PASSENGERS Film Review - 22/12/08

A slow-burn torturous story that gradually gives out all the pieces of the puzzle until the punch in the gut at the end. A psychiatrist is assigned to a group of air-crash survivors who suddenly start to disappear as it becomes obvious that the Airline is covering up an accident and will go to any means to prevent the truth coming out. Shadowy figures from the company track the movements of the individuals involved and eventually even the psychiatrist realises something bigger is going on? Paranoia and deceptions abound until a thread from left-field changes all perceptions. Any more than that will give it all away!

CHOCOLATE Film Review - 22/12/08

This is the tale of a young autistic girl and her mother who have mounting debts owed to them by the local crime lords downtown. The autistic daughter and a local lad set about getting the money back as the young girl beats the crap out of the local thugs in some brutal fight scenes particularly in a butcher's yard. Whilst the mother is taken ill we have the main story taking place between the local Yakuza & Triads as vicious infighting takes place within the gangs. Being the ex-girlfriend of one of the leaders of the group drags the family into some full-contact martial arts punch ups as the villains send in a gang of lady-boys who get slaughtered in a shootout. The jaw dropping moment comes at the end of the film in a massive fight sequence, topped off with gunplay and a mass swordfight. Following this your jaw drops even further when the protagonists proceed to have a full-scale fight scene on the side of a building with people plummeting (For real!) down a 4-storey drop onto pavement several times over. As the credits roll you get to see the real injuries and accidents as they cart people off to hospital. A pretty sturdy fight film that starts off slow and builds to an explosive finale!

THE MUTANT CHRONICLES Film Review - 22/12/08

It's out there in the darkness lurking. Black and dreadful and slithering around. Amongst the debris and the devastation, the firing of the shells and the mud of the trenches. A future where man has fallen and risen again with a different history and a different culture. More Steampunk Gothic than anything else with a religious group trying to keep the touch of death back in the form of a great machine turning humans into zombie mutants and a group of people prepared to die to stop the evil. The story struggles valiantly to come out as a post-apocalypse magnificent seven try to destroy the root of Armageddon against a background of CGI landscapes so black & white half the time you can't see what the hell is going on in the monochrome haze. Shaky cam and computer enhanced effects just whizz by in a cloud of blood spray & mush as the action lurches from one backdrop to the other like madly spinning game animation gone wild! The setting and stylisation is epic and truly outstanding it's just a pity the total incoherence of the plot and the scene-setting, just flashes past your eyeballs with barely a glance. A strange film indeed if you want something unusual to watch?

TRANSPORTER 3 Film Review - 8/12/08

NO NO NO What went wrong here? Apart from a fast car chase (Rather dull - Ho hum...) and then an absolutely terrific ending (Could have stuck this on the latest Bond film it's that good!) we get the usual fight scenes (Nothing new here I'm afraid) and a lot of extraneous padding. An irritating female lead who I would have just driven off and left behind she's such a pain and some to-and-fro stuff from here to there and some plot lifted from an old Thunderbirds episode. Bung in some cod about dodgy environmentalists and a political summit and bon voyage. Luc Besson get back to Directing instead of Writing please!

The Transporter this time around finds himself in a situation where the bad guys won't take no for an answer and gets an explosive bracelet attached so that if he gets too far from his car KA-BOOM!!! Throw in a female side-passenger with a similar bracelet and then the chase is on. The resultant chaos that then ensues leads the bad guys into a sticky end.

EAGLE EYE Film Review - 7/12/08

What starts off as an effectively creepy thriller high on taut adrenalin and bone-crunching, chew your nails off, edge of your seat action - Suddenly changes tack halfway through and your like "Is that it?" moment suddenly strikes and then it all gets a bit silly. Comparisons will inevitably lead to 'Enemy Of The State' (A much better film!) and to a major extent 'Wargames'. The scenario has been done before (. . and better!) but for a jolly good smash-em-up ride it has it's moments - But it's definitely a wet Sunday afternoon no-brainer - Pretty good to start off with then lags along the final stretch.

A run-of-the-mill ordinary Joe gets home to find a terrorist's arsenal in his dingy flat, the FBI soon drop in and this guy goes on the run with a mysterious female voice guiding him (and none too gently!) away from the forces chasing him; forcing him to do her bidding by controlling everything electronic around him. Doing the same to a number of other people the plot unfolds into a complex assassination attempt on the US Government itself.