George Clooney regularly plays that guy many of us secretly wish we were: suave, well-groomed, handsome, charismatic, confident – in other words, the Oceans Eleven Clooney – or for that matter, simply that general image we have of George Clooney with those aforementioned qualities, devoid of any discernible weaknesses or personality flaws. Certainly he has also played roles where he is paranoid,  troubled, even ‘kooky’, but regardless of the odd exception which has seen him gaining weight or growing a beard for certain parts, there’s that marked disconnection between the audience and him and his characters – where its particularly difficult to even picture him wearing anything other than a suit or even just with a different hairstyle. In fact I’ve often wondered whether he’s been ‘doing a Hugh Grant’ this whole time by simply playing himself in most of his parts – where the on-screen Clooney is almost inseparable from his celebrity persona.

In Up in the Air it comes as no surprise when he initially appears to fit the bill again – a sharply dressed, handsome, confident, silver-tongued devil. But as we delve deeper into this character of Ryan Bingham – a ‘corporate downsizing expert’ who has prioritised professionalism and self preservation above all else and has micromanaged to a clockwork efficiency every little last detail of his working life spent mainly at airports and within planes and hotel rooms and who is, as a result, completely detached from remorse and emotional reality – we see something we haven’t seen before; the polar opposite of what George Clooney stands for and what that overall image of George Clooney is. A vulnerable human being.

Bingham comes across as very similar to the character of Nick Naylor in Thank You For Smoking, also directed by Jason Reitman, the former a professional firer of people with zero empathy and the latter a pro-tobacco spokesperson, the both of them unscrupulous champions of capitalism who we ought to really hate but somehow, through those innate snake-like charms of theirs, manage to win us over with a surprising likeability. The main difference between them is that in Up in the Air we catch a glimpse of the life Bingham has left behind and the pain caused by the ramifications of his choices, concealed behind that all-too-familiar smiling Clooney exterior.

This is a film many of us can relate to. It deals with the pursuit of a career and the security of a salary versus the dreams that may not pay off and which we may well never achieve. It explores the trade-off between excelling in what you need to do and not doing the best you can in what you want to do, and vice-versa. We are confronted with that awful fear in the back our minds that there is an extremely high probability that our lives will probably not turn out the way we wished, and how powerless we are to truly prevent ourselves from harm. We see human fragility in the face of love and pride, where a compromise needs to be made and where something usually needs to be sacrificed.

All of these worries are present in the characters in Up in the Air: dreamers and cynics, sometimes a bit of both. Bingham’s love interest in the film, Alex, shares the almost exact same lifestyle but ends up affecting him profoundly. The young hotshot Natalie Keener believes in true love and the importance of seeking it, refusing to even imagine life without it and disagreeing with Bingham’s outlook and the emotionless prerequisites of the horrible nature of their work. These characters impart their beliefs on one another, but the one who ‘learns’ the most from it is Ryan Bingham who, as a downsizer whose life philosophy all along has been to reduce the load of his own emotional baggage while reaching his life target of 50 million frequent flyer miles, eventually comes to terms with the harsh reality that he has, consequently, made redundant his own opportunities of truly living. The scene where he is required to give a potential future brother-in-law advice on the importance of marriage – a decision he has up until then personally staunchly opposed – exposes a hypocrisy he can’t help but self-deprecatingly acknowledge and yet, through this, we feel a strange empathy for him, a character who is seemingly heartless, and see how even the most rock-hard stubbornness can still be swayed. Bingham is heartbroken in the end, but the fact that his heart was able to be broken at all really solidifies his character.

And that’s what really got me in this movie. Far from being depressing, there is a hope that’s revealed through Ryan Bingham: the moment he accepts the flaws of his own beliefs and comes to terms with the pure fact that life cannot be lived alone coincides with the audience’s discovery that, instead of constantly being that guy we wanted to be, this time round George Clooney is playing the guy who kind of reminds us of ourselves. We might not have that exact same external charm or the trademark grey hair or display such confidence in public speaking but inside, we all feel the same things, and that’s what makes Up in the Air hit home so convincingly and accessibly on a human level.

Photo Source

Clint Eastwood directed films, for me, come in two categories: his best films such as Unforgiven, Gran Turino, and Letters from Iwo Jima are amazingly sentimental, whilst his worst ones suffer from, and this might be a little harsh, extreme emotional manipulation – take the ending of Million Dollar Baby, the overacting in Mystic River, and pretty much the entirety of Changeling for instance, the latter category of which I consider to feature several of the most overrated movies of recent times. So then along comes Invictus, a drama about the 1995 South African Rugby Union World Cup winning team and Nelson Mandela’s input in using the sport to unite a divided nation, which not only throws my two category theory out the window, it also convinces me that Eastwood is capable of achieving something in-between: Mediocrity.

The problem with Invictus is that, unlike many sports films that have come before it, it doesn’t focus just on the sport or the sporting-related drama. It tries to bring together Mandela’s election victory, the man himself and the inspiration he found in prison through the poem the film is named after, the state of apartheid and class in South Africa at the time, as well as the events of the rugby tournament without really concentrating enough on any of the individual elements. It is, in other words, the film equivalent of gathering too many eggs into the one basket or, if you will, a film which tries to tackle much more than it can really handle.

Invictus does have its moments. Morgan Freeman is excellent and the character of Mandela is portrayed affectionately and sensibly with hints of his humanity, humour, and his own family problems amidst the enormity of the task he faced. There is a nice scene where the Springboks spend a day with soccer-loving children in a poor community and the only black player on the team is mobbed. But sadly the story suffers mainly through the lack of any strong leading characters apart from Mandela: Matt Damon’s Francois Pienaar who, as the team captain and the main focus on the sporting aspect of the film, is at the end of the day just a rugby player after all, and whilst there are supporting characters in the form of Mandela’s bodyguards and personal assistants while New Zealand’s Jonah Lomu is represented as the closest “bad guy” character to be found in the movie, none of them are explored enough to make the event feel as significant as it ought to have been. The rest of the cast act only as a means of connecting the few major characters together – the Springboks team in particular have very little to offer apart from uttering filler-speak and nodding their heads in agreement or shaking them in disapproval - and Pienaar’s and Mandela’s families contribute only in speaking minor lines of exposition and shouting in excitement at the final whistle.

The fairytale simply works better as a moment in history documented through word and memory than as a film, which is surprising given that, even without any liberties taken with the actual facts of the tournament as demonstrated in many of the other movies in the genre where last minute goals or touchdowns or home runs or three pointers are scored, the Springbok’s did really win the World Cup as underdogs and they did actually score a last minute drop goal in extra time in the Final and yet none of this hits home as anything remotely exciting. Unfortunately Eastwood has a deliberately slow style which is simply not suited to a story of Mandela as well as a story about a sporting miracle at the same time, when clearly he does not know how to capture the excitement of sport never mind a code of football alien and peculiar to many Americans and the mainstream audience granted how scrum shots are over-elaborated on and drop goals are excruciatingly slow-mo’d. As to the bigger question of whether South Africa’s problems improved as a result of the team’s victory, the film teases you by alluding to it through a close-up of black and white hands on the trophy and spliced-together footage of a celebrating nation but does not expand on what happened next, and what we are left with is an attempt at capturing the state of a country during a single sporting moment when the moment is better felt and experienced and almost impossible to truly capture on screen.

It is by no means a terrible film. Certainly nowhere near as awful or as ridiculous as my favourite bad sports movie Victory/Escape to Victory – starring Michael Caine, Sylvester Stallone, members of the England 1966 World Cup (soccer) winning squad, where English and American prisoners of war  in WWII (plus Pele) play the Nazis and win not only the final match but also their freedom. There is however a perplexing and inappropriate scene in Invictus near the end where a South African Airlines plane flies over the stadium to insinuate an act of terror which has no place whatsoever in this movie. Ultimately though we are merely left with a Mandela film which would have been better had it just focused on Nelson Mandela and where the rugby didn’t get in the way, or otherwise a rugby story better left as perhaps a feature article or a story told in a pub or in a school PE class. Fans of the sport and those interested in the former South African president will likely be left disappointed with a final product akin to that of Ang Lee directing Hulk; a talented director better suited to emotional pieces taking on a project that aims for an ambitious goal but skews the kick wide of the mark. And regardless of what the critics say, I still think Million Dollar Baby, Mystic River and Changeling were much worse than this.

Well all right then: Junk food, check. S&M, check. Onto the review.

After about five minutes in, not taking into account the opening rap song performed by Mr T himself, it becomes immediately evident that this man has no acting ability nor discernible talent whatsoever. It also comes as a shock to realise that, contrary to the popular image of him being a muscular and scary behemoth, he is actually quite short, overweight, and in such obvious distress trying to memorise his lines that you actually start to, ahem, pity the fool.

So this is the result of the Hollywood decision to try and soften the image of Mr T; to make him more endearing and less attached to his previous roles in The A-Team and Rocky III (as B.A. Baracus and Clubber Lang, respectively). By coming up with a fresh character for him to play, Bruise Brubaker (with the exact same hairstyle he’s had for his entire life, mind you), this was Mr T reborn, reincarnated with the qualities of compassion, selflessness, and love; none of which makes any difference because, at the end of the day, Mr T can only be Mr T: and Mr T’s only emotion is that permanently strained and confused angry look on Mr T’s face, no matter how hard they tried to turn him into Buddha.

By the time Bruise befriends (rather too easily it must be said) an annoying 80s pre-pubescent ‘tough street kid’ by inviting him back to his place (seriously), it also becomes shockingly obvious that this film is entirely self-serving and indulgent that if you were hoping for entertainment rather than 90 minutes of brown-nosing then you’re in for a painful experience. But let us not stray off-topic: when not busy volunteering at the local youth community centre and teaching kids important lessons on morality whilst wearing purple leotards that really need to be seen to be believed, Bruise earns a living as a tuxedo-wearing bouncer at an upper class Chicago nightclub where he is treated as a key, integral pillar of society. Where even the police know him on a first name basis and give him all the time in the world. Where he resists the urge for violence and resolves potential conflict from body-building drunks through the power of spoken word. Where you realise that this is, forget about Buddha, basically a retelling of the life of Jesus with Mr T in the lead role and suddenly you get the compelling urge to simply turn the DVD off but can’t because you just want to hang around to see whether he gets nailed to a cross by the end of it. Spoiler warning: he doesn’t, and in the opinion of this reviewer such an omission hurts the film.

So then it turns out that the community centre needs to find a source of funding otherwise it will be shut down, leading to Bruise enlisting in the upcoming Toughest Man In The World contest which makes as much sense as the baseball World Series consisting entirely of American teams and just so happens to be in a few weeks’ time and held in town. This leads to about an hour’s worth of discomfort as we watch Bruise go through the 80s prerequisite training montage footage clearly ripping off Rocky as well as some awful subplot involving his love interest and the mafia until we get to the actual event, which is a total joke anyway as he wins it by running through an obstacle course wall rather than climbing over it like everybody else and doesn’t get disqualified.

Overall I’d say the best parts of this movie were when my accomplice, for perhaps the first and only ever time such a moment will occur, referred to Mr T as a ‘fat shit’, and the potential to be had were one to use video editing software to splice together the most inappropriate dialogue scenes for schadenfreudian YouTube consumption purposes such that the footage comes across (more clearly) as a B-grade censored snuff film (again, PG rated). In the end, Toughest Man In The World wasn’t quite bad enough to be good nor good enough to be respectable, existing merely as a lesser-of-two-evils choice: a shitty DVD for one meaningless cent less than six bucks versus a guilty Value Meal’s worth of junk food where both options, much like a bucket of KFC (or, for that matter, too many Snickers bars), leave you with a common outcome of feeling sick and regretful afterwards.

*In doing research for this review, or rather just looking for obscure screenshots, lots of credit must go to the following site dedicated to this film with appreciably condescending comments: http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/Set/9540/mrscreen.html. In some ways I’m shocked that I am only the 82nd visitor to this web page, ever, since the dawn of its creation, but then again what the hell were all 82 of us thinking? In any case if you’re reading this then please click on the link as a sign of respect; let’s aim to get the hits at least up to 100.

(a) Shoot every scene with a moving, sweeping camera so that you end up focusing on the bottom of people’s chins. Or the bottoms of “hot girls”. 

(b) Base the action around America’s world-superiority and military might and exaggerate it to the point that it makes the pro-Americanism sentiments of the likes of Rambo First Blood Part II  and Rocky IV seem like dissident communist propaganda.

(c) Get as many helicopters as the film’s budget can pay for, which in the case of Transformers 2 is a lot, and have them fly around next to each other for a third of the film’s duration.

(d) Have multiple “funny” characters of various stereotypically ethnic backgrounds, particularly the African-American ‘homie G gangsta’, to balance out the hardcore caucasian American patriotism in order to, presumably, deepen the experience of the movie. 

(e) Have your CGI artists do the directing for you while blowing up as many things as possible. 

And there you have it, the five step formula for a Hollywood blockbuster. However unlike Pearl Harbour, Armageddon, The Rock, and Bad Boys I & II, Transformers started out as an excuse to sell toys to kids with the flimsiest and most nonsensical excuse of a plot holding all the figurines/characters together. Flimsy as in mechanical shape-shifting good guy aliens coming to Earth to fight their mechanical shape-shifting bad guy equivalents, all of them masquerading as vehicles while befriending humans and learning to speak English; nonsensical to the point that if a major character like Optimus Prime dies (in order to pave the way for another series of all-new toys) then no worries, just resurrect him with a convenient plot device like The Matrix of Leadership. In other words, with a film license so full of “anything goes”, Michael Bay hit the jackpot. 

This sequel is practically the same as the first film, the both of them essentially a series of convenient dead character resurrections, an overload of CGI, done up cars, girls with too much makeup, and hit-or-miss jokes (but mainly miss: the two “wise-cracking” Homie G transformers are especially cringe-worthy). It’s quite clear that the script was written well after the action set-pieces were decided upon – how else could you explain it when characters can travel from America to the Egyptian pyramids in an instant via a teleporting Transformer. Insert teen-relationship staple movie cliches with a Transformer posing as a nubile girl and you’ve pretty much got your film.

In some ways the movie feels like a revival of the one-man-army popcorn action flick from the 80s and early 90s, and given how Transformers 2 turns out it’s rather easy to see why that genre died. For a movie as far-fetched as this with what is practically a prerequisite to turn your brain off as you enter the theatre, it is amazing and even slightly insulting how 9/11 can warrant a mention; Barack Obama is also referred to by name just for realism’s sake. I find it extraordinary that such intentionally over-the-top movies, more often than not from Bay himself, can attempt to try their hand at political commentary. Perhaps it was even Obama himself who said it best with the quote, “You can put lipstick on a pig, but it’s still a pig”, which sums up Transformers 2 to a tee. 

Preamble, T1 and T2

I am a hardcore Terminator fan and this rant has been a long time coming.

The original was one of the very first movies I ever saw as a kid of about 6, complete with all the violence and swearing and even the sex scene – none of which made any sense to my child mind, of course. Along with the Conan films which my parents also enjoyed, I suppose it’s fair to say that I was born into being a Schwarzenegger fan, although only in hindsight do I realise that I was actually born into being a James Cameron fan. I was terrified by the dark vision of the future in the film, by how hard it was to destroy just that one Terminator, and how when 1991 came round all the kids raved on about how awesome the sequel was and how the T-1000 in particular was one of the scariest film villains ever, even surpassing the Arnie T-800. T2 lost a lot of its dark edge and replaced it with a more hopeful tale of the value of humanity achieving victory through their inner strength, and it was also the cementing of Schwarzenegger as a true Hollywood icon. But the real star was Cameron, the creator, writer, and director. He had raised his credibility with Aliens (as well as the tremendously underrated The Abyss) in between the two Terminator films, with a vision of exactly what he wanted his story to say. And he chose to end it with just T1 and 2, even shooting an alternate ending to T2 with an old Sarah Connor sitting in a park post-August 29th 1997 but opted instead for a black highway ending which was, looking back, a huge mistake.

Because of this ambiguous ending, talk of the third movie was always rumoured in the mid to late 90s. All of it was entirely hypothetical, as Cameron had, with the first two movies, melded an extremely tight and consistent storyline taking into account, as best he could, the paradoxes of time travel. The use of this device in any medium is bound to be confusing and often inevitably contained within an infinitely recurring loop (e.g. 12 Monkeys), especially in Terminator given that Kyle Reese was sent back to 1984 and is John Connor’s father, and that if there was no Judgment Day and no Terminators, he would never be sent back and therefore John could never exist. However the second T-800 sent back to protect him had succeeded in its mission, and then in destroying itself ensured that Judgment Day would never occur. Would John Connor just vanish at that moment? According to Cameron and without entering the realms of discussing alternate dimensions, no, and I agree with that. The infinite loop was broken, and that’s it, game over man, game over.

In T1 the T-800 was a cold, heartless killing machine. In T2, John Connor trained it to be “more human, and not such a dork all the time”. The same goes for Sarah Connor, a character who had evolved from a vulnerable girl who got stood up on Friday night dates to the completely unrecognisable and trained warrior in the gap between the two movies – a strong female personality which was quite rare in films at the time with traits borrowed heavily from the Ellen Ripley character in Cameron’s Aliens. By the end of T2, both these characters, the Terminator and Sarah, “had learnt the value of human life”, so what more was there to do to progress their arcs any further? The only thing that could have happened was that they would go backwards, and sure enough that’s what we got with T3.

T3

So, fast forward to 2003 when the hypothetical third film became a brutal actuality with no James Cameron and, crucially, no Linda Hamilton. The studios had practically decided, “You know, forget about what Cameron thought, let’s add in some cool stuff and bring home the cash. No Sarah Connor? No Problem!”. But there were problems as to how they would go about coming up with a script for another sequel; so many of them. Judgment Day had already been averted. Cyberdyne Systems, and therefore Skynet, the Terminator AI, had been blown up. It was impossible for the Terminators to ever be created, and hence the “unknown future” Sarah Connor had spoken of would roll along and she and John would live their lives as any other ordinary mother and son. Not according to John Brancato and Michael Ferris though, two “writers” you can rely on if ever you want your favourite series to be completely ruined.

And ruin it they most definitely did. Judgment Day was inevitable, apparently. Destroying the Cyberdyne building only served to delay it, and Skynet was now a program run by the military. What? But wouldn’t the T-800 in T2, from the future, already know this? And if it was inevitable, why didn’t Arnie do what the Edward Furlong John Connor suggested and stay with the Connors until Judgment Day did eventually happen, still pretending to be “Uncle Bob”. What a waste! The biggest insults from T3 were, from least insulting to most:

3. It deemed the events of T2 as completely irrelevant. Completely.

2. The T-800 referred to itself as a T-101. WRONG. It is and always has been a Cyberdyne Systems Model 101, T-800. You cannot simply merge the two nomenclatures and expect people not to notice, not least those people who grew up with the movies. Harsh, nerdy bastards like me. The least the screenwriters could do was get their facts right by, just as a suggestion, actually watching T1 and T2.

1. No Linda Hamilton after she refused to reprise her role as Sarah Connor, stating that the script was “soulless,” which is a nicer word than what I would call it. THE Sarah Connor, the legend. The most human character in a series about machines wiping out humanity, suddenly gone, killed off-screen and written out with one word: Leukaemia. The first two movies were never about the special effects, even if T2 was the first film to rely completely on its believability: it was about the human aspect and character development. It wasn’t about the one-liners either; “I’ll be back” and “Hasta La Vista, Baby” just naturally attained pop culture quotable status without ever trying, as in any memorable film. It wasn’t even about Schwarzenegger, whose career post-T2 never hit the same heights. It was all about Sarah Connor.

So what were we left with? A film resembling Terminator only in name and nothing else, not least personalities. Gone was the key character, along with Brad Fiedel’s theme music. John Connor was a pathetic nobody played by an equally pathetic Nick Stahl, spending his time getting high off Vet clinic drugs. The T-800 (hold on no, T-101) was a parody of the Terminator we had known, reduced to a ridiculous joke machine who somehow knew what style of sunglasses were “in” at the time. Instead of strong female leads, all we got were Clare Dane’s pointless Kate Brewster and Kristanna Loken’s female “Terminatrix” with inflatable breasts, a result of primary schoolchild imaginings and “Oh wow imagine if there was a chick Terminator!” nonsense turning into a 100 million dollar movie production.

In fact, it makes me sick just thinking about T3 and the guns in Sarah Connor’s coffin and the disgusting image of Arnie holding that coffin up on one arm with an assault rifle in the other and the “advanced” anti-Terminator Terminatrix that no one in the future ever knew about with an inbuilt hair-styling program that I’m just going to stop it here. As for the Sarah Connor Chronicles TV show with another female “hot chick” cyborg who presumably helped teen John Connor pass his final exams and enter college even if it knew he was going to fail them anyway, just…no. 

Terminator Salvation, aka Terminator Salvation: The Future Begins, aka Terminator 4

McG directing was not a good sign. In fact, given his resume, it was about on par with news that Uwe Boll was taking the helm. McG claimed to be a Terminator fan and wanted to right all that was wrong with T3, even if he was depending on a script penned again by Brancato and Ferris. Plus, after doing the Charlie’s Angels movies, his reputation was hardly sterling. But when Christian Bale signed on, it raised questions. Would Bale, now a bona fide “major actor”, agree to a rubbish film? Would he be doing it because it was, actually, seriously, good? Or was he just doing it for the money? When Linda Hamilton signed on late in post-production a few months before the film’s release, it raised the very same questions. She had turned down T3 but now, surely, Sarah Connor herself would make the right choice. The trailers looked great too and, maybe, just maybe, I could forget about the last movie and just go along with the fourth.

After seeing the film this past weekend, I now know the answers: They took the cash and ran.

30 minutes in, I was intrigued. Going in with the lowest possible expectations, already hating it and hoping it’d impress me on some minor and purely aesthetic degree, it actually had me for a little while. “Could this actually be good?” I wondered. Anton Yelchin’s portrayal of a young Kyle Reese was brilliant. Bale’s John Connor rising through the ranks, the story of how he became that “great military leader”, was quite promising. Sam Worthington’s Marcus Wright had, again, great potential, although his character would have definitely benefited if it not for the fact that his real identity was openly proclaimed in all the trailers, ridding the film of any great suspense or shock (but to be fair, T2 was guilty of the same thing with the “good guy T-800″). But then came the moment. The moment that spelled the downfall: the stealth giant Terminator/Transformer people harvester that could sneak up behind you without a sound, stocked with motorcycle mini-Terminators in its legs whose sole purpose of existence in this film was so that Connor could ride one later. From then on it was all style with zero substance, zero heart. Cold and calculating, like a machine, with no clue as to what made the first two movies great. All the references were there: The human slaves supervised by machines that Michael Biehn’s Kyle Reese made mention to in T1, the rubber skin T-600s, the creation of the superior T-800s, but not once did it feel at all like the dark and frightening vision of the future shown in glimpses in the first two films. The absence of Sarah Connor in this future of whom Kyle Reese in T1 spoke of as the legend who trained John Connor into the man he became, who in William Wisher’s novelisation of T2 lived until an old age before finally dying in battle, hurts this film immensely. How would Kyle ever know about Sarah Connor, and hence fall in love with her before volunteering to be sent back in time? Through hearsay? Through Bale’s muffled incoherent Batman voice shouting all his lines as if his life depended on it?

But the worst thing about T4? Even worse than the dialogue (memorably, a foiled rapist saying the words “killing me won’t win this war”)? The logic. The logic that Skynet would capture Kyle Reese knowing he is “important” but not kill him the moment they got him is just ludicrous. As is a special computer terminal made specifically for Marcus Wright to conveniently wander into on his way back to “Skynet City” (which was Skynet’s plan all along, taking into account Marcus happening to run into and befriending Kyle Reese and also meeting John Connor and getting rescued by a resistance woman who falls in love with him who helps him escape from capture so that he could return to Skynet with all of this knowledge) and finding out the truth of his existence via an awful drawn-out exposition scene with a computerised Helena Bonham Carter; would a computer be so dumb as to give away its sinister intentions before the mission had been completed and therefore sway the opinion and motives of their most advanced creation? Are we still in the old ages of filmmaking where bad-guy characters have long moustaches they can twirl and accompany with an evil laugh and all-revealing monologue; when a Bond villain captures James Bond and tells him his plans when he should be busy getting to the point and killing Bond. And since when (when?!) was a Terminator immune to the melting effects of molten lava? 

Plenty of style with plenty of references and quotes from the core storyline but they were all for show, as if to say “yes, we are hardcore fans ourselves because we’ve got that same Guns’N'Roses track and ‘I’ll be back’ and we’ve got a CGI Schwarzenegger and we also show you how John Connor got that scar we saw in T2″, whilst managing to completely miss the point. With Sarah Connor now long gone, there still remained the chance to turn a fledgling John Connor character into the great leader he was destined to become, but in the end he was only promoted to that position because the existing resistance bigwigs got wiped out. As for the ending? If they were going for the same emotional “I know now why you cry” response as at the end of T2, then they failed spectacularly: having a woman fall in love with Marcus and kiss him, along with a mute little girl whose only reason for being in the film was to hold his metal hand at the end, does not equal emotion. In other words, if you give a child an assignment to write about a giraffe, the kid will make mention of a long neck. If you give a child the Terminator license, they will come up with T3 and T4. If a true prequel to T1 was going to be made and set in the future (yes, time travel is confusing), then that film should end with the 1984 T-800 being sent back in time followed shortly after by an adult Kyle Reese who has mulled for years over that photo of Sarah Connor and “memorised every line, every curve”. But no, if we want to see that film then we’ll have to wait until Terminator 5 comes out, which in all likelihood will be made in a couple of years. For fuck’s sake.

I was really hoping Terminator Salvation would be a personal salvation, restoring my hope in Hollywood and in the series, but then again I was never going to be satisfied: the irreversible damage had already been done with T3. It’s a shame because there was some potential here for T4 to act as a solid prequel to T1, but ultimately it tried to be too many things at once. It tried to be faithful to hardcore fans, fix the horrible errors of T3, as well as appeal to the mainstream audience, ultimately ending up with none of those: the final result a mere special effects-filled turn-off-your-brain “summer movie” under the presumption that the first two films were successful only because of the action. The action was brilliant yes – and much of the current opinion surrounding Salvation is that it works as an entertaining action movie, but the key point of the Terminator series was that it was the story of a diner waitress-turned-warrior single-mother and her knowledge of the truth, and of a young boy overwhelmed by his destiny: human aspects that appealed to fans on many different levels. Terminator was always about the path of humans discovering themselves, their innate and unrealised potential, and how machines could never quite emulate nor understand that spirit which brought the resistance their victory in the end. Terminator was all James Cameron and Sarah Connor and without the both of them, along with there being no substitute for a human connection in parts 3 and 4, this series has been well and truly Terminated (sorry).

A few words about Kitano San to begin. Many of you will remember that crazy old 80’s TV show Takeshi’s Castle, where contestants participated in a myriad of next-to-impossible obstacle courses with predictably hilarious, injurious, I’ve-got-a-bad-feeling-about-this, results. Well this is that very same Takeshi. The very same Takeshi who then went on to make a name for himself in the 90’s with hauntingly beautiful (and often very violent) Yakuza films, before finding relative international success in the 2000’s with the fascinating Zatoichi, a film about a blind samurai, a pair of revenge-seeking geishas, and tap-dancing. Obviously. And in between? Well, that very same Takeshi made a lot of weird ones too. And when I say weird, I mean crazy, messed up, only-in-Japan weird.

If you haven’t realised by now, I’m a big fan of “Beat” Kitano, a nickname he often likes to call himself. I love his charisma, his takes-no-shit attitude. His facial twitches and odd mannerisms. His involvement in the incredibly psychotic cult classic Battle Royale. I’ve even put up with a lot of the ridiculousness that happens in his movies, acknowledging it instead as a unique artistic vision with the defiance of an over-fervent stalker fan. But this time, with Takeshis’, you’ve gone too far, Takeshi. You have gone too far.

Don’t even try to understand what’s going on here.

Only someone like Takeshi Kitano can make this reviewer, in an attempt to explain the plot of this film with the utmost of his ability, sound like a complete and utter fool. Allow me to demonstrate:

Takeshis’ is a movie about the real life Takeshi, as a director, making a movie, and there are auditions for this movie. Fair enough, so far so good; if Kitano is making a mockumentary-type satire about himself, fine. I won’t even mention how this movie (the movie being watched, not the movie within the movie being watched) actually started with a scene in a WWII setting. Not relevant, not one bit. But it sure doesn’t help when one of the people auditioning for Takeshi’s movie is also played by Takeshi, and that this Takeshi, a character working in a convenience store, is practicing for the role of, seemingly, the real Takeshi in the movie within the movie. Oh shit. And then it turns out that every new scene is totally unrelated from the last, but still contains the same imagery and characters we’ve seen moments earlier in a different context. And some of these scenes are dreams. And that this dreaming Takeshi is now an altogether separate character who drives a pink taxi around, and who is not auditioning for a part but still meeting all the same people these other two Takeshis have already met. And in the end, the convenience store Takeshi kills the real life director Takeshi. And that last bit really isn’t a spoiler because (a) I have no idea as to what the significance of that scene even was, and (b) spoilers tend to ruin plot points and this movie, really, has no point.

See what I mean? I was really trying there, too.

If one were to plot the storyline of this movie as a diagram, it might well look like this picture below. In 3D. Which is also what your head will look like if you attempt to work out a coherent and logical explanation behind it all.

Kitano has said that he wanted audiences to come out of this film not knowing what to say or what to think, so in that respect he has definitely succeeded, albeit in some deranged and sick Yoko Ono unit of measurement (Y/Onos per minute?). Takeshis’ makes Being John Malkovich look like a predictable American sports film where the underdog team with the player who was always teased or came from a broken home scores the winning touchdown or basket or goal in the last second. Actually, I’d go as far as saying that Takeshis’ makes even the most surrealist nonsense you could conjure up in your mind (whilst on elicit drugs) seem as certain as the knowledge that a hammer against a window equals smashed glass. And it is for this very fact; the fact that I understood precisely none of it and am certain that I will never see anything like it ever again in my lifetime, that I give it 4 stars out of 5. And as for you, Takeshi, I still reckon you’re awesome, but I think it’s also time we had a break as I go off to watch something I can comfortably understand.

4/5

Michael Biehn : Thanks Willooi. The pleasure is all mine. But please, from now on call me The Biehn

WillOoi : Umm okay. So what are you up to these days Micha..The Biehn?

Michael Biehn : I’ve just finished shooting a couple more feature films where I play tough, handsome, good-looking, sexy, and charismatic macho characters with guns.

WillOoi : You seem to have made a career out of that type of role.

Michael Biehn : Indeed. Ever since I fell out of the sky, naked, in Terminator 1, I think there’s been a helluva lot of demand for that type of character. I mean, it was me naked versus Arnie naked, and the people made their choice.

WillOoi: Terminator really did a lot for you didn’t it?

Michael Biehn : Definitely. I’ll let you in on a little secret here: you know that unnecessary sex scene in T1 with Linda Hamilton? That was my idea. I mean what better way to brighten up an otherwise dark, moody and, let’s be honest here, a dodgy sci fi action B-movie which went on to surprise us all, than with some lovemaking? And from there me and Jim (James Cameron) came up with the whole ‘Kyle Reese is John Connor’s father and John ends up sending his dad back in time’ thing and hence completing the circle. You can credit me with that.

WillOoi : I also remember seeing you in some dodgy Pay TV movie, where you played a spy with amnesia or something. There was also an unnecessary sex scene in that too.

Michael Biehn : Oh, Timebomb? Yeah my idea again. If it wasn’t for me, you think there’d be those Bourne films around? In fact my lawyers are working on a case right this minute to net me a percentage of the takings. I was a direct influence. And Timebomb wasn’t dodgy.

Michael Biehn : Damn right. My lawyers had to help me out with that as well.

WillOoi : [Jokingly] So any other lawsuits right now we should know about?

Michael Biehn : Off the top of my head…against Sean Bean. For ripping off my name. Changing the spelling does not make ANY difference…it’s just like Adidas and Adihash: a bad rip-off. He tries to be like me too, haven’t you noticed?

WillOoi : Ummm…Aliens was such a great film. Reunited with James Cameron, your portrayal of the character Corporal Hicks is legendary.

Michael Biehn : I think so too. James Remar had the role before me but honestly, who would the people rather see? Some skinny ass punk with a lisp who played a nothing role in some crappy gang movie I can’t even remember the name of, or the sex icon that is The Biehn? Jim made the right choice in sacking him.

WillOoi : No way, The Warriors was a real cult classic. And I love the game!

Michael Biehn : [An agitated look appears on Michael's face. I decide to move to the next question].

Michael Biehn : Sigourney Weaver. Did you feel that incredible sexual tension between my character and Ripley in Aliens? That wasn’t scripted either. We had a real connection, Sigourney and I. That’s why I was furious when I got killed off in Alien 3, I had it all in my mind: a 7-minute love scene with Ripley. Those damn idiots at Fox rejected my version of the script. And Bill Paxton too hahaha! I owned that punk so many times it isn’t funny. [Keeps on laughing uncontrollably].

The Biehn: “My hands were on Ripley’s ass in this scene”

Michael Biehn : I was in Grindhouse.

WillOoi : I haven’t seen that. It was split into two parts where I am and Planet Terror hasn’t come out yet.

Michael Biehn : [Silence. Next.]

Michael Biehn : I love games. I play them as much as I can, but because of all the times I was bitten on the hand in my movies (T1, Aliens…), sometimes I can’t press some of those shoulder buttons on my PS3 and 360. That’s why I like the Wii. I also liked how my role in C&C Tiberium allowed me to …

WillOoi : [I cut him off, rather rudely] Sorry…is it Tiberium or Tiberian?

Michael Biehn : Please don’t cut The Biehn off. Because I’m a nice, handsome guy, I’ll answer that…and honestly I forget as well now, those guys at Westwood just couldn’t make up their minds. But AS I WAS SAYING, that role allowed me to truly express my range as an actor. I mean, have you ever SEEN someone play a tough charismatic military character like that before?

WillOoi : Umm…don’t you, like, always play that character?

Michael Biehn : [Deadly stare]. I was in Law & Order recently as well you know.

WillOoi : Sorry again, but isn’t the move from the big screen to TV show kind of like a backwards step? I mean, no offence or anything, but I feel so sorry for Gary Sinise these days, sure he was playing second fiddle to Tom Hanks for a long time, but just when it seemed like he’d finally get a starring role the next thing you know his best option is to get a desperate gig on a TV show. That hardly anyone watches. And you were only in one episode.

Michael Biehn : [Checks his watch and, slowly and creepily with his eyes shut, counts to ten. He reopens them looking much calmer]. At least I’m not Bill Paxton. I mean, who watches that crappy show where he has ten wives or some crap like that? I always kicked his ass and he KNOWS it.

Michael Biehn : Funny you mention that. Right at this moment my lawyers are working on a case that’s been 15 years in the making: Hideo Kojima completely ripped off my likeness for Solid Snake in the early Metal Gear games, and I haven’t received any thanks, cash, nothing. Well it’s a joint lawsuit against Konami and Inifinity Ward…have you noticed all the Aliens references in the new CoD? I said most of that stuff! And again…nudda.

Michael Biehn : I should have played the role of Captain McMillan as well. I can pull off accents, easy. [Switches to a poor attempt at a Scottish accent that sounds suspiciously like Sean Connery]. I broke out of Alcatraz…now you want me to go back in?!

WillOoi : Isn’t that from The Rock?

Michael Biehn : Yeah. I was in that too, remember?

WillOoi : I do, you died after appearing for about 5 minutes.

Michael Biehn : But it was memorable though wasn’t it.

WillOoi : I suppose.

Michael Biehn : [Loses it]. Okay, PUNK! Time’s up! Get of my office!

WillOoi : You mean your trailer?

Michael Biehn : [Furious]. YEA…SHUT UP! And put that ****** sandwich down! Security!!! [Madly pushes a concealed button under his coffee table, Mr Burns-style].

WillOoi : Okay okay I’m leaving! Thanks? [I put my half-eaten ham and cheese sandwich down. The Biehn snaps it up and chews wildly, looking like he hasn't eaten in days].

Michael Biehn : **** OFF!!!! [A piece of ham flies out of his mouth].

Set in an Orwellian 2017 where free speech is illegal, the story begins with futuristic policeman Ben Richards (Arnie) being set up by the totalitarian government for the massacre of civilians and sent to jail (where he sports a cool-looking beard). He escapes of course, but not without someone having his head blown off first (thanks to futuristic head-exploding collars which, to be honest, really had nothing at all to do with the story apart from the gore factor), but is soon caught and forced to take part in the biggest game show around: The Running Man. Hosted by a bloke named Killian (played by a real TV show host at the time), convicts are sent into the game zone via a funky aerodynamic cart down a high-speed tube dressed in Matt Shirvington-style crotch-accentuating tights where they are relentlessly hunted by a ridiculous team of ’stalkers’ as society watches on in awe. None of this would mean anything though if there wasn’t an introductory choreographed group dance by lycra-clad ladies with permed hair. Gripped to the max and brainwashed, the show is a hit…but not for a group of rebels who are intent on a revolution and bringing an end to the propaganda.

Arnold Schwarzenegger and Yaphet Kotto: about as 80’s a partnership as you can get

The Stalkers, how Arnie kills them, and the post-death one-liners

(I mean, what better time to crack a joke than when you’ve just vanquished your enemy?)

Subzero:

A huge Japanese Ice Hockey player with a razor sharp stick and explosive pucks. Strangled to death by barbed wire. “Here’s Subzero…now…plain zero!” (possibly the best movie line of all time)

Buzzsaw:

A Redneck bikie with a chainsaw. Enough said really. Sawn in half with his own weapon from the crotch up. “He had to split!”

Dynamo:

An opera singing electricity-shooting fat guy in a costume decorated with lights. Not killed by Arnie actually, but by a water sprinkler. Hence no witty line unfortunately.

Fireball:

Played by former NFL star Jim Brown, Fireball wields a flamethrower and flies around in a jetpack. Not over the top at all, no way. He is blown up with a dynamite stick when Arnie unplugs his gas cable. Bonus double pre and post-kill lines: “Need a light?” and “What a hothead!”

Captain Freedom:

Played by the big Austrian’s Predator and future political buddy Jesse Ventura, it is a slight disappointment that they don’t get to fight each other. Well not really: the final battle in a spiked cage is ‘digitized’ (you’ll understand when you watch it), and WHAT a crazily violent fake battle scene it is! Sadly, again, no Arnie kill and no line.

Impact and influence

In terms of 80s action, Schwarzenegger’s other hits Predator, Terminator, and Commando tend to steal the limelight: I must admit that even I had forgotten about this gem until a fellow movie freak friend of mine reminded me of it, and I’d go as far as saying The Running Man is right up there with Arnie’s best. Citizen Kane it is most definitely not, but hey masterpiece theatre wasn’t the reason why we loved him so much. This film is also, once you strip away the superficial layer of 80’s cheese and typical Arnie trademarks, a very clever take on the impact of reality game shows, which is not entirely surprising given the fact that it was based on a novel by Stephen King under the alias of ‘Richard Bachman’. Although it differed greatly from the book (I think it’d be safe to say that there was no “plain zero” line in there) the themes present make it well ahead of its time – despite how utterly 80’s the future was presented in the movie: the final scene where Richards kisses the girl and the unmistakable sound of synthesizer rock swelling in the background is pretty, surely deliberately, cringe-worthy.

The film’s influence on gaming should also not be discounted either, with the icy character of Subzero and the spiked battle zone being clear influences on Mortal Kombat. A game was released on the early Commodore 64-era consoles which were, suffice it to say, rubbish, and Smash TV on Genesis and the SNES were quite similar in plot and ideas (which led to that minigame in GTA Liberty City Stories). I want a game remake!! On that note I wouldn’t be surprised either if one of these days a film remake gets the go-ahead, although it will of course be nowhere near the insane value of the original and will probably star Ralph Fiennes in yet another role where he has a serious crying scene.

Overall, a truly spectacular example of what 80’s action was all about, filled with gruesomely graphic violence and a bit of Che Guevara thrown in for good measure. Plus given the reality TV overload seen today, the words of Damon Killian have never been truer: “This is television, that’s all it is. It has nothing to do with people, it’s to do with ratings! For fifty years, we’ve told them what to eat, what to drink, what to wear… Americans love television! They wean their kids on it. Listen. They love game shows, they love wrestling, they love sports and violence. So what do we do? We give ‘em what they want! We’re number one, Ben, that’s all that counts, believe me.” *

*Cue the final kill as Richards sends Killian down the speed tunnel to an explosive death which doesn’t make any sense at all. “Well that hit the spot!”

We should all remember the Rambo films. The first thing that comes into our heads is probably Sylvester Stallone standing half-naked and holding a ridiculously large machine gun with a red headband wrapped around his long and wavy black hair. As iconic as that image may be of the American Action Movie genre, it’s a real shame because this very portrayal of the character takes away a lot of the seriousness behind the first Rambo film First Blood which was quite decent and entirely character-focused, a bit like the first Rocky movie. And I’m sure we are already well aware that there will be a 4th instalment coming soon.

Just on headbands though, why is it that so many characters wear them (and often red ones too)? Why is this piece of cloth so appealing? After First Blood (and Rocky) came success but instead of continuing on with the drama theme of the original movie Stallone and the film producers then went and turned the whole thing into a crazy series of action films with absolutely wild one-man-army plots that, as bad as they were, were so bad that they are actually quite worth watching for a laugh. That’s just what I do, that’s my thing.

For instance in Rambo: First Blood Part II (great title!) the story sees Rambo sent back to Vietnam (he always finds a way to go back to Vietnam) in order to rescue American POWs who were left behind a whole 15 or so years after the end of the war. Not only that, but the Vietcong AND the Soviets are conspiring together with an evil plan for world domination! The best parts of the movie are probably the scenes involving Rambo and the Vietnamese chick who helps him, as well as a bit where he shoots the bad Vietcong boss with a missile. The movie contains some funny dialogue too with the standout possibly being this classic line right at the beginning:

Rambo (Upon accepting the mission): Colonel, are we gonna win this time?

Colonel: This time, Rambo, it’s up to you…

In looking for a decent reason/excuse for watching these movies I guess the good thing about the character of John Rambo is that he wasn’t your typical grunt; he was a patriot who really believed in governments ‘doing the right thing’, and was surprisingly very literate when it came to giving humanitarian lectures even though you had to turn on the subtitles in order to understand him.

Now onto Rambo III: the plot for the 3rd film has something to do with Rambo’s Colonel being kidnapped and him going into Afghanistan to rescue him, where our hero is assisted by Afghani rebels. Anyway sure, a rescue operation like this could very well happen in real life, but how often would you see this massive dude in a black singlet running around blowing things up in the middle of the desert with his bow & stinger-missile-arrows? How unrealistic is that?

But instead of the movie I wish to focus on the game for the Sega Mega Drive/Genesis which I absolutely loved back then at the age of around 8 or 9. It was very similar to the old Metal Gear games and Secret Command on the Master System with an overhead perspective and 8-way aiming. You also had 4 weapon choices: Machine Gun, Knife, Detonator, or Bow & Missile, but the best parts of the game were the boss battles where you controlled Rambo from a third-person perspective and fought off tanks and helicopters with your bow while taking cover behind these big rocks on either side of you. Rambo would even do the headband-tying view-from-the-back pose!

As I remember it was a hard game and the controls took a while to get used to and definitely weren’t helped by the crappy boomerang controller, with the trickiest aspect being charging up the power for your bow and hitting your target whilst also running away from bullets. Despite this it was still a highlight of my childhood gaming. Speaking of which, when I had my Master System II as a kid, I owned a fantastic 2 player co-op game named Secret Command, never realising until recently that it was actually an officially licensed Rambo II game, but the name was changed in Australia for whatever reasons. I feel cheated, somewhat, about that.

So even though I enjoy poking fun at the unintentional humour of the films, there were some innovations that came about such as the close-up shots of Rambo ’suiting up’ for battle. Also if it weren’t for the movies then the Metal Gear Solid series would either not exist at all or be very very different seeing as how Richard Crenna’s character of Colonel Trautman was most definitely the inspiration for Colonel Roy Campbell. Even Solid Snake’s cool headband might have something, possibly, remotely, to do with Rambo’s…

Game Rating: 8/10, Nostalgia Rating: 10/10

If you have a Genesis emulator and want to play this game, click HERE for the ROM! And what the hell, here’s a link for an emulator!