Wild Hogs-Movie review

Wild hogs-attempted comic harmony

This time Touchstone pictures ride forward with a side-splitting tale of a band of bikers. The director Walt Becker walks off receiving applause for well guiding the vacillate story of Brad Copeland. But the latter could be felicitated for his avant-garde characterisation. The movie rolls on well with comic crackers and romance sparklers but falls short of its destination. It loses its escape velocity half way through. Whatsoever this one is a comic conjuror and a a decent family vaudeville. It would be much better without its ending bend. With a trickle of stars the director makes a good show.May be this the reason why there is no running credits at the beginning but at the end of the movie.

The movie flags off with the rendition of four middle age men{mathematically!} who are looking for some adventure in their life. The first of them is Woody Stevens{John Travolta}who was a businessman is a pauper now living alone. Doug Madsen{Tim Allen}is a dentist who is in love with his past college days and fails to connect himself with his school-going son comes next. Bobby Davis{Martin Lawrence}, who is a plumber often annoyed by the big wigging of his wife and pestering kids falls next. Then comes Dudley Frank{William H. Macy} who is a computer programmer looking for a companion of the opposite gender. All of them feel that they live an artificial caged life and decide to ride free. As a result of this they sketch to go on a cross-country ride without any modern day gadgets and immediately enforce their plan by plunging into action. They go on their journey exploring what freedom is. But to our surprise they learn new things. As a part of their ride they have a contretemps with a group of violent biker bullies called Del Fuegos. Dudley finds his lady love in Maggie{Marisa Tomei} in a town called Madrid followed by the vengeance of Jack, the leader of Del Fuegos which Woody had towed in. The comic wheel starts swirling in our stomach when our heroes start spinning the action wheel with gusto. Definitely this movie would be a very fresh and creamy treat for the audience who are stultified by stereotyped movies.

This movie gives us a feel of reading a picaresque novel, moving from place to place, crisis to crisis. The dialogues are very down to earth like a bike and not hiked like a jet, which inturn adds verisimilitude to the storyline. John Travolta travels vibrantly in his Woody stevens bike, stealing our hearts as well as stomachs while rest of the actors ride their character bikes accordingly. Even the characters which occupy a tad time onscreen give a long lasting effect. In particular the cop who follows the hogs, Jack the felon, the Sheriff and his twin comrades score well. In the scenes, the rodeo as well as the riding ones rock. Wild Hogs’ bike starts well, gears up well, but breaks down when a Deus Ex Machina steps onscreen and cut the story strings. This gives us a bad feeling about this good movie.The movie goes six and seven when it reaches its denoument.Though done wantonly the picturisation appear to be a worn out one, smelling of old sawdust.

Taking the technichal aspects of this movie into concern, Robbie Greenberg’s cinematography and the soundtrack by various artists comes first, followed by Christopher Greenbury’s editing. It would have been better if the director had spun the second half of the movie well. As of July 15th this movie stands 8th in ticket sales worldwide. This comic rattler is rattling the box office. So Wild Hogs say,” We often take diversions, seldom take the road ahead!”

-Spontic 

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Die Hard 4.0 – Movie review

Die hard 4.0- Rollicking rodeo!

The big daddy is back again, this time banging his way against Virtual-terrorism. The master cook has presented us a costly sandwich which contains action spread in both the slices. The movie begins in action,progresses in action action and climaxes in action action action. But this time the action gamer uses a computer geek as his trump card in his game of tie or die. So the masterboard Len Wiseman has roller-coastered his way up. In much simpler words, “Two foot up”{isn’t it thumbs up? but thumbs are way too small to explain this big movie!}.

The plot is like an yummy chocolate cake which contains ample action plums than the tasty story cakesponge. The movie begins when a cult extinguishes a few of the leading hackers, through their computer itself. In the meantime, the FBI assigns the NYPD Police Detective John McClane{Bruce Willis} to inquire a prominent and protuberant hacker Matthew Farrell {Justin Long} regarding the recent security hack in an FBI network, but the former goes their only to save the latter from being assassinated by the people of the same cult. Now John McClane takes custody of Matthew Farrell and fights his way to the FBI’s Washington DC headquarters, by blasting the strange henchmen who are on their mission to massacre both the cop and computer pop. On their way John McClane learns that the leading hackers had applied their brains to program a devilishly serious software named “Fire sale” for the insane mastermind Thomas Gabriel {Timothy Olyphant}, who inturn had murdered them and now on his way to help Matthew Farrell to his grave. Now the die hard cop McClane sketches out his plans with the help of chill out hacker Farrell to save his nation once again from devilishly tough clutches of Thomas Gabriel. At a particular point of time McClane kills Gabriel’s girlfriend Mai Linh {Maggie Q} and Gabriel starts blackmailing him by holding his daughter Lucy {Mary Elizabeth Winstead} as a hostage. Things start rolling further heavily. Cars, bullets, guns, helicopters, cops and criminals and what else you need to boost up your adrenaline?! Dont watch it, feel it!

This action blockbuster has a good story but poorly carved screenplay. The screenplay starts well but loses it consistency due to the intervention of too much of action anvils and adventure hammers. The subtle humour which exists inbetween the Atlas action scenes come in handy. Also the relationship between the police father and his daughter has Titanic of holes and needs caulking. At times the action sounds push back the background score. In a long run too much of action becomes a galleon of sour milk. Also the paths and plans made by our epic heroes induces us to prepare a questionnaire against them. Further this is helped by the loose ending except for the manner in which McClane kills Gabriel. Due to a lot of codes, memos, hacks and computers, the story becomes a layman’s maze. It would be better if the director had tried to be down to earth in the concepts used and precised the story line.

Once again Bruce Willis has proved that he runs ahead of many others in the Hollywood’s action race. The hyper-policism fits him as well. Its underlined by the humour in his dialogues and actions. Without him this movie would be without helm. The new comer Justin Long has done his boyy,hacky role well. Coming to the technicians, each and every one of them shoulder this ship well. Though suppressed at times Marco Beltrami’s music is not blameworthy. Of course it takes you to the edge of your seat when it’s allowed to jump out. After a rating controversy this movie is sculpted with a PG-13 rating. Bruce willis says,“I really wanted this one to live up to the promise of the first one, which I always thought was the only really good one.” to Vanity Fair magazine. As he pinpoints, this movie will rattle the cash registers at the box office. So Die hard cries out, “Strong Manline action can make prongs online surrender”
– Spontic

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