Category Archives: Four Stars

Daybreakers (Theaters)

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Daybreakers is the latest movie to hop onto the vampire bandwagon. Unlike the countless other vampire flicks coming out these days, Daybreakers offers up a unique twist that not only sets it apart from other films in the genre, but provides the driving force that moves the film’s story along. Daybreakers distinguishes itself from the rest of the pack by successfully taking a familiar idea in a bold new direction. Daybreakers is not a perfect film by any means, but it is a welcome breath of fresh air in an already overly saturated genre.

In 2019, a plague has caused the majority of the world’s population to become vampires. The few remaining humans are forced into hiding for fear of being hunted down and farmed for their blood. Overpopulation combined with a shortage of humans, has resulted in a rapidly diminishing food supply which is predicted to run out in a month.
The vampire leaders are desperate to find a solution to this problem before human extinction eventually leads to the end of vampires also. This twist is an interesting deviation from the standard “humans vs. vampires” in that it acknowledges the dependency between the two and focuses a majority of the films attention on this fact.

The acting in the film is pretty good overall. Ethan Hawke gives an excellent portrayal of Edward Dalton, the vampire scientist struggling to find a solution to the food supply crisis. Despite him being a cold vampire, he manages to convey a great deal of emotion while still coming off convincingly as a vamp. Willem Dafoe is his usual eccentric self as the leader of the last remaining humans who has an interesting secret. Perhaps the best part of the cast is the amazing Sam Neill. He portrays Charles Bromley, head of a billion dollar corporation whose purpose is to harvest humans for their blood. Some of the coolest villains are those who can remain calm and even polite while in the middle of committing some truly atrocious acts. Neill has this down pat as his character can transform from gentleman to vicious killer in the blink of an eye.

While the premise and the overall story hold up fairly well throughout the film, it seems to lose a bit of steam in the final act. I don’t know whetehr it was the ‘solution” that they discover or whether the premise wasn’t quite strong enough to drive the entire movie for me, but the momentum that was built up started to lose some of its energy by the end. Daybreakers is still a pretty good movie. It presents a fairly new twist on an old idea and the film is entertaining throughout. I wouldn’t expect anything ground breaking when wtching this film, but it is interesting enough to keep you guessing and wanting to know what happens next.

Law Abiding Citizen (DVD)

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I’m glad to see Gerard Butler making more action oriented movies. After starring in a few yawn inducing chick flicks and a some mediocre kiddie movies, it looks like King Leonidas is starting to return to form. After watching the trailers for Law Abiding Citizen, I knew I had to see it. I wasn’t sure if it would be a good movie or not, but the film is clearly built on the exchanges between Jamie Foxx and Butler, which looked more than intense enough to capture my attention.

Make no mistake, Foxx and Butler are what make this movie work. Form the beginning, the plot seems like a standard revenge flick. Butler plays Clyde Shelton, whose wife and child are beaten and murdered in front of him by a group of men while his home was being broken into. Foxx is the attorney prosecuting the case, Nick Rice, who winds up cutting a deal with the leader of the group in exchange for his testimony against another, less involved group member. Shelton of course, sees Rice as corrupt and vows to have his revenge on not only Rice, but the entire judicial system.

After murdering the gang leader responsible for the death of his family, Shelton is arrested and placed in jail. However, he still continues to target and kill anyone involved with his case. It is up to Rice to figure out a way to stop him before it is too late.

The plot of the film is actually pretty good and will keep most people guessing for most of the movie. About two thirds of the way into the film, there is a huge plot twist that feels like it was lifted straight out of a cartoon. The twist is so obvious and almost insulting. Any other movie would have been destroyed by this revealation. It is a testament to the excellent acting of Foxx and Butler, however, that this movie survives. The interplay between the two actors and the tension generated between them in each scene is clearly the driving force of this film.

I know that not everyone will appreciate this movie, but it is fairly entertaining throughout. Up until the big revealation near the end, I was on the edge of my seat trying to figure out what would happen next. This movie is definitely worth renting, although not quite as good as the expectations I had for it.

Pandorum (DVD)

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To say that I was hyped to watch Pandorum is a bit of an understatement. The premise set up in the trailers, although a bit familiar, also seemed eerily original at the same time. I never got the chance to check it out on the big screen, but when I saw it on the video store shelf I snatched it up immediately. I figured even if the movie wasn’t very original, it had this ultra creepy vibe to it that would at least prove entertaining.

The movie’s title “Pandorum” is the word used to describe the condition when a human develop extreme paranoia and dementia from prolonged deep space travel. In other words, when someone is in space so long that they lose their mind. In the future, Earth’s resources have all but dried up due to overpopulation. A large ship called the Elysium is created to be a futuristic Noah’s Ark, ushering tens of thousands of humans and select species into space with the hopes of finding a new home. As the voyage is extensively long and involves light speed travel, there are 6 different crews all taking different rotations between manning the ship and being preserved in cryo sleep.

When Crewman Bower (Ben Foster) is awakened via timed release, he finds that the ship is empty with the exception of fellow crewmember Lt Cooper (Dennis Quaid).The entire ship is badly damaged and most of the systems are offline. It is up to Bower and Cooper to discover what happened to the passengers and the rest of the crews. Along the way they discover that the ship is inhabited by ravenous blood thirsty mutant creatures. The two must find a way to survive these predators as well as battling the symptoms of pandorum, while finding a way to save the ship.

The film has quite a few revealing plot twists along the way, with some being more believable than others. For the most part, the story is fairly good and remained entertaining throughout. I didn’t particularly like the ending, whcih seemed like a last minute addition to the story, but overall the plot is pretty good.

The acting is fairly good overall. I really like Ben Foster’s work. He is an excellent at portraying these unconventional, oddball characters as his work as Russell Crowe’s right hand man Charlie Prince in ’3:10 to Yuma’ and his turn as the mysterious Stranger in ’30 Days of Night’ clearly demonstrate. In this film I feel he is a bit miscast. While I like Foster, he doesn’t really have the charm or authoritative screen presence to succesfully carry the movie, at least not in this role. Dennis Quaid does an excellent job as Lt. Cooper. It seems like just another Dennis Quaid portrayal until about midpoint in the film when another character is introduced that exposes some of Cooper’s darkest secrets.

Overall the movie was good, but it had the potential to be incredible. I had a ton of hope for this film and while it didn’t exactly dissapoint me, it didn’t really impress me in the way that I was expecting. The movie is definitely worth a rental, but when watching it one can’t help but feel that the movie could have been so much more than what it is.