Video review: "Green Lantern"

"Green Lantern" is one of the weakest comic book superhero adaptations we've had in awhile, but I still couldn't quite bring myself to hate it. Sigh with disappointment, maybe, but the strongest feeling I had was the lack of one: I was colossally indifferent to this movie.
Part of it is Ryan Reynolds. I've seen Reynolds do good work, but he's started down an unfortunate career path that I'm not sure he can pull out of. He always plays the glib, fast-talking charmer who comes to realize he's out of his depth, and (usually) rises to the occasion.

I've seen this guy many times now, and I don't like him.

Here he plays Hal Jordan, a reckless and cocky test pilot who encounters a dying alien who bequeaths him a ring of power. It seems the Green Lantern Corp patrols the farthest reaches of the universe, 3,600 of them in all, and Hal's been tapped to take over this neck of the woods.

Alas, Parallax -- the ancient enemy of the Corp -- is released and begins wreaking havoc, manifesting as a giant blob of space goo. Some of his space goo finds its way to Hector Hammond (Peter Sarsgaard), a nerdy scientist and childhood friend of Hal's, causing his head to swell to melon size and gifting him with telekinetic powers.

With his ring Hal can fly and create objects out of green energy, which is the Force-like energy generated by the willpower of all living creatures.

I certainly don't have the willpower to sit through "Green Lantern" again.

Video extras are quite paltry for DVD, but improve quite a bit with Blu-ray. The DVD has only promotional pitches for you: a preview of a Justice League digital comic and another for the Green Lantern animated TV show.

The Blu-ray/DVD combo pack adds two making-of documentaries, one about the Green Lantern universe and another about casting Reynolds in the green-and-black suit. There's also an extended cut of the film and deleted scenes. The centerpiece is a picture-in-picture mode with video pods with tidbits about production.

Movie: 1.5 stars out of four
Extras: 3 stars

Review: "Green Lantern"

"Green Lantern" is one of the weakest comic book superhero adaptations we've had in awhile, but I still couldn't quite bring myself to hate it. Sigh with disappointment, maybe, but the strongest feeling I had was the lack of one: I was colossally indifferent to this movie.

Part of it is Ryan Reynolds. I've seen Reynolds do good work -- he showed great comic timing in the first half of "The Proposal" -- but he's started down an unfortunate career path that I'm not sure he can pull out of. He always plays the glib, fast-talking charmer who comes to realize he's out of his depth, and (usually) rises to the occasion. I've seen this guy so many times now, and I don't like him.

After the screening -- held on a Wednesday night specifically to preclude most print reviews -- one of my fellow critics commented that in many ways "Green Lantern" is strikingly similar to "Iron Man." The protagonist is a hedonistic playboy who cares not a whit for the rest of the world, until circumstances and a really awesome super-suit force him to play hero. It's attractive as a story concept, but is so familiar now I kept thinking Lantern's costume looked moldy.

In this case, the hero's powers do not actually reside in the suit, but in the ring that is bequeathed to him by a dying member of the Green Lantern Corp. There are 3,600 of them split up to guard the entire universe against evil, and the greatest of them, Abin Sur (Temuera Morrison), is fatally wounded in a clash with the Corp's ancient enemy, Parallax (voice by Clancy Brown). Parallax is released from his imprisonment on a distant planet, and turns into some sort of wandering space blob with a head that looks like one of the aliens from "Mars Attacks!"

Meanwhile, Abin Sur crash lands on Earth and orders his ring to find a suitable replacement, and Hal Jordan (Reynolds) is selected. He's a cocky test pilot haunted by the death of his father, another pilot who was consumed in a fiery blaze before Hal's eyes when he was a boy. This has given him, needless to say, issues.

There's an inevitable scene where Hal discovers his powers after getting jumped by some toughs outside a bar. As soon as the scene shifted to the bar, I knew some thugs would appear shortly to serve as Lantern tenderizer. It's practically encoded in the DNA of movies like this.

Then there's a long, unnecessary sequence where Hal travels to the Lanter Corp's home planet for training, and to be told by head cheese Sinestro (Mark Strong) that he's not good enough to wear the ring. A big burly Lantern appears to teach him "ring slinging 101," which seems like an  unlikely name from such a hallowed crew.

In the grand tradition of poor super-hero movies that can't come up with a worthy antagonist, there is a second villain to buttress  the space goo guy. Hector Hammond (Peter Sarsgaard) is an introspective scientist brought in to examine Abin Sur's corpse, but he gets zapped with a bit of the space goo and his head swells to melon proportions. Oh, and he can move stuff with his mind.

The powers of Green Lantern are vague. He can create anything he can imagine out of the green energy harnessed by the ring, which is supposed to consist of the willpower of every living creature in existence. It's like The Force, except for some reason willpower manifests itself as neon-green energy on the Corps home planet of Oa. Even more powerful, but less stable is yellow energy, which comes from fear. That's space goo guy's stock in trade.

So Green Lantern conjures race cars, machine guns, swords, shields and all sorts of other things in combat. He can also fly and fire energy bolts.

The totally unneeded love interest is played by Blake Lively, a childhood friend of Hal's who now runs the big corporation he worked for (until he shoots down two of their super-duper new drone fighter planes). She does have one great line where Hal, after first appearing in the Green Lantern outfit, immediately recognizes him because he only wears a tiny mask covering his eyes. "What, did you think I wouldn't recognize you just because I can't see your cheekbones?" Fourth wall humor, but still funny stuff.

So space blog guy keeps getting closer to Earth, Hector's noggin keeps growing bigger, and Hal learns to focus his willpower and overcome his fears.

I'm bored writing about this movie, just as I was while watching it, so I'll stop now.

1.5 stars out of four

Video review: "Edge of Darkness"

Mel Gibson, in his first starring role in eight years, is effective and believable as a tough Boston cop out for revenge after his daughter is murdered. But the plot is such a discombobulated mess, the movie comes across as a disjointed set of knife fights and pummeling of suspects.

Gibson plays Craven, a veteran detective who becomes unhinged when his only child is gunned down on his doorstep. His investigation leads to the castle-like headquarters of Northmoor, the mysterious corporation where she worked. The cryptic boss (Danny Huston) gives elusive answers to Craven's questions. Meanwhile, a British spook (Ray Winstone) is dispatched to deal with Craven, but ends up befriending him.

Director Martin Campbell ("Casino Royale") knows how to construct action scenes. But the script contains abrupt shifts in mood and tone. We never get to know Craven prior to his daughter's murder, so he only exists as a vehicle for revenge. And the strange interspersing of humorous moments severs any connection the audience might have developed for Craven's pain.

Mel Gibson still has the juice. But he's going to need better material than this for his cinematic rehabilitation.

"Edge of Darkness" is available on DVD and in a Blu-ray/DVD combo pack that includes a digital copy of the film.

Extras are fair to middling. There are four deleted scenes totaling about five minutes. Watching them, one can see why they were left on the cutting room floor.

A nine-part set of featurettes contains a whole lot of glad-handing, but a few juicy tidbits are to be found. Gibson traces the film's roots to 17th century Jacobean revenge tragedies, in which the villains have names that describe their flaws and, as Gibson succinctly puts it, "everybody kills each other in the end."

Knowing he had a one-way-ticket, Craven's character was even supposed to pay for his own funeral, in a scene that was never shot.

Campbell describes the BBC miniseries he directed in the 1980s that formed the basis for this film. The TV version had more political overtones that were jettisoned.

Movie: 2 stars
Extras: 2.5 stars

Review: "Edge of Darkness"

"Edge of Darkness" is a strange, strange movie. Not a terrible one, though its good parts are scattered in a wilderness of discombobulated scenes and disjointed story elements.

Mel Gibson -- in his first starring role in eight years -- plays a familiar archetype, an old-school cop out for revenge after his child is kidnapped/murdered/raped. It's a forceful, effective performance; we believe Gibson as Craven, a Boston detective who becomes unhinged when his daughter Emma (Bojana Navakovic) is gunned down on the front steps of his house.

But unlike, say, last year's "Taken" with Liam Neeson in a similar movie, we never see Craven in any context other than revenge mode. He does not seem to exist as a person outside of roughing up suspects and hunting down clues.

We know he owns a nice house in Roslindale, because that's where the murder took place. Presumably he had a wife once, but she's never mentioned. Craven is a detective, and declines to take a leave of absence, but abandons his own duties (if he ever had any) to pursue his daughter's killers. No one in the chain of command ever questions why he's running around getting into knife fights and highway shoot-outs.

The investigation leads to the doorstep of a corporation called Northmoor, where his daughter worked, and then things really get weird.

In his interview with the Northmoor boss, Craven is immediately put off by the man's elusive answers and strange behavior. The boss is played by Danny Huston, who has been so typecast as the heavy that whenever he first appears onscreen in a film, the audience thinks to itself, "The villain has just arrived." Huston really should talk to his agent about doing a romantic comedy or something just to mix things up.

The strangeness deepens. Northmoor apparently is into some nasty business, with the government's tacit approval, and a spook named Jedburgh is dispatched to take care of things. Jedburgh (Ray Winstone) meets with Craven, talks to him, seems to like him -- while making it clear that he may be inclined to rub Craven out at some indeterminate point in the future.

Director Martin Campbell ("Casino Royale") and screenwriters William Monahan and Andrew Bovell based the film on an old British TV series that Campbell directed. Perhaps that explains the episodic flow of the action, with big events followed by weepy scenes where Craven imagines he's seeing his daughter, still a little girl.

The transitions are abrupt, and often arbitrary.

At one point Craven comes across a name associated with his daughter, goes to the man's house and starts beating the hell out of him. He stops hitting the guy, saying his daughter wouldn't approve, then remembers that she's dead and starts wailing away again.

The audience laughs, and our critical link to Craven's pain shatters in a moment of cheap humor. What's more, the guy he's beating up, who seems bewildered by this assault, then disappears with nary another reference to him.

For all we know, Craven had the wrong address and was pummeling a pharmacist.

As much as I was perplexed by the movie's strange fits, I was never bored by it. I enjoyed the running joke between Jedburgh and Craven that, "Everything's illegal in Massachusetts." Jedburgh, who for some reason is British, wryly suggests it's "payback for the Tea Party."

I doubt "Edge of Darkness" will herald Mel Gibson's return to stardom. He's still a convincing performer, in need of better material.

2 stars