Aylmer

Statham starts as a construction worker with military background who "just wants to be left alone" but gets sucked back into a life of vigilantism yadda yadda yadda.

This is the exact same stuff we've seen dozens of times before; basically Statham as every character he has ever played thrown into the movie TAKEN as well as NOBODY with him up against Russian baddies. It's all pretty cookie cutter and would be pleasant enough, but for some reason about halfway through the movie decides to get needlessly complicated with Statham suddenly deciding to masquerade as a drug dealer in order to try to infiltrate the Russian mafia. Infiltrating the mafia type movies generally have a hard time with maintaining believable villains because, like RAW DEAL etc they seem to become varying levels of stupid and suspicious. Nobody seems to be too tipped off with why dozens of their coworkers are getting bumped off coincidentally at the exact moment that this new guy shows up.

It would have been far better had Statham dropped any pretense and just gone through the film as an unapologetic vigilante, sort of like what he did with BEEKEEPER. The problem with that movie is how superhuman his character came off and how ridiculous the plot got. At least here we are grounded a little more in reality, but the story structure is a mess and actually becomes dull due to failure to connect. It's doubly disappointing considering it was helmed by David Ayer who made a lot of hard-hitting action and crime movies early in his career.

As far as positive points, the film has a fairly strong first half and has some pretty good face-first falls by some of the stunt men after getting shot. It's more of a shooting movie than a fist-fighting movie and the gun play is all adequate, though so cookie cutter that you just won't care at all. I'm baffled that this was king at the box office for over a week, but I think that it's more of an indictment of the low quality of its competition rather than an actual point of pride for this forgettable movie.

This was my first experience with Gamera on the Sandy Frank VHS tape in 1991 at the age of 10, having just moved to a town with a much-better-stocked video store and not any friends to hang out with. Considering that the film is aimed squarely at kids, you think I'd be right in the middle of the target demographic. I remember popping this one in the VCR in between games of "Top Gun" on my NES and being dramatically unimpressed with the film, though thoroughly entertained by a few key scenes.

I'd been a kaiju fan since being introduced to Godzilla, Rodan, and the Gargantuas by 1980's TBS, but the Gamera movies all felt like a sad step down. There is a lot of camp value which appealed to me when laughing through them with my friends however, and in that respect Gamera vs. Gaos (or Gyaos now?) soars.

While the prior film with Barugon took itself awfully seriously (and surprisingly well), this movie goes for maximum ridiculousness by pairing Gamera with a giant laser-shooting anvil-headed bat creature. The "A-plot" of a road crew trying to get through the mountains is mildly uninteresting and weighed down heavily with many massively irritating characters all balancing each other out. We have a stubborn grandpa as the town mayor, two bumbling sidekicks for the lead work foreman, and an irritating little boy who likes to inject himself into everything.

Once the giant monster mayhem starts, there's plenty of laughs including a helicopter filled with suicidal scientists with zero concern for their own safety and the Japanese military's most asinine plan yet involving a blood-filled merry-go-round (?!). Some sections of the movie feature so much insanity that it goes by too fast to even properly absorb, counteracted by a lot of unfortunately slow scenes mired down in banal dialog and general stupidity. That said, I'll give it to the film for being decently directed and with earnest performances from most of the adults. Also it's still worlds better and more entertaining than the next few films in the Gamera series, which got cheaper and more comedic with each entry.

Underwhelming final Kinski/Herzog collaborative period piece which misses the mark at nearly every opportunity. While I love both FITZCARRALDO and AGUIRRE, this film offers a lot of the same meticulous and historically-authentic feeling absurdism only with an African twist but sadly little to offer in terms of entertainment value.

At first I thought this was going to be a fascinating adventure movie about a drifter who is given a fanciful quest by a diminutive barkeep, only to then find the movie submerged in Brazilian plantation life. It then finds itself in some potentially fascinating HEART OF DARKNESS territory, with said adventurer unconsciously on a suicide mission to restart the slave trade. Upon arrival in Ghana, the film switches gears yet again with Mr. Verde making a project out of fixing up an ancient fort to run as a base.

The film honestly is only about half as interesting as it sounds. We never get any real window into Verde or his motivations past the surface level. He doesn't seem to care that much about what happens to him yet loves to throw violent outbursts whenever anyone gets in his way. Is he merely cynically following orders or toes he have some kind of ideals? We never really get to know.

I was particularly upset that this big film with such a large budget didn't feature any action whatsoever. We get several minutes devoted to a subplot where Verde trains an all-female army to overthrow the ruler, but how the whole thing resolves itself feels more like a great big Herzogian troll upon the audience. Long before Rian Johnson, Werner was up to similar shenanigans of subverting expectations, ie. To always do whatever is the exact opposite of what the audience expects. It's sadly most surprising only in that every choice he made, Herzog went for the most dull.

Like most of his other parts in Herzog movies, it's really hard to imagine anyone other than Klaus Kinski in the part. Perhaps another "loose canon" actor like Harvey Keitel or Helmut Berger would have done okay, but this role feels very personal for Kinski. It doesn't even feel like he's acting half the time, and his anger, bewilderment and desperation seem more to reflect on his personal life as an insane actor at the time, rather than on the machinations of his character within the story. Today this film is worthy as a curiosity item and not much more.