So this movie got us thinking about how similar westerns and kung fu movies really are. We're sure we're not the first ones to think that... and we're sure we're not the first to refer to a kung fu movie as an "eastern"; but this movie really did follow a similar trajectory.
We can't say a whole lot without ruining some nice little twists. However, we can talk about how badass the character Fu is. The movie starts off with him coming after a gent named Yen Nan-fei that he had once dueled with, intent on killing him. Before their fight can be resolved, Yen is attacked by some pretty awesome assassins. Fu lets these assassins know that the only man that is going to be killing Yen is Fu himself. Fu, in fact, goes so far as to journey alongside Yen to kill all the assassins out to get Yen... so that Fu can later kill Yen. We know. Fucking awesome.
The fighting isn't the best, but it does have its moments. It also features some pretty offbeat weapons, which is nice. Apart from how badass some of these characters are, the best thing in the movie are the names of the assassins; perhaps the best being Devil Grandma.
It might convince some people to dig deeper and find a really good kung-fu movie?
RZA
The Case Against:
So quick of a pace that most of the movie fails to keep up
Half of a movie, that should be a trilogy, masquerading as whole
Not enough cameos
Not enough true kung-fu film fighting
RZA
MMG Says:
RZA is a beautiful, beautiful man. He has legitimately changed the landscape of music from his Wu-Tang days. We are not going to take anyone seriously who says otherwise. He was a delight in his Jim Jarmusch acting roles and on Chappelle's Show. He is also a real, true fan of kung-fu movies, and seems to take from them the best of what there is to take from them. However:
1) He should NOT be an acting lead under any circumstances other than a Bobby Digital road movie or something like that
2) It is questionable whether he should be directing anything (jury's still out for the moment)
3) While it's possible to tell that he's a true fan of kung-fu movies, the fighting has more in common with any 2000s-era generic action film than anything from Shaw Brothers or Golden Harvest
So what is left from a kung-fu movie that only allows shadowy glimpses of wire work and fighting styles named after animals and eschews balletic orchestrated bouts of fisticuffs? Plenty... in fact, way too much. This movie has some brilliant ideas behind it, and some very colorful characters. Having a town run by animal-based clans that are constantly warring? Fantastic! But why not actually show them really having it out against each other? And why tease us with a fucking bird man if you're only going to show him for 15 seconds?! The Gemini Killers? Great, old-school idea. But how about a little hint of backstory?! Brass Body? Very cool. But maybe throw us a fucking bone about how he turns into metal. Oh, and Lucy Liu's cadre? A nice bit of an admittedly inconsequential twist... except that we have no idea why they are doing the twisting! Explain shit to us!
Here's the problem: this movie was mangled. It's unclear if this is a RZA or Eli Roth problem, notes from the studio, or the result of test audiences imposing their ADHD all over the place. What is clear is that RZA and Roth were unsure they'd every have the opportunity again to take the studio money and run with a martial arts movie... so they crammed it with dozens of great ideas and characters and moments, and sensible Western updates to countless classic kung-fu tropes. Whether though it found its way to the cutting room floor, or just the pink butt end of a pencil during a rewrite, there is another half of a movie lurking around somewhere. Everything was just so partially conceived or poorly explained that there is no doubt in our mind that the explanation exists somewhere. This is not a case of depicting archetypes and scenarios from old school movies and we're just expected to go with it; it is very apparent just from the pacing and certain ineffable qualities that what we are watching is not whole. Hell, this is likely 3 or 4 movies even... and what we are left with is a tame smile, a couple chuckles, and an empty feeling as to how this movie really could have been and meant something.
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P.S. We hate to be a broken record. This site isn't called the Titty Movie Guide or anything. But how the hell is it that much of the movie takes place in a brothel, and there is an extended scene of multiple couples having sex, and we don't get so much as one single boob or butt cheek? This movie has numerous spurting decapitations... they couldn't finagle one damn nipple?!
P.P.S. The ad campaign of having multiple hip and unconventional posters was a great idea. We think this might be one of the best movie posters we've ever seen:
Severely uneven tone for the protagonist in the writing
Severely dull
Severely disappointing
MMG Says:
While we are a proud people here at the Man Movie Guide, we are not afraid or ashamed to admit when we were wrong. This is one of those instances. You will have noticed that some time back we posted, on its lonesome, the trailer for 'Hell Comes to Frogtown'. In MMG-ese, that is our way of saying that we approve of that movie and that it qualifies as a true Man Movie up for review on down the road.
Let us set the stage for you: Post apocalyptic. Starring Roddy Piper, wrestling legend and pitch perfect star of MMG favorite 'They Live'. The protagonist is named Sam Hell, one of the few times we endorse a cute/clever character name. Sam is an exceedingly rare fertile man in a world that consists only of the following: fertile women, desert wasteland, fertile women, mutant frog people, and fertile women. Sam is contracted by the government to begin repopulating civilization. This, dear reader, is a can't-fucking-lose proposition... right? Not so. Not so.
The movie starts off nicely enough. Piper is detained for a crime before the movie begins. In the initial few scenes he is a wisecracking jokester; and while not every line hits its mark, it is a very good indication that we are getting our hands on the one-liner wisenheimer brand of action hero in this movie. Only this never really happens. The viewer must slog through an entire movie as bare and bereft of life as its arid backdrop. The action is few and far between, fairly somnambulent, and Piper doesn't do quite the ass-kicking job that we'd come to expect from either the ring or 'They Live'. Piper's character even loses his charm pretty quickly; as his 'sit-on-it-and-spin' attitude largely falls prey to a messianic mope routine with occasional bouts of slapstick (centering around his genitals in an electric chastity belt and his ability to cross his eyes... which is oddly not related to his balls' predicament).
As for the supporting cast, it's a mixed bag. We get a super butch/fairly attractive commando who shows off her tits while escorting Piper. And if you have a thing for Katey Sagal, then perhaps you can make a case for watching the movie, since there are extended scenes of her bordering-on-malnourished doppelganger prancing around in assorted lingerie. Then we have poor Rory Calhoun, who genuinely looked and sounded like his handlers had to unhook his oxygen tank between takes (he seemed so close to death that we actually had to check on the proximity of this movie to his actual demise... and astonishingly he held on for another 11 years, and worked another 5). Lastly, there are the frogs. There isn't a whole lot to say about them, except that looking at them was one of the scant pleasures this reviewer got from the movie.
This movie, like so many others that fall short, failed to achieve true Man Movie status because it tried to walk in both the light and the dark. If it resorted to Lloyd Kaufman (Troma) antics? We have ourselves a winner. If it went the route of all the killer action movies of the 80s, the Golden Age of the one-liner action film, and focused more on making Piper an ass-kicker who always says something droll after offing a frog? We'd worship it as a direct-to-video masterpiece. Instead we're left with a movie that gets a passing grade only because we're proud they tried.
So many people are quick to rip on Nic Cage. We here at MMG will eventually convince you otherwise; he was brilliant in Adaptation, and far more than capable in MMG-favorites The Rock, Con Air, and Face/Off. This movie, however, will not convert you to the Church of Cage (which, coincidentally, is on one of his private islands). He is dreadful in this movie: mostly he drawls sleepily through his lines as if he were just shoved onto the set from his trailer while still in the middle of a Quaalude haze. His delivery lives on another planet from the other actors, the script itself, and even the scenarios he is put in. Other times his actions are stilted, jerky, and sudden with no pacing whatsoever, such as when he creepily mouth-rapes a once-raring-to-go diner waitress. It's difficult to tell if he picked this role and this movie and this acting style for any reason other than to further his own legend as an eccentric with no real place on film. Mission accomplished, Mister Cage. Mission accomplished.
The movie itself is written a pair of fellers (one of whom doubles as director) who knew they wanted to make a Man Movie. Unfortunately for us, the viewers, their resume features a lot of dreck with the same failings. Their heart seems to be consistently in the right place, and we as lovers of all things Man Movie laud any return to grindhouse, exploitation, and cheeseball horror... the problem is that they are just not very talented.
And so we find ourselves with a movie full of ripe premises and promising situations, that falls completely flat. This could have been the movie that every father would show to their sons on their 13th birthday. Instead, this is just another 90+ minutes relegated for an eternity of dollar bins at Wal-Mart and liquidations at video stores everywhere.
One last plea to the writers, Todd Farmer and Patrick Lussier. Guys, we get it. You like Stephen King and Sam Raimi. You think you're clever for being able to work in a wink and nod to an epic poem about the devil and the fall of man. But do us a fucking favor and don't name your characters King, Raimi, and Milton. It's pretty sophomoric, and that's saying something... considering what your movie is about.
3D because it was actually originally intended for 3D; not some crappy post-conversion
Managed to explain away the gorgeous slow-motion sequences by way of a street drug called "Slo Mo"
The Case Against:
For being a violent, jokey romp of a movie... really rather joyless
The bad guy was nearly completely generic and bland
Despite over-the-top source material and an R-rating, it did not get ultraviolent enough
Suffering for lack of nudity (see R-rating comment above)
MMG Says...
Dredd 3D is based, like the Stallone disaster, on a British comic about a cop in a dystopian future America in which overcrowding forces the police to act as judge, jury, and executioner with no real due process. This backdrop, combined with an R-rating, really should have meant consistent over-the-top violence in glorious 3D.
The biggest problem with this movie was that it suffered from something of an identity crisis. It was almost as if it were purposefully toned down to try to get a PG-13 and appeal to more people. There were moments where, in slow-motion, body parts rippled and exploded from bullet wounds and droplets of blood flew through the third dimension straight into the audience's popcorn-burdened laps. And then there were the wasted opportunities; the moments where limbs would explode but wouldn't really be shown off, or the moments where sex was shown in the most abstract and oblique ways with nary a nipple or buttock.
The movie really had only one option: fully embrace, even bear hug, the source material and the camp factor. They should have reveled in the notion that they didn't have to do a whole lot of explaining: future cop, has to shoot stuff for his job, too many people, life worth less...we get it! To have performed its shootout through the mega-slums with the same sort of zest or zeal of a Machete or a Planet Terror, it would have punched its own golden ticket into the hearts of countless viewers (of course it would have put off just as many people... but better to be loved and loathed than completely forgotten). Instead, the movie was nearly as muted, dingy, and tepid as its color palette.
Another big waste was with the setting. The idea, and this really isn't a spoiler, is that Dredd has to fight his way up the levels of a mega-slum the size of Wilmington (yes, really). In setting things up, the movie shows off a handful of colorful gangs (this reviewer guesses they are from the comic) that controlled the different sections of the building (the slum is all one massive building). Apart from a montage, however, they don't show off the other gangs. This could have been a vertical The Warriors... but no. The reason for this, is that they don't exist anymore... they were all wiped out by the Mama Gang.
Yes, the bad guys are the Mama Gang. Yes, the leader of the gang is named Mama. Yes, the word Mama sounds so juvenile that this reviewer cringed every time he heard it uttered. No, Mama was not cool. You would think with a name like that, she would either be some absurdly obese woman barking orders while spitting up chunks of fried chicken, or at least an actress in heavy prosthesis to make her look ancient. Instead what we get is Lena Headey, nonchalantly limping through scene after scene. She is supposed to be maniacal and bad-ass, but the delivery was flaccid and she didn't have a catch phrase or M.O. for hurting people that set her apart from anything whatsoever. There were several extras with more pop that were more memorable than the main villain; that's never a good sign.
That all being said, the movie is not by any stretch of the imagination a bad movie. It was entertaining, if a tad too long. It was fun, and not entirely forgettable. There are some very good sequences and visuals that you will not see in any other movie. Karl Urban, the titular Dredd, pulls off a very admirable performance that had to be done through a silly-looking helmet while still looking and acting tough. This reviewer enjoyed the movie. It was pretty good, it was just not quite there...
