Say hello to my little friend!!!

OK time for another movie review, this time its another action classic from the 1980s, which is Brian De Palma's Scarface, starring Al Pacino as a Cuban refugee who makes it big in the world of crime in America.  And with that let's have a look at the plot....

Right well the film is set in 1980, and the film's main character, Tony Montana (Al Pacino) is a Cuban refugee who arrives in America during the Mariel boatlift (which was a real life mass emigration of Cubans into the US).  Tony along with his best friend Manny Ribera (Steven Bauer) are sent to "Freedom camp" which is refugee camp.  After a while Manny tells Tony the news that they can recieve green cards if in return that Tony does a hit on a Cuban government official, on behalf of a drug kingpin Frank Lopez (Robert Loggia), which Tony does.  On the outside, Tony and Manny are offered a deal from Frank's henchman, Omar Suarez (F. Murray Abraham) to buy cocaine from Colombian drug dealers.  However the deal itself goes sour, as Tonny and one of his crew, Angel, are captured by the Colombians, and Angel is killed by a chainsaw, but before Tony suffers the same fate, Manny bursts in and rescues him.  Tony then kills the Colombian who nearly chainsawed him, and takes the money from the deal, and then contacts Suarez and defiantly tells him that he will take the money to Frank himself.  Frank on meeting Tony is impressed by him and he decides to hire him and Manny to work for him.  Tony also meets Frank's girlfriend, Elvira (Michelle Pfieffer) who is stuck up and cold in manner, but Tony falls for her instantly.

Months later Tony reunites with his family, his mother Georgina (Miriam Colon) and his beautiful younger sister, Gina (Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio) who Tony is very protective off.  Tony's mother however is far from pleased to see him and refuses to take his money, after which Tony leaves angrily, and Gina goes out after him, and Tony gives her the money anyway.  Manny clearly smitten by Gina, is warned by Tony to stay away from her.  Some time after this Frank sends Tony along with Suarez to meet with cocaine kingpin Aljeandro Sosa (Paul Shenar) where Tony does a deal with Sosa without Frank's consent, which angers Suarez, but Sosa allows Suarez to call Frank before they move on.  However Sosa soon reveals to Tony that Suarez is a police informant, and he shows Tony that his men have Suarez up in a helicopter, beaten up with a rope around his neck, they hang him from the helicopter.  Sosa despite his dislike for Frank, admires Tony's honesty and fortright nature and decides to the deal with Tony.

Tony returns to Frank with the news of the deal, who is outraged and tells Tony that to stall the deal for now, but soon after their partnership falls apart.  Tony later on at a nightclub is shaken down by a corrupt cop Mel Bernstein (Harris Yulin) who proposes to tax him in return for inside police information and protection.  Tony also tries to come onto Elvira, while Frank is present, who angrily tells him to leave, but Tony instead says "the only thing that gives orders in this world is balls!" and Frank leaves.  Not longer after thought an attempt is made on Tony's life in the club, who barely escapes, killing the hitmen in the process.  Tony then get's Manny and his men together, and they soon confront Frank at his office, who confesses to have ordered the hit on him, and pleads with him to spare his life, but Tony has Manny shoot Frank dead, and Tony kills Bernstein who is also present.  With nothing in his way, Tony takes over Frank's business and also takes Elvira with him, and he soon rises in power and partners with Sosa on his drug deals, turning his business in a multi-million dollar empire.  But from here Tony's life becomes increasingly complicated and its not long before events in his career and personal life spiral wildly out of control.

(PLOT STUFF OVER)

While it can be said to be a remake of the 1932 film of the same name, there is not a great deal of similarity between the two films, and for De Palma's Scarface is the more memorable and relevant of the two films, as it mirrored the real life events of the time as a result of the Cuban mass immigration, and the political and social repercussions as a result in America.  Character wise the film is also brilliantly written and Tony Montana is a memorable antagonist with a complex background, as it is suggested that he was an assassin back in Cuba, but also his family have made it over with his mother and sister.  But more interestingly in the film despite his sociopathic behaviour he is to a lesser extent show to be a moral character aswell, as he clearly is very protective of his younger sister Gina, and he wants to keep her away from that part of his life.  Also later in the film when Tony is given the task by Sosa to do a hit on a political activist who is threat to Sosa's business partners, by planting a bomb underneath his car.  But when the day comes and Tony is set on killing the activist, he sees that the activist has picked up his wife and daughter, and he refuses to kill the activist and his family, as he says "this is so fucking bad!" realising of course he too has a family to think of.  And its bizarre in a way that Tony Montana has become such an iconic character, as he's hardly a role model, with so many films and TV shows referencing him, and to this day there are plenty of T-shirts and memoribilia to be seen with Tony Montana on them with infamous lines from the film. 

In terms of the performances the cast are all top notch her with Al Pacino giving one of his best performances as Tony Montana, as he plays him as a sociopathic egomaniac, who has ruthless ambition as well as a potty mouth!  Pacino has many highlights in the film and plenty of great dialouge, of which there are too many mention all at once, but one or two that stand include the scene where he talks to Sosa on their first meeting and says "all I have in this world is my world and my balls and I don't break them for anybody!".  Tony has plenty of other memorable lines such as when he talks to Manny as they at the start of the employment with Frank he says "first you get the power, once you get the power you get the women".  And near the end when he is overrun by Sosa's men who storm his mansion, he grabs his M16 assault rifle with a grenade launcher attachment, he shouts out the infamous line "say hello to my little friend!!" and later "I'm Tony Montana!! You fuck with ME, you're fucking with the BEST!!".  Pacino despite his many firey shouty moments in the film, where he literally spits out his lines (in fact it must have been tough for actors wanting to stand near him!) also has one or two quieter moments of charm, especially when he has to act as a driver for Elvira, and he puts on her hat and says "would you kiss me if I wore a hat?".  Also the scene where he sits in his obscenely large bath tub in his mansion, and he watches current affairs programmes on his TV, swearing away, Elvira chastises him for it and calls him boring for talking about money all the time, so he changes channel instead where we see a pelican on screen and he says "OK! Look at that, a pelican!  Lovely pelican, fly fly!".   Later in the scene he tells Manny to back out of his money laundering deal who calls him an asshole and he says "Hey fuck you, Manny, who put this together??? ME!  Who do I trust??? ME!".  And another memorable moment is where he drunkenly walks out of a restaurant and berates the onlookers and says "you need people like me so you can point your fucking fingers and say "there's the bad guy!".  Overall it remains one of the real highlights in Pacino's career.

The supporting cast are also excellent, starting with Steve Bauer as Manny, who has the daunting job of playing off Pacino at his very best, but he does a great here, and he plays Manny as the more cautious and level headed of the two as well as a charmer and a bit of a womaniser.  Bauer has some great moments in the film as well, such as when he decides to try and pick up a girl by sticking his tounge out at her, and she smacks him in the face, and he angrily says "Bitch! Lesbian!".  Bauer's scenes with Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio are nicely played too, as shown in the scene where he drives her home after Tony catches her in the nightclub, and she asks him "why don't you take me out?" and he says "because you are Tony's kid sister, and that's where it ends and that's where it stays".  Manny also probably would have done a better job at keeping Tony alive should Tony have listened to him, which of course in the end he doesn't, and their final scene together is also quite tragic (which I won't mention so not to give it away).

Robert Loggia also does a great job here as Frank Lopez, the drug dealer, who in the end hasn't got the gumption to stand up to Tony and instead tries to have him killed.  Loggia has some terrific moments in the film as well, and some great dialogue, one line which is where he comments on Elvira, "The broad she spends half her time dressing, and the other half undressing!".  Loggia also has a terrific scene with Tony where they argue over the deal Tony has done with Sosa without Frank's permission.  And Frank reminds Tony "rememeber what I said when you first joined this business.  The guys that fly straight, low key, they'll last, but the ones that want it all, champagne, they don't last!".  Michelle Pfieffer is also excellent as the beautiful yet cold and drug addled Elvira, who resists Tony as long as she can until he takes over Frank's business empire, and they soon enter a loveless marriage.  Michelle's best scenes includes the scene where Elvira dances with Tony in a nightclub and he comes onto her and she says "Even if I was starved, desparate, living on a desert island, begging for it, you would be the last thing I would ever fuck!".  The other scene is where she argues with Tony in the restaurant where she outraged when he says he can't even have a baby with her, due to all her drug abuse, she says "I'm leaving you!".

And finally the last few actors I will mention are first off Mary Elizabeth Mastrantoni as Tony's young sister Gina, who Tony is very protective of, and Mary does a fine job with her sympathetic and ultimately tragic role.  It was suggested in the film that Tony actually harbors incestuous feelings for her, but looking at it again, it is more that Tony is just overly protective of her.  Although Gina later on, after encountering tragedy at Tony's hands, suggestively walks into Tony's office with her robe open and a gun in her hand she says "fuck me, Tony!" as she shoots at him in the climactic scene.  F. Murray Abraham is also excellent as Omar Suarez, Frank's devious henchman who clearly despises Tony from the start, and his best line comes when he says to Tony on their first meeting "If anything happens to that money, my boss will shove your head so far up you ass, faster than a rabbit get's fucked!".  Paul Shenar does a great job as Sosa, Tony's business partner, although later on their partnership turns sour and he angrily speaks to Tony on the phone saying "I told you a long time ago, you fucking little monkey not to fuck me!!".  And finally Harris Yulin is great as the corrupt cop who tries to shake down Tony and is bed with Frank, and his last scene with Tony is great just before he is killed, and Tony says to him "Maybe you can get yourself two tickets to the resurrection!".

Direction wise, De Palma does a terrific job here as well, as he provides a great mixture of drama, suspense and humour.  The action scenes in the film are superbly staged, and they are also quite tense, especially the scene where Tony is captured by the Colombians who are about to chainsaw him to death in a bathtub.  The scene where Tony also avoids getting assassinated in the nightclub is another tense well staged moment, as two hitman sit a table with uzis hidden under napkins, and a cocaine fuelled Tony barely notices until the last second.  And the final scene where Tony confronts Sosa's entire army as they storm his mansion is superb even if it is a bit over the top.  Also quickly Oliver Stone, who at the time was as a screenwriter and this was prior to his directorial debut in Platoon, provides a richly well written screenplay with plenty of great dialogue which I have already mentioned as above, and it was at the time the most profane film ever made with over 200 uses of the word "fuck" (with probably over half of them delivered by Pacino!).

And before I finish I thought I would mention the memorable music score written by Giorgio Moroder, which is a mixture of sythensizer based music, and also reflects the new wave scene at the time in the 80s.  It also features several memorable songs which Moroder produced, such as "Push it to the limit" used in the montage scene where we see Tony rise in power, and songs used in the nightclub scenes such as "She's on fire" and "Shake it up".  At times Mororder's score is a bit cheesy and melodramatic, especially in the tense close-up moments when we see Tony react to Gina flirting with a guy on the dancefloor in the club, and the synthesizer reaches fever pitch to reflect his rage.

So that is it for another very LONG critique of a classic movie, which Scarface undoubtedly is, as it is a highly entertaining and suspenseful film, with one of cinema's most memorable villains.

And with that I shall leave it there my little friend!           

Doctor Who: The other Mona Lisa!

Right time for a more light hearted post which is a story from Doctor Who: City of Death, which was a classic during Tom Baker's era, so let's have a look at that!... (and notice the plot summary is quite short!).

OK the usual plottery stuff to start with, the story takes place in Paris 1979, where the Doctor (Baker) and his young Time Lord companion, Romana (Lalla Ward) are on holiday.  When they arrive at the Louvre gallery they encounter strange slips in time, and the Doctor grabs onto the arm of a woman, who was wearing a bracelet.  The Doctor soon reveals that he had stolen the bracelet as he noticed its was not of Earth technology, and that the woman in question was using it to scan the security systems round the Mona Lisa.  Meanwhile the woman in question is Countess Scarlioni (Catherine Schell) who is the wife of the Count Scarlioni (Julian Glover) as they intend to steal the Mona Lisa from the Louvre.  The Doctor and Romana soon also meet a detective, Duggan (Tom Chadbon) who has been following Count Scarlioni's activities, but the three of them are soon captured by the Count's men.

The Doctor, Romana and Duggan are soon taken to Scarlioni, where the Doctor acts the fool to set them off his interest in them, but instead Scarlioni has them locked in his basement.  In the basement, the Doctor soon uses his sonic screwdriver to escape and he stumbles upon time experiment equipment, which is operated by Doctor Kerenesky (David Graham), and is behind the time slips that the Doctor and Romana had encountered.  The Doctor also finds behind their room they were locked in, six exact replicas of the Mona Lisa, which turned out all to be genuine as they have Leonardo Da Vinci's signature and pigment on.  The Doctor then decides to go back in time himself in the TARDIS to have a chat with Leonardo about his work, but instead he meets Captain Tancredi, who is identical to Count Scarlioni.  Tancredi reveals to the Doctor that he is in fact an alien named Scaroth, and he is the last of his race, the Jagaroth.  Jagaroth millions of years in the past on Earth was in his spaceship and was at the centre of an explosion which threw him into a time field and he ended being splintered into 12 different time periods on Earth's history.  Tancredi reveals that he also has been using his technological advances to push the human race and also using Leonardo to create six extra copies of the Mona Lisa so he can fund Kerensky's experiments with time, in an effort to travel back in time before his ship exploded.  The Doctor manages to escape Tancredi's clutches and travels back to 1979 where he goes about to try and stop Scarlioni from carrying out his plan, as the explosion itself brought about the beginning of the human race.  But can he do it?????

The City of Death is without a doubt one of the most entertaining and purely enjoyable Doctor Who stories of its era.  After Philip Hinchcliffe left the series as producer, Graham Williams took over, and while he served the show well enough, there weren't as many classics in his tenure, but this is definitely one of them.  The story itself was written under the psuedonym of David Agnew by Douglas Adams (who was the script editor at that time) and also Graham Williams and it is wonderfully funny with plenty of amusing dialogue and the story itself is quite cleverly thought out.  And the story's light comedic tone is just right here, despite some of the overt uses of comedy in some of the other stories of the Williams era.

Onto the performances, Tom Baker is wonderful as ever as the Doctor, as he was mostly considered the most popular of all the Doctors in the public eye, he does a great job here again.  Baker as you would expect has his fare share of funny dialogue, of which there is plenty, of which some of my favourites (which I will point out as I usually do!) include the scene where he pretends to be a fool when he meet Scarlioni and is pushed into the room by Scarlioni's henchman: "I say, what a wonderful butler, he's so violent!".  Also in that scene where Duggan attempts to escape by lifting one of the chairs to knock out Scarlioni's henchman, the Doctor says "Duggan, what are you doing for heaven's sake???!  That's a Louis Quinze!".  I also like the scene where the Doctor reads Shakespeare's first draft of Hamlet, out of amazement he says "I recongise the handwriting, its mine.  I wrote it when Shakespeare's sprained his wrist writing sonnets!" as well "take sea in the arms of troubles, I told him that was a mixed metaphor and he would insist!".  Another is when he says to Romana, "Romana, do you I think there's something funny going on, you know that man we saw in the gallery, well he's standing behind me poking a gun in my back!" as Duggan stands behind him with a gun.

Lalla Ward, who was at that time Tom Baker's wife is also really good as Romana, and she get's her fair share of witty lines, as she and Duggan investigate together, he asks her "do you know what I don't understand??" to which Romana replies "I expect so!".  As well as Duggan asking "well if you've been around as long as I have, how old are you anyway?" and Romana replies "125!".  She also amusingly notices how the Mona Lisa while she thinks it is "quite good" that "how come she doesn't have any eye brows?" and the Doctor looks closer at the picture and says "you're right, she hasn't got any eyebrows!".   

Which brings me onto Tom Chadbon, who is great as the rather dim detective, Duggan, who is on the hunt to find Scarlioni and catch him in the act of stealing the Mona Lisa.  Duggan's rather amusingly inept as well as brutish manner of dealing with just about everyone in the show is quite funny, especially as he even breaks off the top of a bottle of wine rather than uncork it, "if you want to make an omlette you've got to break some eggs!".  And typically even when the Doctor takes him back in time to pre-historic Earth, Duggan still refuses to believe it all, as the Doctor shows him the ameno acids which would later form human life, and the Doctor says he came from that, to which Duggan replies "I came from that???? That soup???!".  Catherine Schell is also really good as the Countess, and her best scene comes when she forces Scarlioni to reveal who he really is by pointing a gun at him, as Scarlioni peels off his human mask to reveal his Spaghetti-esque alien features.  David Graham also puts in a neat performance as Kerensky, Scarlioni's unfortunate and weary scientist, who is exhausted from all the work Scarlioni pushes him to do in order to get his experiments to succeed.

But the star of the show is of course Julian Glover, who steals it as the Count, who plays the main villain with great charm, charisma and also menace.  Glover also get's some wonderful dialogue and some great moments in the story, especially when he reveals himself as Captain Tancredi as the Doctor asks "You?? What are you doing here???" and Tancredi replies "that is exactly the question I would like to ask you.... Doctor!".  Also the moment where he asks his henchman, Herrman to sell another Gutenberg bible "discreetly" to make more money and Herrman replies incredulously "discreetly??? Sell a Gutenberg bible discreetly???!".  His reveal as Jagaroth is also well done at the end of the first episode and when he reveals himself to the Countess near the end of the story.

Oh and finally on the cameo front John Cleese and Eleanor Bron provide two funny performances as two art lovers who stand and critique as well as appreciate the TARDIS, which is parked inside the Louvre in an exhibit area, as we see the Doctor, Romana and Duggan board it and take off.  This leaves the two art aficinados looking on in wonderment after the TARDIS has dematerialised as Eleanor Bron says "Exquisite! Absolutely exquisite!".    

Flaw wise the story does have one or two though, although nothing too major, but you could argue that the overall comedic tone does offset the drama just a bit too much, and it does lack in providing a sense of real drama and tension.  But the script is so well written and witty in a way you don't mind, but at the same time you would also like that happy medium between the humorous and the dramatic, like the Hinchcliffe did so well.  Also the make-up for Scaroth's real alien face is pretty naff and yes it is pretty obvious that you see Julian Glover's real face beneath it!  But despite those minor quibbles it is a great story of its time.

Also finally I will mention the story's music score by the regular composer at the time, Dudley Simpson, which is nice jaunty little score which has some nice passages, especially in the moments where we see the Doctor and Romana run around Paris (as the story was shot on location there).

So that is it for my look at City of Death and it is easily is one of the highlights of Tom Baker era and just a fun Doctor Who story that is well worth a look.

And with that I shall say byeeeeee.       
   

Funny how???

OK so its blog removal time again as I move a post from the "other" blog to this one, this time its my review of Goodfellas, Martin Scorsese's critically acclaimed crime drama about the real life story of former gangster Henry Hill.    

The film itself starts in 1955 with Henry as a teenager who lives in East Brooklyn ad he longs to become one of the "wiseguys" and chooses to work for them at the local cabstand.  However Henry's father soon finds out he has not been at school and beats him, as he doesn't want his son to have anything to do with the mob.  However the mobsters manage to put a stop to this by threatening the local mailman by putting his "fuckin head in the oven first!" if he delivers another letter to Henry's house.  After this Henry works full time under the wing of the boss Paulie Cicero (Paul Sorvino) and he also meets his two associates the smooth talking but lethal Jimmy "The Gent" Conway (Robert De Niro) and the psychotic loose canon Tommy DeVito (Joe Pesci).  After being pinched by the cops for selling cigarettes off the back off a truck, Henry is taken to court, but tells them nothing, and is eventually let go where Jimmy tells him "Never rat on your friends and always keep your mouth shut".

As the film moves into the 1960s, Henry now in his 20s (as is Tommy) are making a solid living stealing cargo from the local airports, and they also pull off the Air France robbery, which sees Henry move up the ranks.  By this time Henry also meets his soon to be wife Karen (Lorraine Bracco) a Jewish girl from the Five Towns in New York, initially they dont get on well, and Henry stood her up on their second date, but after Karen confronts him about it, Henry makes it up to her.  After this Henry charms Karen with the glamourous side of his life, as he takes her out on expensive dates for meals and drinks.  Henry also at one point defends her, by brutally beating up an abusive neighbour of Karen's, and despite her initial shock toward the incident, she admits that it turned her on, and soon after they marry.

Now into the 1970s, where things start to get more heavy as Henry and Jimmy host a party for Billy Batts (Frankie Vincent) who is a made man with the Gambino crime family.  During the party, Tommy arrives with his date, where Billy first off warmly greets Tommy but then proceeds to wind him up about his past when he was just a boy who shined shoes, this drives Tommy mad (or madder than before) and he threatens Billy then leaves.  Later on Tommy comes back and with Jimmy they both brutally beat up Billy, and later stab and kill him, and soon after bury his body out in the woods.  With Batts being a made guy, this causes a serious problem for the three of them as they killed him without consent.  And during this period Tommy's psychosis continues as he first off berates and shoots a young hood Spider (Michael Imperioli) in the foot for not getting him drink, and then later shoots Spider dead for talking back to him.  Round about this time Henry also starts an affair with a girl Janice Rossi (Gina Mastrogiacomo), but Karen soon finds out about it and rows furiously with him, which leads to Karen becoming hysterical and confronting Henry, pointing a gun at him while they lie on bed, but Henry soon slaps her and takes the gun off her and shouts at her that he's got enough to worry about without coming home to this, and leaves.  Soon after, Paulie expresses his concerns about Karen, but insists he can put things to rights, and in the meantime Henry go off with Jimmy on business down to Florida.  However on beating up a bookie, things soon go awry as the bookie's sister is revealed to be a typist for the FBI, who gives them up, and Henry, Jimmy and Paulie serve a prison sentence.

After Henry is released, he gets involved in drug dealing (behind Paulie's back who insisted Henry doesn't get involved in it) and he also comes across a very appealing  business proposal from his friend and local mobster Morrie Kessler (Chuck Law).  This turns out to be the legendary Lufthansa heist at JFK airport, where Jimmy and a small crew pull off a robbery where they steal over 6 million dollars  However as a result of the robbery, the crew all buy expensive things with their cut of the money, which infuriates Jimmy who expressly told them not to buy anything as it would attract unwanted attention.  Soon after Jimmy has the participants of the heist murdered by Tommy in order to cut any link between himself and the robbery, this includes Morrie, Henry's close friend.  Once the dust has cleared from the heist, Tommy receives the good news that he is set to be "made" and ingratiated into the crime family as a proper member.  But it soon turns out to be a setup as Tommy is taken into a room by Tuddie (Paulie's brother) and is shot dead, as a revenge for killing Billy Batts and various other things. 

By the time we hit 1980, Henry gets involved even heavier in his drug deals and is trying to set up a deal with his associates in Pittsburgh.  But by now Henry is a total dishevelled mess, addicted to cocaine and has become increasingly paranoid.  However before Henry can get the deal underway he is arrested by narcotics police and he is sent to jail, where Henry fears he may be murdered by his crime partners in case he rats them out.  After posting bail, Henry meets with Jimmy who for the first time asks him to do a hit on someone who was supposedly the rat who snitched on them, but Henry realises its a setup because if he decided to go along with the hit, he himself would be killed.  Henry afterward realises he has little choice but to become involved in the witness protection program in order to save his own life and his family.

Right from the start you just know that Goodfellas is a classic film, that certainly isn't far off the level of The Godfather.  The first scene which definitely ranks as one of the most violent opening scenes in American cinema where Tommy and Jimmy finish off Batts, really grabs you by the throat and pulls you into the film straight off.  The characters in Goodfellas are certainly very vividly drawn and Henry Hill himself is far from an angel, but he does appear to be a man who is out of his depth in this world.  He is surrounded by vicious thieves and murderers and while he is a thief himself, he isn't murder, and as Hill in real life himself said, he lived in constant fear 24 hours a day, fearing that he might be killed himself at any moment.  Hill's narration in the film is also really contrary with the events that occur in the film where he says he loved the life, and the thrill he got from it, but you also see Henry's utter shock and fear at his associates behaviour.  This is probably best displayed in the scene after Tommy and Jimmy brutally bludgeon Billy Batts and stick him the boot of their car, they then go and have dinner at Tommy's mother's house, and Henry sits silently, while Tommy and Jimmy laugh and joke, despite what they have just done.  But at the end of the film even though he is living in the witness protection program, he still has the nerve to complain about how boring and inconvenient has life has become since leaving the crime life behind.  Yet if it wasn't for the program he would have been dead long ago, since then Henry Hill himself said how grateful he was for the program and that it did save his life, although he has since had a few lapses and gotten in trouble with the law for drink and drug abuse.  

However Jimmy and Tommy are far from sympathetic as they come across as the vicious bastards they no doubt were in real life, and no doubt in real life they were much worse.  Tommy's character was for example based on Thomas DeSimone, Hill's real life criminal associate who Hill himself described as a "sick deadly fuck, who would kill your rather than steal", DeSimmone also in reality attempted to rape Karen Hill as well.

Performance wise there is precious little to fault here as the cast are all really strong and on top form.  Ray Liotta is great as Henry Hill, as he starts off as a suave well dressed gangster, but ends up a total mess, burnt out on cocaine.  Liotta perfectly grasps the (fancy word here) Hill's ambivalent emotions about the life, as one minute he loves the thrill of stealing, but the next he fears for his life.  De Niro is also really good as Jimmy Conway, he plays him with just the right amount of charm and menace.  Paul Sorvino also does really well as Paulie Cicero, its basically a part he initially found really difficult to capture, until he saw a look he gave in a mirror which scared the hell out of him!  And he adopts this menacing look throughout the film, and his best scene comes when he confronts Henry about drug dealing.  Lorraine Bracco is terrific as Karen Hill, and she is a far cry from the quiet wives off The Godfather as such as Kay and Connie.  Karen is far more fesity and has the guts to stand up to Henry and confront him about his infidelities, and she also remains strong when Henry serves his time in prison.  But the best performance in the film comes from Joe Pesci as the hot headed and aggressive crook Tommy, and its great how he can take his small demeanour and turn himself into quite a chilling but at the same time amusing bad guy.  Pesci's famous scene where he asks Henry "funny how?" is a great example of Pesci's intensity and ability to play a scene as being both funny and menacing all at once.

The film itself has only a few flaws, but the main one unfortunately however has to be that after Tommy's character is bumped off, the film takes a dip and the energy and momentum of the film drops.  In the last 30 minutes or so, its all about Henry's frantic state of mind as he tries to put his drug deal together, and picking up his brother from hospital and getting him to stir the tomato sauce for their dinner, while at the same he is paranoid about helicopters following him outside.  It all becomes a bit bogged down with inconsequential details at this point, and all Henry's running around really drags the pace of the film down.  However it does feature a great moment where Karen meets up with Jimmy who says he has some dresses for Karen to look at, which are in the back of Jimmy's warehouse in an alleyway, but Karen out of fear choses not to look and drives away in her car.  But the end of the film does feel like a bit of an anti-climax, which is a shame as the rest of it is so good.  

Technically though the film is just as good as anything Scorses has done, as there are many great scenes, the scene where Henry escorts Karen through the bowels the club they are going to in order to skip the queue at the front door is definitely one of the most memorable.  I also love the pull in zoom shot where Henry meets with Jimmy in a diner toward the end where they discuss Henry's case.  Scorsese's also put together a terrific soundtrack for the film and his choice of music is perfect in each scene with such artists as The Rolling Stones, Donovan, The Sex Pistols, George Harrison and Cream.

Soooo that's my review and analysis of Goodfellas over with, its a real classic no doubt it and if you haven't seen it well get it sorted! 

That it for now.

Star Trek III: Searching for Spock

Right as I did a review of Star Trek II, I thought I might as well follow it up with one on Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, which saw Leonard Nimoy make his directorial debut back when it was made in 1984.  So let's gie it a look.  (As usual PLOT SPOILERS ARE AHEAD!!)

Right right right, I might as well start with a bit of the old plot, which begins with the USS Enterprise returning back to Earth, in the aftermath of Kirk's battle with Khan, who tried to destroy the Enterprise by detonating the Genesis torpedo, and as a result Spock sacrificed his life to save the ship.  As they are about to dock, Kirk (Shatner) receives word that someone has broken into Spock's quarters, and he goes to find McCoy (DeForrest Kelly) there who is acting strangely as he tells Jim to "climb the steps to Mount Selaya" which is on Vulcan, but McCoy passes out before he can say more.  Once back at Starfleet command, Admiral Morrow (Robert Hooks) tells the crew that the Enterprise is to be decomissioned and that Genesis is now a taboo subject and not to be discussed with anyone, as a result of a political fallout over the device.  Kirk back home receives a visit from Spock's father, Sarek (Mark Lenard) who confronts him over his son's death.  Sarek mind melds with Kirk but he finds no trace of what he had hoped was his son's "katra" or living spirit, however Kirk suggests that Spock might have joined with someone else.  This is revealed to be the case when they check the engineering room video tapes and they find Spock performed a mind meld on McCoy, on which Sarek tells Kirk that he must find Spock's body and bring him and McCoy to Mount Selaya where they can restore Spock's mind.  

Meanwhile Kirk's son David Marcus (Merritt Butrick again) one of the main scientists involved in the Genesis project, is now assigned to the USS Grissom, where investigates an unidentified lifeform coming from the Genesis planet.  Along with Lt Saavik (Robin Curtis) David beams down to the surface of the planet and they find that Spock's coffin chamber is empty, and they soon find a Vulcan child, which as it turns out the Genesis wave has regenerated Spock back to life.  However the planet itself is becoming highly unstable as David admits to Saavik that he used "protomatter" in constructing the Genesis device, which means that Spock will age rapidly and the planet will be destroyed within a matter of hours.

Elsewhere Kirk with help of Sulu (George Taeki), Scotty (James Doonan) and Chekov (Walter Koenig) manage to steal the Enterprise from space dock and fly off to find Spock.  However to complicate things a Klingon crew have learned of the Genesis device, and the commander, Kruge (Christopher Lloyd) intercepts and destroys USS Grissom and he beams down to the planet, taking David, Saavik and the rapidly aging Spock hostage.  As the Enterprise reaches the Genesis planet, Kruge is informed of their arrival and beams up to his Klingon bird of prety, where he does battle with the Enterprise, and knocks out the ship's engines and weapons in the process.  Kruge tells Kirk that he has David and Saavik hostage below and he orders one of them to be killed, and on the surface, David prevents one of the Klingons from killing Saavik, but he is killed himself in the struggle.  Kirk is devastated by news of his son's death and surrenders to Kruge, but in the meantime he activates the Enterprises's self destruct sequence, and he sets the transporter to beam down to the surface of the planet, just in time before Kruge's boarding party arrive on the ship as it self destructs.  On the surface Kirk and the others soon find Saavik and the aging Spock, who by this time has fully growing into the adult Spock we know.  But before they can escape, Kruge beams down and seeks revenge over the death of his crewmembers, as he confronts Kirk as the planet collapses around them...

Although it isn't quite in the same league as its predecessor, STIII: The Search for Spock has alot going for it as a film, and Leonard Nimoy makes an impressive directorial debut here taking over from Nicholas Meyer, who was set not to return.  It also sees the second part in what is something of a trilogy of its own as the story arc of finding Spock is a continuation from the events of the second film, and this continues into Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home.  I also quite like the concept that Spock can be brought back to life by placing his "katra" or living spirit into McCoy's mind and it also allows for McCoy behave in an amusingly strange manner, as he takes on some of Spock's personality traits, which I'll mention more about a bit later on.  And the Genesis theme is again used well here, although it does seem a bit of a change-up that all of a sudden Genesis, which is supposed to have the power to create, turns out to be a scientific failure, as the Genesis planet becomes unstable and destroys itself later on.  Its also refreshing to see the return of the Klingons to the franchise as well, and this time they are far better represented than they were in Star Trek The Motion Picture, where they hardly had any screen time at all.

Which brings me onto the performances in the film which are again pretty good, and the regular cast once more deliver some nice performances.  William Shatner once again is great in his role as James T. Kirk, and he shows great decency, courage and loyalty in doing all he can to find Spock and bring him back.  Bill also has some funny moments in the film, one of which being when he finds McCoy who has been arrested in put in a holding cell after having an argument in a bar, and Kirk does the Vulcan peace sign and says "how many fingers am I holding up??".  Also later on he has an amusing moment when he takes the remaining Klingon crew hostage, and he says "help us or die" to the Klingon officer, Maltz (played by John Larroquette) who says "I do not deserve to live!" and Kirk replies "fine, I'll kill you later!", which he doesn't to which Maltz angrily says "wait, you say you would kill me!" and Kirk says "I lied.".  Bill however does have a rather silly dramatic and cheesy moment where he learns that David has been killed and he collapses in his chair on the Enterprise bridge, and says "you Klingon bastard you killed my son!".  Bill also has another great moment in his climactic fight scene with Kruge on the Genesis planet as it destroys itself, and he tries to save Kruge from falling over a cliff, but Kruge tries to take him with him, and Kirk says "I... have.... had....enough... of.... you!!!" as he kicks him off.  

DeForrest Kelley is great again as McCoy, and this time he is given more to do as he holds the burden of carrying Spock's katra in his head, and as a result he takes on some of Spock's logical personality, which provides some amusing moments in the film.  McCoy's best scene is of course where he meets with a strange looking alien with big ears, whom he tries to arrange a space flight with to go to Genesis, and he says to him angrily "I wan't to go to Genesis, how can you be deaf with ears like that??!".  He also has a funny moment in the same scene where a barmaid asks McCoy what he wants to drink and he asks for something different to which the barmaid says "that isn't your usual poison" and McCoy replies in Spock fashion "you don't expect one to order poison in bars, its not logical".

And while they three of them have limited screen time, Walter Koenig, George Taeki and James Doonan also provide nice performances.  And James Doonan in particular get's one of the film's best lines where he is about to sabotage the new USS Excelsior starship he has been assigned to, and the automated elevator voice asks him where he wants to go and he says "up your shaft!".  George Taeki as Sulu also get's a funny moment where he teases a big security guard who stands up over Sulu and says "don't get smart. Tiny!" and later Sulu knocks the big guy out and says "don't call me tiny!".  And I will quickly mention Nichelle Nichols as Uhura, who get's an amusing moment in the film where she locks an ambitious cocky wannabe starfleet officer in a closet, "the old adrenalin going?? Good now get into the closet!".   

Of the new cast members, Christopher Lloyd is excellent as the Klingon commander Kruge, an meglomaniacal Klingon who is out to seek power, glory and the usual stuff renegade Klingons look for!  Lloyd overall makes for quite an effective villain, and he has some good moments one of which is where he kills a crewmember who mistakenly destroys the USS Grissom when Kruge asked him to target only the ship's engine, and the victim officer says "A good shot sir!" before being vapourised!  Robin Curtis who takes over the role of playing Lt Saavik also does a good job here although she is arguably not quite as good Kirstie Alley, but she does play Saavik in a more logical way, and her most notable moment is when David has been killed, she calmly tells Kirk on the radio "Admiral, David is dead".  This might appear to be a badly acted moment, but considering that she is Vulcan and they are a logical race, it makes sense that she wouldn't be overcome by emotion.  Merritt Buttrick again as David provides a good performance and his last scene is quite poignant as Kirk speaks to him over the radio and asks "David what went wrong???" and he replies "I went wrong!" before sacrficing himself to save Saavik and Spock.  And finally Mark Lenard as Sarek does a fine job playing Spock's father, and his scene with Kirk at the start when they join minds is quite a sad moment in the film, where Sarek sadly reflects about Spock "that every he knew, everything he was is lost".

In regards to the special effects, once again they were provided mostly by Industrial Light and Magic (ILM) and this time we have four spaceships on display with the USS Enterprise, Grissom, Excelsior as well as Kruge's Klingon bird of prey.  Overall once again the special effects for the ships are all very impressive and one of the new effects we see in the film is the Klingon cloaking device, which is well used.  However the most notable effect in the film is of course the destruction of the Enterprise, and its one of the film's most memorable images as Kirk, McCoy, Sulu, Scotty and Chekov have safely beamed to the Genesis planet, we see the smouldering remains of the Enterprise fire down in the distance.

And regarding the film's music, we are again treated to a great score by James Horner, who follows up his terrific work from Star Trek II with another wonderful effort here, which has the perfect mix of drama, adventure and atmosphere.  Horner reprises some of the themes from the second film, but he also adds in plenty of great new cues, such as the one used in the Enterprise self destruct sequence, and the scene where they attempt Spock's "refusion" on Vulcan.

So that's it for my look at Star Trek III, which to this day is still a very entertaining and worthy addition to the franchise.  It might not be quite as good as Star Trek II but it still stands tall among some of the efforts to be later found in the Star Trek world.

And with that I shall leave it there.  Live long and all that. 

Star Trek II: KHANNNNNNNNNNNN!!!!!

Righty time for another review, so this time I've dug back in time to an old sci-fi classic and its one of the Star Trek films, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, which is widely regarded as the best of the original crew's films.  So let's give it a look....

OK starting with the usual stuff, i.e the plot the film begins with Starfleet officer, Lt Saavik (Kirstie Alley) who is taking the "Kobayashir Maru" test, which is a test of Starfleet officer's character and leadership qualities in battle situations.  Saavik fails the test as it ends Admiral James T. Kirk (William Shatner) comes as he has been overseeing the test and speaks with Captain spock (Leonard Nimoy) afterwards.  Kirk by now has given up his command of the Enterprise, as he insists "galloping round the cosmos is a game for the young".  On the night of his birthday back on Earth, Dr McCoy (DeForrest Kelly) visits Kirk and insists he get back his command on the Enterprise.

Meanwhile the USS Reliant, is on a mission to find a lifeless planet so they can test the Genesis device, which is a torpedo that has the ability to reorganise matter and create habitable worlds for colonisation.  On beaming down to a barren planet named Ceti Alpha V, Pavel Chekov (Walter Koenig) and Captain Terrell (Paul Winfield) beam down to the surface, during a heavy sandstorm they are soon captured by mysteriously masked figures.  The leader reveals himself to be Khan Noonien Singh (Ricardo Montalban) a genetically engineered tyrant who was exiled to the planet 15 years ago by Kirk.  Khan tells them that he was abandoned by Kirk and that he blames him for the death of his wife.  Kahn then uses small eels which he places into Chekov and Terrell's space helmets which crawl into their ears, which Khan uses to control the men's minds and he get's them to find out where Kirk is, and they soon take the Reliant.  Chekov then sends a strange message to the Genesis research team, who created the weapon, insisting that they transport the Genesis materials to them.  The leader of the group Dr Carol Marcus (Bibi Besch) then contacts Kirk to ask why they are taking Genesis away from them, but their transmission is jammed.  Kirk then decides out of concern to take command of the Enteprise, which is supposed to be on a three week training cruise.  And its not long before Khan shows up in the Reliant and launches an attack on the Enterprise, but Kirk manages to trick them into lowering their shields and they counter-attack and escape.  

On arriving at the scientist space station, Kirk with Lt Saavik and McCoy find most of the crew murdered and also Chekov and Terrell, who tell them that Khan tortured and killed most of the crew to get information about Genesis.  Saavik tells Kirk that the remaining might have beamed down into the planetoid of Regula, and they teleport down, to soon find the remaining project team members, including Carol Marcus and her son, David (Merritt Buttrick) which turns out to be Kirk's son.  At this point Chekov and Terrell draw their guns on Kirk, as Khan has been using them as spies, and they beam up Genesis at Khan's command, who tells them to kill Kirk.  Terrell however resists and feeling the torment of the eel inside him, kills himself, whereas Chekov collapses, but eel drops out his ear and Kirk shoots it, and angrily speaks to Khan who taunts him.  Stranded on the planetoid for a short while until Spock on the Enterprise can restore enough power to the ship's engines, Carol shows them around the Genesis cave, which is a beautiful paradise like world.  After a short time, Spock calls Kirk and beams them back onboard the Enterprise, where Kirk once again is involved in a battle of wits against his old foe Khan for the final time.

There is no doubt that Star Trek II is one of the best films if not the best in the Star Trek movie franchise, and after a very disappointing and frankly boring first film, Star Trek: the Motion Picture, this saw the makers refind the essence of what made the TV show so entertaining.  The re-introduction of an old enemy from the TV series was also an excellent choice, as the filmmakers decided to go with Khan, who appeared in the original TV series episode "Space seed".  Khan himself is a very charismatic villain and at times even quotes pieces of Shakespeare, especially near the end when he is (PLOT SPOILER) abotu to detonate the Genesis device and he says "for hate's sake I spit my last breath at thee!".  Its also a really good choice in the film that Khan and Kirk never actually meet in person as they only communicate over the radios, or the ship's screen, and this is used to great effect in the scene where Kirk is left stranded on Regula planetoid and Khan taunts him by saying "I will leave you marooned for all eternity on the centre of a dead planet, buried alive!".  And Khan's mean motivation for vengeance is the death of his wife, although in the film its not really specified directly that this was Kirk's doing, it was more the eel like creatures that were responsible for her death as he says so himself "they killed 20 of my people, including my beloved wife!".  In the end however it is more about Khan purely out for revenge over Kirk for abandoning him on a desolate planet in the end more than anything else.

So getting onto the performances, well starting with the Star Trek crew themselves, they all give reassuringly charming performances that are very much akin to the TV series.  William Shatner is great as James T. Kirk and after playing Kirk in a very stiff and serious manner in the first film, here we see the proper Kirk, with a wry sense of humour.  Shatner himself get's some great lines in the film such as in the scene where he beams down to the planetoid with McCoy and Saavik and McCoy asks and tries to find the remainder Gensis project crew:

McCoy: Where are we going?
Kirk: Where they went?
McCoy: Supposing they went nowhere?
Kirk: Well this will be your big chance to get away from it all!

Shatner also shows Kirk as being quite vulnerable at times and at the start of the film he appears to be undergoing a sort of mid-life crisis, as he refuses to take command of the ship.  And in one of the best dramatic scenes, his former lover, Carol Marcus asks him how he feels and he replies "old, worn out".  Although later on he changes that to the film's last and cheesiest line where McCoy asks him how he feels and Kirk replies "young, I feel young!".  There is also of course the classic line which he delivers after Khan angers him by leaving him stranded on the planetoid and Kirk yells into his radio "KHANNNNNNNNNNNNNN!!!!!".   

Leonard Nimoy also plays Spock nicely in a very subtle way, and he also shows that over time he has grown used to human customs and has a good understanding of their behaviour, and even at times displays a quirky sense of humour himself, as he says at one point to Kirk "I'm a Vulcan, I have no ego to bruise!".  Spock's friendship with Krik has always been one of the key relationships in the series, and they also share a couple of good scenes, mainly the one at the end where (ANOTHER PLOT SPOILER) Spock sacrificies himself to save the ship from the Genesis detonation, and in his dying moments he says to Kirk "I am and shall always be your friend!".  This still is one of the more poignant scenes in the Star Trek movie franchise, and no doubt there will be a few fans out there with something in their eye when this scene comes on!  Although in an earlier scene the way in which he phrases his friendship to Kirk sounds a bit suspect, as he says to him "you are my superior officer, and also my friend, I am and shall always be yours".   Ahem!

Of the other regular cast members DeForrest Kelly is great as Doctor McCoy, and he too get's some great lines when he argues with Kirk and Spock over the merits and flaws of the Genesis device and he says "according to myth the Earth was created in six days, now watch out, here's Genesis, now we can do it in six minutes!".  Later on McCoy becomes instrumental in the saviour of Spock's life in the scene just before Spock goes into the engine room, Spock uses his nerve pinch to knock out McCoy and he performs a mind meld on him, simply saying "remember".  Which amusingly brings to mind a story from William Shatner who was totally unaware of this scene at the time and implications of how it meant they were leaving it open for a third film, which Shatner had no idea about and jokingly accused Harve Bennet the producer and Leonard Nimoy with coming up with this sneaky idea to extend the film series.  And Shatner jokingly said "they knew about it, and did it on purpose and I didn't know, and I'm going to get them for it one day!".  Walter Koenig also does fairly well as Pavel Chekov, despite his forever dodgy Russian accent (always overpronouncing his v's as w's) he get's more to do in this film than normal, and its a nice change-up that he is used as a spy by Khan.

And as for the supporting new cast there is Bibi Besch, who is good as Dr Marcus, although she does have one cringeworthy line where she speaks to Kirk down on the Regula planetoid and she says "let me show you something that will make you feel young, as when the world was new!".  Although Besch does have a good line when David refers to Kirk as an "overgrown boyscout" and Dr Marcus says "listen kiddo, Jim Kirk was many things but he was never a boyscout!".  Merritt Buttrick is also good as Kirk's feisty and stubborn son David, and he would later go on to reprise his role in Star Trek III, and it was a great pity that he later on died only at the age of 29 due to AIDS related toxoplasmosis.

And finally there is of course Kirstie Alley as Lt Saavik, who is really good as the cool headed and ambitious Starfleet officer, who for half the film is frustrated at her failed attempts to succeed in the Kobayashi Maru test, before she get's a chance to have a shot at the Enterprise command chair herself when Kirk says "Saavik, you have the comm!".  As Saavik, Alley shares a nice little scene with Kirk in the elevator scene where she asks him how he passed the test and he says "you may ask!  That's just a little joke" to which Saavik shakes her head and says "humour its a difficult concept, it is not logical!".  But of course Kirk later on tells Saavik his solution to the test, which in effect suggests that he cheated to win, although Kirk puts it as "changing the conditions of the test".  Saavik also most notably cries near the end of the film at Spock's funeral, which was very uncharacteristic for a Vulcan, although in the script it was revealed that Saavik was of mixed Vulcan and Romulan ancestry, although Vulcans do of course have emotions, they just suppress them, and its fair to say that even Vulcans might shed a tear every once in a very long while. 

Which brings me onto the star of the show, Ricardo Montalban as Khan, and he does a terrific job as Kirk's old arch enemy.  Montalban plays Kahn as a charming, intelligent yet vicious villain who is quick to take lives when he feels like it, as we see the bloody aftermath of his attack on the Regula space station.  Montalban get's plenty of great dialogue in the film and he has several highlights in the film, especially in his first scene where he reveals himself to Chekov by removing his mask and he interrogates him, lifting him off the ground asking "why are you here???".  There is also the scene where Montalban is about to launch his first attack on the Enterprise and he says "Ahh Kirk my old friend, do you know of the old Klingon proverb that revenge is a dish best served cold?  It is very cold in space!".  I also like the line where Khan's second in command, Jaochim tries to convince him that he doesn't need to go after Kirk now they have taken the Reliant but Khan insists and says "He tasks me and I shall have him! I shall chase him round the moons of Nibia, and around the Antares Maelstrom and around Perdition's flames before I give him up!".  Montalban also did a fair bit of physical work to give himself a strong physique for Khan and he does impose himself as a very effective villain throughout the film both physically and mentally. 

As for the technical specs of the film, direction wise Nicholas Meyer does a terrific job here, and he also co-wrote the screenplay, and he adds in some doses of Shakespeare for measure here (although not Measure for Measure!) with several quotations from Hamlet, as Kirk and Khan both separately quote from the play.  Meyer also provides the perfect balance of humour, drama as well action to the film, and he nicely conveys how Starfleet is more like on giant navy in space, with even an admiral ranking to back it up.

The special effects for the film are also excellent as the Industry of Light Magic bring the space battle between the USS Enterprise and Reliant brilliantly to life in space and the model work for both ships are great.  And one of the most visually impressive sequences in the film is the cat and mouse chase through into the Nebula, where the two ships can't detect one another due to the large amount of static discharge in the Nebula itself.  Star Trek II is also one of the first films to have used computer graphics effects as well, which is shown in the Genesis proposal video, which shows the effects of the torpedo and how it creates a world.  And its ironic how Star Trek II cost a quarter of the amount that Star Trek The Motion Picture did ($11 million as opposed to $46 million), yet Star Trek II is by far the more visually impressive film, as I guess they used the money in just the right way. 

And finally I can't finish without mentioning James Horner's brilliant and wonderful music score for the film, which easily stands as one of his very best film scores and it was also his debut major film.  And throughout there are so many terrific passages of music, especially in the scene where Khan is introduced, and also in the scenes where the Enterprise comes under attack, as well as the film's terrific main theme. 

Sooooo that's it for my pretty exhaustive look at Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, which for me is the best of the Star Trek films and to this day remains a very enteratining, suspenseful and enjoyable film.

And that's it for now, till the next time, beam me up! 

 

Die Hard Part 4.0: A timex watch in a digital age

OK now this is the final part of my Die Hard posts, and this will cover the latest installment in the franchise, Die Hard 4.0 (or, Live Free or Die Hard as its called in the US).  So as usual why not start with a bit more about the plot...

Starting at the start, the film begins with police officer John McClane (Brucey) being order by his superior officer at the NYPD to bring in a young hacker, Matt Farrell (Justin Long) to protective custody.  On finding Matt, an attempt is made on the young hacker's life, and McClane manages to get him out of there before the assassins kill him.  McClane takes Matt to Washington D.C. where he will be taken into custody by the FBI, and Matt explains that he was going to be paid a large sum of money for writing some security code for Mai Linh (Maggie Q) who turns out to be one of the cyberterrorists, lead by Thomas Gabriel (Timothy Olyphant), who was once a DOD (Department of Defence) analyst for the Government who was dismissed after finding flaws in the security systems.  On arriving in D.C. the traffic lights stop working all over the city, and traffic is grinded to a gridlock.  McClane gets Matt to the FBI cyber crime division, where they talk to Depty Director, Miguel Bowman (Cliff Curtis).  At this point the television networks are filled with a video compilation of the former presidents of the USA, stringing together a threatening speech from past speeches.  Matt soon realises that Gabriel is planning a "firesale", which is an attack on the country's computer infrastructure, which means Gabriel will take out the nation's electricity, fuel and water supplies.  Bowman has McClane and Matt escorted by agents to the FBI headquarters, but their car is intercerpted by a chopper enroute, which takes out the agent driver.  McClane and Matt soon escape sight of the chopper by going into a tunnel, abandoning the car, McClane gets into another car and uses it to launch an attack on the chopper, as he revs it up and it flies up over a damaged toolboth, thereby destroying the chopper.

After this McClane with Farrell's help find out that the terrorists next target will be a power grid and they drive to a power station in West Virginia.  At the station McClane takes out the team of terrorists and Mai, McClane contacts Gabriel, informing him his team and Mai are dead (who was his girlfriend), which pisses off Gabriel, who then sends by remote control, the stations gas supply into it, and McClane and Farrell narrowly escape being killed in the resulting explosion of the station.  After Farrell decides to get the help of his hacker friend, the "Warlock" Freddie Klaudis (Kevin Smith) who is initially reluctant to help them, especially as McClane is a cop, but he tells them that the piece of code Farrell wrote, was part of a code that will enable Gabriel to download all personal and finanical records into a secure facility based at Woodlawn, Maryland.  However Gabriel discovers and tracks Freddie's hack and speaks to McClane, and tells him that he will go after his daughter Lucy McClane (Mary Elisabeth Winstead), who he tracks by use of her mobile phone, and sends his men in to kidnap her.  McClane then heads off to Woodlawn with Farrell, once they get there, McClane takes out most of Gabriel's men, however Gabriel captures Farrell, who is caught encrypting the data that Gabriel has downloaded, and he escapes with Farrell and Lucy.  McClane follows them and in pirsuit kills one of Gabriel's men, driving a truck, but Gabriel is able to hack into the Military corps computers, and convinces a nearby jet fighter airpilot into believing that McClane is in fact a terrorist.  The pilot launches an attack on McClane's truck, but McClane narrowly escapes by launching the truck into the aircraft, which destroys both the aircraft and the truck.  McClane soon after tracks Gabriel to a warehouse, where Gabriel forces Farrell to decrypt the data, and there we have the inevitable final showdown....

Die Hard 4.0, or Live Free or Die Hard, if you like, is another enjoyable entry in the franchise, and while it isn't the strongest of the four, it definitely is more entertaining than Die Hard 2 was.  It was inevitable that with ever changing technology, that Die Hard would sooner or later get to cyberterrorism, and while its hardly an original concept or plot (look no further than the James Bond film, Goldeneye, and you will see the plot is very similar!) the film is still very enjoyable.  In Die Hard 4.0 we see John McClane is becoming more and more out of touch with technology, as he clearly is an old school guy, and is very wary throughout of all technical jargon he faces from Farrell.  In fact there times where McClane's character is almost overly simplified because for him its all absolutes, as he says things like "I'm gonna find the bad guy and kill him, and get my daughter" or "how about I find you, kick your ass out of your own party!".  However that is pretty much the essence of McClane's character, as Gabriel points out at one stage that he is "a timex watch in a digital age", he's a dinosaur in modern age.

However character wise, Die Hard 4.0 has quite a lot going for it, Bruce Willis once again as McClane is as reliable and likeable as he usually is, and his over protectiveness of his daughter is quite amusing, especially at the start when he spies on his daughter Lucy making out with a guy in a car, and he pulls the guy out of the car, and Lucy accuses him of spying on her, and McClane defensively says "I wasn't spying on you!".  He also has the odd moment of personal reflection where he says to Farrell how his life isn't all that great that way it has worked out, being divorced from his wife Holly, and that its up to him to do what he has to do to keep Farrell alive and safe.

Matt Farrell played by Justin Long is not a bad character, although there are a few scenes where he does annoy me, one which is where he berates McClane for listening to Creedence Clearwater Revival's "Fortunate Son", and says it "I'd rather have a pine cone shoved up my ass than listen to this!".  However at the start you hear the crappy Goth metal pish music that Farrell listens to, and I gladly would put the mute on any day rather listen to that, in fact where is the pine cone????? (OK I pushed it too far there, ahem!! ;-).  Another annoying and pointless scene with Farrell is where they break into a car and instead of letting McClane hotwire it, he begs with the car's automated voice system to start the car by pretending that he was in a bad car accident, after which it eventually starts the car.  I mean why bother?????  It would be much quicker to just hotwire it anyway!!  Lucy McClane is also very well represented by the rather nice Mary Elisabeth Winstead, who personality wise follows in her father's footsteps, in being headstrong, stubborn and gutsy.  In fact Justin Long as Farrell get's one of the best lines in the film when Mary (as Lucy) says "look do you wanna grow some balls??!", to which Farrell replies "Wow!  I'm use to hearing that tone, but its funny to hear it from someone with hair!".

Supporting character wise the film also benefits from some fine performances, particularly from Cliff Curtis as FBI deputy director Bowman, who is very good.  Curtis is also a very chamaeleonic actor, and from one film to the next, there are times you wouldn't recognise it was even him!  Accent wise Curtis also is quite versatile, as he has played Americans, Hispanics, Muslims and of course New Zealand (where he is from!).  Maggie Q is also fine (and is foine!) as the icy cool assassin Mai, who at one point McClane says to Gabriel on the phone that "that little ninja chick was smokin hot!".  And of course Kevin Smith plays a very amusing cameo role as the "Warlock", the hacker, who literally lives in his mum's basement.  Smith also has one of the film's most amusing exchanges with Willis, in the scene where McClane looks at one of Warlock's figurines of Bobba Fett, and Warlock says "are you a fan of the Fett?" and McClane none the wiser replies "no, I was always more of a Star Wars guy!".

The film of course however does have a few flaws, the main one probably being that as the franchise has progressed, it has gotten more and more over the top and proposterous, and here it reaches it limits.  In Die Hard 4.0, McClane is now taking out choppers by launching cars at them, and facing off marine aircraft and taking them down.  Even by the standard of what went before in the series, this is getting really ridiculous on the "credibility" stakes, and has you shaking your head in disbelief.  The other film's main flaw for me is Timothy Olyphant, who makes for the least most effective villain in the Die Hard franchise.  Olyphant's Gabriel is more of a whining nerd, then a menacing baddie and at no point do you really get that he is that much of a match for McClane.  Olyphant also clearly lacks the courage of his convictions in killing anyone himself, as he really is like a boy sending men to do his work for him, unlike the Gruber's, who are seasoned professionals and not to be toyed with.  That's not to take away Timothy Olyphant's performance, which is not too bad, but he clearly has been short changed by his character.  Perhaps also another slight flaw in the film, is just perhaps due to its lower PG-13 rating (still rated a 15 certificate in the UK), the film contains much less profanity, which possibly takes away from the grittiness that fuelled the previous films well.  But I don't think that's a bad thing though, as it does provide a welcome change and proves that you don't really need a lot of effin and blinding to make a film work. 

Direction wise though Len Wiseman, who was responsible for directing the awful Underworld films, acquits himself quite well here with Die Hard 4.0, and handles the action scenes very well, as well as the pacing of the film, and he also neatly leaves the film's conclusion wide open for another film to follow.

However the film that followed turned out to be A Good Day to Die Hard, which was released earlier this year, and unlike the other films, its received a real lambasting from the critics, and I have not as yet seen it, but I would imagine that it would pale in comparison to the previous four films.  The plot as far as I know involves John McClane helping his estranged son, Jack, out of prison in Russia during a terrorist threat, and that's all I will say about it just now.  However perhaps one day I will give it a watch and add to this compendium (if that is the right word!). 

And on that note I shall leave it there and that's it for the Die Hard posts. Yippeee ki-yay, mutha fu***!!

Die Hard Part 3: Simon says....

OK now onto the 3rd installment of the Die Hard posts, which covers Die Hard with a vengeance, which saw the return of John McTiernan to the directorial helm.  So here is more on that and the plot.... (please forgive the long plot summary!)

The film begins with a bomb going off in New York Manhattan at the Bonwitt Teller department store during a hot summer morning.  The NYPD receive a call from a mysterious caller that uses the phrase "Simon says" and asks for John McClane (Bruce Willis of course!), who at this time is on suspension of duty.  The caller insists that John McClane get to Harlem and wear a sandwich board, or else, the caller will set off another bomb.  The major case unit inspector Walter Cobb (Larry Bryggman) of the NYPD goes and talks with McClane and tells them that he must do as "Simon" says, so McClane has no choice but to wear the sandwich board which says "I hate niggers" on it.  On walking through the streets of Harlem, a local shop owner and electrician Zeus Carver (Samuel L.Jackson) spots McClane and tells him to get out of there, but as McClane explains what he is doing, a local gang spot him and attack him, but Zeus manages to grab McClane's gun and they escape the scene in a taxi, back to the police station.  Back at the station, the police have found that "Simon" has stolen thousands of gallons of bi-chemical agent explosive.  Simon then calls again and speaks with McClane and insists that he and Zeus go on a series of games of games in order to prevent him from detonating more bombs.  McClane reluctantly manages to get Zeus to go along with him, and their first port of call is trying to prevent a bomb going off in one of the New York subways, which McClane barely gets there in time, finding the bomb in one of the carriages of a subway train, he throws it out the window and it blows up just in time before destroying the train.

Soon after this, McClane and Zeus are taken to meet two FBI agents, who explain that the mysterious caller is in fact the brother of Hans Gruber, the villain from the first Die Hard, and his real name is Simon Peter Gruber (Jeremy Irons).  At this point Simon calls again and tells them he has planted another bomb in one of the schools in the city, and that McClane and Zeus are to solve more puzzles in order to find the location of the bomb.  After the two men find a bomb in one of the parks, they disarm it and take it away, afterwards McClane spots a kid cycling away from a store, having stolen some food and stops him, where the kid says "Look at this place, there is no one here, the cops are into something, its like Christmas, you could steal City Hall!".  At this point McClane realises something is up and it dawns on him that this is actually been all about a heist, as Simon and his men, are in actual fact there to steal the gold bullion from the Federal Reserve Bank.  So Simon and his team, disguised as policeman and construction workers, enter the bank and kill or incapacitate the security guards inside, and break into the bank vault, and use dump trucks to load up the gold.  McClane soon after enters the bank, and meets with Simon's men, posing as cops, he enters a lift with them and notices one of the men wears the police badge from one of the dead NYPD officers, and kills the men in the lift.  McClane thereafter finds one of the remaining bars of gold and with Zeus they go after the trucks and follow them to tanker, which they board, but are captured by Simon and his men.

Meanwhile the NYPD have been distracted by the choas of finding the school and through McClane's help they have found that the school in question is the Chester A. Arthur school, where the police indeed find a big bomb, with two big cylinders of the chemical agent, that the police found earlier.  As the bomb counts down, the police evacuate the school, while their bomb expert Charlie Weiss (Kevin Chamberlin) tries to cut the wires to deactivate the bomb, however as he does, the cylinders simply leak out, what is in actual fact pancake syrup.  On the tanker, McClane at this point realises the bomb is only a decoy, and Simon finds him and tells him that there was no bomb in the school, but the real bomb is on the tanker.  Simon then cuffs McClane and Zeus sitting on the bomb's cylinders, leaving them to be killed in the explosion, the tanker supposedly filled with the gold will sink.  However McClane and Zeus soon manage to escape, just before the bomb detonates and destroys the ship.  McClane having been given a bottle aspirin (as he has been suffering a bad hangover throughout the film!) by Simon before he departed, finds it has the name of the Canadian bordertown where Simon's team have presumably gone to, giving McClane the lead he needs to find Gruber and end it once and for all.  

Die Hard with a vengeance is a very enjoyable entry in the franchise, and it sees the series get back on track after the rather disappointing Die Hard 2.  The film is also helped along by a very enjoyable and somewhat hammy performance from its villain, Simon Gruber, played by Jeremy Irons, who in a way is the perfect choice for the role, as he is very similar in manner to Alan Rickman.  And his character makes for a refreshing take on the Gruber family, and is a far more entertaining a villain than the very cut and dry Colonel Stuart from the second film, although my one criticism of his performance is he gives the worst ever phoney American accent (in the one scene he uses it!).  In fact he delivers one of the film's corniest lines using his Yank accent down at the Federeal reserve bank "holy Toledo! Somebody had fun!".  I also quite like the fact Simon isn't really portrayed as monsterous villain, his idea to plant the bomb in the school was just a ruse, and at one point even gives Zeus a chance to be let go, rather than be killed by his men, as he realises he was just an innocent guy who got caught up in his scheme.  He also clearly isn't too keen on unecessary killing in the film as well, as he clearly is shown as incapacitating most of the guards in the bank, and when his blood thirstry girlfriend Katya (Sam Phillips) viciously stabs the last remaining guard in the bank, he grabs her hand forcefully, stopping her from doing more damage to the dead man, and says "I think he's dead my dear". 

The other character of course which makes it so enjoyable is Zeus Carver, played by Samuel L.Jackson, who almost comes across like he is some kind of militant black man who has a mistrust of white people.  Samuel also gets most of the best dialogue in the film, I especially like his line where he says to McClane about his name "My name is Zeus, not Jesus!  Like the father Apollo, Mount Olympus, don't fuck with me or I'll shove a lightning bolt up your ass!  Zeus!!".  Although Zeus of course appears to some kind of racist towards white people (which I guess he isn't really) he does form a good relationship with McClane as the film goes along, and there is no doubt that Bruce and Samuel share a really good onscreen chemistry with one another.  And Bruce Willis does a fine job as John McClane, and he is perhaps at his most likeable in this film, as he has a good down to earth way with people, acting as a police officer and being polite with the public, even in extreme situations.    

One thing they have sorted out in a way in Die Hard with a vengeance is their attempts to no longer make the police force look as stupid as they did in the first two films.  And the police characters are all quite well drawn, particularly Inspector Cobb and Joe Lambert, one of the detectives in the film, played very well by Graham Greene.  Here the cops are actually fairly smart and they show that they can do their job well, and they aren't all bungling idiots like they were portrayed in Die Hard and Die Hard 2.  Perhaps there is a little bit too much inane chatter among the cops at times in the film, but it definitely is an improvement from the first two films.  Its also good to see McClane at work in his own town, as opposed to being in LA or in Dulles Washington, where he is a stranger and has no jurisdiction (not that the word meant much to him anyway!).

My only niggles about the film however probably are first off, the ending of the film is very silly, with McClane going after Gruber the way he does, and how he interrupts Gruber who is about to have it off with his girlfriend and says "Hey, dickhead, did I come at a bad time???" from a megaphone in a chopper.  Its also pretty daft as the writer of the screenplay, Johnathan Hensleigh pointed out in the DVD commentary, that Zeus would come along with McClane in the chopper ride, as he really isn't needed, but I guess maybe Zeus wanted to see it through to the end as well.  Another criticism I have is the scene with the police psychologist explaining the psychosis of "Simon" and how "we are talking about a pyschopathic personality, with possible schizophrenia, and he wants control over McClane, and his actions".  Its just really feels superflous to the whole film, and unecessary exposition, we don't really need a psychologist to explain all this stuff as its something we can all pretty much work out for ourselves, even McClane knows what Simon is all about without the help of the "shrink".

Music wise the film is well catered for as Michael Kame provides another good score for the film, and adds a few extra new passages to the already well established Die Hard score, he also incorporates "When Johnny Comes Home Marching", into the film quite alot as well (you will know it as soon as you hear it).  The start of the film is also really good, and is perhaps the best beginning of all the Die Hard films, as it has the New York backdrop and the great song "Summer in the city" by The Lovin Spoonful playing in the background, which is used to perfection here, right up until the moment where the first bomb goes off at Bonwitt Tellers.    

But Die Hard with a vengeance is a very entertaining film and worth a watch if you haven't already seen it and with John McTiernan at the directorial helm once again it makes for a worthy inclusion to the series.