JAMES CAMERON INTERVIEW

Deepsea Challenge 3D is perhaps James Cameron’s most personal project yet, a dive to the deepest part of the world’s oceans that has been a long dreamed about expedition by the filmmaker/deep ocean explorer. He ploughed his own cash into getting the ball rolling on the expedition, for which he solo-piloted a submersible to the bottom of the Mariana Trench, a mere 6.8 miles deep. The ocean has, in one way or another, infused most of Cameron’s films except on this project, he was the star of his own story. Hardly one to document such an event with any degree of objectivity, the task of directing the documentary fell to long time friend and Cameron collaborator, Andrew Wight. During the expedition’s initial stages, Wight and Underwater Cinematographer Mike DeGruys were tragically killed in a helicopter crash on the NSW South Coast. The deaths caused the production to scramble and an Australian filmmaker, Ray Quint, stepped into the breach. A director directing The Director, Quint had to sift 1200 hours of expedition footage (shot by Titanic and Avatar VFX Supervisor John Bruno) to fashion an emotional narrative which would give the story heft and drama. Discussing the project with Filmink on a recent trip to Sydney, Co-Director Quint is a genial and understated presence, overshadowed understandably by Cameron, who’s an intimidating specimen: stratospherically successful, fiercely intelligent, well versed in an astonishing amount of sciences and looking ridiculously healthy, no doubt a result of his Veganism. Essentially he’s everything you are not and could never be, though that doesn’t change the sincerity of his technological acuity or his environmental awareness. In terms of the film production, Ray Quint’s approach to the project’s various strands that he found himself pulling together was to find an emotional core: “I knew that this was a project that was dear to Jim’s heart…and for a lot of people who come to see this film they’ll be interested in the science of it and in the exploration but there’ll also be a bunch of people interested in ‘Jim the filmmaker’. So once I’d constructed the narrative, it was about what else I needed to tell this story.” This meant Quint had to access the emotional side to Cameron, who’s guarded and measured at the best of times: “I wanted to give it a thematic core… this idea of curiosity, exploration and inspiring that in young people and to Jim’s credit, he went along with that …often I would have to say to Jim ‘what were you hearing, what were you feeling? Cameron laughs “yeah, he had to coax that out of me… it was the same with the narration, I was concerned it would just be me droning on…but Ray insisted on it as a kind of narrative glue”. It was in this spirit that Quint created Deepsea Challenge 3D’s re-enactments with young Jim in his pretend cardboard submarine, to add an emotional element to the film. Cameron seems reticent to stoop to sentimentality or open himself up to scrutiny: “There were certainly things in there that Ray wanted, that I was uncomfortable with, like my kids on screen…from a security standpoint one doesn’t want to do that (but) it spoke so well to the theme of inspiring children and part of what I was doing was being a role model to my kids. People ask me ‘why would I take these risks?’ but I think there’s a greater risk in not standing for something in life. I want my kids to know that they should feel empowered, that they should stand for something and go for their dreams.” Cameron’s single-mindedness defines the style of his filmmaking, always pitting himself against insurmountable challenges and risks to realise epic visions. This is an ethos essential to who he is as a person: “There are lots of people who live with risk every day, emergency medical workers, doctors without borders going into Ebola infected villages or fighter pilots patrolling hot zones; they have a risk/reward equation that they run for themselves and they are sanguine with the outcome ‘I’m doing this because it defines me as a person and it has meaning.’ We had to deal with that on this mission because we had lost two team members, so we started to question ourselves and the whole raison d’etre of the project...but (Mike DeGruy and Andrew Wight) were explorers and they had put themselves in harm’s way repeatedly in their lives because they believed that the outcome was worth it. So we decided to complete the film, to honour Andrew’s original vision and to complete the expedition.” JARROD WALKER

STEVE BARRON INTERVIEW

A key player in the development of the music video in the 80’s, Steve Barron directed some of that decades most iconic videos: A-ha’s ‘Take On Me’, Michael Jackson’ s ‘Billy Jean’, Dire Straits ‘Money for Nothing’ and countless others for the likes of Fleetwood Mac, Madonna, ZZ Top, David Bowie, Paul McCartney and Culture Club. His entry into feature filmmaking was on Ridley Scott’s first feature: “My parents were in the business, Mum was a production secretary and Dad was soundman. I was pretty crap at school so I looked to get out as soon as possible; when I left I got a job working as a tea boy at a camera hire company. I soon ended up working as a clapper loader on The Duellists, A Bridge Too Far and Superman I and II.” “I was pretty young in the business and learning fast, with music videos it was a case of ‘right place, right time’. The first one I shot was for The Jam and their song ‘Strange Town’… soon after I was shooting videos for Adam and the Ants, The Human League and Heaven 17.“ Barron worked solidly for the next ten years as one of Europe’s top music video directors. “I was asked to do a couple of David Bowie music videos for the movie Labyrinth. I met with Jim Henson and he showed me around the set, he was lovely man, just a total gent…he offered me the chance to direct a pilot for a new TV series he was developing called Storyteller. It was written by Anthony Minghella (The English Patient), who at the time was a BBC writer and it involved working with Jim Henson’s Creature Shop to create the creatures…which was a great experience”. It was Minghella who recommended Barron as a candidate to direct an adaptation of the underground comic Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, already a popular children’s animated TV show. “I immediately jumped on it, thinking it was something extraordinary that I wanted to get involved with”. Barron spoke to Jim Henson, requesting the Creature Shop’s expertise: “he wasn’t too keen to get his creature shop involved, he thought the comic was pretty bloody“ but once persuaded of Barron’s intent to focus on humour and to take a lighter tone, Henson agreed to help, a major advantage as the animatronic Turtle suits were key to the films success. Similarly the fight choreography needed to work “we had a really great fight choreographer who was brought in from Hong Kong… and he got that it was a going to have a sense of humour to it… but some of it we definitely made in the cutting room”. Barron worked closely on balancing the dark tone and slapstick fights with his Editor Sally Menke, who would go on to be Quentin Tarantino’s editor of choice or as Barron quips “he nicked her and used her forever”...Menke was tragically killed last year). Once completed, the darker tone worried the producers: “they really thought it would put kids off, in their heads it was all going to be big, bright coloured foam and what they saw was very different to that”. Upon its release, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was nothing short of a phenomenon at the US Box Office becoming the most successful independent film ever made (until, ironically, Pulp Fiction knocked it from its perch). TMNT has gone on to etch itself into popular culture spawning two sequels, a CG animated feature in 2007 and recently its been announced that Michael Bay will produce a live action re-boot which Jonathan Liebesman (Battle Los Angeles) is slated to helm. Barron is philosophical about the longevity of the Turtle franchise: “these stories are not just nostalgia, they have ideas that strike a note with kids, they’re fun-loving, fascinating super heroes. I think it’s all about re-invention when it comes to kids, if its done right they’ll want to go along again for the ride”. JARROD WALKER

KON TIKI REVIEW

KON TIKI Directed by Joachim Rønning and Espen Sandberg Written By Petter Skavlan and Allan Scott Stars: Pål Sverre Valheim Hagen, Anders Baasmo Christiansen It was an insane proposition: to drift on a raft from Peru in South America across the Pacific Ocean to Tahiti, in order to prove that ancient races populated Polynesia by travelling ocean currents. Thor Heyerdahl (Pål Sverre Valheim Hagen), a Norwegian Zoologist and Anthropologist, tries to sell this theory for many years but few in the mainstream academic accept its validity. Heyerdahl’s a driven individual and he decides to recruit some war buddies and academic associate’s and, in 1947, sets out from Peru on a raft constructed from rudimentary balsa wood and other materials that would’ve been available to the ancient peoples he’s following in the tracks of. They have no fall back plan, nothing but a radio as their saving grace should they need rescue. This tale is etched into Norwegian popular culture with Heyerdahl something of a national treasure but as a protagonist in this story; he is (by all reports, quite accurately) depicted as inscrutable and willing to sacrifice all to achieve a goal. The members of his rag tag crew are more relatable, many of them in it for the adventure and the life experience; one crew member Herman Watzinger (Anders Baasmo Christiansen) is a former Engineer and sometime refrigerator salesman and appears to be the only voice of reason in the face of Heyerdahl’s totalitarian obsession. As a story, Kon Tiki takes off at the mid-point, Co-Director’s Joachim Rønning and Espen Sandberg’s CG depictions of ocean creatures and wild storms as the men drift relentlessly are beautifully handled and the mounting dramatic intensity and high adventure make up for the perfunctory character introductions and odd plotting in the early stages. As a story of obsession and Heyerdahl’s inner life, it barely scratches the surface; as a boy’s own adventure and a salute to the crazy brave, it’s a terrific tale. JARROD WALKER

JEREMY THOMAS INTERVIEW

Born with a self-described ‘silver reel’ in his mouth, Jeremy Thomas started his career as a cutting room assistant on films such as The Harder They Come and The Golden Voyage of Sinbad. His father Ralph Thomas directed more than forty films in the UK and his Uncle, Gerald Thomas, directed all the Carry On films. Eventually becoming an Editor for Ken Loach, Thomas produced his first film shortly afterwards: Philippe Mora’s Mad Dog Morgan, which was shot in Australia and was fraught with production issues thanks to its star Dennis Hopper and his predilection for heroic doses of drugs and alcohol. Thomas went on to produce some of the most lauded and iconic independent films of the past thirty years (Naked Lunch, Crash, Stealing Beauty, The Dreamers, The Great Rock’N’Roll Swindle, Sexy Beast) and he solidified his stature in the independent film world when he won the Best Picture Oscar in 1988 for producing Bernardo Bertolucci’s The Last Emperor. In person, Jeremy Thomas cuts a decidedly relaxed air, clearly at ease with his filmic legacy. He prefaces some statements with off-hand comments like: “I’ve made a lot of great films…” and one’s first reaction might be to baulk, however with Thomas there’s no argument when presented with the evidence of his amazing back catalogue. He’s in Australia for the impending release of Kon Tiki, his film about Norwegian Anthropologist Thor Heyerdahl’s traversing of the Pacific Ocean in a raft in 1947 by drifting from Peru to Tahiti in order to prove that ancient peoples could – and did – use oceans like roads to reach far-flung destinations. It’s smashed box office records in its home country of Norway and it’s nominated for the Best Foreign Film Oscar at this years Academy Awards. It’s a story Thomas has tried getting on screen for more than 20 years: “ I had read the book when I was much younger, it’s such a magnificent boys own adventure, this raft and the men with their beards, it very much stayed with me. Funnily enough, it was Michael Douglas who clued me in to the fact that the publisher of Kon Tiki wanted to sell the film rights but he didn’t own them, so the publisher took me to the Canary Islands to meet Heyerdahl in person and to get his consent. I got to know him, gave him some of my films to watch and went back several times over the next few years… eventually he decided to give me the rights”. The efforts in securing those rights were just one fiery hoop to jump through however more hurdles soon presented themselves: “I couldn’t find the way to do it back then, the ocean, the creatures, the sea life, I couldn’t find a way to do it in a pre-digital world”. Several years would pass before Thomas recruited directors Joachim Rønning, and Espen Sandberg, whose commercial backgrounds benefitted the entrepreneurial Thomas’s desire to fashion an epic for a mere 15 million euros: “we found a way to do the CG effects and the digital work very cheaply in Norway and making it a Norwegian film helped with the funding”. Thomas is justifiably pleased with the end result, as a culmination of many years hard graft, it’s a gratifying outcome: “lately in my career I’ve been executive producing films I enjoy, much like with Takashi Miike (13 Assassins, Hara-Kiri: Death of a Samurai)…but earlier in my career, such as with Nic Roeg and Bernardo (Bertolucci), I would follow those projects for their entire life, from inception…. Producing is a funny cliché really; it’s the ‘vulgarian’ you know? A Hollywood cliché that in reality is very different. It’s a special sort of job and I’m really very lucky to go to all these amazing places with so many interesting and fascinating people…. it’s the stuff that dreams are made of really. So when a project like Kon Tiki is successfully brought to the screen, grows legs and goes on to have a life of its own - its really very satisfying.” JARROD WALKER

STANLEY KUBRICK VISIONARY FILMMAKER BLURAY BOXSET

When he died in 1999, Stanley Kubrick left behind thirteen feature films. Only twelve are available on DVD, his first, the self-funded war film Fear and Desire was pulled from distribution by Kubrick, who was embarrassed by his low-budget fledging effort. Far from being a prolific filmmaker, he deliberately and methodically poured every aspect of his creative vision into each film, building an oeuvre that has changed modern filmmaking and the way we watch films. Stunningly presented on blu-ray, this box set consists of only half of Kubrick’s films, although they are mainly his most well known (the absence of Spartacus and the masterwork Dr. Strangelove are duly noted).

Lolita, 2001: A Space Odyssey, A Clockwork Orange, Barry Lyndon, The Shining, Full Metal Jacket and Eyes Wide Shut are included plus there’s a bonus disc featuring O Lucky Malcolm! a documentary on Malcolm McDowell’s career as well as the brilliant and exhaustive Stanley Kubrick: A Life in Pictures, which is a doco worth purchasing on its own. Sadly Barry Lyndon and Lolita (both new to blu-ray) are devoid of extras, no doubt the impending 50th Anniversary of Lolita will mean yet another blu-ray release, with extras. Despite this small criticism, this is an essential clutch of Kubrick’s greatest hits, an opportunity to view these films in the best possible format. Lolita looks as great as it ever has, as does the exquisitely photographed Barry Lyndon but it’s 2001:A Space Odyssey’s amazing HD transfer that is without doubt one of the best examples of just how great blu-ray can look. Other than Barry Lyndon and Lolita, all other discs come with substantial extras (The Shining features a cracking doco shot by Kubrick’s daughter Vivian during filming), actor and biographer commentaries as well as retrospective documentaries. It’s a pity Jon Ronson’s intriguing doco Stanley Kubrick’s Boxes didn’t make it into the mix but this collection still ranks as one of the best available in terms of value for cash and those all-important geek-tastic extras.

JARROD WALKER

ASIF KAPADIA INTERVIEW

After making a handful of documentaries, in 2001 British filmmaker Asif Kapadia set out to make his first feature, The Warrior, shooting in Rajasthan and the Himalayas. With a small crew and a cast of mainly non-actors, Kapadia crafted a stunningly epic debut that was part Sergio Leone western, part spiritual quest. He followed it up recently with something of a companion piece, the equally epic Far North, which starred Sean Bean and was arduously filmed against the landscape of the Arctic Circle. His latest film Senna takes him back to his documentary roots, telling the story of Ayrton Senna, widely regarded as the greatest Formula One driver.

In past films, Kapadia has employed a highly cinematic style, using long takes with very little dialogue, most notably for The Warrior and Far North. Given the overt spirituality and existential brooding inherent in his style, it seems an odd fit to make the leap to a Formula One documentary but Kapadia says he was moved to accept the job because of the kind of man Ayrton Senna was: “Some people want to see the pure racing driver and his story works on that level, you’ve got the rivalry, the corruption and then you’ve got what he meant to Brazil – you could make a movie just about what he meant to Brazil. They were just coming out of a dictatorship and were in such a bad way…but Senna would be the one to make them feel proud. All these levels are why you can make a movie about him, he wasn’t just a great sportsman, he transcended the sport in so many ways”.

A enigmatic individual; Senna was headstrong and impulsive yet calculating and methodical, a devout Christian deeply involved in charitable causes, who spoke of the near spiritual ecstasy he’d experience while racing, once risked his life stopping his car mid-race and crossing the track to check on an crashed colleague yet would think nothing of risking his life and that of a fellow driver, in order to win a race. For Kapadia, Senna’s spiritual journey mirrors the themes he’s explored elsewhere in his films: “Senna has got a lot in common with The Warrior…for me there are so many similarities character-wise; in terms of a person who is an outsider, a good guy in a bad world, going on a journey, in The Warrior, it was the western genre, dealing with feudal India. Here, you’ve got a guy in the very contemporary, ultra-technological Formula One world but there are themes that I felt were very similar running through the two films…his spirituality was absolutely something that made me interested (in doing it).” Departing from the usual structure for a feature documentary, there are no ‘talking head’ interviews in the film, Kapadia tells the story only through archival footage using Senna’s own voice, mixed with voiceover narration from family and colleagues: “My feature films tend to have very little dialogue so the idea of making a typical documentary with talking heads is something I can’t do…we had so much footage, Senna lived his life on camera and tragically died on camera. Quite early on, I had an instinct that if you cut away from the real footage, the drama gets broken…what I wanted to show was the footage of the time, when the rivals hated one another because the conflict was real.” After some lengthy negotiations, Kapadia and his producers were allowed access to Formula One’s archives: “We were the first outsiders to ever go into the archive, no one gets in there, we were able to go back to every race and recut it from the dailies. I’m pretty sure we were some of the first people to go in there and actually look at the footage from that weekend (when Senna died). It was really Bernie Ecclestone who owns the archives, without him there’s no movie”. This wealth of archival material was key to the development of the film’s structure and style, there was an astonishing amount of footage to sift through: “we had a seven hour cut at one point… but we were budgeted for a 90 minute film so we had to cut it, we managed to get it to 100 minutes. There was 40 minutes of archives in the budget and the rest of the film was going to be talking heads but I just cut a film made entirely of archive, so for two years we struggled because we were way over budget but the proof was in the pudding, we convinced everyone involved that this was the way to make the film so we had to go back to Bernie Ecclestone and re-negotiate the archival footage…by the time we were cutting Senna’s crash, I could cut to aerial shots, on board cameras, wide shots, whatever I wanted – as a filmmaker, that technology is another layer of the narrative: were it not for Senna’s stardom, we couldn’t have made a film like this.”

JARROD WALKER

TT3D: CLOSER TO THE EDGE

Directed By Richard De Aragues
Stars: Guy Martin, John McGuinness, Ian Hutchinson

The affable Guy Martin is a champion road racer (and recently a television presenter), ready with a smart-arse remark or blunt opinion, he’s very much his own man, refusing to be boxed or labelled but is tagged as a ‘maverick’ regardless. This film follows Guy (as well as his two rival riders, Ian Hutchinson and John McGuinness) as they train and prepare for the Isle of Man TT (Tourist Trophy), a competition that’s developed over more than a 100 years due the remote Isle’s once informal speed limit enforcement on its roads. Nowadays it’s a fully recognised racing competition for highly experienced riders only and for which the roads are closed but it’s bloomed into a festival that grips the whole of The Isle of Man with racing fever; a yearly test of fortitude and skill as bikes are hammered around the island at speeds in excess of 200 mph. Riders die every year, as the picturesque rural roads with their tight bends, rock walls and tiny roundabouts become deadly obstacle courses for these speed-addicted madmen. There are some catastrophic accidents depicted in the film, one rider’s bereaved wife talks of her acceptance that the risk of being killed was something that made her life with her husband that much more exhilarating. It’s moving stuff and it’s exemplary of the kind of devil-may-care attitude that the nerve-wracked wives contend with throughout the weeklong competition. The risk is high and you’ll be shaking your head in disbelief at the craziness of it all. Despite the apparent insanity of such high risk versus little reward (the prize money isn’t substantial, the race is run largely for the prestige of winning it) there’s something profoundly life-affirming and breathlessly uplifting about watching these obsessives in their chosen sport, risking their lives in pursuit of their passion. Absolutely top-notch stuff.

JARROD WALKER

X

Directed by Jon Hewitt
Written by Jon Hewitt & Belinda McClory
Stars: Viva Bianca, Hanna Mangan-Lawrence, Stephen Phillips

Holly Rowe (Viva Bianca) is a successful call-girl, she plans to get out of the game for good and start a new life in Paris. The night before she’s due to depart for Europe, she decides to take one more job, a threesome at a Sydney Hotel but needs another girl. She approaches young and inexperienced hooker Shay (Hanna Mangan-Lawrence) and offers her a wad of cash to come along for the trick. Shay agrees and the pair soon wind up hiding in a luxury hotel bathroom as a deal goes south and their client is gunned-down by the psychopathic Bennett (Stephen Phillips) who spends the rest of the night tracking the pair in order to tie up any loose ends. From the opening scene, where Holly has luridly protracted sex with a male prostitute in front of a group of wealthy champagne-sipping menopausal housewives, the film seems to declare itself to be unreserved exploitation. No problem there then but writer/director Jon Hewitt places these characters within a believable and recognisable landscape, Sydney’s Kings Cross. The camera feels Shay’s humiliation as she’s initiated into prostitution but then leers on naked flesh like the camera operator is only using one hand. Viva Bianca’s Holly is believable but the performance is stilted and underwritten, Mangan-Lawrence is convincing but she’s chopped off at the knees by dodgy scripting. The character of Bennett is so full-throttle misogynistic and sadistically cartoony, he belongs in a different film. It’s hard to see Hewitt’s motivations in telling this story in the first place as there are elements of a cautionary tale, erotic thriller and exploitation but it doesn’t really commit on either front. It fails to draw the audience in and simply revels in the grotesque carnality of it all, leaving the characters to flop about pointlessly, ciphers pulling us through a sea of sleaze.

JARROD WALKER

Road to Perdition (BLU RAY)

Directed by Sam Mendes
Written by David Self
Stars: Tom Hanks, Paul Newman, Daniel Craig, Jude Law

Director Sam Mendes followed up his grotesquely overrated Oscar winner American Beauty with this under appreciated adaptation of Max Allan Collins graphic novel, itself a loose reinvention of the classic Japanese manga Lone Wolf & Cub.
Set in the 1930’s, it tells the story of a loyal mob enforcer, Michael Sullivan (Tom Hanks), whose young son stows away in his father’s car, leading to him witnessing a mob slaying carried out by Connor Rooney (Daniel Craig), the murderous son of Sullivan’s life-long employer and father figure John Rooney (Paul Newman). Connor attempts to tie-up loose ends and ensure that the young witness can’t talk, so he brutally slays Sullivan’s wife and other young son in a botched home invasion. Michael Snr and Jnr escape with their lives and hit the road, pursued by a haunted hired killer, Harlen Maguire (Jude Law). Largely dismissed upon its release, Road to Perdition boasts a standout cast (including Newman in his final screen performance) firing on all cylinders as well as stunning Cinematography by Conrad L. Hall, who died shortly after production and nabbed a posthumous Oscar for his work on this film. One of Mendes better efforts; it’s a violent and often time’s lyrical and elegiac take on the mobster genre that rewards the repeat viewer. Extras wise there’s a commentary by Mendes, deleted scenes, a featurette on Conrad Hall and the making of the film.

Underbelly: Season One (BLU RAY)

While its TV run scored massive ratings, Underbelly’s appeal to the Australian television audience proved that the public will happily tune in for a half-arsed crime soap opera because there’s little else in the way of Oz-centric crime drama on offer. Underbelly’s glorification of the Melbourne gangland wars of the 1990’s coupled with an exploitative tits‘n’ass style is salacious and glossy enough to ensure that the casual viewer will find themselves guiltily hooked. It focuses primarily on the ‘Carlton Crew’ crime syndicate consisting of a variety of drug dealers and stand-over men such as Alphonse Gangitano (Vince Colosimo), Mick Gatto (Simon Westaway), loanshark Mario Condello (Martin Sacks), retired bank robber Graham Kinniburgh (Gerard Kennedy), drug-dealing siblings Jason and Mark Moran (Les Hill and Callan Mulvey) and Jason Moran's dim driver, Carl Williams (Gyton Grantley). Narrated in hindsight by police officers Steve Owen (Rodger Corser) and Jacqui James (Caroline Craig), members of Task Force Purana (which investigated the Melbourne gangland killings in the 2000’s), the plot is cobbled together from police records and often times, wholesale fiction. While the show runners had a golden opportunity to create something genuinely compelling and powerful, they ultimately go for the lowest common denominator, fiddling the facts only to churn out badly written and overacted, glossed-up crime-porn. Extras include extended uncut scenes, a behind the scenes featurette and a min-doco ‘Carl Williams: Day of Reckoning’.

KILLERS

Directed by Robert Luketic
Written by Bob DeRosa & Ted Griffin
Stars: Ashton Kutcher, Katherine Heigl, Tom Selleck, Catherine O’Hara


Strangely echoing the premise and tone of the new Tom Cruise vehicle Knight and Day, the story begins with Jen Kornfeldt (Katherine Heigl) and her annoying parents Mr. Kornfeldt (Tom Selleck) and Mrs. Kornfeldt (Catherine O’Hara) arriving on the French Riviera to begin their dream holiday. After slipping the watchful eye of her controlling Dad (who’s clearly seen Meet The Parents a few times), she meets Spencer Aimes (Ashton Kutcher) in the hotel lift. He’s an uber-assassin on the payroll of the U.S. Government but unexpectedly he finds himself falling in love with Jen and contemplating marriage. Fast forward three years and the pair are living in wedded domestic bliss in suburbia. A call from his old Agency boss sends Spencer into a paranoid spin as he finds out that an unknown enemy has targeted him for assassination. So as the killers start coming out of the woodwork to collect the huge bounty on his head, there’s no one else to trust, except his wife.

After helming the abhorrent Legally Blonde films and the horrendous The Ugly Truth, then gaining some filmic credibility with the stylish gambling drama 21, Australian filmmaker Robert Luketic takes a flamethrower to his street-cred with this mind-bendingly awful effort. The concept does have comedic possibilities (as seen in True Lies) but Luketic explores hardly any of them, he’s totally out of his depth as an action filmmaker and saddled with the task of balancing the comedy and the action, he all but ruins many of the films major set pieces. The script is ludicrously overcooked with too much unnecessary exposition at the expense of laughs and Heigl’s habitual decision to play each role as a nostril-flaring, wild-eyed squealing shrew is growing very tiresome indeed.

POSEIDON (Blu Ray)

Directed by Wolfgang Petersen
Written by Mark Protosevich
Stars: Kurt Russell, Josh Lucas, Richard Dreyfuss, Jacinda Barrett

Since Wolfgang Petersen directed his World War Two masterpiece Das Boot he has (with the determination of an endurance athlete) inexorably slid towards cinematic mediocrity and abyssal-deep banality. It’s easy to trace his decline after the ‘Hitchcockian’ Shattered and the efficient thriller In The Line of Fire. Without warning came the execrable Air Force One, the leaden The Perfect Storm, culminating with Troy, a camp epic that managed to reduce one of literatures greatest tomes to scenery chewing and Brad Pitt’s glistening ab’s. Soonafter, Hollywood’s fuck-headed typing pool of banana-chewing Simian screenwriters flung a script onto Petersen’s doorstep, its story gouged from the plot of Ronald Neame’s 1972 ensemble epic The Poseidon Adventure, where a rag-tag group of misfits find their way to the surface through the wreckage of an upturned ocean liner when a ‘rogue wave’ flips it during New Years Eve celebrations. In this remake, the survivors struggling to get to the surface are career-gambler Dylan Johns (Josh Lucas), ex-New York Mayor Robert Ramsey (Kurt Russell), degenerate gambler Lucky Larry (Entourage’s ‘Johnny Drama’ Kevin Dillon), Richard Nelson (Richard Dreyfuss) and Maggie James (Jacinda Barrett). After numerous fiery set pieces, the group diminishes until a handful remains. Who lives? Who dies? Who cares? The extras are not bad, with a production assistant’s video diary of the film set as well as a featurette on the set construction, there’s also a documentary on those pesky rogue waves.