From the beginning on it keeps dropping hints about what  might be up. A sinister past for Zahn? Maybe it’s straight up and this scary couple here are killers? Or this nice couple? Or the other couple? You’ll have alot of theories throughout and as long as you consider the correct one at some point you can claim you figured it out and defeated the movie. The writer/director is David Twohy, famed chronicler of Riddick. It’s another solid B-movie notch on his belt – nothing transcendent, but effective and fun, with some clever touches.

You hear right away that Zahn is a screenwrtiter and you think uh oh… director stand-in. Could get self-indulgent. Could get embarrassing. Does he think we care about his Hollywood problems? But it turns out to be mostly self-effacing, at least the way Zahn plays it.

Timothy Olyphant might not have been the very best of the DIE HARD villains, and he really didn’t work for that HITMAN thing, but he’s generally pretty good, and here’s one where his presence and performance really elevate the movie. He plays a guy they run into on the hike who helps them get past a scary part on a cliff. Next thing you know he introduces them to his girlfriend and the two couples are hiking together.

Because he’s a screenwriter they talk about movies a little bit, and you get some postmodern business where they’re talking about red herrings and stuff… you get it? Because this is a movie we’re watching, and it– well, I think you get. I thought this was kind of funny because I seem to remember Olyphant had to do that in SCREAM 2 also. But here they don’t lay it on too thick. Olyphant’s got a real good character that keeps you guessing – he seems kind but cruel, menacing but goofy. Sometimes he seems like kind of a dumbass, sometimes like a mastermind setting up traps. He claims to be a badass special ops guy, tells some stories, and it’s said twice that he’s “hard to kill.” Whatever he really is he knows his camping shit and his bowhunting, so it’s got that classic city boy/country boy tension. You know, this guy might be a murderer, and if so he’ll have all these skills that I can’t compete with. Or he might not be a murderer, but he’ll make me look like a sissy, because I don’t know how to set up a tent or whatever.

Harry Knowles wrote in his DVD column, “I really liked about 3/4s of this movie, and then it made me want to flip it off.” I don’t get it because the part that he is rudely gesturing at is clearly the part of the movie that makes it original. Also he doesn’t specify if he wanted to do a full-on double flip off or just one handed, or why it is that he wanted to do this but did not actually achieve it. Anyway, I’m gonna have to SPOILER this shit so please abandon this review if you haven’t seen it yet. 100% spoiler material from here on out.
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The genius of the switcheroo is that it convinced me it was a fair trade. Okay, so I was going along with this couple, and suspicious of Olyphant, but to learn that he’s actually the victim here is kind of a relief. It’s like okay, good – I wanted to root for this guy anyway. And his girlfriend seems so nice, it would be sad if he was a psycho and she’s one of these trapped-in-a-relationship helpless girls. This is good news. Plus, he has that special forces training, right? And he’s “really hard to kill.” Before that was a threat hanging over our head, now we get to switch sides and say, “Shit, bring out the special forces training!” We get to wish for asskicking instead of dread it.

I mean, I liked those two enough that I briefly considered if it was possible to make a sequel with them. But that doesn’t make any sense, unless it was the same characters in an unrelated adventure that’s the first part of a planned trilogy. But I doubt that’s something David Twohy would ever be interested in doing.

So many thrillers leave the big reveal for the very end. I like how this one comes out earlier – it re-arranges everything and sets the stage for a big chase. And at the same time it’s using flashbacks to explain what’s really been going on it also sets up a new romantic subplot that makes the movie end on a surprisingly sweet note. I feel like you gotta admire the construction of it, the way it tricks you, leaving out the beginning or ending of a conversation so it seems totally different when you see it in context later on. It’s like a Mad Magazine fold-in!

Anyway, a solid, enjoyable thriller. We need some of these every once in a while. Good work Twohy.

[ratings]

First off let me say that I am not an expert on religion although I found and accepted the lord jesus christ while i was in the can and have since turned my life around to become a Positive Writer and critic of Cinema as well as to overcome the shit out of alcoholism. I am not a catholic or anything, so I don’t know a whole lot about saints and popes and all this type of shit. I never really got into all the technical stuff beyond praying, positivity, etc.

Point is, I liked this messenger movie. Now I’m not saying its perfect. In fact if I were to give it a 10, it would be on a scale of 1-15 with 1 being Halloween Curse of Michael Meyers and 15 being, of course, Bruce Willis’s Die Hard. I think Messenger will be very controversial and for one reason. You see, a lot of dudes don’t like to see a pretty young gal who has an opinion, let alone a pretty young gal who has an opinion that she is a messenger from god who is going to lead an army and crown a new king and all this.

The pretty young gal of course is Joan of Arc, or Jean of Arc as she’s called in this movie if I may nitpick. Now this gal is really the heart of the picture and whether or not you enjoy the movie is based on what you think about her. Maybe this gal that plays Jean of Arc is a little too into it sometimes, but for the most part I liked the way she did it. She seems like a total loon just like the real Joan of Arc must have, whether or not she was. She is pretty and delicate but also tough and often covered in blood. Although later on she looks like Eddie whatsisdick, the kid from Terminator part 2.

What I like is that she is really crazed, her eyes bugging out, a tenuous grip on the realities of war and clinging onto her banner instead of a sword. She’s a warrior and a good leader and stategist but also kind of a prude, slapping motherfuckers for swearing the lords name in vein, panicking if the soldiers don’t get confessed every time they cut a dude’s head off. There is more jokes in this movie than you might expect.

The opening scene is the best part of the movie, with a young Jean of Arc running around skipping in the meadows yelling, “It’s wonderful! It’s wonderful!” I have been around the block a few times so personally I wasn’t too surprised when suddenly the village is set on fire, everybody gets killed and raped and eaten by wolves. This is a pretty good way to introduce the story.

Needless to say, Jean of Arc isn’t thinking its all that wonderful anymore and next thing you know shes a legendary badass with messages from god who gets to lead the army against those fucking english. You might say she’s a perky young gal, ’cause when she gets killed with an arrow, she pulls the fucker out, gets back up and goes and starts taunting the motherfuckers that did it to her. She wakes up her army and tells them to just up and storm the castle, then she’s so cocky she struts in there wearing a sweater instead of armor, and doesn’t even draw her sword until she’s in the middle of the fucking mayhem. After the deed is done she’s soaked from head to toe in other motherfuckers blood and she goes, whoah… wait a minute… this is fucked up, man.

Now at this point in the movie I’m thinking yes, God really fucked this gal over bad in my opinion. He tells her to go to war, then he tells her why the fuck you did that, lady? And the poor gal doesn’t know what to do and then they set her on fire.

For Jean of Arc, its not for sure what failed her. Maybe God failed her, setting her up as the fall guy (or martyr). Maybe organized religion failed her (my opinion) by setting her on fire for following her own idea of religion instead of some guy with a fancy hat. Or maybe the gal was schizophrenic and just happened to be really good at what she did, but her luck ran out after a while. This movie made me really wonder what the real Joan was like, and what she really did. I’m not sure what all these dudes were trying to say with the movie but it made me give it some thought as well as entertaining me for about three or four hours.

[ratings]

In fact this is a lot like a Die Hard movie except in a cartoony comic book space world instead of a building. Instead of talking to a cop on a walkie talkie, he just talks to his mom on the phone, and instead of terrorists there’s this big ball of fire hurtling toward the earth that turns light to dark, life to death, sometimes has a giant skull for a face, eats missiles and sattelites, and calls himself Mr. Shadow during phone calls.

It’s a pretty simple plot. There are these four stones that combined with a perfect being called “the fifth element” can stop the ball of fire. These stones are in Egypt but then these fat robot guys come down from space and take them away for safe keeping. But then 300 years later they try to bring them back but their ship gets blown up by these muppet dog men. But the government finds a glove inside the ship and they use it to construct the perfect being, a hot orange headed gal named Leloo. So then she and a priest and Korben Dallas have to pretend they won this contest and go to the space hotel and the rocks are inside the belly of a singer so after she dies they take them out of the belly and there is a shoot out so they bring them to Egypt and do the whole ritual and whatnot.

The appeal of this picture is mainly visual. It’s a real spectacle like some artsy fartsy comic book some frenchy would do. Bruce doesn’t joke too much and he gets some corny lines like, “There are some very good words in V: valiant, vulnerable, very beautiful.”

But let’s face it the man looks cool even if a little gay. He’s got blond hair and he wears arm warmers. Later in the movie after the space opera there is a big shootout, so he is right at home in space.

Now this Leloo is a pretty young gal with freaky ass hair like Lola in Run Lola Run. She’s played by 1999 Outlaw Award Honorable Mention for Best Badass female Milla Jovovich from The Messenger and she seems completely real, hopping around like some kind of animal blurting out crazy japanese or some shit. See she’s this “perfect being” reconstructed by scientists, so she has to use computers to learn about earth culture, and she only speaks “the divine language.”

Now I might be imagining this but I seem to remember hearing a story about how this movie was made, I believe this girl was a wild child that they found out in the jungles of south america or something, they dressed her up and let her loose on the set and just filmed whatever she did. Now some would say this is cheating as far as acting like an alien goes and that’s probaly why she wasn’t eligible for an oscar for this piece. However if you’ve seen The Messenger story I think her english has improved quite a bit after being out in civilization for a while and she seems to be learning all the social rules, how to stand up straight and eat food properly and what not, although you can still see she’s a little crazy, a little wild. But I hope she is happy living out in the concrete jungle. Kind of a shame really, I think like Tarzan or King Kong this will inevitably lead to tragedy but what the hell, the little jungle girl makes a damn good Leeloo in my opinion.

There’s a lot of comedy type shenanigans in the movie that I don’t think are very good. There are three different parts where people faint, if that gives you an idea. At the end the president tries to talk to Bruce’s mom on the phone but she doesn’t believe he’s the president, and it’s just awful as far as being funny. But Leeloo is funny. And there is this scene, Leeloo has just been created in the lab but the scientists and soldiers are just busting her balls so she decides to just haul ass out of there, and the cops chase after her. Funny thing is, they know she’s this alien being just created in the lab two minutes ago, but they call her “lady” and get mad at her for not having an ID. Fuckin pigs man. Nothin changes in 300 years.

The casting in this movie is good. Not just Bruce and jungle girl, but they got this HUGE motherfucker Tommy “Tiny” Lister playing the president. This is a dude I would vote for in my opinion. There’s also this goofball playing Rhuby Rod, a superstar dj that dances around, sings, rhymes, and dresses like a lady. When he’s reporting live from the scene of a terrorist attack all he says is “Omigod, omigod, omigod, omigod.” Rest of the time he’s spinning around, going “bzzzt,” “super green super green.” I don’t know WHAT the fuck this freak is blathering about but I’m not surprised that shit is popular in the future. I mean look at Pokeyman.

There’s also Emannuelle Jean-Baptiste Zorg, right hand man to the evil ball of fire. This guy’s such a prick that when his adviser tells him they’re worried about the economy and want him to consider laying off 500,000 workers, he says, “Fire one million.” He has a hitler type haircut and wears a fancy plastic thing on his head, but he talks like Andy Griffith. This guy turns out to be a puss, though. His big scene where he almost dies – and I’m not joking about this – he’s sitting at a table flapping his big yap and then he chokes on a cherry. Like a true super villain he just barely survives that one by the skin of his teeth. But then he gets blown up by muppets before he even meets Bruce. And I mean why should Bruce have to bother with this pansy anyway.

It’s a goofy movie, but it’s a beautiful movie. It’s like if you take Die Hard, plug it into a wall, paint it blue and red and teach it how to fly, that’s the fifth element. You know what I’m talkin about.

[ratings]

The plot isn’t that bad. Milla Jovovich, who is still gorgeous even after leaving Luc Besson and becoming integrated into society, plays some kind of security agent or something in a dress. (Not sure.) She wakes up naked in the shower of a mansion with no memory. Some army goons rush in and bring her along with them into a secret underground chamber to investigate, even though she doesn’t remember how to help them.

Okay so I am not really backing my claim that the plot isn’t that bad. Well it turns out that before she lost her memory (I never understood how) she was undercover, living in the mansion to guard the secret entrance to this underground facility “the hive” where a realistically sinister corporation performs illegal genetic experiments. But somebody let loose a deadly virus, the computer put the place in lockdown, and all the scientists and dogs inside were turned into zombies. Also some monster comes out at the end.

Where the not that bad part comes in is that while the team of toughs (including 2000 Outlaw Award Winner Michelle Rodriguez) try to contain the virus, the computer senses that they will be infected and spread the virus to the city, so it contains them. And then Milla starts to get back bits of her memory which make her slowly piece together who released the virus and why.

I mean I’m not claiming its great but it’s a structure that could’ve been interesting with skilled filmatism. Instead they hired the dude that did “Mortal Kombat” and “Event Horizons” and apparently asked him if there was anyway he could make something alot worse. There is no tension because you don’t care about the characters and things are not staged to give you a sense of geography, of how fucked these people are when the doors close on them.

It just doesn’t feel like a real movie. I like looking at Milla and Michelle Rodriguez is pretty cool, even when she has nothing at all to do. But otherwise none of the actors have any presence. They even got that idiot from The Crow Part 3 in one of the lead roles. The sets are mostly storage closets with pipes. If this was shot in hollywood it’s an amazing facsimile of Canada. If it was shot with a hollywood budget, it sure looks like Steve Norrington’s “Death Machine” on less imagination.

At first I thought the computer was going to be the only interesting character. It manifests itself as a hologram of a little british girl. But the idea of a computer that makes snide comments doesn’t hold up. I guess it kinda worked in Knight Rider, but that was a long time ago.

All the attempted scares are cheats. There is a part where Milla is being chased by mutant dobermans. The lab goes totally silent – until the camera changes angles to reveal the dogs behind her. Suddenly they are panting and growling up a storm. This pattern is repeated several times within that sequence, that something is dead silent until it is revealed and suddenly it can’t contain itself.

There is exactly one shot that is worth watching in this movie and it was already in the trailer. Milla sees one of the mutant dobermans jumping through a window. So she turns around, runs up the wall, spins back around and kung fu kicks the dog in the head, mid-air. I must admit I had to rewind that part. If only the rest of the movie had been that stupid it would’ve been easier to sit through.

When my friend loaned me the screener of this picture, he mentioned the dogkicking shot, and one where you see the side of one of Milla’s boobs. I was surprised to find that those really were the only two memorable things about the movie.

The best thing I can say about this one is that it didn’t seem as long as Final Fantasy.

[ratings]