That holds the movie back, but it’s not fatal, because it’s really more about the characters and the mood and a bunch of men out in the cold thinking about death. THE GREY is the story of a group of workers in Alaska who survive a plane crash out in the snowy asshole of the earth and then try to stumble back to safety. While being hunted by wolves. That’s about it.

For what it’s worth this is my new favorite movie by Carnahan. Keep in mind I thought NARC was good but not as great as everybody else said at the time, I really liked parts of SMOKIN’ ACES but thought other parts were terrible, and I probly only enjoyed THE A-TEAM at all because I’m such a kind and forgiving individual. But this one has an unironic macho-ness and a heart-on-its-sleeve quality that I think is very Carnahan and very appealing. It opens with a long first-person narration from Liam Neeson that involves both a love letter to a wife he lost and a poem he likes to recite gravely. And the poem comes up a couple more times in the movie. Also he ignores a ROAD HOUSE sized bar brawl while having a drink, almost commits suicide and holds his hand against a wolf he shot to calm it as it bleeds to death. All in the first 5 or 10 minutes. So I liked this movie.

Neeson was one of the highlights of THE A-TEAM, and he must’ve really liked working with Carnahan because this is not one he could do for the paycheck. It has to have been very personal to him, playing a mourning, suicidal man dealing with death so soon after he lost his wife in real life. It almost makes it uncomfortable, like they’re exploiting his tragedy for a movie, but I think he knows what he’s doing. It’s not like they tricked him into signing on, so it must’ve been meaningful to him.

I’m sure this wasn’t a hugely expensive movie, and there’s an occasional phony background shot, but you can tell it was mostly shot on location. The frozen, windy hellhole that it takes place in feels very real, not artificial. Unlike 30 DAYS OF NIGHT I really felt like these poor fuckers were freezing their toes off every day and that they had gone through the ringer by the end. You see their breath alot and I’m pretty sure it’s not CGI.

That reality is established early on with the little rough edges that make it look more like a place and less like a movie setting. I love the bar he goes to, which is huge and brightly lit like a school gym. You can see why he keeps his parka on inside. But that’s the best place they have to go to out there. And the bumpy plane ride goes on for a long time before it crashes, I can’t remember another turbulence scene that felt that authentic. The actual crash sequence is so terrifying that you just know some motherfucker is gonna make sure it becomes in-flight entertainment.

Well, before long Neeson and several other plane crash survivors are scavenging clothes, alcohol, weapons and flammable liquids from the wreckage and trying to figure out how to not freeze to death. I thought it was funny that Neeson immediately takes charge, and at first nobody questions it. It’s almost like they realize that he’s the lead in the movie. But honestly I think it makes sense and fits the themes, because that’s the type of guy he is, a natural leader. I mean, the first time he sees a wolf out there he calls it a motherfucker and runs straight at it. So he demands respect. If he started telling you what to do you’d probly think “this guy seems to know what he’s doing” too. And of course as the movie becomes more about wolves you realize that he’s the alpha-male leading the pack. And thankfully this is never said out loud by any of the characters.

I also laughed when he started spitting out facts about wolves, that they hunt in a 30 mile radius from their den or something like that. But I have to admit that was unfair, I just didn’t realize that the earlier scene where he shot a wolf was establishing that shooting wolves is his job. He is an expert so that’s why he knows that stuff. It would be funnier if he was just a guy who knew alot of random facts about wildlife. Maybe he reads alot of National Geographic.

Their battle with the wolves is pretty simple. They know the wolves are picking them off one by one, and they hope to do the same thing back. But mostly they just try to head for civilization without getting eaten. They don’t try to build a brick house or anything.

Most of the movie is what happens in between the confrontations with beasts. At its best it evokes my favorite scene in JAWS, the long scene of bonding on the boat that leads to Quint’s famous U.S.S. Indianapolis story. Of course it’s not as good as that scene and the rest of the movie is not as good as the rest of JAWS, but it’s still admirable. It’s a bunch of assholes that don’t know each other real well going through hell together, eventually feeling close enough to talk about their lives and fears, and to laugh a little bit.

I didn’t recognize any of these guys besides Neeson, which was cool. They seemed like genuine guys that would be on that plane. I honestly had no idea until the credits that the guy with the glasses who I really liked was Dermot Mulroney. And Diaz, the ex-con guy, is Frank Grillo, Joel Edgerton’s classical music loving trainer in WARRIOR.

This is about as pure a Liam Neeson vehicle as you could get, merging his genre past and present with his dramatic chops. He gets to be tougher and wiser and braver than everybody else, but also sensitive. He gets to cry macho. He shows you to be hopeful even when you’re obviously fucked. If Grandma had seen this that wolf probly never would’ve been able to steal her clothes.

I don’t know if this movie is gonna go over very well. I heard some people laughing at it at the screening I went to. Maybe Carnahan’s brand of rugged poetic survivalism would’ve worked better with some actual wolf fights. Spoonful of sugar and all that. I sure wouldn’t have complained. But THE GREY has a bleakness and a manliness and a sincerity that works for me, and probly a few others.

BONUS END SPOILER: in case you saw the movie and didn’t stay after the credits, there is a little bit after them. But it seemed to me (and I think intentionally) just as ambiguous about the fate of the two combatants as the part before the credits. Kind of a cute way to tell your audience to go fuck itself. It’s like if after the credits on THE THING they made it seem like they were gonna tell you which one was the Thing and then they just faded to black again.

I’m sure THE A-TEAM TV show probly made it all around the world, but if you never heard of it here’s the premise: an elite special forces team is framed for war crimes, they bust the fuck out of the joint and travel around in a van using their skills to help people who’re in trouble, all the while being chased by military assholes and repeatedly failing to clear their name until the last episode. Each one has a specialty: Hannibal (George Peppard) is a colonel so he’s real smart and masterminds everything, also smokes cigars. B.A. (First name Mister, middle name period, last name T) is just a Bad-Ass so he grabs people and/or punches them. Face (Dirk Benedict from “Battlestar Galactica”) is a charming ladies man so he uses his smooth talking and powers of disguise to sneak into places. And Mad Murdoch (Dwight Schultz) is crazy, so he does crazy stuff. Also flies helicopters. Together they usually do some welding to build some sort of jerry-rigged cannon or some shit and there’s a montage where they pull off their plan and they’re all happy. Come to think of it it’s almost exactly like SCOOBY-DOO but with way less snacking.

For the movie of course they went the origin story route, so in this one they’re trying to clear their name after some combination of mercenaries, CIA and/or army got them blamed for the theft of some counterfeiting plates as they’re about to leave Iraq. The story is kind of a more smart-assed version of a MISSION:IMPOSSIBLE movie. The complicated tricks they play are very A-TEAM, but I’m not sure we need the DTV Seagal-style convoluted series of double-crosses. I guess they heard “special forces” and thought “overly complicated spy movie.”

(And my buddy Mr. Armageddon pointed out that it’s simply not believable that the A-Team was in Iraq. If they were then why did it take so long to find Saddam, and to know there weren’t weapons, and to get the fuck out of there? Just as 9-11 wouldn’t have happened in a world with a Superman, Iraq wouldn’t have happened in a world with the A-Team.)

But the cast is real good at recapturing these characters. Liam Neeson as Hannibal gets a great introduction where he escapes from being tied up to a chair (something Wesley Snipes has failed to do in three different movies, so maybe it’s best he didn’t get to play B.A.). Bradley Cooper (MIDNIGHT MEAT TRAIN) actually seems genetically engineered and trained for his entire life to play Face. It’s ridiculous how exactly his smugness matches Benedict’s.

UFC fighter (and MIDNIGHT MEAT TRAIN scene stealer) Quinton “Rampage” Jackson has the most difficult job – how the fuck do you replace Mr. T? You can’t just imitate him and you sure as hell can’t not be anything like him. It’s a delicate job and they did it with surprising grace. They keep the fear of flying, ditch the gold chains and feather earrings, give the mohawk a meaning. Rampage’s B.A. smiles more than T’s. He has a little more humor and sense of fun, is slightly less stubborn (he can be easily won over by Murdoch’s cooking) but sort of has the same lovable big teddy bear personality as T. He gets an enjoyably corny supblot about renouncing violence and mohawks, and he gets to whine when people make him want to shoot them.

The only thing I really didn’t like about B.A. was when he did a Li’l Jon/CHAPPELLE’S SHOW seven god damn years ago “yay-eahhh.” Might as well have a reference to the Macarena. But apparently Carnahan thought it was funny because he replayed the damn thing on the end credits.

DISTRICT 9’s Sharlto Copley is fine as Murdoch, but does not transcend the role of Murdoch. Like Schultz he’s funny some of the time, but trying to be funny all the time. I kind of liked him but I wish we could’ve seen John Singleton’s idea of Woody Harrelson as Murdoch. That might’ve been something.

It’s a good team, good chemistry, but something’s weird about the rhythm. Some of the jokes seem timed a little wrong, emphasizing the wrong beat or stepping on the funny lines. It felt to me like a funnier movie was right there, it was just mixed up a little. And Carnahan throws in alot of unneeded non-linear editing, jumping back and forth between planning and execution when simple straightforwardness would work better. He’s like a guitarist who takes three or four too many solos. For example they have Face playing a shell game with some cups as he explains a plan, then he’s doing the same moves with a crane and three shipping containers. And just as I’m enjoying the absurdity it cuts back to him moving the cups, as if we’re too stupid to remember that this is what was shown to us about 45 seconds ago and to realize that there is a connection between the two activities. Even though Face even said out loud “This was much easier with cups.” We didn’t need that and you think we need more than that? Thanks for the confidence, Joe.

Most of the action is middle of the road too. There’s a couple high speed nail biters, but most of it’s a little shakier and choppier than it should be. Definitely not as bad as the modern standard, but also not as good as it would once have been expected to be. Rampage only fights a couple of times and his MMA skills are not really taken advantage of. You would assume he was a WWE guy because he pretty much just does one body slam and a wire-assisted power kick.

Jessica Biel is getting hotter and pulling off tough better than she used to, so I liked her as the officer on their trail (and ex-girlfriend of Face). And I really liked Patrick Wilson as the douchey CIA agent who enjoys himself as much as the A-Team do.

I gotta admit, my favorite parts are all of the stupidest shit. I love that when Hannibal and B.A. meet they can bond over Army Rangers tattoos moments after Hannibal shot B.A. And that, since the screenwriters remember that Hannibal used to say “I love it when a plan comes together,” they have him constantly talking about the act of planning and what constitutes a plan and etc., like that’s his only interest. Plans. And I gotta give points to an expensive studio movie where the heroes playing a trick using ketchup as fake blood, like little kids would do. I’m not as sure about Hannibal quoting Gandhi to convince B.A. to renounce his renouncing of violence, but at least it brings the mohawk back.

One thing I don’t like about these types of movie adaptations is that they tell the beginning of the story and never get to the good part. To me the cool thing about the A-Team is not that they cleared their name in the last episode (SPOILER), it’s that before that they travelled around on the lam and were these legendary underground heroes, risking exposure to help people by using their elite skills. This movie isn’t doing too well at the box office, so I’m not holding my breath for episode 2. But I hope if they do one it’s about B.A. trying to stop the children’s center from getting shut down. And they damn well better get into his love of milk.

[ratings]

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I remember seeing a preview screening of SMOKIN’ ACES, and even those I-will-stand-in-line-for-several-hours-to-see-literally-any-piece-of-garbage-movie-as-long-as-it-is-free passholes seemed to hate it. But I have to admit I mostly enjoyed it because it had so many funny and audacious moments peeking out from beneath the big mess of a so-called story. The movie really doesn’t work, but I wanted it to because there were some real good parts. That’s what I think. And in the ensuing years I honestly haven’t met one single person who would give it that much.

So as the world’s #1 SMOKIN’ ACES fan it is my duty to review this DTV followup, produced and storied by Joe Carnahan, written by two guys who were his assistants on the original, and directed by P.J. Pesce (FROM DUSK TILL DAWN 3, SNIPER 3, LOST BOYS 2). It’s mostly a lower budget rehash. A $3 million bounty has been put on a guy, this time not a douchey magician but an aging FBI desk jockey named Walter Weed. (He also does card tricks, so that they can hold onto the already tenuous name from part 1.) A bunch of colorful, gimmicky assassins have their names written on the screen and come try to shoot him, there is a bunch of flashy violence, then a sudden mudslide of plot twist exposition, the end. Short and sweet, at least.

It took me a minute to realize Walter was played by Tom Berenger. So… the sniper has become the sniped. I always like him, he’s not just a man’s man but a good actor and a great presence even in crappy movies. But I was bummed they had another character mention that he looked like the guy from PLATOON and SNIPER. Talk about lazy, SCREAM 3 type humor. Fuck that. That doesn’t count as a joke.

The assassins include: a hot seductress chick who switches between lingerie and a burqa; unlicensed freestyle brain surgeon Vinnie Jones; the evil master of disguise guy I forgot about from the first one; some members of the Tremor family. If you saw part 1 you might agree that the highlight was the Tremor Brothers, three heavily armed redneck lunatics who looked and acted like extras from a MAD MAX rip-off. Darwin Tremor went on to play Captain Kirk, and Jeeves Tremor was in, uh, WILD HOGS, so Lester Tremor returns with a sister, a fat brother and a dad played by Michael Parks (you know, Earl McGraw in various Tarantino movies). The Tremors provide the biggest laugh when they steal a cannon from the circus and fire an explosives-strapped clown through the side of the building.

The building, by the way, is a fully stocked bunker hidden beneath a jazz club. The agent who runs the place also  tends bar and plays saxophone.

It gets to the climax surprisingly fast, and despite some bad CGI explosions it’s funny to see such all out mayhem in an enclosed space. Parks smacks one of his sons on the head for using an RPG indoors. Not a close range weapon, he explains. In retrospect maybe the bunker should’ve been built beneath a heavily guarded fortress rather than a public dining area where the assassins are allowed to come in freely and hang out. But hindsight is 20/20 I guess.

The end makes you think, “Oh, so you guys saw THE USUAL SUSPECTS too?” but then there’s a little twist on that, so it left me surprisingly satisfied. Also nice to see Ernie Hudson coming after Berenger again – it’s a THE SUBSTITUTE class reunion.

Re-reading my review of the first one I remember that as ridiculous and excessive as it was it also had a little bit of weight to it, it made a point of treating at least a few of the characters with respect and showing their deaths as tragic, in a way that kind of messed with an audience’s bloodlust. Don’t expect that here. Wow, I just realized they made a dumbed down version of SMOKIN’ ACES. Welcome to 2010.

But I can’t be mad, it gave me some laughs and that’s the highest expectation I had for it. I’m not gonna try to persuade anybody to rent this, but if you were planning to I say go for it. It’s about what you expect, except maybe a little better. In fact I’d say it’s as good as you could realistically hope a DTV prequel to this particular movie would be. And it ends with an explosive quote from the legendary investigative reporter Seymour Hersh. I don’t remember SNIPER 3 doing that. Never saw LOST BOYS 2.

[ratings]

Let me give a little background so you can compare notes. I was hoping to like this movie, but not predisposed to it. Joe Carnahan wrote and directed, and I’m not a member of the cult of Carnahan yet. I liked NARC okay but to be frankly honest I didn’t understand why everybody made such a big deal about it. I thought the trailer for this one looked insane in a good way, but usually hate these hyperactive showoffy everybody-look-at-me type approaches to filmatism. There was clearly a higher than usual probability of Guy Ritchieness. Or CRANKitude. Or, gulp, DOMINOism. Going in I felt like there was a good chance I would love it and an equal or greater chance that I would want to kill it.

The opening scene has FBI agents Ray Liotta (why the fuck did they cancel SMITH?) and Ryan Reynolds (why the fuck did they cancel BLADE?) in a van staking out an old mafia dude. The dialogue and acting is somewhat naturalistic, the camera is handheld (director code for “gritty crime story and/or police procedural”). It seems serious. But then some giant fonts come on telling us the characters’ names and occupations.

Bad sign, right? Maybe even a dealbreaker, tying to pull that TRAINSPOTTING shit at this late date. But here’s the thing: it’s not a freeze frame. They write the names on the screen BUT THEY DON’T FREEZE THE FRAME! No avid farts either. And they hold the shots for a reasonable amount of time. I don’t think I ever saw this combination of styles before. The editing in this movie does not necessarily appear to have been done under the influence of pixie sticks, it serves the story well. As soon as I realized they had written the names on the screen without freezing, I was sold on the movie. It got me.

Then when they introduced the other characters they freeze framed on all of them. God damn it. But that’s the way things go these days.

SMOKIN’ ACES is a big fuckin mess, but mostly on purpose. The plot for the most part is this: Jeremy Piven plays a mafia-connected Vegas magician named Buddy “Aces” Israel, whose lawyer played by Booger (RAY) is currently putting together a deal for him to turn state’s evidence. The mobster he’s turned on has apparently put a million dollar bounty on Israel, so we follow various hitmen and women who are trying to kill him as well as these two agents trying to bust the mob.

That part I liked. There is also a whole mess of overly complicated backstory and ending revelation nonsense. It’s as convoluted as Steven Seagal’s recent DTV works and explained in big awkward chunks of dialogue, SILENT HILL style. To be honest I was too stupid to follow all of it but I bet if I understood it I would still be against it.

The cast includes (but is not limited to) Andy Garcia as the FBI chief, Common (from the Gap ads) as some guy who works for Piven, the singer Alicia Keys as a hitwoman, Taraji “I dropped the P now” Henson (HUSTLE & FLOW) as her feminist partner, Jason Bateman (TW2) as a hilariously cold-sored loser lawyer, Peter Berg as some guy, Martin Henderson from TORQUE, etc. The whole cast is good with the one exception being Ben Affleck as a bail bondsman who stresses his Boston accent and dresses kind of the way Andrew Dice Clay does now, with a big hat and everything. Honestly I got nothing against Affleck, he is a charming guy and whatever but he is just not convincing as a tough guy (I mean seriously, a bail bondsman?) and his persona is not one you can accept in this role. It’s laughable. But…

If you are already planning on seeing this movie then skip this paragraph because it’s gonna SPOILER all over the best scene in the movie. If you are planning to skip it you can keep reading because I’m gonna bring out the big guns. See, Affleck brings together a couple guys who are gonna make a play for this bounty on Piven. He makes a bunch of tough guy speeches that explain all the backstory and what not. He meets with a lawyer. He comes up with a plan for sneaking into the hotel where Piven is hiding out. In a parking lot, he opens up his hatchback to show his guys the uniforms he rented, exactly like the ones the hotel security wear. Okay, so here’s how it’s gonna go down, he starts explaining. While he’s going through it, an El Camino drives past them, blaring Motorhead or some shit. He ignores it, but then the El Camino starts to back up, so the music gets louder, completely drowning him out. It seems like a movie joke, he keeps telling his plan but we don’t hear it because it’s drowned out by the music. But then machine guns fire out of the windows and fill Affleck and his two accomplices full of holes. The savages responsible are the Tremor brothers, who look and act like they stepped out of ROAD WARRIOR into this movie by accident. After killing these three, one of them takes a sharpie and marks three hatches on his lip, both a body count and a Hitler mustache. He also carves it into the roof of his car for posterity. Then two of the Tremor brothers wrestle each other like pitbulls while the other one plays with Ben Affleck’s corpse, making him mouth that he forgives them and will see them in Heaven. It is one of those rare scenes where for a couple minutes straight you can’t help but think, “Holy shit, am I really sitting in a theater watching this?” Even if you don’t like the movie overall, you gotta admit that this scene is an instant classic. It’s like Samuel L. Jackson’s famous death scene in DEEP BLUE SEA except that this is Affleck, you WANT him to die early and you can’t believe you got so lucky. By the way, thank you for reading this paragraph, those other guys who didn’t read it are a bunch of sissies. Fuck those guys.

Hello again, friend. If you are just joining us from non-spoilerland, you missed my explanation of my favorite characters in the movie, the Tremor Brothers. Since the ’90s there have been alot of horrible movies trying to depict cool hitmen. They have tried alot of different ways (usually involving skinny ties and references to pop culture) but I don’t think anybody has done hitmen who appear to believe they live in a post-apocalyptic wasteland. Until now. These dirty beasts wear goggles, pads, chains, no shirts, they have obscene tattoos, they carry flares and chainsaws, they roar much more than they talk. We hear that they are redneck neo-nazis, but the way they act they might as well be completely free of politics or knowledge of human systems, neanderthals given access to automatic weapon technology millions of years ahead of schedule. Any time they were on screen I couldn’t stop laughing, and after their great scene that you didn’t read about in that last paragraph there was no way I could completely turn against the movie, even when it wasn’t working.

But more often than not it does work. Everybody gets good bits. Taraji Henson has a really funny rant about women she considers skanks. Jason Bateman is only in about two scenes, but gets the biggest non-Tremor laughs of the movie. He sounds like he was up all night yelling and I don’t believe he ever wears pants in the movie. Piven gets so sweaty and coked up that it makes your heart beat fast just looking at him. There is some funny shit about the rock star lifestyle of a magician. His number two guy almost seems like they cast the real life road manager to some rock band or rapper.

Of course you got the usual problem of a movie like this, there are so many characters that nobody gets to do a full movie star’s amount of business. But because of the actors and to a lesser extent the script, they manage to endear some of these characters to you. I really liked Ray Liotta, Ryan Reynolds, and the pair of hitwomen, I was rooting for all of them to make it out okay. And I think Reynolds deserves special recognition, like maybe a ribbon or a pin or something. Because we all knew Liotta could play a role like this, but Reynolds (the closest thing to a lead in the movie) is still proving himself. I liked him in the not-as-good BLADE movie but here he mostly steps away from that smartass thing he’s so good at and pulls off more of a straight role. Way to go bud.

The movie gets real fuckin violent. Alot of people get shot. There is a huge shootout in a regular sized elevator. The gun sounds are more realistic than usual so it gets pretty tense. We are having fun, there is alot of humor and silly gimmicky characters, even a master of disguise. This is one of those movies where not only are the characters a bunch of arrogant pricks, but the movie itself seems to think it’s hot shit. And there are times here and there where that cockiness is not earned. For example, those freeze frames I mentioned earlier. You have to wonder who they think they’re impressing with that corny shit. What made them think that was gonna be hip in 2006? I mean, TRAINSPOTTING was ten years ago, dude. They did that on both OUT FOR A KILL and SUBMERGED, let’s retire it for a while. There is also one sped up driving scene with cheesy guitars and beats. It’s like an old man wearing an eyebrow ring.

But I think the thing that overcomes all this, that makes the movie work for me, is that when a character dies it’s sad. And sometimes it takes time. People sit next to dying people to comfort them, or worry that someone they care about has been shot in all this mayhem, try to find them to make sure they’re okay. It’s not just “ha ha, his head got blown off.” Even in this over-the-top, jokey story, Carnahan treats his characters as real and his violence as bad. This way the movie may be too cool but it avoids being too cool for school. It still goes to summer school at the very least.

But there is certainly enough in here to annoy many people, and you can’t deny that it has similarities to a LOCK STOCK AND TWO SMOKING BARRELS type movie and all the horrible shit that came after that one. I wouldn’t say it was very Tarantino because thankfully there is no dialogue that seems to be aping him. Maybe you could argue that the eclectic selection of music on the soundtrack is trying to be like him (although I wouldn’t have expected even Tarantino to put a Skull Snaps song in a movie).

On the surface maybe it’s like LOCK STOCK but I think its soul is more like WAY OF THE GUN. A movie that covers territory others have famously covered, but manages to put its own spin on it, depite being weighed down by its clumsy and unnecessary attempts at a complex narrative. I think WAY OF THE GUN is a very flawed movie but I still enjoy going back and watching it every once in a while. Only time will tell if SMOKIN’ ACES will have a similar future. But is it worth checking out if you like this sort of shit? Lord knows I checked it out, and did not regret the checking out of it. Therefore I must conclude that it was and will continue to be worth checking out.

Originally published at Aint-It-Cool-News: http://www.aintitcool.com/node/30913

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