by MouthForWar » Sat Jan 19, 2013 2:50 am
So where was I when I was talking about this?
Oh yeah, this movie blew chunks. A total let down. Arnold's usual screen presence is nowhere to be found (and the only one liners he gets are awful), and Kim Ji Woon is so clearly phoning it in, it hurts. That's one of my favorite directors right now, but aside from a couple cool car chases, nothing about this shows that he cared at all and the direction is mostly about as bland and lifeless as everything else in the movie. He probably just took the gig at Arnold's request to have a major film in America. Hopefully he'll use the money from this to make good movies again.
The script is awful, even by Arnold movie standards. Boring, predictable and so hackneyed it almost feels awkward seeing someone like poor Forrest Whitaker or Peter Stormare have to blurt out the lines (seriously, its like Ghost Rider bad). Speaking of Stormare, he's the secondary villain and he played it up fun and over the top. But unfortunately, the main villain is another bland, boring bad guy with no on screen charisma.
Also, Johnny Knoxville is the f*cking worst.
A total let down in ever sense. A really disappointing return for Arnie and a depressing American debut for Kim Ji Woon (especially after delivering his masterpiece with I SAW THE DEVIL). Its really depressing to me seeing movies like this or the Expendables movies where you have these old action stars trying to relive their former glory, only they're all old and can't do any cool fight scenes or anything anymore, so everything has to be shot with awful shaky-cam.
If this movie didn't star Arnold it would have easily been a straight to DVD schlockathon starring Dolph Lundgren or Mark Dacascos or something.
And heck, I saw this opening night and there were probably about 30 people in the theater... so maybe Arnold isn't so far off from being straight to video after all.
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