Rob, Rambling - A lot of things interest me...

I got round to watching Salt last night, the spy-action film with Angelina Jolie in the title role. It filled a gap, and there’ll definitely be a sequel, but it ain’t anything too special.

I don’t know whether this is damning it with false praise, as I thought the Bourne films were over-rated, but when it finished I was left with the impression that it was essentially “The Bourne She-premacy”. It’s almost identical in tone, style, attempts to make the plot needlessly complicated, and a slight feeling of unease that surrounds the main character’s identity.

I thought that the car-based action sequences were among its strong points, and that Angelina Jolie is better than she was allowed to be in terms of developing her character. Hell, Mrs Smith had more depth!

Definitely a popcorn film, and not even a particularly brilliant one at that. Maybe the sequel (guaranteed!) will be better.

I watched Splice last night, and this morning all I can really think about it is a resounding “meh”.

It had its moments, some particularly shocking and nasty, others pretty touching, but it was awkward in that it didn’t really know what it wanted to be. It was torn between an outright sci-fi horror film, and something entirely different exploring what it means to be a parent and a family.

In particular, the ending seems out of kilter with the rest of the film, as if the director thought it needed some added action and gore, but didn’t know where it could fit in elsewhere. It very much felt tacked on, although earlier in the film I found myself willing something similar to happen.

This is because it plods along a little in the middle section, especially if you’d been expecting something more exciting and scary, as the trailer had led me to believe. In fact, the film is more about moral and ethical dilemmas, which I’ll grant is harder to get across in 60 seconds…

Even those moral issues are relatively quickly glossed over, with a “fuck it, let’s do it anyway” attitude present for most of the time. Adrien Brody is pretty good as the more sceptical of the two scientists, with more questions as to the correctness of what it is they’re trying to achieve.

Not a bad film, all told, but one that is undersold by its trailer. Don’t expect violence and scares aplenty, but do expect to see some good ones when they do turn up.

[EXPLOSION]

[FIRE]

[EXPLOSION]

[RUNNING]

[EXPLOSION]

[GUNFIRE]

[EXPLOSION]

[FIGHTING]

[EXPLOSION]

[CLOSE-UP ON ACTOR’S FACE]

[EXPLOSION]

[EXPLOSION]

[EXPLOSION]

There’s a 10-minute section of The Expendables in which the above is pretty much the entire script, with barely a word uttered shouted during a thoroughly intense action scene. The screen is practically shaking with the amount of explosions and gunfire, and everywhere you look something is either burning or blowing up (or both!).

And it’s not as if I expected anything different. Expendables is an action film in the truest sense of the word. Very few scenes are wasted on such niceties as plot or character development. Why, when you can have another explosion/fight/car chase (delete as necessary)?!

The action is over the top, tongue in cheek, almost comically gory, but pretty bloody amazing to watch. These aren’t the biggest action stars in the world for no reason, and they know how to make things look good on camera.

Whether they’re engaged in hand-to-hand fighting (complete with nasty bone-breaking), or shooting the fuck out of a bunch of soldiers (including heads and bodies literally being blown apart), they’re doing so in style. The physical combat scenes are fantastic, particularly those involving Jet Li and Jason Statham.

Stallone is a half-decent writer/director, and isn’t afraid to tackle some pretty nasty material. The torture scene here is brutally realistic, and you can’t help but remember that these techniques were used on hundreds of prisoners by the CIA. It’s uncomfortable viewing, that’s for sure.

Mickey Rourke’s character comes the closest to expressing some kind of depth, whereas the rest rely on chirpy one-liners to give them the merest hint of being something other than an automaton. It’s all banter between the boys, with plenty of piss-taking and gratuitous swearing.

The subplot with Statham’s character and his ex seemed entirely unnecessary, as if it were planted to give him some more screen time? This is sort of acknowledged with Jet Li’s character talking about a family that he has and everyone else asking when he managed to find the time to find one.

Thanks to the trailer, we all know that Bruce Willis and Arnie have cameo roles, but thankfully the best line of their scene wasn’t spoiled. It’s a genuinely funny tongue-in-cheek moment, and played joyously straight by all three of the action film superstars.

I walked out of the film with a massive, massive grin on my face. It was ridiculous, of course it was, but it was entertaining. Sometimes you just need to see 90 minutes of shit getting blown up, of the good guys going after the bad guys with a ridiculous combination of weaponry and fists, of the token inclusion of a female character.

It’s better than any action film I’ve seen for a long time, and it shows that you don’t always need a convoluted plot to be a good film. Or any plot, really.

Disengage your brain, engage your love of explosions, and go see The Expendables.

Almost forgot that I sat through the atrocity that was Starship Troopers 3 the other night, mainly through sheer laziness and a desire to remain so motionless on the sofa that even leaning over to grab the remote was completely out of the question.

I’m a genuine fan of the first film in the series. Yes, it was silly and all a bit overblown, but the level of satire on the military-industrial complex was very well done and hit the spot. The action scenes were impressive, the story was just about believable, and you sort of cared what happened to the characters in the end.

This second sequel, however, was atrocious. Yes, it did include more of the themes and details from the original novel (which I enjoyed, to be honest), but the film was just awful. The plot was pretty poor, and with it being a smaller budget the action sequences were less impressive. I lost count of how many times any bug/human direct interaction (i.e. a bug killing a soldier) happened off-screen. It was all just shadows and screams, which sucked for entertainment value.

The use of government propaganda/news programmes was similar to that in the first film, but a lot less subtle, as were the parallels drawn to fascism and militarism.

Oh, and the nudity was utterly, utterly gratuitous. Yes, I can see that it was an homage to the shower scene in the first film, but was there any need for such lingering, lecherous camera shots of boobs? I have no problem with boobs in films, believe me, but this was just silly.

The acting was awful, although Casper van Dien hammed it up nicely. Jolene Blalock was far too earnest and shouty, and the sheer size of her lips distracted me throughout. The various supporting actors were out of their depth, either shouting every line too much or trying umpteen convoluted facial expressions to convey any emotion whatsoever.

Jeez, the more I think back to this film, it really does show itself up to be one of the worst films I’ve seen in many years. Truly, truly terrible stuff, and I post this as a warning to anyone who stumbles across it late night when there’s nothing on: do yourself a favour and switch the TV off.

WARNING: THERE BE SPOILERS AHEAD FOR INCEPTION

Even though I’m trying not to spoil anything at all, inevitably there will be a couple of things revealed that could spoil the film if you haven’t seen it already. Please stop reading and go see the film instead.

What I want to look at here is the names of the characters within the film, because in the kind of film which is so rich in symbolism and detail, characters will be named for a particular reason. I’ve no idea if I’m correct for each one, but it makes sense in my interpretation of the film.

Seriously, PROBABLE SPOILERS AHEAD. SEE THE FILM FIRST!!!.

Here’s who I think each character is named after, and why:

• Cobb: Probably named after Stanley Cobb, a neurologist and one of the proponents of “biological psychiatry”, recognising a link between the physical make-up of the brain and the consciousness it creates. According to Wikipedia, Cobb rejected the distinction between mind and body, with higher levels of complexity dealt with by psychiatry, rather than physiologists. In the film,

• Arthur: This is the one I’m not sure about. My knowledge of Arthurian legend isn’t too strong, and I don’t really see any other Arthurs that could fit. There’s one interesting line on the King Arthur Wikipedia page, which says that in Welsh legends he “launches assaults on Otherworldly fortresses in search of treasure and frees their prisoners”, which could fit nicely. There’s also the element of chivalry, and representing a moral good, which Arthur does more than any other character in Inception.

• Ariadne: Ariadne is a character in Greek mythology who gives Theseus a ball of string so that he can find his way out of the minotaur’s labyrinth after slaying the beast. It’s clear in the film that she’s trying to help him, and meshes with her designing the various labyrinths in Fischer’s mind. It also fits with one of the more outlandish theories behind Inception, in that it’s all in Cobb’s mind and that Ariadne is a psychiatrist trying to pull him out of his madness back into the real world one level above that we see in the film.

• Eames: My best guess is here is Rebecca Eames, a defendant in the Salem Witch Trials. She was convicted of being a witch, and sentenced to death, but lived until she was 80 years old. Witches were commonly was accused of some kind of shape-shifting, which would be a clear link with the film Eames, but whether she in particular was so accused is something I’ve not been able to establish.

• Yusuf: In Islam, Yusuf is one of the main prophets before Muhammad, and exists in the Old Testament as Joseph. Yes, Joseph of the Technicolour Dreamcoat, and he who interprets the dreams of the Pharoah to predict seven years of feast before seven years of famine.

• Saito: There’s a warrior monk in Japanese history by the name of Saito Musashibo Benkei, who more commonly goes by the name of Benkei. He entered into lore because he was a formidable warrior who defeated 999 consecutive opponents before losing to the 1000th, whereupon he became one of that man’s best soldiers. His master was subsequently cast into exile, and eventually surrounded. His master went into his castle to commit suicide, and Benkei once more defended the bridge until his own death. He’s famous for his loyalty and honour, which is a massive link to the film character, as well as the “exile” of being in limbo for so long.

• Mal: The prefix “mal-” comes from the latin word for bad or evil. Whilst it’s not clear that Mal was intrinsically evil in real life, her memory within Cobb’s mind has become something which is eating away at him, and is destructive in the sense of intruding on other people’s subconscious. Also, in the theory above where Ariadne is trying to save an insane Cobb, Mal could be a representation of a split personality, the dangerous part that Cobb needs to destroy before he can become a normal member of society once more.

• Browning: My first thoughts on this was the Browning machine gun, but that seems a little awkward to make fit. A better fit could be Robert Browning, a Victorian poet whose works were often voiced by an unreliable narrator, seeking to defend him- or herself. Again, this could tie in with the theory of the film taking place within Cobb’s mind.

Of course, this is a very incomplete list, and only from about half an hour’s research. I don’t claim to have interpreted the film correctly, but it was interesting for me to explore the meaning behind the names, and see how many references there are to dreams throughout. It’s amazing just how frequently dreams and the subconscious crop up in so many histories and cultures across the world.

I walked out of Inception last night with a sudden urge to watch eXistenZ again, which is about as high a compliment that I can pay to the new release. eXistenz is an exquisitely crafted, gorgeously visualised, and well acted headfuck of a film, and I can say the exact same things about Inception.

Both are films whose plots almost defy description, or at least require some dexterity in terms of making sound coherent, but they make perfect sense whilst you’re watching. There are so many layers and sub-layers of reality in both that you end up questioning exactly where and how each film is taking place.

Of course, there are differences: eXistenZ uses a virtual reality setting, whereas Inception takes place in people’s dreams, their subconscious. But there are similarities too: both require the participants to be plugged in and networked, and even the “go” button on the Inception device is squishy and reminiscent of the glowing blobs that eXistenZ uses to jack into the other world.

The basic plot of Inception, as much as I can describe it, concerns surreptitiously entering into another person’s head to either steal information (relatively easy), or to insert an idea and make that person believe that they came up with the idea themselves. The latter is the Inception of the title, and makes up the majority of the plot, with the protagonists having to delve ever deeper into the subconscious to plant the idea.

There are going to be obvious comparisons made with The Matrix, as well as eXistenZ, with regards to the question of what is real, but also for the special effects. We all saw that brief shot in the trailer the city of Paris folding in on itself, which looked fucking awesome (and in the longer sequence that actually features in the film it looks even better), as well as a brief shot of some flying martial arts (again, truly stunning in the film itself).

For me, there isn’t much of a comparison to be made to The Matrix in terms of the plot and settings. Yes, there’s some philosophical undertones in there, but Inception is more about a person coming to terms with their own mind and their own consciousness than fighting against any great evil. It’s very much internal, whilst The Matrix externalises the threat somewhat.

I have to say a quick word of praise for Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who is probably the best thing in the film. Well, that and whoever did his wardrobe, because the man looks fucking sharp. His action sequences are brilliant, especially the zero-gravity stuff, and he carries off his role with a gravitas beyond his years.

Di Caprio continues a good recent run of character exploration and internal combustion, and Marion Cotillard sizzles as a malevolent ghost in the machine. I’m also a big fan of Cillian Murphy, and felt he was a little under-used. It was still a pretty stellar performance all round from the cast, though.

The visuals, as you would expect from a Christopher Nolan film, were nothing short of spectacular, with worlds collapsing in on themselves and the people within them. There was plenty of action too, including the obligatory car chase. For me, some of this went on a touch too long, and could’ve been trimmed without too much detriment to the film as a whole.

One minor criticism is the sheer inability of any of the extraction protectors to be able to shoot straight. They were almost Bond-villain’s henchmen in their accuracy. And yes, I suppose this could be put down to an inexpert training strategy being implemented within the subconscious, but it was almost comical at times that so many bullets were being expended without hitting a target.

I’ve tried my damnedest to avoid spoilers here, because it genuinely is a film that is going to leave every viewer with a different take on it as they walk out of the cinema, and I don’t want to give anything away or influence anyone before they see it.

It made me think, made me question a lot of things that I take for granted, and I can guarantee that it’s going to stick in my head for a long, long time. A truly memorable film, and well worth seeing.

I have a few guilty pleasures when it comes to shooty, silly action films:

• True Lies

• Mr & Mrs Smith (which is on now, and is just great).

What can I say? I like tongue-in-cheek spy spoofs that are still pretty chock full of guns and explosions.