Archive for the ‘Reviews’ Category

Once again, we were just 4 people who decided to attend this weeks SMEx. For myself personally it was the second time i’ve seem this film. I was lured to attend a second time through the promise of good food from Billabong Café. We met a Billabong a total of 1 hour and 45 minutes before the film to allow ourselves enough time to eat.. This was a slight mistake as the café was empty and our food came very quickly. We killed some time by discussing how you would go about acquiring the crazy knick knacks  which adorn the walls of Billabong.

We arrived at the cinema earlier than any other SMEx event, we were so early they were not even allowing people into the cinema and were forced to wait outside! The cinema itself was surprisingly empty for the opening weekend of this weeks summer blockbuster: Salt.

On the film itself, its your standard counter espionage thriller, Angelina Jolie plays Evelyn Salt, a CIA agent who is accuse of being a Russian spy, planted through a cold war scheme to embed soviet spies into key positions in the USA from childhood. Evelyn fears for the safety of her husband and must go on the run. Incidentally, the character of Evelyn Salt was original written as a male, and the part of Edwin Salt was offered to Tom Cruise.  He felt the part was too much like this mission impossible character Ethan Hunt, and the rest as they say, is history.

As you would expect from any self respecting summer blockbuster, there is a suitable amount of action in this movie, including some very entertaining car chase scenes. The fight scenes on the other hand seemed very tame, maybe we are just spoilt recently with choreography from films like The Expendables or Inception.. but I find it hard to watch realistic fight scenes as always seem weak. The president also commented on the sound effects in the fight scenes sounding like they were muffled. It reminded me that although Indiana Jones’ punches were actually a baseball bat hitting leather jackets and his pistol was actually a rifle sound, it does make everything a little more extreme; which is after all, what the cinema is about.

Overall, the film itself is exceptionally average, entertaining, containing some interesting twists, but for the most part standard. My one real gripe with the film, is the use of Russia as the bad guys.. we are a long way past the cold war, maybe they thought the Middle East or China would be too controversial.. or maybe given that this plan has to have been in place for 30+ years Russia is the obvious choice… Personally I no longer find the threat of Soviet Russia keeps me up at night.

Another week, another SMEx, another review for the president. Why do you ask? A couple of reasons:

1. A certian Englishman, who is soon to be a Yank, was bragging he had more reviews than the president… well not anymore!
2. Apparently I was the only person who actually liked this movie.

So this week was just a small event, with just four attendees, but we found a couple of wannabe SMEx-ers in the cinema. We started back at the Park Lounge (apparently re-opened after yet another shut-down) in the last throws of a nice Oslo summer evening. Nice weather to take a beer.

So the movie. Being part of the Predator franchise this movie had some big shoes to fill, but quite frankly it has been all down hill since Dutch survived a nuclear explosion to kill the original Predator. Since then all manner of twists have been thrown in including, Predators in the city, or throw in some Aliens to get more bad guys. But this movie takes us all the way back to the beginning.

This movie is really just a remake of the original Predator with Arnie, right down to Arnie’s original quote telling you the plot… “So you cooked up a story and dropped the six of us in a meatgrinder?” So maybe there’s not six people this time, sure there are more predators (hence the “s”), maybe it’s not even on the same planet, but in the send it’s a similar story. To look at it another way, it’s the same type of remake as Escape from L.A., which was just a remake of Escape from New York.

If this movie did one thing bad it was too much like the original even down to the point where they used the same lines from the first movie, and the effect wasn’t quite the same when they weren’t said with an Austrian accent. But I still loved it! It had the original feel and atmosphere of the first one, suspense, action which was helped by having the exact same music. So if you love the first movie, I’m sure you’ll at least like this one! Best Predator since the original!