mr_Goodbomb

I wanted to respond to the current top review, "True Tarantino." First of all, to call it "true Tarantino" and never mention Rodriquez is either misleading or ill-informed. Tarantino wrote the script and played one of the lead characters, yes, but he did not direct the film. He actually denied various subsequent levels of involvement with the film in order to concentrate on his portrayal of Richard Gecko after completing the script. I believe Rodriquez deserves as much credit here as Tarantino, and after the second half of the film, KNB Effects deserves as much as either of them.

That said, to say that the effects weren't "very good" is just silly. While the effects can often be campy and over the top to the point of being unrealistic, it's a monster film, and it treats the effects as such. These aren't your everyday "actor with false teeth" vampires, these are Evil Dead II style demons, creatures that resemble less Lugosi and more The Thing, mutated, weird, and disturbing, and more concerned with entertainment than realism. You must also consider that some of these effects were highly functional, not just simple makeup jobs but interactive builds that sprayed fluid, changed shapes, and moved about. You must also consider that this is a 15+ year old film. If you're looking for visual effects that blend practical makeups with CG elements in every shot, or worse, nothing but CG for "effects," then you're looking for the wrong thing here. Aside from a few blends, melts, and effect fades, everything you see was done in front of the camera, in person, for real, and it looks that was. None of the effects look like something you couldn't reach out and touch, and they all live up to some of the best and highest regarded horror and scifi effects created for film. I'd love to see what the OP thought was a "good" special effect.

All of this aside, this is a fantastic film. The first has is engaging, interesting, and unique, tugging you along for the ride in a familiar fashion to other Tarantino scripts in a decidedly Tex-Mex Rodriquez style. It slows down only to let you get involved with the characters, and is at no point boring or dismissible. If you take someone who has never seen this film, and doesn't know what it's about, and sit them down to watch it, the range of expressions and reactions you'll get to the mid-movie vampire shock are worth repeat viewings with a new audience. After the shift in story arc, the following scenes are fun, entertaining as hell, and right up the gore/camp/gun alley of anyone who enjoys the Evil Dead series (for whom KNB also did the effects). I can't imagine a more consistently entertaining film in this genre. It's one of my all-time favorites and it's always fun to see again.

Let's face it... I didn't go into the theater expecting a thrilling experience in film. I went in expecting a modern example of a blockbuster: a fairly mindless, heartless script pressed out using the same formulas that have made other blockbusters, as mindless as this one, successful, with a few key actors worth watching and, in this film's case, some memories (or toys) from my childhood stamped into the molds and forced to conform to the shape of the figurative cookie they've already agreed to finance. I understood that going in. I could expect "Michael Bay" with someone else's name on it.

I wasn't surprised. The story was as expected... A muscular white lead, an African American partner, joining a secret group of awesome dudes and being pitted against a group of mean, ugly men in sweet costumes. Epic, entirely CGIed battle ensued. When the female antagonist is immediately introduced as someone from the lead's past, I could already foresee the character flexing and struggling to squeeze tears from his muscular ducts. We get it. As soon as a pretty girl on the good guy's side is introduced, I expected pseudo-ghetto, tough-but-funny side remarks from the black sidekick made to impress her. I get it. Dennis Quaid. I get it. It's all the structure, stereotypes, and expected plot turns that will make the dumber percentile of a movie-going audience laugh when they're supposed to and sharply inhale in surprise when they're supposed to. If I wanted to even have a chance at enjoying the movie, I had to look past of this, ignore to poorly-constructed plots, the awful script, the terrible one-liners, and the overuse of CGI that almost makes it an animated movie.

There were a few things that were worse than I had imagined, and tough to overlook. Before the movie even started, I was reminded of the Hasbro logo. This movie was financed by the company that made, and will now make the new line of, the toys for the franchise. GI Joe was a patriotic, Nationalist series of toys originally manufactured in the 1960s and re-invented during the 80s along with an animated series... less for creative purposes, or for the purpose of having a television series at all, and more obviously a vessel in which to sell toys. The fairly blatant attempt to market service in the US Forces to children was missed by few, and each and every action figure reeked of "heck yes, the Army" the same way that Barbie smelled of "I can be anything I want as long as dinner is ready when my husband gets home and I look good doing it." The movie smelled of this, too. The babes were hot, the guys were tough, the gear was awesome, and everything looked like one giant toy advert. Can anyone say Phantom Menace? Being marketed for kids in many ways, many of the plot twists and changes were quite obviously done to suit this theme. The costumes and costume changes were featured and laid out as linear as possible. The weapons, while causing a lot of property damage, didn't often hurt or maim people (unless they were bad guys, which means me to my next point). The good guys were attractive (arguably, I mean, uh, Dennis Quaid), and the bad guys were either entirely covered by armor and nearly robotic or physically marred and dismembered, unattractive and unappealing physically. The two "bad guys" who had the ability to change, become good or more evil, did just that: one turned to the good side and remained attractive, while the other stuck with the bad guys and was beaten, burnt, and had his human appearance stripped away for the appearance of a metal man.

Then, there's the CGI. It seems like someone fell asleep while cleaning up and improving the appearance of these scenes, woke up, realized time was short, and clicked "Render." Even the people that I went to see the movie with that know nothing of how these sorts of movies, and the CGI shots within them, are made, said "this looks like crap," and it did. It wasn't believable, and on a big screen, it looked worse than most of the junk you'll find in early morning cartoons or Sci Fi Channel originals. It did, however, say a lot for the movie as a whole.

Then, last but not least in this disappointment scale, was the acting. Most of the actors weren't stellar by any account, but serviceable with the script they were given (seriously, I have to wonder how many times actors stopped while reading the next scene from the script and said, "...really?"). But the lead, Mr. Channing Tatum, should have stuck with underwear modeling. From his first line (a bored, underacted "attention!") to the last time we see him make a myriad of facial expressions hoping one of them is the right one, this guy was unreasonably bad. The dog from the Taco Bell commercials was a far better actor, may he rest in peace.

The one saving grace, and what I had to pay attention to in order to keep my faith in movies and my sanity, were a few choice performances. Much like being the saving grace of The Phantom Menace, Ray Park was fantastic. It could be because he was mysterious... it could also be because he wasn't given any atrocious one-liners. Christopher Eccleston was more than serviceable, as well, but I expected no less. The real kicker was Gordon-Levitt, however, and I think he had the most eyes (unless you were mentally inept, prepubescent, and watching Channing Tatum) on him. Whoever was sitting in a board room and offered, "you know that guy from all the Fox Searchlight movies? Let's get him," I both applaud you for your tenacity and question your ability to do rudimentary math. However, he was entertaining, no matter how you count it, which is what this movie was all about.