Monster Block Party: ATTACK THE BLOCK

Science fiction has always been the medium of metaphor.  During periods of social and political restrictions, sci-fi was a way to mask a writer or director’s social views behind facade of the fantastic.  Writers could talk about touchy subjects like race, gender, and sexuality without getting people into a huff.  No, no, these are transsexual aliens that the humans have to learn to coexist with and respect.  No connection with anything in the real world (wink, wink).  What?  I just have something in my eye, that’s all (wink, wink, wink).  The interesting thing is, for the Western world at least, we can now pretty much just say whatever we want.  We don’t get arrested or blackballed anymore, just flamed on the internet.  We’ve reached the point where we can drop the metaphor and say “this is a movie about racial and socioeconomic disparity, the glamour of crime, and the nebulous nature of family.  Plus, there are aliens.”  Take ATTACK THE BLOCK (2011), for instance.

The Capsule:

A wannabe gangsta crew of South London youths picks a fight with a recently crashed alien monster.  That first one was not so tough, but they get more than they bargained for when its much nastier mates show up looking for it.  On top of that, they also have to deal with the police who think they are responsible for all the chaos, and a proper gangsta who wants them dead for bringing the cops into his territory.  Cool headed Moses (John Boyega) must lead his people, now including the nurse his crew mugged earlier (Jodie Whittaker), through a locked down high-rise without being shot, arrested, or eaten.  The boys (and girls) of South London are going to show the aliens that they attacked the wrong block. 

 

Director Joe Cornish starts his modestly budgeted sci-fi story off with a cute trick.  Moses and his crew of block boys are first shown as a menacing gang of criminals.  Their hoods are up, their faces are masked, and their eyes are cold and intense.  They confront a single white lady, threaten her with a knife, and take her most meaningful possessions.  After she runs off, they joke around with each other about the crime.  It’s a bold way to introduce the heroes of your movie.  Sure, we find out later that they are just a bunch of kids who were just as scared about robbing someone as Sam was to be robbed (debatable, since she seems much more shaken, while they laugh it off).  Later, they even apologize to Sam, saying they would never have done it if they knew she lived on the same block.  They turn out to be basically good kids, but they make a threatening first impression.

Now, that’s a clever narrative, granted, but that’s not the trick.  The trick is why they are so threatening.  They are threatening because they are urban youths.   On the one hand, duh, that’s the whole point of the movie.  When I really thought about it, though, I realized how insidiously effective it was.  It got me, and usually I see through that shit.  I didn’t realize how much it got me until the second watch.  When I saw Moses’ crew all lined up with bandanas covering their faces, I thought they almost looked like outlaws in a western.  Then it struck me.  Almost every spaghetti western starts with the (anti) hero doing something disreputable.  It adds a layer of complexity and transgression to the character.  As long as they don’t do anything too despicable, I have no problem getting behind them.  A simple robbery where no one was hurt wouldn’t even have fazed me.  It just shows that the main character is a bit of a scoundrel.  No big deal, scoundrels are cool.  Spaghetti westerns happen on the dusty streets of the Old West, though.  I don’t hang out much in the Old West.  Sam’s mugging happened on a dark street in the city.  Scoundrels lurking in places you may actually go are suddenly a much bigger deal.  Thanks to the media, I subconsciously equate hoodies and puffy jackets and masks with danger.  So without realizing, I took a mental step back.  These guys are serious.  

Except that they are just a bunch of kids who like to read Naruto comics.  It was a total manipulation, and I fell for it.  I feel even worse because without their scary masks and hoodies, the kids are adorable.  They talk about video games.  They tease the local girls (who give it back to them just as hard).  They call their mums to check in and lie about what they were doing.   Most importantly, they look out for each other.  Someone is always calling the other cuz, or fam, which the urban dictionary tells me is what you say when you consider someone family.  It’s a tight group, and everyone obviously cares about each other.  They just have really bad role models, like Hi-Hatz, the block’s resident drug kingpin.  He gets to boss people around, always has money, and even records his own rap songs.  The boys are so enamored—and scared—of him, they just want to impress him.  The mugging was just their attempt to follow in Hi-Hatz’ gangsta footsteps.  There are even a couple of younger, even more adorable kids that follow Moses’ crew around.  Wannabe wannabe gangstas. 

All the kids are great, but Moses is the stand out performance.  Going back to the western thing, John Boyega does a great Clint Eastwood.   He has an amazing physical presence, silent and commanding, but compassionate as well.  His deep, soulful eyes convey the uncertainty he won’t allow himself speak aloud.   He is the most mature and serious of all the block boys, forced to be old beyond his years.  When Sam sees the Spider-Man sleeping bag in Moses' apartment and realizes how young he is, it's heartbreaking.  It’s very fitting that Boyega was the breakout star of the movie, landing a lead role in another moderately budgeted sci-fi epic.  I believe it was about an awakening of some kind.  Anyway, I predict a bright future for the lad.

Jodie Whittaker also does a fantastic job as Sam, the put-upon nurse who gets pulled into this mess.  She plays a good mix of terror at the situation and lingering anger at being victimized.  When the boys come bursting into her apartment while fleeing the aliens, she does not hold back in telling them off, even as she helps them.  It gives weight to the bond she develops with Moses.  Their relationship evolves from fear, to resentment, to begrudging cooperation, to eventual understanding and admiration.  By the end, when she’s sticking up for him to the cops, it feels earned.  

All the boys except Moses have parents, but they barely appear in the movie.  There are only quick shots of them as the boys excitedly rush to get weapons to fight off the alien invasion (before realizing how much nastier the males are).  Dennis’ dad makes him take the dog with him.  That wasn’t a great idea.  Aside from Sam, the only bonafide adult to get a decent sized role is Ron, played by Nick Frost.  He is nice to the kids and gives them a safe place to hold up, but he’s basically useless.  Slightly less useless is Brewis (Luke Treadaway), the hopelessly square suburbanite who uses the word “shizzle” about a decade too late while attempting a fist bump.  At least he doesn’t use the word “square”.   He’s older than the block boys, but isn’t what I would call an adult.  When he complains to Ron about being busted for drugs once, he’s talking about by his parents, not the police.  

The aliens are basically wild animals.  They reach Earth by chance, not as part of an organized invasion.  They have light absorbing fur, no eyes, and a giant mouth full of iridescent lamprey like fangs.  Like a fuzzy shadow with glowing teeth.  Gorilla wolf motherfuckers, the boys call them.  Brewis creates a speculative backstory about them, but the movie never goes into detail about the species other than they like to chow down on people and there dozens of males and only one female (sort of the reverse evolutionary flaw of the dragons from REIGN OF FIRE).  It’s the female’s scent that is motivating the rest of the GWMFs.  Another interesting thing I realized on my second watching was that the boys basically saved the world right in the beginning when they kill the female.  Without her, the species can’t reproduce.  There are only a couple of dozen males running around the block to worry about.  Those cause a lot of problems, but nothing compared to what would happen if they got busy making baby mouth monsters.  

The one rough thing about having a great cast is that it makes the deaths hurt all the more.  No one has a problem when an annoying bunch of assholes get killed in a movie.  You might even look forward to it (Hi-Hatz, for instance, or to a lesser degree, his puppet enthusiast henchman, Tonks).  It’s a totally different dynamic when sympathetic characters eat it.  [Spoilers coming] Even though Dennis was the hardest and most sneering member of Moses’ crew, his death was hard to take.  He played tough to the end, facing down the monsters to protect his mates.  When the end came, though, his façade dropped and he was just a scared kid.  The worst was Jerome.  He was the smartest and most sensitive one of the group.  I immediately latched on to him as my surrogate into the film (though in reality, I am  closer to Brewis).  He’s the person I least wanted to die, so of course he’s a goner.  His death scene was terrifying.  The gang is fleeing through a smoke filled hallway when Jerome gets separated.  He hears the GWMFs around him and gets more and more desperate.  Just as he reconnects with one of his mates, the aliens pounce and pull him back into the smoke, screaming.  That scene is like a knife in the stomach to me.  It works wonders for the continued tension, though.  If they can kill off the most sympathetic character, then no one is safe.  

The ending is ludicrous, but it affords Moses a defining moment on the road to being a true hero.  He takes responsibility for his actions and is willing to sacrifice his life to ensure his family and friends (and Brewis) make it out.  Ultimately, he becomes a legend on the block, a role model for the kids worth looking up to.

ATTACK THE BLOCK was Joe Cornish’s first and—criminally—only film so far.  He did a pass on the ANT-MAN screenplay, which retains a lot of his DNA (criminal becomes hero theme, sly humor, heart).  He was considered to direct one of the HUNGER GAMES movies, A GOOD DAY TO DIE HARD (oh, if only), and the speculative GAMBIT movie, but didn’t get any of them.  Come on, Hollywood people, throw this guy a bone.  He clearly has the chops.  Maybe one of those Star Warses you’re always making these days.   I’m sure John Boyega would put in a good word.  I’ll bet he could even do metaphors, in a pinch.

C Chaka

Visit Camp WTF: DON'T GO IN THE WOODS

Growing up in the ‘80’s, I believed the sole purpose of a machete was to give maniacs something to hack you up with in the woods.  Wilderness survival meant being able to run really fast without tripping.  You got picked up from sleepaway camp in an ambulance, not a bus.  Bad people lived in the woods.  Most of them were deformed and liked knives.  There were a lot of movies back then that reinforced these conclusions.   When I was a kid, I was terrified and fascinated by those movies.  As soon as I was old enough to get a video rental card, I went through every one I could get my hands on.  Some of them were great, most were okay, some were terrible.  And then there was DON’T GO IN THE WOODS.

The Capsule: 

Hikers, campers, and nature lovers flock to the unnamed region of the Utah mountains to enjoy the scenic beauty, commune with the wilderness, and be murdered by the dozens.  Two couples, who apparently hate each other, are spending the weekend hiking and camping.  Craig is the know-it-all wilderness expert.  Joanie is the whiny prankster.  Peter is the insecure smart aleck.  Ingrid is the one with red hair.   While they are busy listening to Craig’s safety instructions, bickering, and playing highly inappropriate practical jokes, legions of nameless victims are being killed all around them by a feral backwoods lunatic.  Eventually, the busy killer gets around to the main group and they are forced into a desperate race for survival against man and nature.  With regular breaks for more random killings, of course.  

Let’s be upfront about this.  DON’T GO INTO THE WOODS is a bad movie.  It is badly acted, it has ridiculous and poorly dubbed dialogue, it has the pacing of a meth addict.  It is also amazing.  DGITW doesn’t play by the rules.  It can’t afford the rules.  What it could afford was a handful of eager but completely inexperienced (non)actors, a few hundred gallons of very red fake blood, and a lot of woods.  Woods are cheaper than sets.  Sure, some…many…most would call it unwatchable, but DGITW has so many balls-out insane touches that you will never see in a real movie.  If you are in the market for that kind of thing, it will leave you endlessly entertained.  

This movie strips down the killer in the woods formula to its barest essence (killer, woods, death), and cranks it up as far as it can.  Aside from our four leads, there is absolutely no room for character development.   Hell, there is barely enough room for character identification.  The movie begins in mid attack, as a woman in running in a panic from an unseen menace.  Once she is dispatched, we move on to the establishing shot of our lead campers.  Literally thirty seconds later, we’re back to another completely unrelated victim.  The transitions are so fast they can give you whiplash.  One nameless couple in a tent are set upon so fast we don’t even see their faces before the blood starts flowing.  Another time, a fleeing Joanie runs across the mutilated body of someone we’ve never even seen before.  There are so many murders they won’t even fit inside the movie.  

The sheer variety of the victims is part of the joy.  This patch of forest must be a kind of oddball mecca.  There is a teen birdwatcher in a tweed jacket with leather elbow patches.  There is a poindexter photographer in a pink beret dragging along his complaining mother in a housedress.  The best is probably the incredibly unattractive couple in the shag-lined VW love wagon.  When noises interrupt their tryst in the middle of nowhere (possibly their honeymoon), the guy, who looks like a kimono wearing blond Sonny Bono, leaves his aging hippy lover in the van while he investigates.  A few tense moments pass as she unsuccessfully tries to close the doors (unscripted, the actress couldn’t figure out the van doors).   It doesn’t matter, since the killer pushes the entire van over a cliff, with the hippy screaming uninterrupted as it rolls and catches fire.    

What is so great about these victims is that they are the most inappropriate people to be in the woods.  At one point, a roller-skater shows up, in the mountains!  There is even a lone hiker in a wheelchair.  You have to admire his determination, but maybe there are better hobbies for him.  At least he reaches the top before getting his head chopped off.  I'm surprised a deep sea diver didn't shown up.

Even the main group, who are supposedly normal campers, do not behave like actual humans.  Craig, the uptight scout leader type, emphatically states the first rule of wilderness survival is don’t go into the woods alone.  Yet he raises no objection later when petulant Peter does, in fact, go off into the woods alone.  One scene has Joanie hanging all over Craig, explaining to Ingrid that they were going off so he could teach her “survival techniques”.  It’s pretty obvious what that is code for.  Ingrid takes the hint and goes back to her tent.  The next time we see Craig and Joanie, he’s teaching her how to set an animal trap.  Wait, what?  He actually meant real, non-boob related survival techniques?  I know you are in Utah, but this is a slasher movie, for god’s sake.  Clearly, Joanie is disappointed with this doof, too, since she playfully sets off the trap and crushes Craig’s fingers.  In an example of wildly excessive prank escalation, Craig later traps Joanie in her sleeping bag and hoists it over a branch ten feet into the air, poking at her with a stick.  Even the killer recognizes this as a dick move, leaving Joanie alone and just going after Craig.

The absolute weirdest reaction comes from Peter.  While he’s pouting in the woods all by himself, he begins to have a flashback (or maybe a fantasy) of him frolicking in a stream with Joanie and Ingrid.  In the real world, a fisherman walks up the stream and Peter waves at him.  The fisherman smiles, but then sees the killer standing on the ridge above Peter.  He’s clearly horrified, but Peter just keeps waving, oblivious.  Then a bear trap swings down and snaps onto the fisherman’s face.  There is a great deal of screaming, bleeding, and flailing around.  Peter, who is maybe twenty feet away, just goes back to his daydream.  It’s not until the killer is standing right in front of him to finish off the fisherman that Peter realizes there is anything wrong.  Maybe he was so used to Craig and Joanie’s antics that he figured the bear trap to the face was just a gag.  Everybody’s a joker around here.

Another interesting note: Joanie apparently has the metabolism of a fruit fly.  Despite being lost without food for only about a day, she resorts to licking any discarded candy wrapper or encrusted paper plate she finds.  If she had gotten the jump on the killer, I’m fairly sure she would have eaten him.

The killer epitomizes the movie’s dichotomous nature of somehow being completely derivative and totally unique at the same time.  He’s a big, hairy, deranged mountain man who likes to kill people.  We’ve seen that trope before (even though this was 1981, pretty early into the slasher craze).  I’ve never seen such a pure version of this character, though.  He gets absolutely no backstory.  None of the locals have any rumors to warn the campers about.    There are no newspaper clippings for anyone to find, or relatives to show up and provide exposition.  The killer certainly doesn’t do any monologues.  The fucker doesn’t even have a name.  He’s just this drooling backwoods vagrant who wears what looks like a macramé plant holder across his face.  But, boy, does he love killing.  He actually jumps up and down in glee when he spots one victim.   

He also loves booby traps, but with the exception of the very accurate bear trap to the face setup, he is terrible at it.  When the campers discover his TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE inspired cabin, it is littered with booby traps.  Sorry, I mean filled with littering booby traps.  When someone trips a wire, a cloud of dirt, dust, and small wood fragments dumps on them.  Unless the intent was to irritate the eyes of people with contact lenses, it’s not terribly effective.  Realistically though, it’s a pretty rational move for the killer, since it would be his clumsy ass setting it off most of the time anyway.  Best not to have steel spikes drop from the ceiling when you’re dragging around bodies.

The violence is usually kept over the top and fun.  Every wound shoots geysers of blood.  The scene of the birdwatcher’s arm being lopped off is just shy of Monty Python.  Every once in a while, though, the kills can become gruesome.  It was just enough to keep me off balance, not sure if I should be smiling or grimacing.  The murder of the painter is a good example.  She has her easel set up in the middle of the forest and is busy painting the underbrush and vines (only using one shade of green) when the killer sneaks up behind her.  He stabs her repeatedly in the back, blood splattering on the canvass, and finally skewers her straight through.  It starts off ironic and light, but becomes more unsettling at it drags on.  Adding to the discomfort is the fact that the murder is in view of her toddler, who is dangling in a bouncer hung from a tree.  It’s okay, she mostly seemed occupied with her chocolate bar.

The fate of the kid, by the way, is the movie’s most batshit crazy twist.  [SPOILER]  For half the movie, the killer is running around carrying a cardboard box looped with twine over his shoulder.  He drops it during the climax, and after the dust settles, there’s the toddler.  She must be the most laid back baby ever to be banged around in a box all that time without making a sound.  The best part is that none of the cops or paramedics notice her, and she’s left alone in the woods, just playing with a hatchet (a real hatchet, by the way, belated note to Child Protective Services).  There’s your backstory!  The killer was a box baby from the ‘50’s, and now the cycle is starting over!

This madness is brought to you by the very, very indie director James Bryan.  He basically dropped his cast/crew into the woods and started filming, much as Sam Rami did with EVIL DEAD, though with less success.  Or talent.  He did pull off some nice tracking shots and took advantage of the scenic beauty, but everything else is a gigantic train wreck.  Bryan went on to make THE EXECUTIONER, PART II, a sequel to a movie that doesn’t actually exist.  That one is also terrible, but does not reach the sublime awfulness of DON’T GO IN THE WOODS.  Mary Gail Artz, who played Ingrid, went on to great success as a casting director.  Part of her success came from not casting any of her fellow actors in anything.  Despite its innumerable faults – actually because of them- this movie is an absolute wonder.  So much of it defies description that I’ve barely scratched the moldy, weird smelling surface.  One thing for sure, it’s never boring.   Except for that stretch in the third act where not much happens, but then it gets good again.  

C Chaka

London Falling: REIGN OF FIRE

The big news this week is the Brexit, the UK voting to leave the European Union.  No one knows exactly what that will mean for Great Britain, but everyone is freaking out.  Some are afraid it will mean financial ruin, others say the entire EU will start to collapse as more nations decide to leave.  It’s all doom and gloom speculation, but I think everyone can agree on the most likely outcome: England will be destroyed by dragons.  You only have to look as far as the 2002 eerily prescient drama REIGN OF FIRE to see the writing (and scorch marks) on the wall.  

The Capsule:

Young Quinn (not Christian Bale) is visiting his mum working at an Underground tunnel expansion site when the driller opens up an ancient cave full of hibernating dragons.  The dragons waste no time in destroying England and spreading throughout the world.  Twenty years later, Quinn (now Christian Bale) is leading a group of survivors holed up in a crumbling castle.  They scrounge for food, entertain the kids by reenacting the works of George Lucas, and keep their heads down.  Their meager existence is interrupted by the appearance of an American military team lead by Van Zan (a bald, bearded, badass Matthew McConaughey).  He and his crew of dragon slayers are hunting the only male dragon left in existence.  If they can cap him, the species comes to an end and humanity is saved.  Against Quinn’s advice, the Americans, plus a few of Quinn’s people, head toward the man-dragon’s nest in London.  Things do not go well for anyone who is not fireproof.  To save the rest of Quinn’s group, he and Van Zan must team up and stage a suicide mission straight into the mouth of the beast.  Not a metaphor, by the way.

As far as apocalypse stories go, this is a novel one.  Dragons are almost always confined to fantasy settings, or at least magical ones, so seeing dragons battling helicopters is a nice twist.  The movie does have a bit of a medieval feel to it, though.  Quinn’s bastion of civilization is an old castle, and without modern conveniences like electricity, running water, and not being melted by dragon fire, the survivors live a pretty primitive lifestyle.  Leading this crew is a rough job for Quinn.  It’s hard to make sure everyone has enough to eat when every passing dragon sees the guy working in the garden as a grilled chicken salad.  He tries to keep everyone in line, healthy, and working together.  Luckily, he has a strong right hand man in Creedy, who I completely forgot was played by Gerald Butler, a few years before his break-out role in 300.  

Butler wasn’t the only face I recognized on my latest re-watch.  In the scene where Quinn and Creedy are reenacting the “I am your father” scene from EMPIRE STRIKES BACK, in costume and with props like it was Shakespeare, the camera pans over the audience of spellbound kids.

Holy shit, it’s Lil’ Joffrey!  At first I thought I was just reading into it, but later he gets this regal shot…

IMDB confirms that, yes, it’s a tiny Jack Gleeson, 9 years away from his role as the terrible boy-king in Game of Thrones.  This kid cannot get enough dragons.  Whatever you do, Quinn, make sure that little fucker does not become the leader of your group.  He does not make good decisions.

Fellow GOT cast member Alexander Siddig is also in this as the radio operator/early warning falconer Ajay.  It's like a reunion.  Retroactively.

Quinn’s style of leadership is through reason, not force.  He opts to avoid conflict with the scaly uglies at all cost.  Even the kids’ prayers are customized to reflect this.  It boils down to watch the skies and hide at the first sign of trouble.  This philosophy is put to the test with the arrival of Matthew McConaughey’s American militia.  It’s a ridiculously stereotypical match-up between British and US, right down to the names.  Denton Van Zan vs. Quinn Abercrombie.  It might as well have been Joe Eagle and Reginald Arthur Tallyho.  The Americans are rough and ready; looking for trouble.  Van Zan comes rolling into the castle on a tank, straddling a huge machine gun.  It is not a subtle image.  He immediately riles up the camp, impressing everyone with his tales of killing dragons rather than hiding from them.  He and his (Swedish) US Cavalry helicopter pilot, Alex (Izabella Scorupco), have this crazy tactic of skydiving at flying dragons and netting them in the air.  He claims it works, though the one time we get to see it in action he looses three men and nearly gets everyone else killed.  Maybe it was an off day.  Interestingly, even though he has all these advanced weapons, he takes out the dragon with a harpoon gun.  He even carries around a giant axe.  The high tech toys just get in the way.  I’m surprised he didn’t try to wrestle the dragon. 

The dragons are impressive and threatening and all, but the real show stopper is the inevitable throw down between two super intense mega-actors like Bale and McConaughey.  Quinn valiantly tries to hold on to reason while dealing with the grim, arrogant, occasionally megalomaniacal Van Zan.  He finally snaps when Van Zan conscripts some of the camp members to join his hunt for the male dragon.  The physical fight is quick and brutal, but it’s the screaming and posturing that makes it so entertaining.  Bale and McConaughey are like rival baboons on angel dust.  Their shouting quickly devolves beyond intelligible words.  I was expecting McConaughey’s skull to pop right out of his skin in furious rage.  Those guys were just shy of human nuclear detonation.  If a dragon had come up at that point, it would have quietly backed away while avoiding eye contact, suddenly remembering it had some shit to do across town.  

That scene aside, the dragons do make formidable adversaries.  They are surprisingly well designed, especially for 2002, when CGI could still be a bit wonky.  They don’t have the detail of a fancy Game of Thrones dragon, but I was never distracted or pulled out of the moment by their appearance.  They have a (very) loosely scientific anatomy, fitting with their non-magic origins.  There are visible ducts in their mouths for spitting the flammable liquid that becomes their fire breath.  I couldn’t tell what ignites it, since young Quinn got a face full of the stuff without becoming a bonfire, but I liked the way it would flare up as it dripped from a dragon’s mouth onto the floor.  It’s plausible that enough of these things could wipe out most life on Earth, especially since the military powers seem to have haphazardly and ineffectively attacked them with nukes.  Quinn’s narration implies that it was really the dragons that caused all the great extinction events in the world’s history.  After they roasted the dinosaurs, they hunkered down in caves and waited for the Earth to replenish itself.

The science does get a bit dodgy, aside from the fact that they are, you know, dragons.  The movie claims that they eat ash, even though we only ever see them chowing down on people or each other.   They are apparently immortal, because the one young Quinn bumped into in the cave was fully grown.  They aren’t immune to fire, since they can be burnt or blown up, but they don’t have a problem emitting a few thousand degrees of flame from their mouths.  The most ridiculous bit is their reproductive cycle.  Van Zan claims that, like fish, the female dragons lay tons of eggs and the male flies over and fertilizes them (thankfully not shown).   According to Van Zan, there is only one male dragon (he must have gotten a hold of their census records).  If this is true, it is a serious evolutionary design flaw for a seemingly immortal species.  One accident and boom, there goes your species.  On the other hand, it makes that one guy very popular.  Well as it happens, ladies, I am the last man-dragon on Earth.  

Like all the best movies, it kind of apes the ending of JAWS.  [SPOILERtown] After losing Van Zan’s army and a good chunk of Quinn’s castle folk to the man-dragon, Quinn, Van Zan, and Alex head back to London for one last, desperate crack at the beast in the ruins of London.  Luckily for them, the starving stud has eaten all the other dragons.  Now that I think about it, it was probably getting ready to hibernate again for a few million years.  If the dragon slayer crew had just waited a few days and avoided London, everything would have been fine.  Of course, waiting for it to go to sleep isn’t exactly a satisfying ending, so I’m happy they went with the final showdown.  Like Hooper, Alex is used as bait and makes a white knuckle escape.  Van Zan gets an awesome, Quint-style death.  When he misses his shot with an explosive crossbow bolt, he takes out his axe and leaps off the building, in defiance, at the dragon.  In slow motion, of course.  The dragon swallows him in one bite.  Quinn gets a nice “Smile, you son of a bitch” moment.  It’s slightly understated, but I liked it.

Director Rob Bowman is mainly known for TV work (a familiar refrain on movies I write about), including quite a lot of X-Files.  It seems to be his preferred medium, since he only did one theatrical feature before this (THE X-FILES: THE MOVIE) and one after (ELECTRA).  That’s a solid two out of three record.  He brings just the right tone to this one.  It’s an absurd concept that everyone plays straight.  Bale and McConaughey are good enough actors to be intense without becoming campy.  There is just enough character humor (especially from Gerald Butler) to keep it from getting too grim.  And while they did not specifically use the word “Brexit” in the film, this movie is a pretty clear indicator of the way things are now going.  Nice one, England.  Now if you will excuse me, I need to grab an asbestos suit and a giant axe and get ready for the dracopocalypse. 

C Chaka