Transformers - Movie Review

The earliest memories I have of the Transformers, and more specifically of Optimus Prime was a shiny little toy that my cousin used to have when he was younger. He used to guard this particular toy more carefully than the others as this was the only one which have elbows and knees that could bend, a neck that could turn, and a hip that could actually bend. This made Optimus Prime (or Red and Blue robot, as we used to call him back in those days) extra special and extra powerful. So when I first heard of the Transformers movie and read about it, my memories were taken back to those special innocent days. However, me being the jackass that I am, I missed out on watching this movie at the IMAX theatre in Hyderabad in late 2007.

The movie begins with Optimus Prime, the leader of the Autobots narrating how his home world, Cybertron was destroyed due to lack of energy to sustain it. In the war for the All Spark, the Decepticons led by Megatron manage to destroy most of the Autobots and almost all of Cybertron. However, in his quest for the All Spark, Megatron crash lands on earth and is frozen in ice in the Arctic Circle. Captain Archibald Witwicky stumbles upon his exo-skeleton and accidentally activates Megatron's navigational system which imprints his co-ordinates in his eyeglasses. Sector 7, of the US Govt locates Megatron and the All Spark and moves both of them to the site of the Hoover Dam and builds the dam on top of them to mask the energy emissions.

In the present day, a group of Decepticons land on earth and assume disguises of various earch vehicles and attack a US base in Qatar to hack into the US Military network to locate the All Spark. This forms the first action sequence of the movie in which viewers are shown the actual capabilities of the Transfomers. An awesome desert action sequence involving a lot of great military vehicles, CGI generated robots and battle sequences pepper this great sequence. This battle also leads to the discovery of probably the only chink in the armor of the Decepticons, the high-heat sabot weapons.

One of the Decepticons finds the original eyeglasses up for auction at e-bay, put up there by Sam Witwicky, the great grandson of Archibald. This puts Sam in the middle of the battle between the Autobots and the Decepticons, with the bad robots pursuing him and the good ones trying to protect him. Sam's first car, Bumblebee turns out to be an Autobot disguised as a Chevrolet Camaro. What follows in the rest of the movie is how Optimus Prime and the Autobots thwart every attempt by the Decepticons to get the co-ordinates of the All Spark.
Almost near the end of the movie, the Decepticons manage to revive Megatron, and the action sequence that follows is nothing short of amazing. The fight between Megatron and Optimus Prime, without doubt the two best Transformers in this movie, is quite breath-taking and must be seen to be believed. Whether the Autobots manage to protect Sam and the All Spark forms the climax of the movie.

For anybody who likes action movies and likes nicely crafted sci-fi stories, this movie came as a breath of fresh air. Anybody who has liked the 'Giant Robot' TV series which played in Doordarshan in the 80s will absolutly love this movie. And the fact that somebody like Steven Spielberg has produced this movie speaks volumes for the Production Quality of this movie. All in all, an awesome movie, which is good fun for action lovers of any age and race.

Cheers.......Jam

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Body of Lies - Movie Review

'Body of lies' tries to retrace the operative methods of CIA Operative, Roger Ferris (played competently by Leonardo DiCaprio) who is posted in the Middle East and keeps shuttling between countries such as Iraq, Jordan and Saudi Arabia working on various assignments. He is trying to track down a terrorist called Al-Saleem who has already succeeded in bombing locations in UK and is planning more such bombs in mainland Europe. Ferris' handler, Ed Hoffman (excellent performance by Russell Crowe) is keeping constant tabs on Ferris and keeps giving him lots of necessary information as well as ideas and thoughts on how to go about handling an issue.

However, Ferris does not look down too kindly upon Hoffman actively intervening in situations and double-guessing him. His rationale being that the operative on the field has to rely on his instincts and go with the flow, rather than operating in a situation where some of the action is controlled by people sitting halfway across the world. If anything, such a situation could put the on-field operative more in harm's way than anything else. Suffice to say that Ferris and Hoffman shared a relationship that was anything but cordial, but they almost always got the job done.

Ferris' search for Al-Saleem takes him to Jordan, when he befriends Hani Salaam (played well by Mark Strong), head of Jordanian General Intelligence Department. Hani takes Ferris into his confidence based on only one condition that Ferris remains truthful to him at all times, and does not lie to him at any cost. Here in Jordan, Ferris learns of Hani's considerable influence over field agents and operatives. Hani's unconventional methods and reliance on relationships as a coercive force impress Ferris, which when contrasted with Hoffman's methods which rely on speed more than accuracy seem to be more effective to Ferris.

Hoffman ends up ruining Ferris' relationship with Hani due to one of his operations where he puts the CIA behind Karami, one of Hani's men, which results in the CIA losing a good lead in Jordan and probably missing out on getting closer to Al-Saleem. This results in Hani forgiving Ferris only to the extent of time required for him to get out of Jordan with a strict warning never to be seen again in the country. Ferris goes back to the US and has a tiff with Hoffman accusing him of being high-handed, with the suggestion that going forward, he leaves field operations to operatives themselves.

While in the US, Ferris comes up with an innovative plan to draw out Al-Saleem into the open. Whether this works or not forms the rest of the movie, and is something to be seen in the movie to be enjoyed. Masterful performances by Russell Crowe and DiCaprio carry this movie forward. Plus the fact, that I am a sucker for spy movies which are well made also made this a particularly enjoyable movie for me.

Cheers.........Jam

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Charlie Wilson's War - Movie Review

When the movie "Charlie Wilson's War" begins, the words "The following is based on true events" really piqued my interest in this movie. While I had unsuccessfully been trying for over a year and a half to pull out time to actually sit and watch this movie, the fact that it was playing on Star Movies over a Saturday night meant that I had to catch it there.

Little did I realize that I would pretty much be getting a history lesson in how the CIA actually went ahead and armed the Afghan mujahideen to fight the Soviet Red Army in the early 80s and the role that Texas Congressman Charlie Wilson actually played in this whole story. While the first part about the CIA arming the Afghans was well, pretty much an open secret which I have known for quite a while, I didn't quite realize the part that one lone Congressman had played in this whole scenario.

The movie itself deals with how Charlie Wilson, a 'wheelin-dealin' (read socializing, womanizing) Texas Congressman is persuaded by his friend and romantic interest Joanne Herring (played wonderfully by Julia Roberts) to do more to help the Afghans. Well actually, it was not like Joanne had any special interest in the welfare of the Afghans, but she wanted to beat the Communist Russians at any cost. This puts Charlie in contact with Gust Avrakotos, a maverick genius CIA operative (awesome performance by Philip Seymour Hoffman) who pretty much teaches Charlie how to go about defeating the Soviets in Afghanistan.

What follows is a retelling of the next 8 odd years in which the CIA Covert Ops budget for Afghanistan goes up from around $5 mn to just a tad more than $1 bn, and how the Afghans, for lack of a better term, kick some Russian butts in the meantime. The movie does go into reasonable detail as to how Charlie manages to pull together Congressional support for this increased budget, how the Afghans learn to make the most of the weapons and the training provided to them, while retaining viewer interest in the goings-on throughout. All in all, a very enjoyable movie for anybody who wants to know a relatively unknown aspect of how the Mujahideen grew to be as strong as they did.

What works for me in this movie is the fact that it is based on true events, as I have always believed that true stories make for really good movie scripts, provided they are told interestingly enough. This movie is enriched by some wonderful performances from almost all the principal characters played by Tom Hanks, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Julia Roberts and Om Puri. Now with actors like these, it would take a really horrible script for such a movie to go wrong anywhere.

Ensure you catch this movie sometime soon, as I would assume that Star Movies will have some re-runs of the same all of May for sure.

Cheers.........Jam

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Lions for Lambs - Movie Review

Lions for Lambs starts off with TV journalist Janice Roth (played wonderfully by Meryl Streep) coming into Senator Jasper Irving’s (Tom Cruise in a surprisingly underplayed but awesome role) office only to find out that the Senator has granted her a complete hour of his time for a one-on-one interview. She later finds out that the Senator wants to talk about his new war strategy in Afghanistan and get Roth to give some positive coverage so that the public is convinced that the plan is sound.

While this is happening in Washington DC, back in Afghanistan the new war strategy is put in place. Two soldiers Arian and Ernest are lost behind enemy lines when the chopper carrying them is hit by enemy fire. While one of them is seriously injured, the other has injured his leg and unable to walk. They just have one rifle and a pistol to protect themselves till the Rescue teams arrive. However, this takes longer than expected due to strong headwinds, and the fact that they are stuck on top of a reasonably inaccessible cliff.

The third parallel track of the movie deals with Dr Malley (played by the talented Robert Redford) summoning Todd Hayes, a talented, bright but disinterested student into his office. Malley offers Hayes a straight ‘B’ in his subjects for the rest of the term, provided Hayes promises to “do something” with himself for the rest of the year. When Hayes questions this logic, this leads to an interesting conversation where Malley reveals that both Arian and Ernest are ex-students of his who enlisted in the US Army because they truly believed that this was probably the only way right now where they could ‘make a difference’ and contribute their bit to making the world a better place to live in.

Malley goes on to tell Hayes how he tried to talk the two of them out of enlisting, and as to how in his opinion this particular war was a futile one. But then he is unable to convince the two youngsters, who have had rough childhoods and truly believe that this was probably the only thing that would probably make them ‘debt-free’ for the rest of their lives. They also believed by doing so, people would take them seriously and that it would be easier for them to be seriously heard if they were War Veterans.

What happens in the rest of the movie is something to be seen and not read in this review. Suffice to say Lions for Lambs is one movie which forces us to ask all the right questions. But the biggest issue with this movie is the fact that there is no semblance of an answer to any of these questions. While that by itself is not a big issue, the fact remains that this makes the movie more preachy than anything else. Although the technique of using 3 parallel sequences to tell the same story is not new, the way it is used in this movie is quite interesting. But then this also takes away a lot from the movie since all 3 sequences look and feel too different from each other to be logically connected.

Robert Redford is his competent best, Meryl Streep is probably at the peak of her acting abilities, but the surprise packet of this movie for me was Tom Cruise. He played the role of the Senator to the hilt. The way he tries to convince the TV journalist that this new strategy was “the strategy” that would ultimately result in the US troops coming out on top, and how this human and financial was necessary to put an end to 6 endless years of conflict, all of these make for awesome sequences in the movie. He plays the role of a politician to the T and it was quite refreshing to see him in a role which actually had so much substance to it.

Go watch this movie, at least to ask yourself the right questions, but don’t expect to find any answers in it.

Cheers………Jam

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Paul Blart:Mall Cop - Movie Review

Paul Blart is able to do everything that a New Jersey Police Department recruit can do………well, almost everything. In his n-th attempt at the selections, he completes almost the entire obstacle course collapsing around 2 feet before the finish line due to hypoglycemia. Now any movie which begins with roly-poly Kevin James (of “King of Queens” fame from Star World) almost successfully completing an obstacle course gives you a pre-cursor of how the rest of the movie is going to pan out.

Paul Blart works as a Security Guard at a mall in New Jersey. He is one guard who takes his role very seriously and is more than judicious at his duties. His only gripe in life is the fact that he has to keep stocking up on small sugar packets to keep his hypoglycemia (medical term for low blood sugar levels) in control. His life pretty much revolves around his job and his attempts into trying to get into NJPD, while his mother and his daughter are trying to hook him up with some nice girl from perfectmatch.com.

Black Friday, one of the busiest shopping nights of the year is coming up and Paul is all geared up for the maddening crowds. Everything goes peacefully, and just when Paul is about to get off his duties, he is asked a favor by his friend to help him close the arcade store. While Paul is focused on playing Rock Band – The Game on a console, a gang breaks into the mall and prepares to take the mall by force assuming it to be completely empty. This results in a situation where Paul is caught up bang in the middle of the heist completely unawares of the soup that he actually is in.

Whether and how Paul actually manages the situation is what makes up the rest of the movie. While this is a run-of-the-mill comedy-action movie, what makes it reasonably good are the characters, the simplicity of the storyline and the sheer speed with which the film-makers wrap up the movie.

If you have liked Kevin James in his television roles, you will surely love him in Paul Blart : Mall Cop. Go on catch the movie, you won’t regret it.

Cheers………..Jam

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