Posts tagged plot
The November Man “The November Movie”
Sep 15th
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
THE NOVEMBER MAN might not be the worst movie I have seen all year, but it is certainly the worst spy thriller I have seen all year.
It stars Pierce Brosnan as Peter Devereaux, who used to be a CIA agent, and it has the tired old story of someone being pulled out of retirement for one last job.
The story begins in 2008 in Montenegro, and Devereaux is training another agent, a young man named David Mason, part of which training is, “You feel the need for a relationship? Get a dog.”
Mason then botches a mission by not following Devereaux’s orders, and suddenly it is five years later in Switzerland, where Devereaux is living in retirement, and he is notified that a woman in Moscow wants to “come in” because something is scaring her, her name is Natalia, and she is asking only for Devereaux to be the one to rescue her and bring her to safety.
We don’t know it yet, but Natalia and Devereaux have a history together, and he travels to Moscow to rescue her, but the Russians figure out what she is doing, and that mission is badly botched, but not before Natalia gives Devereaux her phone with incriminating photos on it.
Well, wouldn’t you know it, but Mason is involved in that failed mission, too, and now Devereaux wants revenge, because someone close to him was killed.
Now the story gets really confusing with a Russian named Arkady Federov about to become president of Russia, but there is something in his past that might cause him problems, a woman named Alice Fournier has information about his past, and so Devereaux wants to find her and protect her from others who want her dead.
Confusing? You bet! There are too many people and too many complicated stories going on, along with too many shoot-outs, car chases, and crashes to distract us from trying to figure out the plot.
And we don’t even know what the title means until near the end of the movie when we learn that Devereaux was called the November Man because after he passed through, nothing lived.
In that case, THE NOVEMBER MAN, the movie, could also be called “The November Movie,” because after I saw it, no other movie comes close to living.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”
“All Is Lost” Is Almost Hopeless
Nov 23rd
“Almost Hopeless”
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
All Is Lost stars Robert Redford and was made from a script nearly free of dialogue and only 32 pages long.
However, that script could have been shortened to only one sentence: “A man is lost at sea all alone on a small crippled sailboat and struggles to survive.”
When the movie opens, we hear Redford’s voice say, “I tried to be true. I tried to be right. But I wasn’t. I’m sorry.”
Later on, we will learn the significance of those words and where they appear in the story, but first we see a title that says, “8 Days Earlier,” and the story begins.
Called only “Our Man” in the credits, Redford is asleep below deck on his 39-foot yacht when he is awakened by a loud noise and sees water coming into the cabin.
His boat has struck a floating cargo shipping container hard enough to damage both his boat and the container, which is now spilling its contents into the ocean.
And then we watch him struggle to survive and begin to consider our own mortality as surely as he considers his own.
He tries to repair the hole in the boat as best he can, pumps the water out of the cabin and cleans and dries it.
He dries and cleans his radio, finds a signal, and sends out the message, “This is the Virginia Jean with an SOS call. Over,” but he gets no response.
When a storm comes, he tries to secure everything aboard and puts on his gear for wet weather, but he gets knocked overboard.
His boat gets damaged even more, and later he also suffers a nasty gash to his forehead.
With water coming into the boat even more now, he gets his life raft, inflates it, and secures it to the boat and gets ready to abandon ship.
The water in the cabin is now up to his chest, and he retrieves everything he believes he will need, puts it all in the covered life boat, and climbs into it.
One of the items is a sextant, which is still in its box, appears to have been a gift, and he has to read the instructions on how to use it, so that he can plot his position on his navigation map.
All Is Lost is almost hopeless.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”
“Ender’s Game” Is Game Over
Nov 16th
“Game Over”
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
Ender’s Game is based on Owen Scott Card’s novel of the same name for young adults, and so if you are not a young adult, meaning a teenager, you can skip this movie.
In my opinion, even if you are a young adult, a teenager, immature, or even fascinated with video games, you can skip this movie.
Sure, Harrison Ford, Viola Davis, and Ben Kingsley appear in it, but they are there only as adult window dressing for a story that is about kids and for kids.
The hero is Ender Wiggin, the time is in the future, and the plot is that Earth has to be saved from a future invasion of aliens.
Already, I can hear the room filling with a loud chorus of Ho Hums.
We are told that the world’s smartest children are the planet’s best hope, and the reason is that the future invasion will be fought like a video game, which is strange when you think about it, because the only reality casualty in playing video games is something that might just be called “remote thumb” in order to correspond to tennis elbow.
Anyway, don’t think about it, because there is nothing in this movie worth thinking about, except that the filmmakers are probably hoping that this will be the first in a series of franchise movies and there will be more coming, on which they can lose money.
Anyhow, Ender is a young teenage boy who is bullied at school, but who is clever enough at playing video games that he is singled out for special training in anticipation of the future alien invasion.
Ender has a sister, and he tells her, “All I could think was, what would Peter do?”
Peter is their brother, who was selected for training before Ender, but he washed out of the program, which consists of being treated like privates in a military boot camp, but with training that consists of floating around in huge zero gravity sets and firing weapons at each other.
Can I get a “Ho Hum”?
Of course, there are one or more kids who give Ender a hard time, of course there are other kids who support him, and of course Ender succeeds and advances to higher levels of more rigorous training.
Ender’s Game just makes me say “Game over!”
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”