When you’ve got hind quarters like Jessica Alba, acting skills are optional. In Into the Blue, she plays Sam, a young woman living in the Bahamas with her diving instructor boyrfriend, Jared (Paul Walker). Together they scrape together a humble life on an old house boat. For Jared, being a diving instructor is just his day job, as he dreams of an exciting life as a prospector, hunting for buried treasure. A hurricane has recently swept through and he hastily gets fired, deciding that his time is now and that it’s “all part of the plan”.

The bad guy is introduced early in the form of Bates (Josh Brolin, the only real actor here), a successful prospector and bona fide asshole. He and Jared have a macho rivalry, though Jared doesn’t have much to show for it.

The plot thickens when Jared’s friend Bryce (Scott Caan) and his girlfriend of five days (Ashely Scott) arrive. Bryce has the dough that Jared needs to start doing some serious treasure hunting. Bryce is also a show off who is willing to put his pocket before his heart. Things start to get complicated when one of their diving expeditions leads to a sunken plane filled with cocaine. At this point, a moral battle starts bubbling to the surface. Jared can definitely use the money and for Blake there really is no question. Sam, however, will have nothing of it.

Into the Blue has magnificent underwater sequences, not the least of whcih involve Jessica Alba flummoxing about. On the other hand, the flim is often very lame, in particular when the cheesy soundtrack kicks in or when the wooden actors poorly deliver badly written dialogue. Big no five to Scott Caan whose non-performance is one of the worst I’ve ever seen. Paul Walker is a bit less inept, and he certainly does have that blue-eyed, hawk look appeal, but he would be much more at home in an Abercrombie and Fitch catalog. Into the Blue is certainly nice to look at, but you won’t discover much beneath the surface.

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Harsh Times, directed by the David Ayer, writer of Training Day, is the story of a former army ranger. Jim Luther Davis, played by Christian Bale, readjusting back to civilian life. Davis is one majorly conflicted guy. On the one hand he’s got his best friend Mike Alonzo (Freddy Rodriguez) and a penchance for chugging canned beer in his car, and on the other, straightening out, mid joint, to answer a phone call offering him a job at the Department of Homeland Security. He’s also got his “old lady”, a pretty Mexican girl (Tammy Trull) who lives in a tiny village in Mexico.

As in Training Day, Ayer places the majority of his scenes in moving cars. I guess, this is a way to keep things moving and pepper the dialogue, though Harsh Times in particular, is not exactly what you’d call plot heavy. I guess you can take this film as a mood piece, two guys cruising the streets of southern California, trying to be adults, and yet unable to repress their rather primitive intimacy.

Christian Bale is known for his extreme taste in film roles. He’ll always rank extremely high in my book for his amazing performance in American Psycho. I’m still not sure if he pulls off his character in Harsh Times. Somehow, I always see something somewhat refined and noble in his inner core, even when he’s spewing out the word “dude” every other sentence. As an actor he has a ton of intensity, but it seems kind of wasted here. His best friend Mike seems so wimpy in comparison, that the balance is off.

For a celebrated screenwriter like Avery, it’s hard not to be disappointed by much of the dialogue in this film. A few action sequences might have helped push things along, but this movie essentially boils down to immature adults chatting away about how they’re going to get wasted. The film gets boring pretty quickly.

Harsh Times is somewhat noteable for Bale’s character. A mentally disturbed vet who really wants to get back into the game, but this time on domestic soil. It’s terrifying, and Bale’s intense performance is the only thing driving an otherwise dull film.

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Street Kings is advertised as being directed by the writer of Training Day, which in my opinion, doesn’t say a whole lot. The ability to write a good film does not automatically make you a good director. Furthermore, Street Kings is not even written by David Ayer, the writer of Training Day, just directed by him. To be fair, Ayer does have one film, Harsh Times, under his belt as director.

Street Kings does have a a few big guns in its pack. Hot off his heels as an Academy Award winner, Forest Whitacker plays police captain Jack Wander. Wander is totally loyal to troubled detective, Tom Ludlow, played by a moping Keanu Reeves. Ludlow has a bad habit of drinking a few minibar bottles of Smirnoff and then heading into a house full of Korean gangsters without backup. Through his huffing and overly serious behavior, we realized that Reeves’ character is bothered by something. To quote Reeves’ most famous film dialogue, “Whoa”.

Ludlow’s gotten into a bit of trouble for his awful police work, and rightfully so, though we’re supposed to understand him and sympathize. Reeves does his darndest to with every acting bone and muscle in his body to show us that he’s battling inner demons. In capable hands, this could have been a character I really liked. Reeves, however, can’t do much more than avoid eye contact. This might have worked in other films, where other actors could have picked up the slack, but in a movie boasting a number of rappers/actors, Jay Mohr with a stupid mustache, and Whitacker who sounds like he’s foaming at the mouth the whole time, it just doesn’t cut it.

And yet, I keep getting away from the storyline. The fact is, there is not much of a story here. Reeves’ Ludlow mopes around, gets in a few gun battles, shows us he’s an unorthodox police officer. A fellow officer who he apparently used to be friends with, gets mowed down. Ludlow happens to be there, wants to get revenge. He then gets in over his head in some really bad stuff. All in all, really bland material. The interesting thing about Training Day was watching notorious good guy Denzel Washington play against the grain. In Street Kings we have notorious troubled inner demons guy Keanu Reeves doing the same thing he always does. Sure, he’s playing an insane detective who is the kind of guy who probably would have fit right in with the Stasi, but because he’s doing the Keanu vibe the whole time, we barely notice it.

One final word about the whole actor/rapper phenomenon. What’s the deal? 8 mile, where Eminem played a version of his rapper persona, was a load of crap, and I really like Eminem. Ludicrous in Crash was decent, but other than for box office returns, I can’t really see why they couldn’t have picked a capable actor. In Street Kings you’ve got Common and The Game both playing L.A. crime figures, in other words, not too far from their rapper personas. I though Method Man was pretty awful in American Gangster, but at least he was playing a straight cop. This is a trend that has just got to stop. I wonder if I’m the only one annoyed by gangster rappers playing their gangster rapper characters in movies. (In other words, not themselves, but copies of what they copy in real life. I’m getting a headache just thinking about it.)

I really do enjoy a good action flick once in a while and I’m also totally cool with the whole Dirty Harry badass cop thing, but this movie really gets nothing right. If this thing had been a TV pilot, I doubt it would have ever passed the first round. Skip it.

An up and coming public prosecutor with a near perfect record takes on what looks like a cut-and-dry attempted murder case. Only problem is, it’s actually not really in the bag. Even after a hasty confession, the accused has done a great job covering his tracks. The bullet is lodged in his comatose wife’s brain and the gun has mysteriously disappeared. What ensues is a gutsy battle of wits between the attorney played extra tangy by Jake Gosling and his nemesis, played by what I guess is supposed to be an Irish Anthony Hopkins.

This is the umpteenth time we’ve seen Hopkins rehash his Hannibal Lector masterstroke and, personally, I can’t get enough of it. I even loved watching John Malkovitch channeling Lector in Ripley’s Game. Don’t get me wrong, the movie was horrible, but you can’t help but relish Malkovitch snarling, “Hold my watch because if it breaks I’ll kill everyone on this train.” Good times.

Hopkins is the only the good thing about this movie. I couldn’t stand Gosling’s overdone accent. It’s supposed to show that he doesn’t quite fit in with his rich girlfriend, a decent Rosamund Pike, and her people. It’s not all Gosling’s fault. The script doesn’t give him much too work with and the film doesn’t take the time flesh out his character. Then again, I didn’t really care to know any thing else about him. He’s caught in the tug of war between career advancement and doing the right thing. Deep in his heart, he seems more concerned with the former, even if we are shown otherwise.

Another problem with this film is the complete waste of Embeth Davidtz, who plays Hopkins’ wife. Her pre-comatose part is so brief, and yet the her character is left undefined. It’s hard to figure out what she would be doing with a creep like Hopkins and if you’ve got a talent like Davidtz on your hands, you’re a feel to not let her have a bit more screen time.

The sight of a detective played by Billy Burke also gave me the shudders. He also plays in the more recent disaster “Untraceable”, and the guy belongs on a soap opera. No offense, but when he undergoes a rather painful transformation later in the film, it’s hard to really care. It’s as pathetic as his attempt to portray a pathetic character.

If you like all things Hannibal Lector as much as I do, this movie will be worth your time. All in all though, it’s plot starts to wear thin, very fast. In fact, after the film completely runs out of steam, it takes a lame turn, a moment when many people probably left the theater. Fracture is a middling average legal thriller.

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From the get go, Lord of War is on to a good thing. Here you have a unique take a on an arms dealer, played smirky as hell by Nicolas Cage. This is trademark Cage, so if you hate him, as many do, you’re not going to like it. I, on the other hand, acting skills aside, feel a strange affinity towards him, so I see that as a good thing. Still, the movie is heavy on the narration and rubs it in, way in, that they’ve got a fascinating topic to run with.

Cages’s sidekick brother (in arms), played by wannabe rock star Jared Leto, is a bit too reminiscent of what down in Face Off, and after a certain point he plays nothing more than dead weight. The other top gun is Cage’s nemesis, played by Ethan Hawke. He’s actually a bit unspectacular in the role. I didn’t even notice him at first because he just looked so boring. They shoudl have given him a little tick, like a strange haircut or something. He’s too clean cut, too moral, and sports the ugliest sunglasses.

The movie has a ton of international flair and insight into politics. It is a movie, but one gets the sense that some of Cage’s narrative shields does ring true. Whether he’s talking about the end of the cold war or conflicts in the Middle East and Africa, we feel like we’re getting insider’s view on the world’s power plays.

Of course, there has to be a love interest. In this case, it’s an unattainable billboard model with a desperate past. It gets off to a good start, but is quicky degraded to marriage mush. I’m not saying we had to go Mr and Mrs Smith here, but Cage’s character and his wife just lag on screen. His ambivalence towards her, makes us feel the same, and then we’re just waiting for the scenes with her to be over.

Unlike many a film, Lord of War, actually has a very well-done ending. Though, not a great movie, by any means, if you’re interested in another way of viewing the ways of today’s world, check it out.

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