Passengers

Morten Tyldum’s last film The Imitation Game was a serious Oscars contender at the time, which makes it all the more weirder that his latest film Passengers seems to be stuck in Limbo - with not enough action and excitement to be a popcorn thriller and too-poor a story to be a quality drama-romance.

The colonial seeding-ship Avalon is transporting 5,000 colonists to the planet Homestead II, a 120 year journey that has the entire crew in long-term hibernation pods. After some strange happenings on the ship, two passengers are awoken 90 years early, seemingly due to pod-malfunctions. Mechanical engineer Jim Preston (Chris Pratt) and writer Aurora Lane (Jennifer Lawrence) find themselves alone on the ship, their only other mildly charismatic company the android bartender Arthur (Michael Sheen) and no way to go back to sleep in the Hibernation pods.

Passengers does seem genuinely confused about what it should be. Its opening act starts off as you might expect a classic sci-fi blockbuster of yesteryear to begin, establishing the confines of the location and building a sense of isolation. It uses montages effectively and manages to keep the foot on the pedal, but after a key decision made by one of the characters - something pretty unethical that should have help contour their character development, but is shrugged off by the film soon after - Passengers starts to go downhill fast. It becomes surprisingly slow and bland, and beyond the first act there are no real twists and turns in the story as you might have expected had you seen the trailer. The agonisingly average story just can’t deliver on the hype Passengers tried to build through an intense marketing campaign.

With obvious homages to several Kubrick films and a smattering of others, Passengers doesn’t really have a personality of its own, and whilst Pratt and Lawrence should be able to deliver oodles of chemistry on-screen, the second-rate screenplay drags their performances down immensely. There were also a handful of blatant overacting moments from Lawrence, whilst Pratt is much more timid (see: boring) than in his usual roles, although you can tell that they’re trying to do their best with the mediocre material they’re given. Indeed, the most frustrating thing about Passengers is that you can tell there could be a really dynamic, well-acted romance in there somewhere - a sort of Lost in Translation in Space - if it just stopped trying to add in all the hallmark sci-fi elements that it doesn’t have the complexity to pull off.

If Passengers does have one redeeming feature, it would be its visual composition. As glossy and beautiful as you would expect a $110 million film to look, it manages to keep a leash on its many CGI elements which blend in near-seamlessly with the live action work. Whilst it doesn’t have a unique style, it does at least manage to suspend disbelief when it comes to location, a challenge that many far higher profile films often fail. The helical design of the Avalon ship is surprisingly cool and is integrated into the action in a reasonably satisfying way. Though ultimately these attributes can’t undo the damage of a poorly written story - or even justify going to see the film - they were at least present when the rest of film collapsed on itself.

Passengers has an interesting enough premise, and could have been a lot better even with subtle tweaks to the order of the story, but ultimately it's let down by an uninspiring screenplay and dull-as-dishwater characters.

Let's Be Cops

I'm really glad that this movie points out how illegal it is to run around pretending to be a police officer, not to mention how dangerous it would be, because I reckon it's something people might (and probably already) do. But for Jake Johnson and Damon Wayans, Jr. it looks like a lot of fun. 

Justin (Wayans) and Ryan (Johnson) are two losers in their early thirties who wish their life was better. For their upcoming college reunion, they decide to dress as cops because Ryan misunderstood the dress code on the invitation. After they realise the mischief that they can get away with, they keep up the charade for a while until getting dragged into an actual organised crime investigation.

For the most part this movie is a lot of fun. There are some great montages with Johnson's character learning how to be an officer from Youtube videos and the scenes where the two of them are adjusting to this new life that they have created for themselves, but are still unsure of what they should do, are hilarious. Despite this, the film does take a turn toward the end and the climax of the film is actually quite tense (compared to the light-hearted tone that preceded it).

Wayans and Johnson make a hilarious duo in the movie and work together excellently. There are some funny scenes in which they are talking to another character and both of their reaction shots to what the other is saying is hilarious. Nina Dobrev plays Justin's love interest, Josie, but she isn't given a whole lot to do in the story which is a bit disappointing, considering her talents.

The rest of the cast are very strong. Rob Riggle gets to play a serious cop for once (as opposed to his role in The Hangover). Andy García and James D'Arcy both play suitable villains but they serve more as foils for Johnson and Wayans. Natasha Leggero and Keegan-Michael Key both have hilarious cameos that are definitely a high point of the movie.

Verdict: A fun and serviceable buddy cop comedy that has got some great gags, especially Wayans reading text messages as a black woman.

Kill The Messenger

Movies about journalists stumbling onto conspiracies involving the government come along far too long for my liking. And when you watch them, they always seem over the top, filled with action sequences and other things that never happened to the real people. Kill The Messenger, however, doesn't rely on these theatrics to get people engaged. It uses a gripping true story that is hard to comes to terms with because the real world implications are terrifying.

Gary Webb (Jeremy Renner) is a journalist who works for the San Jose Mercury News. He finds out about a conspiracy that involves the CIA wilfully letting drug dealers sell crack cocaine in South Central Los Angeles in order to fund a revolution in Nicaragua that it backs. Webb writes an explosive three-part story that gets everyone riled up. He then has to deal with people attacking his ethics and whether or not the story is true.

This movie takes an interesting approach to the way the history is shown. While the story of Webb and his investigation goes on, the film sometimes cuts away to media footage from the time as well as film taken of the actors as though they were in the 90s. Although this is a fun technique, I found at times that it was slightly distracting.

Jeremy Renner dominates this movie. I know that he is the star, but there is never a scene where he isn't there. I feel that with a movie like this there should be at least one or two scenes where we don't need to see the lead actor. Mary Winstead is amazing as Gary's editor who really wants him to succeed, but feels pressure from her bosses.

Apart from these two actors, everyone else features intermittently or dropped a couple of scenes after they have served their purpose. Barry Pepper, Michael Sheen and Michael K. Williams are all fantastic actors who appear for a scene or two, but their characters are underdeveloped, especially Williams, who plays drug dealer "Freeway" Rick Ross, a man who probably deserves a movie to be made about his own life.

Verdict: A decent movie that tells a part of history that everybody would already know about, hopefully. Not essential watching.