Reviews

Obviously you've got some money for sets and effects, you've got Liam Cunningham, you've got David Dastmalchian, you've got a cute kid, a girl, and a slightly different take on Dracula. You could make a good, escapist movie!

Ah, but no, not these people. This movie has not a glimmer of intelligence, not a moment's humorous relief, not a single unwasted opportunity.

So much is wrong with it, but I can single out the worst two or three. First, stu pi di ty. The characters, even the most supposedly intelligent, educated, and experienced, show absolutely no situational awareness at any time. Not even the simplest, most basic marks are hit. I know a savage beast is hunting, but do I show any urgency? Do I, say, look around me? No, no; that's for other people. You just can't care about people that stupid.

And Liam Cunningham is absolutely, utterly wasted. He could have been a good focal character, an anchor. But no, they find no use for him.

And there's no real suspense, because there's never a chance they'll beat Dracula. He's too powerful and too smart, and they're too stupid. For instance: they find out that his victims burst into flames in sunlight. So of course, the only hunt for him in daytime, right? No, no; that would make too much sense!

Ah well, I'll stop. Just don't waste your time.

Ultimately, it's a pleasant enough watch. But the road to the end lies through a lot of nothing and everything.

It's hard to put words to what dissatisfies about the film besides the sketchy camerawork. I think it's the unfixedness of the characters. Mike holds his boss in utter contempt, and admires and feels indebted to him. The kid does, doesn't, does, doesn't, and does want to leave. His mother has no use for him, demands to retain him, thinks nothing of him, moves heaven and earth to get him back. She's unstable and coreless, and commands respect and obedience. She acts like a whore and is offended at being considered such.

I could go on, but that's really it. No main character is very definite or very fixed, so it's hard really to like or dislike. So at best you just settle down to watch old Clint do old-Clint things, and hope for a happy ending -- which you get. Or do you? Because his father (after years of unbroken neglect, suddenly) really really cares and is concerned about his boy and wants to do right by him...because he callously wants to use him as a bargaining chip.

Oh, there we go again, don't we?

See what I mean?

I like Jason Statham, Holt McCallany, and Scott Eastwood as actors. From the buzz of the reviews, I expected to enjoy this. For the first few minutes, my hopes began to be realized...until they weren't.

The story starts of very sure-footedly, with one of several clever filming decisions - the use of a single-angle camera shot. A lot happened off-camera. This was the first of many moments where the viewer knew something big was happening, that he wasn't privy to all of it, and that it would eventually be unfolded. This is a mark of good storytelling. If only it had carried through.

The introduction of Statham's character is also very effective, as one immediately senses there is more to him than meets the eye. But the moment Holt McCallany steps in, all friendliness and helpfulness, I think, "He might be an overcompensating bad guy." It was an amateurish telegraphed move. Casting an unknown, or a little more greyness in his character, would have worked better.

Then a brutal and violent plot unfolds, stepping back and forth in the timeline. It is effective as far as it goes. But the moment they say there's an insider, I think "McCallany or Marsan" (the two known names "inside"; the first the overly helpful character played by a known actor, the second a British actor doing an American accent and being a bit fishy).

I groaned when the evil team turned out to be bitter soldiers, kind of a cheap gimmick. (When, later, one of them sells out his brothers for money, the folly is complete.)

But everything goes entirely south when McCallany decides to explain to Statham that he's the insider, there's going to be a robbery, and "H" (Statham) needs to shut up and cooperate (for no reward) or die. We're to believe he'd do that, with Statham just sitting there within windpipe-chopping distance, sitting by an openable door, with McCallany's character having seen what a fearless and deadly machine Statham is. We're also to believe that Statham would not have noticed that his gun has no bullets.

This is a plausibility crash and burn moment. To me the movie never recovers. Nice-guy McCallany turns into a total monster for the remainder, until his predictable death.

Two final notes. As I said, I like Statham. The camera likes him, gifting him with several extended shots. This movie (and camerawork) provides countless opportunities for Statham to expand his range as an actor. He takes advantage of exactly none of them. Statham maintains the same single grim expression throughout, without the slightest shift or nuance.

So all "H: is is a grim, vengeful, usually-efficient character. You're sorry his son was killed, but you don't care a bit for him. At no point does he show a glimmer of humanity or complexity. Bad directing? Bad acting? Bad, anyway.

More largely, apart from the son (murdered after a couple of minutes' screen time), the movie gives us almost nobody to like or care for, and kills virtually everybody anyway. So it's grim, implausible, and only occasionally fun to watch. The flashes of skill and intelligence are more tantalizing and frustrating than satisfying.

Expected to like it, sorry to be disappointed.

I like this kind of movie. Jaws, Deep Blue Sea, The Shallows... Use some creative story-telling, 3D characters, good photography, suspense and I'm there.

This didn't have those things. No characters to really feel or care about. So much of the camera-work lost in darkness, bubbles, and/or silt. At least one death seemed gratuitously cruel and lingering.

That said, there was some real suspense, and a few legit jumps. That saves it from zero or one stars. Very intense (if not completely believable) ending earned it an extra star.

That's how long before the question "When are they going to ram a homosexual character down our throats?" is answered. Better than some shows, but still. So predictable, anymore. (Is there a code?)

My interest was already dropping through the slow-moving plot, the swearing, the drugs, the sneering hatred, the anachronistic racism. But with that, there were no boxes left checked to hold my interest. I've stuck with enough series hoping for some redemptive switch, and regretted it. Not this time.

This is a truly dumb episode.

Was this the dialogue among the writers?

"Where do we go with this? I have no idea."

"Me either."

"Not me."

< pause >

"Wait. I know!"

"Do tell."

"We'll bring back a girl to some weird Christian family and have them try to kill her!"

"Great! That's a classic! We do that over and over! Everybody loves that!"

"But...who'll write the dialogue? Does anyone actually know any Christians?"

< everybody > "No."

"Ah well, how hard can it be? We'll just use what we've seen in a hundred other things like that. Put up crosses, stuff like that. They'll eat it up."

"Genius!"

This review is of the whole season, and its heart is two words:

Don't bother.

The plot throws out some interesting elements, none of which pays off. Trails are begun and dropped, pivotal characters appear and disappear, mysteries loom and vanish, expectations get raised and then forgotten.

The characters don't help much. Bill Pullman's bleary squinting unrelated expressions don't get funner to watch. But worst of all, the central character is a kid named Julian, and he is an unsympathetic, unlikable, uncompelling, annoying, obnoxious character.

The grand denouement is just a spit in the viewer's face and a "See you next season!"

Do not bother.

If a joke had a perfectly wonderful set-up - grade AAA - and a miserably bad (not funny-bad) punch-line, would you say it was a good joke? or if there were no punch-line at all, just the set-up?

I wouldn't.

So I say this wasn't a good movie.

Very involving plot, very good actors and scenery and dialogue. You're really caught up into caring about these people.

Then the ending is just...not. It's a complete cop out. You're approaching the resolution. it's set up, it's coming, it's coming, almost here, and - THE END. The resolution is that there is *no* resolution.

So that's it. If you don't care, you just like a good set-up, this might be the movie for you. For my part, I felt utterly ripped off and wanted my time back.

What makes The Titan so bad is that it had an engaging premise, a promising first act, and decent actors. That lures you in enough to make you want to see where it goes.

Well, I'll tell you where it goes. Right into the toilet.

It plays out very much as if they only had budget for actors, scenery, some effects, and a decent screenwriter for the first act. Sadly, the budget must have failed then, and the janitors finished the script. (I shouldn't impugn decent, hardworking janitors that way; they probably would have done a better job.)

It just completely stops making ANY sense, AND forgets the first act. Wife keeps being shocked that the husband who signed up to be transformed is being transformed. Keeps telling the doctor who warned of a bumpy and risky transformation that he'd lied to her...because the transformation is (A) happening, and being (B) bumpy and (C) risky.

And it just keeps getting stupider from there on, all the way to the stupid, stupid end sequences.

You're left with nothing but unanswerable questions.

Like:

* What did the wife THINK was going to happen? * Why did Worthington's character suddenly totally change, bodily, after a single surgery? * What does sitting under water holding your breath have to do with breathing nitrogen? * How can he go back and forth from breathing nitrogen to breathing air -- shouldn't his breath have poisoned his wife and son? * What was the brilliant wife's long-term game-plan in giving him saline? * Why did she take along the main doctor's assistant? * Why did the woman candidate kill her husband? * Why is it OK that Worthington's character murdered innocent soldiers doing their job? * What is achieved by sending a single mutated human to Titan? * Wouldn't it have been simpler to mutate humans to be able to remain on Earth? * What animal's genes made tentacles shoot out their hands?

...and so on and so forth.

Just don't be left with this question: "Why did I watch this after so many warnings?"

Aware of many bad responses to the movie, I watched, ready to make up my own mind. I often like movies better than louder complainers do, and thought this might be such a case.

From the very start, I was puzzled at the focus. It was this woman, Hamilton (Gugu Mbatha-Raw). She seemed vague, indefinite, not-quite-there, and uninteresting. In a scene with two people, she was the least interesting.

I continued to be puzzled as she continued to be the focus. Here now is a team of actors/characters. As we get to know them, every last one of them is more interesting than she is. Yet she continues to be the focus. Is she destined to become interesting?

No, not at all. Yes, she's destined to be the pivotal character...but she never becomes interesting. She never becomes compelling, likable, sympathetic -- definite. She stares, mopes, looks sad and confused and distracted. That's about it. She's the worst thing about the movie and, unfortunately, she's a major focus of the movie.

Which is a real shame, because the plot (and all the other characters!) is really interesting and complex. I love when a situation unfolds in unexpected ways, and this is just such a plot. The plot (despite Hamilton) kept me interested.

But even there, it ran into foolish holes and gaps. So, the ship hates them, right? It kills at least two of them. Why? Not sure. And REALLY not sure, because the ship seemingly loses interest in them after the last person it kills, and allows all the rest of the story to unfold, leaving the crew unmolested.

And another thing. Our Heroine runs back at the end, seeing two team-members in jeopardy. To save them? No, not at all. Basically she gets there in time to watch the second get shot and struggle with Jensen. So does she join in and help him? Does she grab the gun and shoot Jensen? Does she do anything useful?

No, she runs away and leaves him to be shot again. Ah, but surely she's running away to do something meaningful and important, something that explains why she ran back? Right?

No, not at all. She just runs and hides. Why? She has no useful skills. Oh well.

And then Jensen, stalking this useless UNARMED person, tiptoes around as if she's either a threat, or dearly-beloved. Which is it? Neither! Hamilton has NO weapon (doesn't look for one), and NO skills -- and, when Jensen can, she tries to kill her. So why the cat-and-mouse?

See, this is one of those situations where I feel like the writers/director needed to bring a couple of people off the street, run the story past them, get some common-sense input...and then make a GREAT movie.

Instead, they simply made an uneven movie: part great, part stupid.

And even the ending, while arresting, is very, very unsatisfying.

Could have been great. And that's the worst part.

I'm always happy to ignore reviews. Unhappy people are likeliest to squawk, and many seem to enjoy tearing down the works of others. So I wasn't deterred by the bad "buzz" over this movie.

After all, the first movie was one of the tensest, scariest movies I'd ever watched, and the mounting tension as more and more about the Creeper is revealed was scary fun. The performances were also note-perfect.

But by contrast this movie, from the start, felt tired and empty and thrown-together. Good camera-work and music were wasted on a plot and acting that were very sub-par. All the LEOs seemed like lost idiots, not professionals; the writing was lazy and overbroad, the performances were repeatedly cartoonish and off-putting.

The script really does feel like very little thought was put into it, and no feedback sought nor accepted. I mean, seriously - a country boy tinkers together a high-caliber gattling gun, and NEVER ONCE tries it out? NEVER ONCE shreds a target, or a tree, or a cow?

Then finally comes the big reveal, as the Creeper finds a sign saying "We know what you are." He raises his head to the heavens and screams...

...and absolutely nothing comes of it.

I wanted to like it, but I just couldn't. Disappointingly disappointing.

Oh, if there's a four, particularly with Gina Phillips back, I'll watch it. But the movies so far are ordered correctly: 1 is the best, 2 is less so, and 3 a very, very distant third.

I like boxing movies. I'm almost a sucker for them. Cinderella Man, Rocky 3, Creed, and on and on. I do like the hardworking underdog/redemption story theme, and a well-choreographed match.

And these fight sequences are okay, plus Gyllenhaal clearly got in shape for them.

BUT he SO overacts, and the character is SO obnoxious, that it just isn't that fun to watch.

Whether scripted or not, you feel like Gyllenhaal is ad-libbing a constant patter of nonsense babble in many scenes. We're supposed to care a lot that he loses his great wife, and his daughter is taken away from him. But BOTH happen because HE DOES NOT LISTEN, and he never really confronts that killing flaw.

Even in the courtroom scene, when the judge is informing him what's going to happen, Gyllenhaal (I can't feel it's the character) is mugging and clowning and yapping at his daughter across the room, clearly not taking the trial or the judge seriously -- and so, predictably, when the sentence is finished, he says "What?" Yeah, Enstein: what she said while you were acting like a dimwitted toddler.

What arc there is feels jerky and lacks credibility. He's an idiot, he's an idiot, he's an idiot...oh, okay, now he's really going to train for this fight. Well, great, so I guess everything's all fixed now. And if he can beat that other fighter, he'll be a fit father. Great.

It left me more irritated than entertained, and not in any good way.

I gave it a 5 because the fight sequences are decent, and the little girl who plays the daughter (Oona Laurence) is one of the more consistent, empathy-provoking characters.