Review: "Angel Has Fallen"

“He knows how we do this. He knows all our tricks.”

Any spy thriller character who hangs around long enough eventually makes it to the betrayal phase. The top guy -- it’s nearly always a guy -- is set up as the stoolie for some nefarious scheme to sabotage the agency from within, and is hunted by the government.

Bond, Borne, Smiley -- it’s always the same thing. They find themselves on the run, having to outwit their own team.

You could argue that “Fallen” isn’t technically in the spy genre, since protagonist Mike Banning (Gerard Butler) is a Secret Service agent, not CIA or something similar. But all the hallmarks are there: unstoppable combat skills, stubbornness bordering on mania, international plots and lots of cool technology able to do stuff straight out of, well, a movie.

I liked the first film, “Olympus Has Fallen,” well enough though the sequel, “London Has Fallen,” got tedious and not a little overly macho. All three have the same basic plot: the President’s life is threatened, and only Mike can save him. This time around it’s Allan Trumbull, played by Morgan Freeman with signature gravitas

In most movies like this, the action scenes propel you onward and the slower talkie sequences are what you must suffer through to get back to the pyrotechnics. This time around I was impressed by the “downtime” more than the parts with flying bullets.

Piper Perabo is an empathetic presence as Mike’s suffering wife, put through hell along with their baby girl when he is fingered as the culprit behind an elaborate assassination attempt on Trumball. Freeman spends most of the movie in a hospital bed, but when he was not I was reminded why it’s pleasing to have a man who is seemingly so wise and kind as POTUS.

I really was touched by Nick Nolte as Mike’s long-lost father, Clay, whom he eventually turns to when the chips are down. Clay ran out on the family a long time ago, and is stuck doing the crazy-loner-in-the-woods thing. But Nolte’s wet, pleading eyes, along with a couple of solid speeches about his motivations, genuinely hit the heart.

Quality acting in a dumb blow-em-up flick? Imagine my surprise.

The rest of the story is fairly forgettable, though it moves along at a nice clip under the direction of Ric Roman Waugh, one of the first stunt coordinators to move behind the camera. He co-wrote the screenplay with Matt Cook and Robert Mark Kamen.

Danny Huston plays Wade Jennings, an old Army buddy of Mike’s who now runs his own training facility with a hand-picked crew of mercenaries, and OMG if you don’t know where that’s going then you must not have seen Danny Huston in any movies over the past 20 years.

Seriously, Danny, get a new agent. Otherwise your first scene might as well come with a title card like the silent movies: "The villain has arrived."

Mike’s rumored to be in line for the director’s job at Secret Service, and could steer some business Wade’s way. Secretly he frets about not wanting to hang up his gun for a desk job, plus his body is breaking down after years in the field, leading to some ferocious pill-popping.

Jada Pinkett Smith plays the lead FBI agent hunting Mike; Lance Reddick is the outgoing Secret Service chief; and Tim Blake Nelson plays the nervous nelly vice president who has to take over the reins of office while the president is in a coma.

Butler is decent at the physical stuff, despite looking rather puffy and jowly these days, though the other actors have to carry him through the touchy-feely stuff.

He looks like his skin is sliding off his face and all gathering around his neck. I think the filmmakers were trying to make him look like crap, but also they went that way because that's the clay they had to work with.

Butler seems poised to take over the “Kickass Geezer” mantle that’s been passed down from Harrison Ford to Denzel Washington to Liam Neeson.

Filled with some decent action sequences and even a few well-plucked heartstrings, “Angel Has Fallen” surprises as the best of the trilogy.

Video review: "Gods of Egypt"

“Gods of Egypt” is kind of a junky movie, but not an unenjoyable one. It’s a sword-and-sandals fantasy epic that tries to follow on the financial success of the “Clash of the Titans” and “Thor” movies, but without the A-list stars or first-rate CGI. Despite its schlocky aspects, I couldn’t bring myself to hate the film and even enjoyed it on some puckish level.

Frankly, this is the sort of flick that would’ve made a prime pick for “Mystery Science Theater 3000” ridicule back in the day.

Nikolaj Coster-Waldau (“Game of Thrones”) plays Horus, the god of air, who’s about to be crowned king of all Egypt after his father Ra decides to step down. In this postulation, the gods are 8-foot-tall super-powered beings who dwell among the humans and rule them, but are still flawed and mortal.

Then his uncle, the power-mad Set (Gerard Butler), usurps the throne and kills Ra and a bunch of others. Horus has his eyes plucked out, robbing him of his unerring aim, and is banished. Then a young human thief named Bek (Brenton Thwaites) steals an eye from Set, kicking off a series of events that includes full-scale war between the gods.

This is essentially another superhero movie, with many of the same dynamics at play. Horus is a good but vain god, and must learn to lead humans instead of lording it over them.

Director Alex Proyas (“Dark City”) and screenwriters liberally borrow elements from other movies and insert them here, including sand snakes straight from “Dune” and gods who transform into metallic form for battle a la Iron Man. If you’re looking for originality, look elsewhere.

But if you’re willing to watch something ironically, I think you’ll find “Gods of Egypt” has a bounty of riches waiting to be tapped.

Bonus features are decent, though you’ll have to get the Blu-ray edition to possess most of them. The DVD comes with only two making-of featurettes, “The Battle for Eternity: Stunts” and “A Window into Another World: Visual Effects.”

With the Blu-ray you add four more featurettes on costumes and makeup, shooting on location in Australia, the cast and the overall vision, plus storyboards.

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Review: "London Has Fallen"

"Olympus Has Fallen" was a wildly preposterous but extremely well-done action/thriller about North Korean terrorists taking over the White House, foiled by a gritty lawman straight out of the John McClane mold. The sequel is even more ridiculous, and returns Gerard Butler as the Secret Service agent who mows through brown people while offering taunts and one-liners.

"Olympus" director Antoine Fuqua, a master at tense action scenes, abandoned ship to direct the boxing movie "Southpaw" instead. So Iranian director Babak Najafi takes over, best known for "Easy Money II: Hard to Kill," which tells you how well he's known.

The result is a reasonably engaging flick that carries itself with energy once the action gets going. The setup and occasional talkie scenes are DOA, though.

Butler is Mike Banning, a disgraced agent who failed to rescue the First Lady years earlier but redeemed himself by saving the life of President Benjamin Asher during the Korean assault. He's played by Aaron Eckhart, who rocks a skinny suit even better than the real POTUS (though the Anderson Cooper haircut they gave him deserved a veto).

His role is essentially damsel in distress, who occasionally gets tough enough to get the hero out of a tight spot.

As the story opens Banning is back in the good graces as Asher's pet agent, taking daily jogs around the White House grounds together that escalate into races, which Banning always wins because he's nobody's punk, you punk. Banning's got a baby on the way and is ready to quit the presidential detail for the quiet life, but then disaster strikes again to underline his True Purpose in Life.

The British Prime Minster has died suddenly following an operation, so world leaders gather to pay tribute. It's all a trap, years in the making by Aamir Barkawi (Alon Aboutboul), a Pakistani arms dealer and terrorism supporter who's righteously upset about Western forces killing his daughter in a drone bombing.

The elaborateness of the attack is impressive, with virtually every nook and cranny of the U.K. police force, emergency responders and anti-terrorism forces infiltrated with assassins. Most of the presidents and prime ministers are wiped out within minutes, though Banning and his Secret Service boss (Angela Bassett) manage to get Asher away.

The story is all chase-chase, in which Banning and Asher are pursued in cars, helicopters and on foot, then a second chase-chase in which they go on an unlikely offensive. Waleed Zuaiter plays Barkawi's son, Kamran, who's running things on the ground while daddy titters at the Vice President (Morgan Freeman) via video from the homeland.

To really get under Kamran's skin, Banning mispronounces his name as "Cameron," which is really a low blow.

Banning's M.O. is to sneer at his enemies, which causes them to go crazy, throwing all their assembled forces his way, which... does not seem like a very good strategy for protecting a president.

The action scenes are chaotic and gripping, and Banning's death toll is somewhere in the high dozens at least. He gets shot or stabbed from time to time, but shakes it off like any man's man who runs on "bourbon and poor choices."

If the last movie was slightly jingoistic, this one ratchets the rhetoric up to near Trump-ian territory. Banning brags to a guy whose neck he's about to snap that America is bigger than any one man, and we'll still be here a thousand years from now, yada yada, which would be more convincing if it weren't coming from a Scottish actor laboring through contorted vowels to sound like a Yank.

"You hear that?" he growls over a radio to the bad guy, slowly slipping his knife deeper into a terrorist as he screams. "That's the sound of your brother dying."

"Was that really necessary?" Asher asks afterward. You could say the same about this whole film.

Review: "Gods of Egypt"

"Gods of Egypt" is the sort of thing you're tempted to laugh out loud at -- and believe me, I did, several times -- but I can't bring myself to hate it. It's the sort of goofy disposable entertainment that seems self-aware of its nature, embraces it and has fun with it.

We've had big-budget spectacles featuring the Greek/Roman pantheon of deities as well as the Norse ones via the Thor movies, so now it's the Egyptians' turn. Because everyone was demanding a Horus/Set throwdown, right?

Director Alex Proyas is known for this sort of thing -- "Dark City," "The Crow" and similar middle-brow adventures in the fantasy/science fiction wing. At $140 million, it approaches triple the budget of "Deadpool," though the CGI, while extensive, often has that cheap shallow texture endemic to cut-rate/foreign jobs.

I noticed Proyas often cut away from money shots quickly, giving us time to absorb the impact without letting our gaze linger too long to seek imperfections.

The final package is a giddy sandals-and-swords romp that feels like it plucked elements from various other movies. The gods transform into metal warriors, there are sand snakes plucked straight out of "Dune," there's lots of parkour-ish stunts involving flips and contortions that aren't really necessary to get the job done.

Plus the expected quotient of heaving bosoms, comic sidekicks and so on.

The setup here is that in this version ancient Egypt -- script by Matt Sazama and Burk Sharpless -- the gods literally dwelled among the mortals and ruled them. They're eight feet tall, have amazing powers and live a thousand years, but they can certainly be killed and maimed -- and certainly will be over the course of the next 127 minutes.

They're essentially super heroes, dealing with the same-ol' great powers/great responsibility conundrum.

Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, best known for portraying the morally conflicted Jamie Lanister on "Game of Thrones," plays Horus, the lord of air, known for his keen sight and true aim. As the story opens he's about to be crowned king of Egypt, as daddy Osiris (an oddly uncredited Brian Brown) has reined over peace and prosperity for an eon and is ready to pass the mantle on.

But Uncle Set (Gerard Butler, in full shout-and-flex mode) isn't happy about being banished by father Ra to the wasted desert, and decides it's his turn to rule. He does some Very Bad Things, including plucking out Horus' eyes and banishing him.

Cut to our adorable human facilitator, a young thief named Bek (Brenton Thwaites) whose gorgeous lady love, Zaya (Courtney Eaton), worshiped Horus before his overthrow. She convinces Bek to steal Horus' eyes -- represented as glowing blue jewels -- from the elaborate maze of traps constructed by Set's chief builder (Proyas favorite Rufus Sewell). He manages to snatch one, but Zaya is killed in retaliation.

Bek revives the self-pitying Horus, but with one eye he's only a half-powered god. They set off on a familiar quest for revenge and true love, as Horus promises to rescue Zaya from Anubis' underworld.

Helping out are Hathor (Elodie Yung), the goddess of love who has been joined to both Horus and Set, depending on her need; and Thoth (Chadwick Boseman), the prissy but good-hearted god of knowledge and wisdom.

It's not a particularly Egyptian-looking cast, but there at least is a decent enough mix of ethnicities to pass muster as a multicultural mashup.

I liked Coster-Waldau in the lead role, even though he isn't given much to do other than fight and seethe. He's got an easygoing charisma and likable screen presence. I was glad to see the depiction of a normal male body that's athletic without the usual veiny/engorged look that's become so prevalent.

The movie takes tons of liberties with traditional Egyptian mythology, whipping up all sorts of side characters and events to fit their purposes, and sweeping anything that doesn't fit under the rug. (Look up the recorded conflict between Horus and Set; it was much more, uh, spunky.)

One of the coolest set pieces is Ra's chariot pulling the sun across the sky each day -- in this depiction, the earth is most definitively flat -- doing nightly battle with Apep, the worm of destruction. Played by Geoffrey Rush, Ra is an ancient, remote god who watches the exploits of his descendants below, silently judging but taking no direct action.

The whole sequence is quite majestic and beautiful, which is an amusing contrast with the squirmy, silly stuff happening in the sand. I think if Ra were to weigh this movie on its celestial worth, he'd probably toss it into the trashbin of the cosmos -- but he'd chortle while doing it.

Review: "How to Train Your Dragon 2"

A top-drawer piece of animated filmmaking, 2010’s “How to Train Your Dragon” was supremely entertaining for kids while also gently imparting life lessons about finding your identity and overcoming handicaps, both physical and spiritual. The sequel is essentially more of the same, not breaking a lot of new ground story-wise but satisfactorily bringing back the old gang for another whiz-bang go-round.

If it feels thematically lighter, that’s because it is. If it also seems zippier and more pure fun, that’s because it is.

Five years have passed on the Viking island of Berk since the chief’s awkward son, Hiccup (voice of Jay Baruchel), flipped the script and convinced the former dragon-fighters that the mighty reptiles were meant to be their companions and mounts, not their enemies. There’s peace and prosperity, virtually everyone has their own pet dragon, and Hiccup no longer feels like the outcast offspring of his mighty father, Stoick (Gerard Butler), who is determinedly duty- and muscle-bound.

No longer a gangly teen, Hiccup is more self-assured and settled. He’s even filled out a bit, though in Hiccup’s case that means progressing from painfully thin to merely scrawny.

His best buddy, Toothless, is a rare (so far unique) Night Fury dragon, sleek black death on the wing. Toothless lost part of his tail due to Hiccup’s experimental tinkering, which also fixed him up with a prosthetic replacement. Hiccup has applied those same skills to his own missing leg, injured during a battle against the huge dragon that was compelling its smaller ilk to constantly raid Berk.

Former competitor-turned-girlfriend Astrid is back, a warrior born. She’s sprightly voiced by America Ferrera, who also supplies a wickedly funny impression of Baruchel’s distinctive speech and mannerisms. Also returning is Gobber (Craig Ferguson), Stoick’s reliable right-hand man and best friend, and the crew of young cutup dragon riders, Jonah Hill and Christopher Mintz-Plasse among them.

Hiccup has been spending his time exploring the surrounding isles, and makes a few disturbing discoveries. Some dragon trappers (Kit Harington plays their leader) have been enslaving the winged creatures for a shadowy general named Drago Bloodfist (Djimon Hounsou), who is said to be building a dragon army and have his sights set on Berk.

Hiccup also encounters a mysterious dragon rider whose affinity with the beasts rivals his own; she (Cate Blanchett) turns out to have a painful past with a personal connection.

Dean DeBlois, who co-wrote and co-directed the first film with Chris Sanders (who departed to work on “The Croods”), takes over solo screenwriting and directing duties. The visuals really pop in this movie, from the slightly reflective nature of Toothless’ ebony scales to the nifty fiery sword gadget Hiccup created for his personal weapon. The flying scenes, in many ways the heart of the original film, are somehow even more exhilarating.

The culminating battle has a bit of a familiar ring, and I wish DeBlois & Co. could have come up with an existential threat that doesn’t feel so much like a retread. To some extent he’s trapped by the series of children’s books upon which these movies are based, though from what I understand it’s a fairly loose adaptation of Cressida Cowell’s novels.

Still, “How to Train Your Dragon 2” is first-rate moviemaking, a superior piece of entertainment sure to please parents just as much as their young’uns. A third film has been announced for 2016, and I for one am already counting the days.

Video review: "Olympus Has Fallen"

Maybe we give too many points to originality. I'd rather see a really well-done rehash of old material than a wholly original movie without a dram of flair and wit. "Pacific Rim" may just be a mash-up of monster and robot movies, but it was giddy and fun. "After Earth" was a brand-new idea, but disastrously executed.

"Olympus Has Fallen" is hardly a novel flick. Start with the fact that it's one of two movies out this year about terrorists taking over the White House. And the plot is barely more than "Die Hard" with a zip code change.

But this action/thriller from director Antoine Fuqua ("Training Day") is a zippy, taut distraction. It's entirely implausible, but the sort of movie where you can park your brain in neutral for a couple of hours and have a good time.

Gerard Butler plays Mike Banning, a disgraced Secret Service agent who gets trapped in the White House when North Koreans attack. (I said implausible!) With the rest of the president's detail wiped out, he turns into a one-man wrecking crew, while the POTUS (Aaron Eckhart) and secretary of defense (Mellissa Leo) are trapped in the underground bunker by the sneering villain (Rick Yune).

There's some political intrigue, a side plot involving the president's kid hiding in the building's secret spaces -- though thankfully no lame tacked-on romance. Mostly it's Butler mowing through bad guys and trading insults via radio with the mastermind.

If that sounds a lot like John McClane taunting Hans Gruber while knocking off his henchman from twenty-odd years ago, that's because it is. But the very reason Hollywood recycles old ideas is because they're good ones.

"Olympus Has Fallen" may not be new, but sometimes something old is a better bet.

Video extras are rather modest. There are five making-of featurettes touching on standard subjects like stunts, special effects and casting the film. Add in a blooper reel, and you're done.

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Review: "Olympus Has Fallen"

This seems like good timing for a slick, slightly jingoistic action/thriller with a geopolitical bent. America continues to writhe in its economic doldrums, madmen puff and pose overseas, and sometimes it feels as if members of our political parties regard each other as dire enemies rather than fellow citizens.

“Olympus Has Fallen” is a play on a familiar theme, but one executed with craftsmanship and skill. The plot is essentially a spawn of “Die Hard” -– terrorists take over a place, killing hostages and outwitting emergency responders, but unbeknownst to them a lone, determined lawman is trapped inside and sets about mucking of their plans.

The big twist here is that the building under siege is none other than the White House, the chief hostage is President Benjamin Asher (Aaron Eckhart) and the bad guys are North Korean terrorists looking to impose nuclear domination over the Far East.

Now, the movies have depicted the President’s abode being blown up a few times before, but never a plausible and frightening depiction of it being successfully stormed by hostile forces. Rookie screenwriters Creighton Rothenberger and Katrin Benedickt lay out the scenario with surgical precision, even showing how the Koreans cleverly use the Secret Service’s protective protocols against them.

Things end up with Asher and his closest advisors trapped in the underground presidential bunker, where the terrorists can take their time using brutality to extract the secret nuclear codes. The villain is Kang (Rick Yune), a smiling, hyper-intelligent type who’s eminently hiss-able.

The fly in the proverbial ointment is Mike Banning (Gerard Butler), a disgraced Secret Service agent who was kicked off the president’s detail when he failed to save the First Lady. He starts to take out the terrorists in ones and twos, leading to inevitable exchanges of taunts with Kang via radio.

Banning’s also in touch with the acting president, Speaker of the House Trumbull (Morgan Freeman), who dithers between the aggressive urgings of his top general (Robert Forster), who wants to send in a flood of soldiers, and the more cautious advice of the Secret Service chief (Angela Bassett).

Melissa Leon plays the combative secretary of defense, who’s trapped along with her commander-in-chief. Dylan McDermott is a retired Secret Service agent with a surprising new gig, and Finley Jacobsen portrays the president’s feisty son, who has an intimate knowledge of White House hiding places.

Director Antoine Fuqua (“Training Day”) keeps things moving at a brisk pace, sacrificing characterization for tension-building plot. His depiction of an attack on Washington, D.C. manages to be harrowing without being exploitative -– though a shot of the Washington Monument crumbling under its own weight needlessly recalls the Twin Towers.

The main protagonist, Banning, is actually the weakest piece of the puzzle. He should be more tormented about his previous failure, but he registers as a generic action-movie badass, spouting quips and killing messily.

(Butler’s accent doesn’t help; the Scot tries to speak American and ends up sounding Australian.)

“Olympus Has Fallen” is hardly groundbreaking cinema. But in reinventing an old tale in a smart and engaging way, it’s a thoroughly entertaining and often riveting way to spend two hours.

3.5 stars out of four

Video review: "Coriolanus"

Shakespeare has rarely translated well to film, and even when it does -- "Shakespeare in Love," "Romeo + Juliet" -- it's usually in a modernistic, revisionist way that steps outside the rigid confines of the Bard's plays. And the reason is simple: with nigh on half a millennium separating our version of the English language from his, it's very difficult for anyone who's not a PhD in literature to comprehend just what the heck the characters are saying.

"Coriolanus," based on one of Shakespeare's lesser-known works, lies somewhere in between classic and revisionist approaches. The dialogue is tweaked enough to make it so the layman can usually follow along, but the bones of the story is unchanged.

Ralph Fiennes, who also makes his directing debut, plays the title character, an over-proud general just returned triumphant to Rome. A rigid, inflexible man, he thinks his honor has won him the right to become consul, but the common people do not love him, and scheming politicians maneuver to rob him of the title. Enraged, Coriolanus joins forces with his mortal enemy to wage war against the empire.

It's grandiose, heavy stuff, and both Fiennes and Vanessa Redgrave were passed over for Academy Award nominations they probably deserved. Gerard Butler plays Coriolanus' enemy Tullus Aufidius, and the cast is rounded out by Jessica Chastain and Brian Cox.

Bonus features are the same for Blu-ray and DVD editions, and include a making-of featurette and an audio commentary track by Fiennes.

Movie: 3 stars out of four
Extras: 2.5 stars

Review: "Machine Gun Preacher"

"Machine Gun Preacher" is one of those stories that if it wasn't based on reality, few people would buy it.

Gerard Butler plays Sam Childers, a biker hoodlum who goes straight after discovering Jesus, and builds a church across the street from his house for sinners like himself. This would be enough for most movies, but for "Preacher" it's a mere jumping-off point: Sam goes to Uganda, is repulsed by the bloody civil war spilling over there from Sudan, and dedicates his life to establishing and protecting an orphanage.

But Sam is no pacifist "lamb of God" type of preacher -- he believes the Lord wants not sheep, but wolves with teeth who can fight the evildoers. The film's title is not just hyperbole: Sam gets into frequent firefights, and mows down more bad guys than the first couple of Rambo flicks.

Director Marc Forster ("Finding Neverland") and screenwriter (and Indianapolis native) Jason Keller curiously do not focus too much on the right or wrong of this American bringing the fight to the rebels, who kill wantonly and kidnap children to fight for them as enslaved soldiers. It's more an interior exploration of Sam, and the toll a life of such fierce commitment to a cause takes on his family and psyche.

The bad guys are referred to as simply the LRA, but after a bit of Googling I discover that stands for Lord's Resistance Army. It turns out the Sudanese rebels, led by self-described mystic Joseph Kony, are Christians who follow an apocalyptic form of the religion based on a particularly harsh (mis)interpretation of the Ten Commandments.

This would make for an interesting dichotomy, the two holy men each fighting for their version of the Bible. Forster and Keller briefly flirt with this direction, personified by a female doctor who points out that Kony started out much as Sam did, professing to save the members of his flock from the depravity of the other side.

But as soon as "Machine Gun Preacher" looks like it's going to tackle some tough issues, and really put its protagonist under a microscope, it pulls back and settles for familiar tropes, such as Sam's wife (Michelle Monaghan) calling to complain that he never spends time with his family, they're running out of money, etc.
Not 30 minutes earlier, she was telling Sam to suck it up after the rebels burned down the orphanage, calling it a test from God and to just build it all over again.

Michael Shannon adds a few notes as Donnie, Sam's former running buddy who can't shake off the lure of drugs and crime as easily as Sam did. But his character flits in and out of the story in a seemingly arbitrary way.

Butler is a fiery presence as Sam, and some of the scenes where he witnesses the atrocities of war -- one woman is brought in to the clinic with her lips hacked off, for having talked back to rebel soldiers -- have a genuine visceral punch.

But for much of the time, "Machine Gun Preacher" is curiously flat and wandering. It seems to think that by simply presenting the reality of a colorful man, you don't need to do anything else.

2 stars out of four

Video review: "How to Train Your Dragon"

Don't get me wrong, "Toy Story 3" was terrific. But for my money, the best animated film so far in 2010 was "How to Train Your Dragon."

This marvelous computer-animation effort from DreamWorks combined exciting action sequences with slightly subversive humor, wrapped in a subtle life-lessons subtext about overcoming disability.

Jay Baruchel provides the voice of Hiccup, a wimpy teenage Viking who'd rather tinker with gizmos than fight the plague of dragons that constantly attack his village. But when your old man is the battle-scarred chieftain (Gerard Butler), your future is pretty much laid out for you.

Hiccup reluctantly enrolls in Dragon Training class, learning how to combat the various types of beasties breathing fire, spitting noxious gas and spewing lightning bolts. But his real education comes when he befriends a wounded dragon he dubs Toothless, and learns they're not the mindless killers his people have made them out to be.

Toothless has a maimed tail that won't allow him to fly without Hiccup's technology wizardry. And Gobber, the local blacksmith, is missing a leg and a hand. These and other story elements underscore the theme of celebrating our differences, without any of the usual pat smarminess.

Directed by Dean DuBlois and Chris Sanders, the same team behind "Lilo & Stitch," "Dragon" is the sort of smart, sassy kiddie flick that parents secretly slip into the video player after the children have gone to bed.

Extras range from measly to quite good, depending on which version you buy. The single-disc DVD comes with only a behind-the-scenes featurette with cast and crew.

The double DVD edition includes three deleted scenes, a message from author Cressida Crowell, and several games like a "Viking Personality Test," "Learn to Draw Toothless" and so forth.

On top of these features, the Blu-ray/DVD combo pack boasts a filmmakers' commentary track, a featurette on the artistry of dragons, pop-up trivia, and an interactive picture-in-picture feature with storyboards, video and interviews.

Plus, a new animated short: "Legend of the BoneKnapper Dragon."

"How to Train Your Dragon" hits video stories Friday, Oct. 15.

Movie: 3.5 stars out of four
Extras: 3.5 stars

Review: "How to Train Your Dragon"

Like "Kung Fu Panda," "How to Train Your Dragon" is a slickly-made computer-generated animated flick for kids that unexpectedly turns out to have a whole lot of soul.

Actually, I preferred "Dragon" over "Panda." Both movies are from the DreamWorks animation team, but this one borrowed a little old-school Disney magic.

The writing/directing duo of Dean DuBlois and Chris Sanders are veterans of hand-drawn animation who made the wonderful "Lilo & Stitch" for The Company That Walt Built back in 2002, then jumped ship to DreamWorks. "Dragon" milks similar themes about young outcasts learning to celebrate their differentness, with some slightly subversive humor mixed in.

In this case, Hiccup (voice by Jay Baruchel) is the wimpiest Viking who ever lived. While the rest of his clan are barrel-chested barbarians who live to fight the many dragons that plague the island of Berk, Hiccup is small and scrawny. He's better at tinkering with gadgets in the blacksmith shop than swinging an axe on the battlefield.

It doesn't help that his father is Stoick (a great Gerard Butler), the fearless leader who is mortified that his offspring is such an anti-Viking.

Gobber, the town blacksmith, clumsily tries to reassure the young man -- which leads to this hilarious twist on the trite old "be true to yourself" advice:

"It's not so much what you look like. It's what's inside that (Stoick) can't stand."

Determined to live up to the old man's standards, Hiccup enrolls in Dragon Training. Around the same time, he finds an injured dragon that he brought down using one of his gizmos. He tries to kill the ebony beast, but instead ends up befriending him and naming him Toothless.

So Hiccup spends his mornings learning to kill dragons, and his afternoons learning to fly on the back of one. It turns out the fire-breathing reptiles aren't the thoughtless killers the Vikings thought them to be.

Hiccup ends up learning all sorts of insider tricks about dragons that propel him to the top of his class -- much to the consternation of Astrid (America Ferrera), a fierce warrior and love-interest-turned-potential-enemy who resents being shown up on a daily basis.

I loved the look of "Dragon," where humans are depicted with exquisite realism, but with proportions just enough out of whack to give it a cartoony feel. The dragons, which come in dozens of varieties, are a delightful rainbow of horns, wings, snapping teeth and buggy eyes.

Actually, what the animation most reminded me of was that old "Dragon's Lair" video game. In 3D, it pops off the screen without any self-conscious look-at-me tricks.

The film is based on the book by Cressida Cowell, and screenwritten by Sanders and DuBlois (with an assist from Adam F. Golberg and Peter Tolan). It boasts plenty of pulse-racing action scenes, but the film's heart lies with characters and subtext.

For instance, I really admired the subtle way the theme of overcoming disabilities is woven into the story. Toothless has a malformed tail -- possibly injured when he was shot of the sky? -- and can't fly straight until Hiccup makes him a prosthetic aileron. And Gobber has a peg leg and an interchangeable hand that don't seem to slow him down a bit.

Fun and fresh, "How to Train Your Dragon" is one of the best films so far this young year, animated or otherwise.

3.5 stars

Review: "The Bounty Hunter"

I like Gerard Butler. I like Jennifer Aniston. Both are intrinsically charismatic performers, who make an audience want to root for them and spend time with them. Put them together in a lame romantic/action comedy, though, and I wanted to haul them both off to cinematic detention.

What a lame, cynical, lazy and boring flick "The Bounty Hunter" is. It's about a burnout ex-cop who brings in criminals who jump bail, and leaps at the chance to nab his ex-wife.

It starts out with ... wait, do I even need to describe the plot to you? I think anyone with half a brain who's seen more than two movies in their lifetime could accurately predict the arc of this entire film based just on that one-sentence summation.

They fight, they play a running game of one-upmanship, they exchange enough bile to melt titanium right up until the moment they realize they are still, in fact, deeply in love.

"Bounty" is an original script by Sarah Thorp ... although I'm using the word "original" in a very loose sense. Imagine every cliche of the romantic comedy, and stitch it together with every shtick from buddy-cop action flicks, and you've got this movie. Director Andy Tennant ("Fool's Gold") layers on the bantering tone and physical slapstick.

Aniston plays Nicole, a hotshot reporter for the New York Daily News, chasing down a story about the supposed suicide of a police evidence clerk. It's the sort of portrait of a journalist in which she never speaks to an editor, never seems to have a deadline, sticks her nose into dangerous situations without a clue how to pull it out, and can disappear from the newsroom for days on end without anyone thinking anything is amiss.

Milo used to be a police detective, but turned to drink after the divorce and is now eking out an existence as a bounty hunter. He's in hock to a Jersey loan shark. When the chance to score $5,000 by bringing in Nicole drops into his lap, he's ecstatic.

Her arrest was something about assaulting a police officer with her car, but she ditched her hearing to chase down the story.

They have a predictable assortment of adventures, with a scary guy chasing them around and taking shots at them. All the time, Milo is determined to turn Nicole in -- but not before a few diversions.

They stop in at their honeymoon B&B, but get thrown out for misbehavior. They chase some hapless caddy across a golf course, and when they question him, the audience realizes there's no earthly reason he would have run in the first place, other than he once caddied for the bad guy.

There's even a scene, God help us, where the pair wanders into a casino. Milo starts rolling some hot dice with a little luck from Nicole, who blows on the dice before each toss. Of course, they get into an argument over when it's time to quit while they're ahead, she withholds her blessed breath, and they lose their whole stake.

Other than the dumb jokes and complete lack of originality, the thing that really kills this movie is that we never learn anything about how their relationship went sour. It's hard to understand the context of why Milo is so eager to cause her pain, since we never got to see any that they inflicted on each other. He's just a guy who wants to irritate his ex-wife because ... well, aren't guys supposed to hate their ex-wives?

"The Bounty Hunter" is nothing but a collection of hackneyed story threads and elements, cynically mixed and matched like drinking glass coasters. It is neither funny, nor charming, thrilling or interesting in any way.

1.5 stars

Video review: "Gamer"

"Gamer," the latest attempt to meld video games with movies, starts out with a cool, compelling premise. And then it devolves into a bunch of hyper-fast action scenes, maudlin emotions and exploitative imperatives.

The filmmakers, the same team behind the "Crank" movies, seem to have their own peculiar formula. It's like a marriage of 1970s exploitation movies and modern, ultra-hip music video style.

The set-up is that the world is slowly being taken over by video games -- literally. Gerard Butler stars as Kable, the star of a combat game that billions of people watch on pay-per-view. The only twist is that he's a real person, playing against other live would-be soldiers. They're being controlled by players, who can determine whether they live or die.

The heavy is Ken Castle (Michael C. Hall), the gaming wizard who devised the system, and played by Hall as a Ted Turner spoof, only younger and crazier. He wants to use his nefarious code to turn the brains of everyone on the planet into easily-manipulated hardware.

The computer-animation-assisted action scenes have a nice kinetic feel. But whenever these video-game avatars try to emote like real humans, I wanted to hit the Off switch.

Extras cover a pretty wide range of material, although the ratio of substance to hype is pretty low.

The DVD has a 16-minute featurette that's essentially a commercial for Red, a new type of digital camera. Co-writers/directors Brian Taylor and Mark Neveldine team up with supporting stars Amber Valletta, Alison Lohman and Terry Crews for a rambling commentary track of dubious value.

There's also a making-of documentary that's nearly as long as the movie itself, though not much more entertaining.

In addition to these features, the Blu-ray version also comes with Cheat Codes, additional scene-specific audio and video commentary, and I-Con Mode, an "interactive time-shifting multi-dimensional exploration" of "Gamer."

It's notable that star Butler is almost totally absent from these extras -- although he does moon the camera at the end of the making-of feature. I'd say that's about how much regard this movie has for its audience.

Movie: 2 stars
Extras: 2 stars

Review: "Law Abiding Citizen"

"Law Abiding Citizen" plays out like a comic book version of "Seven."

Gerard Butler plays a suburban daddy version of Kevin Spacey's detail-oriented serial killer, whose real game is to taunt the authorities while he continues to kill -- even after being sent to prison.

Clyde Shelton is an inventor whose life was destroyed when two thugs broke into his wife, raping his wife and killing her and their daughter. The culprits were caught and one was sent to death row, but assistant D.A. Nick Rice (Jamie Foxx) cut a deal with the other assailant, who got a sentence of just three years.

Clyde was not, shall we say, very pleased about this, and uses his gizmo skills to off all the people involved in the travesty of justice in as many uniquely gruesome ways as possible. For instance, one character gets it just from picking up a phone.

However, he does not start his killing spree until 10 years later, for reasons that are never fully explained. It doesn't help that the movie doesn't even attempt to age any of the characters one bit -- not a gray hair or expanded waistline in sight. A little chin scruff appears on Foxx's jaw, but that's it.

I suppose Clyde needed the time to set up his scheme -- and without giving anything away, from the incredibly intricate methods he uses to kill, it's obvious the guy has given it some deep thought.

The first to go are the killers themselves. The one on death row undergoes an execution with a few ... complications, shall we say. The other one gets a particularly gooey treatment that's just this side of those awful "Hostel" movies.

Soon, though, Clyde moves on to targeting the law enforcement and judicial agents who were complicit in what he sees as a corrupt system.

Director F. Gary Gray and screenwriter Kurt Wimmer never quite decide whether they want the audience to see Clyde as a homicidal deviant or a sympathetic figure. Butler's performance is similarly ambivalent.

Foxx does what he can with an underwritten role that invariably leads to a lot of blustering machismo and "If you even touch my family..." histrionics.

The movie's certainly never boring, and as a piece of potboiler fiction it moves things along adeptly.

It does occasionally wallow in its own silliness, as when Clyde paralyzes one of his victims with some mysterious serum and then informs him, "It's isolated from the liver of Peruvian puffer fish." The way Butler delivers these lines, though, makes him sound like a waiter describing the special du jour.

And competently made as it is, there's just nothing special about "Law Abiding Citizen."

2 stars