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Reviews
Resistance (2003)
Only the Belgium link saves this movie for me
10 stars for some beautiful shots of the Belgian countryside and also for taking a stab at making a movie with anything to do with Belgium. This was the only reason I wanted to watch the movie anyway. I've seen one review complaining about French accents in Belgium. Belgium is mainly divided into the Dutch and French speaking populations, so it is no surprise to find a community of French-speaking Belgians. I am not impressed with anyone's reviews where they pick apart all of the little historical nuances that were done incorrectly. Really at the heart of what makes this a bad movie is that it is so uninspired. Acting, direction, dialogue, everything. What is the beautiful Julia Ormond doing taking roles like this? Bill Paxton is a likable guy when he is a cocky, buffoon character actor. But he is the last guy in Hollywood who should be doing serious romantic leading roles. You could tell that both stars knew this was not a shining moment in their careers and the love making scene is almost embarrassing to watch. The rest of the cast takes it more seriously and adds some level of saving grace, particular the young Belgian boy. I would have liked this movie much better had the lead parts been no-name actors who were getting an opportunity to star in a very minor film.
The Last Drop (2006)
A Watchable Mess
Let me start by saying I picked this movie up for $3 at a used book store. And frankly, I do not regret it. There is an interesting quality about this movie that leaves me satisfied with the movie experience. It starts with expectations. When your marquee actors are Billy Zane and Michael Madsen, no matter how high budget the DVD case would like you to believe it is, you know going in that it is a B-Movie. Kind of like anything with C. Thomas Howell in it. So if you go in expecting a Saving Private Ryan, that is your oversight, not the makers of this film. Clearly in the aerial shots and crash scene at the beginning, one gets a good idea as to the "budget". There is nothing quality about this movie except maybe the true events surrounding the plot. I'm a fan of art and art history and WWII provides numerous interesting stories about art theft and art rescue. However, whereas the quality of the movie stinks, it's at least interesting. Low-B actors, recognizable character actors from bigger movies (see Tommy Flanagan in Braveheart), bad accents, poor dialogue, and to make matters worse the movie can't decide what it is going to be. Initially it starts out as a serious war movie and by the end of the movie, it had tried to become a Guy Ritchie film. Somewhere in the middle as the Germans steal a truck, hard rock music starts playing and the whole tone of the movie changes. Regardless of how bad this movie is, it is still an enjoyable time waster just to immerse yourself in bad movie-making.
Law Abiding Citizen (2009)
Everything that Taken did right, this movie did mostly wrong
When you watch a movie about revenge, you want to root for the hero all the way thru the movie and feel sympathetic even when the hero has to resort to violence (e.g. The Brave One, Taken, The Fugitive). Here we have a person who has experienced a great tragedy and has every reason to want revenge. Which is precisely the emotion that I'm sure was intended for the viewers as well. In this movie, the villains are not restricted to the original perpetrators. The Law and the lawyers who manipulate it are also villains in this movie. Initially it appears as if the hero, Gerard Butler, is going to enact his revenge on the Law by means of the great wealth of law knowledge that he clearly absorbed during the 10 years since his unfortunate tragedy. The court scene and initial prison interrogation scenes are brilliant and you can really start to see where an intelligent scriptwriter could have taken this movie to a breathtaking level. Instead, the revenge enacted by the hero becomes too bloodthirsty and the hero stops being a sympathetic character in my opinion. This is where the movie quickly got off track leading to the extremely ungratifying ending. The pursuit of retribution should have followed a more intellectual path, which is where it appeared to be headed.
How much better and sympathetic would this movie have been had the hero exacted his revenge against the legal system by staging assassinations of other violent sex offenders who he had researched over the years that were free due to some legal finagling rather than the lawyers and judges themselves? Imagine Foxx and his legal team trying to outwit Butler, while these sex offenders are mysteriously dying while Butler is still in prison. Tell me that's not a better movie.