65

Stars: Adam Driver, Ariana Greenblatt, Chloe Coleman and Nika King.
Writers/Directors: Scott Beck and Bryan Woods.

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★

There was a filmgoing era, not that long ago (certainly not the 65 million years referenced here), when the dark shadow of ‘tentpole cinema’ did not loom so large as to dwarf films like 65. Films such as Christian Duguay’s Screamers (1995) or David Twohy’s Pitch Black (2000) were given time to breath during their release; they would build reputations as well-told, mid-tier sci fi action/thrillers with smart scripts and committed leads and grow appreciative audiences with word-of-mouth.

65 is that sort of film. Adam Driver (pictured, above) dons his ‘movie star/action hero’ hat as Mills, the pilot of a deep-space expedition craft that spectacularly crashes after straying into an uncharted asteroid belt. Gripped by survivor guilt, he is about to end it all when he learns one of the cryogenically frozen crew is still alive - teenage colonist Koa (Ariana Greenblatt; pictured, below). The pod they must launch to rendezvous with the rescue craft is 15 kilometres away; the terrain is prehistoric Earth, inhabited by the great, snarly thunder lizards of yore.       

It is a cracking premise upon which to build some old school Hollywood thrills, and that is what co-directors Scott Beck and Bryan Woods pull off with their feature debut; they earned the keys to the studio coffers after their script for A Quiet Place hit big. 65 is a similarly lean but skilfully realised genre exercise; a two-hander that is emotionally bolstered by Mill’s longing for his terminally-ill daughter, Nevine (Chloe Coleman) and Koa coming to terms with the loss of her parents in the crash.

If the forced-together father/daughter psychological complexity of The Last of Us has you in its grip, you’ll likely draw comparisons with the HBO hit series; the handful of hardcore sci-fi fans who also saw Pedro Pascal and Sophie Thatcher in Christopher Caldwell and Zeek Earl’s Prospect (2018) will nod knowingly, too . The emergence of Ellen Ripley’s maternal streak alongside Newt in James Cameron’s Aliens (1986) is another clear influence. The ‘ticking clock’ device that Beck and Woods employs is legitimately nail-biting and spectacularly envisioned, offering an element of inventiveness in a film that sometimes wears its influences a bit too prominently on its spacesuit sleeves. 

With Driver earning above-the-title credit and the high-concept ‘dinosaurs-vs-rayguns’ narrative recalling event films like Jurassic Park or Starship Troopers, there is the expectation of commercial filmmaking grandeur about 65. If that’s what you (or the studio) was expecting, that’s not this film; 65 is a taut 93 minutes of sweaty tension, appropriately scaled action and surprising tenderness. The modern film distribution model won’t allow 65 to find its most appreciative audience in its initial run, though it will certainly grow in cult stature.

AMBULANCE

Stars: Jake Gyllenhaal, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Eiza González, Garret Dillahunt, Keir O'Donnell. Jackson White, Olivia Stambouliah, Moses Ingram, Colin Woodell and A Martinez.
Writers: Chris Fedak, Laurits Munch-Petersen and Lars Andreas Pedersen
Director: Michael Bay

Rating: ★ ★ ½

Compared to the action monoliths for which he’s famous, in-your-face noisemakers like Armageddon, Pearl Harbour and the Transformers film, Michael Bay’s Ambulance is his version of an arthouse chamber drama. At its core is the story of three people, confined and needing to understand each other in order to survive.

And that is how he establishes his narrative over the course of a terrific first hour. Returned soldier and dedicated family man Will Sharp (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) is in dire financial need; his wife, balancing a newborn son on her hip the whole film, has an uninsurable disease and Will can’t secure steady work. As a last resort, he reaches out to his adopted brother, Daniel (Jake Gyllenhaal), who promises to help out if Will also does him a favour - be the fourth man in a bank robbery crew that promises a $32million payday.

These early scenes smartly establish character traits, motivations, personalities. The heist goes off the rails in a spectacular sequence that rivals Michael Mann’s downtown LA shoot-out in Heat for visual immersion and sound design. In a final act of desperation, Danny commands an EMT vehicle as a getaway car, complete with tough-gal paramedic Cam (Eisa Gonzalez, the film’s biggest plus) and bleeding-out cop Zac (Jackson White).

And then things get stupid. Instead of tightening the screws on his three leads, Bay goes big and broad in his pursuit of his Bay-hem brand. The movie spins off into idiotic Fast-&-Furious terrain when Danny calls in his Mexican Gang caricature mates, who happen to have a muscle-car with a gattling gun they’re willing to part with. All these empty action calories and Bay’s tendency to double- then-triple down on the faintest whiff of anything emotional blows the run time out to over 2 hours, which proves grotesquely self-indulgent.

The cracking first hour will be enough to carry most action heads through to the end, but Bay’s fleeting interest in his human scenery is dispiriting. After 30 years making empty-vessel spectacles, the tiresome, shallow grind that Ambulance becomes suggests Bay’s detractors - those that claim he’s never been particularly interested in his characters unless they’re holding a gun or a steering wheel - are probably spot-on. 

THE LOST CITY

Stars: Sandra Bullock, Channing Tatum, Daniel Radcliffe, Da'Vine Joy Randolph, Oscar Nuñez, Patti Harrison, Bowen Yang and Brad Pitt.
Writers: Oren Uziel, Dana Fox and Adam Nee
Directors: Aaron Nee and Adam Nee

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ½

There is something so refreshing in watching true movie stars give their bigscreen charisma room to breathe, and Sandra Bullock and Channing Tatum take some very deep breaths in the jungle adventure, The Lost City.

Bullock, who looks absolutely stunning in a way she hasn’t exploited in many of her films, plays Loretta Sage, a bestselling romance novelist who’s just about had enough of her own vacuous airport reading. She’s ready to kill off her franchise staples, including ‘Dash’, her broad-chested, blonde adonis hero brought to life by cover model Alan (Channing Tatum). Not what Alan wants to hear, with his shirtless public appearances being his primary source of income.

But in Loretta’s latest pulp writings are clues to a hidden city and jewelled headdress that don’t go unnoticed by scumbag billionaire Abigail Fairfax (a very funny Daniel Radcliffe). Abigail kidnaps Loretta, assuming she’ll guide him to the buried treasure, and setting in motion a rescue attempt by Alan that borders on buffoonish.

When chemistry is strained and the material is weak, these sort of romps look and feel like Dwayne Johnston and Emily Blunt in Jungle Cruise, but in the hands of a gifted comedienne like Bullock and a goofball hunk like Tatum, The Lost City occasionally feels like the Michael Douglas/Kathleen Turner classic-of-its-kind, Romancing the Stone. When our leads aren’t on screen, and the story has to be moved along, the very thin and silly veneer of a plot becomes obvious, but as a means by which to get to the next Bullock/Tatum giggly bits, it’ll do.

Of added benefit is Brad Pitt in an extended cameo as an ex military black-op who is called upon to lead the snivelling Alan in the early stages of the rescue mission. Pitt riffs on his own physical assets with as much energy as Channing Tatum, and while it’s all very broad schtick, it is also very funny.

KATE

Stars: Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Miku Patricia Martineau, Tadanobu Asano, Jun Kunimura, Michiel Huisman, Miyavi, Mari Yamamoto and Woody Harrelson.
Writer: Umair Aleem
Director: Cedric Nicolas-Troyan

Rating: ★ ★ ★

Kate is a great movie if you want to test out your new soundbar, or get back at that neighbour for renovating during lockdown. Director Cedric Nicolas-Troyan’s female assassin revenge thriller is best watched with the volume amped up to levels that both maximise the visceral rush of the ultra-violent action and drown out that pesky need for logic and depth in cinema.

Mary Elizabeth Winstead plays the titular avenger, a stealthy hitwoman trained since childhood in all manner of lethal means by Varrick, played by Woody Harrelson projecting a ‘I’ve done this before, just let me act’ vibe. When a hit goes wrong, Kate must pay the price; a one-night stand with Michiel Huisman (who also one-night-stood with Kaley Cuoco in The Flight Attendant) turns bad when she is poisoned with a radioactive drug and given 24 hours to live.

A billion miles away from the adorably cherubic Ramona in Scott Pilgrim vs The World, Winstead continues her transformation into A-list action heroine that began in earnest as The Huntress in Birds of Prey; she is a lean, mean, battered and bleeding killing machine, perfectly embodying the movie she’s in. It’s uncertain whether the actress’ planned career trajectory was as a butt-kicking, head-cracking vigilante; one can't help feel that after a 2016 that saw her topline the theatrical hit 10 Cloverfield Lane and the promising but ultimately unsuccessful network series BrainDead, Hollywood might have had loftier ambitions for her unique appeal and talent.

Act 2 kicks off with Kate seeking vengeance for her impending death by tracking down the Yakuza boss she believes ordered the hit. The journey takes her deep into the neon-lit Tokyo night, an odyssey that brings with it a brattish teen named Ani (Miku Patricia Martineau), the daughter of one of Kate’s recent whacks, and who can conveniently supply at lot of narratively-helpful information about her gangster relatives. Set in motion is a bone-cracking series of splattery encounters between Kate and knife-wielding gun-toting henchmen, all of whom die by some horribly violent and beautifully choreographed means (the in-the-chin/out-the-forehead knifing is a highlight). 

Early on, Kate hints at a need for a more sedate, less blood-soaked lifestyle, and the relationship she develops with Ani goes some way to fulfilling those longings. While the actresses work hard to make these moments count, Umair Aleem’s script is less committed. Also working against real-world feelings are plot developments that don’t make a lot of sense (if they can find Kate in a classy bar to poison her, why not just cap her ass there and then?) Wild shoot-outs and stabby hand-to-hand conflict unfold randomly and regularly in heavily-populated locations, suggesting Tokyo is one of those police-free big cities often found in these sorts of films.

All others aspects of this mid-range Netflix programmer adhere to the wronged female assassin template, maximised in pics like Bridget Fonda’s The Assassin, its French source material La Femme Nikita, Soarise Ronan’s Hanna and, most recently, Karen Gillan’s Gunpowder Milkshake. Also in the mix is the central plot device of the 1949 film noir classic D.O.A., remade in 1988 with Dennis Quaid as the poisoned protagonist. Kate is a movie that nods to other, better movies, but which does enough to punch a hole in lockdown boredom for 100+ minutes.

GUNS AKIMBO

Stars: Daniel Radcliffe, Samara Weaving, Ned Dennehy, Grant Bowler, Natasha Liu Bordizzo, Milo Cawthorne and Rhys Darby.
Writer/Director: Jason Lei Howden

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★

Two of young Hollywood’s most compelling career trajectories smash into each other with bloody, gleeful giddiness in Jason Lei Howden’s sophomore feature, Guns Akimbo. A splattery, smartly satirical Truman Show/Running Man mash-up for the content-obsessed millennial masses, this head-spinning horror show pits Daniel Radcliffe against Samara Weaving, with the worldwide web watching their increasingly OTT bloodbath unfold.

In the wake of such all-or-nothing lead roles in Horns, Swiss Army Man, Imperium and Jungle, Howden’s follow-up to his 2015 cult hit Deathgasm represents another fearlessly idiosyncratic choice for Daniel Radcliffe (pictured, top). As video-game coder and anti-troll troll Miles, the ‘forever Harry Potter’ excels as the couch-bound nobody whose anonymous postings unwittingly hurtle him into an ultra-violent online gaming landscape known as ‘SKIZM’. Abducted by channel head/tattooed-skull heavy Riktor (a brilliant Ned Dennehy), Miles awakens to an unforeseen development – his hands have been surgically attached, with little finesse, to two high-powered handguns.

His mission is simple – for the entertainment of the millions who watch SKIZM, Miles has 24 hours to kill holdover champion Nix (Weaving) or die trying. Subplots develop (to varying degrees of worthiness), but the real thrill in Guns Akimbo mirrors the experience of the film’s online spectators – watching the carnage mount as Miles, Nix and Riktor propel themselves towards an inevitable confrontation.

Matching Radcliffe’s physical action/comedy prowess beat-for-beat, Samara Weaving (pictured, above) further solidifies her burgeoning reputation as Hollywood’s most exciting Australian actress (sorry Margot, but it’s true). Coming off Mayhem, The Babysitter and Ready or Not (and with a starring role in the upcoming summer comedy, Bill & Ted Face the Music), Weaving is carving a unique niche for herself with bold, bloody, funny character choices in offbeat vehicles as original as Radcliffe’s oeuvre. In hindsight, their paring seemed inevitable and their chemistry proves a treat.

With exteriors shot in Auckland and studio work lensed in Berlin, Jason Lei Howden has overseen a truly international production yet maintains a hyper-kinetic indie sensibility that suits the madness perfectly. He leaves no directorial technique on the table, revving up his action and actors to new heights, just when it seems unlikely anything is left to mine. The gunplay is constant and unashamedly gratuitous; a workplace firefight is played for laughs, although in this time of mass shooting hysteria it may draw ire from some sectors.

The entire feature is boisterous, surface-level fun, but there is some precise skewering of the web-society culture that breeds a vulgar aberration like SKIZM and the many different types that populate it (most of which, ironically, would be the key demographic for this film). Smartly cast well into the support parts (amongst them, the director’s Deathgasm star Milo Cawthorne and the increasingly common bit part from Rhys Darby) and highlighting cinematic stunt work and effects imagery at its premium, Guns Akimbo ought to turn its limited theatrical exposure into long-term cult status.

FANGORIA x MONSTER FEST and MADMAN FILMS will present Guns Akimbo at nationwide Special Event Screenings on Friday February 28^th. The film will go into national release on March 5^th. For venue and ticket information, click here.

CAPTAIN MARVEL

Stars: Brie Larsen, Jude Law, Samuel L. Jackson, Ben Mendelsohn, Lee Pace, Gemma Chan, Mckenna Grace, Djimon Hounsou, Clark Gregg, Lashana Lynch and Annette Bening.
Writers: Anna Boden, Ryan Fleck and Geneva Robertson-Dworet.
Directors: Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck.

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★

Despite a slightly-too-convoluted origin narrative that will mean more to the comic-book devotee than the audience member for whom a single yearly dose of MCU is sufficient, Captain Marvel overcomes some wobbly first half pacing to deliver all that is really required of the modern heroic-crusader blockbuster. That is, a protagonist, unsure of their true identity, is set on a course of self-discovery during which they reconcile with their past, learn the good truth about their destiny and max out the potential of their superpower while saving a city/planet/galaxy. What separates the best from the worst in the MCU is that which is mined beyond of the studio's rigid template and, as the first female lead character in the franchise, writer/directors Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck identify plenty of fresh thematic angles to explore. 

Coming from a background of gritty, uplifting character pieces (Half Nelson, 2006; Sugar, 2008; Mississippi Grind, 2015), the pair's deployment by Marvel Studios was to serviceably craft a solid, ‘real’ hero in Carol Danvers/Captain Marvel. In Oscar-winner Brie Larson, they achieve that, even if at times her stoicism feels a bit stodgy. While everyone around her is getting the great one-liners and soaking up the spare-no-expense extravagance of their time-shifting/interplanetary setting, Larson hunkers down to provide the film’s emotional as well as heroic core; it’s a task that plays somewhat thankless at times. That said, when called upon to don the superheroine duds, smash villains and integrate with the green screen techies and stunt unit, she comes alive.

The opening act barrels through the world building with a "Hey, pay attention!” urgency that threatens to leave distracted patrons lost.  We meet our heroine (‘Vers’, as she’s known to her special-op combat team) as she stirs from a restless sleep; her head is full of fragmented images, all that is left of what seems like several past lives. On her home planet of Hala, she is one of the Kree, a race beholden to the ‘Supreme Intelligence’ and fighting the shape-shifting Skrull hordes (phew). When her unit, led by the never-not-evil Jude Law, is ambushed, she is flung across time and space, landing in a Blockbuster video store in downtown LA in the mid 1990s.

With young S.H.I.E.L.D. grunt Nick Fury (a digitally smoothed-over Samuel L Jackson) quickly settling into her sidekick role, Vers starts to piece together her own timeline while fighting off Skrull leader Talos (an unrecognisable and terrific Ben Mendelsohn) and his henchmen. A mid-section trip to Louisiana to rekindle a friendship with ex-pilot buddy Rambeau (Lashana Lynch) is a bit talky and the forward momentum sags. But as Danvers’ journey towards an understanding of her past and the inevitable emergence of the titular heroine progresses, the third act builds convincingly towards the stirring effects spectacle finale associated with the franchise.

The pre-release web-posturing of some sectors of the community looks even more churlish and pathetic upon the film’s release. While Larson’s portrayal is one of chiselled moral and physical sturdiness (as have been those of the men in the MCU since Day 1), Boden and Fleck do not hammer home a politicised perspective. Instead, they provide contemporary commentary with some crackling social satire (“Tell the Supreme Intelligence that this time of wars and lies will soon be over”) and draw upon the femme-skewed cast to refreshingly explore character and drama in a manner respectful and honest to the gender. Captain Marvel is not the blunt-force challenge to the accepted norms that Ryan Coogler's Black Panther came to represent, but it's a potent statement of intent. The challenge will be incorporating her into the male-centric Avengers films, where laddish oafs with waning appeal like Tony Stark and Peter Quill still occupy centre stage.

The 90s setting provides for some sweet nostalgia, including a soundtrack of skilfully appropriated tunes (No Doubt’s I’m Just a Girl, the pick of them) and pop culture riffs sure to further transition away from the now-distant 80s as The Retro Decade of Choice. In the standard MCU 'Ageing Icon' role previously filled by the likes of Robert Redford, Jeff Bridges, Ben Kingsley, Michael Douglas, Michelle Pfeiffer and Nick Nolte is the stunning Annette Bening, ideally cast as 'Supreme Intelligence' (even if some of her dialogue seems reluctant to leave her mouth at times).

Fittingly, the passing of Marvel creator Stan Lee was acknowledged with a sweet, simple message in the film’s opening frames, which was greeted with instantaneous applause by the audience.

ALPHA

Stars: Kodi Smit-McPhee, Jóhannes Haukur Jóhannesson, Marcin Kowalczyk, Jens Hultén, Natassia Malthe, Spencer Bogaert, Mercedes de la Zerda and Leonor Varela.
Writers: Daniele Sebastian Wiedenhaupt (screenplay) and Albert Hughes (story).
Director: Albert Hughes

RATING: ★
★
★
★

In this modern movie-going age, where origin stories clutter up our multiplexes with tiresome monotony, it seems fitting that a film that ponders on the starting point of the age-old ‘a boy and his dog’ narrative should take place around the dawn of prehistory. Deceptively simple in its construction yet sweepingly epic, exciting and genuinely moving in its execution, Albert Hughes’ Alpha spins a potentially academic ‘domestication of the dog’ story into a coming-of-age fable that adventure hounds and dog lovers will drool over.

Set 20,000 years ago against a European landscape of shifting geography and harsh climate, Sebastian Wiedenhaupt’s screenplay introduces us to protagonist Keda (Kodi Smit-McPhee) at a pivotal moment in the young man’s passage towards alpha-manhood. He is being led into a buffalo hunt by his father, tribal elder Tau (appropriately sturdy Icelandic actor Jóhannes Haukur Jóhannesson), yet fails to be the man his tribe and his dad needs him to be.

Flashbacks reveal Keda is the sensitive type, unable to slay an animal for food and not the natural woodsman or warrior that is expected of someone with his heritage. Smit-McPhee’s casting proves a deft masterstroke despite at first appearing misjudged. Very much not the hulking caveman type, the Australian actor’s lean physique, doleful eyes and initial timidity does not disappear over the course of his personal growth, but rather takes on an androgynous muscularity that is central and crucial to the film’s subtext.

Separated and left for dead, Keda is adrift and alone on the prehistoric tundra, his injuries making him seemingly easy pickings for scavengers. Prime amongst them is a wolf pack, which fails in their bid to drag Keda from a tree and nearly lose one of their own in the attack. The entire second-act of Alpha is largely the young tribesman regaining his strength while tending to the wolf’s wounds; the co-dependency they develop takes a few real-world liberties (surely a starving wolf would turn on his protein-rich human companion at some point?), but dramatically the friendship is a potent and believable match-up.

As Keda and his newly bonded wolf companion (part real animal, part mostly convincing CGI) set out for his tribal home, they must overcome physically challenging and breathtakingly photographed obstacles, including an unforgettable encounter on and underneath an ice-lake, an omnipresent hyena pack, the first snow of the season and, in one terrifying sequence, the lair of a true alpha predator. Director Albert Hughes, making his solo directorial debut after doing double-duty for two decades with his brother Allen on such films as Menace II Society (1993), Dead Presidents (1995), From Hell (2001) and The Book of Eli (2001) enlivens a rather perfunctory ‘journey home’ plot with thrilling, vast and complex staging of the pair’s trek. He also forges a believably emotional bond between man and beast that is driven home in both personal and sociological terms in the film’s final frames.

Narratively, Alpha is a lean, small-scale friendship drama, of outcasts from their clans bonding across an interspecies divide. Cinematically and thematically, however, Hughes’ film is a grand, bold vision of the development of humankind, one that transcends its millennia-old setting and makes an entirely and passionately contemporary statement.

THE MEG

Stars: Jason Statham, Li Bingbing, Rainn Wilson, Winston Chao, Cliff Curtis, Page Kennedy, Jessica McNamee, Ólafur Darri Ólafsson, Robert Taylor, Shuya Sophia and Masi Oka.
Writers: Dean Georgaris, Jon Hoeber and Erich Hoeber.
Director: Jon Turteltaub.

Rating: 2/5

For a movie so cynically calculated to hit all-important commercial KPIs, so much feels miscalculated about The Meg. The cheapest looking US$125million film ever made, joyless journeyman Jon Turteltaub’s big-shark movie drags the anchor for most of its interminable 113 minutes.  From the bored action lead routinely grimacing, to the beast itself, blessed with the natural skill to change size at will, The Meg seems destined to only find favour with snarky podcasters seeking schlocky targets for ridicule. 

The central ‘plot’ concerns a boozy ex-diver called Jonas (think about it…actually, don’t), drinking his life away in Thailand having lost two colleagues in the film’s lackluster prologue. Jason Statham plays ‘PTSD grief’ as script directions to be ignored; when called upon to return to the ocean depths to save a stranded submersible that contains his ex-wife (Jessica McNamee), he monologues with a grin about why he won’t do it, then jumps on board a helicopter to do it.

The clincher is that his ex may have just seen the same prehistoric beast that Jonas claimed was responsible for his crew’s death. Soon, he is on board the Mana One, an underwater research facility overseen by scumbag entrepreneur Rainn Wilson and peopled by Cliff Curtis’ boss-man, Ruby Rose’ feisty operations manager, Page Kennedy’s shrill nuisance DJ (the film’s most thankless part) and Li Bingbings’ single mother scientist (asked to pull off some excrutiating sentimentality with her on-screen daughter, Sophia Cai, and some chemistry-free romantic sparks with her leading man).

It takes Turteltaub and his trio(!) of writers 40-odd  minutes to shoehorn their moneymaker into the action, the Megalodon’s first appearance recalling the T-Rex reveal in Jurassic Park (the first and last time the movies will be compared, rest assured). The special effects that bring the Meg to life run the gamut from state-of-the-art (a midpoint sequence in which the shark closes in on Statham and Bingbing as they are being reeled in is the film’s best action) to Jaws-3 clunky. The PG-13 framework means kills are meagre by any horror buff’s measure; barring one legitimately hilarious sight gag involving a helicopter pilot, humour is barren (note to the producers – you owe the Sharknado franchise an acknowledgement for stealing their closing shot gag).

Everything about the movie – the cool posters, the fun trailer, the decade-long development history, the mystery behind what horror auteur Eli Roth once might have seen in the insipid material  – is infinitely more interesting than anything that made it into the movie. The Meg is so bound to the ‘studio blockbuster’ template, it never breathes; that’s perhaps appropriate, given its waterlogged staidness, but it leaves this hulking behemoth dead in the water.

BRAVEN

Stars: Jason Momoa, Stephen Lang, Jill Wagner, Garrett Dillahunt, Sasha Rossof, Brendan Fletcher, Zahn McClarnon, Sala Baker, Teach Grant, Fraser Aitcheson, James Harvey Ward and Steve O’Connell.
Writers: Michael Nilon and Thomas Pa'a Sibbett.
Director: Lin Oeding.

Rating: 3.5/5

Stuntman-turned-director Lin Oeding skilfully conjures A-grade thrills out of B-movie beats in Braven, an alpha-male actioner that melds drug-deal-gone-bad tropes with wilderness survival struggles. Another satisfying step on the road to Rock-like crossover acceptance for leading he-man Jason Momoa (pictured, above), this Canadian production stays entirely within its genre parameters but does so wholeheartedly, delivering a lean, mean dose of tension, violence and sentimentality.

Biding time until his star soars post-Aquaman, Momoa plays logging company boss Joe Braven, a hardy working class type, loving husband to Stephanie (Jill Wagner, reteaming with Momoa after 2014’s Road to Paloma) and best-friend/dad to pre-teen Charlotte (Sasha Rossof). The one strain on their otherwise lovely domesticity is Joe’s ageing father Linden (Stephen Lang, God’s gift to movies like Braven; pictured, below), whose wandering memory and cantankerous moods are proving troublesome; Joe is called out late at night when his father starts a bar brawl, convinced his long-dead wife is talking to other men.

Meanwhile, one of Joe’s employees, young trucker Weston (Brendan Fletcher) has compromised himself and his boss by taking on board seething baddie Hallett (Zahn McClarnon, giving an in-for-a-penny-in-for-a-pound performance) and a hollowed log filled with lots of drugs. When the truck crashes, the pair stash the contraband in Joe’s remote cabin, forcing trafficker Kassan (Garrett Dillahunt, his demeanour as icy as the mountainous locale) and his personality-free henchmen to go bush and reclaim it. Thing is, Joe, Linden and Charlotte are already on-site…

One of Hollywood’s most respected fall guys (his credits as stunt co-ordinator include Olympus Has Fallen, Oblivion and The Equalizer), Oeding delivers action with a choreographer’s eye for fluidity and detail. Gun battles, fist fights and, most importantly, the unpleasant consequences associated with same are nailed with convincing realism within a geography that is well established. First-time scripters Michael Nilon and Thomas Pa'a Sibbett allow the occasional incongruity to seep into their structure, but never so that the tense momentum derails.

No specifics are offered as to Joe Braven’s back story; when he starts to ‘Home Alone’ the bad guys, using whatever he can find in his cabin to keep the fight going, one has to assume he’s had some survival and/or combat training, so dexterous is he at hurling a hatchet or manufacturing a bow-and-arrow. Momoa’s take on the heart-of-gold everyman with a killer’s instinct is so engaging, however, such details seem perfunctory.

Braven is as solid a throwback to the ‘80s action movie template as we’ve seen in some time, pleasingly free of the irony that would have spun the film off into wink-wink self-awareness. Its belief in itself inspires the audience to place a similar faith in its characters and narrative; like its star, it is characterised by its broad-shoulders and unshakeable integrity.

BLEEDING STEEL

Stars: Jackie Chan, Show Lo, Ouyang Nana, Callan Mulvey, Tess Haubrich and Xiahou Yunshan.
Writers: Leo Zhang, Cui Siwei and Xiaohou Yunshan
Director: Leo Zhang.

Rating: 2/5

There is a special place in movie heaven for acts of such logic- and physics-defying cinematic lunacy as Leo Zhang’s Bleeding Steel, a momentously staged absurdity that almost endears itself through sheer relentless bombast. Largely shot in Sydney (or, more precisely, a graffiti-stained future version of the harbour city populated by basketball-playing American street teens, for some reason), this preposterous romp plays like a greatest hits version of star Jackie Chan’s most recognizable on-screen characterisations, but with dumbed-down dialogue, a garish colour palette and an audio track cranked to 11.  

Ripping huge chunks of inspiration from the likes of Luc Besson’s sci-fi spectacle Lucy, Chan’s own kiddie romp The Spy Next Door and…oh, let’s go with Roland Emmerich’s Universal Soldier, Zhang’s hyper-charged, hardly-coherent head-spinner is a star-vehicle concoction for both old and new generations of Asia’s favourite film stars. The ageing action legend plays special operative Lin, who has dedicated the latter part of his career to covertly protecting his daughter, Nancy (Taiwanese cellist starlet Ouyang Nana), while never being able to reveal his true self to her. Also in a mix to ensure broad regional and demographic acceptance is The Mermaid star Show Lo, the Taiwanese idol ok as the handsome but bumbling offsider Leeson, and Erica Xia-Hou as Lin’s strong-willed career cop 2IC.  

When a book is published revealing Nancy to be the missing link in a clandestine synthetic human initiative led Dr James (Kym Gyngell), the teen-queen Wolverine becomes the target of Andre (Callan Mulvey), a rotting Frankenstein-type behemoth who needs Nancy’s blood to regenerate. Despite barely being held together by his pale grey skin, Andre has amassed an army of black-helmeted alien types led by a leather-clad warrior-woman (Tess Haubrich, channelling Cate Blanchett’s Thor villainess; pictured, below), whose job it is to slay anyone stalling her quest to bring Nancy to Andre. That’ll do plotwise, suffice to say it spins in increasingly convoluted and largely indecipherable directions, with little regard for even the most basic action-movie realism.

Now well into his 60s and unable to dazzle with the same physical prowess he displayed as a younger action hero, Chan is nevertheless called upon to up the adrenalin for cast and audience (often with CGI enhancement); he occasionally appears somewhat bewildered by all that is unfolding around him. He has played this father/fighter/fumbler archetype before, most notably in his last three films (The Foreigner; Railroad Tigers; Kung Fu Yoga), all of which were far better suited to his age and talent. Chan’s signature large-scale stunt, the fight atop and spectacular descent from a big-city landmark (see his antics on Rotterdam’s Willemswerf Tower in 1998’s Who Am I? or the Hong Kong Convention Centre in 2004’s New Police Story) is dragged out again, this time perching him on the Sydney Opera House sails for some silly but spectacular fight scenes.

The most remarkable thing about Bleeding Steel (that awful title aside) is the tonal shifts employed almost frame-to-frame by director Zhang (who worked with the Chan clan on 2012’s Chrysanthemum of The Beast). Featuring broad slapstick humour, Bond-like gadgetry, Mission Impossible-type set-pieces, teen romance beats, some loopy science fiction tropes, schmaltz-rich sentimentality and, finally, knife-to-the-neck/chest-bursting ultra-violence, it is impossible to gauge what type of audience, other than the die-hard Chan completists, will feel wholly satisfied by this schizophrenic genre hodgepodge.

That Zhang and his cast play it with such straight-faced conviction at such a high pitch for all of the 110 minute running time does inspire in the viewer a ‘Stockholm Syndrome’-kind of respect for all involved, but that’s probably not what the producers (of which there are about four million) were aiming for.