'Diabolik' is lots of fun, despite its excesses

Danger: Diabolik (aka "Diabolik") (1968)
Starring: John Phillip Law, Marissa Mell, Michel Piccoli, and Aldolfo Celi
Director: Mario Bava
Rating: Seven of Ten Stars

In "Danger: Diabolik", the long-standing rivalry between the mysterious supertheif Diabolik (Law) and police inspector Ginko (Piccoli) becomes personal when Ginko forces a top gangster (Celi) to take action against his foe and the love of Diabolik's life, Eva (Mell) is caught in the middle.

I read maybe a couple dozen of the "Diabolik" comics when I was a kid, and two I have the fondest memories of is the one where Diabolik and Ginko team up to rescue their wives from a crook who has kidnapped them, and another where they are both on a cruise ship that gets taken over by terrorists, forcing a sort-of team-up between the two.

As portrayed in "Danger: Diabolik", such cooperation would never have taken place--the two men appear to dislike each other entiely too much, even if the respect they have for one another in the comic books still seems to be present to some degree--but aside from this small "failing", I think this film mostly conveys the essense of its source material better than most other comic book movies out there. It's not quite as dark as I remember "Diabolik" being, but it's entertaining enough.

Star John Phillip Law and the costume designers even took pains to match the physical appearance of Diabolik from the comics. There is no arbitrary "re-imagining" for its own sake in this film, as everyone seemed comfortable with and knowledgeable of the source material ot the point where they could do a faithful adaptation. (Even the musical score captures the simultaneous playfulness and grim intensity that were the hallmarks of the "Diabolik" comic.

There's further icing on this cake, as there literally isn't a single scene in this film that isn't staged in a visually arresting fashion. Director/cinematographer Mario Bava manage to fully bring a comic-book feel to the screen, presenting the sort of motion and three-dimensionality that the illustrators of the "Diabolik" comic are attempting to achieve with the many chase scenes and close calls the characters execute in those pages.

Bava also manages to bring a comic book feel in subtle and visually creative ways. Many scenes have the sense of being panels in motion, with action being framed in various ways, sometimes even feeling like "inset panels", like where Diabolik and Eva are staking out a break-in target, and we see their faces in the review mirror, framed before the building they are watching. The most impressive of the many instances of this in the film is a conference of gangsters that is viewed through a lattice, with characters positioned around the room and isolated in their own frames while speaking.

While the creative cinemagrapy is a joy to behold, some of the sets and mat-paintings are equally impressive. Diabolik's secret hideout, with its many security precautionsand gadgets is the sort of thing James Bond's nemisis Blofeld wishes he could have. Lex Luthor probably has lair-envy as well. (Although neither Blofeld nor Luthor would know what do to with Diabolik's huge rotating bed where he and Eva have wild sex while coverd in millions of dollars....)[/left]

As much as I admire the visuals and the sets, I think these also end up being counted among its weaknesses, despite their beauty (or perhaps becaome of it). Director Bava also seems to have been aware that he and his crew had made a very special movie here, and he is just a little too proud of their work and he shows off the sets and the matpaintings just a little too much. On more than one occassion, he spends so much time dwelling on them that the movie starts to sputter and stall--the worst of these is the scene of Diabolik and Eva making love, while visually cool, goes on for so long that it becomes downright boring. It always recovers thanks to even more great visuals and a script that is jam-packed with action, but the film could have been so much better if some of the scenes have been trimmed a bit.

Speaking of the script, this film would also have been alot better if its creators had known when to quit. There is a perfect ending for the filmd, and even a suitable denoument, but it continues well beyond that point and even gets a bit repetitious.

I'm certain the intent was to include a truly impossible crime in the film--to push it completely over the top--but the end result is a feeling that two different major heists and two different endings had been contemplated for the script (each with its own impossible escape for Diabolik) and in the end it was decided to use both of them. The result is that viewers will start feeling a little impatient during the film's final 10-15 minutes, but because we've already sat through something that's thematically identical and that brought the story to a satisfying close.

"Danger: Diabolik" is an mostly well-done, light-hearted action flick, and it's definately underrated and under-appreciated. I recommend you purchase or rent this flick. If it didn't keep going past the point where it should have ended, and if it had been a little more like the actual comics, it would have been perfect.

'Red Riding' is a moody mystery

Red Riding: In the Year of Our Lord 1974 (2009)
Starring: Andrew Garfield, Rebecca Hall, Anthony Flanagan, Sean Bean, David Morrissey, and John Henshaw
Director: Julian Jarrold
Rating: Six of Ten Stars

A rookie crime beat reporter (Garfield) tries to discover the identity of a serial killer preying on little girls in Yorkshire, but in the process runs headlong into a dangerous and far-reaching conspiracy involving corrupt police officers, a ruthless real estate developer (Bean), and perhaps even the mother of one of the victims (Hall).

Rarely have so many great performances been featured in a film so intense and stylish added up to so little. By the time the 100 minutes of "Red Riding" have run their course, you'll have witnessed one of film history's most incompetent journalist-detectives blunder his way through a twisted maze of perversion and corruption, solve the case, kinda-sorta see justice done... and you'll find yourself wondering, "Is that it?"

Given that this is the first part in a three-part series based on a true story of a serial killer that terrorized Yorkshire in the 1970s and 1980s--and some conspiracy theorists hold that the killer may still be at large.

Based on this movie, one can easily buy into that conspiracy as the Yorkshire in "Red Riding" makes Chicago look like Mayberry by comparison. Everyone with the smallest scrap of power is tied to a corrupt political machine, and anyone who tries to challenge that machine ends up discredited or dead. In the end, it's a somewhat depressing movie, because the over-arcing message is that "evil always wins".

Part of why evil wins in this film is because good is so damn stupid. The erstwhile hero of the film is both cowardly and lazy, which makes him a very realistic character but it also makes for frustrating viewing. He makes the wrong choice at every single opportunity and ultimately becomes part of the very cover-up he is trying to unravel. Although it's probably a good thing for the series of movies that he--if not for the real-life victims of the Yorkshire Ripper--because the corrupt cops and politicians and business people in this film aren't much smarter. With the way they carry on in this film, and the messes they leave behind, their goose would have been cooked long before whatever ultimate solution will be offered to the central mystery of this film in the third film, "Red Riding: In the Year of Our Lord 1983". Unless, of course, Yorkshire really does make Chicago look like Mayberry by comparison.

While you may feel a little frustration at the stupidity of the reporter hero of this film, it is worth watching for the great acting. Sean Bean in particular puts on a good show as a menacing real estate tycoon who may or may not entertain himself on the weekends by kidnapping and murdering little girls and sewing swan wings on their backs.

At the very least, the film serves as a nice stage-setting for the next chapter in the series, which I will be watching and reviewing shortly.

'The Heist' isn't worth stealing

The Heist (aka "Unlawful Force") (1997)
Starring: Cynthia Geary, Andrew McCarthy, Wolf Larson, Peter Hanlon, Hannes Jaenicke, Brent Stait, and Janice Simmons
Director: Michael Kennedy
Rating: Four of Ten Stars

A retired police officer (Geary) turned security company dispatcher engages in a battle of nerves and wits with the leader of a gang that is staging a robbery (McCarthy).

"The Heist" is a made-for-TV movie that screams "cheap" from every single frame. From its limited locations (all of the interior spaces were probably on the same sound stage and all the exteriors feel like they were probably filmed around the same rundown industrial park) to the run-down vehicles used throughout the picture, this is a movie with a budget so low it can't conceal it.

It doesn't help matters that the script is predictable in every way but one (I guessed wrong when it came to the identity of the "mole" in the security company that was, but I called every other plot development long before it made its way onto the screen, and anyone who has seen more than two or three crime dramas will easily do the same.

It's not a particularly bad movie--it's paced decently, no one in the cast embarrasses themselves or their co-stars with bad performances, and stars McCarthy and Geary are as good as one expects them to be, based on work that came both before and after this film--but it's also not particularly good. "Bland" is the perfect adjective to describe it.

This is a film that deserved to fade into TV oblivion, but someone acquired the DVD rights cheaply enough to put it out there for rent and purchase. Unless you're the world's biggest fan of Andrew McCarthy or Cynthia Geary, or unless you've set yourself the goal of watching every single heist movie ever made in North American, it isn't even worth shoplifting.

'Bad Boys' is pretty bad

Bad Boys (1995)
Starring: Martin Lawrence, Will Smith, Téa Leoni, Tcheky Karyo, and Joe Pantoliano
Director: Michael Bay
Rating: Three of Ten Stars

Two life-long friends who grew up to be narcotics detectives in Miami (Lawrence and Smith) find their personal and professional relationships tested when they tasked with located several million dollars of pure heroin that was stolen from their department's storage vault. Just to make a stressful situation worse, the psychopath who stole the drugs (Karyo) is stalking them, their families, and the only witness to a murder he committed in the course of his heist (Leoni).

If you want proof that Kevin Smith "Cop Out" wasn't as bad as it was made out to be, all you have to is watch as much as you can stand of "Bad Boys" either before or after watching the Smith film. This is a film with no likable characters, with a plot so straight-forward that the only reason the film lasts more than 30 minutes is because the characters are as dumb as they are unlikable, and with jokes so unfunny and forced that anyone who sits through it might be able to file a legitimate case of date rape against writer George Gallo and director Michael Bay.

Interestingly, I've been catching bits and piece3s of "Bad Boys II" on cable for years, but I've never actually seen the entire film. The parts I've seen were funny, though, so when I came across a cheap DVD set containing both "Bad Boys" and the sequel on the same day I heard that there was a "Bad Boys 3" making its way through pre-production, I thought it was time to see the first movie, followed by the second.

Well, I now know why I never seen "Bad Boys" on cable. If the bits and pieces I've seen of the other film over the years are any indication, it may be one of those rare cases where a sequel is better than the film that spawned it.

I'll see if my assumption is correct, sometime after the awfulness of "Bad Boys" has faded in my memory. It is amazing to me that Martin Lawrence had a career after this one; I don't think I've ever seen him be less funny. Will Smith and Tea Leoni were in the movie, but they were just sort of Will Smith and Tea Leoni, without anything particularly good or bad about their performances--one can only hold actors accountable for so much when they are working with material as awful as the script for this film. But at least they didn't stink like Lawrence did.

Two things that saves this film from earning a Two Rating: The lovely car race at the very end, and the fact Leoni spends much of the movie in an impossibly short skirt. Looking at her never-ending legs made the pain bearable.

'Unknown' is worth exploring on the cheap

Unknown (2011)
Starring: Liam Neeson, Diane Kruger, January Jones, Bruno Ganz, Aiden Quinn, and Frank Langella
Director: Jaume Collet-Serra
Rating: Six of Ten Stars

While in Berlin for a scientific conference, Dr. Martin Harris (Neeson) wakes up after a serious car accident to find a stranger has assumed his life in every detail, even apparently the affections of his wife (Jones). Martin turns to the only witness of the accident he can find (Kruger) and a retired East German spy (Ganz) for help in proving he really is who he says he is. And that's when the assassins start stalking him and killing everyone he makes contact with....

"Unknown" is one of those movies it's hard to talk about without ruining the whole thing, because it relies on plot twists and secrets for its effectiveness. Without spoiling too much, I can say that the story is sort of a cross between the 1956 version of "The Man Who Knew Too Much" and the 1938 version of "The Lady Vanishes", except in this case it's the main character who has, basically, vanished and he has to pick his way through a deadly cloud of lies and violent spies. The twists and reversals as the film unfolds sets it apart from those two Hitchcock classics, but I think if you enjoyed those films, you'll be entertained by this one as well.

Overall, the film is well-paced and it's revelations are timed appropriately to keep the story going. There's a car chase in the middle of the film that is extremely ridiculous as it's unfolding--suddenly, a university researcher and biologist is able to drive a stick-shift in a fashion that most racecar- and stunt drivers envious--but once all the pieces of the puzzle have been revealed--it makes sense. It's a weak point of the film that just a few lines of dialogue between Martin and his wife at the beginning of the film could have dealt with and the film would have been better for it.

The film would also have been better if the director had been a little less in love with shaky-cam footage, jump-cuts, and extreme close-ups during action sequences. I'm there are viewers out there for whom such techniques make the film more exciting--why else would so many directors over-use them as severely as they do?--but for me they become very, very annoying when used in excess like they are here. Give me Hitchcock's nice steady shots any day over the Alcoholic Monkey with the DTs technique on display in so many scenes, as well as the ADD editing style. Admittedly, it's not as bad here as in some movies, but it's enough to get annoying.

Despite its flaws, "Unknown" still emerges as an entertaining thriller. Just see it at a matinee, or go on days when the popcorn is cheap. Or, better yet, wait three months for the DVD to be available. You'll be more satisfied, because you won't feel like you've wasted money.

'Into the Blue' gives viewers what they want

Into the Blue (2005)
Starring: Paul Walker, Jessica Alba, Josh Brolin, Ashley Scott, and Scott Caan
Director: John Stockwell
Rating: Six of Ten Stars

A pair of semi-pro treasure hunters (Alba and Walker) living the easy life in the Bahamas stumble upon the sunken wreck of a historic sailing ship. They also discover the wreck of a small airplane which contains a fortune in drugs, and this makes them targets of the drug smugglers who want to recover their wares.

I think I liked this movie better when I saw it as "The Deep". I recall being more impressed with the acting and the story than I was with this film, but then admittedly I was 10 or so years old and I haven't seen it since. So, maybe my memory is a bit hazy--and my memory of the Carmine Infantino-illustrated graphic novel adaptation is a bit stronger than that I have of the movie--but I remember finding the underwater action very exciting in both formats, as well as genuinely fearing for the heroes.

With "Into the Blue", I never really cared about any of the characters, and the only actor I found at all remarkable was Josh Brolin as the obnoxious, seasoned and well-funded rival to the pretty young main characters. The film also held no surprises as it unfolded, other than the memories it invoked of my youthful excitement over "The Deep".

That said, the film does move at fast enough a pace that you barely have time to realize that it is absolutely predictable at every turn. It also sports some gorgeous photography both on-land and under-seas, and several well-executed underwater action scenes... and that's ultimately what the film is about. Did anyone REALLY see this movie for anything but the eye-candy?

"Into the Blue" is entertaining enough, but not worth going out of your way for. If you want a beautiful film focusing on attractive skin-diving treasure-hunters, I think you might be better off checking out the "The Deep" starring Nick Nolte and Jacqueline Bissett. (Athough I can imagine someone writing a variation on those words some 40 years from now: "'Raiders of the Deep' is pretty to look at, but it doesn't hold a candle to my memory of 'Into the Blue', a movie I saw when I was 10 years old.")

I will have to get my hands on a copy of "The Deep" to see if I'm being unfair to this movie or not....

Bruce Lee explodes with 'Fists of Fury'

Fists of Fury (aka "The Big Boss") (1971)
Starring: Bruce Lee, James Tien, Maria Yi, Ying-Chieh Han, and Tso Chen
Director: Wei Lo
Rating: Six of Ten Stars

Country-boy Cheng (Lee) travels to the city to live with relatives and to take a job at an ice factory. But the business is a front for vicious drug smugglers, and when his friends and family start to run afoul their evil, Cheng must choose to join them or fight them. Either choice will cost him dearly.

"Fists of Fury" is the of four films that legendary actor and martial artist Bruce Lee made in Hong Kong, and it's the one that made him an international super-star. While some parts of the film haven't weathered the passage of four decades since its release very well, one can still understand why it was such a big hit in its day. One can also enjoy it tremendously if one likes well-crafted martial arts films.

First, the film's modern setting would have been a startling change of pace for movie audiences as this was the first martial arts film to be set in modern times. Secondly, the film presents a number of surprising twists as it unfolds, not the least of which is the surprising death of a major supporting character who was neck-in-neck with Lee's character to be the film's main hero... not to mention the shocking massacre of virtually every other supporting character as the film heads toward its climax, as well as the climax itself (which is one of the most successfully executed downer endings I've ever witnessed in an action movie). Finally, there are the two set-piece martial arts battles of the film that remain thrilling to this day... fight sequences that are equally good showcases for Bruce Lee's fighting skills and his charm as an actor.

Speaking of Bruce Lee's acting skills and charm, they are both what carry the film through its slow first half, particularly during the clumsy attempts at levity and/or scenes designed to show the camaraderie between the factory workers that probably were unique to the 1970s audiences who were used to martial arts melodramas set during various historical periods in China but who had never experienced one taking place "down the street". Lee outshines everyone he shares the screen with, with the exception of James Tien. Tien shared Lee's good looks and on-screen radiance, so they are believable as buddies during the film's early part. (Tien would go onto appear in Lee's other Hong Kong movies as well.)

Lee's acting skills are also what makes the film's climax so moving and effective. As brutal and shocking as the violence in the fights at the factory and on the lawn in front of the Big Boss's house are, it is the way Lee effective portrays the shock that gives way to rage when he discovers the dual secrets of the ice factory, followed by the horror when he later realizes that he had only seen the tiniest sliver of the Big Boss's depravity. The sense of resignation and defeat in victory that Lee exudes during the film's final moments also demonstrate strongly how tragic it was that he was to die a mere two years later with much promise unfulfilled.