instruction:
In this task, you must classify if a given review is positive/negative, indicating your answer as P or N.
question:
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 .
answer:
N


question:
it was with a huge lack of something to do that i decided to watch this on good old upn on sunday afternoon , when the only good things on tv are the second - rate movies they show ( some are good : they showed " total recall " before this one ) . if you know me , i think seagal is probably the most boring action star to ever live .
and this includes keanu reeves .
what do i hate about seagal ?
i hate how he uses one facial expression for every single threatening and non - threatening situation ( the squint ) .
i hate those scenes in every movie where he goes around , bullying people up , saying stupid lines with a brooklyn accent more fake than burt reynold 's hairpiece in " boogie nights .
" i despise how he never gets a bruise
in any of his fights .
i hate how every single plot twist leads to just a melodramatic fight between he and the chief villain .
i hate his non - satirical messages ( in the beginning of this one , he slaps on a quote from arthur miller , which has nothing to do with the film , except it 's about brooklyn where this film takes place ) .
and i hate how he 's so narcissistic that he thinks that he can actually fucking sing
( during the end credits , he has a good old hill billy rock tune sung and penned by him ) .
sure , the guy 's probably a nice guy in person
( i actually found him very non - threatening when he was on letterman not too long ago ) .
but the guy makes worse films than reagan did .
so what 's the plot of this shit - terpiece ?
well .
. .
something about him trying to catch a stupid - ass crook ( william forsythe ) who shot and killed his partner in broad daylight .
i could n't believe how bad this scene was - the guy was conveniently with his family so we get the maximum emotional effect ( ahem ! ) .
and forsythe even said some stupid lines to him before he took off .
i 'm sorry , did anyone ever hear of concealing one 's self ?
so in comes ex - brooklynite seagal , who dedicates his life to catching this guy .
and i just wished he had caught him in the beginning , then ended the film .
but noooo ,
this drags on , as he bullies forsythe 's family members ( including a stupid bar - owner , and none other than gina gershon as his other bar - owner sister ) .
and forsythe more than once threatens his family .
at one point , he actually comes to their house and stalks them like a non - threatening nicholson in " the shining " ( complete with them all hiding in the bathroom , but with an added bonus of one girl conveniently loosing her cool and screaming to give them away ) .
seagal paints himself as a lovable person , with a son , and a fiancee .
he even shows him hanging with his son , checking up on his homework , and then about to take him out for a bit of " catch , " when he 's conveniently called away on assignment .
i dunno about you , but playing " catch " with seagal was one of my childhood nightmares .
he also shows him as that bad - ass he wants to be , with scenes of him bullying crooks around , and taking out people who are stupid enough to attack him even after he 's unarmed a chinese guy swinging bats with a pool cue .
serves them right .
this film , as some of his do , has an interesting supporting cast of actors who are actually talented , but do n't appear to be in this film .
i already mentioned gina gershon ( who 's pretty horrible in this one ) , as well as william forsythe , who over - acts terribly .
i know this guy can act : he was awesome in " raising arizona " as goodman 's partner in crime .
but he 's just awful here .
jerry orbach gives the only credible performance in the film as the police chief who checks up on segal after things have gone down .
why is he the only one who gives a good performance ?
well , because his role is small enough and sporadic enough to not tarnish his credibility .
he seems to be in here just to give it a cool " law and order " feeling ( even if it 's not a " cool " feeling ) .
and in cameos are b - rated erotic - thriller - cinemax - style stars , shannon whirry ( as " terry malloy , " which is more of a bad joke than a clever one ) and athena massey .
oh !
and " er " 's
julliana margiulles has two scenes .
" out for justice " just proves once again that american action films just suck .
i know that there 's such a good thing as good action - he 's called john woo .
but if you 're in the mood for some good old no - brainer , fun - yet - dumb action , do n't bother watching this .
it 's so stupid that it 's boring .
answer:
N


question:
capsule :
one of the ten worst movies ever made .
christopher lambert vs .
evil ninjas in modern - day japan .
. .
and nobody wins .
the hunted is such a bad movie , so completely inept and so totally brain - damaged that i could almost feel affection for it .
i could see myself showing this movie to friends and getting a good jolly guffaw out of it , if it were n't also insanely xenophobic and insulting
.
christopher lambert plays a computer - parts salesman who 's on business in japan .
he meets a slinky young woman ( joan chen ) and has a torrid night of lovemaking with her -- and then manages to witness her death at the hands of an evil ninja clan and their leader ( john lone ) .
apparently they had some unfinished business that could only be concluded with her getting slaughtered .
since lambert is a witness , he 's of course the next one to die .
let 's stop and think about this for a second .
if lambert were in real life being chased by fanatical devotees to a ninja secret society , he 'd have a lifespan you could only measure with an atomic clock .
in this movie , the ninja manage to kill just about everyone except him .
i imagine the japanese gods smiled down on lambert and provided him with a goof field that radiates out about ten feet from his body .
you know what a goof field is : that invisible zone in which anyone who has intent to do harm to you becomes a klutz no matter what their real dexterity is .
this is , of course , only the beginning of the movie 's problems .
lambert eventually finds pseudo - safety with a long - haired modern - day samurai ( yoshio harada ) and his partner -- yoko shimada , who you may remember as lady toda buntaro in shogun .
they are the two best things in the movie ; in every scene they have authority and presence , and they actually look like they belong here , even when dressed in full samurai armor and wielding bows .
the script does n't know what the hell to do with them .
lone , as the bad guy , is zero - dimensional .
the only bad - guy cliche he has to wallow around in is the one about how the bad guy always has exotic women dripping off of him .
in the hunted , this is elevated to the level of an insulting stereotype .
what 's funny is that the peripheral characters in the hunted are not sterotypes -- there 's a nice little scene with a tokyo cabdriver , and a girl in a pachinko parlor -- but many of the main characters are unsalveageably hateful .
also , the phenomenal instrumental troupe kodo has assembled a superior soundtrack -- get the cd -- that manages to survive
despite the drek it 's been designed to accompany .
there is an extended battle scene in the middle of the movie that is almost reason enough to watch the whole thing -- a gory , excellently staged fight on the bullet train that shows some real imagination for a moment , and then smothers it by trying to clumsily re - couple the whole thing with the movie 's relentlessly stupid plot .
by the time we get to the final showdown , with lambert getting to wield his own sword ( which , judging from the ham - handed editing of one scene , was forged in seven hours or so ) ,
we no longer care .
we 're not even given any definitive information about whether or not one of the key characters lives or dies !
someone once said that the key to good art -- good movies , good books , whatever -- is to start somewhere interesting , end up somewhere interesting , and show respect for the audience all along the way .
this movie bungles two out of three , badly .
answer:

N