|
|
|
ReviewsPreviews: Sahara
Starring Matthew McConaughey, Penelope Cruz and Steve Zahn, Breck Eisner’s Sahara is a modern day tale of an old-fashioned treasure hunter, his wise-guy sidekick and a mysterious disease that threatens to wipe out an entire population.
Explorer Dirk Pitt (McConaughey) and his wisecracking sidekick (Zahn) spend most of their time looking for treasure in some of the most dangerous places on Earth. On his latest adventure, Pitt finds himself in North Africa, searching for what locals call ‘the ship of death,’ an old Civil War vessel laden with ancient coins of immense value. There, he befriends Eva Rojas (Cruz), a doctor associated with the WHO, looking for a cure to a mysterious disease in the same region. Having linked the outbreak of the disease to the sunken ship, she faces a race against time to find a cure before its too late.
Notwithstanding the quality of the assembled cast, Sahara lacks any outstanding features often needed by any movie to be called a hit. It’s no wonder then that it fails to live up to the hype surrounding its much-anticipated release, and seems destined to fade away into relative obscurity. Without being too critical, Sahara can only be described as average at best. —Amyn Bhamani
Cinderella Man
Ladies and Gentlemen, we have a winner. On this corner of the ring, we have the enigmatic, enchanting and entirely enthralling Russell Crowe, who weighs in his five-foot eleven-inch form flawlessly into the downplayed artistry of Ron Howard with screenwriters Akiva Goldsman and Cliff Hollingsworth. On the other end, reserved movie surveyors who weigh it diametrically to A Beautiful Mind, which was shaped by almost the same team. Needless to say, who comes out standing at the end of the 13th Round?
Before the film begins we are informed that the life of James Braddock is one of the most inspirational events of our time, defining the parameters within which the film plays. The film progresses in clichéd “supers” of various contests of James Braddock, who attains the pseudonym of ‘Cinderella Man’, a one-time prospering boxer, now hardly making ends meet in the depression era after the First World War.
This is a simple story, and I don’t have a problem with that. Sometimes trouble-free interpretation makes for good entertainment – if it’s chiefly fuelled by Oscar worthy acting. Paul Giamatti pulls in a Jennifer Connelly, but the film will suffer greatly due to its early release in front of Academy considerations. Renee Zellweger is fine wine.
To any cinema student, the film’s growth is speculated as a 101 class in direction. Whether it’s the manipulation of the character’s motivation when he responds ‘milk’ during a press conference, his maturing age or even the brilliantly vivid flashes of bulbs during bouts or the ‘tongued’ camera movements in the intense, historic, final fight between Braddock and Baer, towards which the movie builds.
The only crime I see here is that Ron Howard is not really justified about, as he concentrates more on the character and performance than the life of Braddock, which overshadows his pivotal public acclaim. There is a scene where Zellweger is awestruck when she walks in to the church to pray before the film’s climatic struggle to find people kneeled in prayers. She tells the priest she’s here to pray for her husband, to which he responds ‘well, so are they’. I would say ‘as are we’. – Mohammad Kamran Jawaid
Robots
Since the trend picked up momentum half a decade ago, there has hardly been a CG animated flick that didn’t do decent business. As such, it would have been a shock had Blue Studios’ sophomore effort (the first being Ice Age) Robots didn’t live up to expectations.
Not that expectations were that high. Well maybe a little, considering the Who’s Who of comics that were assembled, including Robin Williams, Mel Brooks, Drew Carey, Jay Leno, etc. As you can expect from such a high-profile collaboration, the movie boasts of some stunning visuals, not groundbreaking, mind you, since they belong to the same mould as Shrek and its successors. However, it falls short on the plot. Robots is as formulaic and trite as you can expect from a sugar-coated Hollywood product. An underdog goes for his dreams, faces temporary failure and this causes him to meet some amusing characters that provide the bulk of the gags.
Rodney Copperbottom (Ewan McGregor) is a poor young ‘bot’ who leaves town to make it big in Robocity, his aim being to meet Big Weld (Mel Brooks) who runs a company that makes robot parts and encourages all and sundry to come to him with innovative ideas. But instead, he finds the evil Ratchet (Greg Kinnear) occupying Big Weld’s place, trying to morph the company into a ‘true’ American corporation which instead of producing cheap spare parts goes for fancy upgrades. Those who can’t afford them are sent to the furnace. No points for guessing the rest.
Even though the story is rife with witty if not hilarious lines, it has nothing new to offer preaching the same old ‘You can shine no matter what you’re made of’ clichés that have become the hallmark of these 3D flicks. Heart-warming but not memorable. —Saqib Khan
TOP FILM
|
|
|
|
