No.306 : Who Am I? (1998)

Who Am I? at the IMDb

Before this offering I’d never seen a Jackie Chan film, believing them to be shit. Having watched this one, I have not seen my original hypothesis disproved. Chan gets credit for direction, stunts and screenplay, in that order, so you have right away an idea of where the focus was - not on story or character but on kicking people a lot.

Chan plays the cleverly named character ‘Jackie Chan’ who is part of a military unit in South Africa. We have seen a meteorite being mined and its explosive power. Chan and his team carry out a mission to retrieve some fragments of the meteorite but are double crossed by some shits in suits who crash the helicopter they are travelling in, off camera, to save some money and to deny us a small thrill. Chan falls out before the explosion and is saved by a forest canopy and some natives who nurse him back to health - but oh no! Jackie has lost his memory.

After having difficulty in making himself understood to both the natives and the viewing audience, Jackie soon speaks the language and wears the garb and make up of the tribe. He finds the rest of his dead crew and the body of one of the bad guys who was tossed from the helicopter. Their multiple passports suggest there is more going on, and a matchbook with some writing on it may hold the answers - new one that!

Jackie then encounters a rally car where the driver has been bitten by a snake. He uses his new found tribal abilities to cure the bite and his kick ass driving talent to win the stage and deliver the man to the medics. This heroism gets press attention and soon the evil shits in suits are after our man who calls himself ‘Whoami’ due to his amnesia. A trip to Rotterdam ensues, where there are innumerable fights and chases before we learn who he is (Jackie Chan) and what becomes of the meteorite which has the potential to unleash untold energy.

Like a Van Damme film, it’s hard to criticise a Jackie Chan movie for bad acting or too much fighting. It was really dull however and I couldn’t see the end quick enough. Jackie seems a lovely bloke, but he lacks leading man charisma and seemed badly dubbed throughout. Indeed, everyone was, with the scientists especially, sounding like someone had phoned in some random voices for them.

There were a couple of decent set pieces but they went on too long with the big finale rooftop fight taking at least ten minutes during which one blow may have landed. The plot was atom thick with there no sense of danger as the disc with the meteor data changed hands every five minutes and the double crosses piled up.

Jackie’s lack of identity didn’t really matter to the plot and the whole thing seemed facile especially as his name is over the title. The film does need your buy in to the fact that no one gets killed by our man, and that all the bad guys queue up to get their faces nearly kicked. You also have to love Jackie with lots of small amusements thrown in so you can say ‘Ooh that Jackie!’. fair enough for his fan base but him getting it in the nuts once with a gear stick is fine - the other several events of this I could have done without.

It was obvious that this was a multi country co-production that was not shot in English. The dubbing was risible as was a lot of the stunt work, which saw the older characters turn into stuntmen when they were getting hit before turning back into themselves as they recovered from the fall.

I enjoyed no laughs or thrills throughout this film and despite some decent locations and stunts it was a complete waste of time. Who am I? Don’t care mate.

Best Bit : Streets Get Clogged  ‘W’ rating 8/23

No.257 : War on Everyone (2016)

War on Everyone at the IMDb

 Well we’re back after a brief year long absence. I know the appetite for ‘W’ based movie excitement is unabated but fear not, the wait for the four of you is now over!

‘War on Everyone’ is the first American film by English director John Michael McDonagh who impressed with his last two offerings, ‘The Guard’ and ‘Calvary’ both of which starred Brendan Gleeson. I say ‘American film’ but I noticed that it was partly funded by the National Lottery despite starring two ‘B’ list Americans and being set in Albuquerque. Still if anyone likes a gamble it's them.

The film is billed as an ‘action comedy’ but the laughs were few and the action was low rent.

Michael Pena, last seen (by me) in ‘The Martian’ and Alexander Skarsgard who was Tarzan in his previous film before this, star as couple of New Mexico police detectives. They play fast and loose with the rues but can’t afford a scriptwriter to supply them with any zingers - “Where’s my X-Box?” “Do ya wanna look up my ass?” Titter you will not.

They highlight their badness by drink driving and swearing a lot but they just come across as a pair of tiresome jerks who are trying too hard to impress. The plot is lifted almost entirely form the ‘Starsky and Hutch’ movie but at least you don’t have Vince Vaughn as the baddie. Here the budget is clearly limited so you have to make do with the guy who got shit on his nose at the end of ‘The Inbetweeners’ movie. To be fair he is backed up by a guy channeling Malcolm McDowell in ‘A Clockwork Orange’ but he’s even worse and exudes the menace of a declawed kitten made out of cotton wool.

Our heroes set out on a quest to gain some drug money but soon get distracted by an exotic girlfriend who was better in ‘Westworld’ and a cute child who offered nothing, not even the intended softening of Pena’s character. The limited plot drags along with the investigation following no logical path and offering no laughs or thrills. At one point they do travel to Iceland for five minutes which seemed totally pointless and probably used up the script polishing budget as well.

The two leads were poor and didn’t gel at all. They were set out to be bad boys but you didn’t care about them at all and have nothing invested in their schemes. The direction was OK but I couldn’t help but think the director was out of his comfort zone and relied on tired old tropes rather than doing anything original. When Paul Reiser showed up as the police chief and demanded our heroes’ badges and to leave the prime suspect alone someone must have called ‘foul’.

The action sequences amounted to some low speed car crashes and a bin through a window so you can tell this isn’t exactly ‘Die Hard’. They also have the familiar trip to the strip joint where all the strippers were fully dressed. This looked like they were trying to secure a lower certificate but when they went back again it was all topless - had they went on Prudish Tuesday the first time around?

The locations were great and it did bring back memories as I too had traveled in that Albuquerque cable car. It wasn’t enough however; the film was dull and predictable and the Frankenstein’s monster of every buddy cop film that you’ve ever seen...

Best Bit : Let's check out the strip joint again...
‘W’ Rating 10/23

No.183 : World Gone Wild (1987)

World Gone Wild at the IMDb

Well here’s a first for the 100+ W Movies Quest - no not a reader, although that’d be nice - an actual request. OK it was a request borne out of vanity as the person making the request only did so as he almost shares the name of one of the characters, but we’ll take what we can get.

This dystopian action thriller is absolutely dreadful and I doubt you’d be able to find it anywhere apart from my hard drive and numerous land fill sites - but let’s have a look anyway.

The film opens with some scene setting narration. The production evidently didn’t have the cash for a scrolling paragraph so instead poor old Bruce Dern is tasked with setting the scene. It’s the late 21st century and a 75 year war has left most people dead and it hasn’t rained in 50 years. Realising their shaky premise and the abundance of clouds in the film, they add in ‘cruelly there are clouds but no rain’ - you can’t fault science like that.

After a dreadfully tacky credits sequence with the cheapest TV movie graphics and over filtered colours we get to the nub of the action. The writer has seen ‘Mad Max 2’ and thought ‘Yeah no one will notice if I steal that’ so he sets us up in a remote compound filled with people in white clothes and hair bands. He cleverly substitutes the rare resource from gasoline to water to make it all original. Anyway the school only has four books, so at least it’s an improvement from today’s education cuts - little bit of politics there, and the kids have no pencils and a teacher lacking most of her clothes.

The lesson on etiquette is interrupted when Adam Ant appears, towed by cape wearing lackeys, resplendent in his flying goggles and in a hollowed out helicopter. I ‘d say ‘you couldn’t make it up’ but clearly someone has - drugs really screw you up. Ant is playing the ridiculously named ‘Derek Abernathy’ and after spouting a lot of shite for five minutes starts shooting up all the peaceful locals along with his dead eyed henchmen. Total carnage is averted when Bruce Dern turns up and kills a bad guy by booting a hubcap into his throat - clearly he’s not a man to be messed with.

Ant crawls off with some of the settlement’s young men (Operation Yew Tree?) to brainwash them into his cult, yes that's cult, while those who remain take stock and fix their hair. They know Ant will be back and Dern sets off to town for reinforcements. The town is a hell hole with women in basques running about while dying babies are denied water. Sounds like my kinda town! After some recruiting of colourful sidekicks Dern returns to fortify the settlement and wait Ant’s next attack. Can the mismatched gang of renegades and mercenaries take on Ant’s formation bike riding team of white clad brainwashed youths? Will the inevitable explosions kick start the environment? Hell yes!

This blog has been guilty of exaggerating the awfulness of many films but I defy anyone to see this and declare it even a partial success. Well OK, pished up students may be able to laugh ironically at the many plot holes, dreadful acting and atrocious dialogue, but we’re a bit higher brow at this blog.

For a start where, in a world with no rain for 50 years, do they find an endless supply of brilliant white clothes, never mind endless bullets and enough TNT to make 9/11 look like a box of Aldi fireworks? For a world scrabbling in the dirt to survive everyone looks well nourished and there is frankly an over abundance of motorcycles and capes.

OK, we can set these gripes aside, as long as the cast is strong and the plot is tight and coherent. Er, sorry. Ant fails to stand and deliver in the acting stakes and it is baffling how he managed to get through the audition. To be fair in a film where “Does Pinocchio have a wooden dick?” is the best line, the standards were never going to be high. Bruce Dern fails to deliver his usual mania and he seems largely disinterested in a film that doubtlessly looked more fun in the script than in reality.

The gang of misfits were uniformly dreadful from ‘Nitro’ the dynamite expert to some other guy who created a ‘snake pit’ trap with precisely 4 small snakes in it - at least they squashed them together for the close up
shot - Indiana Jones this was not.

The plot was virtually non-existent and they even had two goes at the finale both of which failed to elicit any excitement or tension. Ant had one of the lowest key demises of any movie baddie despite being seemingly bullet proof for the first 90 minutes. The big conclusion was ridiculous as it was predictable and frankly if the new rains had washed this effort out of existence no one would be complaining. Well apart from Mr Abernethy at any rate…

W Rating 6/23
Best Bit - Ant ain't no Goody Two Shoes

No.163 : Wrong Side of Town (2010)

Wrong Side of Town at the IMDb

You’d have thought an action flick starring a couple of wrestlers would have swept the board at the Oscars but as always it’s not who you know it’s who you blow.

In truth the only reason to watch this film is for the laughably bad acting and dialogue but I’m sure there are worse ways to spend 90 minutes. Hmmm, let’s see sticking your willy in a blender for one and then …

No neck midget wrestler Rob Van Dam takes the lead as Bobby a simple family man who is living the suburban dream. The fact that he’s got a cissy pony tail and more tats than a council estate isn’t mentioned. He meets his new neighbour, a bookish black fellow, and despite our hero looking the front man for a BNP rally he quickly agrees to a night out on the town. Bobby has some reservations as the club is on the ‘wrong side of town’ but goes along anyway.

Despite the club being the hot spot in town Bobby gets in with his t-shirt on and settled down to dinner in the least convincing restaurant you’ll ever see. As he predicted things soon kick off when Bobby’s wife gets molested by a dickwad on drugs. Bob saves the day but the bad guy falls on his own knife setting our hero against the miscreant’s father.


Despite his obvious innocence Bob is quickly on the run, well waddle, against a lacklustre army of deadbeat gang bangers and an unconvincing bent cop. The journey home is peppered with low-rent bust ups as Bobby does his best at kicking some face. Once home he discovers his daughter has been kidnapped by Mr Big and he has to set off on his Harley with his shades on at 2 am with only some other WWF guy to help.

This is a real comedy classic and if it wasn’t being played straight you’d think it a masterpiece. I know you can’t expect a lot in a film starring Rob Van Dam in the acting stakes but this is really cringe making stuff. Rob is actually only dreadful in the lead as a black ops guy with more muscles than a sea food restaurant. He doesn’t even master the basics like remembering to limp after he’s been shot in the leg and the emotional scenes with the daughter will make you wince and snigger in equal measure.

You’d imagine that when you have wrestlers in the main roles you’d get them a bit of support in the cast but no! Seth, the main villain, is played by possibly the worst actor you’ll ever see. He heads a gang of baldies that are as menacing as the Teletubbies. His maniacal rantings and burst of anger come across as mild annoyance and his henchmen, including a mute black man in sun glasses, beggar belief.

The action scenes are really poor and amount to a few people getting kicked in the balls. Obviously wrestling moves don’t translate to street fighting, what with the lack of folding chairs and all, so all our muscle bound main man can manage is a couple of bitch slaps.

The whole thing wraps up pretty neatly in the course of one night and hopefully that’ll also cover the span of the careers of all those involved.

Best Bit : Rob Hits the Strip Joint
‘W’ Rating 11/23

No.160 : Weekend With The Babysitter (1970)

Weekend With the Babysitter at the IMDb

Here’s a bit of an oddity from 1970 that garnered a frankly woeful 1.4/10 at the IMDb. It’s a hard film to categorise - it’s a sort of soft porn, action thriller fantasy with a bit of education and stoner wisdom thrown in for good measure.

We open with scenes of a young girl on a moped inter cut with some action at the border. The customs are shown to be doing a bang up job and although that seems incongruous with the carefree girl all will become clear soon. Or not, depends if you can stay the course really.

Anyway our hot chick arrives at her destination and we find that she’s the titular babysitter - but there’s been a mix up! The wife is indeed going out but not with the husband who is staying in. As he waves the wife off he tells the girl to stay so he can pay her for her time. The dirty bastard.

The pair settle down on the sofa and the girl starts reading a script that the chap, who is a director, is due to film next week. The girl laughs at how crummy the script is (oh the irony!) and tells him that the kids don’t talk like that. To prove her point she takes him out to meet her skuzzy friends.

Meanwhile, we learn that the wife has a drug problem and is visiting her dealer. They want paid and all she can offer is a loan of her husband’s boat which could bypass the customs problems we witnessed earlier. They take her along on the smuggling trip and after doping her up make her indulge in some lesbian sex for no other reason, it would seem, other than to secure an ‘X’ certificate for this tame offering.

Back at the house the husband is flat on his back after the night on the tiles but the girl stays over to make him breakfast and take him to the speedway, like you do. After lots of unnecessary shots of screaming bikes and babysitter nudity he realises that his wife is missing and commandeers a friend’s plane to search for her. Once spotted he rallies his new biker chums to intercept the bad guys and save the wife. Will lives be lost and will our man take his junkie wife back over the nubile babysitter?

This is quite a funny film if you don’t take it too seriously. The two leads are awful with the silver haired director as convincing as a hat stand. We’ve no idea what the baby sitter’s motivation is in seducing the old timer but fair play to him seeing as this was before the time of Viagra. The sex scenes are pretty tame although I did like how one ended with a cut to an anchor splashing into the water!

The kids all get a say and one boy’s assertion that not all bikers were bad was proven when they intercept the bad guys and destroy their drugs rather than toking up themselves. The twangy early 70’s soundtrack is a bit of a distraction but if ever a film was of its time this is it.

It’s certainly not as bad as the low scoring suggests but by no means a classic either. For your money you do get a fair bit of nudity, some cringingly bad sex scenes and dialogue you wouldn’t hear in a porno - so a wise investment all round then!

Best Bit : Pilot calling the control tower and asking them to call a biker bar for help

‘W’ Rating 11/23

No. 150 : Wake of Death (2004)

Wake of Death at the IMDb

Good old Jean Claude Van Damme, he’s never one for lofty aspirations like doing Shakespeare or Brecht, he knows his audience and sticks to a strict formula for every film. ‘Wake of Death’ is as you’d expect a revenge thriller with high kicks and a high body count but what did you expect?

To give some credit they do try and be a wee bit clever with a big car chase and deadly peril for JCVD right at the start. Before he cops it the film flashes back and it’s over an hour before we get back to the opening scene again. I hope Jean Claude’s fans weren’t too confused by this non-linear experiment but don’t worry it’s not ‘Memento’ or anything, just a cheap way to open with an unearned bang.

Anyway Jean is a club owner who has just retired from his job as a hench man for the local mafia boss. He has a pretty wife and young son and wants to be nice. Fat chance! The wife works at immigration and when a boat is found full of Hong Kong refugees she takes a little girl home, like you do. But no! This little girl saw her Dad kill her Mum and she’s on the run.

Nasty Dad touches down in LA minutes later and sets about reclaiming his daughter. After some gratuitous sex Van Damme heads to work only for his wife to be killed by the baddie with his big stiletto knife. Claude has about 30 seconds of blubbing and flashbacks to happier times before a chinaman jumps through his window with a samurai sword and it’s game on.

The rest of the film is basically Jean and his pal high kicking their way through the Yakuza. He uses his underworld contacts to do some pretty nasty torture on his behalf and lets his pal do most of the high kicking as he’s getting on a bit himself. As the end nears and we pass the bit we saw earlier we have to wonder if Jean will reclaim his son, save the nice little girl, get the bad guy and have a little bit of redemption for himself.

If you put your brain in neutral you’ll have a good time with ‘Wake of Death’. It ticks most of the boxes with some good fights and explosions. You also get a small dose of angst, some nudity and a man being stabbed in the balls. The plot is as predictable as they come but at least some effort is made to show that Jean isn’t a totally nice guy and some of the deaths are brutal to say the least.

The villains are a bunch of oriental caricatures but this was never going to be a film with a layered and fleshed out bad guy. The ending on a ship, in the fog at night was a straight lift from ‘Lethal weapon 2’ and ‘The Usual Suspects’ with every door offering a fresh seaman for a colourful dispatch. The ending may have a small element of surprise but that’s the only bit in this workmanlike, straight forward and highly enjoyable thriller.

Best Bit : Wife makes up for the Chinese Takeaway
‘W’ Rating 13/23

No. 139 : While She Was Out (2008)

While She Was Out at the IMDb

Call me an old chauvinist, but when I saw this was a revenge thriller written and directed by a lady I thought that the male characters may not come across too well. But you know what they say about making assumptions, don’t you? Yes, that’s right they are quite often correct.

Kim Basinger plays Della, a put upon housewife. She is the mother of twins and the wife of a right bastard who expects the house to be a bit tidy when he comes home from work. “What do you do all day” he reasonably asks only to be rewarded with some attitude and no martini. It happens to be Christmas eve so after her hard day of slobbing about Della decides to go to the mall for some wrapping paper.

Della’s tough day soon gets worse however when she has trouble getting a parking space (on Christmas eve - go figure!) and a coffee server spells her name wrongly on her cup. - no wonder she’s ready to burst. She manages to get her stuff despite another crisis with her credit card and she heads for home. She does however regret leaving a pissy note on a badly parked car when the occupants show up to tell her off.

Luckily Paul Blart is on duty as he tells the four thugs to move on but gets a couple of slugs in his head for his trouble. Della manages to get away with the foursome in pursuit but rather than head home or to a police station she dives off into a half built housing scheme before crashing her car. The bad guys, lead by an unthreatening Lukas Haas, are white, black, Asian and Chinese - a multi cultural cadre of evil! I suspect their ethnicity was a deliberate ploy to show that ALL men are bastards, regardless of colour.

Anyway the baddies have Della trapped in the housing scheme or is it she who has trapped them? What follows is a series of unfortunate events where Della, armed with her trusty tool box, systematically takes out the bad guys with various implements - you go girl! Before long it’s Della vs. Lukas and it’d be a brave man who’d bet on the bloke!

I quite enjoyed this film but it was let down by its feminist agenda and ropey last 15 minutes. The male characters are awful to a man and you can see this as nothing more than female wish fulfilment from a bunch of angry and possibly menopausal dungarees wearers. If this were made the other way around there would be a justified outcry, but as it is, it just comes across as silly and illogical.

Della is obviously near breaking point due to the many traumas we see her suffer in her domestic life but how this transforms her into an SAS survival expert isn’t fully covered. I did like some of the gory deaths though with the tyre iron a genuine classic.

Basinger does well with the weak material, but I bet inside she’s thinking ‘I won an Oscar why am in this crap!’. Haas is very poor as the lead villain and spends most of the film shouting ‘Dell-a Dell-a’ like he’s auditioning for a dyslexic production of ‘A Streetcar Named Desire’. His demise is the most far fetched of all and highlights that it’s a woman writing the script - if I’d seen three of my pals butchered I’d be running for the hills not getting amorous with the strangely willing assailant!

If you add up my various moans you’ll probably think the film is a waste of time but I enjoyed it and it’s rather blinkered view of humanity. Possibly not one to watch with the good lady however - maybe suggest she gets on with the laundry will you partake of its dubious pleasures.

Best Bit : I’ll just loosen those face nuts for you
‘W’ rating : 14/23

No. 128 : Windtalkers (2002)

Windtalkers at the IMDb

Nicolas Cage stars in this factual World War Two drama directed by action supremeo John Woo. The film opens with a young Navajo Indian leaving his family in Arizona to enlist in the war effort. Meanwhile Cage’s division is having a hard time in the Solomon Islands with he the sole survivor. As he slowly rehabilitates back on base with the aid of a friendly nurse, the Indian goes through his training. A new unbreakable code has been developed using the Navajo language with these new ‘code talkers’ a prize asset for the Americans and target for the Japs.

Cage is charged with looking after his code talker and secretly told that he cannot allow his man to be taken alive. Cage has rushed his return to duty and has issues regarding the loss of his men. He is unhappy with his babysitting role and his relationship with his new charge gets off to a frosty start in a scene familiar to anyone who’s ever seen a cop movie. The guys are soon spearheading the assault on Japan with Cage’s damaged Sergeant enjoying the killing perhaps too much.

As you’d probably guess Cage’s distain for his charge starts to thaw when he sees the value and bravery of him in combat. His fellow babysitter Christian Slater meanwhile is getting on fine with his charge and they enjoy regular jam sessions on the mouth organ. The code talker plan comes under strain however when their base is attacked and Slater has to decide whether he can obey the order to kill his man rather than let the Japs capture him. Sadly Slater loses his head over the incident and Cage his mind as he has to make a deadly, and messy, choice.

As the conquest of the island of Taipei nears it’s conclusion the Japs wheel out the big guns and our men are caught under fire. Will the tensions between the men prevent them winning the day and can the anguished Cage find redemption?

This is an enjoyable film but doesn’t quite tick all the boxes needed to award it ‘classic’ status. The battle scenes are well handled and epic in their scale but some of the skirmishes have an overly choreographed look about them. The chaos of a murderous battle isn’t really conveyed when our man bashes a few Japs does a diving roll to shoot another before springing up to knife another. The violence isn’t of the gratuitous nature, well is you discount Slater’s head at any rate.

What annoyed me was the lack of focus on the code talker angle. The set up for the film makes you think this will save the day but sometimes our man just gets on the horn and yells for covering fire. Other time the elaborate code is used through various relays to give the coordinates of Jap positions - why bother with the code? - the Japs know where they are.

The main flaw of the film is the lack of invention and surprises. We know Cage is troubled and need to be redeemed, we know he has to shoot his man if he’s in danger and we know the native will have trouble with the red neck element of the unit. What follows are a series of predictable scenes where each of the set ups come off and are resolved as you’d imagine. I’m not saying they should have thrown in some aliens or anything but ultimately the journey from A to B to C could have been mixed up somewhat.

The decent supporting cast which includes Mark Ruffalo and the ever dependable Peter Stormare are all good in underwritten roles but I could have done without Slater’s nice guy who toots his mouthie before heading off.

Although I enjoyed the film it could have been so much better and it’s a pity that the code talking that the plot hangs on seemed to be included as an afterthought.

Best Bit : Big fight at the end
‘W’ Score 15/23

No. 101 : Watchmen (2009)

Watchmen at the IMDb

Due to an unprecedented one request the ‘W’ quest is resurrected for one final fling (well unless I manage to track down ‘White Dog’) with the once promised ‘Watchmen’ getting the final bow as originally promised. I should apologise for my tardiness as un-updated blogs are a bug bear of mine - ‘The Stink’ I’m looking at you!

Anyway the ‘W’ quest came and went with consummate ease and frankly it was a bit too easy to keep my interest. I had visions of scouring car boot sales for ancient VHS’s of long forgotten films to complete the challenge but even with hastily invented ‘no definite article’ and ‘no sequel' rules the ton was passed without a blip.

The Challenge revealed, somewhat predictably, that having a ‘W’ first initial is no guarantee of quality and indeed the misses outweighed the hits by several to a few. I did think of starting other challenges such as ‘Films with numbers in the title (no sequel numbers)’ and ‘Films where the lead character is called Steve or Stephen’ but sadly neither has yet to gain the necessary lottery funding.

I have kept busy in the interim by watching all of the Daily Mail’s war film collection and the latest additions to the IMDb 250 including the 1936 classic ‘My Man Godfrey’. Seeking suggestions from my brother was a poor choice however with the risible and downright nasty ‘Mum & Dad’ the best of a poor bunch.

Anyway on with the highly anticipated ‘Watchmen’ which I saw at the cinema a week after release to coincide with my 38th birthday celebrations. The film was viewed from the premium seats (supplement unpaid) at the Odeon Glasgow Quay in a select audience of six. The film has seemingly under performed with the $100 million mark just squeezed by in the States and screenings here falling off after a fortnight. The reviews were largely lukewarm which probably cost it an audience beyond the comic fans, together with its bum numbing 3 hour running time.

I’m sure you are all aware of the plot and if not check out the Wikipedia as I’ll assume a basic knowledge of the book and characters lest I bore my few regulars by churning up old ground.

The book is a stone cold classic that still turns up gems at the twentieth time of reading (‘raw shark’ indeed!) and it was always going to be a fool’s errand to try and distil its essence onto the big screen. The initial word was good however, with the characters surviving more or less intact as were the 1980’s setting and quirky details like the Gunga Diner and Hollis Mason’s body shop sign. Questions about an altered ending were raised early on and the wholesale removal of ‘The Black Freighter’ was also a concern.

The film opens well with a clever titles montage that showed the genesis of the superhero in America with plenty of nods to the book such as Dollar Bill lying dead in a bank’s revolving door just as Bob Dylan sang of being stuck in the doorway. From there not much altered from the book and that was a bit of a problem for me. With many scenes lifted intact I found myself getting a bit impatient waiting for the next bit to come along. In the opening scene of The Comedians demise, which was beautifully and faithfully realised, I was subconsciously willing the film along as I knew what was going to happen. I felt a similar urge to ‘fast forward’ throughout the film during several scenes such as Laurie and Dan in the basement (although not in the Owl ship!) and the Mars section, not because they were badly done just because the subject matter was so familiar.It's fine and well being reverential to the original work but a bit of insight and interpreation wouldn't have gone amiss.

During the film’s long gestation an animated comic of the original book was done in twelve chapters and I felt that the film was really just a more expensive version of that. I wouldn’t call the film a failure, and if I’d went in cold with no knowledge of the book I’d have loved it, but instead it just seemed a pretty soulless exercise in assisting the illiterate.

Of the actors Jackie Earl Haley was the pick of the litter with his note perfect Rorschach and I also liked Malin Akerman as the free spirited Laurie who matched her earlier showing in ‘Harold and Kumar Get the Munchies’.

As a spectacle and technical achievement ‘Watchmen’ is an unqualified success but for this reviewer the lack of insight and innovation made the whole experience somewhat empty and a definite disappointment.


I won’t end the quest on a down note however and would say that for the production values alone the film is well worth £6 of your cash and the cast are excellent to a man - that man being Matthew Goode whose Adrian Viedt lacked any charisma, malevolence, style - well just about anything really. I also disliked his CGI Bustabus which just looked like an invading Looney Tune, so at least they were well matched!

The long road to the Watchmen has been littered with crappy films, the odd nugget of goodness and the occasional surprise. If you are on medication and have time to kill I’d certainly recommend a quest such as this to focus your viewing and perhaps take you out of your usual comfort zone of choices. ‘Watchmen’ isn’t the best film on the list and I enjoyed it less than I anticipated I would when this quest was started all those months ago. Still, it’s about the journey not the arrival. Well the journey and a shit load of pick and mix!

Best Bit : Dan gets fired up
'W' Score 17/23

No.93 : Waist Deep (2006)

 Waist Deep at the IMDb

Here’s a bit of bad ass action from South Central, ma hoodies. I can’t go on like that for long but this film manages it for 90 minutes without pausing for breath or providing subtitles.

Tyrese Gibson stars as a single dad stuck at his low rent security job. He’s a two time loser trying to make good for his boy. He is due to pick up the kid but is let down by his relief meaning that he has to take his gun home with him. This seemingly unnecessary detail is included to show that our man is a victim of circumstance and not a trigger happy bad ass as some people, a jury for example, may think.

He manages to get to the boy somewhat late but makes good with a toy horsey. For reasons unknown the boy goes to sleep in the back seat and is taken along with the ride when our hero is car jacked. After some massive gun play the baddies get away and our man’s only link to them is through the sexy street suit saleswoman who may have been the set up girl for the car jackers.

Eventually the gangsters get in touch and demand $100K for the boy’s safe return. We learn that our man is just out of jail for a robbery and the hoods think he may still have the loot stashed away. He of course doesn’t and has to embark on a massive crime spree to collect the ransom and save his boy. The girl tags along unwillingly but when she is promised a cut of the take she helps out hoping to free herself from her own crappy existence.

With the cash raised the trade off is arranged but can our man survive the many double crosses ahead of him and stay out of the clutches of the understandably keen police?

This is a really rubbish film but that’s not to say it doesn’t have its moments. Most of these are unintentionally funny scenes where the gun play and over the top action stretch your disbelief and then break it. It is churlish to pick nits as I’m clearly not the target audience. I can see loads of Ali G types getting their wannabe gangster wish fulfilment addressed every time a gun is held side on or someone is addressed as ‘Mofo’.

The ‘hero’ is shown as a decent man fighting for what’s his but he comes across as a terrifying and reckless manic who shoots folk execution style and sticks up banks without a thought for the terrified staff and customers.

The plot is simple as ABC which is probably necessary as subtle plot points would be missed as you punch the air and shout ‘Cap his ass’ a lot. The characters are also wafer thin with development strictly in the ‘arrested’ mode. The two leads are quite decent given the limited material and despite its moral vacuum and terrible message you could do worse for a night‘s guilty pleasure.

Best Bit : Shawshank Steal

‘W’ Rating : 12/23