Reviews

Return of Sabata casts Lee Van Cleef back as the cunning and ruthless sharpshooter, Sabata. Similarities between the first Sabata movie where Van Cleef also played the same role are more than abundant: acrobats, comical sidekicks, greedy villains, double-crossing allies, Sabata shooting off with his cool 4-barreled Derringer and so forth. Lee Van Cleef rocks. He's as cool as ever, and all the other actors do at least fairly decent jobs supporting him.

Everything seems to be as well as in the first movie. Except that this time the plot is more complicated and filled with twists and turns (and plot holes). Unfortunately this is not entirely good thing: in time you lose track of the plot twists and begin to wonder the motives and the logic behind some of the characters behavior. Why did he do that? Wouldn't it been more logical to behave or act some other way? Much like Ocean's 12 or any other snotty "cleverer-than-thou" sequel, Return of Sabata drowns you with twists and turns just for the sake of confusing. This leads to the point that you actually have to watch Return of Sabata at least couple of times before the main plot fully unravels. Of course you do get the big picture in the end of the movie after the first watch, but in order to get all the nuances and small details in place you might want to give it another go. Not that the main plot would magically turn out to be any better: it just rewards you a little bit more since the second time you have a small grasp *why* somebody did something that seemed illogical or strange before. This time you know what's in that characters mind and you also know something about his motives. Then again, I strongly believe that these kind of character traits should have been portrayed clearer in the script (or acting) so you would have realized them during the first view time already.

In short? Return of Sabata offers great characters, but lousy and confusing plot. Still, it's worth a watch. Or two.

First Crimson Rivers was a great movie. A bit like French vision of David Fincher's Seven. This sequel, though, does not deliver as well. It lacks the depth, atmosphere and character development of the first Crimson Rivers. The plot in this sequel is quite silly: monks, apocalypse and Nazis... quite original. Not.

Christopher Lee was awesome, but in my opinion he would have deserved more screen time. Now his motivations and character personality were left way too vague. Jean Reno is always a pleasure to see on screen, but this time he gave a routine-like performance. I wonder if he realized this was to be a below-average suspense flick and nothing more? I bet he did. Benoit Magimel was a new face to me, and I think he did quite well. Although his character Reda was practically exactly same kind of young tough cop as Cassel's Kerkerian on the first Crimson Rivers.

This sequel offers nothing new or interesting compared to it's predecessor. It's still passable fun for a one time rent, though.

As a fan of the Hellboy comic series it's hard not to compare movie with the original comic although that doesn't do any justice to the movie itself: they are separate things and thus they should be taken too. But nevertheless I find the movie version of Hellboy a little hollow: lot of fun action, a little philosophical banter about nature of humanity and not-so-well-done relationship drama.

Ron Perlman IS Hellboy. When I first read Hellboy ages ago, it was Perlman and no other actor I only could imagine as the lead for Hellboy movie. Thank God he did too. Perlman shines in this one and brims of blunt and stoic charisma. His performance of Hellboy is great mixture of humor and seriousness, just like comic version. John Hurt (professor Broom) performed also well, as usually. Others were more or less OK.

Effects were nice, general atmosphere and sense of adventure was great and Perlman alone was well worth to see this. But what of the downsides? In truth, I disliked the romantic parts of the movie. Too shabby, too hollow. Obviously Hellboy is a man with hormones too, but in the movie his craving for tail (pun definitely intended) was way too dominating element and took a lot more screen time than necessary. In a way more than I could tolerate. Believe it or not, you CAN actually do good relationship drama withOUT any romance. Could someone *please* tell Del Toro this? Friendship, for instance, is what I would have liked the Hellboy movie to express rather than any faked romance. In the comic version almost entire B.P.R.D. was one big family, which made Liz, Abe, Hellboy and the other "freaks" of the Bureau more of siblings and true friends, rather than random romantic encounters. This family behavior gave a lot deeper meaning for their interactions in the comics. None of this was seen on the movie. Hellboy treated Abe as a neutral colleague although Abe claimed they were friends (quess Hellboy just didn't show it on-screen then, hmm?). And Liz was portrayed only as the love interest of the main character, not really a plausible person of her own or a qualified member of the Bureau.

But hey, some might have actually liked those romantic scenes. Good for them. For me the very romantic element itself was just a distraction and a lousy way to add forced romance in a movie that didn't even necessarily require that. It felt so fake. But enough of that. Now to the plot. If you have read the comics, you know the deal and can fill the holes the movie leaves. But without reading them? You might have a little harder time to understand everything than happens. It's OK though, as the plot is not that important, intelligent or even interesting anyway. Things just happen and you can focus on the way too cool Hellboy.

As a rental entertainment this has great value though: Cool main character, great action, funny but a little illogical plot. I've seen a lot worse comic hero movies.

6/10

Whoa. Everything seems to click in the right place with Jin-Rô. Awfully tragic and cold story of a man with the nature of beast trying to interact with an ordinary girl. Of course it's all wrapped around political conspiracy plots and lots of references to fairy tale "Little Red Riding Hood", but I think most of the time the movie still works quite nice as it is.

Animation is fluid and smooth, soundtrack is beautiful and the few action sequences the movie provides simply kick ass. But the main thing in Jin-Rô is the impossible and tragic relationship between a beast and a man. This aspect is done extremely well in the movie, thanks to supporting soundtrack, great voice actors and painfully emotional and touching end. I dare not to spoil it, but these kind of endings are rare in the movies, animated or real. Bold move, and it works like a dynamite.

Jin-Rô exceeded all my expectations, although they were quite high before I ever saw it.

In short, The Punisher would be a-OK action movie, if the "hero" was just an anonymous guy we have never heard of before. Now, let's face the fact: this is THE Punisher. At least it's supposed to be. And although I do understand that a movie adaptation can not be 100% accurate compared to the comics, I still find this movie lacking those things that ultimately make Frank Castle The Punisher in the first place.

Acting, directing and cutting is all fine by me in the film. Couple of years ago I was purely hypothetically wondering, who would be the best actor for Frank Castle, but I couldn't think of anyone. Thomas Jane was almost perfect for the role and thank God for him. Others did OK, too. Overall, I don't find much to complain about the actual making of the movie, because it's greatest flaws were already done in the script itself.

What I did find most disturbing was the compromises that were made between realism and the original comic world. Sure, some foolish things from the comic version (like the Russian) were included, but I can live with that. Absolutely as the worst of all the very heart of comic-Punisher's motivation for violent rampage on criminality was seriously altered. Castle's talk about "this is not vengeance" was all empty and hollow, because that's exactly what the whole movie was all about: vengeance. Not punishment, at least not yet. And he did seem to enjoy the "punishing" a little bit too much at the end of the movie. The Crow-ripoff (if you've seen it, you know what I mean) was just stupid.

Maybe I'm too harsh on this one. After all, it was an OK movie, as I earlier stated. It's just that... The Punisher as a character has a lot more potential than this movie ever used. Naturally as a Punisher-fan I did have a lot of expectations for this movie and obviously it did partly fail me because of those strong expectations.

Tell you what, though. I do hope they make a sequel, because I honestly do anticipate to see The Punisher actually start punishing, without any personal attachments to his work. Because that is the core of the comic character we know as The Punisher. Hopefully the makers have the backbone to continue with a non-compromising sequel. And make it NC-17, will ya? Heroes like Spiderman can be done for kids too. Anti-heroes like The Punisher, however, should be strictly entertainment for grown-ups with critical and rational sense of reasoning. Any less is just unnecessary pampering.

Passion of the Christ seems to be a very complex movie. Most of the reviewers here seem to either love it or hate it. Personally I found all the blood, the gore and violence in this movie justified. After all - it was all because of me. Whether the violence was realistic or even historically correct is irrelevant to me, because this is Gibson's vision of the happenings of Jesus' death with several liberties taken (for artistic purposes, naturally). Use of old languages was, if once again, not completely realistic but a nice touch still. Gibson seems to be quite a talent as a director.

Do I find this movie awesome? Ummm, yeah. In a way. Is it inspiring? Yes, brilliantly. Touching? Very. Violent? Surprisingly, not as violent as I expected (then again, perhaps I'm just too numb to gory violence anyway.). But still yes, violent it is. Clearly not a movie for the faint of heart. Is it perfect? No. Absolutely not. As I said, it is Gibson's vision of what happened. I can relate to most of things I saw on the screen, but still some points bugged me.

I found Mary's (biological mother of Jesus) suffering for her son to be too calm, too accepting. I would have imagined any mother's grief to be visually more painful. But now, Mary suffers on-screen like a calm buddhist. It disturbed me, since I considered it to be very un-motherly kind of behavior from her part. After all, she was just a human being, right? Whether she knew about God's Ultimate Plan (tm) or not is actually quite irrelevant. When your son is about to be tortured and killed, how could you keep your cool so well? Where were Mary's emotions and why couldn't she show them more?

And second of all, resurrection happened too quickly. It was almost like a quick teaser for the sequel "Passion of the Christ II: Resurrection" or something. A couple of extra scenes at the end of the movie about the resurrection would have been nice.

In conclusion: I didn't actually enjoy watching this movie (I wonder how anyone could?) but I was very touched and moved by it. This is absolutely the most inspiring and challenging Jesus movie ever made so far. So there; I recommend you go and see it.

Hirttämättömät (=Unhangables) is a Finnish western comedy with road movie elements. Lonely Rider and his (mostly) faithful sidekick Tonto try to transport so-called criminal Speedy Gonzales for hanging in hope for a hefty reward. Little do they know... after some major problems they all end up crossing a hot and long desert with their entire water supply depleted. Or has it?

The whole story relies on the three hilarious main characters but mainly on Lonely Rider (played by Vesa-Matti Loiri). His already great performance gains even funnier sides as he goes almost literally crazy with lack of water. Unlike cunning and cool Speedy or simple but calculating Tonto, Lonely Rider is so boastful, loud, greedy and plainly foolish that you just have to instantly love him. And yeah, all the worst things seem to happen to him.

If you're expecting a realistic western set, don't bother. As earlier stated, this movie was shot almost entirely on sandpits. Such a lovely place as Finland just doesn't have arid and wasted places good enough for fine looking western scenes. Never mind that. It's not the plot (or the scenes) you should think about, it's the journey itself!

This is a national treasure.