keyope

This was two hours of watching Superman get beaten up, outwitted and constantly rescued by other people. Usually in a Superman movie there is at least one moment where I get goosebumps as he shows up just in the nick of time to save the day. That didn't happen once in this film. It was a chaotic mess full of other metahumans, all of whom seemed to be better than Superman and were either beating him up or rescuing him. The stuff about the alternate mini universe was dumb too.

Lex Luthor's motives weren't really clear either. It seemed like he was a billionaire, and just didn't like Superman so he went to incredible lengths to try to discredit him. It didn't seem to bother him that there were loads of other superheroes.

The whole film felt pretty pointless to me. And stuff like Luthor's girlfriend trying to cheat on him with a lowly journalist who's not even interested in her just felt like it was shoehorned in so that a very important plot point could be achieved.

I give it a 3 because there were a few good jokes and all the actors did the best with what they had. The script was the problem.

I like this film, but it sure does have some problems. It could have been great. The cast are great, the costumes and scenery are fantastic, the acting is mostly good too. But it feels like this movie got butchered in the editing room, possibly to make it shorter so they could cram in more showings in the opening week. But it feels like whoever butchered it cut out all the important stuff. For example, you never really find out how the four teenage kids at the beginning became feared mobsters. Somehow they are running a bootlegging business but without seeing how they started it up, the audience is cheated out of some crucial details. There are plenty of scenes too where the characters sit around spouting exposition and lines like, "If you want to make money you gotta do this" "If you want to be a boss you gotta do that" "If we want to be feared, we have to do this". You never really get shown them doing any of this stuff. We're told repeatedly that Bugsy likes to kill people, when it would have been better to show him doing it. He kills maybe two people in the whole movie.

There's also the issue of the two bosses played by Anthony Quinn and Michael Gambon. It's never really clear why either of them wants to team up with Luciano and his buddies. We're just told that they both desperately want the guys on their team.

And you get a love scene between Slater and Lara Flynn Boyle that goes on for about 7 minutes. That time could have been spent showing the rise of the mobsters, or something else, but I guess the producers were more interested in sex and violence than the actual story.

Anyway, I do like this film. I think Christian Slater, Richard Grieco and co are great as the mobsters. The action sequences and the last half hour in particular are great. I sincerely hope that one day an extended version gets released on blu ray, or at least a bunch of deleted scenes pop up because I believe there was a great film somewhere in this production but it got botched in the editing room.

The G is a well made film and much better than most low budget revenge flicks. Dale Dickey is great and perfectly cast. The injustice she and her husband go through sets the story up nicely. There are some pacing issues. A few sections feel padded out to stretch the run time to 100 minutes when really 90 minutes would have been more than enough. The action sequences are well handled. I would have given this film an 8 or a 9 but the final showdown was a little rushed. I was waiting for the G to pull the rug out from under the main villain's feet, but then something major happened off screen that was explained with a quick throwaway line. I felt like I'd been cheated out of a really tense final showdown that the film had been building up to.

This film is definitely worth a watch though, especially if you are a fan of revenge movies.