Riddick (2013)

One of my favorite movies ever is "Pitch Black." And I'm in the very small minority who didn't hate "The Chronicles of Riddick," despite it being a measurable step down. But then again, there are few places to go from greatness other than downwards. For the third installment, "Riddick," all I wanted was a fun, dumb, gory B-movie. I wanted it to get back to basics. I don't think that's too much to ask.

What did I get? Well, it certainly is a B-movie. It's certainly gory. It's got some elements of fun in it, for sure. It's stripped down and back to a very simple survival story. And it is most definitely, without question, really dumb.

But on the other hand, it does have a very sexy voice.

So why do I feel so empty afterwards? Why am I so disappointed in it? I'm not totally sure, but I think in the end my problem with "Riddick" is that the 'dumb' outweighed nearly everything else that was positive about it. This is a dumb movie with dumb, unlikable characters and a plot that's not exactly terrible but not exactly worth caring about. At least it's that way for the first two acts. When the third act comes along all of a sudden we get dumped into "Pitch Black" again out of nowhere, which would usually be a good thing, but here it's so jarring that it's really unwelcome. But more on that later.

"Riddick" is a direct sequel to "The Chronicles of Riddick," which I honestly found somewhat surprising, which finds our titular anti-hero (Vin Diesel) stranded on a backwater piece of nowhere which isn't the same planet from "Pitch Black" even though it looks just like it. What happened is both he and the Necromongers had had enough of each other pretty early in his tenure as ruler, so Karl Urban gets his little 40 second cameo and screws him over, foolishly thinking that a fall of a couple hundred feet and a cliff landing on him is enough to kill Richard B. Riddick.

Please. Riddick will do that and still choke a buzzard right afterwards. He doesn't even care.

After acclimating himself to the dangerous environment he's found himself in, we go through a montage of what must be a year or so as he survives on this rock. Coming across a mercenary station, he sends out a signal broadcasting his location, which sends a bunch of bounty hunters after him. While that would normally be a bad idea, he's intending to use these guys as a kind of taxi service to get him off the planet. And if they don't want to leave him a ship willingly, well he IS Riddick, so Plan B is simply for him to kill them all.

That's a big chunk of the movie, which consists of Riddick making complete chumps out of all the dumb mercenaries that are too stupid to understand that they are hopelessly outclassed or to attempt any kind of basic safety procedures like "Don't split the party." And while it was cool in "Pitch Black" to see him be a supreme bad-ass like that, by the time the third movie rolls around we know all this already. And frankly I have no idea why Riddick, who is capable of such absurd feats of invisibility and stealth so as to be under suspicion of being a wizard, doesn't just sneak on one of the ships, steal it, and leave. I guess then we wouldn't have the pleasure of dealing with the jackasses who make up the mercenaries/fresh meat.

Like this piece of septic run-off.

Jordi Mollà plays Santana, the weaselly leader of the first band of mercs, and he is without question one of the most insufferable characters I've seen in any film this year. He loses out to that carrot-eating piece of crap from "A Good Day to Die Hard," but it was a pretty close match. He comes across like Peter Stormare after being flushed down into a Tijuana sewer and coming back with a brain injury and even more indecipherable accent. He's one of those special characters that, while you're watching him, you're actively trying to understand why nobody is shooting him in the face. The character is that bad. And Mollà is so unwatchable that he makes professional wrestler Dave Bautista look like a pretty damn good actor in comparison. Allow your mind to process that.

Also in the merc group is Katee Sackoff, so that's a thing I guess. She's basically playing Fem-Starbuck again since that's a thing that she does since she's Katee Sackoff. She's fine, but it's really one of those 'neither here nor there' things. It doesn't matter that much, and it could have been anyone. And as far as tough blondes in this series goes, I assure you that she is no Radha Mitchell.

Oh, and the best part about her is how she's evidently a lesbian, and is forward enough about it to get in people's faces over it, but she ends up being Riddick's love interest at the end because he promised to RAPE HER at one point and then kills a bunch of people which evidently is a move that gets her all kinds of hot and bothered and ready for some heterosexual lovin'. Because that's how human beings work, right? And I'll bet you if we saw an interview with Katee she'd call her character "strong." Because all actresses playing horribly offensive characters say that in an effort to defend it.

I don't mean to go on a feminist rant, but what the actual hell?

At the end of the film, a whole bunch of monsters come out of freaking nowhere to kill off the rest of the chumps who Riddick hasn't gotten around to yet, and the movie becomes something between a remake of "Pitch Black" and any other movie that features a lot of aliens crawling out of walls and burly guys shooting shotguns into the darkness going "AAAARGH." It's not that it's particularly bad, in fact it's just average at worst, but the fact that it only takes up the last half hour or so makes it feel particularly rushed and frankly out of place.

I suppose there are some redeeming qualities. There are some stunning visuals if you can get past the comic book looking, CGI-heavy style. The gore is actually pretty effective and the right level of gratuitous (an especially nice change after the PG-13 of "The Chronicles of Riddick"). And there are plenty of moments that strike the pitch perfect note of enjoyable cheese, particularly with the dialogue. When lines like "Instead of Furya, we wound up someplace called 'not-Furya'" are being said with stone-faced seriousness by Vin Diesel in his earth-quaking baritone, it's hard to not find a bit of fun in it. And as silly as it sounds and admittedly is, Riddick gets a dog. Yup, that's a thing that happens.

"Well, I'd certainly say she had marvelous judgment, Richard, if not particularly good taste."

Those positive qualities being said, I can't really give much more than a slightly below average review for "Riddick." It's not that the fact that it's a B Movie is bad. But you can make a good B Movie (see "The Thing" or "Escape From L.A.") and you can make one that's not so good. "Riddick" just didn't have a good enough script or good enough characters to balance out the B factor. And it's especially noticeable when the first film in the series has already shown us how good a genre film starring this character can be.

Man, this trailer makes "Riddick" look so much better than it was...

THE BOTTOM LINE - "Riddick" has some entertainment value, but despite being the return to an R-rated creature feature (by the end), the story feels very insignificant, the characters are nearly all grating, and so much time is spent with them that by the time the monsters heralding the main event show up, it seems out of place and unwelcome. It's not technically a terrible movie, but it feels superfluous when you could just be watching "Pitch Black" instead.

Star Trek Into Darkness (2013)

The 2009 "Star Trek" was one of the best films I saw that year. While some geeks bemoaned the alternate timeline Get Out of Jail Free Card, I thought it was a brilliant maneuver which freed it from the albatross of continuity that hangs from the neck of every film in the series before it. And under the efficient yet overly lens-flare zealous direction of newly appointed "Nerd Savior" J.J. Abrams and the amazing acting from the spooky-good cast, the 2009 "Star Trek" was to be quite honest, the best of the series since "The Wrath of Khan."

Naturally expectations were sky high for the followup. Personally I had "Star Trek Into Darkness" pegged as my second most anticipated film of the year, bested only by "The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug." The mystery surrounding the plot and the enigmatic villain only served to amp up the anticipation, as Abrams as per usual wouldn't tell us anything outside of vague hints in the trailers. Like I'm guessing was the case with a lot of people, I was losing my mind over it. I needed to see this damn movie.

It must be a sadly amusing thing to watch a nerd freak out over a movie. I wouldn't know. I'd be on the inside looking out. I'd probably sympathize.

It's such a special feeling to have all those hopes and expectations you had been carrying for so long be thoroughly met and even, on occasion, exceeded. I was expecting "Star Trek Into Darkness" to be good on the mere fact that the last one was. I had no idea that is was going to be like this.

This movie blew my damn mind.

Still not sure if I like the "football jersey" uniforms, though.

Once again, as with the 2009 film, "Star Trek Into Darkness" is a sleek, surprisingly humorous and tightly wound action flick that pays homage to the source material while putting its own very distinct stamp on it. There's no way you'd mistake either of these films for the Shatner or even Stewart series besides the fact that they all feature a starship with NCC-1701 stenciled on the hood. The J.J. Abrams series is more like those films if they were one of the bonus levels from "Sonic The Hedgehog 2" cranked up on 5-Hour Energy Drinks and blasting Van Halen. But at the same time the reboot has a clear love and deep respect for the source material, and constantly goes out of its way to pay homage to it and reference it whenever it can. And the best part is you don't even have to be a Trekkie to "get it."

With "Star Trek Into Darkness" however, this was like a whole new beast. This isn't a journey of exploration nor a character study nor a turn-off-your-brain explosion fest. This is a dark, violent, dangerous roller coaster ride which sends you plummeting from orbit. And it's sending you flying at such high speeds and severe turns that the G-force is enough to liquefy your skull as it sends you hurdling through the Earth's core. While you're on fire. And blasting Van Halen.

From the opening scene where Spock enters an erupting volcano, "Star Trek Into Darkness" hits the ground running and never stops. Ever. The closest it comes to down time is right after that when Kirk gets predictably reamed out by Admiral Pike for being a loose cannon who doesn't play by the rules, and Kirk reams out Spock because he can't physically not play by the rules, even when people's lives are in danger. Even in the quiet parts people are yelling. And then a building kind of explodes and that's the end of that. From then on it's non-stop intensity. Full power to the warp core, indeed.

Ah yes. The rare "Inward-Facing Double Coconut Crush" maneuver. Brian Adams would be impressed. #oldschoolwrestingjoke #sorry

The story this time involves a mysterious man named John Harrison, who is doing a very good job of blowing up a whole bunch of Starfleet stuff and killing a lot of people. A LOT of people. (The collateral damage numbers in this film are staggering) Once the situation goes beyond personal for Kirk, he sets out to find Harrison and take him out. But as we could tell by the trailer, there is far more to Harrison than meets the eye, and finding himself quickly outclassed and outgunned, Kirk finds himself in a situation where the fate of his crew and everyone he cares about is in dire straights. And the mystery of who this man is serves as one of the most thrilling reveals I've seen in a film in a long time.

I'm going to once again give every single last bit of praise that I can possibly heap onto the cast. As far as the main cast goes, they get all of it. All of my praise. There is not any among them that doesn't capture the spirit of the original actor, almost like it was the younger version of themselves on screen.

Chris Pine has the swagger and bravado and even some of the same mannerisms and facial ticks that William Shatner brought James T. Kirk to life with, but at the same time he does his own thing with it. This is particularly true with his vocal pacing and inflections, which are thankfully nowhere near the Shatnerian method of acting. But every once in a while he slips a halting, oddly intonated line in there in clear tribute. But Pine brings something that Shatner (as much as I am a fan of his) wasn't really able to do, which was to give Kirk a real sense of vulnerability. Here, Kirk is a man who has been successful mostly due to his freakishly good luck and good instincts. But that has made him reckless and overly confident - something which is about to cost him and his crew dearly.

"Oh. Hi."

This movie finds Kirk at the nadir of his lowest despair and the height of his greatest heroics, and Pine sells it with every word out of his mouth and expression on his face. I got more emotional resonance from Chris Pine in this than I ever did from Shatner, which isn't a slam on Shatner because this is a different kind of movie than he was in, but it made Kirk seem like more of a human being rather than the larger-than-life, nearly mythical figure that he was back in the original series or films. That's not to say he wasn't fully fleshed out as a character back then, but he was just as much a "real person" as Bruce Campbell is when he stars in something. You don't watch it for the subtle nuances of his acting, you watch it because it's Bruce Campbell and he's freaking awesome.

Zachary Quinto threatens to steal to show as Spock, once again capturing Nemoy's signature performance to an eerie degree. And if Kirk shows a huge range of emotions and states of mind in this film, it's Spock's journey here that is arguably even more significant, as we get deeper insight as to the nature of his Vulcan way of thinking, and how he functions as a man who has chosen to ignore fear or pain. But when it comes time for that resolve to be severely tested Quinto, like Pine, is more of a firebrand than Shatner or Nemoy portrayed, and because of that tends to convey emotion more effectively when he does fly off the handle after being annoyingly composed for so long.

Pretty much everyone else is a superstar. Karl Urban IS DeForest Kelley. There's no way around it. His version of Bones is the most accurate of all the cast, and he freaks me out. He's also given some of the best dialogue in the film, including the funniest lines and most foreboding. I was very happy to see Simon Pegg's Scotty get a more significant role in this movie than the previous one, as he is another one of my favorite actors, and likewise does a spot-on James Doohan. Zoe Saldana's Uhura is a bit too aggressively in-your-face than I'd like, as it's not much like Nichelle Nichols, but it's a fine version of that character. Meanwhile Anton Yelchin and John Cho as Chekov and Sulu are fantastic but a bit underused for my liking. But then again, "Star Trek Into Darkness" is, like all the rest, a movie about Kirk and Spock. We can't blame priorities on screen time, and everyone does get their moments to shine, short as some of theirs might unfortunately be.

What the crap is Uhura looking at?

The only person I didn't like was Alice Eve. She's a terrible actress. Just wretched. I've hated her in everything I've seen her in, and here was no different. I was pissed when I found out she was in this, and I was proven right to be mad. She's wooden, she speaks like she's reading cue cards, and can't seem to figure out if her character is a calm, cool, collected hard-ass or ready for a nap. I guess the way to portray "strong female characters" is to act bored and speak in a deadpan monotone. Even in a scene where she's pleading for her life and the lives of everyone on the Enterprise she delivers her lines about as forceful and intense as someone ordering from a Taco Bell drive-thru.

Ugh. Just go away.

But what of Benedict Cumberbatch? What of the villain? That would involve spoilers. Horrendous, unforgivable, ruinous spoilers, and I'm not going to do that to anyone, and I would advise that anyone who hasn't seen it yet to not even look up this film on IMDB or its equivalent before seeing it, because spoilers are already hard-coded into the page. Just go into it blind, as it was meant to be seen. But suffice it to say that Cumberbatch is incredible. Unbelievable. Someone needs to cast him as every villain ever after this film, because he's seriously like the next Alan Rickman, or perhaps a better analogy would be Jeremy Irons crossed with Christopher Lee and a dash of Ralph Fiennes. And you need to see him in this.

If he's not the next Bond villain, I quit life. Seriously. I'm checking out.

The only issue I take with this movie is roughly the last 3 minutes. Everything before that is golden, but at the very end it pulls the rip chord on a fight scene which is so intense and heart-pounding that I don't think I blinked for 15 minutes. Then PUNCH - cut to black - two weeks later - then one year later - some words are said - credits. Done. It's almost like the movie heard his parents coming up the stairs while he was in his room smoking so he had to stamp the cigarette out quick, sit on it, spray half a can of FeBreze and throw the ashtray out the window like "WHOOPS NOPE NOTHING TO SEE HERE. WE'RE DONE. MOVE ALONG."

Additionally I must nitpick that the traditional "Space...the final frontier" speech isn't very well handled. It's kind of crammed in there nonsensically, and the way they do it implies that it's actually the oath that Starfleet captains take when they assume command. This would also imply that every ship in Starfleet is called "Enterprise" and is on a 5-year mission to boldly split infinitives. There's also a problem with Kirk not getting any closure on dealing with the fact that he loses a LOT of people on this trip out. It's never even brought up, which wouldn't be such a huge deal except that at the beginning of the movie Kirk makes it a big point that he's never lost a single crew member. Well, that's changes, and it should have been a very emotional scene and a bit of character development which ties into the themes of hard choices and loss throughout the whole film, but since the movie just decides to slam on the breaks we never get that.

But whatever. That's the last 3 minutes. That's 2% of the run time of this movie. And while those things are annoying, everything else is - simply put - one of the best action movies I've seen since...well...2009's "Star Trek." And you need to see it. NOW.

Oh god this trailer. I have all the excitement.

THE BOTTOM LINE - I have not been this pumped up and pleased by any other film this year. It's the best action movie of 2013 so far, hands down, and it's just as good (if not in some ways better) than the 2009 film. It's in the top 3 best "Star Trek" films, and I honestly really want to see it again. Like, I wish I was watching it again instead of typing this. Guaranteed in the Top 10 of 2013, probably near the top. Unreal.

Doom (2005)

It's an old question, but it's one that bares repeating. And the main reason it bares repeating is that we keep getting subjected to movies that serve only to make the audience shamble out of the theater scratching their heads and asking it aloud to each other throughout the car ride home. They are not out of line to ask, either. In fact the question is quite logical, but may be unanswerable because reality does seem to defy common sense in this case.

"Why are video games so hard to make into movies?"

I don't have the answer for you. I really don't. It seems to me that video game movies, particularly the games of this current generation of consoles would be easy, at least from a script standpoint. Most games nowadays are pretty much interactive movies anyways. Have you ever played any of the obnoxiously numerous "Call of Duty" games? Those things are Michael Bay movies that let you choose when stuff blows up, which is often because out of the 8 buttons on the controller, 6 of them call in a napalm strike on the area directly ahead of you. As for the other two buttons, one of them spawns an ethnic person, and the other makes their head explode.

What I'm saying is at that point, all the hard work is pretty much done for you. Just play the game and write down what happens. BOOM. Script. If that's what they actually did it would save me a lot of annoyance, since I could just spend 2 hours watching a piece of crap like "Call of Duty" and get it over with relatively quickly instead of having to play it for 6. It would be cheaper, too. Having to choose between $9.50 for a movie ticket or $60 for a game isn't a tough call, especially when you know it's probably going to suck either way.

And shut up about multiplayer. If I wanted to get called a "fag" by 7th graders while they beat my ass I'd buy a time machine.

Oh, he may look tough. But s00perKrunk69 can't even drive yet. And he has zits. Lots of zits.

Video game movies have rightly earned a really bad reputation for their crap. Out of all the movie adaptations of popular games, and there's been a lot, you could count the passable ones on one hand. Which ones those are is subject to debate, and there would probably be a lot of changes to the list depending on who you asked, but I seriously doubt anyone's number would ever go past 4 or 5 movies. If that. I'm guessing most people would struggle to think of more than 3 video game movies they consider decent.

As for myself, I can only list 5 that I thought were decent. One of them is a movie you probably didn't know existed, "Oni-chanbara," a Japanese film adaptation of the "Bikini Samurai Squad" games, which in a reality shattering perversion of common sense was actually pretty good. I liked "Silent Hill" alright, "Mortal Kombat" from back in the day was kooky fun, and I don't care what anyone says, the Van Damme "Street Fighter" was frigging awesome. That movie is one of my "feel good" standards. From Jean-Claude's indecipherable accent to the late great Raul Julia chewing so much scenery you could have finished a basement with the contents of his lower intestine, it's fantastic. And I will duel to the death any who say otherwise.

He is so American. Just look at that tattoo. That's the most American arm I've ever seen. Yup. America.

The other movie is "Doom." Yes, I know, it's an unpopular opinion, but I actually thought that "Doom" was a reasonably solid action flick with a (very) light sprinkling of horror elements, and I would argue that it's one of the better video game movies I've seen up to this point.

I know that the biggest argument against "Doom," and indeed the argument that is always leveled at video game movies, is that it wasn't faithful to the source material. In that regard, I'm going to go ahead and disagree, but only to a point. First off, it's obvious that the tone of the film is more in line with "Doom 3," which was not as action-packed and mindless as the original games, in which you hit the ground running and never stopped pulling the trigger. "Doom 3" was more about atmosphere and anticipation of what's ahead, with fewer enemies and more horror elements as opposed to straight action. I'm not saying that makes "Doom 3" better, but that's the tone they went for.

"Doom" is obviously going for the "Doom 3" tone, and in that regard they succeeded. If they hadn't done that, and had gone for the original game's style, the whole movie could basically have been an hour and a half of that scene from "Predator" where Arnold and everyone else fires like 40,000 rounds of ammunition into the jungle. The only difference would be replacing every tree and bush with demons, and have them keep coming at them like clowns piling out of a car until there's a pile of them 90 feet deep. Not a single word would be uttered during the proceedings.

I dunno, maybe that could have worked.

Another argument against "Doom" was that there were no demons, and yes, here's where I will concede that they got it wrong. Instead of a portal to Hell being opened and all manner of gross stuff pouring out of it, they give us genetic mutations and gene augmentation which for some reason is attracted to evil. You see, in this movie, a race of humanoids on Mars created a 24th pair of chromosomes, which made them super intelligent and super strong. If they were good, that is. If you were bad, it still did all those things, but it also turned you into a bloodthirsty monster. Since in this movie there's a gene for the soul which labels you as "good" or "bad." So apparently "Doom" is Calvinist.

Okay, I can't really defend that. I'm not even going to get into describing all the why of how that's dumb, because you don't need me to. And yeah, it's the biggest problem of the movie, and the one point against it that I totally agree with and can't understand the purpose of. Was the phrase "Portal to Hell" just too much for the writers to comprehend? Seems to me that not only would that have made it more dark and disturbing, but it could have been more interesting and entertaining as well. Plus with a bit of clever writing you could tie it into "Event Horizon," and that would have been awesome!

I would have loved to have seen Karl Urban blasting his way through Hell. I can see him covered in offal and gore, bringing his shotgun up to shoot a winged demon in the face, its black viscera and brain matter splattering on Karl as he then proceeds to kick it in the chest, sending it tumbling over a precipice to plummet into a roiling lake of fire. I'm trying to think of a movie that's done anything close to that, and I'm drawing a blank. You'd think that if there was ONE movie that would have jumped on that idea, it would have been "Doom." It's enough to make a guy start writing fan-fiction. Ah well.

I think my favorite thing about "Doom" is the cast. Everyone knows I'm a huge Karl Urban fan, but I like The Rock, too. He's ridiculously entertaining and a legitimately good actor for the stuff he does. If you want him to be a badass, say no more. The man's 6' 4", like 500 lbs of muscle and can squint really well. He can be funny, and he's even got a fairly good dramatic range on display in stuff like "Faster." I don't mean this to sound condescending, but especially for a professional wrestler, the man's a shockingly good actor.

Karl and The Rock work really well together in "Doom." They gave what I found to be surprisingly good dialogue between them a lot more depth than you would expect. The Rock's character Sarge and Karl's character, Reaper, obviously have great respect for each other. When that starts getting interesting is in the back half of the film when Sarge and Reaper start having very different ideas on how to deal with the situation on Mars, because both of them are right in different ways.

Karl should have known The Rock would turn heel. After all, he is a wrestler.

Sarge, being the one in command, is doing precisely what his orders told him to do, even if it means killing everyone there and sacrificing himself and his entire squad if need be. Reaper is more emotional and refuses to go along with the script once Sarge starts issues orders akin to fighting a hangnail by cutting off the arm, very much in a "Let God sort 'em out" way. And what I liked about that was that honestly, Sarge is the one making the most sense.

I'm not saying it's not cruel and terrible or that I could ever do it, but if you were facing a situation with an outbreak that would potentially kill everyone on the planet, and it came down to making a choice between saving every single person regardless of their condition, or making damn sure that there was no way it could get out, and so be it if everyone there dies, you have to admit that the later is the more logical, if admittedly crueler choice. If you really think about it, Sarge, despite turning into the bad guy at the end, is doing far more to save the world than Reaper, our hero is. In fact, by surviving and escaping at the end, he's very likely putting the world in mortal peril.

An action hero surviving an action flick. What a jerk.

The end of "Doom" also has some of the best dialogue between the two as well. My favorite exchange in the movie comes right before their showdown, when they come to the decision that they're probably going to have to kill each other. Sarge asks if Reaper is planning on shooting him, to which Reaper casually replies "I was thinking about it, yeah." It's very John McClane, and it showcases why I love Karl Urban. He can deliver on the action movie lines, and that's no small talent.

That being said, I wasn't a fan of everyone in the movie. Richard Brake as Portman, the impossibly sleazy creep is pretty annoying, and his character doesn't get taken out near quickly enough. Portman is what you would get if Christian Slater and Iggy Pop merged and crapped out a rapist who started doing his best "Perverted Master Roshi" impression. It's unpleasant. Ben Daniels as the super-religious whack job Goat wasn't as annoying because he shut his mouth and wasn't up in everyone's face about it, but like Portman I had a hard time understanding why this guy is on the active duty roster for a Special Forces team.

If you carve a cross into your arm every time you blaspheme, a Section 8 should be an option.

Those were really the only two annoying characters though. The rest were basically stock and unmemorable with no real defining characteristics, and it was easier to know them by their cliche niches than their names. There was The Rookie, The Pervert, The Religious One, The Quiet Ethnic One, and finally The Big Angry Black Guy and The Smaller Friendly Black Guy, or alternatively Bill Duke and LL Cool J. Okay, it's not actually Bill Duke and LL Cool J but the resemblance is uncanny.

That's about the level of depth we're talking about. But it never seemed like an issue to concern yourself with because you knew they were all going to die anyway. That's how these movies roll. And there's nothing wrong with that. I only had three problems the characters, the first being that Porter The Pervert is around way too long. Although I love that during his death scene Sarge, without a second's hesitation, completely annihilates both the monster and Porter with the BFG without bothering to even attempt a rescue of Porter, whom at that point could have easily been potentially still alive.

The second thing was that Mac, The Quiet Ethnic One, does precisely nothing of value, and has but a single line before being randomly decapitated. I felt bad for the actor because he got screwed. At least Sonny Landham got to look badass by cutting himself with a machete.

Not saying it helped matters, but still, that was awesome.

Third, I hated the scientist, Dr. Carmack, played by Robert Russell. This freaking guy was near unwatchable. I know what he was going for, playing a beyond freaked out guy who has lost his mind and is in a constant state of hyperventilation, but he's so damn annoying with it. He's got this thing he does with his tongue darting in and out, and between that and him puffing his cheeks with his rapid fire breathing he looks like a sweaty rodent. About the only cool thing he did was pull off his own ear. That was sweet, but the stupid tongue thing just drove me up the wall. It was the same thing David Tennant did in the forth "Harry Potter" movie. And they get the camera SO close to his mouth while he's doing it. So annoying.

Finally we have the matter of the First Person Shooter sequence, which I've heard many people label as the moment where it finally keeled over and died. This was the final straw for some audience members. This was Fonzie on skis right here. For them, the 5 minutes where we are looking through Reaper's eyes wasn't so much a tribute to "Doom" as it was tea-bagging its corpse.

Oh yeah. Such a betrayal. This looks nothing like "Doom."

Honestly, I think those people are nuts. The FPS sequence for me was possibly the best highlight of the film, if not certainly the most memorable. More than anything in the rest of the movie, that part was the most fun "Doom" got, and I think it could have used a lot more of that hokeyness, because "Doom" should be before anything else, fun. As I understand, an early concept for the movie was to have the entire film be in first person like that. I'm not sure if that would have worked, but I would have loved to have seen it.

Look, I know I'm not going to convince anyone that "Doom" is a good movie. I'm not naive. If you're not into that kind of movie or genre, or if you think it's too big of a betrayal and can't look past its faults, then yeah, it's going to be painful to sit through. But if you're like me, and can see it for what it is, which is a cheesy sci-fi action flick that plays it safe but competently, at the very least you have to admit that it's trying. And for what it set out to do, it succeeded with at the very least a C+.

After all, it could have been worse. It could have been PG-13.

Check and mate, "Doom" haters.

THE BOTTOM LINE - I like "Doom." I like the two leads. I like the look and feel of it. I like that they actually gave a story to what is a game with literally no plot besides "Mars. Demons. Shoot." Is it a great movie? No. Did it ever have a chance to be? Not really. Is it better than your average video game movie? You're damn right it is.

Dredd (2012)

Sometimes it's difficult to lie to myself.

I'm an animal.

We all are animals. There are certain things, particular phrases, that can come up in conversation that will immediately cease any other thought processes in our brains besides the most basic Neanderthalic ones. For example: SEX. See? I now have your undivided attention.

But there's more than just the titillation of sexual deviancy, isn't there? There's also violence, which can cause just as strong of a knee-jerk reaction. I'm sure I can't speak for everyone here, but I can guarantee you that I, for one, am immediately paying attention to any movie that advertises that it contains people getting shot in the face.

I mean, for crying out loud. "Shot in the face." Is there a phrase in the English language more inherently hard-core than that? And I'm not talking one between the eyes, or the classic zombie standby of "shoot 'em in the head," because that always involves the top of the skull. No, I mean shot in the eyes/nose/mouth/we'll-need-your-driver's-license-to-ID-you area of the face. That's freaking brutal in an animalistic, dominating fashion. They don't kill you, they shoot you in the face. It's castration without breaking the Man Code.

So when I heard that "Dredd" had a lot of violence, I was mildly interested. But when I heard that there was a lot of people getting shot in the face, "Dredd" officially had my attention.

What? What more do you want from me? I already admitted I'm an animal.

And yes, "Dredd" does contain face-shooting. And while it may not have as many bullets specifically destined for people's mugs as one might expect, there's still a lot of bullets going into a lot of people. What that boils down to is that "Dredd" is fantastically entertaining in regards to amount of pure unadulterated bloodshed. If that's what you signed on for, you shall be quite pleasantly satisfied.

If that's not what you signed on for, I have no idea why you're watching this movie.

If anyone was worried about it, allow me to put your fears at rest - this has nothing to do with the cheesy, campy Sylvester Stallone "Judge Dredd" from the 90's. Having never read the comics it is based on, I can't comment on how accurate it is to its source material, but one thing is for sure - this new film is not messing around. It's dark, it's gritty, it's bloody as hell, and there's nothing goofy about it at any point, aside from the laughs some of the more over-the-top kills may generate in their absurdity.

No, seriously. Even with that helmet, it's still not goofy.

When Stallone said "I'm am the law!" it was funny. Some of that had to do with the fact that he can't move half of his face, making it sound more like "Ah am..DA LOG!" That tended to undermine the badassery of the character.

But in "Dredd," when Karl Urban says it, it's chilling. And a lot of that has to obviously do with the darker tone they went with, and the fact that Karl can pronounce words clearly, but more of it has to do with him giving an absolutely stone-cold, relentlessly brutal performance that is hands-down one of the most awesome action movie characters I've seen in years.

Seriously, this guy is terrifying. Ice doesn't come close to how cold he is. The systematic, ruthless proficiency with which he executes anyone violating the law is both scary and scary awesome to watch. And it's not because he's some invincible superhero who can't be shot like James Bond or Schwarzenegger in "Commando" or something; he's just that good at killing, and his tactics and equipment are so superior that nobody can touch him.

The fact that he never once takes off his helmet, so you never see any more of his face than his mouth makes him come across like this anonymous, nameless demon that exists only for punishing those opposed to him. If there's a soul in Dredd, it's buried under the weight of his station. Once again, it's a chilling performance.

Those flames reflected in his visor? Yeah, those are people. People he just set ON FIRE.

I've been a fan of Karl Urban for a long time now, and I've always been bummed out that he's not more of a star than he is. Of course, after his phenomenal turn as Bones in "Star Trek" he's getting more attention, and rightly so, but I've been a big fan of his since "The Two Towers" in 2002. And yeah, after that there was the frankly underrated "Doom" and "Chronicles of Riddick," in which he was great, but he didn't get a movie where he was the star until 2007's bomb that wasn't that bad "Pathfinder." Even in "Star Trek" he's not really in the foreground. In a way, "Dredd" is the first Karl Urban vehicle that has the potential to actually be noticed, a mere decade after he broke into the big leagues.. And for his sake, since he's a really good actor, I hope this is really successful, because I'm freaking tired of nobody knowing who Karl Urban is!

Holding their own in the film are the two other leads, the lovely and talented Olivia Thirlby, and the also talented and usually lovely (in everything but this) Lena Headey. Thirlby plays Anderson, a rookie judge who is also a powerful physic, and Headey is the villain, a former prostitute turned savage drug lord Ma-Ma. Whereas Thirlby is cute and somewhat vulnerable (at least until she begins proving herself and becomes formidable), Headey is an absolute monster, both in appearance and actions. Her scarred visage, jagged teeth and snarling fury is certainly a step away from her character in "Game of Thrones," and I can't help but feel that if Cersei went through the busted transporter in "The Enemy Within," Ma-Ma is what would come out a couple minutes later.

"I'm Queen Cersei. I'M QUEEN CERSEI!!!"

Wow. Didn't think I'd fit a ToS reference in there.

I'm a fan of both of these actresses, and I'm glad to see them getting great roles like this. Thirlby gets to play a rookie cop who, shock of all shocks, isn't annoying, comic relief, or incompetent, which is like a miracle. And of course Headey matches and even one-ups Urban's cruelty with some delightful scene-chewing villainy. The surprising thing is how often the fact that an action movie is made or broken by its villain is lost on so many films. Ma-Ma could have been a "Die Hard" baddy. Not the dude from "Die Hard 4," though. One of the good ones. The Grubers. If they smoked meth. And were chicks.

So yes, there is plenty of hardcore, face-shooting action going on. However, now is the part where I have to inject just a bit of negativity into this entry. And this mostly has to do with lack of variety.

While it is indeed cool to see Dredd shooting lots of people with his absurdly OP pistol of 1000 different kinds of horrifyingly deadly ammo, there came a point late in the film when it began it get a bit stale. And that's a weird thing to say, considering there was a lot of different gear being used, but almost every fight is ended with someone getting shot to pieces. There were few instances when Dredd or Anderson didn't use a gun.

"Aggravated assault on a Judge. Rookie? Judge 'em."

"Put many bullets inside them."

"We've trained you well."

I really didn't notice until later in the film, during Dredd's only fistfight, that there had been virtually no hand to hand combat at all. And while that wasn't a deal-breaker, that fight was so good, and the finishing move so shockingly brutal that I found myself thinking that I wanted to see more of that. After seeing Dredd do things to a man's trachea that I'm not sure is 100% medically possible, I was interested to know what the hell else he could do with his hands.

Then again, one of the primary rules of being a Judge is to never lose your gun, so I guess by hardly ever having to not shoot someone, he's doing his job right. It was just a little disappointing that there wasn't more of that action movie staple. Maybe I was just spoiled by "The Expendables 2," which is very possible.

I also feel I must bring up the abuse of CGI blood. While witnessing the path of a bullet through a person's jaw in super slow motion is indeed something to behold, it's so overtly computerized that it lacks the impact that it should have. Especially since "Dredd," while loaded with CGI, seems like a movie that would be laden with practical effects. Is building a fake head and shooting it so much to ask nowadays?

Face shooting is still awesome, though. That, I cannot take away.

THE BOTTOM LINE - "Dredd" is a fun, action packed movie which plays out like a ride through a futuristic, Ridley Scott designed sci-fi slaughterhouse as envisioned by Sam Peckinpah. If you want to see good actors making things die, here's your movie. While I didn't like it as much as "The Expendables 2," in pure tradecraft and execution, it's one of the more effective action thrillers of the year. Recommended.