S.W.A.T

I kind of put 2003 right in the middle of the great CGI assault on cinema. We saw the 21’st century in with a different kind of action movie, a kind that many would agree would never live up to their practical stunts/effects clad counterparts of the 70’s and the 80’s. Writing now in 2011, this flick is 8 years old and we may be now living in a time where over used CGI is being noticed by so many people all at various levels of film fan-ism. The days of flash editing and Computer graphics are not and will never be behind us, I just think that film making teams are slowly figuring out how to use certain techniques to enhance a film without it being so focally evident that it is being relied upon 100% for creating all the action scenes in a movie. Subtlety vs. Practicality. But fast editing will probably always be used to cover up badly designed, performed & choreographed action.

Passchendaele

Trench warfare during World War 1 was horrific. Not just because of the combat methods employed by the fighting forces, but the conditions under which soldiers lived made for high casualties from both sides. Trench warfare as a fighting method had to be resorted to for one major reason, to compensate for advances in weapon technology against the lack of development in mobility. Soldiers were under constant threat from being shot by snipers, blown apart by heavy artillery, and being shot by regular rifles if they were ever visible to the enemy. Most attacks were carried out on foot against occupied fighting lines meaning that usually the defending army had the advantage.The battle of Passchendaele occurred in 1917 in Belgium and is one of the famous battles of World War 1. I cannot say that I am any wiser about the real events of the battle having watched this movie, it affirms the horrors of the battle, but when the movies driving theme isn’t military related, it tends to be a bit sketchy on the real gruesome and more interesting details. Passchendaele is a Canadian movie set against the “distant” back drop of WW1 but the films events mostly take place in Canada.

Legend of the Fist: The Return of Chen Zhen

I watched The Green Hornet movie a few weeks ago, Seth Rogen was way out of his depth and Christoph waltz was criminally misused, and the action was pretty much all slow mo mediocreness. That’s my review within a review! So last night I watched Legend of the Fist: The Return of Chen Zhen, which is also, a movie featuring The Green Hornets sidekick Kato. It’s a better “Green Hornet movie” than the soulless Hollywood release, but at times the plot gets a little convoluted.

Donnie Yen reprises the part of Chen Zhen, a character first played by Bruce Lee in Fist of Fury, then again by Jet Li in Fist of Legend. I enjoy writing about plot when I decide to review a movie, and of course my experience, but.....I really don’t want to go too deep into the plot details of this movie here, there were multiple subplots running simultaneously, pretty much every conversation that took place in the movie introduced a new scenario, character, plot development, double cross, allegiance, twist or whatever. It sure was all over the place as far as the narrative goes, but still really enjoyable with some quality Donnie Yen directed action.