ACTION THE EXPENDABLES (15) 103min ●●●●●
The Expendables is as much an A to Z of every action movie cliché as it is a who’s who of the leading men who used to populate them.
Boasting a line-up of Sylvester
Stallone, Jet Li, Jason Statham, Dolph Lundgren, Eric Roberts and Steve Austin, as well as cameos from Bruce Willis and Arnold Schwarzenegger, the film is a flawed throwback to the testosterone-driven action vehicles of the mid 1980s to early 1990s. Stallone, as co-writer and director, isn’t trying to re-define the genre so much as remind viewers of a less politically-correct time when men were men and women needed rescuing. Hence, when an ageing group of mercenaries find their consciences pricked by the plight of a female resistance fighter, they decide to ‘sacrifice’ themselves to rescue her. Macho posturing, bone-crunching fights and big pyrotechnics ensue. It’s ironic that the best moments are the smaller ones – a three-way between Sly, Willis and Arnie, or Mickey Rourke looking rueful. (Rob Carnevale) ■ General release from Thu 19 Aug. See feature, page 92.
Film Reviews HORROR THE HUMAN CENTIPEDE (FIRST SEQUENCE) (18) 88 min ●●●●●
THRILLER SALT (12A) 99min ●●●●●
‘Who is Salt?’ asks the poster’s tagline. ‘Who cares?’ should be the reply. Phillip Noyce’s espionage caper, starring Angelina Jolie at her most proficient and humourless, has been dubbed a ‘Bourne with boobs’. But compared to that groundbreaking franchise, which blended action and emotion in equal measure, Salt feels like a faded facsimile desperately in need of direction. After a prologue in North Korea, where CIA officer Evelyn Salt (Jolie) is
rescued by her boss Ted Winter (Liev Schreiber) following a stint in prison, the story begins when a Russian spymaster Orlov (Daniel Olbrychski) walks into a CIA outpost and outs Salt as an undercover Russian agent. What’s more, he claims the Russian President will be assassinated when he attends the funeral of the late US Vice-President in Washington. Cue much consternation, alarm bells ringing (literally) and a major
lockdown as Salt doesn’t stick around to protest her innocence. What follows is an adrenaline-fuelled chase movie, as Jolie runs, jumps and kicks her way from one scene to the next, frequently escaping the clutches of her pursuers by a hair’s breadth in what feels like a cross between the Road Runner cartoons and Run Lola Run. Still, nothing she does is in any more ridiculous than Kurt Law Abiding Citizen Wimmer’s script resurrecting Cold War-era Russians as the villains. Like a plot from a discarded James Bond movie, the film revolves around Day X, the moment when an army of undetected Russian moles – all raised, trained and planted by Orlov – will rise up in the US to cause chaos. Whether Salt is a part of this or not is what drives Noyce’s thriller, complicated by her feelings for her husband (August Diehl), a German scientist who studies spiders for a living (even, laughably, in North Korea). The problem is not this ambiguity that powers the plot. It’s not even that Jolie can’t do action: from her Lara Croft adventures to her last espionage outing Wanted, she’s more than capable of a little butt-kicking. Likewise Noyce, be it in Patriot Games or Clear and Present Danger, has been here before. It’s just that both have also done it better in the past. Salt is spice for only the blandest of tastes. (James Mottram) ■ General release from Fri 20 Aug.
Body horror has always been one of the queasiest of cinema experiences. Films like Tetsuo, The Thing and the works of David Cronenberg have attacked our fragile human form with viruses, parasites, deformity and medical experimentation. Now Dutch writer/director Tom Six joins these uneasy ranks with The Human Centipede (First Sequence) as a German doctor (a former expert in separating conjoined twins) kidnaps three tourists and surgically joins them, mouth to anus, to create the titular medical monstrosity. It’s a wilfully perverse premise that
repulses and intrigues in equal measure. You expect something truly subversive but in many ways much of The Human Centipede plays out like a generic horror. The action is surprisingly restrained and most of the truly revolting events are implied rather than graphically displayed – that’s not to say Centipede isn’t an acquired taste. Dieter Laser excels in particular, playing his role of the archetypal mad scientist with icy efficiency. In his first international film, Six has created something startlingly original and is certainly a horror talent to watch in the future. (Henry Northmore) ■ Selected release from Fri 20 Aug. See interview, page 103.
FANTASY/ADVENTURE/COMEDY SCOTT PILGRIM VS THE WORLD (12A) 112min ●●●●● Writer-director Edgar Wright has made a career out of subverting genres, as demonstrated by his collaborations with actor Simon Pegg: TV’s Spaced and the films Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz. For Scott Pilgrim vs The World, Wright left the safety of British comedy and familiar casts and ventured to Hollywood (although the film was shot in Toronto, Canada) to make his first big-budget blockbuster. It’s always a struggle for any director with a particularly British sensibility to make the jump to mainstream America – just ask Danny Boyle. So it’s to Wright’s credit that he largely succeeds. He’s picked his story well; Bryan Lee O’Malley’s comic upon which the action is based is a bold mix of romantic comedy, science fiction and video game homage, genres that Wright is adept at toying with. The plot is suitably wacky: Scott Pilgrim (Michael Cera) is an unemployed member of a band who falls for the hot new girl on the block, Ramona Flowers (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), only to discover that he has to defeat her seven evil exes in battles to the death that are based on video games from Street Fighter to Rock Band. Populating the story with subversive side characters such as the nagging sister (Anna Kendrick) and gay roommate (Kieran Culkin), Wright delights in setting up the tale with a mix of comedy, great production design and Fight Club style visual gags. On the downside, Cera’s standard goofy geek stereotype has become slightly wearing and the narrative, with its constant call for fights, can’t avoid a certain degree of repetitiveness. Fans of Zombieland and Kick-Ass will find plenty to enjoy. (Kaleem Aftab) ■ General release from Wed 25 Aug.
104 THE LIST 19–26 Aug 2010