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willyandre
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Hamilton: Men inte om det gäller din dotter (2012)
Steer clear if you're a Hamilton fan
I consider myself a Hamilton fan. I've read every book, watched every movie and TV series. Some TV/movie adaptations have been good, others not so much, but up until the last two movies they stuck to the story and general feel of the books. Now, the last one I can see why they changed. There's no Soviet Union any more, so a lot of adaptation had to be done to bring it into the modern world. That excuses some of the choices made by the directors. On this one, they have nothing to hide behind. The book is Hamilton's most recent appearance, and it's written in our current world setting. It's not even a Hamilton book, the main characters are the Tanguy family. ... so imagine my surprise when I see Pierre Tanguy isn't even in the picture at first. What I saw as a main component of the book, aging warriors dusting off their old gear for one last run. It even gave the book it's title, how they were all done with that life, done with fighting and killing, "But Not If It Concerns Your Daughter". Even Hamilton himself struggles with the decision to go in the book.
That's only the most glaring omission, but that alone should be enough to get someone fired. If the Hamilton angle had been removed, it would have been an OK Friday night thriller. Maybe not in the cinema, but then again I don't think it was released for cinema here in Norway. I found the movie in the cheap bins at Europris (Norwegian low-price store, sort of a mini-Walmart) without even having heard they were making it.
There's another one in production too I see. Let's hope they don't screw up the next one as badly as this. I suspect they will though, to make an action out of what should be a tense thriller.
Taxi (2004)
Poor American remake.
I'm tempted to just write "This movie sucks" and then go see the original again, but that wouldn't be very helpful to you guys. Here's why this movie sucks.
To sum up the movie, I steal from oshram-3 (One of the other comments) "The plot of Taxi follows Detective Washburn (Jimmy Fallon, making his debut as a movie lead) and bike-messenger-turned-cab-driver Belle (Queen Latifah) as they inadvertently get tangled up with one another and have to figure out who is ripping off a series of Manhattan banks and try to catch them. Rounding out the cast (no pun intended) are Jennifer Esposito (you might remember her from Spin City) as Washburn's lieutenant, Marta, and supermodel Gisele Bundchen as the head hot chick."
Luc Besson's action-comedy Taxi(1998) was a great movie, mostly due to decent acting, funny characters and social/cultural references. In this American remake, all that is gone.
The characters in themselves are severely less intricate than in Besson's original, and maybe the best of them all is gone. I am, of course, talking about the utterly insane police captain. Then again, of course the Americans would leave him out, since he's a parody of every single angry police chief in American movies. All that's left is Queen Latifah driving a taxi, and a cop that's just pathetic, and doesn't have that likable quality Frédéric Diefenthal had in the french version.
Also, the political correctness really shines through the gaps in this film. Every single strong character is a woman. The only guy in the entire core group of the movie is the awkward cop/disguise artist. The movie has been carefully constructed so it doesn't lash out at any particular groups in society, and by doing that, you lose the edge.
I see this movie as a blatant attempt to salvage careers and make some money on the fact that Americans don't like subtitles. It's also a classic example of what happens when you let lawyers and politically correct groups scare you out of doing things right.
Ofelas (1987)
Excellent movie in beautiful scenery.
This is one of the truly great Norwegian movies, and those are sort of far between. The thing is, there's not a single word of Norwegian spoken either. It's all in an ancient dialect of the Sami language. This movie is made by Sami filmmakers based on their history. All in all that's some feat in a country where their people were systematically oppressed by the government. The attempts to wipe out their culture and assimilate them into the Norwegian one is only outevilized by the American hunt for the Indians.
The scenery and the light in this movie is truly awesome. It's the kind of light you only get in the dark period in the arctic. The sort of neverending dusk/dawn time. For most of the year, the sun doesn't rise in this part of the world, and this results in the spooky, troll-like feeling of this film.