Kim Gentes

Junk, except for the amazing violence

Excellent fight scenes; content warnings- excessive violence and language, and some nudity.

A young man raised to kill like an animal. His "owner" even has him on a collar. Jet Li plays a man of incredible killing ability with a purposefully underdeveloped child's mind. He kills on command. If the movie would have stayed with this shallow, but believable (ok, acceptable) premise, it would have been just what everyone expected. However, when Morgan Freeman plays a blind piano tuner who tries to help Li grow up into some small normalicy, and we see Li's character being changed by the power of classical music and a young girl's affections, things go from one ridiculous out-of-context scene to another. The only "good" thing is that the storyline returns to enough violence and blood bath that you can forget that this is simply a wanna-be Disney feel-good plot dressed up with martial arts. Worth seeing for the amazingly gritty and mindless violence, but pretty dumb beyond that. A sad use of Morgan Freeman's considerable acting presence.

A backtrace of storylines brings you to the start of the movie. This is a flashback film that starts with the ending (sort of) and takes you through the lives of people that will converge to meet in the strange storyline. The streets of LA are the backdrop for this movie about class, culture, prejudice and crime. Like real life, the characters are shades of hero and lier, truth and criminal. The story is much easier to follow that the typical sliced up reverse chronological thrillers that we have seen of late, but it has substantially more to teach us than those death by rubic-cube-solving psycho-killer movies. The acting is excellent (led by Sandra Bullock, Don Cheadle, Art Chudabala, with strong support from Tony Danza and Matt Dillon), though the characters don't have time for much individual development, since it runs 4 or more concurrent plotlines. A dark tragedy with heroic episodes? Maybe. You will find yourself feeling a little conflicted and sad leaving this film, but it seems that what the director, Paul Jaggis intended. Don't go to this film thinking "big screen", or you will be slapped silly with the unconventional approach. This feels like an offbeat independent film meant to scourge the powers-that-be for the racial hatred that pervades urban America.

Epic story and battlescenes; content warnings- constant violence.

The story of a young man who becomes a knight searching for the appeasement of his sins, leads him to join the crusades to the Holy Land (Jerusalem). The story is not as epic as the battle scenes, but it hangs together well enough to warrant you paying full price at the theatres. The moral lessons trying to be taught here are a little too progressive for the timeframe of the story, which erodes the integrity of the story. Contrasted to other moral teaching movies, Kingdom of Heaven doesn't veil anything in subtly. A good film for wasting an evening with some epic battlescenes. Bloom is not near as convincing here as Russell Crowe was in Ridley Scott's other epic historical piece Gladiator, but the effects and directing are memorable.

Having seen the original really has no bearing on this movie. Whether you loved the original, or never saw it, it doesn't matter. This movie fails at every possible juncture and every possible level. Not sure what kind of folks are rating this movie, but I can't raise a single positive that happened in this movie. From start to finish the humor in unbelievably bad- even Chris Rock attempting the self-defacating black jokes (his trademark style) falls so far below funny that the film is left to juxtapositioning huge brutish prison inmates with effeminate gay inmates as its last line of defence humor. And that fails too.

Sadler is one of my favorite actors in humor, and he might as well have mailed in his lines, because this simply pukes. I was actually feeling embarassed for him as I watched this film. Nothing is sacred either. No device is left untried (even the close friend being brutally and graphically burned to death in a play for sympathy from the audience) and they all fail with remarkable disdain for an audience they director must have thought would mail in their money as quickly as his cast mailed in their performances (if you can be generous enough to call it that).

James Cromwell has the only possible part that seems viewable, and even in that it just proves to be the unbelievable, unfunny, unmenacing, un-everything part that tears what possible fabric of reality the viewer may be clinging to, as he uttered stupid line after stupid line. I would have rather seen him star in another Babe sequel about the pig who became president than watch this sad performance.

Run, don't walk from the thought of seeing this movie. If you waste your money on this, your grandkids have a right to sue you for a lousy inheritance, because its likely a sign of even greater problems with your judgment. I beg you, STAY AWAY!

An amazing foreign film. In league with "Life Is Beautiful".

Summary: This subtitled Russian film says more with action, facial expressions and subtlety than could ever be said with words. It holds a palpable tension between the power of hope and relationships, and the despair of reality and brokenness. A unique and yet all too familiar story of fathers and sons.

Full Review: It is Russia. In the setting of this ethereal world, we step into the story of two young boys. Ivan (about 12) and Andrei (about 15) are brothers and in many ways typical of young boys in any land- they are growing up, challenging one another, pushing up against peer pressures. They fight, yet are deeply devoted to one another. They love fishing and playing in the water.  For their entire lives, their father has been absent. Only their mother's words and scant pictures hold any image of who he is. Then, one day, he appears. For some reason, he has returned.

The boys are shocked, elated, confused, upset, angry and hopeful. As they cautiously open their lives to this stranger, he takes them on a road trip to go fishing. Young Ivan, exuding distrust and anger at a father who appears with no explanation and no apologies, chafes against his father at every turn of this journey.  Andrei, however, gathers quickly to his father, hoping to find a mentor for his soon-to-be transition into adulthood.

As the trip unfolds, typical conflicts between father and son explode with emotion and back story. The young Ivan Dobronravov (playing a character by his real first name, Ivan) has an amazing ability to create emotion with his expressions. Hope, fear, anger, pain. It is through Ivan that most of the story is told. There is nothing superflous or false about this script. It is painstaking and powerful, but will most likely be shocking nonetheless. The visuals are equally impressive, matching the film with a minimalist and beguiling affect. The dark shades, green and bluish hues remain the pitch of the entire film. This is erie and you don't catch the sense of its power until the film has completed, when you realize its been without any reds or yellows for the entire story.

I will not tell you more about the story and how it plays out. This film is one of the best I've ever seen, and I would unreservedly recommend it to anyone.  It is unrated, since it was never released to theatres in the US, but there is no questionable language or scenes. There is some mild violence and moments of intense emotion.

The understatement in this film is not just that it is a realistic drama, it is contained most poignantly in the use of tragic irony and metaphor. What the heart seeks is to be known and loved by those who matter most. "The Return" is about a father and his sons trying to make the journey towards that realization. You will not be the same after seeing this film.

Amazon DVD Link: http://amzn.to/15vNgX8

Review by Kim Gentes