I had a choice to see this, August Rush, or The Golden Compass. This won, not because I thought it would be a better film, but simply by virtue of the fact that I wanted to see things die. In fact, I knew this would be a piece of steaming horrifying shit, not even just because Hollywood can’t make a video game adaptation to save its’ collective assholes, but just because it looked so goddamn corny. Classical music only works in movie action sequences if your last name is Besson or Woo. Other than that, step off, bitches.
This wasn’t Uwe Boll bad (though I will admit a longing to see Postal if only because Dave Foley is in it, and he plays a full-frontal cult leader. also, because the game is monstrously fucked-up) but it was a clunker. I’m glad I saw it, because no doubt this will disappear on the wind to the shelves of Blockbuster where fan boys can masturbate to the scrumptious boobage of Olga Kurylenkyo, whose only credit to date is the vampire who chews the fuck out of Elijah Wood in Paris, Je T’aime, and the fact that she’s hot in a short skirt.
I wasn’t disappointed, both in my hope that it would blow and that people died. I like R-rated movies, for the same reason I hate playing sports video games. I don’t want to play something that I can see on television. I want to do things that don’t happen. I want to vent my miserable white-collar rage on people via pixellation. I want to shoot things in the face, I want to chop off heads with a broadsword, I want to run up the side of the wall as a Persian prince and flip over people like a ninja. I want things to die in horrible ways. The reason GTA is so popular is because you can run over pedestrians with your car. You can ram the back of a slow moving vehicle, get out, and beat the person in front of you to death with a baseball bat, shoot their corpse, get in their car and run over a prostitute with it. Who cares that you can shoot a porno in a fucking side game?
Hitman is bloody, and good for it. People don’t just get shot, they get fucking ventilated. Heads explode with chunks of meat, a bullet tears out a quart of blood, people die messily. Yes! Yes yes yes yes! GOOD. I like that shit. If someone’s going to die, I want it to be a closed-casket funeral. Mess is best. And the afforementioned tart takes her top off alot and walks around in skimpy underwear in the most flimsy of character development moments.
So if you want to look at this like a bloody boob fest, whoo hoo. As a film, it’s just laughable. I cannot understand how they can keep fucking up video game movies. Because, anyone who has played most of the videogames that are coming out lately knows, they’ve been kicking severe ass cutscene/plotwise. I mean, people go into a video game movie, not expecting much more than to be entertained. I long for the day when someone gets nominated for their performance in a video game movie. And if the screenwriter were to just simply PLAY THE FUCKING GAME, the movie would pretty much write itself, or a close approximation thereof.
Dougray Scott continues his career seppuku as the Interpol foil to the “religious organization” assassin (they never get into really WHO Agent 47 works for, other than some sort of monastery-type shadow organization, and why he kills or who makes the money. which pretty much could have been interesting in and of itself.). He’s servicable with his little brogue, and he scowls alot and says Fuck You like a man. And Olga Kurylenkyo looks good in her underwear and out of them. She pouts, and smiles, and seduces. Also, running mascara is hot. I’m not sure if she acts, because her part is essentially fan boy masturbation vision. Which, hey, we all need someone’s body to paste the face of that girl we sit behind in calculus, with the sweaters and the tight ass. Be right back.
And then we have Timothy Olyphant. Oh, Timbo. I love me some Timothy Olyphant. He’s the sports reporter for my morning radio show (on Indie 103.1 with Joe Escalante!) and he’s hilarious. As an actor, he plays the sleazy pretty boy so well. He’s that good-looking, smirking bastard you want to punch in the face. He’s the motherfucking cat’s ass in Deadwood, but since that went tits up thanks to Old People Surfing Jesus Metaphor on HBO (will not do HBO rant, will not do HBO rant) he’s got a little free time on his hands. And he used it poorly. It’s another case of coming into your own a little too soon. He basically had a run of just poor casting this year that he probably and hopefully made a pretty penny off of, so he can be more discerning in his choices next year. And this is just the moldy cherry on the shit sundae. He was atrocious as the love interest against Jennifer Garner in the odious Catch and Release (which Kevin Smith actually acted the fuck out of, and proved through a fat fuck a bone, bitches). He was the misplaced villain (which someone compared to a sinister Starbucks manager, and which is spot fucking on) in Live Free or Die Hard (again, with Kevin Smith playing a pivotal and hilarious role). And then there was his Agent 47 (maybe had Kevin Smith played something in this it would have sucked less. Though probably not.)
I can’t believe I would long for Vin Diesel, but he was intended to and should have been in this movie. Timothy Olyphant looks about twelve with a shaved head, and he’s not emotionless so much as lame. He looks like Eurotrash, a guy in a suit kicked out of a Prague fancyboy bar because he wasn’t wealthy enough. Also, we’re supposed to buy the fact that he’s bad with women. Sorry. Not going to work. Not with Timmy O. It’s just poor casting, and never for a minute can you suspend your already strained disbelief that this fucking Starbucks manager is a world-class assassin. Just because you shave your head does not make you a badass. It’s called a weightset. Look it up.
So, this movie sucks. When things are dying, it’s fun. But you know this could have been better. It’s just that, like a videogame, someone got bored and decided to kill off their last guy and go outside to see what else was going on. So should you, with this movie.
