "Monster of the Month" line-up, I'll explain more about the content and the linking logic behind it in just a few days.  Right now, I've got to go submit materials to get a short film qualified for the Oscars, a daunting task when you're only given 2 1/2 weeks to arrange a screening in L.A. and then put all the necessary paperwork and supporting materials together.  Well, I guess that keeps me out of trouble, anyway. 

Also starring the voices of Craig T. Nelson (last seen in "Gold"), Holly Hunter (last seen in "Moonlight Mile"), Sarah Vowell, Huck Milner, Bob Odenkirk (last seen in "The Disaster Artist"), Catherine Keener (last seen in "Get Out"), Jonathan Banks (last seen in "Gremlins"), Brad Bird, Isabella Rossellini (last seen in "Joy"), John Ratzenberger (last heard in "The Good Dinosaur"), Barry Bostwick (last seen in "Nancy Drew"), Phil LaMarr, Eli Fucile, Michael Bird, Sophia Bush, Paul Eiding, Jere Burns, Adam Rodriguez, Usher (last seen in "Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping"), Kimberly Adair Clark.

RATING: 8 out of 10 oxygen masks

Kingsman: The Golden Circle

Year 10, Day 269 - 9/26/18 - Movie #3,064

BEFORE: I gave myself Tuesday off, for several reasons.  First off, I picked up a cold and I figured that more than anything, I really needed some sleep on Monday night.  So I avoided my usual nightly dose of caffeinated soda and watched the last 45 minutes of "Jurassic Park III" on cable, and I was out around 1:30 am, which is three hours earlier than usual.  If I hadn't fallen asleep then, I would have resorted to watching a Netflix comedy special, those keep managing to put me to sleep, even if they're very good ones.

But part of the reason I was so tired was that I had to get up early on Monday morning for an appointment with an ear doctor, which confirmed that I have had significant hearing loss in my right ear.  I've been aware for a long while that I've been favoring my left ear when talking on the phone, and then when I had the flu in March and my head was all clogged up, I could barely hear out of either ear, except for a throbbing that was producing auditory hallucinations of a sort.  I could hear noises that sounded like they were coming from outside or next door, only they weren't real.  Now my choices to correct the hearing loss would seem to be to either have surgery or get a hearing aid. While surgery may correct the problem, it seems riskier, and getting a hearing aid would seem to allow me more options - if I'm in a restaurant or on the subway near loud, obnoxious people, I can always turn it off, right?  Anyway, I've got a few weeks to think about it.

In the meantime, I'm faced with a dilemma over this film, which according to one source (Wikipedia) has Samuel L. Jackson in it, though only in a flashback sequence, but on the IMDB, he's not listed at all.  So, should I watch it here, or not?  Which source do I trust?  What happens if I get an hour into the film and he still hasn't shown up, should I continue?  That would break the chain, if he's not there, or if they just show his picture on a wall or something, does that count?  I think I've got to risk it, because I really want to watch this sequel, and if I don't, I'll be one film short for the year.  So here's hoping that SLJ carries over again from "The Hitman's Bodyguard"...

FOLLOW-UP TO: "Kingsman: The Secret Service" (Movie #2,289)

THE PLOT: When their headquarters are destroyed and the world is held hostage, the Kingsman's journey leads them to the discovery of an allied spy organization in the United States.  These two elite secret organizations must band together to defeat a common enemy.

AFTER:  Thankfully, Samuel L. Jackson turned up 45 minutes into the film, and telling you this doesn't give anything away, because they just used footage from the first film as a flashback to explain how another character can still be alive, when he died in the first film.  This fact itself is one of the worst-kept movie secrets ever, because that guy's on the poster and was in all of the trailers for the sequel.  Remember, this film is based on a comic book, and comic book heroes never die forever - those deaths only last as long as it takes the writer to come up with a very unlikely reason to explain how they could have survived.  Superman died and came back, so did Batman, Captain America has died at least twice, same goes for Iron Man, Thor, Spider-Man, you name it.  They killed off Wolverine about 2 years ago in the comics, and he's coming back in a couple of weeks - well, the comic is called "The Return of Wolverine" so it's a safe bet, anyway.  Hawkeye died once and I think Scarlet Witch just magicked him alive again, and somehow everyone was OK with that lame explanation.  Hulk died twice in the last two years, and his new comic is called "The Immortal Hulk" to reflect the fact that death is meaningless to these heroes.

Anyway, that major character from the first film is alive again here, surprising nobody - I'll wager this has everything to do with how popular the first "Kingsman" film turned out to be, which surprised many people I think.  Who knew that essentially a parody of the James Bond/Mission Impossible genre that was even more over-the-top than the films it was making fun of, could itself be so much fun?  The audience gives the Bond and M:I films a lot of leeway - we see characters using laser watches and false faces that represent impossible tech and think "Yeah, all right, that could happen" when it really never could.  "Kingsman: The Secret Service" started there and pushed the barriers of believability even further, so now we've got cyborg arms and robot dogs and underwater cars, suggesting that we'll someday have these things in the real world, only nobody's working on inventing these things, we're too busy fighting over Supreme Court nominees.  In a comic book you can give a character a cyborg arm that turns into a cannon and nobody would think twice about it, but if someone tried to invent that in the real world, they'd be considered insane.  An amputee would generally be happy with an arm that just works like an arm.

The villain here is just as unlikely as all the impossible tech - an American woman who runs a drug cartel, one who somehow got a monopoly on the world's supply, forcing out all of the South Americans.  She's so evil that she turned Machu Picchu into her personal compound, and designed it as a tribute to an idealized United States of the 1950's, with a diner and a bowling alley and a donut shop. This is another hint that nothing here is meant to be taken all that seriously, because who the frick would do that?  For that matter, what drug dealer would intentionally try to poison their customers?  Though they do point out here that this would be ridiculously short-sighted, just mentioning that does not negate the fact that as a plan, it doesn't make much sense.

There's ALMOST an argument made here for legalization of drugs, which in theory would solve a number of problems in society (the number of people incarcerated, for one) but I have to imagine would also cause quite a few more at the same time.  Yes, if drugs were legal there would technically be fewer criminals, but what about other crimes that are tangential to the drug trade, such as driving while under the influence?  With the legalization of marijuana in some states, we might be getting closer to a world where pot is legal, but I think you still have to draw the line somewhere, because legalizing cocaine and heroin could hurt more people (health wise) than it would help, and the industries that supply the harder drugs are more criminal and terrorist-based, right?  I mean, farmers grow marijuana, but drug lords grow coke and heroin.  Plus the harder drugs need to be refined, so there's an entire illegal industry built up around them.

But it's another look at the semantics of good and evil tonight - are ALL drug users evil, or is that just a label that parts of society have chosen to place on them?  If all of the drugs were tainted, does everyone, even casual users, deserve to go down with the ship?  It's one thing to be on the moral high ground and say that all drug users are criminals, but where do you draw that line?  What about sick people who need painkillers?   People who are not addicted, but use drugs and still contribute to society?  What about rock musicians, are they just supposed to come up with new music without taking drugs?  As soon as you start to paint everyone with the same brush, things become very murky.

But this leads to a depiction of the U.S. President that can only be now seen as very Trumpian (Trumpish? Trump-esque?) because his solution to a certain percentage of citizens getting sick is to round them up and put them in detention camps.  Sorry, he recommends that they come forward for voluntary separation from the general populace, so their symptoms can be addressed.  Which is really just putting them in camps - tomato, to-MAH-to.  Hmm, now where have we seen this type of approach before?  You have to wonder if, way back when the AIDS crisis first hit, there were Reagan-era politicians who thought that rounding up infected people and at-risk gay men and isolating them might have made sense - but you just can't solve problems like that, it smacks of Hitler's approach to Jews, gays, and other segments of the population he didn't like.  And yet we still have immigrant children in camps right now, and the political firestorm over it seems to have died down.  WTF?

The only way that this differs from real-world events is that Fox News is seen here investigating the President's misdeeds and calling for his impeachment, when, come on, we all know they're going to support anything that a conservative President does, even rounding up his own citizens and letting them die, while not paying the ransom or even searching for a cure.  The Fox News headline here would be "the President wins the war on drugs!" while not mentioning a few million deaths.

It's a little odd, I thought, that the villain strikes against the heroes first, decimating the ranks of the Kingsmen.  This forces the remaining agents to seek out their sister organization in the U.S., known as the Statesmen.  It's even odder that the Statesmen, a similar independent intelligence-gathering organization, didn't even have the Golden Circle on their radar.  Was the whole world just asleep at the switch here?  And if neither the Kingsmen OR the Statesmen had the skinny on the Golden Circle, why didn't that criminal organization just continue to do business in secret, why go on the attack?  You don't see bank robbers blowing up the local police station just to make it easier to rob banks, when it makes much more sense to just try to rob banks without the police finding out.

As a by-product of the effects of the disease (which includes a long period of paralysis), there are some top actors woefully underused here, most notably Channing Tatum.  He spends most of his scenes in this film lying in a hospital bed - now, maybe he was very busy and only available for a few shooting days, but it still seems like a shame, a real head-scratcher if you ask me.  Same goes for Emily Watson, who spends a good part of the movie basically standing completely still - that's just mind-boggling, you hire a name actor and then ask them to do nothing.  But hey, Eddie Redmayne got an Oscar for essentially just sitting in a chair, so there's a precedent for that.  (I'm a Hawking fan, but I still think giving that performance an Oscar was a bunch of B.S.)

I have to issue a NITPICK POINT for the meat-grinder the villain uses in the 1950's diner scene.  I realize that this film is more or less a live-action cartoon, but this was beyond ridiculous.  They were striving for a scene that echoed the wood-chipper in "Fargo", perhaps combined with the human meat-grinders seen in "Pink Floyd: The Wall".  But you can't put a person in a meat-grinder head-first and get something that looks like hamburger to come out the other side.  At the risk of getting very gross here (though the movie had no problem doing so) what happened to the guy's bones, like his skull?  You don't put a full cow in a meat grinder, you trim off pieces of beef and then cube them, so the grinder can handle it.  Now, sure, maybe this was a super high-tech, industrial-strength, James Bond-level grinder, but still, how did it separate out the guy's bone fragments, brains, eyeballs, etc. Plus, what happened to his clothes?  Are there bits of fabric in the ground meat?

This only works from a story standpoint if the grinder was a fake, like if it ground up the body and put those bits down a chute, then dispensed ground beef, not human meat, from a separate compartment.  Then the other bad-guy being forced to eat the grilled hamburger would just be a test of his loyalty, not an exercise in cannibalism.  Because maybe eating human meat wouldn't be the worst thing in the world, but eating little bits of eyeballs and brain, and all the unprocessed blood, it's just sickening, and not recommended at all.  But, no, there's no dodge here, the audience is being asked to believe that a fully clothed man goes in HERE, and somehow edible meat comes out THERE, with no hair, bones, clothing - it's just not possible, except in cartoons.

Another NITPICK POINT: Who the hell would put a retirement home so close to a mountain in the Alps?  I get that this served a narrative purpose, creating a thing that needed to be saved from danger, but come on!  Can old people even function at that high altitude?  Wouldn't they always be out of breath, due to the lack of oxygen?  Plus there's the obvious threat of an avalanche, if that should happen those senior citizens would never be able to shuffle out of the way in time.  This could have been a skiing school for kids, or an St. Bernard animal shelter, anything else would have made more sense than a retirement community.

Final NITPICK POINT: even though I'm not a whiskey drinker, I know that there's "whisky" with no "E" in it, which comes from Scotland, and "whiskey" with an "E" in it, that comes from other places. But when you're talking about Kentucky, where the Statesmen are based, they would most likely use the term "bourbon" instead - bourbon is a form of whiskey, of course, but a specific kind made from corn.  If you're talking about Tennessee, Jack Daniels is made from corn, rye and barley, but if you move over to Kentucky and consider Maker's Mark, that's a bourbon whiskey made from mostly corn.  Again, not a big spirits guy but I think this distinction would be important to some people.

Also starring Colin Firth (last seen in "Mamma Mia!"), Julianne Moore (last seen in "The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio"), Taron Egerton (last heard in "Sing"), Mark Strong (last seen in "The Way Back"), Halle Berry (last seen in "The Flintstones"), Channing Tatum (last heard in "The Lego Batman Movie"), Jeff Bridges (last seen in "Hell or High Water"), Pedro Pascal (last seen in "The Adjustment Bureau"), Edward Holcroft (last seen in "Kingsman: The Secret Service"), Hanna Alström (ditto), Tobias Bakare (ditto), Samantha Womack (ditto), Bruce Greenwood (last seen in "Gold"), Emily Watson (last seen in "Miss Potter"), Elton John (last seen in "Super Duper Alice Cooper"), Sophie Cookson (last seen in "The Huntsman: Winter's War"), Michael Gambon (last heard in "Hail, Caesar!"), Sofia Boutella (last seen in "Fahrenheit 451"), Thomas Turgoose, Calvin Demba, Poppy Delevingne (last seen in "Pirate Radio"), Keith Allen (last seen in "Eddie the Eagle"), Tom Benedict Knight (last seen in "Dracula Untold"), Mark Arnold (last seen in "Florence Foster Jenkins"), Björn Granath (last seen in "The American"), Lena Endre (last seen in "The Master"), with cameos from Shannon Bream, Bill Hemmer.

RATING: 7 out of 10 pugs (not drugs)

The Hitman's Bodyguard

Year 10, Day 267 - 9/24/18 - Movie #3,063

BEFORE: I watched the Emmys over the weekend, only 5 or 6 days late.  But I find, as happens with the Oscars, that the shows or movies that I most enjoy are not always the ones that tend to win the awards.  I realize I might have specialized tastes, because the films that score the highest on my arbitrary ratings system are superhero and sci-fi films, those bring me the most pleasure, and I do believe that we're living in the Golden Age where those are concerned.  The same sort of goes for TV, like I spent the last 3 months catching up on shows like "Stranger Things", "12 Monkeys", "Cloak and Dagger", and so on.  After food-based shows like "Master Chef", "Top Chef", "Iron Chef" "Worst Cooks in America" and "Chopped" (plus many others), sci-fi and superhero is probably the 2nd biggest genre of TV show that I watch.  Wait, there's also late-night talk shows - but you get my point.

The only shows that I watch that managed to get Emmy nominations are: "Barry", "Stranger Things", "Twin Peaks", "Westworld", "Top Chef", "SNL", "Drunk History" and "The Amazing Race", plus 4 out of the 6 nominated for Variety Talk Series.  OK, I also watched the nominated Patton Oswalt, Jerry Seinfeld and John Mullaney specials, plus the "Jesus Christ Superstar: Live in Concert", but overall, that's not a lot of shows that I was rooting for.   On the upside, I was able to speed through the three-hour show in about an hour, racing over the winners that I didn't care about.

Surprisingly, I never got into the "Game of Thrones" show, and now it almost feels like it's too late, like I'd be watching it just because it's popular and won a bunch of awards, not because the subject matter appeals to me.  Same goes for "Curb Your Enthusiasm", if I didn't get on board at the start of the journey, why start now?  I've got too many other things to do than play catch-up on 7 years of a show.  There are shows like "Silicon Valley" and "Atlanta" that feature actors that I like, but I sort of made my decision years ago not to start too many new shows, and I've tried to hold the line on that. I'm sure they're probably great programs, but there's so much TV out there that I can only watch so much of it, and not any more.

The new fall line-ups on the major networks don't really hold much appeal for me, so it looks like it will be another year where I don't take on any new shows, just watch the same programs and cross my fingers that this is the last season of that show, which would help me out by freeing up some DVR space and some of my time.  And so far "Stranger Things" is the only episodic TV I've watched on a streaming platform - sorry that I'm still so old-school about this, but if a show premieres on Hulu, Netflix, Amazon or CBS All Access, that's somebody's way of telling me they don't want me to watch it.  Why else would they make it so difficult for me to see it?  If I have to sign up, log in, download an app - forget it.  I want TV that I can just watch when I turn my TV on, I guess that makes me an old fuddy-duddy.

Samuel L. Jackson carries over again from "Big Game".

THE PLOT: The world's top bodyguard gets a new client, a hit man who must testify at the International Criminal Court.  They must put their differences aside and work together to make it to the trial on time.

AFTER: When I say that it's getting harder to tell the good guys from the bad guys, this film is a perfect example.  Things seem somewhat straight-forward at the beginning - Ryan Reynolds plays a bodyguard who protects his clients, and Jackson plays a hit-man, a killer, so one's good and the other's evil, right?  Ah, but it's not that simple.  What happens when the good bodyguard has to protect his client from a threat?  He might have to harm or kill someone in the process.  And whether the hitman is good or evil depends on who he works for and who he kills, right?  (or is that "whom" he kills?)  If he killed bad people, would that make him good?  Here he's being asked to testify against the President of Belarus, who's accused of war crimes - apparently he used to work for him.  But testifying against a war criminal is a good thing, right?

We also live in a world where often it's the government that is corrupt, not just in Eastern Europe, but right here in the U.S.  I did a spit-take with my morning coffee when I heard Trump addressing the U.N., accusing other world leaders of having their own financial interests at heart, instead of putting their citizens first.  Oh, really?  REALLY?  And what would I call a President who's taking meetings with world leaders because he wants to build properties in their countries in the future?  Talk about the pot calling the kettle corrupt...  When a government can be dirty or sanction genocide, racism or assassinations, then all bets are off, right?  Someone working against that government would either be a terrorist or a freedom fighter, depending on where you stand.  Think about the French Resistance during World War II - to the Germans they were traitors, but to the Americans they were doing heroic things.

Take this a few steps further, and you get a Bond villain, or a character like Thanos.  A Bond villain never thinks of himself as a villain, because everyone is the hero of their own story, even if his actions are perceived as "evil" from where we sit.  This guy wants to take over a satellite with a laser to destroy a city - but does he have a valid motivation for doing that?  Is the government in that city actually corrupt, like does the villain have a point?  Thanos wanted to kill 1/2 of the population of the universe, because he wanted to make a point about conservation, he felt that people everywhere were using up resources much too quickly, and if this were allowed to continue, resources on any given planet would be used up, and everyone would die.  The weird thing is, he's not completely wrong - if humans could get together and somehow reduce the birth rate, adopt a zero-population growth, the planet would be healthier and resources could be replenished.  But no, we can't do that because God hates birth control - what a ridiculous counter-argument.  So EVERYONE should die in the next 100 years because we can't figure out how to have fewer babies?  Maybe if we could get over this prudish attitude, the human race could continue for another 1,000 years instead of 100, wouldn't that be ten times better?  But no, that couple in Indiana needs to have 12 kids that they can't feed.  Of course, Thanos took the most drastic approach and killing people at random is wrong, but the reasoning behind his actions perhaps deserves to be taken seriously.

It gets more complicated, because by spending time together, these two men come to appreciate each other for their different talents and skill-sets, plus they also have a vastly different approach to their work - one is hyper-detailed and organized, the other prefers to make things up as they go along.  It's a bit corny to say that they each learn from each other, but by working together the hitman learns that sometimes having a plan can be helpful, while the bodyguard starts to see things from another perspective, and realizes that he's been very simplistic in his relationships, blaming others for things that weren't even their fault, just because things didn't go according to his plan.  I think the real truth lies somewhere in the middle - it's always better to have a plan, but that plan has to be a little flexible and adapt to changes and surprises.

But there's really no time to discuss strategy or philosophy or how to apologize to a woman, because it's on to the next car chase.  There are at least three big stunt scenes here, or maybe it's better to just call the whole movie one big stunt scene.  The unlikely pair of heroes/not-heroes are on the run from London to Amsterdam (where the hitman's wife is conveniently imprisoned on trumped-up charges) to The Hague, where the International Criminal Court is.  (See, even an action movie can be educational!)  But they don't explain why it's "The Hague" and not just "Hague".  It's not "The London" and "The Berlin", after all, so what's up with that, Hague?

The best action sequence is probably the one set around Amsterdam's canals, when the hitman's on a speedboat in the canal, the evil BelaRussians are in cars riding alongside the canals, and the bodyguard's on a motorbike that can go just about anywhere and everywhere.  This whole sequence must have taken a ton of coordination, and many Amsterdam bicycles had to be sacrificed.

They JUST announced a sequel to this film, titled "The Hitman's Wife's Bodyguard", and I approve of that plan.  As long as they can make them this much fun, they should keep making them this much fun.  Boring is NOT always best.

Also starring Ryan Reynolds (last seen in "Deadpool 2"), Gary Oldman (last seen in "Paranoia"), Salma Hayek (last heard in "Sausage Party"), Elodie Yung (last seen in "Gods of Egypt"), Yuri Kolokolnivov, Tine Joustra, Joaquim de Almeida (last seen in "Downsizing"), Kirsty Mitchell, Richard E. Grant (last seen in "Jackie"), Georgie Glen (ditto), Sam Hazeldine (last seen in "The Huntsman: Winter's War"), Mikhail Gorevoy (last seen in "Bridge of Spies"), Barry Atsma, Rod Hallett, Donna Preston.

RATING: 7 out of 10 nuns in a van

Big Game

Year 10, Day 266 - 9/23/18 - Movie #3,062

BEFORE:  Samuel L. Jackson carries over from "The Red Violin", and he plays the U.S. President in this film.  Somehow I find that easier to believe than watching him play a violin expert.  Because we've seen that for eight years in real life, and even longer on film.  There's a whole generation of teens now that doesn't remember the time before there was a black President, and the concept appeared in films before Obama took office - I recall "Deep Impact" in 1998 with Morgan Freeman as the President, and Dennis Haysbert played one on TV in "24" around the same time.  

But before that there was "The Fifth Element" with a black President of Earth, but that was science-fiction and set in the future.  But before THAT there was "Rufus Jones for President", released in 1933, which depicted Sammy Davis Jr. (at the age of 8) in a dream sequence where he was a young singing, dancing President - wait, I thought the President had to be at least 36 or something?  

Then in 2003 came Chris Rock's film "Head of State", and in 2006 Terry Crews played the President (again, set in the future) in "Idiocracy".  But during Obama's two terms, of course there was a run on the market, it seemed like every TV show and movie was casting actors as Presidents of color to reflect the times.  Now the pendulum has swung back the other way, but I still have a film or two to watch that was part of that trend. 

THE PLOT: A young teenager camping in the woods helps rescue the President of the United States when Air Force One is shot down near his campsite. 

AFTER: Ah, just a nice, simple story about a young boy coming of age, sent out into the forest alone on his first hunt.  And he brings home a large, African-American man.  Wait, that doesn't sound right. He's the first one on the scene when Air Force One goes down, and the President was saved by parachuting out in something that looked like a cross between an escape pod from "Star Wars" and the module that the moon astronauts would land in, hopefully in the sea - because who wants a bunch of astronauts crashing into their house?  

But this film doesn't try to be any more than it is, there's no philosophizing about the meaning of life or telling fortunes with tarot cards.  Who's got time when you have to take down terrorists with only a bow and arrow, or slide down a mountainside in a giant freezer to get away from them?  Sure, the Navy SEALS are on the way, but it takes time to get them to Finland, and the leader of the free world is in danger, so we've got to keep moving.  

This plays out like a low-rent version of "White House Down" or "Olympus Has Fallen", only with better scenery.  The wilderness itself is like a character here, in a part of Finland that's so remote there isn't a village or town for many miles, and the people are so down-to-earth that they may not even recognize the U.S. President - this kid might never have even seen a black man before, so when one comes out of the pod he might even think he's seeing an alien.  It's a funny bit, even if it is slightly racist.  

We've heard a lot lately about the "secret resistance" in the White House now, but this film was ahead of its time three years ago, with a plot to actively take the President down, and the terrorists here have help from a rogue Secret Service agent, and possibly more help in the situation room, too.  Apparently this was a somewhat unpopular President, but technically an American working to kill the Chief Executive is an act of treason, but then again, that's only if people find out about it.  Now we're hearing about lots of tiny treasons in the real world, like hiding pieces of paper from Trump so that he can't sign executive orders which will do more harm than good.  I'm not sure which is more disturbing, him signing to approve terrible ideas, or knowing that his own staff is sometimes working against him, doing the wrong thing but for the right reasons.  I suppose what's most disturbing is the fact that our current President has no concept of object permanence, that if he doesn't see a bill or executive order any more, then to him it no longer exists.  Like, even toddlers eventually figure out that their parents don't disappear when they play "Peek-A-Boo".  

But White House insiders colluding with terrorists to assassinate the President?  I know, it sounds crazy but maybe after another year under Trump, it may still come to that.  Keep an eye on this film, just in case it gives somebody like Pence or Gen. Kelly some inspiration.  Eh, who am I kidding, that's probably more unlikely than this film's final action sequence, which featured about three or four way-too-convenient coincidences.  It felt like somebody just realized that the end of the movie was coming up in 10 minutes, and so everything needed to come together very quickly in one giant logic-free set of circumstances to wrap it all up. 

Also starring Onni Tommila, Ray Stevenson (last seen in "Thor: Ragnarok"), Victor Garber (last seen in "Rebel in the Rye"), Jim Broadbent (last seen in "The Legend of Tarzan"), Ted Levine (last seen in "Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom"), Felicity Huffman (last seen in "Reversal of Fortune"), Mehmet Kurtulus, Jorma Tommila, Risto Salmi, Rauno Juvonen, Ken Thomas.

RATING: 6 out of 10 surface-to-air missiles