Tag Archives: Sam Worthington

2009, Action/Adventure, ⓏⒺⓇⓄ

Terminator Salvation (2009, Joseph McGinty Nichol), the director’s cut

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Ok, no joke, what idiot thought adding Christian Bale to Terminator 4 was a good idea? Was it McG? Without the dumb connection to the previous films–if it had just been the adventures of Anton Yelchin’s Young Kyle Reese–it might have been fine. Nichol’s direction isn’t anything spectacular (it’s solid enough, surprisingly), but he doesn’t fetishize the Terminator world. The callbacks to the originals are at least amusing, since they’re trying for subtly.

Sure, it’s a knockoff of Road Warrior with a little Return of the Jedi thrown in but whatever, it’s not complete garbage. It’s at least diverting, more than Terminator 3, in fact.

However, then there’s Bale. Oh, wait, no way. Bale’s got the goatee to look tough (and less like a date rapist?).

Sam Worthington’s wasted. If I hadn’t seen Rogue, I’d have no idea he was good. Though he can’t hold his accent.

The script’s awful, but Nichol’s shoots it so large scale (studio franchise pictures with establishing shots, I’d missed those), it’s like Terminator‘s less about its actual content than that content’s presentation. Brancato and Ferris probably don’t have the writing chops of a good “Days of Our Lives” writers’ room and have some of the most lamely predictable “surprises” I can remember. But I suppose the script’s better than their Terminator 3 script, even if the nonsensical items–the Terminator base, the networked machine base, having manual, physical overrides.

If you haven’t been able to tell yet, this post’s going to be double length, just because there’s so much to talk about. Not the content, of course, but the film as an example of the decline of popular filmmaking.

Helena Bonham Carter is really bad. Laughable. She just gets worse and worse, doing some kind of impression of The Emperor from the Star Wars series.

Common’s awful. Michael Ironside’s embarrassing himself here.

Watching Bryce Dallas Howard act opposite Moon Bloodgood is pretty funny too. I’ve never seen Bloodgood in anything before and haven’t seen Howard in years–I figured the former would be bad and the latter okay. I was wrong. Very wrong.

Still, whoever did the special effects went cheap on the big “old” Terminators, which are clearly guys in costumes. And the thing when Worthington’s walking around half-Terminator or whatever, it looks awful, cheaper than a Halloween mask, even if they are doing some idiotic CG composite thing with it.

Terminator Salvation comes after The Matrix, so there are plenty of lifts from it (though the giant Transformer-like robots are not)–the whole prophet thing with Bale feels directly copied and pasted from The Matrix 2.

Unexpectedly first-rate is the Danny Elfman score. As much of a Brad Fiedel fan as I am, Elfman’s pure action score is great. There’s nothing playful to it, which is somewhat non-Elfman (at least the Elfman I know), but it’s such a solid piece of composing, it doesn’t seem at all lacking.

Maybe most offensively, they dedicated this crap to Stan Winston.

0/4ⓏⒺⓇⓄ

CREDITS

Directed by Joseph McGinty Nichol; screenplay by John Brancato and Michael Ferris, based on characters created by James Cameron and Gale Anne Hurd; director of photography, Shane Hurlbut; edited by Conrad Bluff IV; music by Danny Elfman; production designer, Martin Laing; produced by Derek Anderson, Moritz Borman, Victor Kubicek and Jeffrey Silver; released by Warner Bros.

Starring Christian Bale (John Connor), Sam Worthington (Marcus Wright), Moon Bloodgood (Blair Williams), Helena Bonham Carter (Dr. Serena Kogan), Anton Yelchin (Kyle Reese), Jadagrace (Star), Bryce Dallas Howard (Kate Connor), Common (Barnes), Jane Alexander (Virginia), Michael Ironside (General Ashdown) and Ivan G’Vera (General Losenko).

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2007, ★★★, Horror

Rogue (2007, Greg Mclean)

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Rogue isn’t just hard to describe, it is–as I try–impossible. While the box cover (it didn’t get a U.S. theatrical release) certainly identifies it as a giant crocodile movie, it’s a lot more. Starting with that description–the giant crocodile movie–Rogue‘s already unique. It’s the only movie of its type (the larger than previously believed possible man-eating animal) where no one ever comments on the size of the animal. It’s visibly monstrous and the people are too busy being terrified–Rogue has a short, pseudo-real time present action–to ponder the animal’s dimensions.

The terror is another strange feature of Rogue. Lead–the movie opens with him, so he’s got to be the lead–Michael Vartan has the most atypical character arc I can remember. He actually assumes the traditional role of a lead female protagonist in a horror film. He kept reminding me of Jamie Lee Curtis in the third act. He spent the first two thirds terrified (though still masculine, but calm among the panicking machismo) to eventually overcome that fear with his intelligence. It works.

Writer and director Greg Mclean’s approach to the material is also what makes Rogue so peculiar. Much of Mclean’s approach is realistic. He populates the film with an interesting disaster movie cast of people–the somewhat bickering married couple, the cancer survivor and her family (including the young daughter who–shockingly–isn’t put in empty peril time and again), the annoying camera junkie and the widower out to spread his wife’s ashes. Mclean handles all of them subtly and respectfully–in some ways, it’s hard to believe the shark–sorry, croc–attack is coming.

Vartan fails in these scenes, since he’s not really on par with the excellent character actors Mclean cast as the fellow bait. Radha Mitchell does quite a bit better, but Sam Worthington’s the big surprise. Not just because Mclean’s script does very well by Worthington’s character, but also because he’s able to convey so much in a few lines. And eventually Vartan gets better.

But back to Mclean’s approach. Rogue‘s very referential to genre standards–particularly the Jaws films, especially with the introduction to the characters and then various little things–and the film is aware of them and is aware the viewer is aware of them. But there’s a barrier. The characters are never aware of their place in a film standard, but Mclean also manages to be incredibly hokey–super-earnest about the fantastic premise–and get away with it. It’s a sublime move and makes the whole experience all the more engaging. It’s impossible to dismiss the film.

Mclean’s also an amazing technical director. For the first two thirds of Rogue, every one of Mclean’s shots is perfect. He shoots with a deep focus, Will Gibson’s cinematography mesmerizingly vibrant. The film is a wonder to behold. Between Mclean’s river boat tour to the long night time sequence where the cast tries to escape the crocodile, there isn’t a single false step. Mclean knows what he’s doing.

Rogue–the title has nothing to do with the content, at least not in any of the content presented to the viewer–is a great little big movie. Understanding how it works would require a lot more viewings, because there’s just so much to the film.

3/4★★★

CREDITS

Written and directed by Greg Mclean; director of photography, Will Gibson; edited by Jason Ballantine; music by Frank Tetaz; production designer, Robert Webb; produced by Matt Hearn, David Lightfoot and Mclean; released by Roadshow Entertainment.

Starring Radha Mitchell (Kate Ryan), Michael Vartan (Pete McKell), Sam Worthington (Neil Kelly), Caroline Brazier (Mary Ellen), Stephen Curry (Simon), Celia Ireland (Gwen), John Jarratt (Russell), Heather Mitchell (Elizabeth), Geoff Morrell (Allen), Damien Richardson (Collin), Robert Taylor (Everett Kennedy), Mia Wasikowska (Sherry) and Barry Otto (Merv).

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