Clash of the Titans

Found floating in the sea as a baby, Perseus has spent his life wondering who he is. When the gods inadvertently kill his adoptive family and condemn the people of Lagos to death Perseus learns he is a demigod, the lost son of Zeus. Perseus and warriors of Lagos set out to try and find the three witches so they can learn how to defeat Hades and strike back at the gods.

Clash of the Titans is a classic example of a film with a great trailer. However, the trailer does not live up to the film. This film is a remake of a weak but fun original, and I have to say that if you go into the theatre expecting anything other than stupid fun for two hours you will be quite disappointed.

To talk more about the tail wagging the dog, if you were a careful study of the trailer you may have noticed there was only one to two lines of dialogue in it, the rest was action…that was for a reason. This movie has some of the worst dialogue I’ve ever heard. It’s cool to hear Pete Postelwaith & Liam Neeson emote verbally, but the rest of the dialogue, no matter how sincerely delivered was laughable. My best example of this was when Perseus and the soldiers are about to enter Medusa’s lair and like a good leader Perseus gives his customary pep talk which ends with “now let’s go get this bitch”. I kid you not.

As if that weren’t enough, the actual plot of the film is weak as well. The reason there is only action in the trailer, is because the films plot really only works as a logline “the son of Zeus finds his destiny and encounters mythological creatures in the pursuit to kill Hades”, anything outside of that wears quite thin. It’s as if the screenplay was written by a first year film student with no experience, they were told to make a index cards, each with a seprate scene in the film listed on it, and then arranged into the chronology of the story – nothing is connected, we just move from A to B to C because that is how everything is laid out.

On top of this there is the obvious build up to a hopeful sequel at the end of the film where Zeus tells Perseus that this is his destiny, more trials will come, etc., etc. This is pandering for a franchise. In a franchise the films tend to get weaker as they go along and after seeing Clash of the Titans I cannot imagine what the second film in this franchise would look like – it would probably be better silent so I can just watch Sam Worthington fight for two hours.

As bad as I know Clash of the Titans is, I still have to say I was entertained by it. I can’t even say it aspired to B movie level, but it was fun. I enjoyed the action and as a fan of Sam Worthington I enjoyed the excuse to watch him do his thing for two hours. Plus there is the downright cool factor of Liam Neeson a Zeus. That man can continue to be cast in god roles like Zeus and Aslan and I am going to think he is perfect for them every time.

Clash of the Titans may be an excuse to thrown money around on action and special effects. But there is a silver lining – this will probably be remade again in another ten-twenty years so we’ll have another shot to get it right.

Director: Louis Leterrier
Perseus: Sam Worthington
Zeus: Liam Neeson
Hades: Ralph Finnes
Andromeda: Alexa Davalos
Io: Gemma Arterton

Defiance

Defiance Poster
Originally uploaded by AsceticMonk

The Oscar nominations are coming out tomorrow and though at one time I wanted Defiance to be on the list of nominees now that I have seen it I can safely say that the only nominations I truly would enjoy Defiance receiving are for Daniel Craig & Liev Schreiber. Not that Defiance is a bad movie, but in a year that had movies like Iron Man, Slumdog Millionaire, The Dark Knight & In Bruges a movie like Defiance has its flaws pointed out instead of ignored.

What is truly remarkable is the story of Defiance; it is about a group of Jews at the outbreak of Hitler’s Germany and genocide that manage to evade capture by the Nazi’s by creating a settlement in the forests of Belarussia. It begins with four brothers and near the end of the war has grown to over 1,200 Jewish refugees. There story is awe inspiring, perhaps only equal to the likes of Oskar Schindler.

What is wrong with Defiance is the fact that parts of the story seem to be missing – it is as if the director trusted his audience to put two & two together too often, or that there were merely scenes still on the editing room floor waiting to be inserted into the film. A prim example of this is the romance between Tuvia & Lilka; she comes to the otriad, throws Tuvia a few meaningful looks and suddenly an ancillary character informs Tuvia that everyone knows that Lilka is hands-off. While not a killing point to the film, the leaps in story telling that occur do make Defiance slightly less than it could have been.

Defiance is an entertaining movie, but not a great one. I do believe that perhaps the film might have been helped if it was released in summer instead of Oscar season, but perhaps I can hold out hope for Craig or Schreiber getting an Oscar nomination.

Director: Edward Zwick
Writers: Clayton Frohman & Edward Zwick
Tuvia Beilski: Daniel Craig
Zus Bielski: Liev Schreiber
Asael Bielski: Jamie Bell
Aron Bielski: George MacKay
Lilka Ticktin: Alexa Davalos

Gramov: How come it's so f---ing hard to like Jews?
Tuvia Bielski: Try being one.