Return to The zeitgeist

Savage carnivorous bastard mongrels perpetuate the unwanted desire to maintain a cynical mindset inside a outwardly destructive world. 

From Paris With Love- Lethal Weapon Rip off or Good Film?

From Paris With Love is kind of like Lethal Weapon meets The Hurt Locker, and when those two distinctly different sensibilities collide, it’s surprisingly bad ass. Directed by Pierre Morel, whose talent for unflinching violence worked so brilliantly on Taken last year with Liam Nieson, is shown many times throughout this movie. However Morel’s style is at odds with a series of ill-fitting parts; actors who don’t mesh and a script which can’t seem to decide if it’s lobbying for an award or if it just wants to blow shit up.

The Lethal Weapon version of this movie is John Travolta, playing a bald spy named Charlie Wax. His approach to his job is best described as “punk rock". That means if there’s cocaine lying around he’ll snort it, and if there’s someone in his way he’ll shoot them in the head (much like in Hard Boiled with Chow Yun Fat) . However cartoonish the character may be, he’s also fantastically entertaining. Most of the movie’s laughs come from Wax, a man who is never afraid to say the ridiculous or do the unthinkable. Many of Travolta’s scenes are hit and miss, but when they hit they’re the only thing that keeps From Paris going. Wax is wild and unpredictable, and almost in spite of the movie he’s been stuck in, a lot of fun.

In the Hurt Locker or serious version of this movie is Jonathan Rhys Meyers and his fantastically unconvincing American accent ( Really Damn bad, if you thought Hugh Laurie's was bad watch John Rhys Meyers) as James Reece, a government agent working at the U.S. embassy in France. He’s in love with the perfect girlfriend and serious about his job, this is what is called cutting and pasteing characters! He has no real sense of humor, but he likes to play chess. I guess that’s a a personality, why not you can never have enough of "guy who plays chess" characters in a movie. Otherwise the character is all over the map. In one scene he hides in a corner like a coward while bullets fly past his head, in the next he’s Harry Callaghan, standing calmly while Wax makes everyone dead. Eventually that calm turns into something else. By the end of the film Reece is deeply conflicted about what they’re doing. He’s paired up with Wax and over the course of the film goes through emotional hell, and as things get worse and they’re embroiled in stopping a terrorist conspiracy, the whole thing becomes very dark and personal. At least until Travolta cuts in with another wisecrack, althoug at least they are funny.

There’s chemistry between Travolta and Meyers but it's not anything we haven't seen before, and it’s not really their fault. They’ve been written into different movies with no real meeting place in the middle. At some point even the movie seems to give up on making their pairing work, and splits them off into different realities. In one, John Travolta is re-paired up with a badass CIA driver who doesn’t talk (presumably because they paid their actors by the word) and in the other a heartfelt Meyers stumbles around with a gun while he watches his entire life unravel.

From Paris With Love goes at a steady rate of kick ass and take names but is held back by the serious dialogue scenes with what it’s doing and in the process never seems sure about what it wants to be. Is it a wild, shoot-em-up, buddy-cop movie or is it a serious meditation on the personal costs of terrorism in a world at war with itself? It waffles between those two insane extremes, never finding a middle ground, never really deciding on a specific tone. In the end it’s neither and nothing. To sum it up its a badass film that suffers from what many major action films suffer from BORING DIALOGUE SCENES, If I want to go see a dialogue filled movie I would watch Doubt ( Which no one should see since it's the most pretensious piece of trash since Valkrie, and yes I probably spelled that wrong). But let's end on a good note one of the best scenes of the movie has a bearded biker shoot terrorists with a rocket launcher....Damn

WarGames

Matthew Broderick (Ferris Buellers Day Off) and Ally Sheedy (The Breakfast Club) are the stars in this compelling, suspenseful, drama filled film. Matthew Broderick plays David Lightman a enthusiastic computer hacker that unknowingly hacks into the WOPR a United States military supercomputer programmed to predict possible outcomes of nuclear war. Lightman gets more than he paid for and initiates a global confrontation that could lead to the begining of World War III. With help from a computer mastermind (John Wood) Lightman must race against time to prevent nuclear war and the end of the world. Featuring top notch performances by Barry Corbin as General Beringer and Dabney Coleman as John McKittrick, WarGames has become a classic film that all movie goers should definatley check out.

Clue

The infamous board game comes to life in a live action, hour and a half movie. Riddled with surprises, this movie keeps you going to the very end with great performances by Tim Curry and Christopher Lloyd. In a movie where everyone is a suspect and nothing is as it seems you have to ask yourself, was it Colonel Mustard in the study with revolver? Miss Scarlet in the billard room with thew rope? Or was it Wadsworth the Butler? Check in tomorrow for the full review on this laugh filled movie!

Ferris Bueller's Day Off

A movie about a self-involved but lovable high school senior and his wild afternoon in downtown Chicago?

It doesn't get better than that.