Every now and again I let myself get whisked away in a frenzy over something that seems great on the surface. I'm very easily distracted by bright, shiny objects as well, much like the giant grub in Monsters vs. Aliens. Last Friday morning I ran across a movie titled Royal Kill. It sounded perfect in a weird way. A movie about an assassin sent to America to kill a royal princess, starring former WWE Women's Champion Gail Kim(whooaahhh!!!), Pat Morita, and Eric Roberts. It sounded perfect. A movie I'd never heard of and a genre I can't deny. Match made in Heaven? More like a match made in Sci-Fi Channel...excuse me, SyFy Channel Hell. Or better yet, the less competent cousin of SyFy. This movie makes Sasquatch Mountain(a sci-fi channel "fave") look like a cinematic tour de force by comparison.
Gail Kim stars as the Terminator-like Nadia, a killer from a small country with a name too lame to bother remembering. The film is set in a current America. Everything seems the same, except for this one fictional little country that keeps waging war with it's neighbors. The 7th princess of the king of one of those conquered countries was secretly spirited away to America to be raised by Julia Roberts' brother. Not sure why he was chosen. He ain't really a warrior. He's just a saggy lookin' old dude. But now that everyone in her line is dead, she is meant to rule. However, Nadia's people don't want that to happen, so she is sent to hunt her down. Standing in her way is just a regular soldier(we know this because they keep pointing out how ordinary he is) dedicated to defender the princess' life. Pat Morita, in his final performance sadly, shows up for a couple of quick sequences as some sort of mentor/trainer/Stick-like figure.
There's nothing good at all to say about this. It's poorly shot, with the lighting so dark and muddy that it's almost impossible to know what's going on. The acting is shoddy at best. Eric Roberts, looking puffier and more disheveled than ever, barely seems to know where he is half the time. I think the script was tacked on the wall in front of him to be recited. Gail Kim, whom I love as a wrestler, channels all the character charisma that she brings to the squared circle. None. And Alexander Wraith, a dude with a name that should be reserved for a Roman Gladiators and super-powered mercenaries from the future, is so emotion deprived that they deliberately have him recite half his lines with his back turned to the camera. To top it off, the action is brief and far between. Not that I could see what was going on anyway. Stay away.
2/10
The Informers
I don't blame Brett Easton Ellis for how awful The Informers is. It's director Gregor Jordan's fault, that much is clear. He changed the tone of the entire film. Ellis hated it. The actors themselves hated it. And boy did I hate it. Ellis's films typically revolve around the supposed social elite in the 1980s. The rock stars, the directors, the actors, and their inner circle of hot chicks and coattail riders. It's a time of free, open sex and random drug use. The spoiled are getting everything they want at the expense of the normal people, and nobody seems to give a shit. Common ground for an Ellis story, who covered the same ground in virtually every novel he's ever written and every film that's ever been adapted of those works.
However, whereas the other films have atleast held on to the flavor of the source material, The Informers completely misses the boat and devolves into intolerable, excruciating soup that made me want to vomit. Random, meaningless interconnected stories about people with no redeeming value whatsoever. Normally I like movies about terrible people, but this film gives us no reason to care. What do I care if Amber Heard's character bangs every guy she sees? We're given no reason to feel anything for her. Not even contempt. She's not interesting enough to even loathe. The same goes for the rest of the cast. Billy Bob Thornton shows up as a TV director who's having an affair with a news reporter played by Winona Ryder. Thornton is trying to patch things up with his wife, played by Kim Basinger. Why do I care? We're given no context for any of this. We don't see any good times between any of these characters, so why care? It's all a waste of time. Even Mickey Rourke, Hollywood's prodigal son, seems to be falling back into old habits making poor career choices. He plays a transient, who basically will do anything for money. Even if it means kidnapping innocent kids for ransom. It fits nowhere. It feels like it should be in another movie.
Just having a thought about Ellis movies in general, I think that if any of them are going to succeed in the future they need to be updated for a more modern audience. I can watch American Psycho and Rules of Attraction everyday, because they don't feel like films stuck in a certain time period. The Informers is so thoroughly entrenched in the 80's that it was almost hard to take it seriously. It started to look more like a parody than a true representation. Everyone's hair was out of control; the rock music was loud and obtrusive as if they were trying to say "Doesn't this remind you of 1980whatever?" Not really, no. It's just annoying. Waste of a good book, waste of some seriously prime acting talent.
3/10
