Video review: "Black Panther"

I thoroughly enjoyed “Black Panther,” though I was mystified by the nigh-orgiastic fervor with which others received it. If I were to rank the entire Marvel Comics Universe (MCU) flicks from top to bottom, I’d put this one about square in the middle.

It’s a beautiful-looking film filled with action and dominated by a lordly, charismatic central figure. Chadwick Boseman plays T’Challa, recently anointed king of Wakanda, and also the beneficiary of a super-suit and mystical potion that turn him into the titular hero, protector of the kingdom.

But the main villain doesn’t make much of an impact. Michael B. Jordan plays Erik Kilmonger, an American special forces mercenary with a very personal connection to Wakanda. I’m a big fan of Jordan’s talents, but the script gives him little more to do than strut and spew ‘hood bravado, which stands in such stark contrast to the lilting, graceful accents of T’Challa and his subjects.

To the rest of the world, Wakanda is another backward little African nation, shrouded in poverty and isolated mystery. In reality, they’re the most technology advanced nation on Earth. Letitia Wright plays Shuri, the king’s kid sister and brilliant chief scientist.

Danai Gurira is Okoye, leader of the royal elite guard, who are all bald-headed, badass women. Daniel Kaluuya is W’Kabi, T’Challa’s oldest friend and ally, while Winston Duke plays a tribal rival. Martin Freeman is the token white, a Western spy who mostly just gets in the way.

Directed by Ryan Coogler, who co-wrote the script with Joe Robert Cole, “Black Panther” is an exciting spectacle with some very familiar heroic story arcs. There’s an understandable amount of excitement about having such an audacious launch to a superhero franchise featuring an African-American protagonist.

Though, as I keep having to remind people, the superhero movie craze really got started 20 years ago with “Blade.” I’ll still take the first film of that franchise over that of “Panther.”

Bonus features are quite princely. They include a director’s introduction, roundtable discussion of the script, deleted scenes, gag reel, feature-length audio commentary track by Coogler, an overview of the first 10years of the Marvel Comics Universe (MCU), as well as four making-of mini-documentaries touching on various aspects of production.

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Review: "Black Panther"

S’Ok.

Pretty good, even.

But the superhero movie to end all superhero movies? C’mon.

“Black Panther” is an invigorating but hardly revolutionary entry into the Marvel Comics Universe, taking the African king who wears a (mostly) indestructible cat suit we saw in the last Avengers movie and draping a colorful backstory around him. Chadwick Boseman plays T’Challa, ruler of the fictional kingdom of Wakanda, in a calm and charismatic performance that foretells many happy returns for this character in future MCU movies.

Rather than a traditional origin story, we get the fall-from-grace saga: T’Challa assumes the throne after the death of his father, and with it the powers -- courtesy of a mysterious flower pod -- and costume of the Black Panther. But almost just as quickly, he finds his leadership in question and his very claim to the throne challenged.

Directed by Ryan Coogler (“Fruitvale Station”) from a script he co-wrote with Joe Robert Cole, “Black Panther” will resonate with some for its nods to the Black Power movement of the 1960s and its more recent echoes. White characters are few; when they do show their faces are derided as “colonialists;" and the taint of slavery is frequently brought up in describing the fate of black people, both in America and Africa.

But these aspects struck me -- a white kid from the suburbs -- as merely fashionable put-ons for the young and hip, flashy decorations over the familiar bones of superhero tropes.

T’Challa operates as a sort of royal James Bond who’s not just an agent of the coolest cloak-and-dagger outfit in the world, but is actually running the whole show. He’s even got his own Q-like gadgetmaster, in the form of his kid sister, Shuri (Letitia Wright), concocting playful new toys to augment his super-suit.

Wakanda is viewed as a poor third-world nation, but actually is the most technologically advanced people on Earth, helped by a vast store of vibranium that fell there in the form of a meteor long ago. The strongest substance in the universe -- but wait, I thought that was supposed to be admantium? -- vibranium has all sorts of cool abilities to absorb and transmit energies. This allows Black Panther not only to jump and scratch, but set off mini sonic explosions.

It seems a nasty mercenary named Ulysses Klaue (Andy Serkis) stole a store of vibranium 25 years ago, and now it falls to T’Challa to bring him to justice. He’s helped by Okoye (Danai Gurira), the head of his personal guard, who are all very stern-looking, bald women, as well as Nakia (Lupita Nyong’o), a Wakandian spy who also happens to be T’Challa’s ex.

The X-factor, who shows up rather late in the game, is Michael B. Jordan as Killmonger, an American former special ops soldier/assassin who at first appears to be working for Klaue, but turns out to have a very dark connection to Wakanda, which I’ll not spoil here.

Also turning up are Martin Freeman as a helpful, if naïve CIA agent; Angela Bassett as the queen mother; Forest Whitaker as the Wakanda high priest; Daniel Kaluuya as T’Challa’s best pal; Winston Duke as the head of a rival tribe; and Sterling K. Brown as another member of the royal family.

“Black Panther” certainly is one of the most visually sumptuous films in the MCU, with a pageant of bright costumes, stunning CGI technology and colorful vistas. The hidden Wakanda capital city looks like some glorious cross between “Blade Runner” and “Zootopia.”

I enjoyed the movie, but didn’t come close to being blown away by it. The hype machine has been cranked to 11 for this film, which turns out to be a low 7, at best.

Video review: "Arrival"

“Arrival” is a fine science fiction drama, more contemplative and imaginative than we usually see. But a Best Picture Oscar nominee? Please.

(In this regard it shares a lot of company, up to and including the runaway favorite, “La La Land.”)

Amy Adams plays Louise Banks, a scientist specializing in languages. When giant black ebony space ships suddenly appear out of the sky, silently taking up station at random points around the globe, she’s brought in to try to communicate with the invaders.

The “heptapods” allow the humans into their ships once every 18 hours. We see some massive tentacles through a clear wall, but the only sounds they make are grunts and screeches that none of the other big brains can make sense of.

Louise, working with fellow egghead Ian (Jeremy Renner), try to use visual aids to make a breakthrough. Meanwhile, military leaders (including Forest Whitaker) are barking orders and international leaders are stoking fears, believing that the aliens came to provoke a war.

The pivotal role falls to Louise, who discovers that the extraterrestrials do not view time in the same linear line as humans.

I don’t mean to deplore “Arrival.” My chief criticism is that it’s a movie that works very much on an intellectual level and not so much on an emotional one. Most films go the other way, so it’s refreshing to see one aim more for the mind than the heart.

The truly best films, though – the kind nominated for Best Picture – should do both.

Bonus features are a bit lacking, especially if you buy the DVD edition, which contains none.

The Blu-ray comes with five making-of featurettes: “Xenolinguistincs: Understanding Arrival,” “Acoustic Signatures: The Sound Design,” “Eternal Recurrence: The Score,” “Nonlinear Thinking: The Editorial Process” and “Principles of Time, Memory & Language.”

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Review: "Rogue One: A Star Wars Story"

Befitting its title and main character, “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story” is the grittier, edgier entry in the Star Wars saga. Right from the get-go, director Gareth Edwards and screenwriters Chris Weitz and Tony Gilroy give us the tonal and sensory cues that we’re in for something very different.

No ubiquitous text scrawl at the start of the movie. No blast of John Williams’ iconic Star Wars theme to set the mood. Indeed, Michael Giacchino’s score has a dark and forbidding beauty to it. The rebels are shown to be capable of underhanded dealings and even cold-bloodedness in battling the Empire. Hardly a lightsaber in sight.

There’s still a line between good and evil, but lots of graying at the fringes.

There are also plenty of hallmarks of Star Wars. It’s a tale of orphans and adoptive parents, of hope shoving off despair, of those who desire power for its own sake and those who would oppose them. The Force certainly plays less of a direct role than any of the seven other movies, but its energy still thrums in the background, living on the characters’ tongues and in their hearts.

It’s easy to call it the weakest of the Star Wars movies. The first half especially is discombobulated, with too many fringe characters demanding their moment in the spotlight. Including not one, not two but three Asian-influenced warriors who aid the cause. One of them is even the embodiment of that tired old saw, the blind-but-still-a-badass combatant.

Still, it’s a matter of degrees. The weakest Star Wars flick is better than 90% of sci-fi/fantasy films out there. And “Rogue One” continually builds energy as it goes instead of losing it, leading to an action-packed final act I suspect will leave zero fans disappointed.

You probably already know that “Rogue One” shines a light on the events leading up to the destruction of the (first) Death Star, depicting the men and women (and aliens) who procured the secret plans that made it possible for Luke Skywalker to blow up the planet-killing station.

(And, in doing so, it definitely rejiggers around some of the established Star Wars lore. To wit: Apparently, many Bothans didn’t die to bring us this information.)

Felicity Jones plays Jyn Erso, capable thief and miscreant. Abandoned as a child after her father (Mads Mikkelsen) was conscripted by the Empire to help construct the Death Star, she finds herself falling into the hands of the Rebel Alliance. Leader Mon Mothma (Genevieve O’Reilly) recruits her to seek out Saw Gerrera (Forest Whitaker), a radical who rescued Jyn as a child. Saw’s a battle-scarred sort who’s missing parts of his body, and we suspect that’s not all.

Chief baddie is Ben Mendelsohn as Director Orson Krennic, chief architect of the Death Star project, while Diego Luna provides the counterpoint, rebel spy chief Cassian Andor. Donnie Yen plays Chirrut Imwe, aforementioned blind guy, and Wen Jiang is stoic gunslinger Baze Malbus. Riz Ahmed plays Imperial pilot/turncoat Bodhi Rook, whose entire role could’ve been outsourced to a gaggle of stunt men and extras, and probably should have been.

The scene-stealer is droid K-2SO (voice and motion capture by Alan Tudyk), an Imperial enforcer who was captured and reprogrammed by Andor. He’s rather peevish but also protective of his human charges, and is so used to more freewheeling behavior that when the time comes to impersonate his former role, he’s spectacularly awful at it.

I enjoyed “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story” – but then I’ve liked all the Star Wars movies, even the unfairly maligned prequels. (To those who harp on their clunky dialogue and goofy humor: that’s a feature, not a bug, of all these films.)

It’s a departure, but also a return to roots for a franchise that seemingly has whole new universes yet to explore.

Review: "Arrival"

We don’t often see science fiction movies as cerebral as “Arrival.”

Even “Interstellar” relied on a certain amount of action scenes and contrived peril to keep the narrative moving. This film, directed by Denis Villeneuve (“Prisoners”) from a screenplay by Eric Heisserer, based on a short story by Ted Chiang, is largely a rumination on how language affects our thoughts and perceptions. It’s an often exhilarating experience that largely eschews obvious thriller-movie moments.

If it’s possible to do a film on an alien invasion of Earth that’s the polar opposite of the “Independence Day” flicks, then here it is.

Amy Adams plays Louise Banks, a language genius brought in by the military to help communicate with the extraterrestrials. Their ebony ships, shaped like large concave discs, suddenly appear one day, looming over a dozen spots on Earth. Banks is assigned to the team working the Montana ship, headed up by Colonel Weber (Forest Whitaker, doing an annoying and entirely unnecessary accent of vaguely New England vintage).

She’s partnered up with Ian, a physicist played by Jeremy Renner. Normally in these types of movies the male character is the focus and the woman is relegated to the moon that reflects his light. Here it’s pretty much the opposite; Ian is constantly around and supportive, but he’s there to facilitate her journey.

They’re both lonely academic types, but she’s further burdened by some memories of a failed marriage and daughter, about which I’ll say no more.

The aliens are left deliberately vague. Described as “heptapods,” they appear to be giant seven-tentacled creatures with no visible faces. They are viewed only in shadowy fog through a glass wall inside their ship, into which the humans are permitted once every 18 hours. The aliens don’t appear to be violent, but nobody’s been able to get through to them. Their language appears to be a wave of rumbles and screeches that no one can figure out.

Louise determines to use visual aids, reckoning that written communication doesn’t always stand in for how it’s pronounced. The heptapods can produce strange, inky spirals that she and Ian begin to puzzle out.

Meanwhile, other nations are leery of the alien threat, egged on by a populace riven with paranoia. Are the aliens here to ask something of the humans? To give something? To provide a test of some sorts?

“Arrival” is the sort of the movie that’s challenging to review without giving too big a peek behind the curtain. It’s a slow-moving film that some people will find dreamy and intoxicating, and others may become bored with it. It stimulates the mind more than the heart, and that’s a nice change of pace.

Review: "Southpaw"

You go to see a movie like "Southpaw" for the gritty performances and slam-bang boxing scenes. From a story standpoint it's a pretty generic boxing plot, with our scrappy champion rising and falling, falling and rising, from the mat and metaphorically.

The screenplay by Kurt Sutter is original only on a technicality, liberally cribbing its plot from the "Rocky" movies and other boxing flicks. (He reputedly wrote the script with Eminem in mind, basing it loosely on the rapper/sometime actor's life story. Em doesn't appear, though he supplies a couple of punchy songs.)

Jake Gyllenhaal plays the protagonist with the not-at-all-subtle name of Billy Hope, who rose from the hard streets of New York City through dint of hard work and an unmatched ferocity in the ring, an unwanted orphan who became light heavyweight champion.

Then through a succession of senseless disaster and self-destructive behavior, Billy loses it all, including custody of his 10-year-old daughter, Leila (Oona Laurence). He's forced to reinvent himself as a fighter and as a man, starting from the bottom again and earning his way back to glory and redemption.

This is Boxing Movies 101 stuff. Check that; it's actually 201. Boxing 101 is "Rocky" and "Rocky II," where an unknown pug rises to the championship. "Southpaw" is "Rocky III" and "IV" -- they're virtually interchangeable, really -- where the reigning champ takes things for granted, gets knocked down a peg or seven, and has to scrap back to former heights.

There literally isn't a single surprise along the way, including the inevitable final match. You've got the familiar nemeses along the way, including a black-hearted young boxer (Miguel Gomez) who was responsible for Billy's fall, and the mercenary boxing promoter/manager (Curtis "50 Cent" Jackson), who tells Billy they're family but saves his deepest love for the hottest prospect.

It's an interesting role for Gyllenhaal, who jumped off the traditional Hollywood star train a few years back to pursue smaller, more personal projects like "Nightcrawler" and the excellent "End of Watch." He's fought against his blue-eyed prettiness during this time, and in "Southpaw" he really works the scarred, stumblebum angle, muttering his lines and cocking his one good eye.

After losing a bunch of weight for "Nightcrawler" he packs on the ripped muscles for this role, and director Antoine Fuqua obligingly sweeps his camera and lights across Gyllenhaal's torso to emphasize the craggy wall of his abdomen. (I'm not really sure when abs became a thing; you'd think a boxer would want a little padding there to better absorb blows.) The actor's body becomes this strange mix of revulsion and fetishized object; we linger over his spent blood and abused flesh like a latter-day Lazarus.

The fight scenes are well-choreographed and energetic, though in the commonplace failing of Hollywood boxing movies, the fighters absorb more solid blows in a single round than most pugilists encounter in a year. Billy's strategy, if you can call it that, is to let opponents wallop him until he gets furious enough to uncork his pent-up rage.

Forest Whitaker is terrific as Tick Wills, an old-school trainer who teaches kids at an inner-city gym. Billy comes to him at his bottom, after lost having his wife (Rachel McAdams) to tragedy, his daughter to social services and his fame and fortune to his own self-hating spiral. Tick is old and tough, has taken his own cuts, and retrains Billy as a defensive fighter. "Protect yourself" is his mantra, underlined by one cloudy eye.

Just as the two men begin to trust one another, the filmmakers shortcut the journey and we're back to the ring again for Billy's deliverance. A smarter, better movie would've had Billy turn down the offers of quick money and a shot at the title, realizing that when you've gone down the path of destruction you can't just back up to solve your problems.

But who wants to see a boxing movie about a boxer who doesn't want to box anymore? Me, but apparently few others.

Review: "Black Nativity"

The Christmas pageant is a familiar holiday tradition for most everyone who grew up in America, and “Black Nativity” is the closest cinematic replication one could think of. There’s singing, dancing, some mild religiosity, and family tensions giving way to warm togetherness.

Writer/director Kasi Lemmons loosely adapts the stage musical version of the Nativity story told with an all-black cast written by Harlem Renaissance poet Langston Hughes. It’s almost an homage to Hughes himself, with the main character, Langston Cobbs (Jacob Latimore), bearing his name and legacy.

The film is colorful, joyous and heartfelt. The characters exist more as archetypes than flesh-and-blood beings, but that’s part and parcel of adapting mythology into modern times. The Cobbs family also takes center stage, while the tale of Mary and Joseph (Grace Gibson and Luke James) gets turned into the backdrop.

Think of it this way: various people wander on and off the stage, declaring themselves to us in song and prose, and then they all get together at the end to usher us on our way back into our own regular lives. We relate to them not as actual people who we might stumble into on the street, but as representations of ourselves, both our ideals and our failings. Their role is not to convince us they could be real, but to embody our innermost desires for ourselves, and how we often fail to live up to them.

And, it should be said, the music is very, very good. Much of it is gospel influenced, which shouldn’t surprise as the main character is a preacher and the last act takes place in his church on Christmas Eve. I particularly liked the songs “Fix Me” and “Be Grateful.”

Latimore is a well-known R&B artist, and other famous performers surface as cast members such as Jennifer Hudson, Mary J. Blige and Nas. But mainstream actors Forest Whitaker, Angela Bassett and Tyrese Gibson also croon in, showing off pipes we didn’t know they had. (Whitaker in particular shines with a gorgeous, smooth baritone.)

Langston Cobbs is a youth from Baltimore, where he lives with his single mother, Naimi (Hudson). She lost her job and is struggling to make ends meet, and their brownstone is about to be foreclosed. She sends her son to stay with her estranged grandparents in Harlem, with the tacit implication that he may be there for a while.

Langston has never met his grandparents, or even knew they existed. It’s a big culture shock. While not a bad kid, he’s used to a certain amount of independence and sass, and neither are much brooked in the home of Cornell and Angela Cobbs (Whitaker and Bassett). Rev. Cobbs is a man who wears his dignity like a fine suit that he cares for well, much like the pocket watch he was personally given by Martin Luther King Jr.

There’s a mysterious big hurt between the elders Cobbses and their daughter, and Langston spends the rest of the story trying to ferret out what it is. Gibson plays Tyson, a street tough who offers some advice and help, though not necessarily in pursuits that will have a positive outcome.

While some might be annoyed that the story of Jesus takes a backseat to the Cobbs clan, I found their company more like an embrace that feels awkward at first, but becomes warmer as the audience and movie clutch harder. Bring on the show.

Review: "Lee Daniels' The Butler"

What could have been a searing portrait of race relations in America seen through the eyes of a longtime White House butler instead becomes something like a cheap "Forrest Gump" knockoff.

"Lee Daniels' The Butler" is loosely based on the life of real White House butler Eugene Allen, who served eight presidents from 1952 to 1986. He was a witness to the tumultuous events of the mid-20th century, from school integration to the civil rights upheaval and Vietnam.

Director Daniels and screenwriter Danny Strong, who based the movie on a Washington Post article by Wil Haygood, use this as a basis for the completely fictionalized persona of Cecil Gaines, played by Forest Whitaker. While it starts out as a strong character portrait, it soon morphs into a hard-to-believe sequence of events in which either Cecil or his son is present, Zelig-like, at every single pivotal moment in the civil rights movement.

(And yes, the official title is "Lee Daniels' The Butler" -- the studio even sent out a stern reminder to that effect. Personally I think including the name of a director or author in the title makes them seem incredibly insecure.)

Even worse was the choice to cast well-known actors as the presidents Cecil served. Most of the time they bear not a whit of physical resemblance to the Oval Office occupant they're supposed to represent, and their attempts to mimic their speech or mannerisms fall short. Thus, Robin Williams' Eisenhower seems pinched and feisty, while John Cusack as Nixon (!!) has an itchy, sad quality.

Liev Schreiber does an amusing through pretty standard LBJ parody, and James Marsden adds a New England warp to his vowels as Kennedy. Alan Rickman's Reagan is probably the best of the lot, capturing the Gipper's unseen warmth. Casting Jane Fonda as Nancy Reagan seems like some sort of cruel in-joke, especially when she invites Cecil and his wife to attend a state dinner as their guests just so (it's implied) there will be some diversity in the room.

The main problem with the churning of administrations is none of them hang around long enough to make any substantial impression, so these appearances end up falling just north of cameos. One part where Cecil attends to Jackie Kennedy after the assassination, her clothes still stained with JFK's blood, is a cheap and false moment.

The movie is at its best when it peers at the relationship between Cecil, his often-troublesome marriage to his boozy wife Gloria (Oprah Winfrey), his children and his co-workers. Cuba Gooding Jr. plays the prankster head butler, and Lenny Kravitz is the more sedate wingman. The scenes where the White House staff hang out in the kitchen and back areas are lively and insightful, contributing to an Upstars/Downstairs vibe.

I enjoyed the section where Cecil talks about the two faces of the black house servant. You wear one face that is your own at home and among friends, but when white folks are around you must be non-threatening, indeed a non-entity -- "the room should feel empty when you are in it," Cecil learns.

He even manages to land his White House gig through strident obsequiousness. When a white manager suggests him to the black head butler, the latter takes affront -- and Cecil sides with him, saying he's right to want to hand-pick his own staff. Impressed with the way Cecil can disappear inside himself, he hires him on the spot, commenting that he'll "be a good house n*gger."

The part where Cecil tangles with his oldest son Louis (David Oyelowo) over his evolution into a civil rights activist grows increasingly far-fetched. Louis manages to be at the forefront of virtually every iconic scene from the equal rights movement -- getting beat up at a diner sit-in, having police dogs and firehouses trained on him, being nearly burned alive on a torched Freedom Rider bus, even seguing into the nascent Black Panther movement.

Curiously, the moment when the civil rights era arrives on Cecil's doorstep, the 1963 march on Washington by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and others, is not represented.

I think this ambitious film would have been better off as a rumination on the different paths African-Americans have taken toward equality and respect -- the way of the harsh revolutionary vs. the quiet insider. Instead, its story and emotions wander all over the map of the black experience, never finding a home.

Video review: "The Last Stand"

My favorite part of “The Last Stand” is the very end. After over-the-hill sheriff Ray Owens has fought off a small horde of Mexican gangsters invading his dusty border town, he rests on the sidewalk, bloodied and beat. He struggles to get to his feet, and a younger man offers a hand. Ray glares at that outstretched hand, peeved that it is seen as necessary. Then he gives up and accepts the help.

At 65, Arnold Schwarzenegger no longer resembles a superhero, just a tough old-timer with a few tricks left. After giving up superstardom for politics, Arnie attempted a comeback with this throwback action thriller. Audiences stayed away, perhaps because of recent revelations about his personal life.

Judged solely on its merits, “The Last Stand” is an effective if unoriginal action flick. It takes a while to get rolling, but after the 45-minute mark it’s an enjoyable orgy of gunfire and explosions.

The set-up is that a Mexican drug cartel kingpin (Eduardo Noriega) has escaped from federal custody and is zooming toward the border in a super-charged Corvette prototype. With the help of an elaborately planned escape, he’s gotten away clean, and only Sheriff Owens and a small passel of misfit deputies stands between him and freedom.

Johnny Knoxville is a hoot as a local gun-loving coot, while Luis Guzman is Ray’s overly cautious right-hand man. Rodrigo is the very recently deputized town drunk – and ex-Marine – while Jamie Alexander rounds out the cast as the lone, able female cop.

Korean director Jee-woon Kim knows how to stage action scenes so they’re exciting while still remaining grounded in the laws of physics.

And Schwarzenegger has a comfortable, easy grace playing a regular guy who becomes a reluctant hero. The box office receipts may disagree, but the Austrian Oak still has action-star bona fides.

Both the Blu-ray and DVD versions come with a decent amount of goodies. There’s a making-of documentary short and three other featurettes focusing on various aspects of production, plus a handful of deleted and alternate scenes.

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Review: "The Last Stand"

Just a quick review/rumination on "The Last Stand" today. Nick Rogers is handling the main review over at The Film Yap, so head over there to check that out for a more complete take.

I see "The Last Stand" as a marker. It's less a movie meant to be enjoyed in its own right than a question for the audience, and the Hollywood machine. And that is: Can Arnold still cut it as an action star?

Based on this old-school shoot-em-up, ably directed by Korean filmmaker Jee-woon Kim, I'd say the answer is definitively yes.

The movie itself is big, dumb and loud. It's one of those flicks where the audience is encouraged not to think much about whether the plot makes a lick of sense or if the characters are thicker than plywood. It's one big excuse to dive into a whole lot of gunfire and mayhem, interrupted by funny bits and Schwarzenegger's patented quips.

"The Last Stand" takes its own good time to get rolling -- the screenplay doesn't really take off until the 45-minute mark -- but once the explosions and machine gun fire starts up, it's a glibly visceral thrill ride the rest of the way.

The plot is straight and simple: a Mexican drug cartel chieftain named Cortez (Eduardo Noriega) has escaped from the feds during a bold breakout in Las Vegas. He's driving a hyper-fast Corvette prototype toward the sleepy Arizona border town of Sommerton Junction. After the various federal law enforcement agencies muck up the job, it's up to the local sheriff, Ray Owens, and his three deputies to stop Cortez.

Now, Schwarzenegger does not look like a "Ray" or an "Owens," but he fits comfortably into the town's laid back culture. We later learn he was once a hotshot Los Angeles narcotics cop who gave up the fast lane 20 years ago to detox in Sommerton.

It's sort of funny to think about the fact that the Austrian Oak has lived in America for 40 years or so, but his thick wiener-schnitzel accent hasn't diminished one iota. Still, it's clear that despite his name and speech, Ray isn't a native -- at one point he tells the bad guy, "You make us immigrants look bad."

Arnie is still a badass in this movie, but a more down-to-earth and human one. He looks a mite stiff and slow during the fight scenes. Schwarzenegger also seems physically smaller, like a Norse titan cut down to size by his earthly existence. I noticed he appeared shorter than a number of his male co-stars. My memory of him is that he towers -- and glowers -- over everyone else.

Other cast members include Johnn Knoxville as Dinkum, the local screwball who operates an ersatz firearms museum -- open every third Thursday of the month, noon to 3 -- just so he can legally own all sorts of high-powered weaponry that will come in handy later. Peter Stormare has a fun role as the kingpin's henchmen, who dresses like an Old West dandy and even fights with an ancient six-shooter.

Luis Guzman is Ray's right-hand man, who suggests they look the other way when the heat comes, but walks tall in the end. Rodrigo Santoro is the town drunk, who happens to be an ex-Marine. And Jamie Alexander is convincing as the only female cop.

At age 65, how  many more movies like this does Arnold Schwarzenegger have left in him? I'd like to think a few -- especially if he comes back in other roles like this where he's not playing a superman, but just a tough old-timer with a few tricks left in him.

Personally, I would love to see him make some more Conan movies -- as I often point out to people, the original Robert E. Howard books took the character out to age 70 or so.

The most telling moment in "The Last Stand" comes at the end. Having defeated the bad guy -- what, you didn't think he would? -- the sheriff is sitting on the curb, torn up and bloody from his travails. Over walks the FBI chief (Forest Whitaker) who had been overseeing the chase from afar, offering Ray information, advice and not a little condescension.

Ray goes to stand up, struggles to do so, and the G-man holds out a hand to help him up. He glares at the outstretched hand, clearly peeved that it is seen as being necessary. Then he winces with pain, bows to the inevitable and lets the younger man help him to his feet.

Time catches us all, and even the biggest action movies stars should have the grace to acknowledge it.

2.5 stars out of four

Review: "Repo Men"

What a steaming pile of a movie.

Part sci-fi fable, part blood-spurting action film, "Repo Men" is a movie with a lot of ideas but no concept how to weave them together. It veers wildly from futuristic satire to knife fights to anti-capitalist screed, with a little love story and buddy-cop stuff thrown into the blender.

Here's the setup: Jude Law and Forest Whitaker are Remy and Jake, lifelong pals who traded the soldier life for repossessing artificial organs from people behind on their payments. And it's not some genteel transaction: They zap their targets with electrical darts, slice them open and tear out the mechanical liver, kidney, lungs, whatever -- even if it means death, and it usually does.

Now, you might think that it's hard to like a couple of characters who gleefully carve up other people for a commission. And you'd be right. The repo men -- who are for some reason marked with a special neck tattoo -- are essentially licensed thugs, not so much trampling on civil liberties as acting as if they didn't exist.

The film is set in a vague near future, where cityscapes teem with video billboards and vertical overdevelopment a la "Blade Runner" -- and yet Remy's car looks suspiciously like a 2010 Subaru with a few bolt-ons.

It's the sort of universe where miraculous "Artiforgs" are marketed to the masses, but firearms seem to be a forgotten technology: Jake and Remy rarely encounter resistance any stiffer than a switchblade.

Remy's wife (Carice van Houten) wants him to give up the repo life and go into organ sales instead -- it's still the same nasty business, but hey, at least now he can work 9-to-5.

His life gets turned upside down when a job reclaiming a heart from a famous jazz musician goes bad, and Remy's left with his own artificial ticker. Back on the job he discovers his taste for killing strangers has ebbed -- a real change of heart, get it? -- and soon he's behind on his payments.

It's not long before the creepy boss (Liev Schreiber) taps Jake to go after Remy. On the run, he teams up with a nightclub singer (Alice Braga) who has more replacement parts than she can remember.

My objections to this film are many, but here's the ones I can think up right now:

· Why is it that so many people need new organs? They're so numerous they band together into small armies to hide out from repo men. Is there something in the future water making everyone rot on the insides?

· Wouldn't you think if a company was sending out goons to rip people open because they can't make their payments, the media would be reporting on it, day in and day out?

· All the female roles seem to be played by actresses with indistinct, hard-to-place accents that make it very difficult to understand their dialogue.

· Remy is presented as a dumb, brutish guy: There's even a flashback to his Army days, where he's assigned tank duty because of his "small brain and big skull." Yet at one point in the movie, he sits down and writes an entire book about his experiences in the repo biz.

"Repo Men" is based on a novel by Eric Garcia, who co-wrote the screenplay with TV vet Garrett Lerner, and was directed by Miguel Sapochnik, his first feature film. Normally I try to be charitable to novices, but based on this borderline-unwatchable mess, their nascent careers should be recalled.

1.5 stars