The post Grudge Match review appeared first on Game News.
]]>The story’s rooted in what should’ve been a bout for the ages: the tie-breaking third tilt between Henry ‘Razor’ Sharp (Sylvester Stallone, flexing hangdog charm) and Billy ‘The Kid’ McDonnen (Robert De Niro, content playing the clownish heel). However, Sharp handed in his gloves on the eve of the showdown, denying Billy the satisfaction of knowing who was best.
When the former pugilists cross paths 30 years later and come to blows while shooting motion-capture sequences for a video game (in the only scene that allows director Peter Segal to flaunt some flair for physical comedy), an opportunistic promoter (Kevin Hart) pounces on the chance to stage the long-delayed rematch.
While the Rocky Balboa vs. Jake LaMotta premise reads like outrageous fan fiction, Tim Kelleher and Rodney Rothman’s script features only standard-issue redemption and hackneyed old-age gags (although Viagra jokes are conspicuous by their absence, so that’s something).
Both protagonists are waiting for people they’ve wronged to come crawling back to them, whether it’s Henry’s ex-lover (Kim Basinger) or Billy’s illegitimate son ( The Walking Dead ’s Jon Bernthal). Sadly, the adult support cast is neglected in favour of a tagalong moppet (Camden Gray), who’s allowed to mug insufferably for the camera.
After an endless wait, Stallone and De Niro finally square off but their gazes rarely meet. It’s as if they’re both embarrassingly aware of how they’re tarnishing their reputations for the sake of a few easy laughs.
Verdict:
Rather than getting us on the ropes and landing some telling blows, Grudge Match keeps its distance and tosses meek jabs. Cheap sentimentality can’t disguise the crashing cynicism on display.
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]]>The post The Family review appeared first on Game News.
]]>Looking at the results, you can’t help wishing Bob’s initial resolve had held firm. The Family turns out to be a desperately uneven affair, uncertain if it’s a fish-out-of-water satire, a Sopranos -style portrait of mobster-clan dynamics, or a bloody thriller about poulets coming home to roost.
Yes, there are some yuks to be had watching De Niro’s bored patriarch Fred, testy wife Maggie (Michelle Pfeiffer) and their two kids (played by Glee ’s Dianna Agron and The Wrestler ’s John D’Leo) stick it to the snooty locals by terrorising a tardy plumber or destroying the village grocery.
But given they’re meant to be lying low, their actions become rapidly nonsensical, not least when it alerts the very people they’re trying to hide from to their whereabouts and new identities.
Besson’s film – adapted from a novel by Tonino Benacquista, co-writer of Jacques Audiard’s The Beat That My Heart Skipped – takes an even sharper turn for the preposterous when Fred is asked by the town’s film club to ruminate on GoodFellas ’ authenticity.
No wonder Tommy Lee Jones looks so sour as Fred’s flummoxed handler, his pained expression becoming an apt metaphor for a picture that is treading water long before De Niro’s vengeful ex-associates catch up with him.
Besson at least rallies in the closing stages to deliver a moderately exciting finale that predictably reduces much of the sleepy Normandy setting to smouldering rubble. But as the French might say, it’s trop peu, trop tard.
Verdict:
Though it’s good to see Michelle Pfeiffer married to the mob again, she alone can’t redeem a lumbering farce that takes an unpleasantly sadistic glee in violence, murder and intimidation.
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]]>The post Silver Linings Playbook review appeared first on Game News.
]]>With two films in two years he’s taken a leaf out of Terrence Malick’s playbook, only in a far more multiplex-friendly way.
Having emerged from the Toronto Film Festival with the Audience Award in tow (beating Ben Affleck’s front-runner Argo ), Silver Linings Playbook is poised to become this autumn’s most crowd-pleasing comedy-drama – thanks to its feisty, feel-good romance, triumph-over-mental-adversity theme and two of the hottest stars around right now, Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence.
Cooper plays Pat Solitano, a bipolar sufferer freshly sprung from a state institution where he’d been banged up for eight months after knocking out a work colleague he found banging his wife (Brea Bee).
Moving back into his dysfunctional family home with parents Robert De Niro and Jacki Weaver, Pat finds rebuilding his life isn’t that simple, especially as his social filter is clogged and his anger management leaves something to be desired.
Fortunately, there’s a ‘hilarious’ Indian psychiatrist (Anupam Kher), colourful inmate buddy (Chris Tucker, emerging from semi-retirement and brightening Playbook with every appearance) and a difficult but delectable young widow (Lawrence) to soothe his fevered brow.
At a certain point, Playbook ’s audience-ingratiating elements begin to, well, grate.
Russell’s script whisks together sports-team obsessions, ballroom dancing and home-made Italian cooking, along with a splash of spicy mental struggle (but not too much!) and some of the cutest darn kooks that you ever did see (De Niro’s played-for-laughs OCD gets especially exhausting).
But looking on the bright side (one of the life lessons taught here), Cooper and Lawrence do generate terrific chemistry.
The former doesn’t dip too deeply into his character’s dark side, but neither does he flinch when the time comes to expose a few ugly truths.
But it’s our Hunger Games heroine who gives SLP its kick and watchability, her sullen, stalker-ish Tiffany offering much-needed salvation both to Pat and the viewer.
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]]>The post Taxi Driver review appeared first on Game News.
]]>Shame the winner was Rocky, not Scorsese’s masterpiece of urban alienation, which turns 35 this month.
Though its iconic elements – De Niro’s unstable cabbie, Jodie Foster’s child prostitute, “You talkin’ to me?” – earned immortality, it’s screenwriter Paul Schrader’s palpable disgust that resonated (and still does) with disaffected viewers, notably John Hinckley Jr, a fan of Foster’s who shot at Reagan in 1981.
He missed his target. Scorsese and co do not.
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