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Reviews
Hoodlum (1997)
A fantastic cast.
Hoodlum is a film with a sparkling cast. The actors did live up to my expectations, considering what they were given to work with, which was not much. The story in Hoodlum is wrought with cliche, and yet takes itself far too seriously. The directing seems to be a mish mash of styles that don't mesh. Take the closing shot, which attempts to be symbolic, but ends up looking like an afterthought.
Both Fishburne and Roth were excellent, as was the entire cast. Unfortunately, the whole film left me with the impression of a high school production.
Wing Commander (1999)
A butchery of what was a fantastic story.
As an avid fan of the Wing Commander series of games, I was looking forward to seeing how Chris Roberts would adapt his universe to the big screen. I was concerned that he might be forced to stray from his original vision to create a film that would be "appropriate" for Hollywood. My concerns were justified. Wing Commander is a formulaic film that completely fails to capture the spirit of the games upon which it is based.
The movie is plagued with a mish-mash of characters and events pulled from several of the games. Given the film's running time, I'm not surprised that this approach was taken, but I am disappointed by it.
The rest of my disappointment stems mainly from the movie's special effects. Roberts was able to bring together a lot of talent to produce the involving graphics, cut scenes, and cinematic sequences in the game series. It's unfortunate that he couldn't do the same for this film. Instead, it seems he decided to back off from high-tech energy weapons, and adopt a WW2-esque approach to the battle scenes, complete with machine guns and torpedoes. It's cute, but it doesn't fit. Furthermore, the few Kilrathi we actually see are generic animatronics.
Wing Commander could have made a good film, but, as with many stories adapted to the screen, the butchers cut out all the meat.