Posts tagged Robert Maillet
Brick Mansions – Movie Trailer
May 8th
In a dystopian Detroit, abandoned brick mansions left from better times now house only the most dangerous criminals. Unable to control the crime, the police constructed a colossal containment wall around this area to protect the rest of the city. For undercover cop Damien Collier (Paul Walker) every day is a battle against corruption. For Lino (David Belle), every day is a fight to live an honest life. Their paths never should have crossed, but when drug kingpin, Tremaine (RZA) kidnaps Lino’s girlfriend, Damien reluctantly accepts the help of the fearless ex-convict, and together they must stop a sinister plot to devastate the entire city. With stylized action featuring thrilling Parkour stunts (David Belle is the co-founder of this physical training discipline), Brick Mansions puts an entertaining twist on the action genre.
Brick Mansions “Totally Preposterous”
May 8th
(“Totally Preposterous”)
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
BRICK MANSIONS is an action movie that might be of interest only to very huge fans of Paul Walker, the star of the FAST AND FURIOUS movies who was killed in 2013 in an auto accident.
The reason is that it is probably the last movie that Walker completed before he died.
The movie takes place in 2018 in Detroit, and it is a remake of the French film, DISTRICT B13, which was written and directed by Luc Besson.
The title refers to a precinct in Detroit that is walled off and become a lawless zone inhabited entirely by hoods and criminals, and Detroit itself is called the most dangerous city in America.
Walker plays Damien Collier, and undercover policeman in the narcotics division who says, “I handle what needs to be handled,” and at the beginning of the movie we see him break up the drug operation of a notorious drug manufacturer and distributor that involves a massive shoot-out and an incredible car chase with Damien performing some unbelievable stunts.
Speaking of stunts, the movie also stars David Belle as Lino, who invented a training technique known as parkour, which, according to the notes, “uses vaulting, flipping, swinging, rolling and above all bodily momentum as a means of overcoming physical obstacles.”
The main story is about how the mayor of Detroit wants to restore the city to its former glory, and that means cleaning up Brick Mansions and getting rid of its undesirables.
Well, unfortunately, the top Bad Guy in Brick Mansions, Tremaine Alexander, had hijacked a government truck with a neutron bomb in it, and he accidentally started a timing mechanism that will cause the bomb to explode in 10 hours.
So, Damien is charged with infiltrating the dangerous district, avoid being discovered and identified by the undesirables, find the bomb, and disarm it.
No problem, right?
As his partner, Damien teams up with Lino, who knows Brick Mansions like the back of his hand and who also has a personal interest in bringing down Tremaine, as does Damien.
Unfortunately, when they start out, Lino doesn’t know who or what Damien really is, which makes for some intense fighting between themselves.
And as if that isn’t enough, Tremaine has done something with the bomb that endangers all of Detroit.
BRICK MANSIONS is ridiculous and totally preposterous.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”
“Sherlock Holmes” Deconstructing Holmes
Dec 30th
Deconstructing Holmes
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
SHERLOCK HOLMES takes one of the most famous of all fictional characters, the brilliant but eccentric London detective created in the late 1800s by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and turns him into a modern-day action hero.
The setting is still London in the late 1800s, but Robert Downey Jr.
plays Holmes as just as much a martial-arts fighter as a brilliant thinker.
And Jude Law plays Dr. Watson, Sherlock’s partner, colleague, and writer of Sherlock’s famous cases, as just as much an equal in the martial arts as Holmes is.
To steal a line from somebody else, “This is not your great-grandfather’s Sherlock Holmes.”
In fact, Watson himself may be onto something, because a major subplot in this mess of a movie is that Dr. Watson is engaged and preparing to move out of their digs at 221B Baker Street.
The fault, Dear Audience, lies with the writers and the director, Guy Ritchie, known for his rock-’em, sock-’em modern-day British crime-caper comedies, but most famous for being the recently divorced husband of Madonna.
When the movie opens, Holmes is in a foul mood, and Watson says to Mrs.
Hudson, the woman who keeps their rooms as tidy as she is allowed to, “He just needs another case, that’s all.”
The last case that Holmes had and presumably solved was three months ago, but before he acquires a new case, Holmes is invited to dinner in a restaurant with Watson and his fiancee, Mary, who insists that Holmes examine her at the table and tell her what his observations reveal about her.
To say that it doesn’t go well would be the understatement of the 19th century.
Holmes eventually gets a case that involves black magic, a midget, a plot to rule England and to reacquire the United States, and Holmes’s female nemesis, Irene Adler, played by the beautiful Rachel McAdams.
Yes, this movie is more like a James Bond adventure than a story about the Sherlock Holmes we have come to know, love, respect, and admire.
The movie is preposterous, the story is preposterous, the action scenes are preposterous, even the acting is preposterous.
And, unfortunately, the ending has all the earmarks of a sequel in the works.
SHERLOCK HOLMES is a silly deconstruction of the four novels and 56 short stories that we have read and loved.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”
