Tag Archives: action

Saints Row 2

Saints Row 2 is the rare sequel that follows the horror movie rule of good sequels: make exactly the same thing again, only adding an incremented number on the end of the title. Five years after the rise and sudden fall of your character from Saints Row, he (or, this time around, possibly she!) wakes up from a coma ready for revenge. Only, revenge will have to wait: the 3rd Street Saints are no more, crippled in power by the total loss of their leadership[1], crippled geographically by the corporate gentrification of their seat of power, and crippled statistically by the rise of three new gangs who have taken advantage of the power vacuum to once more carve up the sad and inexplicably water-bound city of Stilwater.

The game, being a carbon copy, has flaws in keeping with the original: the glorification of gang lifestyle and graphics that seem almost hokey when held up next to Grand Theft Auto IV are the most obvious. But the newly chatty main character[2] is so over-the-top in her villainy and love of chaos that it felt a little less scuzzy than the voiceless original protagonist upon whom one inevitably would imprint their own motivations. As with the first game, I completed something like 93% of the available game, leaving out only a few races and stunt jumps and such. The series has been very good to me, on a value basis.

There is a remaining inevitable question to be answered. Having played them in such proximity, how does Saints Row 2 compare with Grand Theft Auto IV? Well, the similarity of game is a bit of a plus here; I really appreciated that the map of the city was so familiar, as opposed to Liberty City being so vastly different in GTA. (Then again, the time between sequels was only a couple of years rather than a decade, so I understand Rockstar’s point of view on the Liberty City update.) Storywise, GTA is the clear victor, hands down. Niko Bellic is a meaningful, tragic character while the nameless leader of the Saints is a caricature. And the respective stories very much reflect that comparison. All the same, I think Saints Row is the more fun of the two games; mindless mayhem and frequently-thin story motivations did not leave me wallowing in misery, the way Niko’s life did. And Saints Row’s story does have a handful of dark and dramatic turns, don’t get me wrong. If it wasn’t for the graphical disparity, I think I’d have to say it’s down to a matter of taste. But no, less fun-filled or not, GTA is objectively the better game.

[1] Some to retirement, some to the corporate sector, some to (seriously) the police force, and of course there’s the one that’s been imprisoned and in a coma.
[2] To my surprise, there was no option to import the previous character design from the original game. In compensation, there’s an ongoing joke about the character having “new hair”. Since mine changed gender, yeah, I found the understatement pretty amusing.

Inglourious Basterds

MV5BMTk3NDA0NTI3Nl5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTcwMTUwODQzMg@@._V1__SX1859_SY893_ The problem I think with a Quentin Tarantino movie is that it defies categorization. He’s not exactly his own filmmaking genre, not really, but it’s a close thing. And it’s not even that Inglourious Basterds is a multi-genre hodgepodge like Kill Bill was; it’s on the whole a straightforward World War II action movie. All the same, it’s tricky to explain. But here goes: a band of Nazi-killing Jews led by Appalachian Brad Pitt, a Jew-hunting SS officer, and a young Jewish theater owner cross paths in 1944 occupied Paris over an Allied plot to take out the Nazi high command in one fell swoop. …yeah, that looks right.

There’s plenty of stylized violence, over-the-top yet finely-drawn characters, and episodic storytelling; all straight out of the Tarantino playbook. I guess he maybe does have his own genre. But it’s a good genre! Aside from my appreciation for the tropes and for this particular plot and character combination, the most interesting aspect of the film was, for me, dissecting its trajectory. More bluntly: a plan to kill Goebbels and Hitler and etc. is pretty much doomed to failure in mid-1944. I have pretty explicit historical knowledge backing me up on that point. So there I sat, watching and wondering, is this a comedy of errors? A tragedy? An ironic masterpiece in which any of several plans might have succeeded without the interference of competing plans toward the same end? What movie is Tarantino actually making? Obviously I can’t tell you what he made, because, well, that’s the whole movie. But I can say that lens really worked for me.

G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra

In my halcyon youth, which is to say late elementary school and possibly early junior high, one of my primary goals each day was to get out of school and home to my even then twenty-year-old, cableless, rabbit-eared television and click over to one of the handful of UHF channels[1] and watch back-to-back episodes of Transformers and G.I. Joe. So when the Transformers movie hit, there was a significant nostalgia quotient even though I really didn’t trust it could turn out that well. Because, giant transforming robots just seem more plausible in a cartoon, despite that modern special effects turned out to be up to the job after all.

Surprisingly, it didn’t cross my mind then that a G.I. Joe movie might happen, even though it seems a lot more plausible that one could be successfully made. Still, once I caught wind of the film’s existence, I was pretty excited. And then, over months of previews focused on metallic combat suits that might be better placed in a game of Halo, that excitement gradually drained away to nothing. Which, really, is the way that expectations management ought to work on big budget summer adaptations of childhood memories.

The Rise of Cobra is at least as much about the existence of a secret military organization under UN authority tasked with solving unique problems on the geopolitical stage as it is about the emergence of yet another new terrorist threat. G.I. Joe, says its commanding officer General Hawk, picks from the very best of each member nation’s armed services, by invitation only. They have a secret base. They are, in short, every UN-armed-takeover conspiracy theorist’s wet dream. Luckily, instead of making a movie about that, it’s about fan favorites Duke, Scarlett, and Snake Eyes’ fight to stop an (implausibly) Scottish arms dealer from carrying out a plan to bilk the UN of a lot of research money they paid into his nanomite[2] program by stealing the weapons back upon delivery, demonstrating their power, and then selling the remaining warheads to the highest bidder. All while carrying out a second, more sinister plan that will ensure adequate sequel bait if the box office performs as expected.

But you know what? It worked. I’ll watch it again, and I already look forward to that all-but-certain sequel, and if there were a few pieces of dumb to ignore over the course of the movie, well, that never stopped me from enjoying the cartoon either. I am well-pleased.

[1] Maybe channel 39? I guess it doesn’t matter anyway; all the UHF channels either got bought up by the emerging new networks or else went Spanish when cable ate up too much local marketshare. (Also, I’m not sure who I’m kidding when I say I had to click over; why would I ever have changed it away in the first place?)
[2] Nanomites, as you shouldn’t really care to know, are tiny robots that, in this case, are programmed to eat pretty much everything until told by their software to stop. The ability to strip a city bare in just minutes, although insignificant next to the power of the Force, is a pretty potent threat; albeit perhaps a wee bit too easy to lose control of.

Star Trek

Obviously, you are aware of this movie, and you’ve probably already formed your own opinion. And anyway, I’d be leery of spoilers for anyone who hasn’t seen it. In theory, this constrains my review by quite a lot, but I figure it leaves me free to talk about what I really wanted to anyway. But, first things first. Did I like it? Enough to see it three times on opening weekend. Did it have flaws? I can think of a couple offhand, one extremely nitpicky and one that, absent, would have failed to feel like a Star Trek movie anyway. Plus, I think I’m willing to claim that at one point, there was actually an insufficient amount of technobabble. Was it accessible to non-fans? I feel as though it really was, and the reviews I’ve heard from non-fans (and in one case, an actively anti-fan) have borne this impression out. So you should really go see it, if this has not already occurred.

Because what J.J. Abrams made here was a philosophical, character-driven action movie, and really, how many of those do you think exist? Of the ones that exist, how many do you think aren’t insufferably smug about it? This right here is a narrow field to occupy! Action: ’cause, you know, space battles and laser gun fights. Character-driven: the driving forces of the story are all based in interactions. Kirk and McCoy’s friendship. Kirk and Spock’s rivalry. Spock’s relationship with his human mother. Nero’s irrational impulse for personal rather than systemic revenge. (He’s the bad guy.) Philosophical: take a group of people that shook the foundations of the Federation (and, projecting outward less than you’d think, the galaxy) and drastically change their history. Okay, many of the changes were not drastic, but one was, and there are clear, subtle ripples from there even before the main plot of the movie takes over. And then explore the question of random chance versus unalterable destiny.

I liked that by the end of the movie, the history of the Federation is vastly divergent from the one that fans of five TV series and ten movies know. And I like that it’s not going to be “fixed.” It was a bold move that I think is going to pay off in spades for the future of the franchise. But as much as I approve of that, I absolutely adored watching as, moment by moment, destiny pushed beloved characters into roles that they had fallen into by seeming happenstance in the original timeline. This new Trek may have surprisingly non-causal time travel that never really existed in “my father’s” Star Trek, but it also has some modicum of fate. And that’s kind of cool.

Taken (2008)

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So, you know how in Europe, there are all these unscrupulous Albanians and Serbians and other Iron Curtainers running around kidnapping people, for the purpose of letting them be tortured to death or else sold into sexual slavery? Here’s a thing that I maintain would be a bad idea: being one of those people, and kidnapping Jedi Master Qui-Gon Jinn’s daughter. I mean, if he were allowed to be angry and have thoughts of revenge. So, Sith Master Qui-Gon Jinn, I guess is what I mean. Also, he and Jack Bauer probably hang out over beers, sometimes.

I predict this is enough information to tell you whether you’ll like Taken. In case you’re on the fence, don’t forget that Liam Neeson cannot help but lend pathos and gravitas to every role he plays. It drips off of him like sweat off some guy named Keith.

JCVD

Quantum of Solace

So, new James Bond movie, which is almost by definition cool and only really needs to be compared to other Bond movies. I liked it enough to have seen it twice, and yet I’ve been stuck on the review for a while now. I think it wasn’t until I realized that and thought about why that I was able to come up with something, but it does all kind of make sense now.

What I liked about Quantum of Solace is what they’ve done with the franchise. Not only was was it a direct sequel to Casino Royale[1], but there are strong implications that an underlying arc will continue through at least the next film, if not several more. I’m also pretty okay still with the lack of gadgetry in favor of more direct badassery, though I think I maybe want there to be a few more gadgets than approximately none. The plot: in which a shadowy organization has various irons in the fire whose goals are the acquisition of more power and resources with which to acquire more power still. Or, okay, to be specific, they are propping up a Bolivian dictator in exchange for control of certain resources. Or okay, to be more specific still, the water supply. Which is possibly silly, but appropriately grandiose for the archetype. It fits, anyhow, so I like it well enough to not worry about it.

What I didn’t like was the lack of an iconic villain. Casino Royale had a guy who wept blood, for crying out loud! This only has a guy with a bowl haircut, which, y’know: enh. And he’s just the villain’s cousin! And, okay, yeah, I’m coming around on the gadgets thing. Awesome car chases are necessary, but they are not sufficient. These are largely quibbles in the face of my joy over a Bond with both a plot and a character arc. But I’m pretty confident it’s possible to have and eat my spycake, so I’ll look forward to that in 2010.

[1] I’m pretty sure they’ve only ever done that once before, and the time they did it, it was just a few minutes at the beginning that had no bearing on the rest of the flick.

Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare – Game of the Year Edition

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I know objectively that I finish a goodly chunk of games each year, and that I could even demonstrate this via the method of counting back on the tag. And that this does not even take into account the many games I play partially but consistently fail to finish with. Nonetheless, it’s always a bit surprising to me when I do finish one, even one that’s a solid year old by now. Which, okay, is misleading: Call of Duty 4 only took me a couple of dedicated afternoons, and I didn’t start until this past month. Plus, I’m still nominally in the middle of Grand Theft Auto IV[1], and I’m actively about a third of the way through Dead Space. I play stuff, honest!

Aside from spending the money, one of the things that held me back from CoD4 so long was the Modern Warfare tag. For whatever reason, I convinced myself that removing the game from World War II meant there would be a lot of cool new weaponry, sure, but no plot to hang it from. To the contrary, it was as affecting as many war movies I’ve seen, and far superior to anything the franchise has previously put out. Russian and Arabic terrorists with nuclear capabilities, if you’re wondering, but it’s a couple of the characters that really make it pop, plus one incredible scene in which you don’t use a single weapon.

The multiplayer looks like it would be really fun with a sufficient number of players, but at the reduced amount we can usually pull together on any given Monday night, Halo 3 remains the clear champion of that aspect.

[1] Where “the middle” doesn’t appear to have scratched the surface in reality, plus I’m reaching the point where, without a conscious pushing of myself, it will fall by the wayside. I blame this at least in part on the giant pile of new games I want to play: Gears of War 2. Far Cry 2.[2] Saints Row 2. Fallout 3. Left 4 Dead. Even Resident Evil 5, if it’s out early next year as I’ve heard. (And I really need to finish RE4 before that!)
[2] Why did they split it into two words for the sequel, I wonder?

Eagle Eye

Pineapple Express

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Am I still way, way behind? I think you know the answer to that. The sad part is, this shouldn’t have been a hard review for me (and probably still won’t), but I never expected to be delayed by days beyond when I first sat down to type, like this. My time management is gradually getting back into the swing of things, though, and once I catch up on it all, things will be back to normal. (I would skip straight to the review, but I know you love these intricate, behind the scenes looks at how Shards of Delirium works.)

Despite my relative lack of things to say about Pineapple Express, I certainly liked it. It spent a lot of time being funny or sweet (in that slightly off-putting Seth Rogen way, sure, but maybe that contributes to the sweetness, how bad at it he is? Like a puppy who pees just off the edge of the newspaper, while staring soulfully into your eyes), and those were punctuated by chop-socky and explosions; so, like, something for everybody, right?

It’s a stoner comedy, and there haven’t been many of those in a while. But it’s also an on-the-run buddy action movie. My best comparison, which is undoubtedly flawed, is that the writers were heavily influenced by Cheech and Chong movies, but then said, “Hey, what if we throw the slightest soupçon of Boondock Saints into the mix?” Not enough for it to be actually comparable in any way, but like you’re getting occasional hints of it through the clouds of pot smoke. (I’ll have to find someone to ask, someday, if that’s a completely insane comparison or not.) Anyway, that one guy who was in the pregnant movie I never saw is a process server who accidentally witnesses a murder and then teams up with the son of the Green Goblin, AKA his pot dealer. And then, implausibly, they get completely entangled in the drug war that inspired the murder and which is the source of this awesome new weed they’ve been smoking together: pineapple express.

So, yeah: pretty funny! But you probably have to be into that type of movie to really enjoy it much?