Shoots Itself in the Head

Rating: Null/10 (28 June 2008)

There's a trend in these big budget action moves to try and support the thing with hefty story components: profundity, explorations of fate and power (often via revealed conspiracies). We come to expect this, and I believe have rather clear thresholds about what works.
I think when you try to these ambitious story arcs, you have to pay attention to these thresholds. For all its faults, the "Matrix" films impose style on a robust enough narrative. You have to have a narrative.
Here, we have a story line: young nerd with hidden powers revenges his father, only to discover deceit, then he takes revenge on the deceivers. That could have worked, if it had been supported. It has before, right? There's all sorts of meta-noir possibility here: the ordinary man picked out and placed in a situation long since determined. The idea of death being visited on people, directed from supernatural sources by seemingly supernatural agents. The idea of fate weaving in lives and so on. The cinematic ideas of a man whose vision "slows things down," and as narrator for us in voice and sight.
But its all given short shrift here. We cannot rely on this narrative to carry us. Hitchock's wife was in charge of vetting scripts for this property of robustness and I believe that the threshold of what can accept in speculative noir was discovered or defined by her. This fails.
Which basically leaves us with some very energetic and brutal stylizations within which we can encounter Angeline. I suppose that because of these roles, she is the most bankable actress in the world. I do think she knows how to do this. In "Smith" she drove the story simply with her attitude. In Tomb Raider 1, I think she successfully defined this persona, a confident sexual being who could match any male film presence. That's what this is all about.
She actually does support that well enough in the early chase scene where its her movie. But then we have to start relying on the narrative to move us along, and we get stuck with Morgan Freeman's silliness. She simply becomes a watcher with nothing to do. She cannot carry it off because there's nothing to fill, no movement to get behind.
And so much of it fights itself. There's a hint of a sexual relationship, but its random. There's a "training" session that makes no sense at all and seemingly is inserted only to film brutality. There's much made of curved bullet paths. Is this a supernatural talent, or special bullet designs, or something to do with spin while shooting?
But, you know, I could have tolerated the whole thing, all the rats, the predictability, the incoherence. Until the very end where our transformed wimp looks directly at us and challenges us with something so remarkably "real" that it subverts the whole fragile fantasy, the implied humor. It was so disturbing, I credit that encounter as all the power of the film. It was dumb, blunt and repellent.
Oh, there's a crude use of the redhead type as the petty tyrant of the hero's office
Ted's Evaluation -- 1 of 3: You can find something better to do with this part of your life.