Omni's Random Video Noise

Funerals, Caviar, Horses, Koalas, Wallabies, Underwater World "Oceanarium".

You may recall I identified a trend with Police Story 3 where the fight scenes were becoming increasing in number, but decreasing in quality. You may also recall that I was particularly critical of the plot and it's apparent lack of structure.

Both of these gripes are resolved in First Strike.

Firstly, the narrative is much MUCH stronger with a more traditional James Bond-esque story which Jackie Chan even specifically references, "I'm like James Bond without all of the gorgeous girls."

And sure enough it's still a healthy distance from aping James Bond in any serious respect, due mainly to the humor taken at Chan's expense, at one point having him strip down in public to only his koala underwear and even further until old ladies are snappy sassy pictures of him. That's about as crude as the humor gets so overall so even the jokes are a lot more tasteful.

The story didn't have any plotholes that jumped out at me, however I may have missed something during the exposition dump reveal that explains how it is that Jackie's in what appears to be Australia where everyone speaks Russian and Chinese.

That was kinda confusing. At the end I THINK I know what happened, there was a rogue offshoot of the Russian government that was smuggling decommissioned warheads and tried to sell them to Ukraine or... wait- China? Wait... I forget. It was a serviceable story, engaging enough to keep my interest, but not so engaging that I was noticing issues with it.

The real service here is the action and there are 3 main action sequences in this movie. There are bouts sprinkled here and there, I'm not even counting the apartment fight, but mainly there are 3 main big sequences.


The first is a ski resort chase where Jackie, in very light clothing, chases down goons in a snowmobile and escapes on a snowboard. There are exploding helicoptors and Jackie actually submerges bodily in freezing water, that's HARSH.

The third is an entire underwater fight sequence at Underwater World Oceanarium where Jackie and NOT LOVE INTEREST (phew...) stave off goons from stealing the MacGuffin. As can be expected they get about as creative as they could possibly get with it and when puppet sharks are swimming around with goons' legs hanging out of your mouths, I admit I start to forget about all of the real fish they have in captivity. By the end it gets as ridiculous as the characters keeping their cut thumbs in their mouths so as not to upset the sharks, with Jackie at one point trading his thumb for a goon's oxygen mask. It's very silly.

SECONDLY, and yes I hold the best for last, is the one and only straight-up fight scene in this whole movie. You may be disappointed and liable to cry foul at such a waste of Jackie's talents, but never fear, for this is probably one of his very best fights onscreen.

Dubbed "the ladder fight", we have a proptacular battle that pitches all manner of decorations and construction tools into the mix until it culminates is Jackie adopting a folding ladder and TOTALLY WRECKING FACE WITH IT. This is what I meant when I said that people who watch Supercop won't get what's so special about Jackie Chan: the guy sees a ladder... and figures out over a dozen and a half different ways he can beat people up with it. It's sick.

Not that we should disparage all of the other stunts he performs, but if Jackie Chan was a D&D character, he'd be a Monk and his first feat would be Improvised Weapon Proficiency. Guy's a fricken' maniac with this stuff and I love it.

It may be his only really real fight in the movie, but the rest of the movie is solid so it all rises close enough to peak that I feel comfortable saying that: overall, it's good stuff.

It doesn't reach the heights of Police Story, but it doesn't reach it's lows either, it's not as good as Police Story 2, but it's definitely a step above Police Story 3.

Kissing, Birthdays, and Cake. Wait, that's all? Well, there was some food I couldn't identify, but otherwise, *phew* crisis averted.

A Better Tomorrow is one of those movies that starts off pretty slow, even boring, actually. It doesn't take long before strange edits and plotholes start creeping up and you're beginning to resign yourself to it's shittyness.

But then it gets good.

Then it gets REALLY GOOD.

And not really even in the action sense, granted there are a couple noteworthy shootouts in the movie, but seriously the big weight here is on the drama and even with my very low threshold of tolerance for ******** drama I was very pleased with this movie.

It's very inaccurately marketed as Chow Yun-fat's movie, but in reality it all revolves centrally around Chow's friend, Ti Lung, both are referred to as Mark and Ho respectively.

There seems at first to be a single tertiary character, but I was extremely confused for the first half hour what their apparent relationship to the main two characters was until i realize that I was actually confusing two characters for each other, known as Shing and Kit.

Apparently Mark and Ho are a power duo in the counterfeit money business and for the first 20 minutes it's just them livin' it up, unzipping their pants and dragging their reputation across everybody's faces.


They share opposing relationships with Shing and Kit, Shing is the newbie crook in Mark and Ho's racket, while Kit is Ho's brother and unbeknownst to the audience he's unaware of Ho's illegal activities.

One day Ho gets caught, but not before having an emotional flashback to a few minutes ago (seriously, we're only 23 minutes in at this point), and supposedly this is Shing's fault, but all I remember is Ho telling him to run away, so I don't know where this betrayal thing comes in, did I miss some setup?

Anyway, Ho goes to prison and after he gets out ****in' 3 YEARS HAS PASSED, but it's not like I knew that because there's no indication whatsoever before suddenly Shing's a bigwig in the organization and Kit's all "You're a thief!". Yeah, he is. Wait, you didn't KNOW???

This bit really bothered me because it's central to the story and it takes nearly HALF THE MOVIE for me to figure this out. At one point he's all "Hey! I'm becoming a police officer!" and Ho's all "Ah, that's cool!" and I just get the feeling that, wait, is that a different character? So he's wants to be a police officer and work parallel to his criminal brother? Alright, I guess I can swing with that, but NO, I was just totally lost for a reactionary cut for anything else that would inform me that Ho's family is not aware of what he does for a living.

Anyway, it's after the overly long and boring setup for Ho to get out of prison that the movie gets interesting because now he wants to shed his ways and return to society as a regular person, but his brother, infused with his police responsibilities won't accept him, Shing, now proto-head of the crime syndicate wants him back in the fold, and Mark's just trying to reconcile their differences.

I really liked this dynamic. There are times I wondered why in the hell Shing was trying so damn hard to "join us or die" all over the movie, it really wasn't justified at all, but at the same time their whole "we only let your brother live because you were one of us" bit smacks HARD, that's a rough ****in' spot you gotta be in.

Your brother's disowned you.
Your friend's lost for what you do.
Your old job is calling you back with the threat of death, but the law has got their sights set on you too.

Join one, the other'll kill you, ya can't win. That SUCKS, and Ti Lung can fricken' act the part, I wanna see him in more stuff now, he was great in this.


Eventually Ho conceives of a gambit with Mark's help to turn Kit over to his side in a suicidal blackmail of Shing who's already framed Ho for murder.

It all goes down with bullets and explosions and while there's the off "ooooh, that looked that bad" moment, it's quickly snuffed by the ~OH ****!!! TWIST!

Chow Yun-fat's character dies! Holy crap! How come he's in the sequels!?

Altogether, a satisfying end, but there were some odd annoyances in the movie besides those I mentioned, mainly to do with Kit's wife, Jackie, who's just the sort of wet towel Token Girl you want in every movie.

Home invader? Run at him with a knife! ****, he noticed! *waits, gets smacked aside* Oh no! However could that happen!?

Husband busy trying to get violent criminals? Get catty and annoy the **** out of him because he forgot your birthday! Your birthday is WAY MORE IMPORTANT than saving people's lives.

Seriously, I want to take this character archetype and slowly strangle her until the lights in her eyes go out. You PUTRID, HATEFUL, USELESS SACK OF SKIN I WANT YOU TO DIE.

REWATCH UPDATE 1/23/2022:
This was one of those movies I knew I wanted to revisit, partly because it made me question whether it wasn't comparable to Hard-Boiled, another John Woo/Chow-Yun-Fat movie.

It's still odd to me that Ti Lung is the main character though, however I admit that's probably because I haven't seen him in any movies before this and he looks unusually old for a star of one of these movies, especially considering Chow-Yu-Fat is a major protagonist.

I just now Googled Ti Lung and he looks far older now, but younger photos of him lead me to believe that he probably had solid career in action movies before this.

Regardless, I still appreciate the conflict his character brings to the movie. It's a fairly realistic dilemma of a high-level criminal going straight for family but not before he's exposed for what he is and disowned by that same family. His dedication to turning over a new leaf is reflected in his willingness to get a job and more-or-less turn the other cheek when his brother wails on him.

"Ho" wants to protect Kit, but he can't rat on his former employers for fear of repercussions. Ho wants to reunite with Mark, but Mark wants to return to the old days and can't do that if Ho's turned over a new leaf. Mark comes to hate Kit because Kit won't respect the efforts of his friend to lead a noble life, and Kit can't respect Ho because he was indirectly responsible for killing their father and strangling his promotional opportunities on the police force.

The only other weird motivation to further cloud this conflict is the former triad that, for some inexplicable reason, desperately wants Ho back to work with them. Ho demonstrated that he wouldn't rat on them after 3 years in prison, so he's practically a non-threat for them at this point, yet they respond to his refusals with unreasonable escalation. There's brief mention of his connections and possibly being able to use Kit to manipulate the police, but Kit's obviously not going to comply with that and he doesn't say that so, it's just this really big contrived "what if?" that seems to be used to rationalize threatening his family and beating his friend (and former coworker) half to death.

That bit doesn't make any sense. And I think it largely doesn't make any sense because, much as I appreciate a brisk movie, this movie FLIES through each plot point before the central conceit of the conflict is revealed and it actually becomes interested. The first half of the movie is set up for this brilliant conflict, but that first half consequently lacks the emotional impact or engaging character and dialog of the latter half. Skimming over the gang's relationship with Ho probably contributed to this seemingly flimsy excuse to stir shit up.

And I would say that's probably this movie's biggest weakness, not that it takes too long to get good, but that the time it takes to get to the good parts isn't entertaining on it's own (which I suppose is the same criticism just phrased differently).

It's funny reading back this review some 5 years later and finding my criticisms are largely about the same things.

I wasn't anywhere near as irritated this time around with the girlfriend character, but she really is useless throughout the whole thing. I think the only thing she adds is a person in the family that's sympathetic to Ho, but even that doesn't really amount to anything since Kit is never swayed by her on the matter.

Still a good movie, but I'm going to drop it half a rating.

There's something about these kinds of movies where they just can't help including food. LOOK, you're puttin' all this food away, but it's not like we're ever gonna see you **** it out, what makes you think I find what you're having for dinner any more interesting than the book you got sitting next to the crapper? I don't care, please shut up.

Birthdays, Kissing, Dogs, Eggs, Bacon, Hotdogs, Turkey, Ice Cream, Fish, Fishing, nearly all of this **** is specifically referenced in DIALOG, GO AWAY.

Lethal Weapon at it's worst is unpleasant to suffer, the camera gets in all close, everyone gets overdramatic as **** (*shock of realization* "you knew her..."), and scenes become interminable. Danny Glover talking down to the street kids in his enthusiastic dad voice is cringe-inducing and they haven't the mercy to point out how awkward he is.

Mel Gibson also overacts the **** out of his character, at least at the start, he's twitchy as **** and it would've taken a few dozen less wide-eyed open mouth spasms to convey that he was unhinged.

At it's best however, Lethal Weapon reminds me of Appleseed, which reminds me of Strange Days, which are Grade-A gigs in my book.

All of these movies feature contrasting character pairs (and ironically all of them have police or military backgrounds), and in Lethal Weapon we got the straight-laced two-days-left-till-retirement Danny Glover paired with the youthful go-get-em newbie- WHOA WAIT A SECOND, I'm sorry, I have the wrong movie, I mean the rogue cop with a criminal past- WHAT NO, THAT'S TOTALLY WRONG.

I mean suicidal psycho veteran, Mel Gibson.

The scene that occurs early on that establishes their relationship has Mel's character, Riggs, nearly blow his own head off when Danny's character, Murtaugh, calls him on his bluff.

At first I didn't quite get why Murtaugh was antagonizing him, but when he mentioned "psycho pensions" I got to thinking and realized, AHHH, if he were to retire supposedly scarred from the force there might be a policy to compensate him further, I get it.

I'm extraordinarily unfamiliar with these things so I'm gonna say that while it made sense to me that it wasn't conveyed quite as clearly to someone with no idea of what pensions are (don't laugh).

Anyway, after this super intense staredown over the barrel of a gun, Rigg's is all, "Oh, it's your birthday? Happy birthday, man." and way friendly all of a sudden. He was way overacting before, but at least this establishes that he's unpredictable, and even simultaneously establishes that as nutzo as he may be he can at least approximate a facade of professionalism.

With this out of the way, most of the movie has Riggs and Murtaugh workin' there rounds while very seamlessly working in development of their interpersonal relationship and additionally packing in sneaky exposition about Riggs' past as a hardcore spec ops and a plot to culminate in the kidnapping of Murtaugh's daughter.

I have to admit, I wasn't paying super duper close attention to the plot (been playing Deck Heroes actually, it's fun), but I think it's fairly predictable at this point, for these sorts of movies, that the whole "these crimes are connected!" plot that shifts into focus never really comes into focus as clearly as they could. Suddenly the main characters are throwing around the names of multiple characters that are so background that they barely manage screentime long enough for me to ever be able to point my finger at them and say what their name is.

The action's obviously not of the sort one should expect from a kung-fu movie or even a John Woo movie as I've been watching, but what it managed was solid, largely thanks to the strong characters which lends a lot of weight to moments like when Mel Gibson takes a full-on shotgun blast to the chest which throws him bodily through a window.

That's a pretty big "holy ****!" moment, and there are several of them, like when one of their suspect's houses just friggen' explodes, there's no warning or any of those annoying movie queues that tell you something is wrong.

I had one of those moments in Murtaugh's house and it got all quiet and he was looking through his mail and I'm all "something's gonna happen, something's gonna happen..."

And nothing happened.

Thank you. Thank you, Lethal Weapon, for not living down to my expectations. Now that we know you can make a solid action movie, let's see you do it without the turkey dinner, eh? Or was that a crucial plotpoint I just missed?

No, I'm serious, I get that his wife's cooking a bonding topic for them-wait nevermind, "WIFE", forgot marriage, I usually forget marriage. We just can't have a man and a women live together and have a family with words like "husband" and "wife", there just aren't English words for that, **** you, English! What'd you ever do for anybody?

It takes a mere 1 minute and 40 seconds for Con Air to completely culturally isolate itself from any prospective alien viewers who may have picked up the language, but otherwise make no concessions in how they approach the movie. Kissing is weird. I'm gonna keep drawing attention to the fact that it's weird until people accept that it's weird.

Hugging? Sure, I can dig hugging, it's the comforting embrace of a friend or loved one, how can I condemn that? Kissing? What are you nuts? Why don't you touch your ears together? You'll spread less germs that way. Youuuu sluts.

At the 5 minute, 40 second mark we commit our first narrative sin by contriving Nick Cage into jail for killing a man in self defense.

What, is that wrong? The guy pulled a knife? How is that defense nothing short of ****ing impervious to judicial scrutiny? Go **** yourself.

There's also an off-comment about steak. Ironically. And that's those are my biggest complaints.


Now, before you freak, lemme tell you that overall I prefer Lethal Weapon. I like the characterization in that movie better, it was more surprising, and it was played seriously. Not that I can't dig goofy, but Con Air was nearly cheesy enough for me.

That said, Con Air is a rock solid movie due in no small part to the cavalcade of rock solid B-movie actors behind Nicolas Cage including, but not limited to John Cusack, Colm Meaney, Dave Chappelle, and, of course, the schlockmeister himself, Danny Trejo.

Nicolas Cage is rather silly looking in his long hair and frankly he didn't do much for me, his job is pretty much alternating between blissful smiles, mild concern, and intense stares. He was basically a more boring version of himself in Raising Arizona.

John Malkovich, who was, is it just me, unrecognizable? Maybe his manner was just that different, but I utterly failed to make the Being John Malkovich connection, either he's just got that much range or I'm stupid. Probably a little of both. Either way he was a fun antagonist if only because you really don't know him very well and he hogs his scenes consistently.

For my money though, it'd have to be the pleasant surprise appearance of Steve Buscemi who I just get a kick out of. There's something about actors like him and Brad Dourif which makes them really enjoyable, they always get typecast as the socially retarded psychopath and yet in Con Air I wished there was more of him.

They set up Malkovich's character as the worst of the bunch, BUT THEN you got Steve's character, who's the worst of the worst, he's the con cons FEAR yo. And sure enough he's the only one in plain clothes, speaking calmly and articulately, and while everyone else is having a violent shootout he's off having a tea party with a random girl you're not entirely sure he isn't about to just up and kill.


When the little girl asks him if he's sick and we zoom in on his REALLY uncertain face that, to be honest, he's Steve Buscemi, the guy looks ****ed, and we even get this fish eye lens of from his perspective, I loved that scene, that was great.

I was really worried that when he leaves offscreen with the doll from that he had killed the girl, but she's revealed to be alive and he's the only one who ever actually escapes.

Oh right, THE PLOT. Nick Cage gets sent to jail, on the his daughter's birthday-BIRTHDAY ~GAHHHH forgot that.

...

Birthday. He gets on a plain intended to chauffeur convicts and he gets wrapped up in a hijacking where he inevitably winds up saving the day.

There are a couple bumps in the story, namely how is it that the police know Sims is dead? They can't know that. That's never explained, it's just assumed and it directly contradicts the "but why didn't NICK'S CHARACTER get off the plane hmmmm????" I dunno, why didn't Sims get off the plane? PLOTHOLE.

Some lines just don't work like "I'm gonna show you God does exist" which only follows when Bubba from Forrest Gump is dying and just comes right the **** out of nowhere with his suspicions that God doesn't exist.

Set up? Did anybody see the set up? No? Okay then.

The line, "make a movie and the bunny gets it" is silly, sure, but it's totally out of nowhere and comes without the punch of timing or irony that would require developing Malkovich's Cyrus further.

"Put the bunny back in the box" is much funnier since it much more heavily weighs on the stakes and intensity of the situation and Rule of 3s make it even more amusing in retrospect, "Why didn't you just put the bunny back in the box?"

Rule of 3 is important, people. Respect the 3.

Such as the 3 vehicles in this movie that inexplicably explode on impact.

Any less and I'dve hardly noticed. Any more and I'dve complained.

But 3? Just the right level of absurdity.

OOOOOOGGGGGHHHHHHHH, 59 MINUTES!!! You went 59 minutes without ANYTHING and then you had to throw in that DOG that did absolutely ****ing nothing! You were THIS CLOSE!!!!!


Alright, well, this movie appears to be very controversial. It has a middling review score in the 70s range, it's about glorifying legal execution, it's FULLA DRUGS, and it even has that gore thing I don't like.

I feel such a controversial movie deserves a controversial opinion:


Yeah **** that crap, THIS movie has personality. Now pay attention to the words I use there, "this MOVIE", not the actors. Or even the characters. Carl Urban just does not have the charisma of a Stallone or a Schwarzenegger which would bleed through the helmet that's hermetically sealed to his face. He's boring and both the female lead and villain lack the proper development and lines to make them memorable.

It's the movie that sets the tone around them though and I could tell I was in for something solid when that ambient backing starts thumpin' and Dredd hasn't even shot anybody yet.

You could draw a fair number of parallels between The Raid and Dredd and they're warranted comparisons. They both feature a heroic law enforcement figure trapped in a tall apartment block full of goons intending to kill them with the driving goal being to struggle to the top and cap the Big Bad once and for all. Both have a lot of gunfire and explosions and both try to be gruesome in their depiction of violence.

The difference, I FEEL, is multi-fold. Dredd's myriad elements come together to present a picture that is far more digestable and engaging.

While Dredd lacks the emphasis on martial arts, he is at once and immediately the undeniable power fantasy character. Rama, the "ROOKIE" is just incidentally good at his job, but Dredd lavishes it's hero in precisely the sort of thing that feeds power fantasy characters: he comes out of certain death scenarios without a scratch, he shrugs off pain like it's nothing, the goons all know and fear him, he gets one-liners, he even gets a monologue where he intimidates the entire building. That he can make a guy's head explode on occasion IS THE TOPPING, NOT THE FILLING, if you catch my drift.


There is a fair bit of gore in the movie, surprisingly so. We don't get John Woo levels of blood spatter, but we do get some gruesome-ass injuries. A number of people are graphically shown colliding with the planet and the drugs, which for once offer a narrative excuse for slow-mo (good on ya, movie), give us a few instances of people getting ripping apart by bullets.

Not a fan of that, BUT! The slow-mo really did add to the scenes it was in, it didn't feel too overbearing to me and a few instances such as when they breach a door and you see the guy on the other side's skin ripple in the explosion was... frightening. It definitely got a "whoa" out of me.

The movie is stylish and despite sharing gruesomeness with The Raid it's far better off. The oversaturated colors could have gone overboard, but they're relegated to the drug trip sequences and the rest of the movie is just as colorful as you'd expect a comic book movie to be. Far better than the ugly greys of The Raid.

Also, the sci-fi setting which the movie also spends a healthy amount of time doling out bits of finally gave me an opportunity to experience a piece of fiction I hadn't seen before! The future "megablocks", that dystopic idea where the population density gets so insane that regular apartment buildings aren't big enough, we gotta make our own little city within a city.

That combined with our periodically increased familiarity with Dredd's personal arsenal both go a ways to help inform of how these aspects of the world tend to work, and I really liked that. It does raise the question of "when will Dredd run out of toys?", but that question is answered quite matter-o'-factly.

I've called this an action movie, but I just noticed I made the mistake of failing to make a key distinction: THIS MOVIE DOESN'T WASTE TIME.

There's no dawdling around with exposition and the only real silence comes in the consistent building and release of tension.

I'm basically saying the pacing is good. It's very very well paced and it snares me from the get-go.


The story is as subservient to the action as you're likely to find, but I will pick on the sort of anticlimax with Anderson as well as completely botched setup involving the man she shoots.

There's one scene where Dredd urges her to perform an execution and she does (and it makes sense even if it does seem unpleasant) and she later meets the guy's apparent wiiiiiiiiii...

Partner.

Romantic partner.

Significant other.

****buddy, there we go.

She meets his ****buddy who actually helps them and insists that she's only doing it because she wants to keep her family safe, implying this to include her hussssssssssss****buddy who she doesn't know is dead.

You'd think this would be the start of a subplot wherein she begins to question the current justice system, or perhaps press Dredd to be less cold and detached about his job, but nothing ever comes of it. It's just a... useless scene. It adds literally nothing to the movie other than to maybe hang a lampshade which only serves to undercut the tone the movie's already going for and will continue to go for.

It also doesn't serve Anderson's ending which I mentioned already, Dredd okays her despite her breaking his rules and yet just like Schindler's List I'm at a total loss as to where this change of heart is ever to have taken place. I can GUESS, but my inference of certain scenes verges of meta when they already feel like buildup to narrative climax that never comes. We see the moments up until Dredd breaks his own rules or has that meaningful heart to heart where we get a little glimpse of his true character, but it never happens.

Anyway, all in all, Dredd has decent visual design, strong sound design, great pacing, solid action, mundane acting, but a solid script, blatant gore, but reserved enough to give it punch, and a generally satisfying ending which finally shows where Sci-Fi Slob got his avatar.