Ip Man, Ip Man 2

Ip Man, by Wilson Yip, 2008

Biopics, as a whole, just might be my least favorite genre. There are good ones out there. I love Ed Wood, and Bound for Glory, and Amadeus, for example. But for the most part, we in America get Oscar bait that glorifies rather than humanizes the subject, plays fast and loose with historical accuracy, and throws just about every cliche in the book at us.

Well, in Hong Kong, they appear to make biopics pretty much the exact same way, but for one thing: a real sense of fun. Ip Man is the story of the great 20th century martial arts master: Ip Man, best known as the teacher of Bruce Lee. Donnie Yen plays Ip Man, a peaceful, mannered family man in 1930's China. He is frequently visited by other masters eager to prove themselves for a fight, and he takes it in stride, though he refuses to teach his trade, which is the Wing Chun style. That all changes when the Japanese invade and occupy China. Ip Man trains his people in self defense and face off against the invaders.

Yes, the movie glorifies Ip Man. He's treated as almost saintly. The only character flaw I could really find was that he loved Martial Arts so much that he didn't have much time for his wife and children, a trope not too different from the heroes in our rock and roll biopics. And no, I don't know much about the historical Ip Man, but I doubt his life really played out like this, a perfectly structured Martial Arts movie. I really don't mind, though, because none of it feels cynical. It doesn't feel like a product manufactured for awards. What Wilson Yip made was an entertaining and reverent action movie based on a life of an interesting 20th century Chinese figure. The fight scenes are great, and Donnie Yen is extremely charming in the lead. The movie was very successful in China, making tons of money and winning tons of awards, and it led to...

Ip Man 2, by Wilson Yip, 2010

That's right, a sequel! How many biopics get sequels? I guess Che was split into two movies, but usually all the greatest hits of someone's life are covered in one movie, but the first Ip Man only covered a few years in his life, and the sequel picks up right where it left off. Master Ip Man has fled the Japanese occupation in mainland China for Hong Kong, where he opens a school.

The problem is, all the heads of the other schools run a tight racket on the Martial Arts business. He must first prove himself in battle with these guys before they allow him to teach Wing Chun in their territory. There's a great fight sequence between Yen and Sammo Hung where Yen must stay on top of a wobbly table for the entirety of the duel in order to keep teaching.

Then, Ip Man is roped into fighting an English boxer, boxing vs. Wing Chun. The fight seems a little absurd. Seems to me since Ip Man is fighting with his bare fists instead of with gloves, and is allowed to use kicking, that it should be no problem. But the English guy is apparently super strong and nigh-invulnerable, and a big mean jerk to boot, endlessly spouting out swipes at the Chinese.

Like the first entry, Ip Man 2 is a lot of fun. It doesn't try to make things realistic, it's a purely movie world these characters are living in. I didn't think it was quite as good as the first one, but they do play great as one big movie. I'm again impressed with how entertaining and watchable Donnie Yen is as the hero. Oh, and by the end of this movie, Ip Man is still well shy of meeting and teaching Bruce Lee. There's a knowing nod and a wink to the audience at the end that would seem out of place in a serious Hollywood biopic, but works great for the popcorn fun of the Ip Man movies. Maybe someday they'll make an Ip Man 3 with Bruce Lee as a character. I'd watch that.

The Amazing Spider-Man

I'm about as big a fan as Spider-Man as they come. I've read close to every issue of Spider-Man ever published. Not just The Amazing Spider-Man comic, but also the various other titles, Spectacular Spider-Man, Web of Spider-Man, blah blah blah. As a kid, my mom had my uncle paint a picture of Spider-Man on my bedroom wall. It was awesome.

When Sam Raimi's first Spider-Man movie came out a decade ago, I saw it three times on opening weekend. I know it was a flawed movie, but Sam Raimi got so much right, and even more right the second time around. Well, I guess I feel the same way about Marc Webb's reboot, The Amazing Spider-Man. Despite many plot holes and flaws in the narrative, he got a lot right, including some things that Raimi didn't. And I hope this movie might pave the way to an even better sequel.

The broad strokes of the origin have stayed the same: Peter Parker is a quiet high school kid, who gets bitten by a spider in a science lab that imbues him with spider powers. He is inspired to fight crime when he loses his Uncle Ben through an act of his own negligence. There are some slight alterations, but for the most part, nothing too surprising happens. Now Peter's parents are involved in his origin. His father's work as a scientist is somehow tied to his powers. How, we don't know yet, I suppose it will havve to wait until the sequel.

What I really liked about The Amazing Spider-Man was the cast and their performances. Andrew Garfield's Peter Parker/Spider-Man isn't much like Tobey Maguire's at all. I like aspects of both of them. Garfield's is a little more believable as a high school teen, rather than Maguire's more dweeby, classical geek. He's a lot more angsty and, you know, going through teen things. In fact, he stays a teen all the way through the movie, unlike the Raimi version, who is done with high school within the first hour of the first movie.

Emma Stone plays Peter's love interest, Gwen Stacy. I was worried she would just play the role as Mary Jane with blond hair, but she did great. She was Gwen Stacy. She even looks like an old John Romita drawing. She and Garfield were great together, and by the end of the movie, I was totally into the romance between the two of them. One of my favorite scenes was when Peter fumbles through asking her out on a date.

Martin Sheen and Sally Field play Uncle Ben and Aunt May. They get a lot more screen time this time around, which I thought was nice, because they both do great. Denis Leary is really good as Captain George Stacy, Gwen's father, a cop on Spider-Man's trail. Rhys Ifans' Curt Conners/The Lizard is adequate, but from what I've seen online, his character suffered a lot of cutting and re-editing.

Some things I didn't like as much as Raimi's version. Obviously, the familiar origin scenes didn't feel very fresh the second time around. There's no real sense of awe or excitement in the web swinging, since we've already seen it so much before. I preferred Raimi's bright color scheme and comic booky, more comedic tone. I don't mind the slightly more muted, realistic take on the world, though. They've done it both ways in the comics over the years, and there's room for both in movies too.

There are also too many ticking digital clocks in the movie's finale. That's par for the course for this kind of movies, I guess, but what really bothered me was the lady's voice on the computer telling us how much time is left. The lady announcing how much time is left at the very end seemed especially forced, as it was coming out of some device that The Lizard rigged together. Why would he give it that voice?

During the credits, they try to do the post-movie sequel tease now expected at the end of superhero movies. When done correctly, like all the Avengers teases, they get everybody talking. (OMG THAT'S NICK FURY!) (THOR'S HAMMER!) (THANOS!!!) But this one doesn't work at all. I won't spoil it, but it's nothing very interesting, so, you know, don't get your hopes up for that post credits scene. I guess we'll just have to rely on the actual movie's merits to get us excited for a sequel.

As for the complaint that it's too soon for a reboot, I suppose that's probably true, but they tend to update and retell the origin in the comics every decade or so, too. There have been a lot of different versions and takes on Spider-Man over the years in all kinds of different styles, and this is just one more. I can live with it.

Overall, I thought The Amazing Spider-Man was pretty good, but not as good as the Raimi movies when they were at their heights (half of part 1 and all of part 2). The cast really elevated this movie for me. I'll be happy to watch Andrew Garfield, Emma Stone, and Sally Field in future installments, and I look forward to meeting the new Mary Jane Watson, Norman and Harry Osborn, and maybe J. Jonah Jameson. There's a lot of groundwork in place for them to knock it out of the park next time. I hope they pull it off.

The Avengers

I have been waiting four years for this. Marvel Studios announced the Avengers movie the Monday after the first Iron Man came out in 2008. Heck, they announced it even earlier by putting Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury at the end of the credits. Now four years later, having seen The Avengers, I can't believe they not only pulled it off, but knocked it out of the park.

Admittedly, I'm a lifelong comic book reader, so I don't know how that colors my opinions. I'm also a part of the cult of the movie's writer/director, Joss Whedon, whose career I've been following since the first episode of the Buffy the Vampire Slayer TV show aired when I was in 9th grade. The Avengers was pretty much made for me.

But Marvel and Whedon didn't just target the nerds with The Avengers. They crafted a giant event film for the largest audience possible. An event film that truly feels like an event. Not since the Universal monsters started meeting Abbott and Costello has a studio so successfully combined characters from four separate movie franchises into one movie.

For those of you that live in a cave, The Avengers is the story of Iron Man, Thor, Captain America, and The Hulk all team up to defeat a world-threatening evil. Rounding the team out are superspy Black Widow, crackshot archer Hawkeye, and Nick Fury, the morally ambiguous director of SHIELD, a global peacekeeping organization.

The Avengers are not well known for how well they get along. These guys have big egos, and wildly clashing personalities. Part of the fun in the first half is watching the good guys duke it out with each other, in basically the most epic pissing contest in cinema history, before things start going crazy in the second half and they have bigger fish to fry.

The second half is where The Avengers really takes off. It's a slow build, but once the last 45 minutes come along and the heroes battle an alien army, ravaging New York City in the process, the movie provides one huge crowd pleasing moment after another. I think just about every thing you ever wanted to see done with these characters is done.

Joss Whedon is a lifelong fan, too, and he understands what we, the viewers want to see, and he delivers it with wild abandon. The characters are imbued with all the complexity and humanity that made them endure in the first place. Downey Jr. shines as always as Tony Stark/Iron Man, and the Chrises Evans and Hemsworth bring it with Captain America and Thor. Scarlett Johannson gets a whole lot more to do this time around as Black Widow, the spy with Red in her past. But the characters who stole the show for me were Mark Ruffalo's Bruce Banner/The Hulk, finally done right in a movie, and Tom Hiddleston's Loki, the perpetually monologuing, pompous Norse God of lies and mischief.

Also, did I mention the movie is extremely funny? The dialogue is endlessly witty, and there are several big comedy moments throughout. The audience laughed more at The Avengers than a lot of comedies I've seen.

I could go on and on and on about The Avengers, but I feel like I would be in danger of falling into one of those "and the part where this happened... and then the part where THIS happened..." situations, where I just list everything. I loved it. And I don't think you need to know the comic books to love it too. The Avengers is a real-deal phenomenon.

The Raid: Redemption (Serbuan Maut)

Gareth Evans' The Raid: Redemption is about as intense as a movie can get. It grabs hold of you within the first 15 minutes and doesn't let go until the very end. I shouldn't have to say much more to convince everyone who loves action movies to go and see this movie right away, so the review portion of this entry will be short. But I have a special surprise at the end!

The Raid: Redemption stars Iko Uwais, the star of Evans' previous film, Merantau, as Rama, a rookie in the B-Unit of a SWAT team attempting to raid a building swimming with criminals. The crime lord in charge of the building is Tama, a paranoid man who hides out on the 15th floor and has rigged up his building with security cameras and henchmen. The SWAT team must make their way from the bottom to the 15th story in order to capture Tama. All hell breaks loose when Tama learns of their presence and sends everyone in the entire building to take them down.

From then on, it's a non-stop barrage of violent shootouts, stabouts, punchouts, and kickouts. One great battle ensues after another, as Rama quickly reveals himself to be a one-man beatdown machine, working his way to the top of the building on his own. There are a few twists and turns along the way, but I don't want to ruin them, and really, the movie focuses on delivering to us exactly what we want to see: Carnage.

I love the way the battles progress. The SWAT team relies heavily on their guns, but they only have so much ammo. Once they run out, the movie shifts into martial arts mode, as Iko Uwais uses his tremendous skills to evade the blades of machete-wielding tenants. The scene stealer baddie is Mad Dog (Yayan Ruhian), a guy who, when given a choice between shooting someone and fighting hand-to-hand, will throw his gun away in a heartbeat. Crazy as he is, you've got to respect him.

The Raid is a pretty amazing feat, from a technical standpoint. It's action filmmaking at its purest, and Gareth Evans deserves the praise he is getting. To make a movie that never gives the audience a chance to rest, to shoot and put together in editing all these action sequences that are clear and easy for the viewer to track, is a difficult challenge indeed.

There's already buzz that Gareth Evans is hard at work on a sequel. While I'm sure it's in good hands, and have the utmost faith in him to pull it off, I thought it couldn't hurt to throw out a couple of scene suggestions. It's going to be hard to top the first one, so here are a couple of moments of pure ownage that just might do the job, as horribly rendered by yours truly in MS Paint.

Here we have Rama kicking a guy's head clean off. The head flies through the air, clear over to a nearby basketball hoop. The head goes through the hoop, NOTHING BUT NET, with a SWISH sound effect, and then falls into the open mouth of a hungry monster, or possibly an alligator or a dinosaur. I'm not sure what that is that I drew.

And here we have a bad guy slicing open Rama's throat with a long knife. Little does he realize that even Rama's blood is badass, as it flows out of the wound on his neck, forms a blood fist, and wallops him one.

If you read this, Mr. Evans, I just wanted to let you know, you can have these ideas FREE OF CHARGE. I already owe you one for giving us The Raid.



And for everyone else, if you're interested in seeing a couple more of my illustrated reviews, check out my popular Logan's Run entry, and Goke, Body Snatcher From Hell, which is actually my favorite of all the reviews I've done.

Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry

I've known about Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry for a long time, read about it in books about cult movies, surely I've heard Quentin Tarantino mention it at some point. After all these years, I still can't get the title straight in my head. Is it Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry, or is it Dirty Larry, Crazy Mary? Even watching the movie, I couldn't remember which was which. Because, you see, Mary didn't seem so dirty to me, but she did seem kind of crazy. And Larry was definitely crazy, but he was also kind of a dirtbag. Still, despite all my confusion, that title leaps out at you when you see it written out in front of you.

Right out the gates, Dirty Mary/Larry, Crazy Larry/Mary puts all the pieces in place for a perfect car chase movie. Larry (Peter Fonda) is a race car driver. His friend Deke (Adam Roarke) is a mechanic. Together they hatch a plan to rob a ton of money from a guy. They hold the owner's family hostage at home, while getting him to hand over the money in the store. Roddy McDowall is the store owner, and it's a tiny role, but I still ended up really liking his character, because it's made clear that he's no dummy.

The plan goes off, almost without a hitch, until Larry gets in the getaway car, only to find Mary (Susan George), his one-night-stand from the previous night sitting in there waiting for him. He tries to get rid of her, by being a jerk, but she wants to come along for the ride and she won't take no for an answer.

Meanwhile, the sheriff (Vic Morrow) has already begun a search for them, sparing no resources, and a high speed race to the border ensues, where Larry, Mary, and Deke use all of their wits and know-how to keep one step ahead.

The movie is well known for its car chases, and the car chases are absolutely great. 1970's car chase movies are so much better than modern car chase movies because they really did the stunts you see up on the screen. There's no CGI at play. No quick cutting. Just real stunts with real cars.

But the action isn't the only draw. The interaction between the characters is just as good. Peter Fonda's Larry is a mean guy, but that doesn't mean you don't like him. He walks that line really well. Susan George is really likeable as Mary, who, though unwanted at first, earns the respect of Larry and Deke, and is eventually accepted as part of the team. I actually liked her the best of the three.

The classic French film The Wages of Fear casts a heavy shadow over a lot of these 1970's movies involving vehicles. Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry is actually the second 70's film that I've seen in the last few months with an ending that owes everything to Wages of Fear. The other, of course, is The Italian Job. And these were both made before William Friedkin flat out remade Wages of Fear with his movie Sorceror (which I have yet to watch). I wonder if there were many movie-goers back in the day wondering why all these movies coming out had such similar endings.

Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry is cool, culty, gritty, and action packed, with an intelligent script and memorable characters. I've never seen anything else by director John Hough, though it looks like he made some pretty memorable movies in the 70's. He did a great job with this one. It's one of the most memorable and exciting car chase movies of all time.

The Italian Job (1969)

Peter Collinson's The Italian Job is one of the coolest movies ever made. Almost everything about it is "cool", or at least embodied what was "cool" in 1969. It's a slick, funny heist movie, a smart comedy, and an action movie all rolled into one. It has a score by Quincy Jones, one of the coolest composers ever. And let's face it, you don't get much cooler than 1960's Michael Caine (or now Michael Caine, for that matter).

Caine plays Charlie Croker, a career criminal just released from prison, who catches wind of a big heist in Italy from the widow of a deceased friend. He had the heist all planned out, but was executed by the Mafia in Italy before he could pull it off. Croker, with the help of a crime lord still in prison, assembles his own crew of specialists and getaway drivers to finish the Italian Job.

The heist involves them starting a traffic jam in Rome and robbing an armored car full of gold bricks in broad daylight. And they have to do it from right under the noses of the local authorities and the mafia.

Michael Caine is the greatest. He is so fun to watch in this movie, he gets tons of great one liners and exchanges with the other characters. Even though his character is a criminal, he's so charming and likeable that you want him to succeed.

The one weak link for me in the movie is the casting of Benny Hill. Now, I understand that even Benny Hill was considered cool back in England, 1969. But I just can't find him funny. He doesn't work for me. For what it's worth, I think he was really well cast, as the computer guy they enlist from a sanitarium. They imply he was a rapist or at the very least a sex offender, which is pretty appropriate for Benny Hill. But then they try to make him lovable, like these are just some wacky quirks he has. And yes, there is a scene where he squeezes a fat lady's butt and chases her around in fast motion.

The car chase at the end is one of the best ever, not far behind the one in The French Connection. It wins a lot of points for having the three getaway cars be mini coopers. The final scene is hilarious, and I'm not going to spoil it, because it's such a treat. I will say, I think it owes a little something to Henri-Georges Clouzot's The Wages of Fear.

The Italian Job is such a fun movie. It reminded me a lot of Steven Soderbergh. In fact, though I have never seen the original Sinatra Ocean's 11, I would not be surprised to learn that Soderbergh took more inspiration from The Italian Job for his remake. They have pretty much the same sense of style and humor. Check it out!

Diamonds are Forever

Here it is, folks. The moment you've all been waiting for: The final James Bond movie to star Sean Connery. Unless you count Never Say Never Again, which I don't, because it's produced by a different studio and not a part of the actual series. This brings the series I started in December full circle. If you wish to read the rest, here they are:

- Dr. No
- From Russia with Love
- Goldfinger
- Thunderball
- You Only Live Twice
- On Her Majesty's Secret Service

And now, finally, comes Diamonds are Forever. I don't know what brought Sean Connery back to the role of Bond ($$$) after retiring from the role with You Only Live Twice ($$$), but I'm betting it had something to do with getting a great script ($$$), or the promise of a chance to play a different side of 007 after the life-changing events of the previous movie ($$$), or possibly the opportunity to work with Goldfinger director Guy Hamilton again ($$$). Whatever the reason, Connery is back as Bond... with a vengeance!

After the events of On Her Majesty's Secret Service, highlight for SPOILER His wife was murdered SPOILER, 007 has an axe to grind with Ernst Stavro Blofeld, nefarious criminal leader of SPECTRE. The movie opens with Bond tearing his way across the world, tracking down Blofeld by choking henchwomen with their bikini tops and such. He finds Blofeld before the credits, trying to alter one of his men to look like him, to use as a decoy and escape Bond's vengeance. Bond gets him anyway, before the opening titles, and the viewer is robbed of the exciting, take no prisoners James Bond movie they were hoping for.

After that, Bond is pretty much fine, and ready to take on a mission again. He is assigned to pose as a diamond smuggler and follow the diamonds to their destination, in order to uncover the smuggling ring. The main Bond girl this time is Tiffany Case, played by Jill St. John, a fellow diamond smuggler who likes to wear wigs, apparently.

Bond traces the diamonds to their source, which is, of course, Blofeld, who plans to build a reflective laser satellite with them to take over the world. Oh hey, remember when Bond got his vengeance earlier? Well, that cooled him off some, since he's taking all this pretty lightly now. I would have expected all of those emotions to come rushing back, but Bond is over his pain and has moved on to his next girl already.

Diamonds are Forever is by far the campiest James Bond movie yet. It is loaded with dumb gags that betray the clever humor of the series' best entries. Among the worst is a scene where, on the run from some henchmen in Nevada, Bond storms onto the set of a moon mission being faked, steals the moon rover and takes off in it. Come on, guys! The space program was real just two movies ago, when you had Blofeld stealing rocket ships.

This movie is also the origin of the scene where Bond gets caught in some sort of death trap and manages to get out of it unscathed, calmly brushing dust off of his tuxedo or something. That's my least favorite version of James Bond. I like it when Bond gets messed up a little, not the guy who can casually walk through a gunfight sipping a martini.

And there's more. Cake bombs. Bickering gay assassins. Blofeld dressing in drag.

I've enjoyed the first six 007 movies to varying degrees, some less than others, but Diamonds are Forever is the first one that is downright crappy. They don't even give us a proper showdown between Bond and Blofeld at the end. After avoiding Bond's grasp for six movies, the final confrontation amounts to Bond swinging him around in a crane for a while, then leaving.

I think this is it for now. I hope you enjoyed my James Bond reviews. One day I plan on continuing on with the Roger Moore series, but this one kind of killed my will to go on, at least for the time being. With a new movie coming out later this year, though, I can't imagine these reviews being gone for too long.

James Moore will be back (someday) with his review of LIVE AND LET DIE

Haywire

Over the last two decades, Steven Soderbergh has proven himself to be the most versatile and chameleon-like film director currently working. He can jump from genre to genre, tell a great story, while still keeping his trademark style at the forefront. In the past, he's made slick heist movies (the Ocean's 11 series), sweeping crime epics (Traffic), a science fiction romance (Solaris), tiny improvised independent films (Bubble), and so on. Just four months ago, he gave us an apocalyptic medical thriller with Contagion. What I'm saying is, you could find a Steven Soderbergh film in just about every Netflix category. I suppose that's why he plans on retiring a few movies down the road.

Haywire is Steven Soderbergh's martial arts movie, starring MMA fighter Gina Carano as Mallory Kane, a mercenary on the run from her employers who set her up for a fall. There's more of a story, but that's kind of all you need to know. She kicks lots of ass and tells her story to a 19 year old kid she takes with her. It's like a smart, slick, and stylized Steven Seagal movie, but with a hot girl mercifully put in Seagal's place.

Gina Carano is not an actor (or wasn't before this), but she did alright. She did better than I probably would have done if I ever tried acting. I thought she was better in some scenes than she was in others, which made me wonder if her better scenes were the ones that were the ones that were shot later on. Soderbergh wisely surrounds her with a lot of big talent, including Bill Paxton as her military father, Ewan MacGregor and Antonio Banderas as those plotting against her, Michael Douglas as the government man who hired them, and Michael Fassbender as a British agent she must work with.

I liked Haywire. It's not one of Steven Soderbergh's best works, but you can tell he's having a good time, and I found it infectious. Lots of cool camerawork, great editing, and a funky Out of Sight-esque score by that movie's same composer, David Holmes. The action sequences are really cool too, choreographed to play to Gina Carano's strengths as an MMA fighter. I'm not sure if this movie made a star out of her, but I bet she'll continue to find work based on it.

I'll always gladly go see a Steven Soderbergh movie upon release. I hope his talk of retirement is just talk. I hope he takes a couple years off, gets bored and comes back to filmmaking. I'm sure there are still a couple of minor subgenres he hasn't tackled yet.

Mirageman

It's not fair that every superhero lives in New York, is it? People need rescuing the world over, right? Well, now Mirageman is here to fill that void in Chile.

Directed by Ernesto Diaz Espinoza, Mirageman is another entry in the "normal guy in the real world, inspired by comic books, puts on a mask and decides to fight crime" genre that we're getting more and more of these days. I've heard about a few other independent ones, but I suppose the most recognizable entry in the genre would be Kick Ass.

Mirageman is the story Marco (played by Marko Zaror), by day a lowly bouncer at a sleazy night club, who spends all of his spare time exercising and training in martial arts. You see, three years earlier, Marco's parents were murdered and little brother raped (!!!) and traumatized, now catatonic in a home. One night, a ski-masked Marco stops another home invasion and rescues Carol, a beautiful news reporter from certain rape (!!!). Carol thanks him publicly and calls him a hero. When he next visits the hospital, he finds that the news of this mysterious rape-preventing hero has brought his brother a little bit out of his shell, the first positive response in years. Inspired by this, Marco dons a costume and becomes Mirageman.

Visually, the movie is as gritty and down to earth as the silly subject matter allows. It has a near documentary style, and relies heavily on news reports to fill out the narrative. In fact, the anchors and reporters often give Mirageman advice on what he should and shouldn't do, and even downright manipulate him for their own gain.

Though Mirageman strives for a certain kind of realism, at the same time, it doesn't take itself too seriously. There's a great deal of comedy mixed in with the violence and awesome martial arts. Marco's trial and error attempts at superheroics offer a lot of laughs, poking fun at comic book nonsense, such as the length of time and difficulty one would actually encounter when trying to change into costume while a crime is in progress. He also has a hilarious sidekick figure, who goes by the name "Pseudo Robin", who is not much of a fighter, but all heart, and he has an extra motorcycle.

Mirageman has some fun with the audience, undercutting our expectations at times. At first, it seems like a typical martial arts movie is happening, where every opponent he faces, every gang of crooks, appears to be a martial arts master himself. But then, when Mirageman attempts to bust his Holy Grail, an evil pedophile child trafficking ring, he realizes how out of his element he is when facing people carrying guns.

Marko Zaror is awesome as Mirageman. It's hard to say how good he is with dialogue, as he only had a few lines in the whole movie. His actions speak for him, and he's a killer martial artist. Ernesto Diaz Espinoza and Marko Zaror have made two more movies together, and I believe I'm going to have to watch those as well.

Mirageman was one of those movies that I knew next to nothing about and had no expectations for. I was very pleased with what I got. It is action-packed, funny, self aware, and a little bit cheesy, all in all a movie worth geeking out over.

Check it out! It's on Netflix Instant if you're in America.

Hanna

Joe Wright's 2011 film Hanna could have been pitched as The Bourne Identity meets Kramer vs. Kramer. It's basically about a young girl caught in the middle of a very messy divorce. The girl just also happens to be a genetically modified kung fu killing machine.

At the opening of the film, we meet Hanna (Saoirse Ronan, I promise to learn how to say that out loud someday), a teenage girl living in the Northern European wilderness with her father (Eric Bana), cut off from the civilized world. He has devoted his life to teaching her combat, hunting, survival skills, languages. You know, spy stuff. When she comes of age, and begins to wonder what the world outside their forest is like, he gives her the option to leave, though it will alert the CIA, the agency he has been hiding her from all these years, of their existence.

They split up, agree to meet up at a specified rendezvous point, and both go on the run. Hanna is soon captured by the CIA, led by the villainous Cate Blanchett, spiteful of Bana's character's defection and kidnapping of Hanna after all these years. Hanna escapes in a really cool little sequence where you see her life of training put to the test, and leads them on a chase across Europe. Along the way, she befriends an oddball family of English Bohemians and learns what it's like to be a real person.

I really thought I would like this movie better than I did. The first half hour or so, all the way through Hanna's escape from the secret CIA facility, had me locked in. From that point on, the movie kind of lost me, only pulling me back into the story once in a while. Joe Wright, best known for period dramas that I've never seen but might look into someday, such as Atonement and Pride and Prejudice, seems to be doing his best to bring a dynamic, somewhat artsy kind of visual style to the story. It's kind of reminiscent of Danny Boyle in his more hyperactive mode. Combined with a thumping score by electronic artists The Chemical Brothers, the action sequences are propulsive and as relentless and violent as a PG-13 film will allow.

Saoirse Ronan is very good as Hanna. It's fair to say she will be around in movies for some time to come. Hanna speaks English with a German accent. I wondered to myself if Hanna was ever taught German, or if she just knows English with a German accent, since she speaks to her father in English in all of their private scenes together.

Cate Blanchett, on the other hand, made what I think was a very big mistake with her character in giving her a southern accent. I don't know if it was scripted that way, or her idea, but for some reason, it seems to me like something she would bring to the table herself. It's the kind of accent that, I don't know, might pass muster outside of America, but sounds pretty bad to us. She's done decent American accents before. I guess she just really wanted to play a Texan.

Despite it's problems, Hanna had some fun sequences and a good soundtrack to keep it going. I appreciate that Joe Wright seemed to really want to give us something different, it just didn't quite get there for me.

On Her Majesty's Secret Service

Ok, right now, imagine me walking into the middle of a crosshair and turning towards you and shooting you, because I'm back with yet another of my chronological series of James Bond reviews! The first five are as follows: Dr. No, From Russia with Love, Goldfinger, Thunderball, and You Only Live Twice. And now on to the next one.

On Her Majesty's Secret Service is the sixth James Bond film, directed by Peter R. Hunt, and is truly an odd man out in the series for more than one reason. Most obviously, Sean Connery opted out of this movie, and was replaced by George Lazenby in the lead role. And secondly, this movie is one of the only Bond movies where the consequences of his actions as 007 actually spill over into his personal life.

The plot this time around follows Bond on a hunt for Ernst Stavro Blofeld, the diabolical leader of SPECTRE who eluded him at the end of the last movie. Bond finds a lead through a rich man who agrees to give him Blofeld's whereabouts if he agrees to romance his troubled daughter, Tracy (Diana Rigg). The romance gradually becomes mutual, as Bond and Tracy fall in love. Finally, the mission: Bond, undercover as a mild mannered genealogist, must infiltrate Blofeld's research institute in the Alps, where women from around the world are being brainwashed into releasing a disease in their home regions.

The movie cuts to the chase, acknowledging and addressing Connery's absence right away, by having Lazenby utter the line, "this never happened to the other guy" after a big fight. Oh, crap! Bond has become self aware. He knows he's in a movie. That's the only explanation for him to say that line, because it's given absolutely no other context whatsoever. I understand why they would want to acknowledge the lack of Connery, but there has to be a more clever way to do it.

By the way, let's talk about the lack of Connery. Why'd he quit? I'm sure at the time he felt his tenure as Bond had run its course, or maybe they just weren't offering him enough money. But why did they go ahead and make the Bond movie with one of the most defining moments of his entire life in it WITHOUT the actor who we all associate with the character? It's still a pretty cool scene at the end, but it would have packed SO much more of a punch if it had been Connery experiencing it.

You know what? That last sentence could pretty much describe the entire movie. This is a really cool, back to basics, character driven Bond movie, loaded with plenty of action, but more importantly, plenty of spying, something the last couple Bond movies had set aside in favor of action. Unfortunately, George Lazenby just doesn't cut it as James Bond. He gets the job done, I guess. He can throw punches and spout one liners as the script demands, but he lacks the charisma that made Sean Connery so iconic in the role. The lack of Connery casts a heavy shadow over the whole film.

James Moore will be back with his review of DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER.

You Only Live Twice

Welcome to another installment of my series of James Bond reviews in chronological order. If you would like to read my previous entries, please follow the links: Dr. No, From Russia with Love, Goldfinger, and Thunderball.

You Only Live Twice is the fifth James Bond film, again starring Sean Connery as 007. It's directed by Lewis Gilbert, a newcomer to Ian Fleming's universe. It quite literally rockets past Thunderball as the most expensive, and the most excessive, James Bond film up to this point. I chose the above poster to represent this movie in order to prove that point. Yes, there's a sequence where Q assembles a sweet ass portable helicopter for Bond, followed by a big crazy helicopter dogfight. And that's not all!

This time around, Bond, after faking his death in order to get off of SPECTRE's hit list, is sent to Japan to investigate a stolen spacecraft that landed in the Pacific nearby. A stolen spacecraft. See, Spectre is trying to escalate the cold war by using their own, larger spacecraft to eat American and Russian spacecrafts and have each country cast the blame on the other.

This is actually a pretty important James Bond film for a few reasons. First and foremost, we are introduced to 007's arch-nemesis, evil mastermind Ernst Stavro Blofeld (Donald Pleasance), seen in 3 of the previous 4 films as only a pair of hands stroking a cat. We are also introduced to his secret evil mastermind headquarters located inside a volcano. This is the reason villains always build bases inside volcanos! The base itself served as the inspiration for Dr. Evil's base in the first Austin Powers film.

There's a lot more silliness to go around in this movie, including a scene where Bond has his face "altered" to look Japanese. He has some prosthetic eyelids put on and brushes his hair forward. The effect is less than impressive. The finale is also pure craziness, where Bond and an army of NINJAS invade Blofeld's volcano base! This is a dream come true. It was also parodied brilliantly in You Only Move Twice, my personal all-time favorite Simpsons episode, guest starring Albert Brooks as loveable-boss-slash-diabolical-terrorist, Hank Scorpio.

As ridiculous and over the top as You Only Live Twice gets, it's probably the most fun of the first five. Not the BEST, mind you, and also not my favorite, but it's loaded with action and camp value. The script is written by Roald Dahl, best known for childrens books like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Fantastic Mr. Fox, and he brings a level of cleverness to the story that balances out the ridiculousness.

It only took a few movies, but by this point there is absolutely no attempt to ground James Bond in any kind of reality. You Only Live Twice is pure escapism, and I can't fault it for that.

James Moore will be back with his review of ON HER MAJESTY'S SECRET SERVICE.

Thunderball

I'm back again, with yet another installment in my chronological series on the early James Bond films. If you want to start at the beginning, click here to read my review for Dr. No, and follow the links at the end for the following movies in the series.

The fourth Bond movie is Thunderball, again starring Sean Connery in the role of superspy 007. Terence Young returns as director, after sitting one out for Goldfinger. This time around, evil organization SPECTRE returns, holding the world hostage with stolen atomic bombs. The villain this time around is Emilio Largo, Number 2 in SPECTRE's hierarchy. The primary Bond girl is Domino, who also happens to be Largo's mistress.

At this point, most of, if not all of the James Bond formula has been established. He has his Aston Martin, his gadgets from Q, the theme song (this time by Tom Jones), etc. A lot of the action this time around is set underwater, which is pretty ambitious even by today's standards. The final battle at the end is a huge, no-holds-barred SCUBA melee in shark filled waters, and it is awesome.

As enjoyable as Thunderball is, and there is a lot to enjoy about it, the Bond series is also beginning to show signs of fatigue at this point. Things are starting to cross that line into the absurd. The opening sequence features Bond beating up a man in drag before blasting off with a jetpack. We're getting into silly territory.

Another thing that kind of bothered me is the amount of sharks that they must have killed to make this movie. There are points where sharks are shot with harpoons on camera. There are scenes where an already dead shark is used to act as a live one. They didn't really have any kind of rules in the 60's about harming animals in movies. I'm not huge into animal rights or anything, but seeing animals get hurt still bugs me.

Thunderball is the biggest and most ambitious movie up to this point in the 007 series, with triple the budget of the previous entry, Goldfinger. Unfortunately, it's also the point where the series shows signs of weakness. With all the staying power that Bond movies have shown over the decades, Thunderball serves as the point where the movies become more of a hit-or-miss affair.

James Moore will return with his review of YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE.

Goldfinger

For those of you just tuning in, I'm in the process of writing about all of the early Bond movies in chronological order. Goldfinger is the third film to star Sean Connery as 007, and if Dr. No started the ball rolling, and From Russia with Love formed the template that all Bond movies are built upon, then this is the movie that refined it to an art form.

This time around James Bond is on the trail of Auric Goldfinger, a gold-obsessed businessman (in the business of gold), with plans to increase his riches by devaluing the gold in Fort Knox. Gert Frobe plays Goldfinger, who is quite possibly the quintessential evil mastermind in a James Bond movie. The oft quoted line "No, Mr. Bond. I expect you to die." is spoken by Goldfinger.

Though I had never seen Goldfinger before, so much of it has bled its way into pop culture that I already knew a bunch of it. Bond girl Jill Masterson, murdered by being coated in gold paint. Korean mute assassin/footman Oddjob and his razor sharp throwing hat. Bond being cuffed to a table while a laser slowly climbs its way toward his junk. And of course, the most famous Bond girl of all, "Pussy Galore".

This particular adventure is more of a standalone side mission to Bond's ongoing dealings with the sinister criminal organization, SPECTRE. No reference is made to his defeat of Dr. No or their revenge attempt in From Russia with Love. I like that; it shows us that James Bond doesn't just deal with one enemy. SPECTRE is just one of many international threats bearing down upon us.

Several Bond traditions are established or elaborated upon in Goldfinger, too. The opening credits are projected upon sexy ladies once again, a tradition started in From Russia with Love, but for the first time, the movie's title theme is played over it. The song, Goldfinger, is, of course, one of the most famous Bond themes. M, Moneypenny, and Q all make their standard appearances. Bond's flirtation with Miss Moneypenny continues, as well as a running hatrack gag established in Dr. No. CIA agent Felix Leiter also appears, though he is played by a different actor who doesn't even remotely resemble Jack Lord.

Also of note, for the first time, we get a sequence inside Q's massive weapon-testing warehouse, seeing background gags of stuntmen getting sprayed with flamethrowers while Q is talking with Bond. Bond's tricked out Aston Martin makes its first appearance in this scene, too.

Now we all know these early 007 films can be pretty damn politically incorrect at times, and downright misogynistic at others, right? Well, Goldfinger may contain the worst thing I've ever heard James Bond say. Before a meeting, he dismisses the girl he's with by telling her it's time for some "Man talk", and then smacks her ass as she goes! Whoa!

The stunts, fights, and chases in Goldfinger are spectacular. We get to see everything his car can do. The final showdown in Fort Knox with Oddjob is one of the greats. For the first time in the series, Terence Young steps aside as director. His replacement is Guy Hamilton, who is more than able to fill Young's shoes.

Goldfinger is definitely one of the best James Bond films ever made. I still love Dr. No for its lower budget, more stripped down, edgier feeling. But when it comes to the more familiar over the top spectacle that we've all come to expect from 007 films, Goldfinger is the gold standard. See what I just did there?

James Moore will return with his review of THUNDERBALL.

From Russia with Love

Alright, everyone! Here I am again with another 007 adventure. This time, it's Sean Connery's second go-round as James Bond, From Russia with Love.

After the huge success of Dr. No, a sequel was inevitable. From Russia with Love, again directed by Terence Young, builds upon the success of its predecessor, and establishes the template for what we've all come to know and love as a James Bond film.

For the first time, we get the opening sequence of sexy ladies gyrating over the cast and crew credits, projected upon their bodies. For the first time, we get a title song for the movie, in addition to the famous Bond theme. We also get our first ever gadget tutorial from Q, and a further glimpse of Bond's archfoes, the shadowy criminal organization SPECTRE.

This time around, SPECTRE is out for revenge on Bond, after killing their agent, Dr. No and foiling their scheme in the process. They send an assassin named Grant (Robert Shaw) after him, and set him up with Tatiana Romanova (Daniela Bianchi), a Russian clerk that has no idea who she's in bed with (figuratively speaking. Literally speaking, she's in bed with Bond). The majority of the action is set in Istanbul this time around.

Bond is more clever with the one liners than he was in Dr. No. The sexual suggestiveness is played way up. I mean, this movie is DIRTY. I always knew the Bond films had this stuff in them, but I guess I had never seen one where it was pushed to this extent. I grew up on the cleaned up, neutered Pierce Brosnan 007 films.

The villains become a little more arch this time around, but only a little. It's not like Dr. No was a paragon of subtlety. Robert Shaw is one of the better nemeses in a Bond film as SPECTRE assassin Grant. And Number 3 is pretty memorable too, with the blade that pops out of the tip of her boot.

Whereas in the first film, Bond was a pretty low-tech spy, this time around, he gets some gadgets from Q, including a trick briefcase. They're still not at the heights of implausibility that they eventually reach. I believe I remember him unfolding a briefcase into a helicopter in a later one.

One thing I noticed in From Russia with Love is product placement, something we've all come to expect in a James Bond movie. There may have been some in Dr. No, but I wasn't on the lookout for it at the time. Eveready batteries must have paid top dollar for some screen time in this movie.

Though I preferred the less gimmicky, more gritty feel of Dr. No, From Russia with Love is just as good. It expands and solidifies the Bond universe and utilizes its increased budget by adding some grander set pieces and action sequences. I was actually surprised that it was a direct continuation of Dr. No. The later James Bond movies have little to no continuity from one to the next, which I think is a shame. At the end of the movie is the promise of a third, surely already in production at the time of this one's release.

James Moore will return soon with his review of GOLDFINGER.

Dr. No

As much as I love the 60's aesthetic, it's somewhat baffling that I've never seen most of the Sean Connery James Bond films. I can't explain it. But I can correct it. Over the next couple weeks, I'm going to try to watch as many of the first seven James Bond films as I can, in order, before they are unceremoniously ripped from the Netflix Instant Watch menus on January 8th. If I had known they were leaving, I would have watched them sooner!

Dr. No is Sean Connery's debut as 007, directed by Terence Young, and I think it's about as good as a James Bond film can possibly be. The series has yet to establish its' gimmicks and cornerstones. The camp level is minimal. The spy action is low-tech and down and dirty. The character of James Bond is cooler and grittier than he gradually becomes. In fact, the closest Bond film I've seen to Dr. No is my other favorite Bond film, Casino Royale, though the latter is obviously on a much grander scale.

The plot revolves around James Bond being sent to Jamaica, where he finds a small island ruled by a scientist named Dr. No, who is plotting to sabotage the American space program. Helping Bond out are CIA agent Felix Lieter, who appears regularly in Bond films, this time played by Hawaii 5.0.'s Jack Lord, and Honey Ryder, played by Ursula Andress.

I was pretty surprised by how violent Dr. No was. There's actually a decent amount of blood in it. I assume this is because it was a United Kingdom production, and they did not have to work within the strict boundaries of the Hollywood system. Then again, I could be wrong, since Hollywood was slowly starting to loosen up around this time.

Connery is as cool as can be as Bond, but he's not quite the quip-spouting sexaholic he later becomes. He still quips and sexes with the best of them, but I think those qualities were played up in later films after proving popular in this one.

The best Bond movies are known for their villains as well. There are some pretty memorable bad guys here, including Dr. No himself, and a trio of assassins known as the Three Blind Mice (introduced by a sinister orchestral rendition of the nursery rhyme).

Let's see, what milestones do we get in this first James Bond film? We see James Bond walk into the crosshairs, turn and shoot at the camera for the first time. But get this: HE'S WEARING A FEDORA. Also, M, 007's boss gets his first appearance. And the existence of a criminal organization called SPECTRE, an ongoing thorn in Bond's side, is revealed to MI6.

So there you have it. The first 007. Arguably the best.

James Moore will return soon with his review of FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE.

Mission: Impossible: Ghost Protocol

I never gave up on the Mission: Impossible franchise. The first 3 films were all successful to varying degrees, but were never quite as good as I hoped them to be. As great as Tom Cruise running away from (and toward) things can be, there was always a bit of an unfulfilled feeling by the end of the movie.

Brad Bird's fourth entry, though, eliminated that feeling for me. In fact, I would say it's easily the best Impossible Mission yet. The movie is full of twists, truly original high-tech spy gadgets, a likeable team of non-Cruise characters, and one inventive and intense action setpiece after another.

The film opens with the IMF breaking Ethan Hunt out of a Russian prison to lead a mission of breaking into the Kremlin. The opening titles are downright awesome, starting with Tom Cruise saying "Light the fuse" like a badass. Their mission is botched by somebody piggybacking on their radio frequency and making them look like they were there to commit an attack. Ethan and his team must now clear their name and retrieve stolen launch codes in order to prevent a nuclear war.

Like all Mission: Impossibles, the story is crazily complicated, and like all Mission: Impossibles, it matters little. What matters is that there are lots of fight scenes, chases, explosions, and espionage operations, and boy, do they deliver. Tom Cruise engages in a foot and car chase through a sandstorm, scales and rappels off the world's tallest building, and kicks ass to your heart's content.

A key factor in M:I:Ghost Protocol's success is the team Ethan Hunt is given to work with. Unlike the previous three films, all four members of the team are given personalities, backstories, and most importantly, are instrumental in the success of the mission several times over. Usually, it's just Cruise, Ving Rhames, and a couple more people who you don't even remember when the movie ends. This time, Simon Pegg returns as Benjy, a character established in a cameo in part 3, providing all the technological know-how and comic relief, Paula Patton acts as Hunt's second in command, and Jeremy Renner is a CIA "Analyst" who seems much more able than one in his profession should.

I also really loved the way the odds are stacked way against Cruise and friends. Without the resources of cooperation of the government to help them, they are left afloat and on their own. The odds feel overwhelmingly against them, and the tasks they perform are difficult, to say the least. Cruise gets the brunt of this, and he takes quite a beating throughout the film. There are several times where he jumps down from a high place and slams himself painfully onto a surface below. They really make it look painful. What I'm saying is, this mission actually seems kind of impossible.

Before I go, I can't forget to bring up Brad Bird's direction. As the director of Pixar's The Incredibles, he has now transferred to live action his ability to stage elaborate, perfectly laid out and executed intense action sequences. The production design on the movie is also ridiculously detailed and layered. Unfortunately, I didn't get to see it in IMAX, but I did see it in "XP". The image was amazingly sharp. If you're planning on seeing it, I would strongly recommend paying the extra and seeing Mission: Impossible: Ghost Protocol on the biggest screen you can find.

Charley Varrick

Charley Varrick is one of those older movies (1973, in this case) that holds up ridiculously well. It's a shame that nobody seems to have heard of it. It was directed by Don Siegel, who had directed many movies of almost every genre before this, but had achieved a huge box office success with the gritty crime action genre with his previous film, Dirty Harry. While Dirty Harry was an over the top action movie, built around an iconic, badass performance by Clint Eastwood, Charley Varrick is much more subdued, with intelligent plotting, a more relaxed pace, and really good dialogue. In fact, I would even say that Charley Varrick is the better of the two films, if not quite as memorable.

The title character is played by the great Walter Matthau (who won a BAFTA for this performance over in the UK), a down-on-his-luck former stunt pilot, now cropduster, who puts together a gang and masterminds a low-profile, small town bank robbery in New Mexico. The robbery is a bit of a disaster, with half his gang getting killed, along with some cops, but Varrick is very good at thinking on his feet, and he and his (surviving) partner in crime manage to elude suspicion.

When they return to his trailer park and check out their haul, they realize that they've stolen almost a million dollars, which is almost a million dollars more than they expected a tiny small town bank to have in its vault. Varrick deduces, correctly, that the money must belong to the mob, and was being held there until it could be properly invested overseas. This means that the mob is going to stop at nothing until they're dead and the money is returned.

What follows is a chess game, where Varrick must stay ahead of all the obstacles in his path, including the police, a nosy old lady neighbor, the corrupt owner of the bank (played by John Vernon), and a man named Molly (Joe Don Baker), the hitman employed by the banker. The question is, will Charley Varrick get away with the money and his life?

Charley Varrick (the movie, not the character) reminds me a great deal of the work of Elmore Leonard. In fact, I would go so far as saying that this film was a direct inspiration for Quentin Tarantino's Leonard adaptation, Jackie Brown. I haven't read anything saying this, but I am sure of it nonetheless. They are quite similar in style and tone, and both contain a smarter-than-their-station-in-life hero working a long game against all odds for a huge sum of money.

Charley Varrick (the movie, not the character) is an extremely smart caper with funny moments, great performances and colorful characters. Another thing worth noting is the awesome score, composed by the great Lalo Schifrin. There are so many reasons you should all watch this movie. Check it out on Netflix Instant!

The Warriors

Wow, where was The Warriors when I was a teenager? I mean, it was out there, but I never even heard of it until I was in my twenties, and just got around to watching it recently. If I had seen it as a teen, it would probably have been given the same heavy rotation that Evil Dead 2 and Big Trouble in Little China got in my VCR.

The Warriors is a 1979 cult classic directed by Walter Hill, set in Brooklyn in the near future where gangs rule the streets. Cyrus, who appears to be the Martin Luther King Jr. of street gangs, calls a huge meeting, with the intention of forming a United Nations of gangs. Together, they would outnumber the police three to one. But before the alliance can be formed, Cyrus is gunned down by an unstable member of The Rogues, who then pins the assassination on The Warriors. The Warriors must then get back to the safe haven of their home turf in Coney Island while every gang in the city is out for their heads, not to mention the police.

The movie has a very post-apocalyptic feel. 1979 New York is run down and nasty looking. Graffiti completely covers the subway walls. Walter Hill is also very deliberately invoking comic books, right down to illustrated scene transitions, making it appear that the film is jumping right off the panels. It reminded me of Frank Miller's comic book work of the mid-80's, such as The Dark Knight Returns, though The Warriors predates Miller's fame by a couple of years.

I love that every gang has a dress code and a theme. That's something from a lot of 80's pop culture that I wish were real. The Warriors and a few others just have logos and jackets or vests. But some gangs go all out, with pinstriped baseball uniforms, full clown makeup, what have you. If Walter Hill had included shots of the clown gang sitting in front of a mirror putting on their makeup so they could go beat some ass, they would have lost a lot of their menace.

The police are also always on The Warriors' tails. At least I think it was the police. I have a theory that they might have just been a police-themed gang trying to join the alliance, but things just got out of hand. Maybe they should consider a fireman theme.

I'm glad I finally saw The Warriors. I tend to watch a lot of older, more straightforward classics, but for me, it's always a real treat to find something like this; a unique, strange little movie set in its own universe with its own rules and sensibilities. It's a shame I didn't get to watch The Warriors over and over again in my VCR days, because it would have been perfect for that.

30 Minutes or Less

30 Minutes or Less is a new action comedy by Zombieland director Ruben Fleischer that could have gone either way. Luckily, it went the right way. It's fast-paced and silly, with well-drawn characters and a simple, clever premise that leaves lots of room for the performers to bounce off of each other.

Jesse Eisenberg plays Nick, a slacker who delivers pizzas for a living while his friends are moving up in the world. Aziz Ansari plays his roommate and best friend, Chet. Danny McBride and Nick Swardson play Dwayne and Travis, two more slackers who are even more slackery than Eisenberg, who hatch a scheme to get someone else to rob a bank for them, so they can secure the funds to hire a hitman to knock off McBride's lottery winning dad. They do this by ordering a pizza and strapping a bomb to Nick and telling him he has 12 hours to rob the bank.

That's it. From there on out, it's just the actors bouncing off of each other and having fun. The dialogue sounds pretty largely ad-libbed by the actors, but it's a testament to the screenwriter that I couldn't always tell what was scripted and what wasn't.

I should also point out that the four leads aren't the only funny ones. Michael Pena is hilarious as the hitman McBride is hiring. Though normally a serious actor, he's proven himself a great comedic performer with bizarre turns in Jody Hill's work, like Observe and Report and a scene stealing role in the second season of Eastbound and Down, HBO's pitch-black comedy starring the king scene-stealer himself, Danny McBride.

Ruben Fleischer seems to be a pretty competent director. Zombieland was not only funny, but a really well made film. In 30 Minutes or Less, he seems to know his job is largely to step back and let his cast do their thing. The action is pretty well done, too.

The movie is probably easiest to compare to Pineapple Express, which, while I laughed a lot at it, didn't really work for me in the end. I thought the third act was a mess, and it abandoned the comedy for action and violence. I also thought Gary Cole was poorly used as the villain, who was really given nothing to do. Also, I'm just not too into the stoner thing. 30 Minutes or Less is a lot more successful for me. It keeps the action and the laughs properly coming all the way to the end.