The Crabster got rooked twice on cruddy DVD rentals in the past week. First off, Death Sentence. This total piece of shit stars Kevin Bacon as a well-to-do white man who goes postal on some tattooed urban toughs after they murder his hockey-playing golden-boy son in a gas station as part of some initiation ritual. It's like Death Wish only not as classy. The director, James Wan of Saw fame, has perfected the art of creating ugly, stupid movies devoid of suspense or any redeeming social value. The only time Wan rises to the level of even a decent hack is during a well-staged sequence in a parking garage that ends with Bacon strapping his victim into a car and watching it plunge several stories to a crashing, glass-strewing end on the pavement below. But even this sequence demonstrates exactly what's wrong with the movie: For all its technical panache, the scene is so humorless and bereft of joy that one is simply depressed by it. Wan is capable of thinking clearly only about violence - he fumbles everything else, including the storytelling, the family dynamic, his idiotic faux-theme about the costs of revenge. Bacon, it's safe to say, gives the worst performance of his career as this wiry, skullfaced, vaguely prissy agent of revenge. But Bacon is not the worst actor in the film - that distinction belongs to John Goodman, who goes for one of those crazy Maury Chaykin-type hambone supporting performances and only succeeds at grinding your nerves down to the point where you want to whip out your own .357 and blow away your TV. The Taxi Driver rip-off finale sets a new low for half-assed homage. Avoid this dour, brainless heap of manure at all costs.
Yes, I actually rented a movie called "Dragon Wars." That title should've been a hint, no? Well, I got suckered. Dragon Wars is not, as some of the advertising seemed to suggest, the successor to The Host as a crossover Korean monster movie. The Host is a fantastic, hilarious, thrilling film - Dragon Wars is a Sci-Fi Channel movie.
Okay, that's slightly unfair - Dragon Wars at least has really good CGI (and, unlike Sci-Fi Channel movies, it does not involve Mansquitoes or Chupacabras). Actually, there's a scene in Dragon Wars that's worthy of the best Hollywood has to offer along the lines of digitally-rendered mayhem. Have you seen Transformers? Okay, think of that big fight scene at the end in L.A., then replace the giant robots with dragons, and replace Megan Fox with a blonde who is, unbelievably, an even worse actress. That's the good part of Dragon Wars. Unfortunately, the producers seem to have blown all their money on the CGI, leaving none to hire decent actors or writers. Robert Forster was all they could get. Hint number 2 that a movie might not be worth renting: Robert Forster is the biggest name in the cast.
The sad thing about Dragon Wars is that there's probably some dope out there who's never seen a Korean movie, and they'll rent this and think, "God, those Koreans suck at making movies." The Koreans do not, however, suck at making movies. They make awesome movies, sometimes. Dragon Wars, unfortunately, is too overt an attempt at breaking into the American market. They hired American actors and made it in English - a recipe for all sorts of amusing cultural tone-deafness. My favorite dumb-ass moment: The Secretary of Defense waltzing into an LAPD meeting room, and some asshole introducing him by saying, "The Secretary of Defense." Oh, and the depiction of the inner-workings of an American television newsroom. Apparently, when a TV reporter goes off to cover a story, they only go with their cameraman...in an SUV. TV networks don't have news editors, and they don't send out vans loaded with equipment, and reporters don't travel with tons of producers and interns and sound and make-up and hair people. Sadly, this nonsense is all taken seriously. If it had been treated with a jot of humor, maybe it could've worked as some kind of campy thing. But no...these idiots thought they were making the greatest dragon war movie of all-time. Actually, they succeeded - because there are no others. So, this one is the greatest by default.
Death Sentence and Dragon Wars both receive 0 Chips Ahoy out of 4. And I will be cleansing my palette by filling the top of my Netflix queue with Bette Davis movies.
