Whale Rider (5/10): The struggle of keeping past traditions alive in a modern world

“We were waiting for the firstborn of the new generation, for the descendant of the whale rider. For the boy who would be chief.”

This New Zealand coming of age film about a young girl from the Whangara tribe struggling to find her place in this traditionally patriarch society, opens with tragedy. A woman dies giving birth to twins, and only the sister survives. She is the one narrating this event while introducing us to her tribe's culture and saying what a huge disappointment this was for her grandfather who was expecting the first born son to become the tribe chief. Her father, Porourangi (Cliff Curtis), is heartbroken and against her grandfather's wishes he doesn't assume the responsibility of becoming a leader, deciding to travel abroad instead as an artist. He leaves the girl, Paikea (Keisha Castle-Hughes), in the care of his parents, Koro (Rawiri Paratene) and Nanny (Vicky Haughton). From a very early age, Paikea feels she is destined to become the leader of her tribe, but despite Koro's love for her he refuses to let her participate in the training and search for the new leader.  Of course a film about female empowerment like this was directed by a woman, Niki Caro, who also adapted the screenplay from Witi Ihimaera's novel. The story almost has a fairytale quality to it, but it does have a lot to say about sexism and keeping up with past customs in a modern world.

At the time of its release, Whale Rider, was received with a lot of praise from audiences at the Sundance and Toronto film festivals and it also received an Academy Award nomination for Keisha Castle-Hughes' lead performance who at the time was the youngest actress to be nominated in that category. Keisha was given strong material to work with and she is by far the best thing about the movie. Her performance is breathtaking as Paikea as she captures the struggle to find her place in this society that she feels destined to lead. Her relationship with her grandfather is the center of the movie and it was one I had a difficult time believing considering he ignores her for almost the entire film despite her love and belief in him. There is a powerful scene near the end of the film in which she honors him at her school but it didn't move me as much considering I didn't share that same sympathy for Koro. It is however a wonderful scene thanks to Keisha's touching speech and I'm assuming it was the reason why she was nominated. 

My greatest complaint is with the pacing of the first half of the film that never managed to engage me. The family dynamics weren't compelling and it took a while to understand why Paikea would want to stay in such an unwelcoming place out of a sense of duty in fulfilling her destiny. I did enjoy the final 20 minutes which were touching and inspirational, but it wasn't enough to save the first 70 minutes and its slow pacing. The only other interesting character in the film is Paikea's uncle who is given little screen time, but his relationship with her seemed like something much more interesting and worth exploring more. I didn't enjoy Whale Rider as much as I had hoped, and I found it to be quite a missed opportunity for such an interesting story.

Last Knights (4/10): The familiar Samurai tale now told through Knights

“The code was simple: Possess an absolute devotion to one’s Master.”

Last Knights is Japanese director, Kazuaki Kiriya’s third feature film, but his first one with well known Hollywood actors. What he attempts to do here is blend the familiar story of the 47 Ronin and adapt it to the Medieval world of knights. Why would you want to trade samurai soldiers for knights? I have no idea because it actually doesn’t work. You have these men living by a code of honor similar to the samurai, but there is nothing fresh or unique about the idea because the entire story becomes completely predictable and generic. During this feudal world, Captain Raiden (Clive Owen) is completely devoted to serving the house of Bartok (Morgan Freeman), his wealthy and caring Master. Second in command is another loyal knight, Lt. Cortez (Cliff Curtis). These knights live by a strong code of honor and respect for their Master, but when Bartok is dishonored by the Emperor’s corrupt advisor, Gezza Mott (Aksel Hennie), the knights are dismantled. Will the knights be able to rise again and avenge their Master or will they fall into despair and go back to their old ways? If you’ve seen any samurai movie you probably know what to expect. 

The greatest issue I had with Last Knights is its lack of originality. We’ve seen the film played out many times before and that makes the pacing of the film feel incredibly tedious because we know what is going to happen next. Kiriya tries to take his time establishing the setting and building the characters, but since we’ve seen this world before it doesn’t do anything for the audience. Clive Owen is a fine actor, but he’s even played this role before in King Arthur, a knight who is completely devoted to the cause. Morgan Freeman is one of those actors who you could close your eyes just to hear him speak and that is basically why he’s in this, to narrate the introduction of the film and set the premise. Last Knights can easily be divided into three acts, the first being the introduction of each character and the injustice they must face, the second which takes up most part of the film centers on the build-up of each character, and the third part of the film and by far the most exciting is the climax where vengeance is coming. The problem is that neither the introduction or the character development manage to engage the audience and everything is taken way too seriously for us to be entertained by it. 

The characters are completely one dimensional. Only Clive Owen gets to play a meaty role, but everyone else is simply playing a stereotypical character in a film like this. And even watching Owen on screen you can’t help but feel the familiarity of having seen him play this role before. The villain is perhaps the best example of how stereotypical the characters in this film are. You couldn’t have Aksel Hennie play a more evil or sadistic man than he is here: he beats his wife, abuses people, accepts bribes from other noble men, and to top things off he hurts animals. He’s also a coward who surrounds himself with thousands of guards and a heavy fortified home. That is what actually makes the final climax scene quite entertaining. The action is delivered quite well and it makes up for some of the tedious pacing during the first 80 minutes of the film. Is it enough to recommend the film? Not even close.   

My Review: Bringing Out the Dead (5/10)

"Saving someone's life is like falling in love. The best drug in the world. God has passed through you. Why deny it, that for a moment there, God was you?"

Bringing Out the Dead presents a dark and bleak view of New York City as we get to experience it through the main character's depressive perception. Working as an ambulance paramedic, Frank Pierce has always found purpose in his life in saving others, but after not being able to save a young girl and feeling haunted by her ghost he has lost his passion and begins to question his existence. The torment he is experiencing leads him to an identity crisis that impacts the way he (and therefore we the audience) sees the city. Martin Scorsese gets all the technical aspects of the film right, teaming up with his usual collaborators: the cinematography done by Robert Richardson and the editing by Thelma Schoonmaker, but somehow the story doesn't work as well. I understand what he was trying to do, but I just couldn't care for the characters in this film and it all felt a little too surreal for my taste. This is the first film from Scorsese that I've seen that hasn't worked for me, but I do have to give him credit for delivering on the technical aspects. There are also some great moments and some supporting performances that worked really well for me, but it only made me wish the film focused on those characters instead of on Frank. The unique way in which the city was portrayed through Frank's eyes as he's dealing with his personal demons and nightmares really never engaged me because I didn't care for his character. His partners on the other hand were much more engaging and I wish we could've seen it through their eyes instead. 

The screenplay was adapted by Paul Schrader from Joe Connelly's novel of the same name. This was Schrader and Scorsese's fourth and final collaboration together after having worked in Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, and The Last Temptation of Christ. Bringing Out the Dead is perhaps most similar to Taxi Driver in tone, but it is a departure from most of his work considering its surreal and nightmarish tone. The film follows Frank Pierce (Nicolas Cage) as he drives across New York City in his ambulance during the night shifts. It's a two man ambulance team although his partners switch every night. Frank is completely burned out considering he hasn't been able to save anyone over the past few weeks and is eagerly awaiting to be fired. His partners don't seem to be experiencing the same problem as they all seem to deal with their demons in different ways. There's Larry (John Goodman) who is constantly thinking about food, Marcus (Ving Rhames) who is a religiously devoted man, and Tom (Tom Sizemore) who borderlines on psychotic behavior. They work for Mercy Hospital, which is always full of wacky characters and very crowded. Frank begins to fraternize with the daughter of one of the patients he brings in, her name is Mary (Patricia Arquette), and she seems to be the only good thing about his job now. Tormented by the ghosts of those he couldn't save, he searches for his salvation through trying to help Mary and saving both of them in the process. 

Despite not enjoying this film as much as I have other Scorsese movies, I have to admit that there were some incredibly entertaining scenes. Ving Rhames has an amazing scene along Nicolas Cage and one of the patients they are trying to save. It was hilarious. He was by far my favorite character in the film. Patricia Arquette was also pretty interesting, and Cliff Curtis also had a couple of great scenes as Cy. Those were the highlights for me in an exhilarating and fast paced film that failed to engage me with the main character played by Cage. Scorsese does manage to capture the chaos and darkness of the city in a very unique way and the technical brilliance of this film stand out above the story. It's a demented film, but it just wasn't my type of movie because the story was emotionally uninvolving. I will give it credit for the hilarious scenes, but I was let down by the lack of an engaging story.

My Review: Colombiana (7/10)

¨Never forget where you came from.¨

Zoe Saldana is this year`s Angelina Jolie, although instead of playing Agent Salt, she is a Colombian assassin who is set at avenging her parent`s killers. The movie is action packed and Saldana shines in her role proving she can be a lead action star. The plot is simple and we`ve seen thousands of these revenge movies, but that doesn’t mean we can`t be entertained with the premise. Colombiana isn`t a memorable film and it doesn`t add anything to the existing girl power slash revenge genre, but it is entertaining nonetheless. It is very predictable, we`ve seen the action scenes before hundreds of times, but Saldana makes the movie worth watching. She is great in her role and looks better than ever. As for the rest of the cast they were all pretty much forgettable. There weren`t any interesting villains either, everything centered towards Saldana. Director Olivier Megaton (Transporter 3) may perhaps have made his best film to date, although it won`t be very memorable. His movies are simplistic action centered films with little character development and several plot holes. This film was written by Luc Besson who in my opinion directed one of the best action films of the 90`s: Leon the Professional, but he has focused on writing now and he has had his shares of hits and misses. This is probably not one of his best efforts, but I still had a good time in the theater nonetheless thanks in most part to Zoe Saldana who was very entertaining in her Nikita-like role.

The movie begins in 1992 in a small city of Colombia where a mobster named Don Luis (Beto Benites) orders his bodyguard Marco (Jordi Molla) to kill a family because he has been betrayed by the father. Ten year old Cataleya (Amandla Stenberg) sees how these mobsters murder her parents, but somehow eludes the mobsters after her dad gives her an escape plan. She manages to arrive in Chicago where her uncle Emilio (Cliff Curtis) raises her. Emilio is a hitman, and young Cataleya asks him to teach her how to be an assassin. She wants to avenge her parents’ death. The film then jumps to the present where we see an all grown up Cataleya (Zoe Saldana) doing what she does best: killing. She has become a cold blooded assassin, but what Emilio doesn`t know is that while she is murdering her targets she is also leaving her mark in order to get the mobs attention back home. Her mark is a Cataleya orchid which is only grown in the Colombian town where she grew up. The FBI agent in charge of tracking her down is Ross (Lennie James) who has no clue as to who he is supposed to be looking for. When he finally decides to release the details of the murders to the media, the mob finally receives the message and decide it`s time to search for Cataleya. The only problem is that she has kept secluded to herself, her only contact being Emilio himself and a boyfriend with whom she barely communicates: Danny (Michael Vartan).

The movie opens with a very interesting action scene, probably the best in the film where we see the mobsters chasing the young Cataleya through the Colombian streets. Amandla Stenberg plays her character really well although she is only in the first 15 minutes, and then Saldana takes over from then. The rest of the characters are pretty much all forgettable and so are most of the action scenes. I did enjoy the movie although I know there is nothing new or original about it. Colombiana only serves to prove that Saldana can be a lead actress and that she can be great in better scripts. I enjoyed the film in the same way I enjoyed Salt, so if you didn’t like that movie than you probably won`t enjoy this one. The editing action scenes are very similar to those of The Transporter so you have a lot of cuts and sometimes the action is hard to follow. Colombiana is still an enjoyable film if you don’t go into it with much expectation.

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