Eye Candy #528 - "Rain Fall"

Rain Fall:  An extremely tepid thriller based on the book of the same name by Barry Eisler, “Rain Fall” also features almost 80% Japanese dialogue.  John Rain is a former spook for the CIA whose loyalties are called into question.  He is tasked with retrieving a flash drive with sensitive information on it that interests the Japanese government and criminal elements, as well as the United States (embodied by a CIA station chief played by Gary Oldman, who seems to spend all his time yelling at Japanese people).  We also get a Japanese cop looking into the case from the opposite end.  The plot is confusing and underdeveloped, and the “reveal” borders on the insulting (mostly because it references things that never happened on screen, while trying to get you to go “ah-Ha!” as if you watched it all).  The lead, Kippei Shiina, plays John Rain in a fairly wooden fashion.  Unremarkable in almost every way, though for some reason I liked the soundtrack.  Woodchuck sez, “Skip it.”

Eye Candy #527 - "Exit Wounds" (SEAGAL! #10)

Exit Wounds:  Another sterling example of acting oeuvre of one Earl Simmons, better known as the  rapper DMX.  It’s the same sort of gritty crime action flick he always seems to find himself in, this time with the immortal Steven Seagal playing star-maker here.  Seagal is Detroit cop Orin Boyd, who doesn’t play by the rules.    This shouldn’t be confused with his standard “LA cop who doesn’t play by the rules”, “NY cop who doesn’t play by the rules” or “ex-Navy SEAL who doesn’t play by the rules” schticks.  It’s all about nuance here, people.  Busted for being insubordinate, he is relegated to the worst precinct in town (so bad apparently, it has a miscast Jill Hennessey as precinct commander).   Once there, he comes in contact with a local dealer Latrell (DMX) doing a drug buy with an undercover cop.  Soon a large quantity of heroin goes missing from the evidence lock-up,  all signs point to a team of dirty cops.  On top of that, Latrell isn’t who he appears to be.  Boyd stumbles into the midst of this criminal conspiracy and all it gets resolved through a modicum of excessive violence.  The supporting cast also includes Isaiah Washington, Bill Duke, Anthony Anderson, Michael Jai White, and the equally immortal Bruce McGill.  Eva Mendes and Jamie Foxx have small parts, too (this came out back in 2001, long before their respective ships finally came in).  This is the beginning of Seagal’s long decline into a decade of mediocrity; this film is cheap and looks it, particularly in HD.  Seagal doesn’t do all of his own stunts (there is an extended bit involving a motorcycle and the person on the bike is so obviously not Steven, yet we get to see extensive shots of the stunt double from the front), he’s already starting to put on some weight, and there is some goofy misplaced wirework as well.  With the exception of one vaguely interesting fight with paper cutter blades (vaguely in the sense that I have never seen a fight with paper cutter blades, just forget that no reason is given for the paper cutters to be there in the first place), there is absolutely nothing here to write home about.  This may be Seagal’s first and only film (loosely) based on a novel.  Director Andrzej Bartkowiak is a much better cinematographer than he is a director (he also directed “Doom” and “Cradle 2 the Grave”).   There are lots of talented people here trapped by a terrible script. Woodchuck sez, “Skip it.”

Eye Candy #526 - "Sucker Punch"

Sucker Punch:  In the 1960's, a young woman's mother dies and her stepfather schemes to steal her inheritance, resulting in tragedy and the girl consigned to a mental hospital, with only 5 days until the specialist arrives to lobotomize her.  The young woman, Baby Doll (Emily Browning), quickly immerses herself in a fantasy world involving several of the other incarcerated girls, Sweet Pea (Abbie Cornish), Amber (Jamie Chung), Blondie (Vanessa Hudgins), and Rocket (Jena Malone), with all of them working at the same brothel and escaping into fantasy vignettes involving giant Japanese demon-warriors armed with gatling guns, World War 1-era steam-powered German zombies, dragons, knights, goblins, and B-17s, and cybernetic robotmen, as Baby Doll and company endeavor to gather five items essential for their escape plan.  Think of it as a hyper-sexual, violent "Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants".  Scott Glenn, looking very wizened, is here as resident plot device, with Carla Gugino is the girls' dance teacher, and Oscar Isaac as brothel owner Blue Jones.   Jon Hamm also has a small role in support.  The director, Zach Snyder, known for his popular adaptations of the stylized "300" and "Watchmen" graphic novels, has obviously watched way too much anime.  This is his first film based on an original screenplay...and it shows.  It feels like the kind of film a first-time screenwriter would make, attempting to include EVERYTHING they love about film, whether it makes sense or not.  The schizophrenic plot feels like 5 different stories, none of which is fully developed enough to stand on their own, mushed together into one hodge-podge of visually interesting elements that don't lend themselves to a great deal of coherence.  Also the brazen sexuality of the girls depicted puts Snyder's understanding of human sexuality somewhere just north of Penthouse Forum.  The acting is fine, but the girls' use up their glistening-teary-eye allowance well into the second reel.  It’s not a bad movie, but I could certainly see how it would be off-putting.  It doesn't lend itself easily to accurate marketing, so you just stick with the most readily apparent elements (girls! Swords! Nazis and dragons!) to suck people in.  This movie's greatest crime is that it quite simply has too much going on.  By the third or fourth vignette, you're feeling sensory overload and are, quite frankly, bored, because the vignettes move the plot along in small intervals and become more important than the plot itself (never mind how a girl in 1960's America would fantasize about an anime-inspired battle mech hopping around in World War I?).  I’m sure the director's cut DVD will have even more of the same.  All that being said, I liked it for what it was and disliked it for what it wasn't-it's cool to look at, but painfully thin in other crucial areas.  Woodchuck sez, "Worth a look…"