One Guy Rambling

Pelham 123 is a train. It is taken by a group of bad guys led by Ryder (John Travolta) with the aim of… I can’t remember. Money was involved. Then there was some political hubbub. Then some issues arose from Ryder’s past.

Frankly, once John Travolta showed his neck tattoos and metallic teeth and tried to fool me into thinking he had an edgy side by swearing and killing innocents, I checked out faster than a straight masseuse who saw Travolta’s name next on the schedule…

Not even Denzel trying his long distance The Bone Collector shtick – literally phoning it in again from the control centre – could regain the lost credibility that Travolta’s miscasting created.

That said, director Tony Scott never let an absence of assets or logic prevent him from cramming in unnecessary action sequences. In one scene a car hurtles through busy city traffic ignoring all safety and laws, while both good and bad guys openly ponder why a helicopter wouldn’t be a better alternative. Another scene requires a timely (and entirely unlikely) rat bite to exist.

Again Tony Scott – like Walter Hill before him – refuses to let such things trouble him. He ignores Travolta’s inane overacting and the thin story and seeks to patch it over with gunfire, explosions and collisions. I imagine this is the same thought process as Pink has in coming up with a new concert routine; look my songs aren’t great and I don’t have too many of them, maybe I can distract people with a trapeze thing?

To some these bells and whistles are enough, but The Taking of Pelham 123 is as linear and drab as the parallel rails that the train is trapped on, and as eventful and memorable.

Final Rating – 5 / 10. Tony Scott tends to make things better than they should be. He also seemed to learn from his mistakes, as evidenced by the vastly superior train based film Unstoppable arriving only a year after this mess…

Frank (James Belushi) and Rodriguez (Tupac Shakur) are dirty cops. They kill criminals and keep the money, writing each incident off as…

…

Dramatic pause…

…

Gang Related!

…

Problems arise when one such murder ends with an undercover cop being killed. Gee, why can’t a couple of hard working dirty cops catch a break?

The murdered cop’s colleagues want justice. When several inane attempts are made to pin the blame on known scumbags prove inept, Frank and Rodriguez settle for someone who can’t possibly say no, an alcoholic and entirely oblivious bum named John Doe (Dennis Quaid), a man so out of it all that he ends up believing that he must have committed the crime, seeing as so many people tell him he did.

This indescribably silly cover up leads to a never ending series of exponentially worse ideas, where the tiniest pull of any number of threads to invariably cause instant unraveling.

There are many threads, all tugged at once. So much to disbelieve – seriously, amnesia? – and even more to dislike. The two culpable cops casually discuss the small print surrounding their misdemeanors at loud volume in the midst of a crowded police station.

A lawyer says “oh SHIT!” loudly in court when something doesn’t go her way. A key (fake) witness finds she knows the accused.

And all that before the accused turns out to be someone of far greater importance than a mere homeless bum. Someone worth defending.

Blah.

Belushi and Tupac never seem to gel. As his former alcoholic fog lifts, so too does Dennis Quaid seem to come to the realisation that this is a doomed project. James Earl Jones tries to lend credibility with his booming voice, but no one is bailing out this sinking ship.

Final Rating – 5 / 10. Bad cops might write crimes off as gang related, you should just write this film off altogether…

A young girl awakens. Confused. Gagged and bound to rusty pipes in a dingy room. She is already bloodied and bruised, but she has energy and strength borne of panic and self preservation.

…

A man appears brandishing a large industrial drill. A drill he clearly intends to use for non industrial purposes. She frees herself and flees on foot. He pursues.

…

The girl lives. She is not the first to fall afoul of the driller killer, but she is the first to survive. Thanks to the intervention of detective Matt.

All familiar so far. Well it gets familiar-er.

Despite breaking a lengthy case and taking down a notorious serial killer, Detective Matt worries that it is not yet over. Is hunch is almost instantly proven correct when a new spate of sudden and especially bloody murders commence across the county, each carried out by random and unexpected protagonists. Each with familiar traits reminiscent of the recently disposed murderer.

Meanwhile Matt’s 11 year old daughter is behaving… oddly.

The only interesting thing I took away was the number of times someone happened upon clear evidence of ultra weird circumstances and instantly told the bloodied and petrified witness or victim to ‘stop talking crazy’ or variations of ‘stop talking crazy’ at their seemingly valid claims and assertions.

The plot in Worry Dolls only exists to progress the film to the next ‘kill’, so as to show we the audience that the filmmakers have watched the classics closely, to the extent that each kill scene rips off another film. The first is Texas Chainsaw Massacre, with each sequence cribbing the music, angles or means of execution from other well known films.

Paying homage is fine and all, and there is no lack of effort or application on display here despite being an obviously low budget effort, but perspiration without inspiration can only take you so far. With an absence of new ideas and an inability to inject new energy into old concepts, once again I finished a film that inspired me to rewatch some of the classics it stole from.

Final Ratings – 5.5 / 10. In honour of Worry Dolls I suggest the following; Angel Heart, The Blair Witch Project or Skeleton Key.

A ninja assassin for hire. An expert at stealth and killing silently. A master of remaining undetected, despite her attire of choice being a bright red leather sports bra with matching tight pants, that must have squeaked like buggery while her katanas (I think – little swords anyway) make that *shing* sound as they slice nothing but air…

Look on the basis of Daredevil I find it amazing that anyone found reason for this indescribably dull spin off. A film that somehow finds itself marginally better than its predecessor ‘thanks’ to being unfathomably lazy.

It is when Elektra (Jennifer Garner) is asked to kill a precocious teen girl and her father that some naughty ninjas called The Hand become upset with her. And here I thought all ninjas were nice and they all got along with no problems.

Among The Hand’s crew are a giant, a shape-changer, a woman with the touch of death, no a bunch of randoms even less memorable; remarkable given I totally forgot about the first three until I just went through my notes. If that isn’t enough, the randoms are so very inconsequential that their very deaths leave no remains, instead they simply explode into clouds of green dust when struck a mortal blow.

Ridiculous. And not even good ridiculous. Funny ridiculous. The funny ridiculous of a competent spoof or even the inadvertent ridiculous of B movies that are funny because of their inadequacies.

This is just regular, boring ridiculous, as Elektra inevitably decides to protect the girl and make goo goo eyebrows at the dad as the evil ninjas pursue them inexorably and fight this red leather clad firebrand quite ineffectually.

There isn’t an instant of excitement, nor a moment of exhilaration to be found. Just contrived and clumsy messages and badly faked tension.

Oh and I forgot the bad guy who sends a stream of CGI generated snakes, hawks and wolves at Elektra, all of them borne of his many tattoos. I forgot to tell you that because I forgot he existed, and frankly I am slightly saddened at the recollection that he in fact does.

Final Rating – 5.5 / 10. Elektra the film is like the red leather outfit; shiny, ill fitting and ill conceived. This is indeed a worthy companion piece to the equally execrable DareDevil, with the two pack DVD undoubtedly sold in the gift shops of Hell.