Review #1,475: 'The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part' (2019)

Before Phil Lord and Christopher Miller surprised everybody with one of the best films of 2014, the idea of a movie based on a toy line seemed like a rather hopeless idea. Yes, the building blocks and miniature figures of Lego have been adored by both children and adults alike for decades, but they are still produced by a company whose main focus is naturally on your wallets. It felt inevitable that The Lego Movie would be a soulless feature-length advertisement, but not only did it feature some of the most eye-popping CG animation in recent memory (which also felt hand-crafted), it also melted our hearts by taking the action into the real world, where we discover that events are being conjured by the imagination of a young boy. His father, an avid collector played by Will Ferrell, had forgotten the true meaning of playtime. Lego, after all, is about whatever you want it to be.

The Lego Movie wasn't just great, it was awesome. It was also unfairly snubbed by the Academy, but with a worldwide box-office gross of just shy of $500 million, Lord and Miller's film was a huge hit and seemingly the beginning of a lucrative new big-screen franchise. The Lego Batman Movie was next, successfully capitalising on the appeal of Will Arnett's supporting character and opening up Lego's own DC universe. The juggernaut started to creak and show signs of fatigue with The Lego Ninjago Movie however, which arrived the same year as Batman, so the brand was allowed a bit of time to breathe before its next instalment. The big question is does The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part steer this yellow-tinged universe back on course, or has it burnt itself out? The good news is that this sequel is far more the former than the latter, but despite the skills of Lord and Miller on the screenplay (Mike Mitchell has moved in to direct), it does suffer slightly from sequelitis.

The end of The Lego Movie saw the arrival of the real-world family's young girl on the playing field, and with her comes unicorns and Duplo, both unwelcome arrivals in the world built up by the young boy. As a result, Bricksburg has become Apocalypseburg, a Mad Max-esque wasteland turned to dust by the invading Duplo aliens. While Wyldstyle/Lucy (Elizabeth Banks) finds the wastelands a perfect place in which to brood and gaze seriously into the distance, Emmet (Chris Pratt) maintains an upbeat attitude, enthusiastically purchasing his morning coffees and listening to remixes of his favourite song, Everything Is Awesome. Despite being plagued by visions of Armageddon, Emmet builds Lucy their dream home, but their attempts to live a normal life are scuppered by the arrival of intergalactic traveller Sweet Mayhem (Stephanie Beatriz), a mini-doll from the 'Systar System' who has come to take the strongest leader away to marry Queen Watevra Wa'Nabi (Tiffany Haddish). Naturally, that leader is Batman, and he along with Lucy, Benny (Charlie Day), MetalBeard (Nick Offerman) and Unikitty (Alison Brie), find themselves kidnapped and taken to another galaxy.

The premise sounds fun and that's precisely what it is. It maintains the madcap energy of the first film and brings back memorable characters, throwing in more meta-jokes and visual gags than you can shake a stick at. But The Lego Movie was fun and so much more, and Lord and Miller really set the bar high for any future sequels. The Second Part keeps the family thread going, this time with Mom (Maya Rudolph) trying to keep the peace between older son and younger daughter, but doesn't bring anything new to the table. One of the funnest aspects of the original was tying to keep up the amount of characters from both pop culture and real life showing their faces, but the supporting cast seems much thinner this time around. There's a joke about Marvel not returning the calls, and in fact no characters from the world of Disney show their faces. More focus could have been given to other DC figures who show up, particularly Channing Tatum's Superman and Jonah Hill's Green Lantern, who both seem to be having a great time behind the microphone. It's still a rollicking ride, and it only seems like a slight let-down because, somehow, we have come to expect something special from these Lego romps. The film boasts a new catchy song called, um, Catchy Song, which warns 'This song's gonna get stuck inside your head." And in your head it will certainly remain, but the rest of the movie sadly won't.


Directed by: Mike Mitchell
Voices: Chris Pratt, Elizabeth Banks, Will Arnett, Tiffany Haddish, Stephanie Beatriz, Maya Rudolph
Country: Denmark/Norway/Australia/USA

Rating: ***

Tom Gillespie

Review #1,458: 'Aquaman' (2018)

After a cameo in Zack Snyder's 2016 car crash Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice and a team-up appearance in 2017's equally disastrous Justice League, the time feels right for one of comic-book lore's goofiest superheroes, Aquaman, to receive his own standalone origin story. After all, Jason Momoa's hulking, tattooed fish-whisperer was one of the surprising standouts of DC's flop team-up event, and with the campy orange-and-green costume replaced by a long-hared and shirtless Kiwi Adonis, the character can now be played straight-faced. Wonder Woman proved that DC could produce quality with the right director pulling the strings, and they pulled off a coup with James Wan, a filmmaker whose talents I have long admired despite many of his films missing the mark for me. So it pains me to say that Aquaman is yet another tonally uneven and bloated effort from Warner Bros. that never quite knows if it wants to make you laugh or feel, with a marathon running time which, by the time is gets round to its umpteenth climax, is about as welcome as a fart in a wetsuit.

In 1985, lighthouse keeper Tom Curry (Temuera Morrison) comes across a beautiful woman washed up on the shores of Maine. The woman is Atlanna (Nicole Kidman), a princess from the underwater nation of Atlantis who has escaped an arranged marriage and a gang of Atalantian stormtroopers. Tom takes her in and the two naturally fall in love, resulting in the birth of the half-Atlantian, half-human Arthur. When her enemies come calling, Atlanna must return to the ocean, leaving Tom to bring up young Arthur on his own. The baby grows up to be the beer-swilling gym-devotee we saw in Justice League, but there is trouble a-brewin' down in the depths. Arthur's half-brother Orm (Patrick Wilson) wants to unite the kingdoms of Atlantis and wage war on the surface, who have been polluting their home for decades. But Orm knows that he will never be accepted as the true leader while Arthur, who has no desire to take the throne, is still alive. Mera (Amber Heard), the daughter of King Nereus (Dolph Lundgren), comes to warn Arthur, but they don't stand a chance against the might of Atlantis without the Trident of Atlan, a magical weapon buried somewhere in the Sahara desert.

Aquaman certainly isn't short of ideas; the problem is that Wan doesn't quite know how to cram them all in. We are taken across continents on land and to multiple kingdoms under the water. With a desire to capture the adventurous magic of Romancing the Stone and Indiana Jones, the film actually trips over its own ambition, squeezing in side characters such as Atlantean Mr. Miyagi Vulko (Willem Dafoe) and the fearsome pirate Black Manta (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II), as well as a variety of underwater races we are expected to remember and littering the story with clunky CGI smackdowns. Wan crafts a colourful, vivid world, full of giant sea-horses and advanced technology, but it shares more in common with the weightless. computer-generated locations of The Phantom Menace than the tangible flamboyance of Black Panther's Wakanda. Yet all of this could be considered a mere niggle had the leads been up to the task, but Momoa and Heard have all the chemistry of two strangers making awkward small-talk in a lift. Momoa is an impressive specimen and possesses the charisma to bring this character to life (see Justice League), but here he is denied a moment to have that quiet moment of reflection or to reveal the flaws to his character that would help make him interesting. A wheezing, confused and sickly bore.


Directed by: James Wan
Starring: Jason Momoa, Amber Heard, Willem Dafoe, Patrick Wilson, Nicole Kidman, Dolph Lundgren, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Temuera Morrison
Country: Australia/USA

Rating: **

Tom Gillespie

Review #1,433: 'Dead End Drive-In' (1986)

After the global success of low-budget exploitation flick Mad Max, the Australian film industry underwent a revolution, built mainly around fast cars, a rebellious attitude, and a satirical look at the 'dangerous' youth of the day, all within a post-apocalyptic, near-future setting. One of the directors at the forefront of the Ozploitation movement was Brian Trenchard-Smith, the man behind such cult classics as Turkey Shoot, BMX Bandits and The Man from Hong Kong. The director referred to his best work, Dead End Drive-In, as a mixture of Mad Max and Luis Bunuel's The Exterminating Angel, and although he was clearly over-reaching by comparing his film to two established classics, there's much more going on here than punk teenagers, souped-up classic cars and boobs. Yes, Dead End Drive-In is just as concerned with social and economic commentary as it is with loud music, B-movies and vehicles smashing into each other.

In the near-future, society has crumbled amidst economic collapse, and small gangs of mohawked ne'er-do-wells scour the cities for car parts. With manufacturing at an all-time low, cars are now a commodity so criminals cruise the streets looking for accidents in the hope of swiping rare parts for profit or to pimp out their own method of transportation, while rival salvage companies battle it out for scraps. Workout junkie Crabs (Ned Manning) has little trouble getting his hands on an impressive ride - his burly older brother possesses a 1956 Chevy - and he manages to persuade his sibling to loan him the chick-magnet for a date with his girlfriend Carmen (Natalie McCurry). A night at the flea-pit local cinema followed by a night of steamy passion is clearly on Crabs' mind, but this particular drive-in has a little secret. Surrounded by high fences and S-roads that don't permit walking, the drive-in is actually a concentration camp that keeps its inhabitants - horny, trouble-making teenagers - prisoner. While the residents of the graffiti-laden hellhole appear content with their responsibility-free existence of booze, drugs and sex, Crabs does everything he can to persuade the creepy owner (Peter Whitford) to help him escape.

Described as a sort-of offbeat Mad Max clone upon its release, the comparisons to George Miller's grindhouse favourite seem a little lazy. While both films share a fetish for automobiles and a concern for the economic climate, the only other similarities are the accents and a grungy aesthetic. Dead End Drive-In doesn't litter the story with action scenes, and although it is book-ended by some impressive stunt-work, the film takes it down a gear during the middle section to explore the madness of Crabs' situation. The idea of a makeshift concentration camp for the apparently disenchanted youth is interesting enough, but the crazy idea that the prisoners within the walls are in fact happy to stay lend the film a unique and rather pleasantly maddening tone. If you've ever been stuck within a dream where nobody can understand you, you'll empathise with Crabs' plight, despite his unfortunate nickname. While the dip in pacing may infuriate exploitation fans hoping to see leather-clad warriors of the apocalypse battling it out on jacked-up vehicles, it only increased my curiosity, and while Trenchard-Smith doesn't explore its themes with enough care to make the film truly resonate, Dead End Drive-In is one of the more thought-provoking and off-kilter efforts from the age of Ozploitation.


Directed by: Brian Trenchard-Smith
Starring: Ned Manning, Natalie McCurry, Peter Whitford, Wilbur Wilde
Country: Australia

Rating: ****

Tom Gillespie

Review #1,406: 'Upgrade' (2018)

Leigh Whannell's Upgrade feels like the type of film made for Netflix; a sort of mid-level science-fiction story constructed around one intriguing idea, and bulked up with elements from other, better genre movies. It's also the type of film I would consider for a few seconds whilst flicking through my Netflix queue, before opting for something else with a more compelling premise. Set in the very-near future, the film's main hook comes from a game-changing microchip that, when surgically planted in a willing - or unwilling host - allows body and foreign body to communicate with each other. Of course, it doesn't stop there. The implant can also turn down your nerve endings so you don't feel pain, and - with the host's permission - can fully operate your body and turn you into a hand-to-hand master. This comes in handy for grease monkey Grey Trace (Logan Marshall-Green) when the plot demands he seeks revenge on some baddies.

As well as possessing one of cinema's all-time most ridiculous names, Grey spends his time fixing classic muscle cars and drinking beer. This near-future is complete with iHomes and self-driving cars, but Grey is far more comfortable getting his hands dirty. His wife Asha (Melanie Vallejo), on the other hand, works for one of the big tech companies and has fully embraced this new digital, hands-free world. Opposites do attract however, and Grey invites his wife along to the isolated home of tech genius Eron Keen (Harrison Gilbertson), his most high-profile customer. Eron, who is clearly inspired by Elon Musk, is withdrawn, strange and undeniably brilliant, and also eager to show off his latest invention: a microchip he dubs "a new, better brain." On the journey home, their car experiences a catastrophic error, sending the couple down dark streets before crashing and overturning. Injured, they are then preyed upon a gang of masked criminals, who murder Asha and cripple Grey. Waking up paralysed from the neck down and understandably angry, Grey is offered a solution when Eron makes a rare public appearance at the hospital.

If all of this sounds familiar, it's because you've seen it before in countless other movies. Upgrade's greatest achievement is that it doesn't make you wish you were watching something else, and instead pulls you along into its world. This is mainly down to some spectacular action scenes, which combine well-choreographed hand-to-hand fighting with some nifty camerawork, which bends and turns along with Grey as he dishes out violence with a look of both confusion and excitement splashed cross his face. There's something hilarious about a body acting independently of the face, and Whannell wisely chooses to play up these moments. Marshall-Green is often unfairly referred to as a bargain-bin Tom Hardy (who is currently dealing with his own parasitic second personality in Venom), and while he fails to convince as a leading man, he's clearly enjoying himself. Produced by Blumhouse Productions, who churn out huge hits with incredibly modest budgets, Upgrade is infused with a grainy, B-movie aesthetic that give it an exploitation vibe and slightly grimy feel. I mean that as a compliment, and it's a shame that the excitement generated by the outrageous action scenes couldn't be replicated in the generic beats of the main story.


Directed by: Leigh Whannell
Starring: Logan Marshall-Green, Melanie Vallejo, Harrison Gilbertson, Betty Gabriel, Benedict Hardie
Country: Australia

Rating: ***

Tom Gillespie

Review #1,350: 'Cargo' (2017)

Cinema has been over-saturated with zombie flicks ever since Danny Boyle made them cool again with 2002's 28 Days Later, with everyone from small-time filmmakers hoping to make it in the business to huge production companies tackling the undead, all with varying, but mostly disappointing, results. Even the master himself, George A. Romero, with a new trilogy of apocalyptic horrors failed to manage to breathe any new life into the genre he practically created. But every now and then a film will come along with something new to say, or at least offer a fresh perspective, such as Sang-ho Yeon's Train to Busan from last year, which got by on pure adrenaline and a breakneck pace, as well as placing its characters in an interesting dilemma.

Like Romero's classic Dawn of the Dead, some zombie movies stride to explore deeper concerns. While Dawn made fun of our growing consumerist society, this new effort from directors Ben Howling and Yolanda Ramke, Cargo, turns its eye to white guilt and Australia's treatment of Aboriginals. The already sparsely-populated Outback may seem an odd setting considering the walking dead's real strength lies in their sheer numbers, but Cargo isn't interested in delivering a splatter-fest. Instead, the focus is on a much smaller scale, exploring this brutal terrain through the narrow eyes of a father, Andy (Martin Freeman), and his one year-old daughter. (Plot spoilers follow in the next sentence) After losing his wife, Andy is bitten early on, so he is forced to leave the comforts of the boat he and his family have been sailing on for what must be a long time, in search of a new guardian for his defenceless child.

The government has been nice enough to hand out preparation packs for the population, which include every from a manual to a countdown device to a handy suicide pack. The length of time a character takes to turn is normally decided by their role in the story or the pay packet of the actor, with anyone disposable becoming a rotting lump of gun/baseball bat/crossbow fodder in mere seconds, and those of any importance allowed enough time to say something profound or whisper goodbye to their loved ones before attempting to eat their face. Here, it's much clearer. Infection takes near enough 48 hours to completely take over, with uncontrollable fits and coughing up brown mucus all things to look forward to as your body gives way. On his trek, Andy encounters a young Aboriginal girl named Thoomi (a fantastic Simone Landers), who is on her own quest to locate her wandering dead father. Thoomi and her tribe believe that you turn when your soul is lost, but there are plenty still alive and kicking out there whose souls have long turned rotten.

The dark side of the human race is embodied by Vic (Anthony Hayes), a large, sweaty chap who scavenges whatever he can from the zombies, having executed them after luring them with human bait. Those humans are the Aboriginals, locked up in huge steel cages with fresh meat hung around them to generate a smell. One of these is Daku (the great David Gulpilil), and his tribe is out searching for him. There's a tendency to employ indigenous people to lament our lost spirituality, but here they are perhaps the only ones truly prepared for life without comforts or a large, connected society. As the rest of the world tears itself apart, they band together and welcome others. Cargo still occasionally revels in genre tropes, but carries them out effectively, and an earlier introduction for Thoomi would have done the film wonders. Overall, this is pretty stirring stuff with a strong performance by Freeman, who gets to flex his dramatic muscles for once. Cargo isn't scary because of the snarling zombies, but by playing with our concerns of our loved ones' survival once we are gone.


Directed by: Ben Howling, Yolanda Ramke
Starring: Martin Freeman, Anthony Hayes, Susie Porter, Simone Landers, David Gulpilil
Country: Australia

Rating: ****

Tom Gillespie

Review #1,273: 'The Year Of Living Dangerously' (1982)

Peter Weir's The Year of Living Dangerously is now an Australian classic and, along with the likes of Panic at Hanging Rock and Gallipoli, helped establish Weir as a film-maker to watch our for and eased his inevitable transition to Hollywood. Living Dangerously may now be a more obviously flawed film in 2017 than it was back in '82, but it still retains a sense of raw power stemming from an uncanny sense of place and danger. The setting is Indonesia, 1965, and President Sukarno's grasp on power is quickly fading. It's the eve of his overthrowing by the military and the communist purge that quickly followed, and journalists in Jakarta huddle in sweaty bars, feeding on scraps thrown to them by Sukarno, knocking back beers and chasing tail to pass the time.

The last guy left in a hurry, so young Australian foreign correspondent Guy Hamilton (Mel Gibson) arrives in Jakarta without a single informant or friend to lean on. The diplomats and fellow journalists who inhabit the same bar every night take no pity on him, but sympathetic Chinese-Australian dwarf named Billy Kwan sees something in the handsome, chain-smoking young man and decides to help him. Kwan believes strongly in Sukarno, the President his own people has dubbed the 'Puppet Master' due to his ability to keep the peace between the Communist Party and the military, and that he will save his poverty-stricken people from starvation. As well as setting up a key interview for the young journalist, he also introduces Hamilton to Jill Bryant (Sigourney Weaver), a beautiful assistant working for the British embassy. As the conflict heats up and the stories become juicier and more perilous, Hamilton must choose between his job, his lover and his close friend.

The flaws of The Year of Living Dangerously are more apparent now, 35 years after its release, as the idea of cinema's tendency to 'whitewash' is now more openly discussed. It becomes clear very quickly that the most interesting character in the film is Billy Kwan. He has a much more personal attachment to the events playing out, and proves a more charismatic screen presence than Gibson's blander outsider. He is also played astonishingly well by Linda Hunt, the only actor to win an Academy Award for the playing a character of the opposite sex. When Kwan retreats into the background around the half-way mark, the focus shifts to the blossoming romance between Hamilton and Bryant, and the film becomes far less interesting in the process. However, there are some terrific individual scenes. The initial excitement of shooting a violent protest quickly gets out of hand, and a horrifyingly tense slow-drive through a heavily-armed road-block will leave you holding your breath. Yet it's difficult to shake the feeling that Weir's movie would have been far more absorbing with Kwan as the driving force at its centre.


Directed by: Peter Weir
Starring: Mel Gibson, Sigourney Weaver, Linda Hunt, Bill Kerr, Michael Murphy
Country: Australia/USA

Rating: ***

Tom Gillespie

Review #1,246: 'Alien: Covenant' (2017)

Ridley Scott's ambitious but ultimately flawed Prometheus attempted to somewhat distance itself from the Alien franchise, or at least the silly money-spinner it had become. While very much set within the Alien universe, Prometheus made a crack at some big themes, particularly man's obsession with meeting its maker, but ended up leaving us with far more questions than answers, with Elizabeth Shaw (Noomi Rapace) and the decapitated synthetic David (Michael Fassbender) leaving to find the Engineer's planet to find the answers to the very questions we are left with. After the success of the brilliant The Martian, Scott seems eager to get back into the familiar stalk-and-eat/impregnate routine of his genre re-defining Alien. Indeed, Alien: Covenant is a direct sequel to prequel Prometheus, but Scott seems more interested in straight-up horror than further exploring the deeper themes of its predecessor.

It's 11 years since the Prometheus expedition, and the spaceship Covenant is drifting through space on its way to a distant planet that its crew and passengers hope to colonise. Two thousand colonists lie in stasis, and only the crew are awoken when a stellar neutrino burst almost destroys the ship. As repairs go underway, they pick up a faint radio transmission from an uncharted planet, which sounds suspiciously like John Denver. Following the death of the ship's captain (played by James Franco, who appears for roughly 30 seconds), the newly-promoted Oram (Billy Crudup), against the wishes of second-in-command Daniels (Katherine Waterston), makes the decision to follow the signal in the hope of finding another habitable planet. When they touch down, they find an alien ship, a sea of extraterrestrial corpses, and the planet's seemingly lone inhabitant, the long-haired synthetic David. Soon enough, a couple of crew members become infected by alien spores, and the rest you already know.

1979's Alien, which still has the power to terrify, has little in way of plot or alien action. Its power comes from the simplicity in which its story unfolds, and the fantastic ensemble of actors bringing to life the human interaction between those brief moments of sheer menace. They talked about shitty working conditions and bad pay, and felt like actual people rather than just the clothes they wore. There was something fascinating about watching these blue-collar types, hundreds of years into the future, and seeing that we haven't changed one bit. In Alien: Covenant, characters are defined by the things they say about themselves or their accessories. One of the first things Oram reveals is that he is a man of faith, as if the audience is too stupid to work out for themselves that the story essentially represents humanity's search for God. Chief pilot Tennessee (Danny McBride) is a cowboy because he wears a cowboy hat and, well, his name is Tennessee. Daniels rocks a white vest and a tough, slightly sad demeanour, so we instantly think of Ripley without any actual character development required.

The film spends most of its time having the characters explain the plot to each other. At one point, a character proclaims that so little of what is happening makes sense, and I refuse to believe I'm the only one to spot the glaring irony in this statement. Characters are introduced and killed off before we had the chance to care about them, while most of the audience will still be trying to figure out how all this 'black goo' fits into the overarching story. Thank the Engineers then, for the presence of Michael Fassbender. He was the best thing in Prometheus, and it's no different here. Doubling as both the American-accented synthetic upgrade Walter and his unhinged, English-accented predecessor David, his scenes are the film's eeriest. Scenery is chewed, certainly, and there is a ridiculous, homo-erotically charged moment I won't spoil, but it's only during these moments that Covenant doesn't feel like a re-tread of every other Alien movie there's been, only done worse. Covenant's main problem is that it is trying to explain and expand on a mythos that doesn't require it. In Alien, the alien arrived without explanation and that was part of its appeal. It was a slimy, unpredictable unknown, and perhaps we now know too much.


Directed by: Ridley Scott
Starring: Michael Fassbender, Katherine Waterston, Billy Crudup, Danny McBride, Demián Bichir
Country: UK/USA/Australia/New Zealand/Canada

Rating: **

Tom Gillespie

Review #1,220: 'Kong: Skull Island' (2017)

The title of this latest movie to feature cinema's most famous giant ape, King Kong, refers to the beast's misty and unexplored home in Indonesia, or the Pacific Ocean, or the Indian Ocean, depending on which incarnation you happen to be watching. It's a world known to movie fans to be full of prehistoric or unnaturally gigantic monsters, and things are very much the same in Jordan Vogt-Roberts' entertaining big-budget update. Anyone fearing a retread of the story told back in 1933 and never bettered since can relax, as Kong: Skull Island is less interested in exploring the incredibly fragile relationship between man and nature than it is with smashing helicopters to pieces in front of a gorgeous sunset.

Both a follow-up to 2014's Godzilla and a build-up to the upcoming smack-down cross-over between two of the big screen's most famous abominations, Kong carries on the tone by making its human characters infinitely less interesting than the big guy we all came to see. Early trailers and posters before the film's release teased a tone akin to the great Vietnam War movies, especially Apocalypse Now, but there are little similarities other than the famous shot from Coppola's movie of helicopters flying by a setting sun and the 1973 setting. This is big, dumb fun, and little more, but that is by no means a bad thing. Peter Jackson tried earnestly back in 2005 to tell the traditional story with a mixture of heart and spectacle, with mixed results. It climaxed with the ape's relocation to the mainland and his tragic end at the top of the Empire State Building, but here, once government agents/scientists Bill Randa (John Goodman) and Houston Brooks (Corey Hawkins) seal the required funds and hit the island, we never leave.

At just shy of 2 hours, Skull Island struggles to handle the unnecessarily expansive cast of characters, and boy are they bland. Tom Hiddleston's British Special Forces captain James Conrad (an obvious nod to Heart of Darkness author Joseph Conrad) is the closest thing we have to a lead, but this is only because he is handsome and warns the others of danger. They are escorted by Samuel L. Jackson's Preston Packard, a Lieutenant Colonel in charge of a helicopter squadron called the Sky Devils whose idea of scientific study is to bomb the shit out of the island upon arrival. Among the rag-tag bunch of monkey-food soldiers are the grizzled Cole (Shea Whigham), and Jack Chapman (Toby Kebbell, who also performs the motion-capture for Kong), an eager-to-please young buck with a questionable American accent. In a somewhat baffling move, they also invite photojournalist Mason Weaver (Brie Larson) on a mission you would expect the Army to want to keep quiet.

At one point, I counted three concurrent storylines. Supporting characters such as John Ortiz's Nieves and Tian Jing's San are played by familiar faces but serve absolutely no purpose, and only John C. Reilly's stranded World War II veteran Hank Marlow brings any heart and soul to the story. Yet, Roberts knows how to make carnage look incredibly cool, and this is the meanest, leanest and biggest Kong to date. Helicopters are torn to shreds, a giant octopus (living in fresh water?) is brutally devoured, and soldiers are swallowed whole - Kong doesn't have time to share a tender moment with a beautiful woman lying in his palm. When the action shifts away from the puny humans and to the titular powerhouse, the film is so damn exciting that you can, for a short time, forgive the film's many misgivings and cliches. It's unlikely that the 1933 original will ever be topped, so it's pleasing that Kong: Skull Island at least makes an attempt to try something a little different. For a B-movie dressed up as an A-movie with only one memorable character who isn't simian, it certainly entertains.


Directed by: Jordan Vogt-Roberts
Starring: Tom Hiddleston, Samuel L. Jackson, Brie Larson, John C. Reilly, John Goodman, Corey Hawkins, Toby Kebbell, Shea Whigham
Country: USA/China/Australia/Canada

Rating: ***

Tom Gillespie

Review #1,202: 'Logan' (2017)

For the past 17 years, Hugh Jackman has played X-Man Wolverine nine times. It was the role that made him a star, and he's thanked Fox for having faith in him by sticking by the character regardless of how bad the franchise became. But at the age of 49, Jackman has decided to hang up his claws and trim the sideburns, taking a pay-cut in order to give the character the final send-off he truly deserves. He and director James Mangold, who joined forces to make stand-alone entry The Wolverine in 2013 only to see the studio step in and butcher the final edit, have persuaded Fox to go with an R rating. Whether this is down to the huge success of the wonderfully foul-mouthed Deadpool in 2016 or Fox feeling they owe the actor for his loyalty down the years, the results are pretty astonishing. With Logan, the camera no longer cuts away when Wolverine slices and dices, but captures his animalistic ferocity in all its bloody, decapitating glory.

Logan is a brutal, angry movie, and more than warrants its 'hard' R rating. It's no gimmick, nor is it a cash-in on Deadpool's success. Superhero movies don't need to follow the Marvel formula of good, clean, family-friendly fun, nor DC's preference for muted colours and CGI-overkill, world-threatening set-pieces. In fact, Logan doesn't feel much like a superhero movie at all. Here, the former cage-fighting, time-travelling X-Man (although it isn't entirely clear where the story fits into Fox's ever-confusing timeline) is an old man, dying of some mysterious illness and battling alcoholism and depression. He is bearded, grey, and wrinkling, and his torso covered in grisly scars from some unspoken former battles. When he uses his claws, his knuckles seep with puss. We're in 2029, and all but three mutants are dead. We don't know why, but Logan is intent on living out his remaining days looking after a senile Charles Xavier (Patrick Stewart) with clairvoyant mutant Caliban (Stephen Merchant), working as an Uber limo driver to fund the medicine required to keep Charles' dangerous telepathic seizures in check.

People start to look for Logan. Gabriela Lopez (Elizabeth Rodriguez), a nurse working for corporation Alkali-Transigen, wants him to transport both her and an eleven year girl named Laura (Dafne Keen) to a place in North Dakota called 'Eden'. Logan is also questioned by Transigen's chief of security Donald Pierce (Boyd Holbrook), a cybernetically-enhanced thug who seems to be searching for the little girl. When Gabriela turns up dead and Laura ends up in his care, Logan is forced to take Charles on a road trip to escape Pierce and his Reavers, and to seek out the mysterious Eden. Caliban is abducted by Transigen head Dr. Zander Rice (Richard E. Grant), who forces the albino to use his powers to track down the fleeing mutants and take back Laura. It is revealed that the young girl is one of many mutants experimented on by Rice in the hope of turning them into weapons, and that she possesses the same adamantium claws as Logan.

For a character who has seen and done pretty much everything over the past 17 years, it feels a fitting time to draw the curtains. Knowing that another run-of-the-mill superhero adventure wouldn't do the mutant justice, Mangold has done what no other studio movie has done before and portrays the superhero at the ends of his days, trying to bury the past while haunted by his deeds. While Logan does throw in a couple of exciting - and utterly brutal - set-pieces, this is an incredibly sombre experience. It's about getting old, loneliness, and rediscovering a reason to live. Jackman has never been better, and Keen is a real find. Their shared scenes are touching and often hilarious, and with the presence of the ever-reliable Stewart, the trio form an amusingly dysfunctional family unit. While there is an issue with a bland villain who brings back memories of that horrific climax in X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009), this is a damn near-perfect last hurrah for a character who comic book fans have been hoping would fully unleash his berserker rage for years. Farewell then, Logan aka Wolverine, until the inevitable reboot.


Directed by: James Mangold
Starring: Hugh Jackman, Patrick Stewart, Dafne Keen, Boyd Holbrook, Stephen Merchant, Elizabeth Rodriguez, Richard E. Grant, Eriq La Salle
Country: USA/Canada/Australia

Rating: ****

Tom Gillespie

Review #1,158: 'Hacksaw Ridge' (2016)

Whatever your opinion is of Mel Gibson, the once-Hollywood A-lister turned exile following that infamous drunken rant at the police back in 2006, it's unlikely that any other living director could have told the tender and bloody story of World War II hero and Medal of Honor recipient Desmond Doss with quite the same mixture of visceral horror and religious bent. There have been a myriad of movies recounting the acts of heroism and barbarism that occurred during the conflict, but most fail to stand out or tell their tale in a way that is unique. Gibson has defied his (understandable) haters and crafted a fine piece of work, and a story that will no doubt be compared to the actor/director's own personal plight.

Essentially a movie of two parts, both in terms of tone and quality, screenwriters Robert Schenkkan (HBO's The Pacific) and Andrew Knight (The Water Diviner) take the conventional biopic route by going way back to Doss's childhood living with his mother (Rachel Griffiths) and abusive, alcoholic father (Hugo Weaving) in Virginia. He is raised a Seventh-day Adventist and works in the local church, and as he eventually grows into Andrew Garfield, starts to romance the pretty girl who will later become his wife, Dorothy (Teresa Palmer). These early scenes have a corny gloss to them, like watching a big-budget Lifetime movie with a slightly better script. While the incredibly cute romance between the couple is beautifully played by the two main leads, the movie doesn't really get going until Doss follows his brother in volunteering to fight against the Japanese.

Undeterred by his restrictive religious beliefs, which forbid him to even touch a gun, Doss hopes to do his part by working as a medic. He first must go through boot camp, where he quickly finds himself in hot water with his drill instructor Sgt. Howell (Vince Vaughn) and Captain Glover (Sam Worthington) when revealing himself to be a conscientious objector. Rejecting a ticket home by way of psychiatric discharge, Doss becomes an outcast in his unit and is bullied by his fellow recruits. A stint in army jail and a trial ensues before Doss is eventually allowed to rejoin his squad before they are shipped off to the Pacific. It is during the Battle of Okinawa, and more specifically the mission to secure Maeda Escarpment - nicknamed 'Hacksaw Ridge' - that Doss will prove his worth, while the unrelenting horror of war explodes around him.

Anyone familiar with Gibson's previous work will know what to expect: No punches are pulled in the truly horrific battle scene, which lasts for pretty much the entire second half. Doss rushes somewhat elegantly through exploding heads and young men holding their own guts, as a seemingly endless wave of Japanese screamers lunge at them with rifles and swords. To call this the most disturbing depiction of war would be untrue (Elem Klimov's Come and See will forever hold that title), but it's damn near close. Though the splatter is relentless, it also manages to wear you down psychologically, so you can almost feel the weight of every bullet-ridden body Doss manages to drag to safety. Garfield is terrific, managing to charm with a near-permanent goofy grin that makes it seem like Doss knows and is comfortable with exactly what life expects of him. Somewhat surprisingly, so is Vaughn, who injects what I expected would be a cliched boot camp montage with some laugh-out-loud humour. Bravo then, and welcome back Mel (haven't we forgiven actors for much worse?).


Directed by: Mel Gibson
Starring: Andrew Garfield, Teresa Palmer, Luke Bracey, Hugo Weaving, Sam Worthington, Vince Vaughn, Rachel Griffiths
Country: Australia/USA

Rating: ****

Tom Gillespie

Review #1,132: 'The Proposition' (2005)

Visceral, unrelenting and poetic, John Hillcoat's masterful and incredibly underrated western filters the work of Sergio Leone and Sam Peckinpah through the distinctive bleakness of the Australian outback in the 1880s. It's a yellow-tinged place, drenched in sweat, stench and flies, where white men are still trying to 'civilise' the wild lands and rid it off the Aboriginal people, and outlaws roam the plains causing destruction wherever they go. Written by musician Nick Cave, The Proposition tells a story of race, class, justice and family in a country as unforgiving and harsh as the men who inhabit it.

Following the bloody massacre of the Hopkins family, Captain Stanley (Ray Winstone), a copper given the task of bringing law and order to the land, corners outlaw Charlie Burns (Guy Pearce), a member of the notorious Burns gang. With Charlie is his younger, simple-minded brother Mikey (Richard Wilson), but neither of the men are who Stanley is really searching for. The big prize is the oldest brother Arthur (Danny Huston), a beast of a man with a reputation so fierce that the natives have dubbed the 'Dog Man'. So Stanley makes Charlie a proposition: find and kill his older brother in exchange for a pardon, or Mikey gets hanged on Christmas Day.

This all occurs in the opening scene, and what follows is a tale of two men questioning their own brand of honour, and a journey into the heart of a country where law and order simply don't apply. It soon becomes clear why Stanley has taken to such desperate measures to rid the world of Arthur Burns: he wants to make the land safe for his wife Martha (Emily Watson), who was also friends with the butchered Hopkins clan. Charlie rides off into the wilderness, where hostilities await him at every turns, be it wild Aborigines, bounty hunter Jellon Lamb (John Hurt), or the blistering heat, relentless dust clouds and swarms of flies that come with the territory. For long periods, not much happens at all, but the score by Cave and Warren Ellis injects a melancholic and haunting atmosphere into these quieter moments.

It's a delicate balance between beauty and horror, and the film does not flinch when it comes to violence. From the opening montage of grisly photographs to the exploding head that will undoubtedly catch you off guard, Cave is eager to establish that this is a world built upon violence and atrocity. The Burns gang seem evil for evil's sake; a product of their environment (Hurt's character calls it a 'godforsaken hole'), and The Proposition is one of a few Australian films to journey into the country's heart of darkness, making it a good companion piece to Wake in Fright (1971). The cast are outstanding, in particular Winstone, who gives Stanley a much-needed humanity, and Pearce, who say little but emotes real pain behind those red eyes and rotting teeth. It may be too much to stomach for some people and too slow for others, but there's also a poetic beauty to savour for those who can stomach the brutality.


Directed by: John Hillcoat
Starring: Ray Winstone, Guy Pearce, Danny Huston, Emily Watson, David Wenham, John Hurt
Country: Australia/UK

Rating: *****

Tom Gillespie

Review #1,095: 'Ghostbusters' (2016)

There was talk of a Dan Akroyd/Harold Ramis-scripted Ghostbusters sequel for years, with Colombia Pictures understandably keen to reignite the love showered on what is their most commercially successful franchise. While Akroyd and Ramis had an idea in mind, Bill Murray, going through a career renaissance after his lauded performance in Lost in Translation (2004) and working frequently with Wes Anderson and Jim Jarmusch, was not interested. Then in 2014, Ramis passed away, and all hopes of seeing the original foursome together again died with him. However, it didn't take long for Sony to announce that Paul Feig would be taking the franchise in another direction, and changing the gender of the main cast in the process.

For some, including myself, this announcement was an interesting idea. After all, Feig had handled a female comedy ensemble before with Bridemaids (2011), which was well-received by both critics and audiences, and had a muse in the form of Melissa McCarthy, who he had worked with on The Heat (2013) and Spy (2015). McCarthy and fellow Bridemaids star Kristen Wiig were cast as the leads, and would be supported by Saturday Night Live alums Kate McKinnon and Leslie Jones, completing the titular group of ghost trappers. Yet Feig's vision also inspired one of the ugliest online backlashes in memory, and while fan opposition can always be expected when dealing with a remake of a beloved piece of nostalgia, there was also racism and misogyny, resulting in the film's trailer being voted the most hated in YouTube's history.

Such repugnant trolling only made me want to love the film more, despite my own dislike of what I saw in the trailer and desire to see a childhood favourite well and truly left alone. After a promising and unexpectedly creepy opening, in which a tour guide is chased and attacked by a malevolent glowing goo, and an enjoyable introduction to three of the main characters, Ghostbusters 2016 fails to hit the mark on almost every level. The biggest crime is how tight a leash Feig keeps on Wiig and McCarthy, both wasted here as the 'straight' guys, forced to speak scientific gobbledegook in an attempt to explain the plot, while McKinnon and Jones get to do the goofy stuff to grating effect.

Wiig is Erin Gilbert, a professor hoping to get tenure at Colombia University who tracks down her old pal Abby Yates (McCarthy) after she finds a book they co-authored years earlier about the existence of ghosts selling on Amazon. With ghosts starting to crop up all over the city, it isn't long before Erin is down with Abby's crazy-sounding ideas and, along with the latter's unhinged engineer Jillian (McKinnon), form the Ghostbusters. They hire the handsome but completely stupid secretary Kevin (Chris Hemsworth), and are eventually joined by subway worker Patty (Jones), who offers her 'street smarts' and knowledge of the city to make up for her lack of scientific know-how. The sudden appearance of ghosts is down to the work of disgruntled mad scientist Rowan North (Neil Casey), a bellhop who plans to bring the apocalypse.

The film makes a huge effort to pay its respects to the 1984 and 1989 originals, with homages made to the likes of Marshmallow Man and Rick Moranis' character, and featuring cameos from Murray, Akroyd, Ernie Hudson, Sigourney Weaver and Annie Potts. Yet while such nods are normally welcome, here they do little but gloss over the absence of any real laughs and emotional connection to the characters. There's also an over-reliance of set-pieces and special effects, with a thinly-drawn antagonist with the haziest of motivations. The funniest part of the movie is Hemsworth, who really does have a talent for comedy, but even he is embarrassed later on with a silly dance scene. To the online mob who may try to say "I told you so," - Ghostbusters isn't bad because of the gender switch or its audacity in trying to reboot a classic, it's bad because it simply isn't funny.


Directed by: Paul Feig
Starring: Melissa McCarthy, Kristen Wiig, Kate McKinnon, Leslie Jones, Chris Hemsworth
Country: USA/Australia

Rating: **

Tom Gillespie

Review #1,048: 'Gods of Egypt' (2016)

Alex Proyas's return to directing following a 7 year hiatus couldn't have come at a worse time. Just as the film industry was up in arms about the #OscarSoWhite debacle, Gods of Egypt arrived in cinemas boasting a near-all Caucasian cast despite being set in Africa. The demand for diversity in Hollywood duly followed, and rightly so, but the questionable casting isn't even the worst thing about the film. Gods of Egypt is a bloated, garish and nonsensical piece of trash, the cinematic equivalent of Raheem Sterling's bathroom. Is this really the same visionary who brought us The Crow (1994) and Dark City (1998)?

Sadly it is, and it completes a steady quality decline in Proyas's output which began in 2004 with his middle-finger to Isaac Asimov, I, Robot. On paper, the big-budget tale of Gods living amongst humans battling it out for the throne may seem like the perfect the opportunity for some campy, brain-on-auto-pilot fun. However, it fails to even offer any sort of camp appeal due to a cast either gobbled up by the video-game cutaway special effects or so utterly devoid of charisma. The main offender is Brenton Thwaites, a young actor who looks like he's been custom-built to appeal to any teenage girls in the crowd. He plays Bek, a human living in a thriving Egypt governed by ten-foot Gods, and sadly he is our protagonist.

Bek, along with his pretty girlfriend Zaya (Courtney Eaton), witnesses the handing-over of the crown from the abdicating Osiris (Bryan Brown) to his dashing and popular son Horus (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau). The coronation is rudely interrupted by Osiris's uncle Set (Gerard Butler), who feels that the time has come for him to rule, killing his brother and ripping out his poor nephew's eyes in front of a terrified crowd. With the Egyptians forced into slavery to satisfy Set's greed and vanity, Bek, a talented thief, swipes the plans to Set's vault in the hope of stealing back Horus's eyes and assisting him in defeating his uncle. But when Zaya is killed after the successful theft, Bek strikes a deal with Horus to help guide him through Set's pyramid in exchange for returning Zaya from the underworld.

The main question lingering over the head of Gods of Egypt is why was this film made? For a modern blockbuster from a talented director, the film lacks maturity and brains. For a film possibly designed to appeal to fans of explosion-heavy sci-fi/fantasy extravaganzas such as Michael Bay's Transformers franchise, the CGI is often embarrassingly bad. And for anybody hoping for a throwback to the kitschy B-movies of the 1950's and 60's, where giant monsters and grotesque gods mingled with us puny humans, you will find more charm in one frame of any movie involving the work of Ray Harryhausen than you will for the entire 2 hours of Gods of Egypt. The whole thing just feels oddly out of place, paling in comparison to even the most sickly of recent CGI-fests. Re-telling essentially the exact same story told a thousand times since Homer put ink to paper, this could be re-titled as A Simpleton's Guide to the Hero's Quest. Utter tripe.


Directed by: Alex Proyas
Starring: Brenton Thwaites, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, Gerard Butler, Courtney Eaton, Elodie Yung, Chadwick Boseman, Rufus Sewell, Geoffrey Rush, Bryan Brown
Country: USA/Australia

Rating: *

Tom Gillespie

Review #1,016: 'In the Heart of the Sea' (2015)

When taking into account the reputation of Herman Melville's novel Moby Dick as one of the Great American Novels, it is surprising that so few directors have taken it upon themselves to adapt the epic tale of man against nature. The most famous and well-respected is John Huston's 1956 effort that starred Gregory Peck as the obsessed Captain Ahab and, dismissing the few straight-to-DVD efforts and TV movies over the past few years, it is really the only one of note. Ron Howard has also decided to side-step Melville's tricky beast in favour of the true story that inspired it, the sinking of the whaling ship Essex.

Almost as if Howard was afraid that the sight of a group of battered, starving sailors drifting would be too boring for the audience to stomach for two hours, the story begins with Melville himself (played by Ben Whishaw) paying a visit to the only remaining survivor of the Essex's doomed voyage, Thomas Nickerson (Brendan Gleeson). After a bit of nagging from his wife (Michelle Fairley) and the promise of whiskey, Nickerson soon begins spilling the tale he has kept bottled up for years, and reveals that it is not just a story of a giant, extremely peeved-off whale, but that of two men - first mate Owen Chase (Chris Hemsworth) and captain George Pollard (Benjamin Walker).

The men sitting behind the desks at the Nantucket whaling company view Chase, despite his impressive record at collecting whale oil, as a 'landsman' - someone born outside of the vast whaling family. Pollard is inexperienced and envious of Chase's reputation and popularity, and there personalities soon clash. Most is viewed through the eyes of the young Nickerson (played by Tom Holland, the new Spider-Man), and just when the two potential father figures reach a mutual understanding and finally discover whales after months at sea, they are rammed by a giant sperm whale and left hundreds of miles from shore with limited food, water and supplies.

You would think that a story so packed with sea-faring adventure and the promise of an unknown monster lurking beneath the surface would be effortlessly thrilling, but sadly In the Heart of the Sea is not. While certainly an overrated director, Ron Howard has made exciting films before, but here the action is so laced with obvious CGI that it makes it impossible to truly engage with the action. The film actually works best during its quieter moments. While peppered with survival-movie cliches and sluggish character development, its well-performed by the (mostly British) cast, particularly Walker, whose character arc pleasantly surprised me, and Holland, who is surely destined to be a star in the future. Still, we wait patiently for the film that does Meville, or the story behind his greatest work, justice.


Directed by: Ron Howard
Starring: Chris Hemsworth, Benjamin Walker, Cillian Murphy, Tom Holland, Brendan Gleeson, Ben Whishaw, Paul Anderson
Country: USA/Australia/Spain/UK/Canada

Rating: ***

Tom Gillespie

Review #917: 'Electric Boogaloo: The Wild, Untold Story of Cannon Films' (2014)

When Israeli cousins Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus took over The Cannon Group in 1979, cinema had little idea what it was in for. With the company in a dyer financial situation, Golan and Globus began churning out pictures of questionable quality at an unnerving rate, making a small profit with the odd micro-hit that quickly added up. Soon enough, the exploitation pioneers were buying up cinema chains, paying movie stars ludicrous amounts of money, taking over Cannes, and releasing some of the most diabolical and insane movies of 1980's. Electric Boogaloo tells the rapid rise and even faster implosion of the notorious studio, with the people both in front of and behind the camera telling their own anecdotes of the madcap antics that seemed to engulf their every production.

Director Mark Hartley has made a career in documenting exploitation cinema with Not Quite Hollywood (2008) and Machete Maidens Unleashed! (2010), and Electric Boogaloo is undoubtedly his most fun. Packed with clips of such cinematic disasters as Enter the Ninja (1981), Hercules (1983), Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo (1984) and Superman IV: The Quest for Peace (1987), the film lambastes Cannon as much as it adores their persistence, levelling the field by also showing us their more interesting efforts - the likes of Lifeforce (1985) and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 (1986), both directed by Tobe Hooper - and the films that were surprisingly great, such as Runaway Train (1985) and Barfly (1987). But this isn't just a collection of clips from some of the most outlandish films ever made, Hartley ensures that the film is highly informative about the 'creative' minds behind the company and the reasons for its inevitable fall from grace.

Amongst the interviewees are John G. Avildsen, Franco Nero, Dolph Lundgren, Robert Forster, Bo Derek and Alex Winter, all telling stories that will have you laughing as well as questioning just how the Israeli's got away with it for so long. Some of it is brutal, with Golan especially coming across as an ego-maniacal tyrant with little care for the safety of his crew and no understanding of the American audience he was targeting. Yet it's all told with a nostalgic fondness, celebrating the fact that these were little guys who actually made it, and doing it all on their own terms. They were, after all, responsible for Chuck Norris's career and the prolonging of Charles Bronson's (although it's questionable as to whether or not that's a good thing), and were eager to give great but fading directors such as Jean-Luc Godard, John Cassavetes and Franco Zeffirelli another shot with complete artistic control. It's a strange story - Golan and Globus clearly adored cinema but didn't seem to understand it - but this is a success story like no other, and insomniacs with little to do at night but watch TV have a lot to thank them for.


Directed by: Mark Hartley
Starring: Menahem Golan, Yoram Globus
Country: Australia/USA/Israel/UK

Rating: ****

Tom Gillespie

Review #916: 'Mad Max: Fury Road' (2015)

Attempting to piece together the chronology of Max Rockatansky's four-movie journey between 1979 and 2015 would be to miss the point of the series altogether. Max Max (1979) was a raw slice of grindhouse that just happened to be financially successful and genuinely brilliant, and has since evolved into something so wildly imaginative and increasingly insane that to try and piece together how many years have elapsed since Mel Gibson's youthful Main Force Patrol officer watch his family murdered and how he has suddenly shrunk and become Tom Hardy would be as deranged as the franchise's latest instalment, Fury Road.

Whether it's a re-boot or a continuation of the story we haven't seen since 1985's Beyond Thunderdome, we are plunged back into the familiar, post-apocalyptic Australian plains (although it was shot in Namibia) inhabited by obscene punks, raging warlords and ragged rebels. Following a nuclear holocaust, fuel and water is scarce, and the residents of the Citadel are ruled over by the ageing Immortan Joe (Hugh Keays-Byrne), a hulking monster of a man with a breathing apparatus strapped to his face. Max (Hardy) is captured and is used as a 'blood bag' for War Boy Nux (Nicholas Hoult), and when Imperator Furiosa (Charlize Theron), one of Joe's lieutenants, goes AWOL with an armoured truck full of Joe's many wives, Nux and a small army pursue with Max strapped to the front of his vehicle.

Like its predecessors, Fury Road has little in way of a plot. Similar in many ways to Max Max 2, the film is little more than one huge chase with precious few quiet moments in between. Hardy is as reserved a Max as Gibson was, but strangely lacks the charisma that has propelled Hardy to recent superstardom. Yet Max is more in the background, playing second fiddle to the battering ram that is Furiosa. One-armed, shaven-headed and raccoon-eyed, Theron is in equal measures extremely sexy and utterly intimidating, offering glimpses of vulnerability as her trust in Max becomes more cemented. Furiosa's drive is that she wants to get back to her homeland, which is now little more than a distant memory from her childhood, and Max just happens to be along for the ride. But character development is left in the dust of what is ultimately one humongous chase set-piece.

Although he is now 70 and his recent work has consisted of Happy Feet (2006), Happy Feet 2 (2011) and Babe: Pig in the City (1998), director, writer and producer George Miler shows no signs of losing his touch. Fury Road is the most aggressive Max Max yet, complete with acrobats on huge wires who bend into other vehicle's to attack from above, War Boys getting themselves pumped for violence by spraying a powerful drug called Night Fume onto their lips, and an electric guitar player who sprays flame from his instrument and is backed by a hoard of drummers. Everyone involved in creating the stunts should be extremely proud, as what could have been repetitive turns into a two-hour adrenaline rush. It's not the masterpiece that it has been heralded by critics and audiences alike, but it has breathed life back into a genre stuffed with CGI and former wrestlers.


Directed by: George Miller
Starring: Tom Hardy, Charlize Theron, Nicholas Hoult, Hugh Keays-Byrne, Josh Helman, Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, Zoë Kravitz
Country: Australia/USA

Rating: ****

Tom Gillespie