Movie Review - Pompeii

Pompeii (2014)

Starring Kit Harrington, Carrie-Anne Moss, Emily Browning, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, Jessica Lucas, Jared Harris, and Kiefer Sutherland

Directed by Paul W.S. Anderson

Your guess is as good as mine as to why I watched the special effects disaster that is Pompeii.  I'm sure there's an interesting story dealing with the eruption of Mount Vesuvius and the desolation of the titular city in A.D. 79 -- it just isn't told here.  Instead, director Paul W.S. Anderson has created a film that looks like a horrible, cheap video game with hammy acting that rivals some of the worst you've seen in a major motion picture.  (Kiefer Sutherland chewing the scenery as the film's "baddie" and Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje's stilted spoutings as a "righteous slave" are equally bad.)  Tossing in an awkward romance between a slave and a member of royalty doesn't help matters either.  The fact that this was released in theaters and not straight-to-dvd is unfathomable to me.

The RyMickey Rating:  F

Movie Review - Unthinkable

Unthinkable (2010)

Starring Samuel L. Jackson, Carrie-Anne Moss, and Michael Sheen

Directed by Gregor Jordan

***This film is currently streaming on Netflix***

I watch a lot of junk at times, but I rarely watch flicks that go direct-to-dvd.  Somewhere along the line, most things reviewed on this site have at least seen the darkness of one American theater.  The lack of a movie poster to the left and the picture of the dvd case are because Unthinkable went straight-to-dvd.  It's moderately surprising because while the film isn't perfect, the questions that it raises about the rights of American citizens are intriguing ones and Michael Sheen's performance alone are reason enough to give this one a shot if you're looking for a quick watch some evening.

Yusuf (Sheen), an American Muslim, is arrested by the United States government after he makes a tape stating that he has placed three nuclear bombs in three American cities ready to explode in less than a week's time.  FBI Agent Brody (Carrie-Anne Moss) is called in to interrogate the terrorist suspect, but she is joined by a man named "H" (Samuel L. Jackson) who is apparently the government's go-to guy for extreme torture techniques.  Playing a high level game of "good cop-bad cop," Brody and H attempt to crack Yusuf and get him to reveal the bombs' locations before it's too late.

Overly melodramatic?  Sure, but the film works in terms of tension and suspense.  Samuel L. Jackson is partly responsible for that as his character H is rather unhinged.  We in the audience are rather unsure of how far H will go in order to get his information, but (and as a big credit to the screenwriter) H's motives never seem out-of-place for his character.  The lengths that H goes to are extreme and graphic (heading into that Saw-level territory at times), but it was always believable.  

Part of the reason things felt "real" and tense was because of a rather brilliant performance from Michael Sheen.  Maniacal is probably the best word to describe his character.  There's an evil just underneath the surface of Yusuf that's even more frightening because his motives are realistic in today's society.  Sheen has to run the gamut of emotions from demonic to tortured to stoic and he handles them all rather brilliantly.

Unfortunately, I feel like the film cops out a bit at the end (the conclusion of the Extended Edition, while it seems a little silly based off of a description I read, would have been a little more interesting with a few tweaks) and Carrie-Anne Moss is quite a boring let-down.  And while I would've liked the film to have either taken a more solid pro- or anti-torture stance (although I think the ending chosen causes the film to lean slightly more to the anti- camp), it does open up the mind to questions about torture tactics and whether they are legitimate tools for the American government to use in the War on Terror.  While the film didn't necessarily change my opinion on the topic (which I won't state in order to keep this non-political), I like the morality play on display in Unthinkable.  I don't want you to think this is an amazing film because it certainly does have a direct-to-dvd "feel" to the aesthetics and set pieces, but it was an interesting flick that was worth the watch.

The RyMickey Rating:  C+