SKYSCRAPER : Tuesday 17th July 2018.

'SKYSCRAPER' just has American action drama written all over it with none other than all conquering hero Dwayne Johnson as the hunk of beef cake set to save the world, or the skyscraper in question at least, from a bunch of gun toting, no good pesky terrorist types. Directed, Written and Co-Produced by Rawson Marshall Thurber whose previous Directing credits include 'DodgeBall : A True Underdog Story', 'We're the Millers', and 'Central Intelligence' also with Dwayne Johnson, the film went on general release in the US and Australia last week. Described by many a Critic, including this Blogger, as a fusion of 'Towering Inferno' from 1974 and 'Die Hard' from 1988, the film cost US$125M, has so far grossed US$74M and has received mixed Reviews, although Dwayne Johnson's performance has been largely praised. The film is released in the China market on 20th July.

The story here surrounds former FBI Hostage Rescue Team leader and U.S. war veteran Will Sawyer (Dwayne Johnson) who in the opening segment set ten years before, is engaging in a night time hostage situation with a crack team of Special Op's personnel. A father has taken his wife and children hostage and is holed up at home threatening to kill 'em all. In bursts Sawyer through the wall and we see the father with his back to us, holding his young son and sobbing. Sawyer lowers his weapon, because he can see that the father is unarmed, and asks the perpetrator to stand down. At which point, the father releases the child, turns around and is seen to be wearing an explosive vest with the detonator in his hand, which he releases, and . . . . kaboom! Next up, the badly injured Sawyer is being stretchered into hospital, with an attractive female surgeon looking on saying that everything's gonna be just fine!

We next meet Sawyer in the present day. He is an amputee having lost a lower leg in that bomb blast ten years previously, who now assesses security and safety for skyscrapers for a living. He's on assignment in Hong Kong with his family living in the said skyscraper, known as 'The Pearl' - the world tallest building at 220 storeys. The construction process is nearing completion, although the upper floors from 94 onwards remain uninhabited, save for Sawyer and his wife Sarah who just happens to be the attractive female surgeon who patched him up ten years ago (Neve Campbell), daughter Georgia (McKenna Roberts) and younger son Henry (Noah Cottrell), who have been put up temporarily while Will conducts his business within the property.

Sawyer is that day to present his safety findings to Zhao Long Ji (Chin Han) a local multi-gazilionaire and owner of the skyscraper, for the purposes of finalising the buildings insurance requirements. Sawyer passes all the elements of his assessment except for the control base located a mile away in a secure facility, which he has not yet been able to inspect, but is set to do so the next day.

Later that night, when Sawyer is on the ground with a former colleague from his FBI days, who as it turns out has double crossed his friend and wound up dead at Sawyers hands after a confrontation involving close hand to hand combat within the confines of an apartment, an international terrorist kingpin Kores Botha (Roland Moller) and his group of merry men break into the building. The mercenaries torch the 96th floor which blocks access to the upper floors, while at the same time switching off all the hi-tech cutting edge fire suppressant devices so allowing the flames to spread rapidly to upper levels. Pretty soon the building is burning out of control and with the flames rising quickly.

The local Police spring into action headed up by Inspector Wu (Byron Mann) who suspect that Sawyer is in fact the main ring leader in the terrorist attack, because only he had access to security data contained on a tablet given to him earlier by Zhao to access the control base in order to review the security and safety protocols.

However, that tablet was stolen from Sawyer by Botha's ground based partners headed up by Xia (Hanna Quinlivan) who have in the meantime gained access to the control base, taken out everyone working there and disabled and over ridden all systems within the tower. The Police needless to say are hot on Sawyer's heels and chasing him down. Sawyer has meanwhile evaded arrest at the base of the skyscraper and is looking upward in disbelief at the inferno that has erupted high above the ground, and in which his family are trapped.

Sawyer spies a nearby crane on an adjacent construction site and heads for it, planning on getting close. He ascends perilously with the Police giving chase and the world's news camera's and the gathered crowds looking on. Now high above the ground, Sawyer takes a giant leap of faith that defies all the odds off the extended crane arm into a shattered window to gain access . . . which of course he does successfully, by his fingertips!

Sawyer is soon reunited with his family who have fled from their apartment floor and were making their way through a giant greenhouse atrium occupying several floors and housing lush greenery, waterfalls and natural features. This area is also rapidly becoming engulfed in flame but the family, now reunited, manage to escape, except for daughter Georgia who is being chased down by two of Botha's goons. Sawyer is able to get his wife and son to an elevator who use it to free fall to safety engaging the emergency brakes to stop their rapid decent just at the right moment of course. They get to the ground unscathed and help the Police identify Botha as a result of an encounter with him earlier in the day.

Meanwhile as Sawyer is rescuing his daughter from Botha's henchmen, he is caught by Botha himself and ordered to gain access to a solid titanium door behind which Zhao has retreated for safety and to safeguard an all important memory stick. That stick contains incriminating evidence against the kingpin terrorist concerning extortion running into millions and money laundering on a global scale. If Sawyer is unable to gain access as the leading security expert on the job, then Botha will throw his daughter off the roof - 220 storeys up!

This leaves no alternative for Sawyer but to comply, but to gain access he must override the security access controls hidden behind the massive air conditioning turbines that drive the properties carbon neutral heating and ventilation system. To do this, he must scale the outside of the building, using a length of rope secured from a window fitting and good ol' duct tape which he tapes sticky side out to both his hands and feet for extra grip. Clever stuff! He overrides the system thereby opening the door to Zhao's inner sanctum, temporarily.

Sawyer narrowly makes it back inside when his planned journey back goes awry and he is left dangling upside down with a rope yanking on his prosthetic leg, which of course gives way. But our hero can't plunge to his death from nearly 200 storeys up, so some quick thinking and deft manoeuvring sees Sawyer clamber back inside, and wedge his kevlar leg in the now closing doors of Zhao's strong room for him to gain access. The two hatch a plan to thwart Botha and rescue Georgia from the roof top, where Botha and his goons plan to parachute off to make their getaway.

In a close quarter gun fight inside the actual 'Pearl' Sawyer is able to overpower all the goons and dispense with them using his own particular set of skills, leaving the last man standing, Botha. The terrorist now uses Georgia to negotiate his own escape, but is kicked out of the building through a hole in the floor while holding a hand grenade. He is blown to pieces seconds later. Sawyer holds onto his daughter while flames lick all around them and there is nowhere left for them to escape to. On the ground Sarah retrieves the stolen tablet after a shoot out with the Police and overpowering Xia and the mercenaries at the parachute landing site. She realises that she can override the shutdown of the hi-tech fire extinguishing system built into the skyscraper by rebooting the computer system. This she does, and the system kicks in dousing the flames quickly, so saving Sawyer and his daughter from certain death. The family are reunited back on the ground and everyone is happy.

This is a fairly predictable by the numbers all action thriller that offers no surprises and really is straight out of the 'Towering Inferno' and 'Die Hard' play book. There are even some scenes that are direct obvious derivatives of those two films that clearly has inspired this film, not that the Director need apologise for this fact, as I guess there will be a whole new audience out there who are unfamiliar with those two movies. In Sawyer, we have a hero who clearly knows no fear, who's bravado knows no bounds, and is prepared to spray a can of Whoop Ass on anyone getting in the way of his family. And to this end he muttered the lines 'I love you' to his wife and kids about a hundred times during this film, which I found just a little OTT and clearly the scriptwriter here was struggling for meaningful dialogue amidst all the action set pieces when it was Sawyer all alone against the world! Johnson is clearly the big draw card here and it is his film alone, unlike Newman and McQueen in 'The Towering Inferno' and Willis and Rickman in 'Die Hard' who paired off against each other admirably and shared equal screen time. You need to see this on the big screen for all the vertigo inducing action, but as for the story and the originality, there is very little new to see here that hasn't been done already.

'Skyscraper' merits two claps of the clapperboard from a potential five.

-Steve, at Odeon Online-

ATOMIC BLONDE : Thursday 27th July 2017

I saw 'ATOMIC BLONDE' at an advance screening at my local multiplex one week ahead of its Australian release on 3rd August. Directed by David Leitch in his first solo Directorial outing having served as the uncredited Co-Director on 'John Wick' with Chad Stahelski and having served his time over the years as Stunt Co-ordinator and Stuntman on more action films than you can poke a stick at, and in the capacity as Second Unit Director on a good many also, and occasional Producer and Actor too. Next up for this new Director is 'Deadpool 2' currently filming and due in 2018. This film is based on the 2012 graphic novel titled 'The Coldest City' by Antony Johnston and Sam Hart, stars a strong cast and a thumping '80's soundtrack and cost US$30M to make. The film has so far garnered generally positive Reviews.

The film opens with the death of MI6 Agent James Gasciogne (Sam Hargrave) at the hands of ruthless KGB Agent Yuri Bakhtin (Johannes Johannesson) who then proceeds to remove his wristwatch - for it contains microfilm detailing a List of covert field operatives working in the USSR, that is a very valuable commodity in this 1989 cold war era action spy thriller set on the eve of the Berlin Wall coming down and with it the shifting of superpower alliances. Fast forward ten days and in an ice cold bath emerges a very bruised, beaten-up and battered Lorraine Broughton (Charlize Theron) - a top level MI6 Agent.

She steps out of her bath, pours herself a neat Stoli over rocks, gulps it down and makes herself presentable. She then appears in an interrogation room with MI6 Executive Eric Gray (Toby Jones) and CIA Agent Emmett Kurzfeld (John Goodman) to discuss the intricacies of her very recent mission to Berlin from which she has just returned, and is wearing the battle scars to prove it. The day following Gasciogne's death she is dispatched to Berlin by her superiors to recover the List, now missing in action, and identify, locate and dispense with a known Double Agent referred to as 'Satchel' who has been selling intelligence to the Ruskies for years, and who is believed to be responsible for betraying Gasciogne.

Upon arriving in Berlin, supposedly undercover and incognito, she is ambushed by KGB Agents working for a a lynchpin of the KGB and a generally unscrupulous kinda guy that you don't wanna cross, Aleksander Bremovych (Roland Moller). After a set piece involving Broughton's red stiletto and close quarter hand to hand combat inside a speeding car that doesn't end so well for the Russian's, she is met with very unceremoniously by her contact in Berlin - Agent David Percival (James McAvoy). Percival has been living and working in Berlin for the last ten years or so and is so deep undercover that there's not much he doesn't know about what's what and who's who in Berlin - on both the east and west sides of the Wall.

Later, having made slow progress with her investigations Broughton has a snoop around Gasciogne's apartment looking for any clues. She discovers a photograph of him and Percival indicating that the two men were close friends - a fact earlier denied by Percival. East German Police Officers arrive on the scene of the apartment and another close quarter hand to hand fist fight ensues with Broughton dispensing with them pesky Police types with her usual aplomb using a length of hose pipe and sundry household implements lying around the abode. She comes to realise that only Percival knew that she was going to Gasciogne's apartment, and suspects him of double crossing her to the authorities, and for potentially being Satchel.

Bakhtin meanwhile intends to sell the List to the highest bidder. Percival, having received word of this, arranges a rendezvous and then sticks a screwdriver in Bakhtin's forehead killing him outright stone dead, and takes the List for himself. Broughton in the meantime has met up with a sultry young undercover French Agent Delphine Lasalle (Sofia Boutella) and the two are instantly drawn to each other. Percival meets with Bremovych to sell the List to him, but unknown to the pair is that Lasalle is covertly photographing their meeting.

Amongst all of this is a Soviet defector known as Spyglass (Eddie Marsan) who stole the List in the first place and is the only person to have sighted the contents of the List and has all its data committed to his memory. Spyglass also is a Stasi Officer. Percival has agreed to escort Spyglass and his family across the border into West Berlin, but during a large protest rally which Broughton, Percival and Spyglass use as cover to effect their escape to the West, Percival shoots Spyglass and sends word to Bremovych's men that the injured Spyglass and Broughton are on the run. More hand to hand combat follows, and all the while Spyglass is bleeding out from his shot to the stomach. The pair end up in  car which gets chased down the streets of East Berlin by Bremovych's henchmen. Eventually the car is shunted into the river - Broughton swims free but is unable to free a pinned down Spyglass who drowns in the passenger seat as the car sinks into the River.

After this fracas, Percival visits Lasalle, and kills her to cover his own tracks but not before the French Agent was able to stab Percival twice. Lorraine arrives just after Percival has left, discovering the dead body of Lasalle and an envelope with her name on it containing the covert photographs taken of Percival meeting with Bremovych, proving in her mind that Percival is Satchel. After Percival patches up his wounds, he sets his safe house alight and attempts to flee the city under cover of darkness. Broughton tracks him down, shoots him dead and removes the wristwatch containing the List.

Back in the present day and still in the interrogation room where Broughton has been dutifully recounting all the facts surrounding her Berlin assignment to Gray and Kurzfeld, she presents the photographs and an audio recording that she spliced together herself that show that Percival was Satchel. She also denies all knowledge of the whereabouts of the List, forcing MI6 to shut down the case.

Three days later and Broughton meets with Bremovych in a Paris hotel suite, and she reveals herself to be Satchel, and in possession of the List, which she hands over to the Russian mobster. Bremovych knows however, that he has been set up and has his three henchmen and a 'cleaner' enter the room to dispense with Broughton and dispose of her body. Using a pistol concealed in an ice bucket, Broughton instead dispenses with the three henchmen and the cleaner, and then puts a bullet in Bremovych's head, but not before revealing first that she has been playing all sides along from the get go. Broughton then boards a private jet, where she meets Kurzfeld revealing herself to be a mole planted by the CIA, and hands over to him the wristwatch containing the List, before the pair depart for Langley . . . job done!

There a lot to like about this film - the pounding soundtrack featuring many late '80's greats including Depeche Mode, New Order, Public Enemy, Echo and the Bunnymen, The Cure, Blondie, Duran Duran, David Bowie, George Michael and Nena; the well choreographed action fight sequences; the performances by McAvoy who chews up the screen and the dialogue, and Theron too proving herself to be a bona fide kick ass female action star; and the attention to detail in capturing the mood, the fashion, the sounds of the era. But for all of that I swear that Lorraine Broughton must be John Wick's Mum and she taught him everything she knows, because in the intense gun play and the close quarter fight scenes there are plenty of similarities with John Wick's previous two instalments. The plot we have seen before too (1996's 'Mission : Impossible') and as such it's pretty standard fare, that is saved from its predictability by the stylish and fast paced action. The film has so far grossed US$25M and I guess if it gets enough bums on seats, there is scope for a follow-on instalment.

-Steve, at Odeon Online-

LAND OF MINE : Tuesday 18th April 2017.

'LAND OF MINE' is a Danish/German Co-produced foreign language historical drama film that I saw earlier this week. It had its Premier at TIFF in September 2015, and was released in its native Denmark in early December 2015 and only in the last three weeks has this highly acclaimed inspired by real WWII events offering arrived into Australian cinema's off the back of 26 award wins and nineteen further nominations including a Best Foreign Language Film nod at this years recent Academy Awards. Directed and Written by Martin Zandvliet, this film cost US$5.2M to make and has so far grossed US$2.2M.

Telling the true WWII story of the days immediately after the surrender of Germany in May 1945 when a group of about 2,000 German Prisoners of War were handed over to Danish authorities and sent out to the west coast. Here they were forced to clear up to two million land mines buried in the sand along the coastal beaches there, laid by the Germans when they occupied the country, believing that the Allied Invasion would take place there.

We are first introduced to Sergeant Carl Rasmussen (Roland Moller) waiting in his Jeep at an intersection when a column of captured German soldiers of all ranks passes by. The Sergeant waits and waits at the intersection and then drives down the road in the opposite direction to which the Germans are walking. He pulls his Jeep up abruptly and reverses ten meters or so, jumps out, and picks out a German soldier carrying a wartime souvenir of a Danish flag and promptly starts to relentlessly beat him up violently and without any remorse. Such is the Danes hatred of the Germans for occupying their country for the past five years, and what right did that German soldier have to steal the Danish flag! This sets the tone for the film that will unfold, and gives us the measure of the man. We then see the Sergeant pacing out demarcation lines on the beach according to a map of where 45,000 land mines are buried in the sand on the area of beach that he is to supervise the clearing of.

Next up we see thrown together teams of young German soldiers, mostly teenagers conscripted by Hitler in the closing days of the war. They are in a training camp learning how to diffuse land mines - the type of which are buried in the coastal sands they will shortly be sent to clear. They at this point are under the command and the training of Captain Ebbe (Mikkel Folsgaard), who has even more contempt for the Germans and cares not if they live or die.

Once their training is complete, the German lads, some of them no more than boys, are tested on live land mines in a bunker against the clock. Speed is of the essence for the authorities, while staying alive and in one piece is the priority for the young lads. The scene where one by one the boys enter the bunker carrying a live land mine which they have to diffuse is edge of your seat stuff, as one by one they come out some smiling, some shaking but all sweating from their ordeal. It is their first of many such ordeals from which many will perish or carry permanent life changing injuries.

With their training complete, the lads are sent off to the west coast where they meet for the first time with the hard nosed, uncaring, brutal Sergeant whose contempt for the Germans is set in stone, and as such he is determined to treat them with zero tolerance and zero sympathy.

He tells them that his strip of beach contains 45,000 buried land mines and if they each clear six mines every hour they will be able to return home to Germany in three months as free men. The reality is though that many of his team were teenagers and all were ill equipped to get down on their hands and knees and carry out such dangerous work day in day out for three months with little sustenance, cramped and makeshift sleeping conditions, and nowhere to clean up.

Every day the Sergeant marches his team down to the beach to dig for mines. This task seems like an endless one as the team inch along the beach side by side on their bellies prodding beneath the surface for hard metal objects that must be diffused. As each mine is located, so we see shaking hands very gingerly pulling out the detonator pin, which for the most part meets with success, but along the way there are failures as well resulting in casualties and severe life threatening injuries sustained. Sometimes it's freak accidents and sometimes it's booby trapped mines too that cause the explosions, and when they do come, it's almost with a sense of relief from the tension being played out on screen.

Each early evening the team are locked inside the confines of their hut where they sleep off the stress, the fear, the anxiety of the day. Tensions mount within the team as they suffer from acute hunger, from the mood swings of the Sergeant, and from the personality clashes within their own ranks. As the team grow increasingly hungry scavenging for food which makes them sick, and weary, so the Sergeants feelings towards his young charges starts to soften.

As time passes the Sergeant comes to appreciate that his team really had nothing to do with the wartime German occupation of Denmark, and he begins to show sympathy towards them - securing them rations of bread and potatoes, organising a beach soccer game, showering them with clean water and providing pain killing medical aid to those injured. He warms especially to Sebastian Schumann (Louis Hoffman) who stands out as the natural leader of the group, and with whom he has open conversation and shares a joke or two.

In the final analysis the beach is cleared of 45,000 mines. The team that remains are on clean up duty aided by others loading all the diffused land mines onto the back of a truck for removal. Sharing jokes and light hearted banter about their future lives once they return to Germany, one of the lads becomes just a little too slack with loading the munition onto the truck. The resultant explosion sends truck parts, bodies, sand and a thick plume of black smoke up into the air leaving a huge burned out crater in its wake. The majority of the team perish, leaving only four surviving out of the original team of fourteen.

As the four remaining, including Sebastian, board the truck to begin their journey home and to freedom so the authorities have over-ruled that decision on the strength that they need more experienced Germans to clear more land mines elsewhere on the west coast, and as such they are forced to stay behind. The Sergeant pleads with Captain Ebbs but to no avail - the orders have been given and they must be followed, and after all, they're only Germans and 'if they're old enough to go to war, they're old enough to clean up after them!'. The Sergeant finds the decision to be unjust given the commitment originally made, the sacrifices he has seen in human life as a result of his mine clearing operation, and the determination seen in his young men. And so, the Sergeant engineers their release and secretly defying orders takes them to a drop off point 500 metres away from the German border, where they are released and run toward their freedom.

This is an intense, at times confronting, emotionally charged film that you can't help but feel invested in. The body of Actors give convincing  performances especially Moller as Sergeant Rasmussen and Hoffman as Schumann, and also adding weight are the roles of identical twin brothers Ernst and Werner Lessner played by Emil and Oskar Belton respectively and Helmut Morbach as played by Joel Basman. A little known story that turns the tables on the Nazi's as the downtrodden, persecuted and punished in the aftermath of the War making the captive the captor and ultimately a hero from the antagonist. This is believable, engaging throughout, beautifully shot in muted tones and a relevant story of tragedy, tension, compassion and the human spirit that needed to be told. Of the 2,000 or so German POW who were ordered to clear the beaches of their own laid landmines, more than half either died in the process or suffered serious injury during the five months in took to clear the beaches completely - more than were killed during the entire five year Nazi occupation of Denmark.

-Steve, at Odeon Online-