Oh, no! You sank my movie!

I don't believe I've ever watched a movie that made less sense than Battleship, the movie inexplicably based on the board game of the same name. Taylor Kitsch and Alexander Skarsgard star as unlikely brothers Alex Hopper and Stone Hopper, respectively, one an officer in the navy, the other a down-and-out, unemployed loser. Older brother Stone tries to convince younger brother Alex to join the navy, but Alex is more interested in the curvy blonde who has suddenly appeared in search of a chicken burrito. And that's where everything begins rolling down the Baffling Highway of Inexplicable  and Senseless Events.

Alex somehow goes from breaking into a convenience store, stealing a chicken burrito, destroying property, resisting arrest and being tased to becoming a commander in the US Navy. One could begin making jokes about how selective the Navy is with its recruits. As absurd as it sounds, this is just one of the many head-slappingly unbelievable events that put severe strain on suspension of disbelief—even in this sci-fi actioner. Had this been a made-for-Saturday-morning-TV movie released in the '90s, it could have become a popular classic among the younger crowd. Unfortunately, it's just impossible to take seriously a movie like this being released on the big screen.

After Hopper lands command of his own ship in the US Navy, the aliens appear with the apparent intent of launching an invasion to conquer the Earth. Well, at least that's what the audience is expected to believe—in spite of all evidence to the contrary. The alien race possesses military technology far beyond that possessed by the US Navy—yet time and again they don't utilize it to their full advantage. They can swat us Earth humans around like flies, yet they allow us to one-by-one destroy every ship in their reconnaissance fleet. In addition to artillery that resembles the pegs used to sink ships in the board game (this was obviously intentional), the alien arsenal also includes spinning, fiery balls of doom that can chew through metal like wet cardboard. They could easily have launched a few of these to eat through every single weapon the humans possess. Instead they sit around waiting for the insects to attack them with their puny weapons and slowly demolish everything they have.

Oh, but this is, after all, just a reconnaissance mission for the aliens. They're just here to send a message back to the homeworld about a plump fruit ripe for the picking. Never mind that the reconnaissance forces themselves seem to be more than a match for anything the Earth can throw at them. Naturally, the humans, against all the odds prevail because of their tenacity and ingenuity in the face of insurmountable obstacles. And the gullible audience is expected to rejoice in the triumph of the underdog, assuming that the homeworld won't miss the reconnaissance mission or will have decided that the Earth is just too powerful for them to conquer.

The movie really just doesn't make much sense, but it does offer up plenty of moments that tug at American heartstrings. And, if I may digress for a moment, that is another of the film's great failings. Like many other films, it suffers from being solidly planted in an American perspective with blinders firmly in place. After all, if an alien race is going to launch an invasion of Earth, it would certainly be the US Navy it confronts. Because nobody else has any weapons to bring to bear.

But if we can ignore such shortsightedness, then we will surely be moved by the double-amputee military veteran who has the courage to go toe-to-toe with one of the alien brutes, pounding it with one right cross after another until several of its teeth go flying. And who could possibly be immune to the emotional appeal of the WWII veterans who help Hopper launch the USS Missouri into the battle? Even the movie's token geek steps up to inspire the audience with unlikely bravery. Ultimately, however, it is Hopper's rise from ne'er-do-well to hero that provides the films strongest moment.

The movie counts on emotional appeals to please the audience because, quite frankly, it's got nothing else in the tank. This is an empty, illogical, senseless mess that nevertheless manages to make us—some of us at least—raise our fists in triumph and belt out a loud "Hurrah!"

Not so Safe House

In Safe House Ryan Reynolds reprises his role as Green Lantern to battle the nefarious Mr. Frost, played by Denzel Washington, whose superpowers include the ability to beat people up really badly and inject data capsules into his body where nobody will find them. Unfortunately, Hal Jordan has somehow managed to lose his ring and gets beat up a lot and stabbed with broken glass. And his driver's license has probably been revoked because he wrecks a lot of cars.

Okay, so Reynolds actually takes on the role of Matt Weston, a CIA "housekeeper," someone whose job is to watch over a safe house for field operatives and to maintain the safety of any "house guests" who arrive for a little enhanced interrogation. It seems like a pretty nice gig, really. You just sit around in a highly secure place with all kinds of doors with security keypads and a nice fridge stocked with fruits, soft drinks, plasma and medicines. Yeah, you know, just like the stuff you have in your fridge right now. I guess the whole idea of showing that scene of the refrigerator contents was to let you know what kind of apartment this is, but it was kind of a moot point, given that, you know, the title of the movie sort of gives it away.

The only problem with landing a nice job like this where you get paid lots of money to sit around bouncing a tennis ball off the wall and lying to your girlfriend about working at a clinic is that inevitably Hollywood will come along and want to shoot the place up.

So when Tobin Frost arrives, poor Hal, I mean Matt, is forced to do some real tough-guy stuff like hijack a car, drive it really, really fast, get shot at and beat up and actually shoot people himself.

Reynolds is actually pretty good as the in-over-his-head Weston. He is convincing as the idealistic agent whose worldview is flipped on its side by the jaded traitor Frost. We learn early in the film that Frost is a bad dude--in multiple senses of the term. But you can't help feeling he's not all rotten to the core, and the idea that he and Weston will become allies at some point is inescapable. Because the focus of the film is on Frost and Weston, the other characters are more placeholders than anything else, with Brendan Gleeson playing Weston's boss, Vera Farmiga as the agent in charge of the operation to secure and interrogate Frost, and Sam Shephard as CIA Director Harlan Whitford. Their jobs are just to act as Hollywood expects us to believe CIA personnel behave, which is both bad and good.

The movie opens with a glimpse of Weston's life as a housekeeper. He has a girlfriend, played by Nora Arnezeder, to whom he must lie about what he's really doing. The film makes Weston's job seem insufferably boring. He's alone in a place that looks like a well-stocked bomb shelter. He seems to spend most of his time listening to music and bouncing that ball off the wall.

And then the phone rings and his life takes a drastic turn. Frost, fleeing a group of armed men hellbent on recovering the data he's just received from a contact, has walked into an embassy and got himself nabbed by the CIA to be dragged to Weston's safe house. It seems that Frost is a bad guy who sells classified information to anybody with a suitable amount of cash. What's on the data capsule he carries that warrants constant pursuit from armed men who manage to find him wherever he goes? Well, that's the big mystery in the film.

In spite of the presence of well-armed and well-trained military men, the safe house is invaded, turned upside down and all of the military personnel killed. Weston is forced to flee with Frost in tow because it's his duty to take care of his guests. "In brightest day, in blackest night ..."

We saw this coming, of course. So, too, could we predict Frost's escape and Weston's determination to get him back. The first idea we get that maybe Frost isn't all bad comes when he has the opportunity to kill Weston but does not, telling him, "I only kill professionals." At first this appears to be a taunt, an insult to the bungling, amateurish Weston, who seems in over his head and out of his element. Jason Bourne he is not. He's the guy that sits in a safe house bouncing a tennis ball off the wall. And wondering where he lost that ring. It is revealed later, however, that the taunt is more a kind of code Frost follows and instructs Weston to also follow.

Everything sorts itself out rather predictably, but the action is fast paced and the tension is thick. You'd have to be pretty dense not to know who the real bad guy is. Weston emerges as a sympathetic character, but you can't help admiring Frost's confidence and presence. That may be Washington's strength as an actor: He has a real screen presence and does the cocky, badass role very well. He nonchalantly shoots bad guys like tossing a wad of paper into a waste basket.

Many will harp on the movie's predictability, but it's not really not the point to deliver up surprising plot twists. The focus is on the characters of Weston and Frost and how their relationship evolves throughout the film. It also challenges our perceptions of what it means to be a "bad" person in the world of lies and subterfuge. The characters and situations here are light years from the old westerns in which the bad guys wore the black hats. Even then things were never so clear cut, but the waters are even muddier now.

The film ends in different kinds of triumph for both Weston and Frost. Weston learns that his idealism has been built on a sham, that his purpose served a cause that didn't really exist. His path in life has been forever altered by his experience. Frost manages to regain his humanity and in the process finds redemption. Thought it would be easy to think that Weston will follow Frost's path, the evidence suggests otherwise. It is clear that Weston is not frost and that he will in fact do as Frost instructed and be a better person than he.

As a thriller Safe House comes up a bit short for its predictability, but as a story examining the inevitable collision of two men seemingly on different sides of the spy game, it delivers an engaging character study that's worth watching.

John Carter: Don't buy the anti-hype

A cliche that has floated around for decades states, "Don't believe the hype." It's a simple idea that hyperbolic claims about something tend to lead to disappointment, that the underlying substance usually fails to live up to the assertions. Hype is much like fiction in that the tale, to paraphrase a well-known writer, tends to grow in the telling. The bigger the hype, the bigger the disappointment in the final product.

The same can be said of negative hype, or "anti-hype," if you will. The more vitriol you hear about something, the less terrible you realize it must actually be.

While I concede that some movies deserve much of the criticism they receive, it often seems that deliberate forces are at work to undermine others, in much the same way that politicians employ attack ads against their opponents.

And that brings me to the recent rental release John Carter, aka John Carter of Mars, aka A Princess of Mars (if we want to link it to its Edgar Rice Burroughs source material), directed by Andrew Stanton and starring Taylor Kitsch and Lynn Collins. This film suffered greatly from negative hype. Rumors about various problems swirled about as its box office release date approached. The title of the film was even changed before its debut, with various excuses provided. The budget was huge, there were production problems, and there was just no way Disney was going to recoup all of its investment. In short, John Carter was a dismal failure.

The truth is, John Carter is not such a bad movie after all. The saddest part is that it was indeed a failure at the box office and may be declared one of the biggest bombs of all time. Frankly, I have seen far worse films that performed far better at the box office.

That is not to say that John Carter is a great movie, but it does have enough in the way of story, special effects and action to make it pretty darned good. And at its core it does offer a fine look at the development of the titular character.

One reason stated for the title change from John Carter of Mars to simply John Carter was to show the progression of the character from a Virginia Civil War veteran who'd lost hope to a man of Mars who'd found a reason to live. In keeping with this idea, the final title screen displays the title as John Carter of Mars. I found this to be a fitting touch, and it truly felt like a triumphant moment.

Unlike many movies that hit the big screen—especially those in the SF and fantasy genre—John Carter is a patient film that is happy to let the character and story develop over time. Beyond the special effects, the action, the romance and even the humor, this above all else makes it worth watching. Most films seem to want to rush headlong from start to finish, story be damned. The more explosions, fights and gunshots, the better. Most people will say John Carter dragged at times. I say it's at those moments that the most critical character development occurs.

And it's the character of John Carter that makes the film. You find yourself liking him from the start. He's willful, cantankerous, resourceful, and he's apathetic, a man who has lost hope. The reason for his despair unfolds over time throughout the film, revealed to us as fragmentary flashbacks until a final, drawn-out scene during an epic battle reveals his pain and loss in bitter full. It is a powerful and moving image, one of the best I've seen in any film of this genre.

You cannot help wanting John Carter to find himself, to regain some measure of purpose and happiness in his life. When it finally happens, it is a satisfying moment. And that is the best way to describe how I felt at the end of this film. It was fulfilling and satisfying.

It's not a perfect movie. There are certainly plenty of awkward moments of unintentional humor. The scene in which Carter is trying to learn how to walk on a planet of lesser gravity than he's accustomed to frankly went on a bit too long. The low-gravity schtick was overdone in many parts of the film and grew tiresome. We did not need to be reminded of it time and time again.

The romance between Carter and Deja was, naturally, predictable and all-too obvious from the start, even when it was apparent that Deja was determined to exploit Carter's strength and abilities to save her planet. But that doesn't mean it still wasn't engaging or that the viewer didn't want it to happen. I contrast this strongly with the romance of Anakin and Padme in the Star Wars films. I was entirely indifferent to that romance, didn't want it to happen and really hoped it would just go away. Here, at least, there are moments you find yourself mentally telling Carter, "Just kiss her, dammit!"

The awkward, predictable or even slow moments are mere blips on the map in an adventure brimming with all of the classic formula elements of action, romance, danger, heroism and humor. It is, simply, an enjoyable, if not terribly remarkable, movie.

In addition to a fine story and some good special effects, John Carter also boasts a great cast, many of whom lend their voices to CGI figures, including Willem Dafoe as Tar Tharkis, Thomas Haden Church as Tal Hajus, Dominic West (McNulty!) as Sab Than and Mark Strong as Matai Shang, and, oh, yes, Bryan Cranston as the Civil War officer, Col. Powell.

No, I will not say John Carter is the best SF/fantasy film I've seen, but it stands up to many of the best and most of the recent releases in the genre. It's more than worth the rental or purchase price, and I may very well grab the Blu-ray myself. This is a clear-cut case of a movie most undeserving of the negative hype.