I went out on Thursday to rent a few movies, but I only watched half of them becaue Wall Street and The Messenger weren't really something I was in the mood to watch =P
I watched Tron: Legacy first, because I'd been planning to see it at quite some time and it actually came out on DVD rental the day before.
The movie is immense. It's not the most scintillating motion picture of its year, but it's a blast from start to finish. It's a visual splendor with a thundering soundtrack and some high-quality acting, and while the plot is labyrinthine and ridiculous it's great to sit back and switch some of the higher brain functions off and just enjoy its creativity.
The creativity, I think, is what makes Legacy such an enjoyable movie. It's encrusted with little stabs at technology and the visualization of digital things, with small jokes thrown in here and there through character banter. It doesn't ever seem like it's trying to be funny when it is, and even the robotic-looking characters have the excuse of being digital creations.
Jeff Bridges is half of what makes the performances in this film superb. Both as the young and old versions, C.L.U etc. he's top-class when it comes to diving into a character. He does bring a sort of messianic act to Kevin Flynn, but at the same time his little (forgive my ignorance) hippie quirks like "touching the sky" and his turns of phrase with "dude" and "man" mean that he doesn't
feel like some omniscient Creator - rather, he has this aura of some child who stumbled across a Lego set he'd never seen before.
Garrett Hedlund doesn't necessarily stand out from the crowd when it comes to his performance, but with the material he's given it seems to come out pretty naturally and it works in his favour.
I was actually fairly skeptical about Olivia Wilde's significance in this movie, but the way the plot works out, she does a a character type I've never really seen her do. Quorra comes off as wide-eyed and excited, curious about everything that isn't The Grid, but at the same time is fairly emotionally grounded rather than the typical sci-fi girl-warrior, and it's something fresh, to say the least.
Michael Sheen (I had to see the credits to realise that it was Michael Sheen) does this hilarious David Bowie-like performance as a club owner, and he steals the majority of the scenes he's in for the pure batshit craziness.
The thing that struck me about Legacy was how...
visceral the fighting was. It's an incredibly in-your-face sort of violence while still being relatively bloodless (There's one instance of blood in the entire movie and it's not even half a pint.). People are being sliced up into bits, thrown into huge whirling fan blades, dismembered, decapitated, and run over by bikes into digital giblets.
In one instance some guy flying some jet thing gets shot in the face during the aerial combat sequence, and the camera lingers on the glory of a neat six-inch hole doughnutting his head. If it was blood, rather than pixels, this movie could probably net an R18+ rating. Some of the hand-to-hand combat with the disc wars and the batons didn't feel particularly inspired, but it's largely irrelevant when there are flying planes and lethal light cycles and programs throwing frisbees of death that cut easier than a lightsaber.
Daft Punk, of course, was a huge selling point of this movie, and it's pretty obvious that they made good on their claims. The general sound direction of Tron: Legacy is a great facet and really complements the bim-bam-smash pacing of the film. It's the regular synth-plus-orchestra-on-the-side, but unlike some other soundtracks of similar style, Daft Punk seems to recognise what balances need to be made. Some tracks use heavy synth drums that really bring out a hard rhythm in the action, while there are one or two orchestral string-heavy pieces with titles like "Nocturne" that are surprisingly moody without being overtly melodramatic and vapid.
The plot isn't one to be overtly analysed. That would probably make head explosions, because if anyone were to base Tron: Legacy on scientific validity it'd have legs of sand. It has the typical diving into the digital unknown that is standard sci-fi fare, a benevolent mastermind gone renegade, discussion about idealistic perfection, and assorted things about "evolution" and other mumbo-jumbo that a dozen other movies would probably have covered in far better detail. But because most of it is stuff that we've seen before, it's safe, it's secure, and we can adequately suspend our disbelief while we feast on some of the best visual, sound and character design of this age.
Would I watch it again? Probably only once again. The pacing is break-neck speed, and I'd probably need to take some notes to get a handle on what's happened bit-by-bit. Kevin tucks his son into bed, tells him a story about The Grid, a timeskip happens, Kevin's disappeared and Sam loafs around and sabotages his company's schemes for a living, Sam then discovers the Grid for himself and gets thrown into things way over his head, eventually Sam and Kevin reunite and plot to get the hell out while Kevin's digital doppelganger also plots to get the hell out with his own private digital army so that they can take over the physical world. Yeah, and a whole load of sequences of elaborate characterisation, action and discussion happen in between. Quorra is hot. Mhmm.
By the end of it, I'd gotten the gist of what happened, but not with a solid understanding of the actual events. Still, it's a blast to watch, and well worth more than a rental imo.
My other DVD I watched, on the complete opposite end of the spectrum! The Other Guys. Now, I didn't exactly go into this expecting very much. To me, Will Ferrell is hit-and-miss, with barely more hits than misses. Mark Wahlberg, probably doing his standard tough-guy role. Samuel L. doing his Samuel L. routine, swearing like there's no motherfucking tomorrow, and The Rock doing his The Rock routine except thankfully the last two don't really do it for very long. Because, you get what you pay for, you get to see The Other Guys in action.
I came out of it really, really, pleasantly surprised by how funny the whole thing turned out to be. I'd probably rank it behind some big-name buddy cop movies (Lethal Weapons, Rush Hours, etc.) and probably behind Hot Fuzz as a parody, but it's still pretty solid. It doesn't change the fact that the lead actors (except for probably Eva Mendes and Marky Mark) have been typecast into a nutshell, but there's enough self-awareness about it that they throw in a few surprises into the mix.
I also have to applaud the way they deal with the two "heroes" that form the seemingly untouchable protagonists. Watching it with my father, he was suckered into believing that they were going to be around for the entire movie, and 10 minutes in he asked "so what is that supposed to mean?" Well, I cracked up at that point. He also cracked up even when I had to explain it to him. It's a great punchline.
The real buddies in the buddy-cop movie are pretty much just plain antagonistic for the majority of the film. Terry Hoitz initally seems to be Mark Wahlberg's tough-guy scheme, but McKay plays it up by using Allen Gamble as a finely honed counterpoint, meeting his chest-beating hostility with roundabout oratory that both confuses and irritates Hoitz. It turns to gold, however, when Allen Gamble reveals a secret past life (and his inexplicable attractiveness to women) that makes Hoitz much more wary and sometimes downright fearful of his innocuous paper-shuffling, pen-pushing partner.
While they still hold a familiar dynamic, the complexities to the relationship by the end of the film make it a hilarious thing to watch unfold. Michael Keaton plays a hilarious character in the station's captain, who is constantly exasperated by the bullshit that happens in his department. Eva Mendes plays a subservient sexed-up housewife to Allen Gamble, a duo that looks hilarious from any angle and they (nearly) play it straight with riotous results. Unfortunately, Steve Coogan probably comes out with the weakest role in the movie, as the flustered billionaire investor who is constantly being kidnapped, and is constantly bribing the cops. It's a role we should probably be appreciating, but compared to a lot of the other parodies in the movie it doesn't seem as significant.
There is
some substance to the plot, but it isn't as exciting as it tries to be. There's stuff about TARP and the Fonzi Scheme, but in the end The Other Guys is too focused on maintaining a balance between parody and homage to the buddy-cop genre, to make any meaningful commentary on either subject.
Nonetheless, it's a great comedy and one of the better buddy-cop movies. Definitely worth a rental and probably two sittings.
