I just watched The Fugitive for the first time, and I’ve got to say, it was about as entertaining as a movie gets. (Anything involving a wonderfully muscular and shirtless Harrison Ford is good by me.) But I think it also needs to be pointed out that I have rarely seen a movie in which I thought nearly every single crucial seen was completely unrealistic.
- I’ve never been shot in the stomach and then violently bashed in the head, or even seen it happen to someone else, but in my non-expert, non-medical opinion, there is very little chance that a person in that situation could speak as clearly and coherently as Harrison’s little wifey did, only moments before death. “Don’t worry, dear 9-1-1 operator – the fact that I am bleeding profusely from the back of my skull shall not affect my enunciation in the slightest. Cheerio.”
- If a person is lucky enough to outrun a derailed train and shortly thereafter survive a 1000-foot jump into a dam, I would highly recommend that person go out and start investing in the PowerBall.
- I know not every cop out there is utterly brilliant, but seriously? You’re holding in your hand a photo of a convicted murderer while looking him directly in the eye and holding on a friendly little conversation, COMPLETELY fooled by the fact that he changed his clothes and shaved his beard? That indicates an international award-winning level of incompetence.
- Furthermore, only a little while later 30 or so cops and marshals were staring into both ends of a tunnel, which must have been lit at least moderately adequately by several sets of headlights, and not a one of them noticed when the fugitive they were tracking opened the driver’s side door of the ambulance and hopped right on out. Are these people all wearing Velcro sneakers or what? How do they make it out of the house in the morning?
- I would LOVE to know how often judges issue warrants to wiretap a lawyer’s phone. I will grant the fact that this dude was already convicted and in the midst of committing another felony, but still, that attorney-client privilege thing is a pretty big deal.
- The awkward conversation between Tommy Lee (who doesn’t like to bargain with murderers) and his little buddy that was held hostage for a minute or two (and who would rather have seen some bargaining going on) was pretty pointless. I’m sure the marshals have protocol for that situation that they are obligated to stick with or else get heavily sanctioned, and one or the other of them would have known that the other guy was inarguably in the right.
- Most of the rest of the movie I could accept pretty easily, until we came around full circle to more head-bashing. Correct me if I’m wrong, but my worldview includes the tenet that getting smacked in the fact with a steel beam (even a rather slow-moving one), is going to result in something along the lines of brain damage, or at least a need for reconstructive surgery. But I suppose that wouldn’t have made for such a happy ending. Oh well.
Did the Mayans really believe the world would be destroyed in 2012? Maybe, sort of. Hey, if they figured it out, more power to ‘em. It doesn’t seem to have done much good to believe the predictions based on the events of 999 A.D. and 1999 A.D., but you never know when the real deal is gonna roll around and make a laughingstock of all our little earthly lives.
However, I have some serious doubts that it’s going to unfold the way it did in the movie 2012. (If you haven’t seen it, be aware, I’ve got some spoilers coming.) For one thing, the science is totally bogus. Evil neutrinos? Crust displacement theory? I don’t think so.
Secondly, supposing you accept that whole earthquakes-tidal-waves-california-falling-into-the-ocean business, what makes you think the scientists could accurately predict any of it? Mostly this leaves me to wonder how they decided China would be a safe place to build the arks, and it just so happened to be so. It was just as likely to get destroyed as anywhere else on Earth before anyone got over there. Yes, I get that the Chinese government is real good at hiding things, but still, what if all those billions of dollars in blood money went straight down the tubes when Armageddon was nigh at hand?
I’m a bit of a conspiracy theorist myself, so the governmental hush-hush aspects of the movie (including the murdering!) don’t strike me as particularly silly, but I do wonder how they could ever really and truly keep 400,000 folks quiet for three years.
And, of course, I have to mention how incredibly ridiculous the escape route that John Cusack and his family take really is. Granted, I’ve never driven a limo, but I have a feeling they don’t turn on a dime. Could an extremely long and unwieldy car really dodge every random moving object in its path while LA is being rocked by insane earthquakes? Keep in mind that 98% of people in the city seem likely to be dead or dying after this five-minute scene of utter destruction.
What’s that you say? You find it odd that the ex-wife’s boyfriend so easily maneuvers that plane between falling skyscrapers, gushing lava, and what-have-you? Don’t be so skeptical – I’m sure if you’d had a couple of lessons flying a single-engine plane that you’d have done the same, or better! Eh, actually, why even bother with actual lessons when you could become a grade A pilot playing Xbox? Especially when you can fly all the way from Vegas to China without stopping for gas on that fiery rock formerly known as Hawaii?
I’ve gotta say, those arks looked good, but if a measly roof cave-in and a malfunctioning door are any indication, they were kind of shoddily made. Plus, what’s the point of sealing off all those flooding chambers if the water keeps flowing into them? How did Tamara die before all the people in the chamber that was actually OPEN TO THE WATER?!? Her death, along with that of Yuri, Sasha, Gordon, and others, pretty much summarizes the movie: death! with special effects! BE ENTERTAINED!!!
But the truth of the matter is, I was entertained, despite the infuriating apathy displayed by the majority of the characters. Who doesn’t love watching stuff get blasted into tiny bits? Who doesn’t love John Cusack, Woody Harrelson, and that adorable little girl (the only actor to show actual grief, BTW)? Who doesn’t love an unambiguous bad guy, especially when he’s a bureaucrat? Who doesn’t love seeing giraffes flying through the tundra underneath helicopters? And who doesn’t love an unabashedly cheerful ending in the face of the end of life as we know it?
To summarize, this movie was like Armageddon (minus the hotness of Ben Affleck and Bruce Willis) and Titanic (minus the authentic romance of Kate and Leo). It was totally goofy. I loved it.
P.S. I drooled a little over Sasha the steamy Russian pilot.
But his voice reminded me of the space station guy from Armageddon. Also, crazy Charlie Frost’s little animation totally ripped off one of my favorite viral videos of all time.
I was terribly disappointed in The Two Towers, the second installation of the Lord of the Rings movie trilogy. Perhaps it would be fine on its own, but in my humble opinion, it ripped out a great deal of what made the book not only interesting but also genuine.
I understand the need for certain cuts for the sake of time, but I vehemently believe there is no reason at all to change the very essence of a character as it was written by Tolkien. Take the Ents, for example. Part of what made them so cool in the book was that they had long memories and deeply hidden but powerful emotions. In the movie, it’s made to seem as if their innate slowness hinders the action, and furthermore, that it is only a shallow device for concealing their cowardice – not true in the least! This theme is carried on with the elves, as if Elrond considers himself too lofty to be burdened with aiding Middle Earth in its hour of need. True, in the book an entire army of them never forms, and it’s worthwhile to question why they only send one or two at a time to fight, but it is also obvious that as a race their existence was tied to the destruction of Sauron and they couldn’t avoid getting caught up in mortal troubles even if they wanted to.
The greatest travesty is the terrible transformation of Faramir, Boromir’s brother. The movie accurately depicts the feelings their father Denethor had toward the two (loved and admired Boromir, despised Faramir), but distorts their reactions to that love in a way that only Hollywood could. They try to make it seem as though Boromir defended his brother and thought ill of his father’s forceful, conniving ways, when in reality, noble as he may have been, Boromir was very much like Denethor in his desire to be king and in thinking of the well-being of Gondor before all else. I doubt he ever questioned anything his father may have thought. By the same token, they give Faramir a very ugly edge: he wants nothing more than the love of his father and will do anything and everything to get it. But in the book he very matter-of-factly rejects the ring – not because he doesn’t desire it mightily, but because he is GOOD. This script needlessly creates “drama” when it should be extolling the occasionally achingly beautiful nature of humanity.
Lastly, I’ll complain about a minor point. Why did the movie-makers feel a need to make Theoden King a puppet, controlled entirely by magic? I mean, come on, like there aren’t enough mystical things already going on in this story! I think it should have been just fine to show that he was a fallible human being who was manipulated by another. Not to mention, even after the spell was broken they didn’t show him in a particularly positive light. He was basically a quitter who kept needing to be prodded into action by Aragorn. Boring! Apparently Peter Jackson didn’t want to overwhelm the audience with too many heroes. [I'm so rolling my eyes right now.]
There may indeed have been some very lovely aspects of this film, but I can’t remember any of them so I’m not going to go to the effort of trying to find some to talk about. Anyway, no matter how wonderful they happened to be, for me they could not possibly redeem The Two Towers as a whole. End of story.
I don’t think I’ve seen a film yet that surpasses a book in greatness, but I do have to give the peeps behind The Fellowship of the Ring mad props for making a killer movie. Since Andy and I both have been reading the trilogy (and, wow, isn’t that a surprising “couple activity” for us? I personally never would have imagined it coming to pass), he wanted us to watch the first movie right after we finished the first book. I wasn’t really excited about it but obliged nonetheless. I had seen it once before, probably six years ago, and it frankly just didn’t make much of an impression. I can’t even remember whether I watched the whole trilogy or just the first one. Still, on a second viewing, it held up to my intense scrutiny.
If nothing else, anyone who watches the DVD extras must admire the sheer dedication that was devoted to this movie. I mean, the amount of work they put into it is astonishing. (Luckily, it did all pay off, I’m sure.) The attention to detail is incredible: from the hairy hobbit feet to the carvings on the tower of Orthanc, every part of this project was designed to look and sound as lifelike as possible, which I’m sure was doubly difficult since, aside from the human beings, nothing in the story is the least bit real!
The plot is very close to that of the book, but out of necessity some changes have been made. To me, the biggest and most obvious difference between the two is the passage of time. In the book, decades go by between Bilbo’s eleventy-first birthday party and Frodo’s hasty exit from the Shire, but in the movie no more than a day passes! In fact, Frodo and Sam are supposed to be well into their middle age (though of course Frodo as ring-bearer wouldn’t age visibly), with Merry and Pippin being significantly younger, though still adults. In the movie they all seem to be in their late teens/early twenties. I think this changes the tone of Frodo and Sam’s thoughts more than anything else – it probably doesn’t affect the story much as a whole.
Other bits and pieces were altered or left out less noticeably, such as the chain of events at the inn in Bree and the encounter with the barrow wights, and these seemed quite sensible to me. On the other hand, even though I know he didn’t contribute much to the plot, I was quite disappointed to not get to meet Tom Bombadil. Part of the enchantment of the book is the depth of Middle Earth history that the reader experiences. Tiny side stories like that of old Tom are what make the The Lord of the Rings feel so real.
But I love the fact that the movie is able to give a voice to the magical poems, songs and stories that the book is so full of. Without it, I might never have heard spoken Elvish! And surely life would be incomplete without that experience
The one scene that I specifically detested in the movie is one that I loved in the book, when Frodo offers the Ring to Galadriel. And oddly enough, the dialogue matches the written version exactly. It is the sense of it all that doesn’t match. In the movie she grows a little (good choice) and glows a lot (a sickly green, not so good choice). With the black eyes and growly voice she just looks weird and terrifying.
Yes, she should be “bright as the dawn”, but I would have shot it in a gleaming silver and altered the face of Cate Blanchett so that she seemed super-human and fiercely beautiful. Instead she just ends up looking like an alien. In other words, they only got the second half right when she says, “everyone shall love me and despair.” I will praise the delivery of the next line, though, when she becomes herself again; she looks frail and mortal and sad, which is perfect.
To wind this up, I’ll say that the movie is long but the story is exciting, the characters are dynamic, the acting is excellent, the special effects are superb, and the ending is appropriately climactic. I give it four out of five stars.
"Sorry, but I'm an old-fashioned gal. I was raised to believe that men dig up the corpses and the women have the babies." - Buffy the Vampire Slayer ("Some Assembly Required")
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