Film Review: Pacific Rim Uprising (2018)

The apocalypse is still cancelled

Pacific Rim Uprising (12A)

Starring: John Boyega, Scott Eastwood, Cailee Spaeny, Charlie Day, Burn Gorman

Director: Steven S. DeKnight

The Plot: It's been ten years since the Kaiju were defeated and humanity has begun to rebuild. Jake Pentecost (Boyega), son of Stacker Pentecost, is a former Jaeger pilot who now lives a life as a smuggler and thief amongst the ruins of Miami. After encountering teenage tech genius Amara Namani (Spaeny), the two are caught and Jake receives an offer from his adoptive sister Mako: re-enlist in the Jaeger corps and help to train its new recruits (including Amara), or go to prison. Jake reluctantly chooses the corps, where he faces not only his father's legacy but his old rival Lambert (Eastwood), and finds himself forced into action when a rogue Jaeger begins attacking. However, it quickly becomes clear that the Kaiju are set to return - and a human being is responsible . . .

Check out the trailer here.

Review: I'm shamelessly a huge fan of the original Pacific Rim, which arrived back in 2013. It was a big, cheesy blockbuster that made no apologies about what it was - big robots fighting big monsters - but more importantly it had a spark of magic to it due to the involvement of Guillermo del Toro - you know, the guy who just won the Best Director Oscar for The Shape of Water. GDT directed and co-wrote the original Pacific Rim, and his passion and enthusiasm for the subject matter shone through. It was still a big silly blockbuster, and obviously not to everyones taste, but I loved it.

Enter Pacific Rim: Uprising, the sequel everyone knew would happen due to the success of the first film. Does it live up to the original? Unsurprisingly, no. We have a (mostly) new cast, a new director and new writers, and it shows - that spark of magic from the first film is sadly missing here, and while GDT has a producer credit, I seriously doubt he had much input on the final result. While the film will still appeal to its target audiences of massive nerds (that's me!) and young kids, it fails to live up to its origins.

While this is another big, silly blockbuster about humans inside giant mecha-suits fighting giant monsters, it has some real problems with the script. I know that it sounds a bit stupid to say that, as this clearly isn't the type of film that you come to for the finer qualities of the writing and the story, but even a film like this one needs a solid base to support the big, crunching action of the battle sequences. Sadly, you can see plot points coming from a mile away, meaning that nothing is a surprise, and it's also saddled with what I call "the sequel problem" as characters frequently remind new audiences of what went on in the first film through some terribly forced dialogue. The plot also feels incredibly rushed, despite the film's close to two hour run time, and because of this there's very little character development. Jake is the prime example here, our hero character who spends the vast majority of the film wanting nothing to do with the corps and counting down the days until he can leave, only to suddenly step up and become its leader during the final climactic battle with little to explain his change of character. Other plot threads suffer through lack of attention as well, particularly Jake's relationship with Amara (who's arguably the second lead of the film) where we get the hints of a brother-sister bond forming, but not enough time devoted to it. There are other issues as well, for example the group of cadets that Amara joins are about as stereotypical as you can get, and there's no mention at all of Raleigh Beckett, our hero from the first film who was played by Charlie Hunnam. That's particularly odd given that the character survived and there were hints of a romance between him and Mako (who does return here, once again played by Rinko Kikuchi). He doesn't appear inside a memorial room that Jake enters, displaying fallen heroes from the first film, so fans of the original will be left wondering what became of him. As for Mako herself, it would have been nice to have seen some explanation of how the character had progressed to the high-ranking officer that she is now, but again the film has no time for that.

What everyone has really come to see are the action sequences. There are only three, if you don't count the film's opening sequence where Jake and Amara are chased in her homemade Jaeger called Scrapper, and of those three the Kaiju only show up for the final battle. This is disappointing, as the Jaeger-on-Jaeger action of the first two scenes, while hard-hitting, aren't what I'm here for. The final battle, however, hits the nail right on the head as the four remaining Jaegers, led by Jake inside the brilliantly-named Gypsy Avenger, fight three enormous Kaiju in Tokyo in what is an orgy of destruction. Some of the CGI here works better than others, but it's an exciting battle that sees the city laid to waste and leads to the greatest Superman punch from orbit that you've ever seen a fifty-storey high robot perform. If only all of the fights in the film could have been like this one, it would have been far more exciting. There's a fair bit of humour to be found though, which helps make up for it: one of the Jaegers performs an anime-style landing, one flips a Kaiju the double bird, there's an appearance of the "Trololololol" guy, and we see a Gundam statue as well.

Now, again, performances aren't exactly an audiences priority for a film like this, and in Pacific Rim: Uprising that's a good thing. Boyega is the best thing here by far - he's a fantastic actor and his natural charisma is enough to carry the story along, despite the rushed nature of the film not allowing much character development for Jake, as I mentioned earlier. He does the best he can with what he's given here, and is suitably commanding when his character steps up and gives a motivational speech to the cadets. I was also impressed with Cailee Spaeny as Amara, who does well with a back story that's a carbon copy of Mako's from the original (her family were wiped out by Kaiju right in front of her). She has good chemistry with Boyega, and while you can see their shared plot line coming a mile away (spoiler alert, they have the necessary link required to pilot Gypsy Avenger to success at the end) it still works well. The rest of the cast don't fare very well though: Scott Eastwood is Scott Eastwood - nothing more needs to be said there - and both Burn Gorman and Charlie Day chew the scenery to the point that there's almost nothing left.

So overall then? Disappointment. Even for a huge geek and fan of the original like myself, this film isn't able to capture the magic of the first one and is let down by a rushed plot and lack of Jaeger-on-Kaiju action. While the final battle is exciting, it isn't enough to make up for the rest.

Rating: 2 out of 5 stars (3 out of 5 if you're the target audience and can forgive its flaws)
A disappointing sequel that, without the guiding hand of Guillermo del Toro, fails to capture the spark that elevated the original beyond its cheesy blockbuster roots. John Boyega is a charismatic lead and the final battle is exciting, but this isn't enough to make up for a rushed, obvious plot that prevents character development and and has a distinct lack of Kaiju action. If you're in the target audience and can forgive the flaw there's still an exciting film to be found, but for most people there won't be. A shame.

Film Review: Tomb Raider (2018)

A survivor is born . . . just not here

Tomb Raider (12A)

Starring: Alicia Vikander, Dominic West, Walton Goggins, Daniel Wu

Director: Roar Uthaug

The Plot: Following the disappearance of her father Richard (West) several years previously, Lara Croft (Vikander) has shunned her inheritance and lives a reckless life in London as a cycle courier. Learning that the family estate may be lost, Lara reluctantly agrees to sign legal papers confirming her fathers death, and in doing so receives a clue that leads to his research into his last fateful expedition - the lost Japanese island of Yamatai, believed to be the resting place of Himiko, a queen who possessed great destructive power. Lara sets off to Yamatai to discover what happened to her father, and there she faces a gruelling ordeal - and most the stop the deadly organisation Trinity, who have sent an armed force to the island and are determined to claim Himiko's power for themselves.

Check out the trailer for the film here.

Review: It's been fifteen years since Lara last graced the cinema screen, in 2003's terrible Lara Croft: Tomb Raider - The Cradle of Life (for which star Angelina Jolie famously criticised the distributors for airbrushing her nipples out of the film poster) and a lot has changed since then, particularly in the Tomb Raider video game series. You probably won't be surprised to learn that I'm a big fan of the series and of Lara herself - I've been playing the games since way back in 1996, when the original was first released and I installed it onto our family's home PC that barely managed to run it in its lowest, pixellated graphical settings. The series had been gradually declining in quality until a few years ago, when the game upon which this new film is loosely based arrived.

In 2013, Lara and her story were rebooted in the imaginatively-titled Tomb Raider. In the game, Lara was spun back to nineteen years of age, her comically-large breasts were reduced, and we follow her on her very first expedition to the lost island of Yamatai, a place her (very much dead) father had never been able to find. Shipwrecked on the island and hunted by a dangerous cult who live there and worship the queen Himiko, Lara is broken down both physically and mentally and must build herself back up to survive. The story, which was written by Rhianna Pratchett (daughter of the late great Sir Terry), was widely praised by both critics and players for the positive depiction of this new version of Lara, particularly in how it shows the mental and physical impact on an inexperienced young woman who literally has to kill to survive, and how over the course of the game Lara gradually progresses until at the end we see the first spark of the fearless adventurer we know she's destined to become. It's a brilliant game and a brilliant story, and it's therefore a real shame that the makers of this film have chosen to ignore the vast majority of it.

Now, that's not to say there's nothing recognisable from the game here. And, I feel it's important to say that for all the criticisms I have, I understand why changes were made - film is a different medium, after all, and not everything that works in a video game will work for a film the makers are hoping will appeal to a mass audience. So, Lara still travels to Yamatai, she still gets shipwrecked, she still has to fight for her life, and she still gets the shit beaten out of her by the environment and her opponents. But they've really missed the point here. With the exception of a short sequence where Lara escapes from the Trinity soldiers, is wounded and then forced to kill one, the whole aspect of survival, of Lara being forced to rely on nothing but her own instincts to overcome the odds, is completely removed. Even the moment when Lara kills a Trinity soldier with her bare hands, which admittedly is very well shot here, has seemingly little effect on her, compared to the huge emotional impact it has on her in the game. The tag line for the video game was "A survivor is born", and the trailer for the film (which featured a remixed version of the song "Survivor") made it seem like this would play a large role in the story, but alas, this isn't the case.

Instead, the film focuses more on Lara's relationship with her father Richard who, spoiler alert, turns out to be very much alive and stranded on the island himself, having remained there to work against the Trinity soldiers. This actually works fairly well thematically: Lara is initially resentful towards him, still hurt by the man who left her as a teenager and never returned, despite promises to do so, and her gradual acceptance and forgiveness play a role in the outcome of the story. But, it's her father who saves her and heals her, something Lara is forced to do herself in the game, and this again is a change that from the original story that negatively impacts the character.

It's not the only change that has been made either. The villain of the piece is Matthias, played by the great Walton Goggins and very much hampered by the script. Here he's a rather generic villain, the leader of the Trinity forces who have come to the island in search of Himiko's supposed power. In the game, Matthias is the crazed leader of a cult that worships Himiko, having been shipwrecked on the island himself many years earlier and slowly driven mad. It's a real shame that this isn't the character we get to see in the film, which would have been a far more effective use of Goggins' talent. Himiko herself was, in the game, a supernatural entity with the power to summon huge storms and who transferred from body to body via ritual sacrifice. Here her "power" is revealed to be that she was the carrier of a deadly virus, having been sealed away to prevent its release into the world.

Another notable change made for the film is that, in the game, there was a distinct lack of actual tomb raiding. While Lara can explore several small optional "tombs" that consist of one or two rooms, the developers intentionally avoided having Lara explore large, complex tomb structures (as she did in all the previous games) in order to focus on the survival story. The writers and creators of this film, however, obviously decided that audiences wouldn't accept a film called Tomb Raider unless it featured just that, so instead the third act of the film is devoted to Lara, Richard and Matthias exploring Himiko's tomb, a grand underground structure filled with deadly traps that wouldn't look out of place in an Indiana Jones film. It works well within the theme of the film and allows for some good set-pieces, but again it kind of misses the point that Lara isn't supposed to be ready for all of this yet.

Alica Vikander is, fortunately for the film, terrific here as Lara. She's an incredibly talented actress (an Oscar winner, let's not forget), and she not only looks the part - complete with ponytail and trademark grey vest - but really throws herself into both the dramatic and physical aspect of the role too. This version of Lara is, as I've already mentioned, a bit different from the one in the game. She's a bit older (in her mid-twenties here, as apposed to late teens) and already a bit of a badass, proficient with a bow due to archery lessons as a child and seemingly proficient in hand-to-hand fighting and grappling, despite the opening scene in a boxing ring showing her having her arse kicked. For all my criticism of the story that's been presented here, Vikander does well with what she's been given and has a few key dramatic scenes with her father that show there's more to the character than the hard exterior.

The action sequences are actually pretty decent, shot well and are fairly exciting given the film's 12A rating. The sequence where Lara initially escapes and traverses a rusted old fighter plane that overhangs a waterfall (partially lifted from the game) is particularly good, as are the trap sequences inside the tomb of Himiko, but ironically the best sequence is actually a cycle chase that Lara has on the streets of London during the first act. Given the direction chosen to take the story, it was essential that these aspects of the film, along with Vikander's physical performance, were up to scratch. They are, and while they're not mind-blowing in any way, they're exciting enough to keep your interest.

So is it a good film? Well, yes. That's the thing though - it's just good, but if it had been a faithful adaptation of the video game's story, it could have been truly great. I would have loved to have seen Vikander play out the tense, emotional journey that Lara undergoes in the game (where she's voiced and motion-captured by Camilla Luddington in a terrific performance) but sadly it wasn't to be, and instead the filmmakers decided to go for a version of Lara that, while distinctively more modern, is already the arse-kicking woman that audiences are familiar with. A tease at the end of the film where Lara picks up her trademark dual pistols for the first time indicates there could be future films, which wouldn't be a bad thing, but it's just a real shame that the filmmakers have missed the point here.

Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

A decent action-adventure film that sees a good performance from Alicia Vikander as the iconic Lara Croft. Unfortunately it shuns the most effective and praised part of the video game that it's based upon, so rather than an emotional tale of a young woman overcoming overwhelming odds to survive, we get a more audience-friendly story of an already strong Lara and the relationship with her father. It's worth your time, but it could have been so much more.

Film Review Round-Up: Red Sparrow, Game Night & Gringo (2018)

So the UK fell victim to the "Beast from the East" last week and my area was hit with snow pretty badly, which meant that I could neither get to work or the cinema. I wasn't able to bring you a film review last week as a result, so I've been playing catch-up and this week I present another of my patented review round-ups - three shorter than usual reviews, but hopefully just as informative. First up is Jennifer Lawrence's spy thriller Red Sparrow, then we join Jason Bateman and Rachel McAdams for the hilarious Game Night, before finishing with David Oyelowo's adventures in Mexico with Gringo. Let's go!

For the motherland . . .

Red Sparrow (15)

Starring: Jennifer Lawrence, Joel Edgerton, Matthias Schoenaerts

Director: Francis Lawrence

The Plot: Dominika Egorova (Lawrence) is a Russian ballerina whose career is cut short after a leg injury. After she recovers, she's approached by her uncle Vanya (Schoenaerts), a director in Russian intelligence, with an offer: train to become a "Sparrow" - elite spies who use seduction to infiltrate - and he will arrange for her sick mother to be taken care of. Dominika agrees and, after undergoing the training, is given her first assignment in Budapest - win the trust of an American spy (Edgerton), in order to gain the name of a Russian mole high up in the intelligence service. A complicated web of deception begins as Dominika starts to play both sides . . .

Review: Jennifer Lawrence reunites with Francis Lawrence, who directed her in three of the Hunger Games films, for this spy thriller that many are calling the Black Widow film that Marvel never made. It's a watchable film that's just good, not excellent: it has a terrific cast that also includes Jeremy Irons, Ciaran Hinds and Charlotte Rampling (who's excellent as the Matron of the Sparrow school), the performances are mostly good all-round, and it's beautifully shot. Unfortunately there are also questionable Russian accents, a plot that becomes increasingly difficult to keep track of as Dominika continually switches sides, and at two hours and twenty minutes a runtime that could use some trimming down. It's also a shame that, despite that run time, we only spend fifteen minutes at best with Dominika's training at the Sparrow school - I would liked to have seen more time devoted to that aspect of the story.

Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

An enjoyable enough spy thriller that's let down by an overly long, complicated story and some questionable Russian accents. That said, Lawrence is (unsurprisingly) very good, the cast is strong and it's visually superb. Worth your time.

Game on!

Game Night (15)

Starring: Jason Bateman, Rachel McAdams, Kyle Chandler

Director: Mark Perez

The Plot: Max (Bateman) and Annie (McAdams) are a super-competitive husband and wife who love winning any kind of game (board games, video games, etc), and whose social calendar revolves around "game nights" with a close group of friends. When Max's successful brother Brooks (Chandler) comes to town, he invites their group to his house for a game night of his own - he's hired a company to stage his kidnapping, and the group must solve clues to find him. Unknown to them, however, Brooks is actually a smuggler and he gets kidnapped in front of them for real - the group play along, believing it's all fake, and Max and Annie are determined to win, unaware of the real danger they're in . . .

Review: Game Night is a terrific comedy film and the funniest one I've seen this year. Don't let my description of the plot fool you - it's not a serious film in any aspect, and the jokes come thick and fast throughout. Bateman and McAdams are both fantastic - they have a great chemistry together and bounce lines off each other really well - and they're supported by a very likable, funny cast. Lamorne Morris (who I'm a fan of from New Girl) has a great running sub-plot where he and his wife argue over her having slept with a fake Denzel Washington, and I also liked Billy Magnussen as their stupid friend Ryan. Jesse Plemons steals the show, however, as their monotone cop neighbour who has more to do with the story than you'd think. This isn't the kind of film that you come to for the quality of the plot, although to the films credit it's a fun one, but what you get is a hilarious film with a very likable group of characters. I loved it.

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

The funniest film I've seen this year. It won't win any awards for the plot, but it really doesn't matter as that's not what you're here for. A likable bunch of characters led by the excellent pairing of Jason Bateman and Rachel McAdams make this a real winner. Highly recommended!

Welcome to Mexico . . .

Gringo (15)

Starring: David Oyelowo, Charlize Theron, Joel Edgerton, Amanda Seyfried, Sharlto Copley

Director: Nash Edgerton

The Plot: Harold Soyinka (Oyelowo) is an honest, decent man who works for a pharmaceutical company owned by his "friend" Richard Rusk (Edgerton). On a business trip to Mexico to visit one of their suppliers, Harold learns some horrible truths: Richard and his business partner Elaine (Theron) are planning to sell the company, he's going to be fired, and his wife is having an affair with Richard. Harold snaps and decides to fake his own kidnapping, sparking off a disastrous and hilarious chain of events that involves him crossing paths with a good-natured tourist (Seyfried) and being hunted by both a Mexican cartel and a former special forces soldier (Copley) that Richard sends to retrieve him . . .

Review: This is an excellent dark comedy that features a terrific cast. After his brilliant performance in 2015's Selma, it's great to see Oyelowo show off his comedic chops here - Harold is an extremely likable character who's completely out of his depth and very funny as a result. Both Theron and Edgerton do a great job as Elaine and Richard, two vile human beings who will do anything for success and to keep themselves on top, Seyfried is likable in her small role and the great Sharlto Copley is fantastic as Richard's brother Mitch, the former solider sent to retrieve Harold. The film moves along at a brisk pace and features a surprising amount of action, and it's genuinely funny throughout. Really good!

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
A dark, funny film that features a surprising amount of action. A great cast that spark off of each other well propels the story along, anchored by a genuinely funny and likable turn from David Oyelowo. Well worth your time.

Video Game Review: Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice (2017)

The greatest battles are fought from within . . .

Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice

Format: PS4/Windows PC (Reviewed on PS4)
Publisher: Ninja Theory
Developer: Ninja Theory

What is it: A dark fantasy action-adventure game set in the 8th Century. Players control Senua, a young Pict warrior woman on a journey to free the soul of her dead lover Dillion. Senua suffers from deep psychosis, a condition she has struggled with all her life, and now believes she is journeying into Helheim to confront the goddess Hela. Players guide Senua along a linear story that involves puzzle-solving and combat to proceed, constantly dealing with (and sometimes battling against) Senua's psychosis that impacts everything she perceives and does . . .

Review: Every now and then a video game comes along that has something truly original about it, which is becoming a rare thing these days. Hellblade is one such game, and it's been on my radar for some time: it was released in August last year, but I finally picked it up last month and I'm glad I did. It's the first game to feature mental illness - in this case specifically psychosis - and have it play a central role in everything the player experiences. Senua is utterly consumed by the condition, which has been fuelled by her grief at finding her village slaughtered by Vikings and her lover brutally sacrificed, and it impacts everything she sees and hears, and thus what the player sees and hears. It's an experience like nothing I've played before and it's truly remarkable.

Now this is still a video game. It's a fairly short one (around 8-10 hours of gameplay, which is reflected in its price) and it's played from a third-person perspective, with players guiding Senua along her journey through sections that involve exploration and puzzle-solving, interspersed with sections of combat. In the puzzle-solving areas Senua will find her way blocked by doors sealed with glowing runes, or paths seemingly broken or blocked by rubble, and players must use Senua's "focus" ability - which represents her fractured psyche - to seek out either runes hidden in the environment around her or to shift the blocked paths into passable ones, and the player receives visual and audio cues when they're in the right area. While not particularly difficult, some of the solutions aren't immediately obvious and it's an interesting take on puzzle-solving that fits with the overall theme of the game. The combat, unfortunately, is less effective: while the controls are fine (Senua draws her sword and has both light and heavy attacks, can dodge, parry and use a melee attack to stun) and the shadowy enemies she fights are varied and visually interesting, the game all too often surrounds her with opponents in these sections meaning you frequently get hit from behind by enemies that you can't see, leaving you open to being struck by another one from the front. It can get quite frustrating.

While some of the areas of the game are split into sections that can tackled in any order the player chooses, the game follows a linear path from beginning to end. A what a beautiful journey it is - the game features some truly incredible graphics and motion capture of an actress, amongst the best I've seen on a console, and PC players enjoy an even better experience. Some of the pictures you see here are screenshots I've captured with my own PS4 (which is a standard one, not the more powerful Pro) and I was blown away by the quality. Senua's journey takes her through forests and caves, through razed villages, across an ocean and finally into the depths of Helheim and to Hela's sanctum itself. There's a strong mythological element to the story and the presentation of the environments, and when you combine this with how Senua's psychosis effects both the visuals and the audio, which I'll talk about next, it makes for a truly remarkable experience.

While creating the game, the developers Ninja Theory worked with several psychologists and prominent experts in the field of psychosis, along with a group of people who have/continue to suffer from the condition, to ensure that the depiction of it in the game is realistic. Some people will find the game unsettling because of this, and this has been done deliberately, as the developers didn't want to water down this element of the game and I commend them for it. As well as the aforementioned "focus" ability Senua has, the player is bombarded with what I can only describe as a visual and audio assault as you play through it, which represents the continued deterioration of Senua's mental state: the environment around you is frequently disturbed by flashes of images and sounds representing both dark hallucinations and Senua's memories of being isolated and attacked for her condition; brief cut-scenes will sometimes interject themselves without any warning, and there are several clever visual effects used that distort the environment around her to create feelings of isolation and claustrophobia.

The most effective element of this, though, are the Furies. Senua hears several female voices inside her head (a condition of psychosis known as voice hearing) that, while not constantly talking, appear frequently enough to remind you that they're always there and give you an impression of just how maddening it must be to suffer from the condition and hear voices in your head all the time. The voices alternate between being cruel and mocking (verbally abusing Senua and criticising her/the player for her choices), to supportive and reassuring (offering encouragement and hints, or warning when you're about to be attacked). The voices bicker amongst each other, are sometimes joined by Senua's own internal voice, and Senua sometimes verbally addresses them - including moments when she turns and speaks directly to the camera, implying that you the player are one of the many voices in her head. If you play the game with a surround sound system or 3D headphones the voices appear from all sides and distances, and they add another incredibly effective layer to the presentation.

Senua is performed by Melina Juergens. Juergens, who has never acted before, works as a video editor for developers Ninja Theory and they initially used her as a stand-in while testing their equipment, but they quickly realised they'd found their actress. Juergens was fully motion-captured so both the physical and vocal performance is provided by her, as well as Senua being physically modelled on her, and it's a phenomenal performance - the emotional and physical ranges she goes to in the depiction of Senua's journey and her mental state are nothing short of astonishing. She won an award for Best Performance at The Game Awards 2017 for the role, and was only beaten to the same award at the Golden Joysticks by Ashly Burch for her performance as Aloy in Horizon Zero Dawn. She's truly impressive.

 

Some players will find Hellblade too unsettling to play due to the frank and incredibly effective depiction of psychosis. I urge you to give this a go though - it's a remarkably beautiful and original experience that has one of the best acting performances I've seen in a game.

 

Rating: 5 out of 5 stars

A truly original, beautiful but harrowing game that takes a fantastical storyline and presents it through a realistic lens of what its like to suffer from psychosis. While the combat sections can sometimes be frustrating, it doesn't spoil a unique experience that features some of the best graphics and motion capture I've seen in a game, along with a truly astonishing performance from actress Melina Juergens. A game that everyone should play.