Terminator: Dark Fate — Deserves termination

Terminator: Dark Fate (2019) • View trailer 
Two stars. Rated R, for profanity, relentless violence and fleeting nudity
By Derrick Bang

Seriously?

Bad enough that this film is little more than 128 minutes’ worth of increasingly daft chases, brawls, explosions and big guns making bigger holes, fleetingly interrupted by fitful — and unsuccessful — attempts at some semblance of story.

Enraged by the violent events that have turned her life upside-down, Dani (Natalia Reyes,
right) is prevented from foolish bravado by Grace (Mackenzie Davis), her mysterious
protector from the future.

The greater sin, however, is that this sixth entry in the Terminator series makes even worse hash of the time-travel elements so carefully established in the initial two films, and progressively screwed up by each subsequent entry. At this point, nothing makes any sense, particularly with respect to the fate of all-important John Connor.

Dark Fate apparently is intended as a re-boot of the entire series, but even that flimsy claim doesn’t withstand analysis, given the presence of Linda Hamilton’s Sarah Connor and Arnold Schwarzenegger’s venerable T-800. This is arbitrary, kitchen-sink mayhem at its most gratuitous.

I’ve observed, over the years, that the quality of a film decreases — often exponentially — in direct relation to the number of writers above two. This misbegotten screenplay has sixcredited writers, which is rather ironic. It can’t take that many people to type “She shoots him repeatedly. They beat each other to a pulp. Then stuff blows up.”

Granted, the reunion with Schwarzenegger’s T-800 is a crowd-pleasing thrill, although his presence centers around a heinous act from which the film never recovers … despite some (later) preposterous lip-service toward redemption. Ol’ Arnie, bless him, hasn’t anywhere near the acting chops to pull off that whopper.

We shouldn’t be surprised by this flick’s superficiality. Director Tim Miller’s sole previous big-screen feature was 2016’s Deadpool, which is nothing but exploitative, violently gory pandemonium. In fairness, that guilty pleasure benefited from its snarky attitude and cheerfully deplorable dark humor. Dark Fate has no humor whatsoever, despite Hamilton’s repeated efforts at thuddingly clunky one-liners.

Actually, the only genuinely funny moment comes when Schwarzenegger, deadpan as always, claims to be funny.

Terminator Genisys: Out of time

Terminator Genisys (2015) • View trailer 
2.5 stars. Rated PG-13, for relentless sci-fi violence and gunplay, partial nudity and fleeting profanity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 7.3.15

Not since the original five-cycle Planet of the Apes films, between 1968 and ’73, has a franchise attempted to cycle itself so intricately. Terminator scripters Laeta Kalogridis and Patrick Lussier deserve credit for an ambitious attempt here, tackling multiple time periods — and alternate timeline realities — in an effort to slot this newest entry into What Has Gone Before, while also (more or less) re-telling the whole wild ’n’ crazy story from the beginning.

Surrounded by an impressive cache of military weaponry they'll never get to use, our
heroes — from left, Sarah (Emilia Clarke), "Pops" (Arnold Schwarzenegger) and Kyle (Jai
Courtney) — concoct a half-baked scheme to destroy an evil master computer complex
before it can wreak havoc on the entire world.

Sadly — and as often is the case, with sloppy time travel sagas — things get so convoluted that the result becomes confusing and, ultimately, pointless. The situation clearly has gotten out of hand when characters spend the entire third act explaining each new twist to each other (and, by extension, to us). Rarely has a film indulged in so much blatant, tedious said-bookism.

Part of the problem is the labyrinthine degree to which this franchise has been expanded (often not for the better) by outside parties, most notably extended story arcs by six different comic book publishers, dating back to 1988. No single new film could satisfy a mythos that has grown so convoluted.

On top of which, director Alan Taylor has absolutely no sense of pacing. He simply yanks his cast from one deafening CGI action scene to the next, with no attempt to build suspense or inject any sense of actual drama. The result is massive, messy and noisy: a 125-minute cartoon that has none of the heart — or intelligence — that made director James Cameron’s first two films so memorable, back in 1984 and ’91.

This is simply a pinball machine, with its little spheres — our heroes — whacked and bounced from one crazed menace to another, somehow (miraculously!) surviving each encounter, physical laws and human frailty be damned.

That said, this new big-screen Terminator chapter — the fifth — does have one secret weapon: the same bright, shining star who also highlighted Cameron’s entries: Arnold Schwarzenegger. Far from the over-the-hill relic that many fans may have feared, the big guy owns this film. He’s well employed, granted some droll one-liners and sight gags, and has solid camera presence.

On top of which, Kalogridis and Lussier come up with a genuinely clever explanation for why Schwarzenegger’s good-guy T-800 android has aged so much, since its first appearance in 1991.

So ... take a deep breath, and pay attention. Ready?

The Expendables 3: Way past their prime

The Expendables 3 (2014) • View trailer 
Two stars. Rated PG-13, despite relentless violence, brutality and profanity
By Derrick Bang

What an overcooked, overlong, overloud waste of time.

Any semblance of the modestly clever, “aging Dirty Dozen” scenario — which the first film in this series possessed, to a minor degree, back in 2010 — has been buried in an endless, mindless fusillade of bullets, bombs and badly delivered, grade-Z dialogue.

Little realizing that their mission is about to go pear-shaped, Barney (Sylvester Stallone,
right) leads comrades Toll Road (Randy Couture) and Lee Christmas (Jason Statham) to
their unscheduled appointment with a notorious arms dealer.

I note star Sylvester Stallone’s credit for this film’s story, with further input from scripters Creighton Rothenberger and Katrin Benedikt. The notion that three whole people were required to write this laughable mess, frankly, defies belief.

Okay, granted, we’re not talkin’ Shakespeare here. This series’ sole raison d’être is to gather a bunch of aging A-, B- and C-level action stars, feed them tough-guy one-liners, and set them loose against some power-mad villain with delusions of world domination. Cue the aforementioned bullets, bombs and badly delivered dialogue.

But the cartoonish qualities, admittedly present back in 2010, have devoured this tedious excuse for a threequel. The first film’s modest efforts at actual characterization — such as Charisma Carpenter’s presence as Lacy, tempestuous wife of Lee Christmas (Jason Statham) — have been jettisoned. Carpenter is a no-show here, as is any layering that might make us care a whit about these anti-heroes.

They’re simply well-muscled point-and-shoot stick figures who have no more actual screen presence in this chaos, than the army of uncredited stunt doubles who actually perform all of these crazed action scenes.

Well, that’s not entirely true. Mel Gibson makes a memorably crazed über-villain as psychotic arms dealer Conrad Stonebanks; Gibson knows how to chew his way through all this nonsense. In great contrast to Stallone’s morose, stone-faced non-performance as primary hero Barney Ross, Gibson enthusiastically embraces every aspect of Stonebanks’ bad-bad self. More power to him.

Newcomer Antonio Banderas also is a hoot as Galgo, an insecure chatterbox who threatens to bore everybody to death with his ceaseless prattle. Banderas’ performance — and patter — are an amped-up echo of his comic voice work as Puss in Boots, in the animated Shrek series; the irony is that this approach succeeds better than most everything else in this pinball machine of a movie.

Sabotage: Vicious, vulgar trash

Sabotage (2014) • View trailer 
No stars (turkey). Rating: Rated R, for strong bloody violence and gore, relentless profanity, nudity, drug use and sexuality
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 3.28.14

Oh, how the mighty have fallen.

Our rough 'n' tumble "heroes" — from left, Neck (Josh Holloway), Breacher (Arnold
Schwarzenegger), Pyro (Max Martini) and Tripod (Kevin Vance) — infiltrate a drug cartel
safe house, taking down all opposition while cracking wise. Because real DEA agents
behave like this all the time, donchaknow.

Once upon a time, in the 1980s and early ’90s, Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger vied for the crown of box-office action champ: the former riding the momentum of his Rocky and Rambo franchises; the latter embracing a string of solid sci-fi/fantasy entries such as Conan the Barbarian, Predator and — needless to say — The Terminator.

Now they’re in a race to the bottom.

I was astonished — and saddened — when Stallone popped up about a year ago, in the loathsome Bullet to the Head. Exiting that bit of distasteful junk, I couldn’t imagine any (former) big-name star doing worse.

Color me surprised, because along comes Schwarzenegger and this repugnant turkey.

Back in the day, you’d have had to stay up late on a Friday night — at home — to see this sort of grade-Z shoot-’em-up on Cinemax. No self-respecting actor would have signed on for such grindhouse trash, and no self-respecting studio would have dared release such a thing theatrically.

My, how times have changed.

Sabotage isn’t merely offensively, viciously, gratuitously violent; it’s also stupid beyond measure.

Director David Ayer has made a minor splash with gritty urban thrillers such as Harsh Times and Street Kings — don’t feel bad, if they escaped your notice — but his primary Hollywood rep results from his impressive one-two punch as a writer, in 2001: collaborating on The Fast and the Furious, and as sole scripter on Training Day, which brought Denzel Washington an Academy Award.

Based on his subsequent career, Ayer has been chasing the belief that amorality for its own sake is what sells in these United States. Why bother with plot or character, when one can wallow in the sleaze of ghastly depravity?

He has teamed here with co-writer Skip Woods, who also made some noise in 2001, with the stylishly nasty Swordfish, and more recently got involved with glossy action junk such as The A-Team and A Good Day to Die Hard. Nothing to brag about, to be sure, but also nothing to be ashamed of. Until now.

Escape Plan: A breakout surprise

Escape Plan (2013) • View trailer 
Three stars. Rating: R, for violence and profanity
By Derrick Bang

Sometimes it pays to approach a film with diminished expectations.

After the comic book nonsense of both Expendables flicks, not to mention January’s distastefully trashy Bullet to the Head, I held out little hope for Sylvester Stallone’s recent return to the big screen.

Although trapped in a maximum-security prison that offers little hope for any sort of
escape plan, Ray Breslin (Sylvester Stallone, left) and Emil Rottmayer (Arnold
Schwarzenegger) have a few ideas ... all of them highly dangerous, of course, and
with little chance of success. But it's not like they have anything else to do...

And although Arnold Schwarzenegger cleverly parodied his advancing age in The Last Stand, also released in January, box-office disinterest made that little action flick’s title seem prophetic, with respect to his career.

I therefore haven’t been surprised by the disinterest in Escape Plan, which arrives in theaters today after a rather lackluster publicity campaign.

Which just goes to show the folly of jumping to conclusions. Swedish-born director Mikael Håfström has uncorked a tidy little thriller, which gets much of its juice from a clever script by Miles Chapman and Jason Keller. The premise is intriguing, the execution is engaging — if occasionally burdened by exploitation flick clichés — and, yes, Stallone and Schwarzenegger acquit themselves honorably.

Indeed, they’re perfectly cast in this twisty prison saga, which seems to have been shaped with their strengths — and acting limitations — in mind. Håfström allows them to do what they do best, and they do it well; the result certainly won’t be more than a footnote in cinema history, but it’s a reasonably entertaining way to spend a night at the movies.

Ray Breslin (Stallone) has a most unusual career: He’s a structural engineer who specializes in prison design, or — more precisely — the weaknesses of such institutions. As the “field agent” half of the Los Angeles-based security firm Breslin-Clark, he allows himself to be incarcerated into various prisons as an apparent felon, in order to escape and thus expose design and (more frequently) staffing weaknesses.

Although ostensibly on his own, Breslin always is monitored by his operational partners: handler Abigail Ross (Amy Ryan) and genius hacker Hush (Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson). Partner Lester Clark (Vincent D’Onofrio) acts as the company “face,” securing the assignments and managing the tidy sums that Breslin charges for his talents.

Following the completion of yet another routine assignment, Breslin is offered a tantalizing challenge by CIA operative Jessica Miller (Caitriona Balfe). Wanting to remove the political stink left by a decade’s worth of nasty headlines concerning Guantanamo Bay and extraordinary rendition, shadowy U.S. black-ops agencies have collaborated to construct a top-secret über-prison at an undisclosed location, well away from prying media eyes. The goal is to keep its dangerous occupants locked up, no matter how clever — or desperate — they might be.

That’s where Breslin comes in: If he can’t break out, then All Concerned will be satisfied that their “detention center” lives up to its promise.

The Last Stand: Solid comeback vehicle for Schwarzenegger

The Last Stand (2013) • View trailer
3.5 stars. Rating: R, for considerable violence, gore and profanity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 1.18.13

The New Year seems to have brought a run of transplanted Westerns.

Last week, the Magnificent Seven template wound up in 1950s Los Angeles, as Gangster Squad. This week, Howard Hawks’ iconic 1959 John Wayne oater, Rio Lobo — which John Carpenter riffed, just as suspensefully, as 1976’s Assault on Precinct 13 — has been transformed into a modern-day mission to stop a notorious Mexican drug kingpin from making it back to the safety of his native country.

When screwball Lewis Dinkum (Johnny Knoxville, being carried) gets pinned down by
gunfire, Frank (Rodrigo Santoro) charges into the thick of battle in a rescue attempt.
Things have gotten out of hand in the sleepy little town of Sommerton Junction, and
they're about to get even worse...

The only thing in his way: the helplessly outnumbered and outgunned citizens in the pokey little border town of Sommerton Junction.

The Last Stand marks the American directorial debut of South Korean director Kim Jee-woon, perhaps known on these shores for A Tale of Two Sisters and his genre-bending Oriental Western, The Good, the Bad, the Weird, which was Korea’s top box-office hit in 2008.

No surprise, then, that Kim would favor us with a variation on a classic American Western known for its blend of suspense, deftly sketched characters and snarky humor (in this case, quite dark at times).

Frankly, Arnold Schwarzenegger couldn’t have selected a better comeback vehicle, at this point in his career. Andrew Knauer’s story — clearly shaped by the earlier Hawks and Carpenter films, with scripting assists from Jeffrey Nachmanoff and George Nolfi — plays to Arnie’s advancing age, while amply demonstrating that movie action heroes never die, they just find more inventive ways to get the job done.

Mind you, this scenario is wholly outlandish and ludicrous, and no laws are broken more than the basic laws of physics. But it’s all in good fun — if unexpectedly gory at times — and you’ll have no trouble embracing Kim’s all-stops-out rhythm.

Events kick off late one evening in Las Vegas, as grim-faced FBI Agent John Bannister (Forest Whitaker) oversees the transfer of drug lord Gabriel Cortez (Eduardo Noriega) via a special prisoner convoy. Borrowing a gag from James Bond’s You Only Live Twice, Cortez makes an impressive escape; within minutes, he’s speeding from the scene at 250 miles per hour (!) in a tricked-up Corvette ZR1.

Worse yet, Cortez has a hostage handcuffed in the passenger seat: FBI Agent Ellen Richards (Genesis Rodriguez).

The Expendables 2: More mindless mayhem

The Expendables 2 (2012) • View trailer
Three stars. Rating: R, for strong bloody violence
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 8.24.12

It’s time once again to buy stock in ordnance manufacturers; Sylvester Stallone and his geezer squad are back to wreak more havoc and shoot up fresh landscapes.

Determined to rescue a lone American trapped by gun-toting
mercenaries, our heroes — from left, Barney Ross (Sylvester Stallone),
Lee Christmas (Jason Statham) and Hale Caesar (Terry Crews) — blast
their way into a fortified compound, and then prepare to eliminate any
two-legged signs of resistance. It's just another day at the office for
these guys...

Really, even by the already crazed standards of Hollywood’s exaggerated action flicks, I’ve rarely seen so much gunfire. Or so many blood squibs spurting from the chests, limbs and heads of obligingly posed victims. Particularly the goons shot by long-range, high-power sniper rifle, whose heads explode in a spray of viscera.

It’s almost enough to harsh the laughably ludicrous vibe of this otherwise mindless live-action cartoon.

The Expendables 2 is even sillier than its 2010 predecessor, an AARP spin on The Seven Samurai, The Dirty Dozen and all sorts of other gang-of-losers-against-insurmountable-odds epics. Ironically enough, "sillier" means better, in this case; thanks to the lighter tone, this sequel is quite a bit more entertaining. The notion that Stallone and his old coot buddies still can raise hell, definitely raises smiles ... and, yeah, it's a kick to see so many familiar faces.

With tongue even more firmly in cheek, Stallone once again shares screenwriting credit, but this time hands the directing chores to Simon West, a veteran of similar high-octane action fare such as Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, last year’s remake of The Mechanic and TV’s much-loved (if woefully short-lived) 2003 cop series, Keen Eddie.

The first Expendables at least made an effort to blend some actual character drama with its grim doings, with Dolph Lundgren’s Gunnar Jensen failing to play nice with the rest of the crew, most particularly Jet Li’s Yin Yang. Lundgren is sweetness and light this time — and has inherited a college-educated science background (!) — but Li makes little more than a token appearance in an audacious pre-credits rescue mission, which pretty much sets the tone for what follows.

Indeed, West errs slightly with this prologue; it’s far better staged than most of what follows. The folks who make these sorts of films really need to stop front-loading their best stuff; the rest of the film invariably feels anti-climactic.

But back to basics.

Any trace of squabbling has vanished, with Barney Ross (Stallone) and the rest of his crew — Lee Christmas (Jason Statham), Hale Caesar (Terry Crews) and Toll Road (Randy Couture) — joking and tossing brewskies like seasoned best buds. They’ve also taken on a rookie, a talented sharpshooter dubbed Billy the Kid (Liam Hemsworth), who seems to fit right in with the gang.