What I'm watching

#354/#71 Gone in 60 Seconds

(Rewatch)

When veteran car thief Memphis Raines’ (Nicholas Cage) little brother Kip (Giovanni Ribisi) gets into trouble with an underworld crime boss, Memphis has just 3 days in which to steal 50 cars before his brother is killed. Getting his crew back together the team set off to do just that but the Long Beach police department are nipping at their heels.

Much like the Italian Job remake or Fast Five, this is another one of those films where the right combination of characters, comedy, storyline and visuals all line up perfectly to give a wholly enjoyable movie. It’s not that deep, and a lot of the characters are purely representative of one main trait, but it all just seems to work regardless. You’re enjoying the story and the character interactions enough that these things, ultimately, don’t seem to matter.

While all the actors are great in this, the two I want to draw attention to are Angelina Jolie as Sway and Vinnie Jones as Sphinx. Jolie is great in a lot of main roles but I think this is one of the best examples of how she can also just be a great supporting character as well. She doesn’t do a lot but she is fairly memorable regardless. Jones is also great in his role. Much like Arnie or the Rock he might not have the largest range but you put it in his wheel house and he’ll knock it out the park every time.

Jerry Bruckheimer and Cage are just a match made in heaven for good popcorn action flicks and I think this might be their best collaboration of the bunch. 4/5

#335/#52 National Treasure 2: Book of Secrets

(Rewatch)

When the Gate’s family name comes under attack, Ben Gates (Nicholas Cage) starts tracking down evidence to exonerate his ancestor. This time his exploits take him around the world for clues, all the while being shadowed by another treasure hunter (Ed Harris) with ulterior motives.

I’m not quite as enamoured with this film as I was its predecessor. Where the original film walked the line quite nicely between acceptance or refusal of a given situation, the suspension of disbelief in this one is used just a few to many time for the audience to completely accept its logic. It doesn’t kill the film it just makes it a little less enjoyable.

It also suffers from sequelitis pretty hard. The leading couple has broken up in between films so that they can get back together by the end of this one, the sidekick gets his own romantic subplot, the father (Jon Voight) from the previous film and now mother (Helen Mirren) from this one are now main character but don’t really add anything, grander locations/settings for no real payout and the villain is just the previous villain in a different hat i.e. NT1 ‘I just want the money’ NT2 ‘I just want the money and family recognition’. Again it doesn’t make the film bad because of it, it just makes it less interesting.

I still enjoy the characters and the American history-mystery plot enough to not get bored watching this film but it’s never one I would watch without having rewatched the original movie first. 2/5

#334/#51 National Treasure

(Rewatch)

Benjamin Franklin Gates (Nicholas Cage) is a treasure hunter going after the knights Templar’s secret treasure. After finding the latest clue is on the back of the declaration of independence, Gates has to steal the document before his former employer (Sean Bean) can get to it and destroy the priceless artifact. With the help of his team (Diane Kruger and Justin Bartha), Gates rushes across the United States picking up clues and trying to unravel the mystery first.

Some people don’t like this film because it’s just Disney’s attempt at a Da Vinci Code clone but I quite enjoy it. I’m not the biggest Nic Cage fan but his earnestness and over the top enthusiasm work really well at selling Gates as being both passionate and motivated enough to do all the crazy things he does in this. Similarly, Bartha works really well as comic relief and Kruger comes off as a capable female character, who happens to be the love interest, rather than just being the love interest for being the love interest’s sake. Plus she’s sexy as all Hell, so you’ll never hear me complain she’s in a movie.

Story-wise, yes it’s a little silly at times, but you signed up for a historical-based mystery film surrounding the Templars and American independence; how based in reality did you think this was going to be? As a non-American, who’s knowledge of the time period extends as far as knowing who George Washington and Ben Franklin were, none of it seemed enough to break my suspension of disbelief and I was willing to just accept most of it as it transpires.

Add to all of this some enjoyable speeches, a couple of interesting factoids, some good comedy, interesting locations, etc and I’d say there are a lot worse films you could be wasting an evening on. 4/5

#154 Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call - New Orleans

Following the exploits of crooked cop Terrence McDonagh (Nicholas Cage) we see him as he operates in a post Katrina New Orleans.

I didn’t care for this film. I can like Cage when he’s being off the wall crazy but this was worse than Face Off crazy Cage. He’s just all over the shop. I understand that was supposed to be the character but I just couldn’t get into it. I didn’t really like any of the characters and it was fairly easy to see where the plot was going from the beginning.

I did like Xzibit as the main criminal. He actually gave a pretty good performance. Eva Mendes was fine as well but nothing worth writing home about.

Apparently this is either a love it or hate it film and I felt like I just wasted 2 hours. I was counting time down until it was finished about halfway through and that’s never the sign of a good movie. 0.5/5

#73 Kick-Ass

(Rewatch)

Dave Lizewski (Aaron Johnson) is just an ordinary teenage comic book geek who gets the idea to become a super hero in real life. He buys a costume online and starts to fight crime as the superhero Kick-Ass. Quickly he attract media attention and peaks the interest of a father-daughter vigilante team, Hit Girl (Chloe Moretz) and Big Daddy (Nicholas Cage), as well as mob boss Frank D’Amico (Mark Strong).

This is a really sold comedy and superhero film. It came out around the same time as Scott Pilgrim vs the World so inevitably they get compared to one another due to their somewhat similar vibe and geek appeal. I personally enjoyed Pilgrim more, but that doesn’t take anything away from Kick-Ass.

Moretz as Hit-Girl steals the show. It’s hard not to when she’s a kick ass foul mouthed 12 year old killing criminals as if they’re nothing. Cage as Big Daddy is pretty sweet as well. Your never quite sure what his deal is but it doesn’t stop you liking him all the same. Plus he does a faux Adam West Batman voice when he’s in costume which is just great.

This films also got a really good supporting cast, right down to some of the random goons, which just makes the whole thing even better. Pretty good soundtrack as well.

The only real problem it seems to have is that while you’re watching it you’re really into the movie but after you’ve finished however, you lose all interest in it. I really enjoyed watching it a second time but I have no desire to buy the DVD and I needed to remind myself how much I’d enjoyed it the first time to psych myself into rewatch this time. That is not a good selling point for a film. 4/5

#69 Windtalkers

Taking place in the South Pacific during WWII, Corporal Joe Enders (Nicholas Cage) is assigned the task of making sure the newly created code from the Navajo language is kept secure at all costs by protecting the new Navajo code talker (Adam Beach) of the unit and killing him if he falls into the enemy’s hands.

I saw the first 20 minutes of this film years ago, but I’m only now getting around to watching the film in its entirety. This is a fairly standard war flick with all the cliche characters in the unit, dying their cliche deaths while the war haunted veteran has to look after the fresh new recruit before he becomes a true man. In this sense the film should be really poor. I don’t know if it’s just the fact that I haven’t seen a film in this genre for a while or what, but I actually really enjoyed all of that cliche stuff.

It sort of felt like the poor mans Saving Private Ryan. It didn’t quite have the heart or the story but all the characters and action scenes were there. You just had to replace the Germans with the Japanese.

None of the main actors really stood out enough to merit any real comment. It was a little weird though, that they had Jason Issacs as the Major and Peter Stormare as the Gunnery Sergent for the Americans seeing as they’re both English and Swedish respectively. Issacs can do a fairly everywhere accent but Stormare has a really distinctive one. It just struck me as odd.

It was also focused more on Cage than Beach which is also odd when the films supposed to be all about the Najaho and how their language save countless lives over the course of the war.

As I said, fairly formulaic but for some reason I was really enjoying it this time around 3.5/5