White House Down

            I'm getting really sick of your shit, Roland Emmerich.  Your characters, your plots, even your scripts are so formulaic.  Plus, who would have thought that you could come up with something even more ridiculous than 2012?  What really pisses me off the most is how much fun White HouseDown turned out to be.

            On to the review!

            If you didn't know, White House Down is this year's second film about the president being in mortal danger thanks to terrorists.  After having to see Olympus Has Fallen I had little hopes that this would be any better.  Looks like I'm eating crow tonight.

            White House Down stars Channing Tatum as Cale, an ex-military man who desperately wants to work for the Secret Service; not only as a career jump but as a way to impress his daughter Emily (Joey King).  Unfortunately his interview doesn't go so well and the lady in charge, Finnerty (Maggie Gyllenhaal) lets him know that there's absolutely no way they can trust him to protect President Sawyer (Jamie Foxx).

            Even worse, while Cale and Emily are touring the White House, terrorists decide it would be a great time to start some shit.  Eventually, it's just Cale and the President.  Cale is torn between the need to save his daughter and the other hostages while also knowing that he has to get the President to safety.

            Now, I really have to give some respect to the trailers that I've seen as they actually don't spoil the plot.  There are a ton of awesome actors in this film like James Woods, Jason Clarke, Lance Reddick and Richard Jenkins but I'm not going to say shit about what side any of them are on. 

            As for the actors, I have to give credit where credit is due.  Jamie Foxx is genuinely entertaining as the President, and his soft-spoken style benefits the film.  He's pretty much the only person who isn't yelling, and that's a nice thing.  While I still feel that Channing Tatum is at his best in comedic action roles (21 Jump Street) he actually does a great job here.  While he does occasionally fall back into super-serious mode, his character is just wisecrack-y enough to stay on the right side of entertaining.  There are a few genuinely funny moments in White House Down and that right there is why I liked it.  Olympus Has Fallen was terrible partially because it took itself too seriously.  There's none of that here.

            If you're going to watch one movie this year that involves the White House and explosions, I highly recommend this one.  I mean, it's no Die Hard, but it actually comes closer than any film in years of straddling action, entertainment and humor.

Netflix'd: In A Glass Cage

            Well, it’s certainly been a while since I’ve been so bothered by a film that I had to pause for breaks at regular intervals.  Fortunately In A Glass Cage was there to rectify this situation.

            On to the review!

            In A Glass Cage is a Spanish film about…well, it’s about suffering, really.  Years after WWII, Dr. Klaus (Gunter Meisner)  is in hiding from his Nazi past.  Himself, his wife Griselda (Marisa Paredes) and his daughter Rena (Gisele Echevarria) live a very isolated life within a Spanish villa.  Their only visitor is the maid and she only comes three times a week.

            Well, Klaus, for whatever reason, decides to step off the roof of his villa in an apparent suicide attempt.  This doesn’t go so well because he’s still alive.  But now he's paralyzed and stuck inside an iron lung.  Griselda was already miserable before this so now she insists that a nurse be hired to take care of Klaus so that she can concentrate on raising Rena. 

            Enter Angelo (David Sust): a young, handsome local boy who manages to convince Klaus that it would be in his best interest to hire the boy on.  While Griselda does not agree, Rena seems to like having someone in the house closer to her age and Klaus is insistent.  Unfortunately Angelo is kind of the opposite of a nurse.  You see, he wants to be just like Klaus.  Klaus, the pedophile Nazi who raped, tortured and murdered children.

            Yeah, see why this movie made me uncomfortable?  It is a 108 minute festival of discomfort.  It never outright terrifies like a slasher flick or a ‘true’ horror film does.  What it accomplishes is a slow burn of discomfort.  The kind where you find yourself shifting in your seat, wondering if there’s something that needs done in the kitchen just so you can get away.  It may not be A Serbian Film but I definitely put In A Glass Cage up there with Happiness in terms of subject matter and general depressive atmosphere. 

            So check it out if you want to see a challenging film.  I mean, any movie in which the pedophile Nazi becomes the sympathetic character is a terribly disturbing one.

World War Z (in 2D)

            Let's get this out of the way:  I am a huge fan of zombies.  I love zombie movies, games and books.  However, I like to think of myself as a discerning fan.  Sure, I'll play/watch/read damn near anything with the undead in it, but I have standards damn it.  I only want the best of the best of the undead menace.

            So when I heard that World War Z was being made into a film I got pretty excited.  I fully believe that this book was responsible for helping kick-start the latest zombie craze.  Despite being one of the first 21st century zombie books, it's still one of the best.  The audio-book version is simply the best audio-book ever recorded thanks to amazing talents such as Mark Hammil, Nathan Fillion, Carl Reiner, Simon Pegg, Alan Alda, Martin Scorsese, Henry Rollins, Kal Penn, John Turturro, a million other fantastic individuals and Max Brooks himself all lending the perfect voice to their proscribed characters.

            It was, then, with very high hopes that I eagerly awaited the film version of World War Z in which Brad Pitt himself was going to make sure it happened.  But oh, how was a book of short stories that happened to overlap and tell the tale of mankind's struggle against the undead going to work on the silver screen?  Easy!  By dumping the entire concept, writing a completely new character and just keeping the name of the book!  Shit.

            On to the review!

            Like I said, I'm a fan of zombies.  28 Days Later, Fido, Sean of the Dead and Dawn of the Dead all take a look at the sociological, psychological and physical reactions of mankind when faced with nigh-unkillable, slavering versions of ourselves.  But at their heart, all of these films focus on individuals simply seeking ways to stay alive (or in Fido's case, live together in harmony).  World War Z attempts to give us a super-hero in Gerry Lane (Brad Pitt) and make him the savior of mankind. 

            Strangely enough, the first half hour of the film is just freaking amazing.  As the outbreak begins to spread, Gerry and his family are just living a normal life.  With his wife Karin (Mireille Enos) and two daughters Constance (Sterling Jerins) and Rachel (Abigail Hargrove), they're perfectly ordinary individuals who happened to be stuck in Philadelphia traffic when the zombie menace breaks out.  This first portion of the film focuses solely on how Gerry tries to protect his family. Getting medicine, finding somewhere safe to hide, figuring out who to trust.  This is the stuff that matters and its small-scale is perfectly suited to the actors and the story. 

            Unfortunately for us, things take a turn once Gerry and family are rescued by his friend Thierry Umutoni (Fana Mokoena) who just happens to have a lot of pull and gets Gerry's entire family safely bunked on a U.S. warship.  Oh, did I forget to mention that Gerry is a retired World Health Organization official who was the 'best of the best' despite us never really knowing what the hell he did for the W.H.O.?

            In order for Gerry's wife and kids to stay on the ship, he has to help figure out the location of the outbreak as well as help to find a cure.  With that, he is sent off with a small squad of military specialists and a brilliant doctor.  Their job?  Save the world!

            Of course shit goes down and people start to die left-and-right, but for some reason Gerry gets to just stand there like a smug douche and be nigh-untouchable, even in the most dire situations.

            Look, the locations are amazing, the special effects are not quite as shitty as they appeared to be in the trailers, and the acting from everyone who is not Brad Pitt is actually quite good.  They even tried to throw in a few facts from the books to placate those of us who actually wanted an adaptation of the novel.  What they didn't bother with, however, was making the movie any fun.  Brad Pitt stone faces his way through the entire movie, and the ending is never in any doubt.  It's not a zombie movie.  It's an action-packed outbreak movie (like Outbreak!) that focuses on a team of super-special individuals trying to save the world from a deadly, tiny menace.

            I was surprised by the beginning and really got into it, and then the rest of the film fell flat, got stupid, and hurt my feelings.  Sadly enough I may be in the minority as the theater was absolutely packed at the noon showing I attended. People actually gave it a standing ovation while the end credits rolled!  So give it a try.  Maybe you'll like it.  I, however, would rather watch 28 Days Later again.  At least the zombies in that movie didn't create fleshy tidal waves.

V/H/S/2

            Bad news, horror fans.  V/H/S/2 shouldn’t have happened and that makes me very sad.  I was a huge fan of V/H/S and  its use of the hand-held camera medium.  Though weak at points, I still felt that out of the 5, 2 were amazing, one was good, one was meh and one was really unnecessary.  This time?  Only four shorts and a slightly longer overarching narrative.  I don’t know what they did, but they ended up with one good, one decent, one meh and one really not-that-good.

            As my friend said after it was over “if someone spliced the two movies, they could make one really good horror anthology."

            On to the review!

            V/H/S/2 starts us off with the overarching story, “Tape 49” in which a private investigator and his assistant have been hired to find a woman’s missing college-aged son.  They get into the kid's place and find nothing but a bunch of old VHS tapes.  As the private dick searches the small apartment (which apparently takes 90 minutes of walking around the same two rooms repeatedly) he has his assistant check out the tapes for anything that might provide a clue.

            This is similar to the first V/H/S where some kids broke into a house to rob it and one of them started watching tapes to see if there was anything valuable.  In both cases, this is how we get into the meat of the movie.  In V/H/S/2 the first short is “Phase 1 Clinical Trials” in which a guy gets a cyber-eye.  In return for his new eye, the company says they will be recording and monitoring everything as part of a clinical trial.

            The guy gets home and finds out that his eye can see a bit more than a regular eye can.  Halfway through we’re introduced to a girl who had gotten implants into her ears because she was born deaf, and she can hear things that normal ears can’t hear.  It’s an interesting premise, and “Phase 1 Clinical Trials” is my favorite short of the group.  Unfortunately, and I know it’s rare to hear this about a short film, but it was actually too short.  Just three to five more minutes of fleshing out the characters would have gone a long way.

            Our second short is “A Ride in the Park” and is an interesting concept that I just don’t think was pulled off.  It’s pretty much a zombie story with a twist.  The helmet cam provides most of the film, so you get some neat shots from the zombie’s point of view.  Unfortunately, it doesn’t quite do much.  It could have been 10 minutes shorter or 5 minutes longer and made absolutely no difference.

            “Safe Haven” is the boldest short film in V/H/S/2 but it suffers from some narrative dissonance.  Due to the way it’s filmed, you really don’t care about any of the people and the filmmaker’s attempts at adding depth to a side plot does nothing but add unnecessary angst.  It does have the best special effects by far, but it could have used additional editing.  Maybe cut a bit out of “Safe Haven” so we could have fleshed out “Phase 1 Clinical Trials”?

            Finally, there’s “Slumber Party Alien Abduction” whose title leaves nothing to the imagination.  The only thing I can say about this is that this short made the most controversial decision when it comes to killing off a character.  Oh, wait, no.  I can say something else about it.  It’s really freaking terrible.  If the alien-oriented short film in the first V/H/S was bad (“The Sick Thing That Happened to Emily When She Was Younger”), this one was worse.  At least the “…Emily…” episode had some decent frights and just ended poorly.  “Slumber Party Alien Abduction” starts off small and ends worse.

            Did V/H/S/2 justify its existence?  Sadly, I don’t believe it did.  Even worse, by releasing it on video on-demand, I believe they’re shooting themselves in the foot if they were hoping for any sort of theater release.  Everyone who really wanted to see it (people like me) will happily pay $5 to rent it rather than $11 to see it in theaters.  Add in the film’s damning mediocrity, and I think it should skip theaters altogether.

This is the End

I am convinced that if you hire Danny McBride to be in your film, you are contractually obligated to have at least one giant dick somewhere in the movie.

            On to the review!

            The only other movie that I've been looking forward to more than This is the End this summer is TheWorld's End.  Interestingly enough they're both about apocalyptic scenarios.  This is the End is just on a slightly larger scale.

            As you all know from the previews, it's about the rapture, with the good getting sucked up to heaven in a blue light while the sinners are stuck on earth.  Unsurprisingly those sinners include almost all of the Hollywood elite. 

            We begin with Seth Rogen picking up his friend Jay Baruchel from the airport.  Immediately we know this is no regular comedy since everyone uses their real name.  This, my friends, is meta-humor.  Actors playing themselves in a fictional scenario.  Mindblowing.

            After an afternoon of chilling out, Seth talks Jay into going to James Franco's house-warming party.  Despite Jay's protests, they head over to hang out with other famous Hollywood actors.  There are a ton of cameos from Aziz Anzari, Mindy Kaling, Rhianna, Paul Rudd, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Kevin Hart and more.  However, Michael Cera steals the spotlight early as the douchebaggiest version of an actor you could ever hope for. 

            However, Jay doesn't really dig the party atmosphere, so he asks Seth to go with him to buy a pop from the local grocery store.  That's when things get weird.  People start disappearing in beams of blue light while everyone else is thrown into chaos.  By the time the initial 'Ragnarok' event is over, the only people left are Jay, Seth, James Franco, Jonah Hill, Craig Robinson and Danny McBride.  Everyone else is fled or dead.

            Then shit gets really weird.  These six are left to fend for themselves as they try to figure out what's going on, trying to survive with just a little bit of food, some water, lots of alcohol and too many drugs. 

            Fortunately for us, all these guys are good actors and great comedians.  There's rarely a minute that doesn't go by without something hilarious happening on-screen.  You can tell everyone's comfortable with everyone else because the flow is downright amazing. 

            Honestly, I don't want to say anything else about This is the End other than you should watch it!  It is definitely the year's best R-rated comedy.  I liked it even better than the original The Hangover.  Yup.  That's it.  Short review.  Go see the movie.

The Purge

             Never before had I encountered a movie so intent on reminding you of its title, overarching plot, and 'amazing ideas.'  Too bad none of it worked very well.

             Before I get into the meat of today's movie, however, I want to mention two things I'm actually enjoying in theaters before the movie starts.  This clever commercial, and this fantastic trailer.

            On to the review!

            Since I just couldn't bring myself to see The Internship a.k.a. The Wedding Crashers Part 2, I hit up The Purge, a movie I've been curious about for a few months.  The idea is sound, I'll give it that much.  Some day in the future, America gives in to its basest instincts and legalizes all forms of violence for 12 hours a year.  This keeps down crime the rest of the year, 'weeds out' the unwanted and keeps unemployment at under 1%.  Of course, the haves now have it even better than the have-nots, as they can hide behind security measures while the homeless and the poor are the ones most likely to be beaten, raped and murdered. 

            It also doesn't help that many of the rich purposely go outside in packs, heavily armed and armored, to 'purge' their baser instincts.  The Purge is basically the wet dream of a sociopath who goes to sleep reading Ayn Rand every night.  Which is fine, because it's trying to make a statement.  A statement that would have been perfect if this were 1970.  Unfortunately, between its being so incredibly heavy-handed and so boringly predictable, The Purge is going to be one of the most easily forgotten films of 2013.

            We begin with James Sandin (Ethan Hawke) coming home from a successful day where he found out that his team sold the most security systems leading up to the night of the Purge (they will say 'the purge' roughly 10452389 times in this 85 minute movie).  Very proud of himself, he is in a good mood as he has dinner with his wife Mary (Lena Hadey) and his children Charlie (Max Burkholder) and Zoey (Adelaide Kane).  It is in this good mood that they prepare for lockdown and wait out the next 12 hours of their life.

            Things almost immediately take a turn for the worse as Charlie lets in a desperate homeless man who is running for his life.  At the same time, we find out that Zoey's 18 year old boyfriend Henry (Tony Oller) had snuck in just before lockdown because he wants to prove to her father that he really loves his daughter. 

            So we have a hormonal teenager and an unwanted stranger wandering around this ridiculous mansion during a time where there are no laws.  Of course, that's not bad enough, so a pack of rich-kid hunters in masks show up and demand that the Sandins turn over the homeless man or they will all be killed. 

            Still sounds pretty cool on paper, huh?  The problem is, it's all very dead and dull.  Despite being so incredibly short, the first 45 minutes are dedicated to damn near nothing.  When we do get to the action, it's very stuttering.  This in itself would still be okay if the non-action setpieces weren't so amazingly boring.  None of the characters really pop out as interesting in any way, and again, it's a very predictable movie.  Even the twists make so much sense the only words you'll utter will be 'well, duh.' 

            Admittedly, there is one scene that was actually fascinating, as it explored just how far James was willing to go to protect his family.  Will he go against his principles to make sure his wife and children survive? 

            Feel free to do what I did and purge The Purge from your memory.  If you've seen it, I'm sorry.  If you haven't, well, give it a rent.  If you're still dying to see a movie about psychotic strangers making innocent people's lives hell, go watch Funny Games.  Hell, even The Strangers is a better film.

            

Reality TV (Sort of)

            I have become obsessed with reality television.  Now before you pick up your large rocks and prepare to hurl them in my general direction, hear me out.  You see, I am not just obsessed with every show that is supposedly unscripted.  No, that would just be stupid.  I am obsessed with reality cooking shows. 

            Be they competitions or one of the roughly 8324 Gordon Ramsey vehicles currently on the air, I cannot get enough of watching real people with huge egos fuck up constantly.

            Between Hell's Kitchen, Master Chef, Chopped and The Taste, I devoured roughly 10 seasons of these reality TV in the last 30 days.  Seriously, I forgot what the outside looked like for an entire weekend at one point.  Throw in Hotel Hell, Kitchen Nightmares, and ManVs. Food  and I may never want to go outside again.

            But why???

            I honestly have no idea.  I believe that part of it is the aforementioned egos, most especially in the competition shows.  I fucking hate big egos.  But how do you judge if someone on Survivor should go or not?  Certainly it's not talent.  You don't have to be talented to be on that show, you just have to try not to be an idiot.  On cooking competitions, people who have legitimate talent within their field have been chosen to compete.  That's what separates these cooking competitions apart: they have at least a decent amount of demonstrable talent.  (This is probably why I also enjoy watching the ScyFy show Face/Off.)

            In all these cooking competitions, we start off with 12+ aspiring chefs who have to make it through the preliminaries based on their talents alone (ok, we all know that's bullshit, producers also like people who will help garner ratings. But still, they have some talent).  Then they're thrown together and encouraged to talk shit and talk themselves up.  You can tell some of them aren't very fond of it while others can't get enough of themselves.  Oh, those are the ones that I love to see fail.  I gain such an immense amount of schadenfreude from their failures.  The larger the mouth, the happier I am to see them go.

            But it's not just that.  It's because of the cooking.  Cooking is something anyone can do decently with some practice.  I've honestly never met someone who just could not cook.  I truly believe those people do not exist.  Cooking, to me, is like driving.  Anyone can do it, not everyone can do it well.  That's the other thing that sets these shows apart.  For Face/Off you need some serious talent to hone.  The same goes for singing competitions; not everyone can sing.  With the cooking competitions, I'm suddenly watching a show that I could be a part of if I was motivated.

            The same goes for the reality entertainment shows like Kitchen Nightmares.  Here are people doing something I could legitimately see myself or a friend doing.  Not that I want to own a kitchen, but it's something that could be learned through work and schooling.  I can't just magically become a teen mom or a Jersey douchebag.  I can't magically become a sports super-star.  But I could totally be a floundering businessman with a failing dream and a lack of motivation.

            There it is.  That's why getting Hulu is possibly one of the worst things I've ever done from a work ethic standpoint.  I still haven't mounted my TV on the wall because I'm too busy watching episode after episode, season after season of people who I could actually aspire to be running around a kitchen and getting yelled at by their betters.

            Also, that's why there's no movie review today.  

After Earth

            Thanks to this song I can no longer say 'Earth.'  It's always 'Erf.'  Well, this part of Independence Day doesn't help either.  Fortunately you get to hear Will Smith say 'Earth' again.  Unfortunately(?) it's fully enunciated.

            On to the review!

            After Earth is, at its heart, a father/son movie.  For that, I cannot give it enough credit.  They could have easily turned this film into some sort of galaxy-spanning epic but to their credit, the filmmakers did not.

            The movie takes place in a future where humanity had to flee Earth after polluting it to the point that it was uninhabitable. A thousand years later, a new threat has arisen: aliens. Not just any aliens, either. Alien warriors that, while blind, are specially bred to smell the pheromones released by mankind when they feel fear.

            Enter the savior of mankind, Cypher Raige (Will Smith), a man who has learned to feel no fear, thus becoming invisible to the alien Ursa.  In order to make things a bit more corny, this ability is called 'Ghosting.'

            Now, General Cypher has a bit of a problem.  You see, his son Kitai (Jaden Smith) is trying very hard to follow in his father's footsteps, but he has a glaring disability in the form of being capable of actual emotion.  Even though he is still a teenager, he expects more from himself and believes his father does as well.  Just think of Cypher as the High Expectations Asian Father meme (with less racism) and you've got the right idea.

            So what is a father to do when his son wants to follow in his footsteps?  That's right!  Field trip!  In this case, Cypher takes Kitai with him on a training mission, where fellow Rangers will receive the benefits of his boundless wisdom.  At least in theory, because something goes wrong and they all crash land on--wait for it--Earth!
            Even worse, the father and son duo are the only survivors, they have limited food and water, Cypher is hurt, and the rescue beacon is 1000 kilometers away.

            That's just the first 30 minutes.  It's a very busy movie.

            The rest of the film is devoted to Kitai's trek across a verdant world that does not want humanity there.  He must fight off all manner of monsters and face dozens of fears in order to get to the beacon and save both his life and his father's.  Also, he falls down a lot.  No, seriously.  There may be close to a half-dozen instances of Jaden Smith laying on his back or side after being hurt/surprised/etc.  That was weird.

            So what about everything else?  Well, the film is gorgeous, there's no getting around that.  For such a CGI-heavy film, I wasn't really bothered by any sense of fakeness.  The futuristic technology is cool for the most part, but I didn't really get the hippie-vibe from all the man-made structures. 

            Jaden Smith continues to surprise me with his acting abilities, while Will seems to be coasting more and more on former fame.  What you have is a mindless summer film that doesn't really impress in any way unless you have zero expectations; then you're marginally impressed.  It is the ultimate inoffensive summer movie that you can probably take kids of any age to see as long as they are not frightened by CGI violence.

            Wait, there is one more thing.  The accents.  They were absolute bullshit.  They sounded like some sort of strange, country-boy-meets-British-nobleman thing.  It's like the director told all of his actors to talk like they moved from Alabama to Ireland, lived there for 10 years and then tried to become nobility.  What kind of idiot would fuck with accents that play no part in a film other than to cause a distraction?

            Directed by M. Night Shyamalan.

            Oh.

Now You See Me

            Now You See Me was on my radar for several months.  I like magic because I like being entertained.  Burt Wonderstone didn't do much for me because it was kind of a mess, albeit a harmless one.  So I have not been truly mesmerized by a 'magic movie' since The Prestige.  I was hoping this weekend would shake that up a bit, but alas I still have not been mesmerized by a magic movie since The Prestige.

           

            On to the review!

            The problem with Now You See Me is not in its plot or actors.  Both aspects may be a bit underwhelming but there's nothing offensive there.  No, my biggest problem is the cinematography.  You see, when I watch a movie I do not expect to be nauseated.  Neither The Blair Witch Project nor the Bourne films bothered me at all, yet I left the theater on Friday with a headache and an angry stomach.  My theory is that directors of photography Mitchell Amundsen and Larry Fong are terrible people. 

            No, not really.  What they are, however, are directors of action.  Just look at their background.  300, Sucker Punch, Watchmen, Pearl Harbor, The Bourne Supremacy.  Those are action-packed films that also have dizzying camera effects.  Unfortunately this time they went overboard.  When the camera should sit still, it goes crazy.  When it could get away with being crazy, it sits still.  Oddly enough, the only time the cameras calm the fuck down is during portions of the magic act.  Otherwise they are everywhere.  I'm pretty sure some of the fight scenes were filmed by some dude wearing those little glasses cameras people use on prank TV shows.

            In short, the camera work is a sloppy, distracting mess.  Which is a real shame, because the movie really isn't all that bad.  Basically, four magicians team up out of nowhere and start putting on ridiculous shows, during which laws may or may not be broken.  This of course attracts the attention of the FBI, who send Agent Dylan Rhodes (Mark Ruffalo) and Interpol Agent Alma Dray (Melanie Laurent) to interrogate the 'Four Horsemen'.

            If you have seen the trailers, you already know that the Four Horsemen are Jesse Eisenberg as The Lover, J. Daniel Atlas, Woody Harrelson as The Hermit, Merritt McKinney, Isla Fisher as The Priestess, Henley Reeves and Dave Franco as Death, Jack Wilder.  Individually they are all uniquely talented magicians, but together they seem to be an unstoppable force that is always several steps ahead of any and every Federal Agency that tries to stop them.

            Throw in Morgan Freeman as a magician who lives to expose other's magic tricks and Michael Caine as the rich financial backer of the Four Horsemen, and you've got yourself an amazing cast.  To me, this more than makes up for the slightly muddled plot.  Yes, there are so many damn people on screen that nobody really gets fleshed out, but it was nice to have a film where you really won't know who the bad guys are until you get to the end...or until you figure it out. 

            That's the other slight problem I had.  While the film does a fine job of not telegraphing who is what when how and why, there are enough not-so-subtle clues that will allow you to figure out the ending with a good 30 minutes left in the film's 115 minute run-time.

            So there you have it.  A movie that is nowhere as good as it could have been and certainly not as good as it should have been.  The characters are interesting if not deep and the plot is just good enough to keep you entertained, but it's nothing special.  Oh yeah, and if you do see it, sit in the very back of the theater or you might throw up.