Missed Movies: The Mechanic

***WARNING***

THE FOLLOWING REVIEW MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS AND CONTRADICTIONS THEREFORE IT MAYBE UNSUITABLE FOR SOME FUCKS. IT WILL ALSO ROCK YOUR WORLD LIKE AN EARTHQUAKE AND HAVE YOU RUNNING FOR COVER LIKE A TSUNAMI.  

 ***YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED***

Going into this review you are all in no doubt expecting me to bend this film over hot coals and proceed to nail it in the darkest of dark voids with something big sharp and most likely infected with some nasty disease. I must warn you upfront though that I have no intention of doing so as I am a not so closeted fan of  all out stupid brain-dead action movies. I for one do not understand the hundreds and thousands of critics out there who insist their films come with rich well written characters, detailed plots and unexpected twists. Sure I love all that stuff too but sometimes I just wanna' turn off my brain and let the big explosions and fast pacing take me away and entertain my on my most Neanderthal of mental planes. With this in mind lets get on with 'The Mechanic'.

As the attentive, regular persons that form my 30ish page views per post will recall, I have been thwarted from seeing this film twice by my local Odeon regime. The result in having to wait this long to see a film while suffering the worst cold ever is akin to a pubescent teen experiencing his first erection at the family dinner table, then having to wait for years before he gets his first handjob, the end result will inevitably disappoint due to the unavoidable build up not to mention leaving you with a massive amount of gunk to clean up. Ok so maybe that analogy was a little thin, but it allows me to segway seamlessly into the films plot which is equally thin.

Jason Statham is not what he makes himself out to be. He is (in this film) a Mechanic, however the definition this film gives for a Mechanic is "somebody who fixes things" and not "a burly chap who overcharges for car repairs". I do understand however that ' The Guy Who Kills People Who He Is Told Too' isn't exactly cinemas most gripping title and also provides the brains of the action genres biggest fans with too many words which would no doubt lead them into buying tickets for 'Paul' instead simply because its easier to say. So Statham is a mechanic who has nothing to do with mechanics, in the same way The Carphone Warehouse has nothing to do with Car-phones. Now we have got that straight the story is about Jason Statham who runs around killing people and occasionally takes his shirt off. Then he is forced to take the son of his dead mentor under his wing and teach him the tricks of the trade and as a result there are some explosions. Its a typical action story which fits the film well but will not supply enough substance for the more intellectually stimulated film snobs out there. There is the odd moment in the film where things get bogged down in exposition and the ensemble are required to put down their guns and let their mouths do the talking instead. These are by far the worst moments in the film, happily they are few and far between.

Jason Staham is now an action star. Almost annually we get new ammo to load into the Statham weapon of mass destruction and in each film our hero is exactly the same. He has a gruff English accent, he hasn't been shaving very well, he has lost his shirt and has very little on his mind other than putting the hurt on many, many people. It's never a taxing role for him but he is very good at it now and no matter what he is doing, its enjoyable to watch him do it. Jason aside the acting is atrocious and completely pointless which is again perfect for this kind of film. Its simply pretty women, ugly men and Jason Statham blowing shit up and shooting people as if life itself was going out of fashion. Its dumb, stupid and the perfect companion to a beer or six.

As I mentioned way back when this review started, the wait and unavoidable build up I had was going to take its toll on 'The Mechanic'. While I can see that this is not the best Statham adventure to date it does have its place somewhere in the middle of the score board. It by far surpasses 'C(rap)h(anous)a(nd)o(ver)s(isckening)' and 'Death Race in 60 seconds up the fast and furious mountain', it lacks the all out ballsyness of the Crank franchise and doesn't have the magic possessed by all three Transporter films. 'The Mechanic' has all the right ingredients but lacks the flavor. Its the Ready Salted action film. But if I'm honest, I think the film was damaged more by my waiting to see it rather than its own quality.

Thanks Odeon Oxford, now go jump into a Japanese Reactor.

The Mechanic who isn't a mechanic but is in fact a man who kills people who he is told to kill because its what he's bestest at in the whole wide world gets...

                                                             

                                                                                                                                      2 out of 5

    

Missed Movies: The Social Network

THIS REVIEW IS TAKEN FROM www.fucking-movies.co.uk WHERE IT CAN BE SEEN IN ITS INTENDED FORM.

***WARNING***

THE FOLLOWING REVIEW MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS AND CONTRADICTIONS THEREFORE IT MAYBE UNSUITABLE FOR SOME FUCKS. IT ASLO TAKES THE ENTIRE SOCIAL EXPERIENCE OF COLLEGE AND PUTS IT ONLINE, MINUS THE HARD DRUG USE, EXCESSIVE SEX AND OBSESSION WITH SHIT PROG ROCK/INDIE MUSIC.  

 ***YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED***

I, like the rest of the insignificant people that make up my world, detest facebook. It supplies the voyeur in me with more power than it should safely receive, makes me mad at people for nothing more than a simple status update and takes up way too much of my online browsing time. At this time I have 88 friends on my facebook profile and I can safely say that I actually know 18 of them. The remaining 70 are only there so I can nose into their private lives, take a snoop around and then leave again unnoticed safe in the knowledge that I am still better than they are (thats right Guy Keown, I’m talking about you). Besides this rather cheap form of entertainment and the odd occasion when it allows me to remain lazy and wall post rather than calling someone to ask if their free, facebook is pretty much a waste of mine and everybody else's time. So why the fuck did David Fincher (one of my favorite current directors) decide to make the film about it?

The short answer is, he didn’t.

‘The Social Network’ is about a bunch of unlikable rich kids who attend that famous university (or college) in America that hands out “fuck you” degrees to people who really don’t need any more encouragement. Of the mentioned unlikeables we have a pair of rowing twins who stomp around breaking door knobs and shouting at the top of their lungs in words that are clearly way to long for them to understand which is made obvious when the said words never contain ‘beef’ or ‘cake’. We have another rich kid who is so out of touch with the world that he sees absolutely no issue in spending almost twenty grand as a result of a five minute conversation. And one other total arse hole who gets dumped for being a dick head and as a result sets the wheels into motion that will eventually dumb the worlds population by removing us the need to meet new people for real and provide my voyeuristic alter ego (Raymond the Wonder Roll) with the tools he needs in order to sniff around ex-girlfriends and the dudes she has banged since. That arse hole, in case you couldn’t work it out, is Mark Zuckerberg, the creator of facebook.

As I said the film is about a bunch of unlikeables which makes ‘The Social Network’ a seemingly hard film to enjoy. Every character is played realistically, which means I was always going to enjoy their company as much as I enjoy Meryl Streeps face which itself resembles an old sandwich bag filled with bacon bits and left to go rotten before being beaten with a welsh midgets erectile disfunction. The film itself joyfully skips from one appalling moment to the next while interspersing an equally distressing legal battle set a few years after the main story. What is odd though is that despite the film dripping with the last decades bile it still manages to hold your attention and sustain your interest for almost two hours. The script is incredibly well written, its completely dialogue driven with the exception of that one scene where Zuckerberg gets ten of his mates to rob three of Las Vegas’s largest casinos which struck me as quite an odd plot development, but the Albanian bloke I bought the DVD from insisted that that’s pretty much how it all went down so I went along with it.

The actors contained within are all pretty much spot on in terms of their portrayal of the characterizations of the real people whom most of the story is based. Jesse Eisenberg pulls off a role that finally convinced me he wasn’t actually Michael Cera in a bad mask. You believe that his Zuckerberg could actually make the decisions he inevitably does and in rather a brave step leaves the character with almost no good sides what so ever. Timberlake is turning out pretty well also portraying Napster co creator Sean Parker. My favorite Fincher puppet in ‘The Social Network’ however has to be Andrew Garfield as Eduardo Saverin. Eduardo’s story in the film takes him through a massive array of complex emotions. From happy and drunk to hurt and betrayed to angry and vengeful, the part is truly played almost to perfection and despite the character still being a unlikeable swine I did find myself begrudgingly feeling sympathetic towards him when Zuckerberg performs the dirty facebook sanchez on him mid way through.

Fincher’s direction is as always amazing. The actors all giving perfect readings across the board and the story moves at a comfy pace while remaining entertaining something quite astonishing considering how little I cared about the story itself.

By the end of ‘The Social Network’ I was a mixed bag. On one hand I had been entertained and impressed by what I had seen, on the other hand I was wondering why I bothered watching it. At the end of the day ‘The Social Network’ is still a movie about the people who created facebook, a topic still too current and still totally irrelevant in terms of story telling. There really isn’t much of a story to tell which is party why the film is so good in terms of holding your attention. The film, somehow is a contradiction of itself. I watched it and enjoyed it, then when I was done I thought I had wasted my time.

Its a tough one to rate, so I’m going to cheat!

The Social Network gets...  

                                   

                                                                                                                                                4 out of 5

and

                                                                                          

                                                                                                                                          2 out of 5