Manntis
01-21-2007, 09:43 AM
First, Clive Owen, Michael Caine, etc. earn their paycheques in this film. Good acting all around - including the black fellah who played the assassin in Serenity.
Second - this film is brutally violent. Not in a blood-and-guts sort of way (although a girl does come walking out of a cafe after a bombing carrying her freshly severed arm) but at a far more base level.
In one scene, a carload of people are joking around when they see a flaming wreck roll down the hill and explode in front of them. Hundreds of people run out of the woods to attack them, and they back up to get away. Armed men on a motorbike follow them, shooting. They manage to get away, and pass a fleet of cop cars screaming towards the carnage. One of the cop cruisers turns and follows them, pulling them over, and they all get out - resulting in a brief gun battle.
^ and all of that was shot in one take. No cutaways, no camera tricks. One continuous action. And that's not the only one either. Tons of scenes in this movie, especially action sequences, are non-stop start to finish. The way it's filmed, and the scenes they selected for this treatment, are amazingly adept at putting you into the action. You come out of the theatre feeling like you were alongside the characters all the way, actually experiencing the events.
A timely topic, too. Illegal immigrants put in concentration camps and deported, while the rest of the world has gone to shit and they've fled to England just to survive in the first place. 'fugees treated like Jews in the Polish ghettos circa 1944. No children, and barely any morality left. Society has all but given up. And realistic dialogue: nothing weighty or important speeches, just whet needs to be said, and said in a realistic way.
I recommend it.
Second - this film is brutally violent. Not in a blood-and-guts sort of way (although a girl does come walking out of a cafe after a bombing carrying her freshly severed arm) but at a far more base level.
In one scene, a carload of people are joking around when they see a flaming wreck roll down the hill and explode in front of them. Hundreds of people run out of the woods to attack them, and they back up to get away. Armed men on a motorbike follow them, shooting. They manage to get away, and pass a fleet of cop cars screaming towards the carnage. One of the cop cruisers turns and follows them, pulling them over, and they all get out - resulting in a brief gun battle.
^ and all of that was shot in one take. No cutaways, no camera tricks. One continuous action. And that's not the only one either. Tons of scenes in this movie, especially action sequences, are non-stop start to finish. The way it's filmed, and the scenes they selected for this treatment, are amazingly adept at putting you into the action. You come out of the theatre feeling like you were alongside the characters all the way, actually experiencing the events.
A timely topic, too. Illegal immigrants put in concentration camps and deported, while the rest of the world has gone to shit and they've fled to England just to survive in the first place. 'fugees treated like Jews in the Polish ghettos circa 1944. No children, and barely any morality left. Society has all but given up. And realistic dialogue: nothing weighty or important speeches, just whet needs to be said, and said in a realistic way.
I recommend it.