Movie Reviews
Damage flaunts action minus thought
By Nicole Rodriguez
TSC Writer
There are three elements common to most Arnold Schwarzneggar movies: lots of action, semi-ridiculous scripting and incredibly ridiculous plotlines. Collateral Damage, the latest of the Austrian actor's film attempts, does little to stray from this stereotype.
The movie is about Los Angeles firefighter Gordy Brewer (Schwarzeneggar), a stand-up citizen who sees his wife and child die by the hands of a Columbian terrorist known as "El Lupo" (Cliff Curtis). Outraged that the United States is doing little to give his family retribution, Brewer decides to take matters into his own hands. He sneaks into Columbia and decides to track down the mysterious Lupo himself.
In wake of the Sept. 11 tragedies, one would think that a movie about terrorism would be treated with a certain amount of tact and respect. Damage makes no such attempt.
Instead of seeing the pain and anguish Brewer must be feeling due to his loss, the audience is forced to watch him transform from your regular Joe to a high-tech crime-fighting machine.
Despite his humble upbringings, Brewer is able to beat up three terrorists at once, build bombs in the blink of an eye, and outrun the bullets of what must have been fifty machine guns.
The team of writers, headed by Hollywood veteran Nicholas Meyer, have hit an ultimate low with this action-packed flick. Not only is the plot irritatingly predictable, but the script is also filled with corny one-liners bad enough to make one want to get up and leave in the middle of the movie. (For example, "Can you believe it? The fireman escaped the fire!")
Also confusing is the fact that the majority of the movie is set in Columbia, yet none of the characters speak any Spanish except for the occasional "gracias" and "vamanos."
It is hard to believe that a group of Columbians would get together and discuss their hatred of the United States in perfect English, without so much as a Spanish accent marring their pronunciation.
The one highlight of the film (if it can even be called that) is a brief appearance by John Leguizamo as a Columbian drug-lord with dreams of making it big in the American music industry. However, Leguizamo no sooner enters the film as he is killed off. His comic relief is so brief that one could blink and miss all his screen time.
In short, Collateral Damage is nothing more than an over-rated actor trying to bank on his popularity to rake in a profit.
If you're an Arnold fan, be my guest and run to the theaters. But, truth be told, this is no Terminator, and you will be severely disappointed with the outcome. F
Time weaves three lives into intricate movie
By Brian Tanaka
Ass't Scene Editor
Slow and steady wins the race. Such is the case with writer/director Ming-liang Tsai's What Time Is It There?, a film that takes its time to create a world so captivating and emotional that it's easy to forget that it's fiction.
Tsai composes a linked story of three characters, each one following a similar line of fate with different situations. A street vending Hsiao-kang (Lee Kang-sheng) lives his day-to-day life in Taiwan selling wristwatches from a suitcase. His father's death leaves his mother (Lu Yi-ching) and him with nothing but an empty house. His mother finds solace in trying to resurrect her love's spirit as Hsiao-kang comforts her while also dealing with his own pressures.
On a routine day of vending, Hsiao-kang meets Shiang-chyi, a passerby who realizes that she needs a watch before heading off to Paris. She wants the watch on Hsiao-kang's wrist, but he reluctantly declines. He eventually is persuaded to sell the watch, and she presents him with money and a gift of a cake.
This exchange blossoms Hsiao-kang's infatuation with not only Shiang-chyi, but also to Paris. He obsessively starts changing all the clocks he sees to Paris time, seven hours behind Taiwan.
Hsiao-kang, Shiang-chyi, and his mother eventually fall into a spiral of desolation and solitude as Hsiao-kang can't see Shiang-chyi, mother can't see her husband, and Shiang-chyi is a foreigner in France.
Time is a film deeply influenced by Francios Truffaut's The 400 Blows, Tsai's favorite movie of all time. The 400 Blows is referenced heavily throughoutTime: Kang obsesses about the French lifestyle, often turning on The 400 Blows as comfort, and seems to mimic much of the life of Blows' protagonist Antoine. Even the now-aged Jean-Pierre Laud, who played the young Antoine, pops up during a scene in a French cemetery with Shiang-chyi.
A subtle dark humor arises throughout the film, allowing a much needed release of nervous laughter. As the film sets itself up for extended scenes of exposition, a pleasant whip of comedy emerges from beneath the morbid shadows.
All three main characters, Hsaio-Kang, Shiang-chyi and mother are elegantly formed by the actors. Kang-sheng delivers a delicate performance of the despondent Hsaio-Kang, flushing out his idiosyncrasies and allowing the audience to embrace his infatuation whole-heartedly. Shiang-chyi carries a mostly silent film with poignancy and grace through gestures and expressions as she ventures off to Paris, alone and foreign. Yi-ching creates the most emotionally-driven character as Kang's mother, a woman deeply submerged in denial of her husband's death.
The simplistic style to the film greatly enhances the complex story by giving control to the characters, not the camera. Each shot is carefully setup to reflect the repetitive lives of Kang and his mother without taking away any of the attention to absurdist melodrama playing out between the characters.
However simplistic the movie appears, What Time Is It There? deals with the complex issues of human misery and its ability to repress one's life to basic modes of living. Dark, humorous, and affectionate, it elaborates on the lost souls of humanity. A