Reviews

THIS RoboCop reboot by director Jose Padilha, thankfully, doesn't try to copy the original 1987 version by Paul Verhoeven, although it does follow the same path. Viewers will still get to see a Christ-like figure being killed, resurrected and saving his city, or flock, from the evils of capitalism. There's still a corporation that's pulling the strings of the city, and maybe the whole country, by promoting its saviour, which in this 2014 version comes in a sleek black chrome finish. The 1987 was a satire about TV news programmes and the greed of corporations. However, its main theme was that underneath the Judge Dredd-like armour lay a heart teeming with humanity. The 2014 version still places the story in Detroit but doesn't mention that the city in reality is bankrupt. It also focuses more on the relationship between RoboCop and his wife and son, who were not prominent in the first version. RoboCop (Joel Kinnaman) hands Dr Dennett Norton a tough question. This film has its moments, particularly when RoboCop faces off against a multitude of robotic cops in a warehouse. He disposes of them with the elan of a confident gamer, and viewers even get to see his point of view. However, for a film that talks a lot about emotions, this film feels strangely detached, meaning, it doesn't encourage viewers to root for our "black" superhero. It doesn't help that RoboCop's wife keeps popping into the picture at inopportune moments. The filmmaker wants to show more of RoboCop's family life, but this is the part of the film that fails miserably. The idea of having robots patrolling cities was a new one in 1987. But, in 2014, with all the news about US drones taking out Afghan Taliban rebels, the idea of that now is much more plausible. Padilha frames his film with the notion that US robots and drones are maintaining law and order in faraway lands (Iran) but can't do the same back home because of a piece of legislation that bars them from doing so. Samuel Jackson plays TV host Pat Novak, whose in-your-face reportage is often incendiary. He asks if Americans are robo-phobic. "What's more important than the safety of the American people?" The preamble doesn't aid the film in any way. The film should have just cut out the first few minutes and leapt headfirst into the story. It wants to comment on current issues, just like what the 1987 film did, but its preface bogs down the film. Similarly, it showing OmniCorp as thinking about ways to maximise profits from its robots and drones in the US market is nothing short of boring. Isn't that what all corporations do? There's nothing devious about it. The firm wants to humanise its robots because OmniCorp boss Raymond Sellars (Michael Keaton) says Americans want a product with a conscience, or something that knows what it feels like to be human. I take this to mean that American troops or security forces will always think twice before killing civilians. I had to suppress a snigger when I heard Sellars say that line. Detective Alex Murphy (Joel Kinnaman of TV's The Killing) is a righteous cop who stumbles on a plot about dirty cops working hand in hand with drug lord Antoine Vallon (Patrick Garrow). For that, he gets blown into smithereens. When he next wakes up, he's in a body armour. He recoils at the sight of his metallic structure and runs out of the lab and into the fields in a scene similar to that in Avatar. The scene of Dr Dennett Norton (Gary Oldman) showing RoboCop what's left of his body is touching, and so is the scene where he meets his son for the first time. RoboCop's wife, Clara (Abbie Cornish), is competent as the strong wife who wants to know what happened to her husband. Her total acceptance of his new body is commendable but it would have been more realistic to show her gasping or taking a moment to take it all in. She could also have been showed wondering how they would ever make love again. However, Clara becomes persistent and a pain in viewers' necks. I don't think viewers will for one minute believe in their unusual relationship. For the rest of the film, viewers will see RoboCop being put through his paces and watching him expand his limited acting skills. This brings us to Kinnaman, whose sardonic and wisecracking ways are curbed by the suit he's wearing. In fact, he's just a lump of metal. Paul Weller was in a similar situation in the first film but he allowed his acting to show us his pain, anger and desire for revenge. Kinnaman, meanwhile, just goes through the motions. In short, RoboCop is a huge mess that lacks emotion. Heck, I can't even be bothered to make myself be angry with this film or take it as an affront to the first film. 2 1/2 out of 5

HANSEL & Gretel: Witch Hunters is on the surface a rip-off of The Expendables 2. The dialogue is just functional, risible and crude, and the action -- not to mention the abundance of blood splatter, and crushed and decapitated heads -- dominates most of the film.

The film certainly doesn't mince its action; in fact, it'll make director Quentin Tarantino blush.

Norwegian writer-director Tommy Wirkola, in his English-language debut, uses the Brothers Grimm's tale of child abandonment as a springboard to display his aptitude with medieval fantasy, tight leather clothes, face-changing witches and an arsenal of heavy weapons for the most enlightened of bounty hunters.

Hansel (Renner) and Gretel (Arterton) dig deep into their souls to get rid of witches.Beneath the river of blood that permeates this film, however, lies the simple fact that two orphaned siblings are on a quest to find out what had become of their parents and why they were abandoned, in short, a search for their identities.

Unfortunately, to get to that point, viewers will have to sit through an avalanche of violence. As one sibling says: "Unleash hell."

The film opens with Hansel and Gretel being carted into the woods by their father. He never comes back. Brother and sister walk into a home made of cake and dispose of the witch in it, thanks to their immunity from spells.

Fifteen years later, diabetic Hansel (Jeremy Renner of The Avengers, The Bourne Legacy) and Gretel (Gemma Arterton of Quantum of Solace) are witch hunters.

The mayor of the small German town of Augsburg (in a nod to the tale's German roots) hires them to kill witches who have been abducting children for a sacrificial ceremony.

For a while, it's fun to see the male and female siblings working together to eliminate witches.

Both have equal strength and are well-equipped to deal with any event that arises, especially as they have weapons that emit arrows. That fun quickly disappears as their witch hunts involve only a huge amount of carnage.

Hansel says: "Killing innocent women won't bring back the missing children." He'll get to skinny dip with pretty Mina (Pihla Viitala), initially wrongfully accused of being a witch.

Mina later gets to spray bullets with a machine gun in a scene similar to that in The Last Stand.

Gretel finds an unlikely romance with a troll, Edward (Derek Mears), who's the Beast to her Beauty. Edward crushes victims, especially their heads, as if they were ants.

The film, of course, sets its mind and path on beating viewers into submission.

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DIRECTOR Simon West (The Expendables 2) teams up again with Nicolas Cage on this daddy-rampage film in New Orleans.

By the way, what's with the recent spate of films about fathers who go ballistic (see Taken 2) when their families are threatened? Perhaps films like these allow fathers, and society, to give vent to their feelings of helplessness in the face of rising crime.

Or, perhaps, it's just an excuse by Cage and West to go through the motions and con (get it? Con Air?) the audiences into parting with their money.

Cage has, of course, ventured into robbery territory before, for example, Gone In 60 Seconds(2000), in which a skillful car thief is forced to come out of retirement to save his abducted brother.

In Stolen, just-released skillful bank robber Will Montgomery is forced to come out of his shell to save his kidnapped daughter Alison (Sami Gayle).

Earlier, the audience is privy to a bank robbery gone wrong when Will shoots his accomplice Vincent (Josh Lucas) in the leg to prevent him from killing an eye-witness. He also burnt the US$10 million that they had stolen.

Eight years later, Will is released from prison and heads straight to see Alison, 15, who refuses to entertain his fatherly entreaties.

Unbeknown to them, Vincent, who now has a Terminator-like leg, is watching them from his taxi. He kidnaps Alison, stuffs her in the trunk of his taxi and demands that Will give him the US$10 million within 12 hours.

While I don't mean to be disrespectful to the handicapped, I wonder if the US authorities would allow a man with a metal prostheses to drive a cab.

This is all happening during Mardi Gras, which I had the opportunity of partaking in a long time ago, so you can imagine the revelry and crowds thronging the French Quarter.

Will begs the cops to help him, but detective Tim Harlend (Danny Huston) doesn't give a hoot about his predicament.

The FBI is portrayed as a bunch of bumbling incompetents who can't even protect its own office. What follows is a cat-and-mouse game as viewers watch Will hunt for Vincent and the cops hunt for Will (see The Fugitive).

There are lots of close calls as bullets are fired and Will jumps in and out of buildings and cars with reckless ease.

One thing that is puzzling is Vincent's decision to place Alison in the car trunk. I'm assuming that he wants to remain on the go, but why would he drive in the city during its busiest time of the year?

Also, as he abruptly stops the vehicle many times, why doesn't Alison bump her head against the trunk?

The movie, as you might imagine, is pretty predicable, as once Nicolas Cage sets his mind on doing something, you know that it'll be accomplished.

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KUNG-FU movies are a dime a dozen, what more if they are about a callow youth wanting to study it under a master and then getting a chance to impress the master's pretty daughter. Even having Sammo Hung choreographing the action scenes will have little effect.

There's a little commentary in Tai Chi 0 (Tai Chi Zero) about the dangers of aping decadent Western culture and how Chinese ingenuity can resist any white invasion. By this time, however, viewers would have lost interest in the narrative and, like me, would have been fighting to stay awake.

Director Stephen Fung's story about Yang Lu Chan, the founder of tai chi, uses Japanese animation and video games to up the movie's ante, but maybe he just wasn't too confident in the flick.

At the start, viewers are introduced to Lu Chan (2008 wushu champion Yuan Xiaochao, which is proudly announced on the screen). He's a tiger in battle because he has a horn-like stump on his head that can be hit to escalate his anger and increase his fighting prowess, just like the Incredible Hulk. But his downtime is also considerable. .

There's a flashback using black-and-white silent movies to describe his birth and childhood, including showing how far is mother (former soft porn star Shu Qi) would go to raise him.

In battle, his team is cut to pieces. So he heads for the mountains to learn a special kind of kung fu from Master Chen of the Chen Village, but this village is finicky because it won't teach it to outsiders.

Lu Chan is at his wits' end and fights villagers to show them his worth. These include Master Chen's pretty daughter Yu Niang (Angelababy). But he's beaten back at every step, until a labourer (Tony Leung) tells him to mimic the villagers' kung fu and use it against them.

Yu Niang's fiancé is Zi Jing (Eddie Peng), who is at odds with the culture of his country with his British clothing and snobby demeanour. He wants to build a railroad that will take it across the village, but this is met by fierce resistance from the villagers.

So he calls in the artillery, or a monstrous metallic ogre that's part tractor and part train. I don't know why but I thought about the metallic steam-powered spider in the desert in Wild Wild West (1999).

Lu Chan and Yu Niang conspire to bring the machine to a grinding halt, but not before taking down a regiment of hopelessly dressed white soldiers and a huge white guy.

A romantic subplot has Zi Jing working with a white woman whom he met in London. Her last moment on earth is to hear him tell her that he loves her, all within earshot of Yu Niang. Zi Jing should not mix business and pleasure.

The movie then ends abruptly, either living viewers unsatisfied or glad the movie ended.

A MAN and his lover are busy texting each other as they head for the wedding dais. Viewers think that both of them are getting married to each other but, as it tuns out, each is getting married to another person.

Director, co-writer and star Afdlin Shauki's Untuk Tiga Hari starts off with this intriguing premise and introduces many flashbacks to explain how the two got into this precarious situation. The movie is based on Ahadiah Akashah's novel of the same name.

Zafrin (Rashidi Ishak) and Ujie (Vanidah Imran) have known each other since their college days 10 years ago. Six months before their marriages, they scheme to get married only for three days and to divorce their spouses after that.

Zafrin proposes this solution as he is under pressure from his mother (Khatijah Tan) to marry a woman of her choice.

Zafrin and Ujie promise each other that they will do their best to avoid consummating their marriages. Ujie arms herself with pepper spray and Zafrin slathers himself with prawn paste (belacan) and durian.

However, complication arise as Ujie has married the sympathetic and understanding Armi (Afdlin) and Zafrin is with the gorgeous and ever- willing-to-please Juwita (Ayu Raudhah).

Armi and Juwita are crushed to learn that their spouses have been deceiving them.

Armi, who's such a nice bloke because he's played by the director himself, convinces Ujie that he takes his marriage seriously. Juwita begs Zafrin not to divorce her and even tells him that he can marry another.

One concern I have with this scenario is the absence of Armi and Juwita in their spouses' lives six months before the marriages. Didn't Armi and Juwita have any inkling that their future spouses were committed to others?

The movie doesn't say whether both couples got to know each other before their marriages. In fact, Zafrin asks his wife whether she had loved anyone previously only on the second day of their marriage.

I find it hard to believe that both couples didn't meet their intended partners before their weddings, even if they were arranged marriages.

So the movie has created a scenario that could have easily been avoided. The movie says marriage is serious business but it creates unnecessary problems to explain that.

Afdlin directs the bedroom scenes with a certain panache and in the style of old Hollywood comedies. It's hilarious to watch Zafrin and Ujie rebuffing their partners by all means possible.

Both Zafrin and Ujie's mums (Fauziah Ahmad Daud) are portrayed as baying shrews. Zafrin's mum, especially is a control freak.

A flashback shows Zafrin dating Balqis, the smartest girl in Form Five. His mum, however, is against their relationship as Balqis is poor and lives in a squatter home. One day, Balqis and her mum just disappear from the face of the earth.

Viewers will wonder for a long time what happened to Balqis, and her disappearance is explained only at the end.

Also, the actor who plays Zafrin at 17 looks much older. The young Ujie, too, has a boyfriend who doesn't look his age.

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