KNIGHT AND DAY (Three-Disc Combo)

Written by Pirata Hermosa

June Havens (Cameron Diaz) was in Wichita picking up some new parts for her father’s GTO in order to restore it as a wedding gift for her sister. But little did she know that she was about to have an “accidental” run in with rogue agent Roy Miller (Tom Cruise).

Initially she thinks it’s a lucky coincidence that she keeps running into Roy. But after she boards a supposedly full commercial jet to return home with but a handful of passengers aboard, she begins to get a little suspicious. After quickly dismissing that thought from her mind, she is surprised to find that while she was visiting the lavatory Roy not only killed all the other passengers but the pilots as well.

Once Roy manages to crash land the plane into a cornfield, he promptly tells the hysterical June that he works for the government and some of his colleagues have turned against him. He warns her to be careful of anyone that comes looking for him, that they will tell her that he is crazy, and if they say the words "safe" or "secure", that they are planning on killing her. Roy offers her a drink and she immediately passes out.

June wakes up the next morning in her own bed thinking that what happened the previous night was a dream. But she quickly finds out that it was real when FBI agents pick her up outside her house and want to take her to a secure location so she will be safe. As she begins to worry about her safety, Roy shows up and frees her during an elaborate high-speed chase on the streets of Boston.

The two are now partnered together in order to clear both their names and to protect the Zephyr, a secret invention that is a perpetual energy battery which is the size of a regular flashlight battery and can power an entire city.

In order to keep the Zephyr out of the wrong hands and the inventor who created it, Simon Peck (Paul Dano), their journey will take them around the world to Spain, a secret island in Jamaica and on a train through the Alps.

The three-disc set contains a Blu-ray, DVD and a digital copy of the film. The Blu-ray is presented in Widescreen 2.40:1 ratio with a 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio. The audio immerses you in the action with gunshots and explosions going off all around you. The video quality is a completely different experience. There’s a little graininess at the beginning and some warping when looking at the screens displaying the flight schedules. There’s also a number of times when the characters seem to really pop out compared to the background making it look like they are standing in front of green screens, but as some of the special features attest to, everything was shot on location and no green screens were used.

There are several features on the disc showing the making of the film, how the action scenes were filmed and what locations were used. The most interesting of the features was “Knight and Someday” where Tom Cruise flies into London to watch a Black Eyed Peas concert and then meets up with the band for the after party where they play the new song “Someday” that Tom had asked them to write for the film. Watching Tom chat up the members of the band seems a little surreal and then watching them all dance around while they play a recorded version of the song to a crowd of people foaming at the mouth behind barricades is just weird. And to top it off, the song isn’t very good.

The other cool but strange aspects of the bonus features section are the two viral videos “Soccer” and “Kick”. In the first one you watch Tom and Cameron from a distance as they are kicking a soccer ball back and forth. Suddenly they start doing a bunch of tricks. In the second one Cameron is practicing her karate kicks with a trainer and a giant cushion. Tom comes over and takes the cushion from the trainer and tells her to kick him as hard as she can. After a couple kicks, Tom gets distracted and looks away only to have Cameron kick him through a table and halfway across the lawn.

The film tries to walk a fine line between being an action film or a comedy. Unfortunately, it doesn’t walk it well enough to be either one. The comedy aspect isn’t pronounced enough. It gets close, but is then yanked back too abruptly into the seriousness of the situation. The action should be amazing. They used real locations. They set up good stunts and Cruise does his own. So why doesn’t it work? For some reason several of the stunts look fake. Even after watching the feature “Wilder Knights and Crazier Days” where they show how the stunts were done and how real they were, they just visually don’t work in the film.

Overall Knight and Day is not a bad film. It’s just an average film. The acting is good. There are plenty of exotic locations. There are a number of well-choreographed action scenes. There are many reasons why the film should succeed, but ultimately it just doesn’t live up to its full potential.

Article first published as Blu-ray Review: Knight and Day (Three-Disc Combo) on Blogcritics.

TRANSFORMERS (2007)

Written by Hombre Divertido

Transformers – More than meets the eye, and substantially less than meets the brain.

If you are looking for a movie that will bring the toys and cartoons to life, this is the film for you. The special effects are amazing. If you are looking for any kind of story, stick with the cartoons. This film makes no sense at all.

It is a good hour into the film before we get any kind of explanation as to what is going on, but said information becomes useless as the story…wait, that’s too generous, as the film progresses. By then we have seen our forces in the Middle East get slaughtered, which was far more disturbing than entertaining, and we are still waiting to be introduced to characters we came to see.

Though the plot is missing, the performances are not bad, the characters are likable, and the dialog actually contains some pleasant humor, but eventually you will find yourself asking questions and counting the GM logos. Questions like how are people able to run away from something that big? How are robots not seen when they appear to be in plain sight? What exactly happened at the end with that cube? In a movie called Transformers, shouldn’t we have gotten to know the robots a little more and some of the humans a little less?

It’s a little unclear as to who the target audience is here. It is far too violent for young children, older kids may not know who the Transformers are, and it makes far too little sense for adults. The ending certainly set up a sequel and certainly left the audience wanting more, which is normally good, except in this case the more is a plot. Perhaps they could include that in the next one.

For a movie over two hours, one might expect a longer review, but since a review would normally give some insight into the story, and there was none, I can’t transform this into anything bigger.

Recommendation: The special effects won’t be as good on a DVD, so if that’s what you’re looking for, go see this. For a better action movie with a hint of a story; go see Live Free or Die Hard.

LIVE FREE OR DIE HARD

Written by Hombre Divertido

Live Free or Die Hard; either way it’s fun.

Keep your spider-men, pirates, green ogres, and silver dudes. You can let Evan build the Ark, as long as you let John McClane (Bruce Willis) crash it, cuz he is what summer is all about. No awards to be given here; this film knows its purpose and serves it well. Like visiting a friend you have not seen in far too long, and as simple as heating up a piece of pizza the next morning; this movie satisfies.

Maybe not moving as fast physically, but still able to banter with the best of them, our hero is thrust into the middle of a techno-terrorist conspiracy in which a former government employee (Timothy Olyphant) is taking control of all that is run by computers, from the back of his big rig, in order to steal all of the money in the United States. Oh, and make the point that he is smarter than everyone else of course. Luckily grizzled NYPD Senior Detective John McClane is once again surrounded by bad guys, and one hot martial artist bad girl (Maggie Q.), who couldn’t hit the ground with their guns if they dropped them.

Apparently McClane missed all the computer-training classes offered by the city, because he was too busy playing Pong and waiting for Betamax to come back, thus is reliant on his sidekick in this outing; computer hacker Matt Farrell (Justin Long) who just happened to be an unwitting pawn in the whole evil scheme, and is subsequently being hunted by our bad guys who are trying to tie up loose ends.

Long appears to be channeling a young Keanu Reeves in appearance and performance which serves him well here. Especially when we watch officer McClane escape the aforementioned big rig, as it careens down a collapsing freeway, by jumping on to the tail of an earthbound stalled jet and surfing it to safety in a stunt so ridiculous you’ll believe Sandra Bullock could jump a bus over a gap in the same freeway.

Yes, some of the stunts are way over the top, and the simplicity of escaping peril by crossing a floor covered with broken glass when you’re not wearing shoes has given way to CGI flying cars, but at least there is commitment to giving the audience what it wants. Far more commitment than in the scene where McClane attempts to convey the dark side of heroism to Farrell in a show of emotion by an action hero that will rival Rambo’s monologue at the end of First Blood for worst of all time. At least the powers that be in Stallone's outing made the effort. The audience here was treated to a scene so awkward that it appeared that someone walked in and said: “What are you guys doing? Cut this out and just blow something up!”

If you are hoping for an appearance by Bonnie Bedilia as Mclane’s ex-ex-wife, or Reginald VelJohnson as John's old pal Sgt. Al Powell, no such luck. You will get to meet Lucy McClane, played quite efficiently by Mary Elizabeth Winstead, who is not only her mother's daughter, but more importantly daddy’s little girl, as she manages to not only infuriate her dad, but the head bad guy as well. She shows sequel potential herself as she manages to rumble with and shoot a henchman along the way.

So maybe we are missing a few friends from the past, and some of the scenes and stunts may not always work, but this is popcorn faire at its best and is certainly worthy of its predecessors. Please Bruce; don’t make us wait so long to see John McClane again. He’s a relatable character that works in the right and wrong place all the time.

Recommendation: It’s been far too long since we’ve had this kind, and this much fun at the movies. Stop reading and go now.