Hollywood standard?

The guardian

Director: Andrew Davis Cast: Kevin Costner, Ashton Kutcher, Melissa Sagemiller, Sela Ward, Neal McDonough, Clancy Brown, Brian Geraghty 3/10

Try as he might, even a huge star like Kevin Costner cannot save this B-grader from sinking into the depths of the ocean. Why a decent actor who has strong movies like The Untouchables, Dances with Wolves and JFK in his resume, opt for The Guardian, beats whoever has gone to see the movie, if only for the starcast. Well, the guess is, he must have trusted the director — Andrew Davis — with blockbusters like The Fugitive and Collateral Damage under his belt, to deliver a hit. But if someone writes a loose, wobbly script, adds some badly-shot scenes, tops it with some mediocre acting and riddles it with amazingly lousy action, what do you get? The Guardian, silly! How else would one explain the unconvincing rescue sequences (read: stunts) by elite US coastguard swimmers in the deep sea? How come the closeups always got hacked from the nose with the microphone hanging from the screen top in almost all the indoor shots? Pathetic, by Hollywood standards. And, boy, is Kutcher pathetic. White as a sheet, wooden-faced and all brawn, Demi Moore’s boy-husband cuts a sorry figure. To think he went all the way to learn swimming in the pool and the sea, attend a boot camp and trained along for eight months with the real awesome coastguards for this action role, the results are a big zero. If Andrew Davis really wanted a champ swimmer, he could have asked Ian Thorpe. Who knows, he could have been better.

Pallabi Biswas

Surprise springer

lucky number slevin

Director: Paul McGuigan Cast: Josh Hartnett, Morgan Freeman, Ben Kingsley, Lucy Liu, Bruce Willis, Oliver Davis, Stanley Tucci, Michael Rubenfeld, Sam Jaeger, Dorian Missick, Kevin Chamberlin 5.5/10

A rather confusing title to begin with, but then the whole movie leaves you puzzled till well into the second half. It’s just another murder-revenge story, starkly Tarantinoesque plot, nothing new, but still a surefire attention-grabber.

Absolutely no question of spilling the beans, so no storyline here. Just that the director Paul McGuigan’s appeal in the movie lies in the fact that it keeps springing surprises, though one too many. With the fast switch-on switch-off between the past and the present the movie keeps you groping. With the final curtain you just might feel a little foolish, maybe even a bit cheated. But the ploy works to an extent.

It’s the great starcast that actually keeps the plot moving. There’s this sexy Josh Hartnett, showing off in a flowery towel. You have Bruce Willis in an intriguing role. You have the two veterans, Sir Ben Kingsley and Morgan Freeman, snatching attention. Lucy Liu’s the only female interest in this out-and-out male madness. And it’s only the generous dose of gore and death that earns the film its ‘A’ certificate.

Madhuparna Das