ARENA (2011) (a review)

ARENA (2011) (a review)

Yikes. Just...yikes. Stars: Kellan Lutz (Twilight: Breaking Dawn, 90210, Immortals), Samuel Jackson, Nina Dobrev (Vampire Diaries) and Daniel Day Kim (Lost). Written by Robert Martinez and Michael Hultquist. Directed by Jonah Loop.

The story: a man's wife and unbron child are killed and he goes on a drinking spree where he gets kidnapped and forced to fight in various to-the-death matches that are being shown over the internet. At first he refuses, but then a man he befriends is killed and he agrees to fight to win his freedom and get the chance to kill the executioner who killed his friend. Additionally, the fights are all different with various computer generated settings.

Was it good?

No. No, no, no, no, no. It wasn't even so-bad-it's-good bad. It was just bad. First, the fight scenes. This is an action movie and the fight scenes need to be cool as hell. And they weren't. They were worse than in the tv show Spartacus. They're not as good as you'd see on Buffy or Alias either.

The rest of the movie isn't any better. If you've ever sat through bad action movies you know they all have a lot in common -- over-the-top acting, bad stories that don't really make sense, 1-dimensional characters, plot twists that don't really make sense but are supposed to be cool. This movie has all of them. It's just that bad.

*** AVOID ***

THE OTHER GUYS (a review)

THE OTHER GUYS (a review)

A comedy starring Will Farrell and Mark Wahlberg about two cops who try to take over for a pair of daring hero cops who get killed. Also stars Dwayne Johnson (the Rock), Samuel Jackson, Eva Mendes and Michael Keaton.

The story: two hero cops get killed chasing bad guys and two other cops (Farrell and Wahlberg), one of whom wants to be a hero cop and the other who is happy doing paperwork, try to step up and stop a major crime. Sort of.

Was it good?

YES.

I know I'm not explaining it well, but this movie is a little more odd, then a similar movie COP OUT(Bruce Willis, Tracy Morgan, directed by Kevin Smith) and between the two this is a much better movie -- it's bigger and weirder and funnier. At the same time it's harder to explain because because the crime they are foiling is a little weird and they come at it in a very strange way. You see there's this guy who lost a lot of money -- like a couple hundred Billion -- and so he's going to pull this scam to try to get it back. Except the cops don't know anything about it. In fact, Farrell's character arrests him for some permit violations, except then these guys steal him back right out of police custody which leads them to think something is up, but they don't figure it out until the end.

So it's a police movie where it isn't clear who the bad guy is or what's going on or even if there is really a crime for most of the movie. But it still works. And the reason it works is because it's funny. It's funny the way COP OUT wanted to be, with all the weird antics of the cops and all the strange and funny dialog. Plus this movie has this nice twist that it starts out with two other hero cops who pull the kind of ridiculous over the top stunts you only see in movies, and then when they are killed our two protagonists struggle to become the next hero cops. It's better because one of them wants to be a hero and the other doesn't, but then of course learns to embrace his crazy hero side too.

I liked COP OUT. But I liked THE OTHER GUYS a lot more. A LOT MORE.

**** RECOMMEND ****