13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi: Film Review

13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi: Film Review

Cast: John Krasinski, James Badge Dale, Pablo Schreiber, David Denman
Director: Michael Bay

With a more restrained touch and a degree of maturity, director Michael Bay's more excessive touches appear reined in in this film based on a true story.

When a US ambassador's compound is over-run in Benghazi after several waves of terrorist attacks on September 11th, 2012, it falls to six defence military contractors to try and save the day.

But, as this sat in direct opposition to orders from their CIA chief, the men felt doing the right thing was more important than bureaucracy, and put their lives on the line for 13 hours.

With the likes of American Sniper and Lone Survivor blazing the trail for homegrown hero stories, and coupled with the master of Bayhem at the helm, you'd expect that 13 Hours would be an all guts, all glory, guns blazing type of affair.

But what Michael Bay has done - despite characterisation of the men being more than a little lacking - is craft something tense which transcends its Call Of Duty: Benghazi potential and which delivers taut suspense that's as close to enthralling as any base under siege story can match.

Sure, it hits the tropes and cliches of the genre thanks to scenes of the guys bonding and reaching out to loved ones just prior to fateful events going down as well as its occasionally cliched dialogue, but as it ratchets up to its sickening end, it remains a compelling watch.  It's largely thanks to a controlled level of chaos and a major dose of mistrust that you're never quite sure who's on the right side as the team of six snake their way through the streets - the powderkeg does blow but Bay manages to prolong it to keep you guessing where and when it will go off.

As the leads, The Office star John Krasinki (all buff and beardsy) and James Badge Dale imbue their weary contractor characters with an appeal that will see you empathising with them and hoping they make it, despite their having cursory slight back-story.

But it's Michael Bay who delivers the biggest surprise here with his usual patriotic and jingoistic fare, all wrapped in a hyper-real colour palette and complete with compulsory final shot American flag motif in place - dialled down a bit more than usual. Granted, the men hardly stand apart from each other and when the emotional moments inevitably come, it makes it hard for them to be sympathised with as you're not sure who's been taken down.

13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi may be close to war porn at times, but it never falls short of delivering a tense experience that's heart in its mouth gripping from the moment the action begins.

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Shayne and Aurox, Whiskey Foxtrot, and Kelvin unveiled

Shayne and Aurox, Whiskey Foxtrot, and Kelvin unveiled

 2K and Gearbox Software introduced Shayne and Aurox, Whiskey Foxtrot, and Kelvin, three new playable heroes for the upcoming hero-shooter Battleborn, which launches with 25 playable heroes on PS4, Xbox One and PC on May 3, 2016.  

Shayne and Aurox, Whiskey Foxtrot, and Kelvin are the weird oddities of the Battleborn heroes, and like all Battleborn, are available to play in both competitive multiplayer matches, as well as the game’s Story Mode – which can be played singleplayer, co-op up to 5 players, or 2-player splitscreen. First in the trenches, Whiskey Foxtrot is an offbeat and imperfect facsimile of a soldier. Using scavenged armor and jerry-rigged weapons, everything about Whiskey Foxtrot just seems “off,” but his homemade UPR-SL3 tactical rifle, sticky bombs, and scrap canon can help turn the tide of any battle. At first glance, Kelvin appears to be a hulking ice golem, but is in fact an entire microorganism civilization that, together, form a single sentient being that smashes, chomps and freezes its enemies for the survival of the species. Another unlikely team-up, Shayne was already a bratty teenage girl at the end of the universe with nothing to lose, but her bond with the space creature known as Aurox has made her nearly unstoppable. Joined at the hip, these symbiotic furies strive to utterly demolish their foes through a mixture of brute force and stealth.

You can read a lot more about both characters, including about how they play in-game in today’s official introduction post on the Battleborn blog: https://battleborn.com/en/news/view/en-battleborn-whiskey-foxtrot-kelvin-shayne-and-aurox-reveal/ 

Tom Clancy's The Division - Survival Guide

Tom Clancy's The Division - Survival Guide

SURVIVAL GUIDE

To view the trailer click the image below

Within the margins of this real survival guide, written before the collapse, lies a mystery— the story of a woman struggling to survive and to discover why New York City fell. Retrace her steps through the city in mid-crisis and solve her clues to reveal the key secrets at the heart of Tom Clancy’s The Division.

Concussion: Film Review

Concussion: Film Review

Cast: Will Smith, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Albert Brooks, David Morse, Alec Baldwin
Director: Peter Landesman

Based on the book Game Brain and a "True story", Concussion is a worthy but slightly overblown drama about the after effects of American football.

In Pittsburgh (all drab greys and dour palettes) Smith plays Nigerian pathologist Bennet Omalu who's on duty when Pittsburgh Steelers legend Mike Webster (a bloated David Morse) is brought in after apparently committing suicide.

But as the home-town hero is dissected, Omalu falls foul of the fact he's an outsider and that he doesn't watch or understand football. And when further NFL players end up in the mortuary, Omalu begins to feel he should speak for the dead with his proof that repeated collisions lead to life-altering brain injuries - despite the fact no one wants to listen.

Concussion is more a fumble than a touchdown to be frank.

Smith and fellow performer and love interest Mbatha-Raw are usually stars with immense charisma on screen and whose star-wattage usually brings an energetic level to the screen. Wisely dialled down, Smith is more of a dim bulb burning brightly in a film that's earnest but never quite manages to vault its ambitions of celebrating the American dream and overcoming the odds.

Despite a brilliant turn by Albert Brooks as Dr Cyril Wecht, Omalu's mentor who injects some life and some dry wit into the proceedings, this above the line TV movie never manages to fully get off the sideline. Baldwin also manages to give some life to an-off-the-page whistleblower but never soars.

A domestic storyline for Omalu in the form of his love feels shoe-horned in and is turned to when the drama demands a break rather than out of narrative necessity; equally brief glimpses of the players do little to build character before they end up on the slab where Omalu talks gently to them, leading the audience to feel nothing for their demise.

The true horror of the film is the fact these collisions continue to take place and that the NFL is apparently aware of them but refuse to warn players. It's here the dramatic meat of the story lies and the shock factor should have hit home, despite Concussion being over-stuffed with plot. Had it been streamlined and some of the drama benched, it could have been so much more.

But despite everything Smith does in a just above average performance, Concussion's desire to overly ram home the point with an overt over-use of head-crunching footy footage does nothing to further the cause and may have you leaving the cinema scratching your head before forgetting all that's passed.

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How To Be Single: Film Review

How To Be Single: Film Review

Cast: Dakota Johnson, Rebel Wilson, Leslie Mann, Alison Brie
Director: Christian Ditter

Here we go, another NYC set rom com where a group of single ladies navigate the scene with mixed and apparently hilarious results.

Based on Liz Tuccillo's novel of the same name, How To Be Single follows 50 Shades of Grey star Dakota Johnson's Alice who dumps her college boyfriend of four years so she can see what life as a singleton is like.

Working as a paralegal in a firm, she makes friends with Rebel Wilson's Robin, who parties most of the night and encourages her to play the field. But as she does so, she finds herself falling into more relationships than she desires and dealing with the fallout from them.

How To Be Single is frankly a mess.

Despite its intentions to be different and its desire to present women as needing no men in their lives to get by, the film hits every rom-com cliche and feels so generic that it fails to stand out from the crowd as it plays out.

While Johnson does the best she can with her relatively two dimensional character, she's the only one to fare reasonably by the script, which seems determined to put the women back in relationships, rather than explore their single-ladies-ness.

Rebel Wilson exists only to be the party-hard blow hard (in fact, her introduction in the piece feels like the writers took the club sequence of her sitcom Super Fun Night and re-purposed it) and despite attempts to beef her up at the end with some back-story, she's nothing more than a cypher. Equally Mann's workaholic OB-GYN nurse who decides she wants a baby ends up as nothing more than a kooky crazy unable to express her feelings. Worst of all is Alison Brie, who ends up shoe-horned into proceedings, never appears to gel with the rest of the group and whose OCD to use computers to find the perfect match and explodes when things don't go well would normally see her prescribed some kind of medication, but is here exploited for laughs (cause we all have a crazed friend, right, ladies?).

Occasionally the script makes nods to pop culture (both Sex and the City and Ross' desire to take a break are the best throwaway lines) but How To Be Single aspires to be nothing more than chick kryptonite as it exploits its NYC tourism spots and its protagonists' propensity for kookiness.

While ladies on a night out may get something out of this film, How To Be Single serves only low hanging fruit and offers the pantheon of rom-coms nothing new, preferring to proffer up cliches and patchily painful moments.

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Agatha Christie: The ABC Murders: PS4 Review

Agatha Christie: The ABC Murders: PS4 Review

Platform: PS4

There's something about detectives currently - and classic ones even more.

With the retooling of Sherlock Holmes for the 21st Century and with games like Crime and Punishment on the go, it's clear the obsession with the franchise is a long way from dying.

And certainly that edge is no more apparent than with Agatha Christie: The ABC Murders which captures some of the artwork stylings of a Telltale Games release and paints it into a Poirot shaped curio that's fun to play.

The point and click mystery that's based on one of Agatha Christie's famed tales is certainly a different gaming experience that sees you taking on the role of Hercule Poirot, the funny little man whose puzzle solving prowess is renowned.

With the central impetus being the need to solve three murders over the course of a few hours, the game's pacing is certainly not in question. And the character of Poirot is spot on too, with your responses helping the man to gather either ego points or being dismissed by others, it's fair to say that your style of game play will influence the outcome somewhat.

While the MO is relatively simple (go to an area, explore, examine and talk to some people) its art execution is nothing short of brightly entertaining. The sheer cartooniness of the proceedings and the almost caricature like renderings of the heroes involved make Agatha Christie: The ABC Murders like no other point and play game that's been encountered.

The game's relatively short too, but its playability (even with some occasionally flawed vocal capture) make it something completely different for the console world currently. Agatha Christie: The ABC Murders may not be everyone's bag, but its police procedural stylings, mixed with its arty tendencies give it a USP that's undeniable.

Black Mass: Blu Ray Review

Black Mass: Blu Ray Review

Rating: M
Released by Roadshow Home Ent

From the acting ashes, rises Johnny Depp.

Ever the buffoon on screen, Depp rediscovers his acting roots in a return to form that'll make you forgive and forego his outings as Mortdecai, Jack Sparrow and that vampire from Dark Shadows.

In this grimy gangster flick, Depp is Jimmy Whitey Bulger, the notorious Boston criminal who made his way into the headlines in the way the likes of Henry Hill and Tony Soprano rose through the ranks. But it turns out that Bulger was playing the FBI in the shape of former street buddy, John Connolly (Joel Edgerton, all highly coiffed hair and braggadacio) and getting the FBI to do his work for him, taking out other crime-lords and leaving the streets open to his taking.

Out Of the Furnace director Cooper is well versed in the likes of the grime, having shepherded Christian Bale through a role of misery in a drab setting - and here, he once again drains the palette of all colour and the story of all forms of life. Horrendous 70s beige, browns and moustaches bedeck the  admittedly all-star (but under-utilised) cast and surroundings as the story unfolds.

And in the centre of all the dour and drab story is Depp's Bulger, a gangster villain that's gone the way via an undead creature, Blow, Donnie Brasco, liver spots, One Hour Photo and a pastiche of every criminal with a seething edge we've seen before.

A scene early on sees him issuing parenting advice under the umbrella of "It's not what you do, it's when and how you do it" that serve as a tone for his conduct within the turf wars and tantalisingly hints at what could have been given the film's joyful insistence on refusing to glorify the way of the gangs and those caught in their thrall.

Equally, a one-on-one sequence with Connolly's wife, who's become so appalled by the circles her husband's running in, crackles with unease and monstrous uncertainty. Depp's almost inhuman Bulger is perhaps the best part of Black Mass and solely the reason to watch. It's a film that ironically never really reaches critical mass due to an ineptly paced script that misses all the emotional beats. Key moments and characters in Bulger's life (such as his wife and son) simply disappear at wildly inappropriate moments, as they fall by the narrative wayside.

It's not a film that builds an ascent and plots a rapid descent for any of its protagonists, a route which many like Goodfellas and Casino have gone before - and unfortunately while to be commended for doing something different, it never quite negotiates its own route as it jumps between Connolly, Bulger and those around them. Some of the problem is that the script dictates time jumps and leap frogs emotional moments in the script that would go more to creating a portrait of Bulger and a reason for his rallying paranoia - the same goes for Connolly whose seduction into Bulger's world is all too easy. Equally, falling back on using interviews as exposition becomes lazy and a get-out clause for Cooper's story - and replaces anything transpiring on screen and serving to build character and elicit empathy or sympathy for anyone involved.

Ultimately, when the comeuppance for all arises, the consequences of this mass of errors and dour maudlin preceding is that there's a palpable lack of any kind of catharsis or joy; and a post film coda lacks any kind of resonance and frustratingly hints at where a better film would lie;Black Mass skirts around the character of Bulger and as a result, doesn't serve either him, the supporting players or the audience in the way that perhaps a great gangster film should have done.

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