New on DVD

Enlarge Image

Surrogates

EARLY in this film, Bruce Willis is seen crawling out of an exploded helicopter with an arm torn off, and even in that condition, he still manages a full-bore pursuit of a bad guy.

At this point, you wonder if you haven't rented Die Hard V by mistake. But no, in the scene in question, Willis is actually a robot operated remotely by an FBI agent (also Bruce Willis).

In the film's speculative future, everyone has pretty much given up on going into the outside world, except via robot proxies. But when a killer employs a weapon that not only fries a robot but its user, Willis must find some answers, even if that means the human Willis, his surrogate disabled, is obliged to go out in the real world, pale, blinking, and looking for all the world like a World of Warcraft addict.

This is a sporadically amusing sci-fi entry that seems like a safe, middling variation of James Cameron's Avatar, a film that explored similar themes with far greater ambition and success. That's twice now director Jonathan Mostow (who took over the Cameron franchise with Terminator: Rise of the Machines) is destined again to be compared to Cameron, only to found merely competent. 3 stars

Smokin' Aces 2: Assassins' Ball

THE 2006 movie Smokin' Aces was a bit of a mess about a convergence of assassins descending on a Nevada hotel. Call it a bold but unsuccessful attempt by writer-director Joe Carnahan to Americanize the crime-and-quirk milieu of Guy Ritchie.

This time, the killers descend on a Chicago nightclub to try to collect on a $3-million contract on low-level FBI agent Walter Weed (Tom Berenger), a harmless-looking paraplegic mystified by why anyone would want to kill him, let alone pay $3 million for the hit.

This splattery direct-to-DVD sequel is an unholy mess compared to the first movie, and not remotely comparable to Ritchie or, for that matter, any other filmmaker with a semblance of narrative sense.

Carnahan delegated directing duties to one PJ Pesce and the only relation to the first movie is the presence of a few common hired killers: master of disguise Lazlo Soot (Tommy Flanagan) and the extended family of Part 1's Tremor Brothers, including a redneck patriarch (Michael Parks) and a sleazy-sexy sister (Autumn Reeser). The family employs exploding clowns -- yes, you read that correctly -- in its assault on Agent Weed's hideout.

The untangling of the mystery is somewhat more comprehensible than it was in the first movie, for what that's worth. And the spectacle of actress Martha Higareda (as assassin Ariella Martinez) stepping out of a nun's habit wearing decidedly sinful lingerie is as close as this movie ever gets to sexy. Playing the unrated option on the DVD only yields some grisly gratuitous violence.

In the DVD's gag reel, Parks is seen snapping at Pesce: "Don't direct me!" If that's supposed to be funny, you've got to wonder how unfunny this movie was to make, let alone watch. 2 stars

Gamer

IT'S a mug's game trying to make a movie about the dehumanizing effects of media violence, all the while exploiting that same violence with a non-stop barrage of splattering blood and viscera.

The filmmaking team of Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor (Crank) gamely take on that challenge. As in last year's underrated Death Race, a Death Row-inmate-fighting-for-his-freedom (Gerard Butler) role previously inhabited by Jason Statham. Butler is Kable, a real-life warrior in the first-person shooter game Slayers, devised by sinister billionaire Ken Castle (Michael C. Hall of Dexter). Castle has figured out a way to turn the human brain into a game console using nanotechnology, and Kable is its superstar, even if his smooth battlefield moves are controlled by a teen game prodigy named Simon (Logan Lerman).

Neveldine/Taylor's shtick is an anything-goes approach to narrative. They thrown hundreds of images up on the screen -- sex, violence, skin -- with the vague hope that it will hang together into something cohesive, rather like throwing a plate of spaghetti at a wall and seeing how many strands stick.

That freedom occasionally results in moments of refreshing novelty. But that doesn't compensate for the fact that the filmmakers are milking the sex and violence with no more noble intent than the film's villain. 2 stars

randall.king@freepress.mb.ca

Top rentals

1. Gamer (left)

2. The Invention of Lying

3. The Hurt Locker

4. Whiteout

5. Pandorum

6. World's Greatest Dad

7. Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs

8. The Hangover

9. Smokin' Aces 2: Assassin's Ball

10. A Perfect Getaway

-- Rogers Video, week ending Jan. 24

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition January 28, 2010 E4