Recently in 2 Stars: So Close

When the first scene of Salt featured Angelina Jolie in her underwear, being tortured by North Koreans, I felt my heart sink. I lectured myself sternly, though. After all, we've seen a few movies with terrible introductions turn out to be quite good. Have to give it a chance.

So I gave it a chance. But it's not very good. The plot is extraordinarily silly and convoluted--it reminded Mark of that episode of South Park about the plot to assassinate Hillary Clinton. For me, it seemed more Tom Clancy-esque. Like, if Tom Clancy had a really bad day. And got paid by the word. It is, as the trailers would have you expect, all about layers of international intrigue and double-crossing and double-double-crossing, etc. And it all flows fairly logically (i.e. you can follow it without much effort), but with every new plot twist you're left thinking not "Ooh! I didn't see that coming!" but "Oh, really? Come on! Don't do that!"

Though I have nothing of any interest to say about Salt as a story, the gender politics is worth discussing. The film was originally "Edwin A. Salt," a vehicle intended to star Tom Cruise (as per Variety). Watching it, this makes sense. Other than the original tortured-in-her-underwear scene, there is very little about Evelyn Salt that differentiates her from the men in the movie--on both sides. Except that she kicks all their asses. None of her ass-kicking is done in a "girly" way, none of it requires a leather bra or high heels, or even the quips we often get from female action heroes. She's just doing her job. I'm actually reminded a little bit of Sigourney Weaver's Ripley from the first Alien film--another role intended for a man. I love that Evelyn Salt was allowed to be concerned about her husband, a scientist. It had nothing to do with her being female and him male--he was a civilian and she wasn't. That makes sense to me, and I love to see that kind of unconscious (or seemingly unconscious) gender equity in a movie. It fails the Bechdel test all to hell, though--there aren't even any other major female characters. Evelyn definitely plays in the boy's sandbox. (Note that the relationship between Salt and her husband, which I found to be one of the more feminist aspects of the film, was apparently not intended that way--there is a piece on Scott Mendelson's Blog worth checking out about that.)

Many reviewers are calling Salt a feminist version of the Bourne trilogy. Honestly, I think that is giving a bit more credit than is deserved. Whatever else is wrong with them, the Bourne movies are pretty darn good action films. Salt isn't, it's dumb. And Jason Bourne's heroism makes sense in context--he may not remember what he's been trained to do, but it is ingrained. He's supposed to be the best. Salt offers no explanation, no matter how far-fetched, for why Angelina Jolie is able to not only run and shoot and drive real fast, but also jump from the tops of trucks or out of windows without getting hurt, climb walls like Spiderman, and perform Matrix-style kicks. No matter how unrealistic the general premise of a film may be, internally consistent logic goes a long way to make it believable. Salt doesn't have that.

On race, the film is racist in the same way all of these type of international intrigue movies are--the bad guys have a nationality and their national identify is part of what makes them bad guys. I was glad that, with the exception of Angelina Jolie, the actors who played Russians in the film were mostly Eastern European. Peabody, who is likely the film's most stable and professional character, is played by Black British actor Chiwetel Ejiofor. Though the fictional president in the film is a white dude, the fictional presidential cabinet was at least somewhat diverse, with an African-American Secretary of Defense and a female CIA Director.

Overall, this was simply a film I had a hard time getting excited about. The ridiculous plot made it hard to stay interested, and the over-the-top action heroism of Jolie's character ended up victim to it. I like Angelina Jolie as an action hero--I've crowed about her here before. This film doesn't allow her to work up to her potential, even if it is one of the best action roles for women we've seen in a while (certainly the best starring one this year). It doesn't impress me much that some of the best action roles for women in 2010 are the same ones from 1979--the ones intended for men.

Posted by Grace in 2 Stars: So Close
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One of the best things about doing this blog over the years is all the fabulous people who have showed up in the comments section. One of those fabulous people, Patrick, has been kind enough to offer us a number of guest posts for the next few months - starting with his review of Prince of Persia. Patrick is so cool that he writes reviews in 2 languages, so if you took more German than we did in high school, you can also head over to his blog when you're done with this. Alternately, you can look for him as "The Other Patrick" in the comments at The Hathor Legacy. Enjoy!

Persia, long ago: King Sharaman (Ronald Pickup) and his brother Nizam (Ben Kingsley) are out at the market one day, when Sharaman notices the young but courageous boy Dastan and decides to adopt him as his third son. Dastan grows up to be Jake Gyllenhaal, and together with his brothers Tus (Richard Coyle) and Garsiv (Toby Kebbell) Dastan one day finds himself conquering the city of Alamud. However, the weapons that are supposed to be in Alamud turn out not to be there, merely an excuse to get at Alamud's true treasure: a dagger containing the Sands of Time, with which anyone can travel into the past and change it. Things happen, and Dastan finds himself on the run with the Dagger on his belt and the Princess Tamina (Gemma Arterton) at his side and a conspiracy declaring him a traitor and murderer...

Okay, so far for the plot summary. If you read on, beware of spoilers.

I can't talk about Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time (hereafter Prince of Persia) without mentioning the racefail at its core.

Posted by A Very Special Guest in 2 Stars: So Close
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I fell in love with the first Iron Man movie because of Robert Downey Jr. as Tony Stark. Watching Downey transform from cocky playboy to desperate prisoner to obsessed inventor... I just don't know how to describe it, he took my breath away. I guess I hadn't been paying enough attention to him previously. I had no idea he could do anything like that.

Iron Man 2, lacking the element of surprise, was going to have a harder time impressing me. And not to be a killjoy on the first Big! Summer! Movie!... but it didn't. I mean, it wasn't BAD. I have seen enough bad movies for this blog to know a bad movie, and this was not bad. But it didn't sing.

Here's the plot overview, sans spoliers as best I can: Tony Stark has been Iron Man for a while, and everything is swell with the "world peace" thing. Except now the U.S. Government wants the suit, Stark's former competitor in the arms trade wants to humiliate him, and there's a problem with the power cell in Stark's chest that he can't fix. Oh, and there's a brilliant Russian physicist who wants to kill him. Beyond that, it's pretty much held together with tape and "ooh shiny."

Posted by Skye in 2 Stars: So Close
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I did not intend to see Kick-Ass, the film based on Mark Millar's comic of the same name. I have never seen Wanted. I read the comic, which was written by Millar, and came to the conclusion that he is probably not the kind of person I would enjoy spending time with. That impression was further reinforced by reading some of his work on The Ultimates. Unfortunately, then I read the first volume of Wolverine: Enemy of the State without realizing it was Millar writing, and I was completely blown away by teh awesome. The man can tell a goddamn story.

Now I can't decide what I would do if I ran into Millar at a cocktail party. Try to reason with him? Kick him in the shins? Try to get him talking so I can judge whether all the sexist, racist crap and horrible people doing horrible things in Wanted is really a statement against evil or just an excuse to put tons of stuff on the page that reflects what he really feels?

Posted by Skye in 2 Stars: So Close
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Seven soldiers go out on a training mission. Only two come back, one of them having been shot. What the heck happened out there? Captain Julia Osborne starts an investigation, but strangely, the two surviving soldiers won't talk.

Lucky for us, John Travolta is summoned to take over!

Unluckily for us, he isn't wearing platform shoes like in Battlefield Earth!

I found out about Basic in a post on Collie's Bestiary. I am not a John Travolta fan, and I am not particularly interested in military dramas, but this bit of her review intrigued me:

The stiff-necked military provost marshall, Captain Julia Osborne, is young and a bit new, and thinks things should be done by the book. [...] One would expect her to be an easy plot scapegoat, or simply the love interest - and yet she's not. Again, expectations are wonderfully tossed out the window: Osborne is quick on the uptake, physically adept and well-trained, has little trouble resisting the "hero's" romantic manipulations, and in the end unexpectedly figures out the underlying plotting - to the surprise of those very plotters.

The cliche of "woman who insists on playing by the rules, man who shows her how it's really done" is stale. In the first few minutes of this film, the filmmakers were slathering it on. Really, people, do we always have to wade through the woman-hating before we can enjoy the strong woman?

Posted by Skye in 2 Stars: So Close
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So imagine a really boring version of The Bourne Identity made with a small budget and a female lead. You there? OK. You've seen Contract Killers.

The film begins with Jane (Frida Farrell) being drugged and waking up to a dead husband. The viewer comes to find out, when Jane shoots and rides her way out of her surrounded house, that she's a CIA assassin. Fair enough. From there it's typical stuff--the CIA is after her, she knows something she shouldn't, so on and so forth. Jane meets up with and bullies a civilian, Lars (Christian Willis), then forms an alliance with a CIA operative sent to kill her, Pernell (Rhett Giles). There are many cryptic phone conversations with between Jane and some suits at the CIA. And then the film is over.

The acting is bad. The plot is...not so much a plot. Really, it's just a terrible movie. There is a reason it went straight to DVD. Jane herself is perfectly competent, and her character is improved slightly when you learn her original reason for becoming an assassin is that her sister was raped and killed and she avenged those wrongs. But given the film's overall suckitude, those are really just crumbs. Plus, towards the end of the film, it's clearly Jane's partnership with male operative Pernell that keeps her alive. Ick.

This is also a white movie. There are two colors of character, both minor (a second CIA assassin sent to kill Jane and a CIA agent at the headquarters office). Race is a non-issue in either case, so I can't really remove points based on racism, but I can't add them based on great racial insight, either.

I'm giving this one two stars. It's a bad movie. Nothing about it really offended me, but nothing impressed me, either.

Posted by Grace in 2 Stars: So Close
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From our guest poster Bonnie Norman comes this look at the newest Tim Burton flick...

Disclaimer: I didn't see this in 3D because those glasses give me a major headache, so I may not have gotten the full experience.

Set 13 years after the events of the original Alice in Wonderland, we are once again introduced to Alice Kingsley, a pale blond English girl of about 19 years of age. Alice constantly questions why things must be done a certain way, such as wearing corsets or adhering to societal norms. With the times being very proper Victorian England, Alice has many expectations weighing on her from all sides. She manages to escape them, though, when she tumbles down the rabbit hole to Wonderland, as she did when she was a child. There, she learns that she is the only one who can free Wonderland from the Red Queen's tyrannical rule, and slay the foul Jabberwocky.

Visually speaking, Alice in Wonderland is just beautiful. Bright colors, bizarre and fascinating landscapes, and of course the many interesting creatures that make up this story. Being directed by Tim Burton has done wonders for this movie. The landscapes are dark and gritty, the creatures sufficiently strange and terrifying, and the overall feeling is of a child's fairy tale turned adult and mean. Alice has returned to a Wonderland ravaged by war.

One of the best things about this movie, in my opinion, is that it's about women. The main heroine is Alice, the villain is a woman, and the one Alice champions is a woman. Getting to see Alice ride to battle in full shining knight armor, without even a special "female shaped" breastplate to spoil the scene, was seriously cool. It also passes the Bechdel test quite easily, with most conversations between women revolving around the upcoming battle and what Alice will choose to do. One memorable scene takes place between Anne Hathaway's character, The White Queen, and Mia Wasikowska's character of Alice. Alice asks the Queen why she doesn't fight the Jabberwocky herself, and with a very tongue in cheek attitude, The White Queen answers that it is against her vows. A nod to the ridiculous twist in logic needed to justify one woman being able to fight like a man, but not another?

Alice herself is a very interesting character, with much emphasis placed on her intellect and courage, as well as her ability to do what no one else can. She is meant to physically fight and slay the Jabberwocky, which is another rarity. Generally, the girls are meant to fight from a distance or outwit a monster, not go at it with a sword. The fact that Alice carriers her new-found confidence with her back into the Real World is a big plus, but also predictable.

However. The Red Queen's character in particular very much bothered me. Much is made of her oversized head, as though deformity automatically means depravity. If only she were beautiful like her sister The White Queen, she wouldn't be evil. It's a commonly held prejudice, that those who look different must somehow be wrong or evil, or that their difference somehow excuses or explains their behavior. "Well of course she's bad! Just look at her (skin color, face, ableness, etc.)!"

Another point against the movie; there are absolutely no characters of color in the entire film, either in Real World England or in Wonderland. Considering it is Victorian England and at an upper-class event, the lack of diversity is understandable. But Wonderland is an imaginary world populated by fantastical creatures and characters of all shapes, sizes, and colors. They've got singing flowers and mice with swords, but not a single POC? That's what I call a race-fail.

Overall, I liked this movie, but I didn't love it. It's a big blockbuster, so pushing the boundaries is not usually going to happen. Even with the couple of awesome female representations, there are just too many things missing from the movie for it to be truly great, including anyone not white or an anthropomorphized animal or plant. I'd call it progress in the form of an unusual heroine, the proper English girl Alice, but it doesn't try hard enough in other areas. I give it 2 stars: So Close!

Posted by A Very Special Guest in 2 Stars: So Close
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First, the warning: this film includes a fairly graphic, though short, rape scene. It's also graphically violent in a way kung fu is often not.

The basis is this: Madame M (Almen Wong Pui-Ha) runs a high-end assassin business. At the beginning of the film, she kidnaps a load of young teenage girls with special martial arts and athletic talents, taking them to remote island to train them up to become the next generation of assassins. This is not your friendly Kill Bill-style assassin school, though--the girls are pretty well tortured, culminating in a competition in which they have to kill each other or be killed, with the winner(s) coming out as the new top killers.

Posted by Grace in 2 Stars: So Close
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I saw Whiteout by myself, in a nearly empty theater, in the afternoon. My perfect film-viewing experience. I'm likely giving it a more positive review than it's getting in most forums, and that may be why.

Whiteout's main character is U.S. Marshall Carrie Stetko, played by Kate Beckinsale. That would make her the heroine (it also makes her the only woman in the film). Her first scene, for absolutely no plot-driven reason, features her stripping out of full cold weather gear and taking a shower. Not exactly an auspicious beginning.

It does get better. The beginning shower scene is very much in the same vein as Sigourney Weaver's stripping down to her underwear at the end of Alien--a single gratuitous moment for a character who is otherwise nearly completely sexless. Beckinsale spends the majority of the film in her parka. She is, after all, at the South Pole, and she's working. She's the law in these parts, and she's got murders to solve. No argument from me there--there isn't a ton of physical fighting, but Marshall Stetko does her job, puts herself at risk to keep other safe, and performs in a generally admirable way. I just wish she could have done it without the survivor flashbacks from the botched job that sent her to the South Pole in the first place. Without those moments, she'd have been cool and competent--something like Ripley, or even a bit like Frances McDormand's Marge from Fargo. With them, she's not entirely trustworthy and seems just a second away from needing rescue.

Posted by Grace in 2 Stars: So Close
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If you've been reading Heroine Content for long, you know that I have a thing for movies about female athletes, and a particular love for boxers. I'm picky, though--I gave Million Dollar Baby only one star, but I loved Girlfight and gave it full marks. Keep that in mind, as I am about to tell you a lot of nice things about a really bad film.

Rigged (also know as Fight Night, which is what the DVD I got from my RedBox was labeled) is the story of a shady underground boxing promoter, Michael Dublin (Chad Ortis) and a female underground boxer, Katherine (Kat) Parker (Rebecca Neuenswander). The two strike up a relationship based on mutual need and end up becoming friends as they work their way around the south for fights. Oh, and they also address issues from their pasts, blah blah blah. The story is really nothing impressive.

But these things are impressive:

First, Kat Parker KICKS ASS.

Posted by Grace in 2 Stars: So Close
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