Posts tagged car
“The Taking of Pelham 123” Better Than Expected
Jun 17th
Better Than Expected
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
THE TAKING OF PELHAM 1 2 3 is a remake of the 1974 film of the same name but with different spelling, and it has been updated with new technology and financial conditions, as well as with the whiz-bang visual techniques of director Tony Scott.
Denzel Washington plays the Walter Matthau role of Walter Garber, a temporary dispatcher of New York City Transit, and John Travolta plays the Robert Shaw role of a man named Ryder, who leads a team of four hijackers of a subway train.
When Garber first talks to Ryder to ask why the train stopped, Ryder says, “This is the man who’s going to give the City a run for its money.”
After some quick and obviously phony calculations, Ryder demands $10 million and one cent in cash in exactly one hour, or else he will start killing one of the 19 passenger hostages for every minute that the money is late.
James Gandolfini plays the mayor, who gets involved when he has to authorize the payment of the ransom, and we get an awful lot of preliminary setup shots followed by an awful lot of talk, plus the flashy visuals of the police racing to transport the money downtown to where the subway car is waiting.
Garber’s boss tells Garber to go home and let the official hostage negotiator from the police take over, which is fine with Garber, because he has had the dispatching job only a couple of weeks. But when Ryder learns that Garber is gone, he shoots the motorman and demands that Garber be brought back for the negotiations.
If you are not familiar with the story, at this point you might start to wonder What’s the suspense? Well, the suspense is in whether the hijackers are going to succeed or fail, depending on which side you are rooting for.
So, essentially we have a weak story with very good execution and exceptionally fine acting, especially by Travolta, who naturally has the showier part.
Garber and Ryder eventually even get to meet face to face when Ryder demands that the dispatcher come underground with the money for reasons we don’t learn until afterwards.
Then we get an exciting ending that we didn’t anticipate.
THE TAKING OF PELHAM 1 2 3 is better than expected or deserves to be.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”
“The Last House on the Left” Gratuitous Remake
Mar 18th
Gratuitous Remake
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
THE LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT (2009) is a remake of Wes Craven’s 1972 film of the same name, which itself was a remake of THE VIRGIN SPRING, the 1960 film by the great Ingmar Bergman, and it proves once again that Hollywood has run out of ideas, as well as brings to mind the saying, “Leave well enough alone.”
It also brings to mind another saying: “Of all the movies I have seen so far this year, this is one of them.”
The film begins with a gruesome accident and then keeps getting worse all the way to the very final, gratuitous shot.
In fact, that is the best way to describe this sorry excuse for a movie: gratuitous. Here are just some of the notes I made watching it: “gratuitous assault,” “gratuitous rape,” “gratuitous violence,” “gratuitous (closeups of a) broken nose,” “gratuitous drowning in the sink and garbage disposal,” “gratuitous nudity,” “gratuitous destruction,” “gratuitous final shots, too,” and “one final gratuitous shot to the head.”
Yes, there is a story, but given what makes up most of the movie, you could very well say that the story is gratuitous to the violence.
The story is about a family staying at their vacation home on a lake.
As they are driving to it, they come to the road that leads to it, which is marked by a sign that says, “Lake Ends in the Road,” and the wife, Emma, remarks, “Gee, you think somebody would change that sign.”
The teenage daughter, Mari, borrows the car and drives into town to visit her friend, Paige, who is working in a convenience store.
A young boy named Justin comes into the store, and the three of them end up going to the motel where Justin is staying with his father, uncle, and another woman, who come back unexpectedly and interrupt the teenagers.
The group abducts Mari and Paige, and they all go out into the woods, where brutal things happen just as a bad storm moves in.
Mari manages to escape, but she gets shot.
Then as always happens in movies like this, the group shows up at the vacation home, where Mari’s mother and father are more than happy to accommodate them and put them up in the guest house.
THE LASTHOUSE ON THE LEFT is just a gratuitous remake.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”