No. 353 : World Trade Center (2006)

World Trade Center (2006) at the IMDb

 

 * I watched this film and wrote a review for my new Michael Shannon Blog 'Michael Shannon and On and On' which will debut sometime soon. Check back here later and I'll link it when it goes live. It would be a disservice to my one follower to not add a review here on the W movies blog, so I have adapted it for this audience with the more Shannon-centric comments removed.

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Five years after the devastating events of 9/11 director Oliver Stone assembled a star studded cast to try and tell some of the stories behind the disaster. It would be churlish to criticise it too much as it is well intentioned and celebrates worthy people, but you may find it a bit mawkish and sentimental.

The film centres on Nicholas Cage’s Port Authority cop John. After the attacks take place – mostly off camera; we see only a shadow of a hijacked plane – Cage is sent down to the site to assist in the rescue effort. He comes over as a bit cautious and fusses about looking for equipment as the towers burn and fall. I’m not sure what was being conveyed here – was he playing it safe and by the book or was he fearful of walking in to near certain death? His choices are quickly made for him however, when a tower collapses and he and his men dive into a lift entrance that quickly collapses. Most of the men are killed immediately, with another shooting himself in what I trust was a true incident, as it seemed a bit unconvincing in the film.

Cage and his colleague Michael Pena survive, but both are trapped by their legs. The remainder of the film documents their bid to survive as they comfort and cajole each other to stay awake and listen out for a rescue. As they do so we enter their minds and see flashbacks of better times. They also have visions of Jesus and imagined conversations with their wives. These scenes took me out of the moment somewhat and although they may be accurate to the men involved, it just seemed daft when a vision of Jesus came down to offer salvation. At least he brought a bottle of heavenly water with him.

Whilst our guys struggle with their predicament, the film intercuts with real life events, with stock footage from the day interwoven with scenes of the wives and family back home awaiting to hear of their men’s fate. The women in this film are poorly served with Pena’s partner, a pregnant Maggie Gyllenhaal, being annoying throughout and Cage’s Maria Bello having weird eyes. IMDb says her eyes were colourised for the film and it is poorly done and distracting.

We also get a couple of side stories with Michael Shannon's ex-marine accountant going back to the good fight and Frank Whaley's alcoholic character putting a plug in the jug so that he can offer medical assistance to the injured.

The trapped men are located and, after some digging and more bonding, both are eventually freed from their tomb. We then jump forward two years to see that they have done well in their rehabilitation with baby naming and marital difficulties seemingly resolved.

The films does well not to ponder on the political aspects of the events and focuses more on individual stories. This gives the production some heart, but it also makes it feel somewhat unsubstantial when it covers world changing events. The performances are mixed with a lot of shouting and screaming taking the place of real acting. Your sympathies lie with Cage and Pena from the start and the outcome was never really in doubt. The backstories and family dramas were decent but I didn’t like the wives much and some of the dialogue was too on the nose to be believable.

Overall I’d give the film a pass as it deals with tragic and emotional material well, but I never truly bought into the characters we were offered and their annoying families only served to distance me from the heart of the story. There was a lot to cover in a two hour film and I think ultimately it was a worthy but unsatisfying effort.

Best Bit : The building collapse was well realised and the sets were excellent.

'W' Rating 15/23

No. 352 : Willy's Wonderland (2021)

 

Willy's Wonderland at the IMDb

I found this soon to be cult classic on Amazon Prime and have to say that, despite myself, I actually quite enjoyed it. The film stars Nicholas Cage and appears to be from his ‘filmed in an afternoon to pay the tax bill’ phase. Its budget is listed as a lowly $5m and it was sponsored by the Malaysian film industry to the tune of 30%, which is confirmed by the credits list that suggest most of the post production was carried out overseas.

With a foreign backer to appease the film took the bold decision to have its star have literally no lines of dialogue whatsoever - I imagine that saved plenty on the dubbing costs alone. Apart from a few grunts Cage has nothing to say at all, and if the intention was ‘mysterious’ it came across as ‘constipated’.

Cage plays ’The Janitor’ a drifter, who for unexplained reasons, has a high end sports car. He drives through a small town when he hits a spike trap on the road causing a low end come to a stop - no budget for a big smash here. We quickly learn that this is small town movie cliché number one, with corrupt officials and police putting their well used plan into action. Cage doesn’t have the money for car repairs but a local businessman makes him a strange offer - clean up the abandoned fun house overnight and the $1000 repairs will be covered. Sounds like a good deal? HUGE mistake.

Whilst Cage gets his mops and brushes organised, we have a side plot with a bunch of high school kids who are plotting to burn down the titular fun house. These are your typical teen slasher fodder and I don’t think a single one registered with me. 

Despite having no lines, Cage does show character depth - he drinks a can of energy drink every hour and plays pinball, even when fighting off a hoard of rampaging animatronic characters. Yes, the fun house is inhabited by 8 mascots all of whom have murderous intent. In a large info dump from the sheriff, we learn that the fun house was owned and staffed by a bunch of child killers. When the game was up they carried out a ritual suicide which caused their spirits to inhabit the mechanical fun house hosts, like you do.

The robots were the best bit of the film with a good mix of creepy and exaggerated clown features with various animals and creatures depicted like a crocodile, woodland nymph and the titular Willy the stoat himself. As you’d expect the bad guys gamely line up for individual battle with Cage whilst their contemporaries take out the kids. We learn that the townsfolk lure in strangers to appease the bad guy spirits, lest they once again return to the town to seek their prey there. They should have called Cage in the first place, because as The Janitor, he quickly cleans house.

I was setting up to dislike this film. The opening has a lot of fast edits and has a washed out sepia tone. The gimmick of having Cage not speaking quickly wears thin and there are a lot of awkward scenes were a line of dialogue would move things on, whereas we get Cage looking awkwardly for a way out instead. His character and motivation are wafer thin but the fight scenes are decent and brutal with no time wasted with complicated explanations or justifications. The teens could have been wearing t-shirts marked ‘Fodder’ and their fates would have been no less obvious. Down the cast you’ll recognise no one apart from the lady sheriff who has a few decent credits, but was trying too hard to channel Darlene out of ‘Ozark’ to be effective here.

Overall this was a throwaway piece of nonsense that had just enough to keep me interested. The violence is fun and extreme and it demands nothing in terms of your attention or powers of deduction. The animatronics were well realised although it was clear that it was people in costumes for the fights and they weren’t as tough as invulnerable as the locals would have you believe. Guess you just need to hire the right janitor to take out the trash!

Best Bit : Need a new t-shirt

'W' Rating 15/23