The Day The Earth Stood Still

Keanu Reeves is an artist who divides opinion. There are those who say he's a bad actor with the emotional range of an Easter Island statue, while others simply describe him as “bollocks”.

Whichever side of the fence you reside, the real mystery is how such a limited talent has managed to cultivate such a long and successful career with a delivery as flat as Keira Knightley’s chest.

Weirdly, it was probably his ability to act with an almost zombie-like detachment that drew casting directors to award him the part of the robotic alien Klaatu in Scott Derrickson’s remake of the B-movie classic The Day the Earth Stood Still.

The plot sees Keanu cast as a tree-hugging alien despatched to Earth wipe out the human race as punishment for destroying the environment. 

After landing in Central Park, Klaatu is met by a hostile welcoming committee of stereotypical 'hoah-ing' marines who set about interrogating him Guantanamo style. With reluctant scientist Dr. Helen Benson (Jennifer Connelly) in tow, Klaatu uses his extra-terrestrial powers to affect an escape and finish his mission to destroy mankind.

Dr Benson attempts to stop Klaatu by taking him deep into a forest to see Nobel prize winning Professor Barnhardt (John Cleese). He persuades Klaatu that we aren’t all bad eggs and that mankind has the capacity to change. Just as he is about to buy that baloney Dr Benson’s brat-ish stepson grasses Klaatu to the cops and leads them to his hideout.

As the law move in, a pair of police choppers loom over the tree line and home in on the alien invader. Before they can mow him down, he uses his powers of telekinesis (or bad acting) to fry the helicopters circuitry. 

With the pilots disabled by a cacophony of high-pitched interference coming from their headsets, the helicopters go into the now traditional tailspin that fans now will end in an exploding helicopter. The two whirlybirds smash into each other and break apart. Debris plummets to the ground and blows up in a delicious ball of flame.

Artistic merit

The film is chock full of choppers so it was only a matter of time before one went to helicopter heaven. The explosion here is nicely realised with some rich and satisfying oranges and is all the more impressive for silhouetting Reeves in much the same style as Hugh Jackman in X-Men Origins: Wolverine. It would have been nice to see the wreckage hit the floor but there is no doubt about the chopper’s demise.

Exploding helicopter innovation

Helicopters destroyed by alien mind control - it's unconventional if nothing else.

Do passengers survive?

We don’t know for sure as Derrickson refrains from showing us the impact of the stricken choppers on the ground but chances are the pilots are barbecued to a crisp in the chunky fireball.

Positives

For a film that relies so heavily on special effects it is just as well Weta Digital made the visuals plausible. I particularly liked the swarms of tiny nano-machines programmed to wipe out every man made device and bring the earth back to its natural state.

Oh, and James Hong (Big Trouble In Little China) turns up for a cameo in a bizarre scene which only really succeeds in reminding you that this film isn’t as good as any of the other films you’ve seen him in.

Negatives

The film has very few interesting elements to distract you from a pedestrian plot chock full of genre clichés, product placement and forgettable performances. Worse, the film ends on a preachy, environmental message when all you want to see is the aliens get their ass handed to them by the human race. 

Favourite quote

Helen Benson: "Have you done your homework?"
Jacob Benson: "School's cancelled on account of the aliens."

Interesting fact 

A photo of GORT the humanoid robot and purveyor of destruction alongside Ringo Starr dressed as Klaatu graces the cover of Ringo’s 1974 Goodnight Vienna album. Rumour that purchasers of said album wanted the world to end after hearing it could not be verified at the time of going to press.

Review by: Neon Messiah

The Matrix

As Churchill almost said: never in the field of contemporary cinema has so much [money] been given for so few [facial expressions].

Ah, Keanu. It’s easy now to forget just how big a deal The Matrix was when it came out: the sharp outfits, the blistering special effects, the quasi-mystical plot, the enigmatic director brothers.

The movie was a phenomenon so huge even Keanu’s balsa-wood presence couldn’t sink it. And when it emerged the boy’s profit-share deal meant he’d made £56 million for sleep-walking his way through a few dozen scenes of wonky dialogue and indifferent kung fu, that – if anything – only seemed even more impressive.

The plot, while bonkers, certainly has ambition. It suggests the real world is a ravaged post-apocalyptic wasteland, where dastardly machines live off the electrochemical energy of cocooned and comatose humans. The world we think we live in is actually just an artificial reality – a jumped up computer game – known as the Matrix.

Keanu plays a computer hacker (Neo Anderson) recruited by a tiny band of rebels who know the truth and are fighting to overthrow the evil robots. They are led by Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne), who thinks Neo may be the mystical ‘one’ prophesised to save them all. Like, woah dude.

The rebels ‘wake’ Keanu from his gloopy cocoon and reveal to him the real future world, a desolate rockscape with no signs of human life. Except presumably a branch of All Saints, going by the trendily distressed clothes they all seem to wear.

Morpheus puts Neo through a vigorous training regime, involving lots of gun-play, leaping tall buildings and implausibly-fast kung fu. These all occur within a virtual computer programme where participants appear as idealised versions of themselves. (Keanu’s ‘real’ shaved head, for example, is replaced by his lustrous bouffant). All of which begs the question: why has Laurence still got a big gut sticking out his karate pyjamas?

It’s fascinating to trace the Fishburne weight trajectory throughout his cinematic career. The ripped, powerful father figure of Boyz in the Hood has started to swell out impressively by this movie, giving Big Lol’s participation in action scenes a slightly strained effect.

Inevitably, as the Matrix franchise took off and the bucks flew in, he just got bigger. By Matrix: Revolutions, only Steven Seagal could hold a candle to him in the comedy-fat-man-doing-kung-fu stakes, and edits of the fight ‘action’ became so rapid epileptics were reputedly scared to step into the auditorium.

Incidentally, Big Laurence has a priceless cameo in the recent Predators revamp, playing a veteran who’s been hiding from the monsters for months in a disused spaceship. When asked how he’s survived Big Lol, chins swinging and belly straining at a tent-like hessian smock, stirs a watery-looking soup and replies: ‘On whatever scraps I can find.’ (Deliciously, the Schwarznegger hero figure in this scene is Adrien Brody, an actor who presumably had to ‘bulk up’ for his turn as a WW2 ghetto inmate in The Pianist.)

Still, there’s much to love in this film. The baddies are great – all cynicism, shades and sharp suits – and chief villain Agent Smith’s refrain (‘Miss-ter Ain-der-sunn...’) is still good fun. There’s loads of inventive visual trickery and the trademark Matrix special effect (someone jumps in the air, then the camera travels round them in slo-mo) was a real game-changer.

Despite – possibly because of – its earnest ridiculousness, The Matrix is stomping good fun. And the fact that the two sequels were, and let’s not mince words here, arse-clenchingly bad doesn’t detract from the genuine inventiveness on display in this first outing.



Artistic merit

Not bad. Three agents have Morpheus chained to a chair in a skyscraper, when Keanu pops up in an open-sided helicopter and empties a howitzer into the room. Big Lol jumps from the building and the chopper swings away, Keanu dangling from a rope with one hand and holding onto his mentor with the other.

The chopper is piloted by Trinity (poor Carrie Ann Moss who was shortly to find that, like the matrix itself, her acting career didn’t really exist). As she veers off, Agent Smith holes the fuel tank and helicopter mayhem looks inevitable.

But wait! Keanu lands himself and Morpheus safely onto a skyscraper roof then, holding the rope, actually slows the descent of the chopper. Meanwhile, Trinity detaches the other end of the rope and, as the the faltering machine finally hits a building, swings away from the explosion. Huzzah!

Does the passenger survive?

Trinity does indeed climb to safety and into Keanu’s waiting ‘guns’. It’s a fine example of the infrequently seen helicopter-explosion-survival-scenario.

Positives

It’s all done rather well. When the chopper first hits the skyscraper, the building itself morphs and semi-envelops it – as a reminder we’re in the matrix – which is a nice touch. There’s also a neat overhead shot of the rotor blade actually buckling against the building in slo-mo and a great image of Trinity swinging towards the camera as the chopper explodes behind her.

Negatives

The one obvious letdown is asking us to believe that Neo, for all his power, would be able to hold on to Laurence Fishburne with one hand. Or two, for that matter.

Favourite quote

‘Woah.’ You’ll never guess who said that.

Interesting fact

Famously, Keanu made even more squazillions for the lamentable Reload and Revolutions – reputedly over £200 million – despite looking barely conscious for much of them. In terms of actual work input, he’s perhaps the only professional in recent memory to make Fred Goodwin look good value for money.

Review by: Chopper

Still want more? Then check out the Exploding Helicopter podcast review of The Matrix on Podomatic, iTunes, YourListen or Stitcher.