TASK DEFINITION: In this task, you must classify if a given review is positive/negative, indicating your answer as P or N.
PROBLEM: a cop with a troubled personal life .
a ruthless villain .
a friend of the cop .
a _ dead _ friend of the cop .
a quest for vengeance .
a new partner .
a romantic interest .
a chase scene .
a chase scene
_ in san francisco _ .
a woman in peril .
a confrontation .
an explosion .
the end . yawn .
yawn .
yawn .
the preceding has been the plot of approximately twelve thousand and six action films ; this one just happens to be called metro .
i have learned to expect little from films like metro , and consequently i am bored by them more often than i am genuinely disappointed . with eddie murphy on board , however , you hope for something extra , some kind of spark .
when a film makes watching eddie murphy a tedious experience , you know it is doing something terribly wrong .
murphy stars as scott roper , a hostage negotiator for the san francisco police department who is exceedingly good at his job .
with his personal life , he is considerably less successful , facing an unhappy ex - girlfriend named veronica ( carmen ejogo ) , a gambling problem and a mountain of debt .
then his professional life gets a jolt as well when a friend and colleague ( art evans ) is murdered while investigating suspected jewel thief michael korda ( michael wincott ) .
finding korda becomes very personal to scott , and he joins with new partner kevin mccall ( michael rappaport ) to foil korda during an attempted heist .
but all is not well even with korda in jail , as scott , veronica and kevin all continue to face life - threatening danger .
metro ( the title , in case you are wondering , means absolutely nothing ) is so badly put together that even the most casual viewer may notice the miserable pacing and stray plot threads .
in the first place , korda 's rage over being discovered before he can make his big score is rendered completely pointless when he proceeds to hit the target anyway ( and , incidentally , to screw it up ) .
a reference to payoffs in the police department , followed by a conspicuous decision to keep scott off the korda case and a couple of pointed glances , is dropped abruptly with no resolution after about forty - five minutes ; even the relationship between scott and new partner kevin is so perfunctory , with kevin disappearing entirely after taking a bullet for scott , that you may yearn for bickering buddies .
worst of all is a plot structure which places the main villain ( the always menacing michael wincott ) behind bars for far too long , leaving a lot of time to kill with the tedious reconciliation of scott and veronica .
you ca n't blame murphy for being unable to muster any enthusiasm for the scenes with his bland leading lady , but he should have known better than to take this role at all .
scott roper exists in an uncomfortable middle ground between the kind of street - wise fast - talker murphy has built a career on and an actual three - dimensional character , and murphy is never able to reconcile the two .
the script seems to have been doctored for him , with a gambling problem turned into a bit of character color and his supposed inability to form relationships turned into a cause for gags rather than actual conflict , yet there is still too little comedy for murphy to work with .
for much of the film , he walks around with an intense frown , and it is over 90 minutes into metro before you hear that trademark laugh for the first time .
murphy is stranded with too few solid punch lines , and nearly all of the ones he does have bounce of ejogo and fall to the ground limply
.
i suppose i should give director thomas carter credit for taking the obligatory san francisco car chase ( how much do you want to bet on the likelihood of seeing a car soar over a hill ? )
and doing a few interesting things with it .
as vehicles are sent flying and passengers sent sprawling by a runaway cable car , it is possible at least for a moment to take some pleasure in a goofy spin on a familiar situation .
carter does an even better job by taking that old suspense stand - by -- the medicine cabinet mirror which will close to reveal a killer standing behind someone -- and using it to defuse tension not once , but
_ twice _ .
the fact that carter was able to demonstrate even that much recognition of cliches , and a willingness to subvert them , makes his involvement in the rest of the disaster
that is metro all the more puzzling .
an action film like this plods so relentlessly and obviously from point a to point b to point c that you might find yourself shouting out " point c ! " while they 're still getting to point b , or getting up with the rest of the audience after the big explosion which signals that nothing else of any consequence is going to happen .

SOLUTION: N

PROBLEM: " holy man " boasts a sweet , gentle , comic performance from an unusually subdued eddie murphy and a few moderately funny skits .
unfortunately , to get to the good stuff you have to sit through a painfully long set - up , loads of tedious filler , interminable shots of jeff goldblum stammering and twitching ,
a superfluous romantic subplot and quite possibly the most annoying performance of robert loggia 's career .
if ever a movie screamed " wait for video so you can fast - forward through all the dull and annoying parts
, " this is it .
eddie murphy plays g , a robed nomadic pilgrim wandering the land enjoying the moment and spreading his spiritual message .
a chance meeting with ricky hayman ( goldblum ) ,
a stressed - out executive of a home - shopping channel , and kate newell ( kelly preston ) , a no - nonsense media analyst , results in physical injury to g . quicker than you can say " the odd couple ,
" g ends up rooming with an extremely leery ricky .
after some script gymnastics , g appears live on the air at the good buy shopping network , wreaking havoc on the cheesy product demonstrations , enraging network owner mr .
mcbainbridge ( loggia ) , and becoming a national media sensation .
" holy man " attempts to be several things at once .
it tries to satirize home shopping networks , but it 's difficult to effectively make fun of something that is already a self - parody .
the film attempts to teach us that collecting material possessions is merely a futile attempt to fill the spiritual holes in our hearts , but that 's common knowledge already .
" holy man " also tries to present a story of redemption , as ricky hayman tries to decide whether to exploit g 's good will to achieve financial security or do the right thing at the expense of his career .
anyone want to place a wager on his final decision ?
the one genuine asset in " holy man " is eddie murphy , who gives a charming performance , sharing love , good will and relevant advice to all those around him , while beaming his million dollar smile at just the right moments .
murphy is delightful and the film takes off whenever he 's onscreen .
unfortunately , he 's not onscreen enough .
jeff goldblum gets the lion 's share of screen time and his tired storyline weighs the proceedings down .
as his potential love interest , kelly preston tries to brighten things up , but she transforms from an all - business media shark to an empathic softy far too quickly and the abrupt change reeks of contrivance .
the other principal actor , robert loggia , wastes his talents in a one - note turn as a ruthless , screaming monster .
structurally unsound and way too long
, " holy man " is appealing when murphy is onscreen and dull
when he is n't . instead of dropping your money at the theater for this trifle , wait until it hits video and fast - forward past everything except the murphy scenes .
g suggests that we focus on enjoying the moment and that 's the best way to do so .

SOLUTION: N

PROBLEM: the thirteenth floor is a bland , obligatory exercise in genre film - making .
if i had n't recently watched the matrix and open your eyes -- both of which are similar but far superior -- i might have been a little nicer to this picture .
craig bierko makes an adequate hero as douglas hall , the rich co - creator of a perfect human world simulation who is suddenly blamed for the murder of his boss ( armin mueller - stahl ) .
everything that was subtle and smart about the previously mentioned films is battered over our heads in this one , and characters stare at each other for maddeningly - long periods of time and refuse to communicate on any realistic level .
the acting is okay , but the film suffers from every logical flaw one could think of , and features a script ( co - penned by director josef rusnak ) loaded with cliches and stock characters .
there are individual scenes and ideas that work -- i like the thought of a sentient computer program -- but none of the film 's strengths are recognized to any meaningful degree .
producer roland emmerich , based on this and his previous directorial efforts , seems hell - bent on bringing us the ultimate standard in mediocre science - fiction .

SOLUTION:
N