Lasko - Death Train

Monks have never been stars of the silver screen.

Mostly commonly sighted in historical dramas, they act as a kind of period window dressing – generally portrayed as stout, jolly fellows, whose love of God is only matched by their love of mead.

True, Asian martial arts films in the 70s and 80s often featured monks of the Shaolin variety, kicking god-fearing ass while dispensing cryptic wisdom (usually with a badly-dubbed English accent). But in Europe, monks have only ever had a marginal presence – the only notable contribution being period murder mystery, The Name Of The Rose.

So, it’s against this unpromising backdrop that we come to Lasko: Death Train (2007), a film which bravely smashes the stone tablets of convention and preaches a new gospel: a ‘monk cinema’ for the 21st century. Say it loud: I’m a monk and I’m proud.

Naturally, though, our hero – Lasko (Mathis Landwehr) – isn’t just any old monk: that would be boring. Our man is a member of a secret order of deity botherers - known as the ’Fist of God’ - who are dedicated to protecting the church.

Just as well, really. Because, while accompanying a train-full of pilgrims on a trip to see the Pope, Lasko only finds himself caught up in a plot of international intrigue after terrorists steal a deadly virus.

Attempting to make a covert getaway after their theft, the terrorists - led by Arnold Vosloo - hitch a ride on the pilgrim train disguised as monks and nuns. However, when their plan is discovered it’s up to Lasko to stop Vosloo before he can release the virus.

Now, you might think a monk trying to stop terrorists poisoning a train full of nuns and priests sounds like a disastrous cocktail. But while these ingredients really shouldn’t gel together, the film – in some crazy, mixed up way – works. Proof, if ever you needed it, that God does indeed work in mysterious ways.

Fittingly for a member of a secret sect called the Fist of God, Lasko is a supernaturally good martial artist, and you’ll be unsurprised to hear he’s given bountiful opportunities to demonstrate his face-pummelling prowess as he tries to foil the terrorist plot.

This though, presents a problem: how to reconcile Lasko’s devout religious faith with the need to get biblical on villainous ass? Fortunately the scriptwriters, aware of this contradiction – and showing no little knowledge of the Catholic Church’s stance on confession and absolution – permit Lasko to briefly regret each life he takes by making the sign of the cross over the body while looking mournfully into the middle distance.

So, to recap: meet baddie, punch baddie repeatedly till face resembles a tenderised steak, snap baddie’s neck like it was a cheese-stick, stand over corpse and look a bit guilty for a second. Are we all up to speed? Good. On such logic are the great religions of the world built.

Director Diethard Kuster craftily takes the opportunity to run with various religious motifs throughout the film. So when Lasko has to dispense a vaccine for the lethal virus amongst the passengers, he administers it via holy wafers. Not so much the body of Christ, as the anti-bodies.

Despite the bonkers premise, Lasko: Death Train is a thoroughly entertaining film. As Lasko, Mathis Landwehr has got good martial arts chops and the fights are excitingly choreographed. Appropriately for a train-set thriller, the whole thing rattles along enjoyably, building up a satisfying head of steam courtesy of a director who keeps the story on track throughout.

Of course, as fun as this film is, I wouldn’t be telling you about it unless it contained an exploding helicopter or, in this case, two.

The first comes when the police attempt to stop Vosloo escaping with the virus. They order in a helicopter full of commandos to storm and seize the train. As the chopper hovers above the moving carriages, the brave commandos slide down ropes to try and get onboard.

Unfortunately, the villains are prepared for this eventuality and have sneakily brought along a rocket launcher as carry-on luggage for their journey. One of the baddies leans out a carriage window and fires a missile at the chopper. There’s no time for the pilot to take evasive action and the helicopter explodes in a huge fireball.

The second moment of chopper carnage happens near the end of the film. In order to make his escape, Vosloo whistles up his own helicopter to whisk him off the roof of the train and to safety.

Naturally, Lasko isn’t going to allow this, so after also clambering up onto the train’s roof the pair proceed to have their long awaited showdown.

Unsurprisingly, Lasko prevails in the fight leaving Vosloo (the scoundrel!) to resort to dirty tricks. He pulls out a pistol – rather begging the question why he didn’t do this earlier – to shoot our hero. But Vosloo’s aim is inexplicably bad and, in attempting to kill Lasko, he succeeds only in haplessly shooting the pilot of the chopper hovering nearby.

Vosloo leaps onto the rope ladder dangling from the chopper, in the expectation that he’ll be flown away. But the mortally wounded pilot can only manage to dimwittedly steer the chopper into the path of the onrushing train. Ka-boom.

Artistic merit

These are two absolutely first class chopper fireballs. There really isn’t anything like watching the real thing, and here the extravagantly huge explosions are clearly executed using pyrotechnics and without the use of CGI.

The second fireball is especially praiseworthy as we get to watch the train plough into the helicopter and, moments later, its debris. Lasko: Death Train was nominated for best action in a foreign film at the Taurus World Stunt Awards and it’s not hard to see why.

Exploding helicopter innovation 

While the quality of the helicopter explosions are beyond dispute, they’re not particularly innovative. Chopper destroyed by rocket launcher is a routine method of destruction and, though rare, we’ve seen helicopters destroyed by trains before, most notably in Blue Thunder.

Do passengers survive?

At least two commandos survive the first exploding helicopter. Realising that the chopper they’re dangling from is about to be destroyed, a couple of the quicker-thinking soldiers jump from their ropes. Two of them can clearly be seen in a later shot examining the helicopter’s wreckage.

Positives

Some comic relief is provided courtesy of two pilgrims travelling on the train – one blind and one with gout – who remain oblivious to the drama unfolding around them through a series of escalating coincidences.

The pair bring to mind the great double act of Caldicott and Charters from Hitchcock’s own train-based thriller, The Lady Vanishes. In that film, despite the murder and kidnapping taking place around them, the duo are amusingly only concerned with getting back to London in time for a cricket match.

While not in that league, the pair here do entertainingly compliment the main story.

Negatives

Unfortunately, director Diethard Kuster decides to use the film’s opening sequence to prove he’s completed a correspondence course in editing from the Michael Bay School of Retina Damage.

This renders the first action set-piece – the theft of the virus from a Government facility – into a dizzying, whirling, jumble of epilepsy-inducing edits.

The effect is compounded by Kuster’s love of showing the same event taking place from multiple camera angles. It creates a kind of Groundhog Day feeling, where you begin to feel you’re trapped in a permanent loop of the same events.

Thankfully, it looks like Kuster exhausted even himself with this initial effort and he reins in the technique a little for the rest of the film.

Favourite quote

“Look I joined a monastery. I didn’t think I was joining a paramilitary organisation.”

Interesting fact

Proving that God’s work is never done, a spin-off TV series appeared two years later, which chronicled Lasko’s further adventures defending the church.

Review by: Jafo

Still want more? Then listen to the Exploding Helicopter podcast episode on Lasko Death Train. Listen via iTunes, Acast, Stitcher, Player FM or right here

Austin Powers in Goldmember

As Skyfall, the third Daniel Craig Bond film, provides a chopper fireball fix for cinemagoers, it seems an appropriate time to revisit the third of the 007 spoofing Austin Powers’ franchise.

Too tenuous a link? Perhaps. But the film does have the only ingredient necessary for a review on this hallowed website - the warming orange glow of a helicopter explosion.

We all remember Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery (1997). The series debut was hilarious, lampooning the sexual innuendo, contrived plots and simplistic henchmen of the Bond franchise.

With the public hungry for more, a sequel seemed an obvious winner. However, with the best gags used up, The Spy Who Shagged Me (1999) quickly descended into puerile joke-making. They may have doubled the budget, but unfortunately they halved the humour.

It's against this unpromising backdrop that we arrive at the third installment, Goldmember (2002) which was presumably made for no other reason than a desire by creator/producer/writer/actor Mike Myers to have a final, pocket-lining, payday.

The story is simple. Blofeld parody Dr Evil (Mike Myers) hatches a plan to take over the world by using a "tractor beam" to crash a meteorite into the Earth, melting the icecaps and causing a global catastrophe of a scale normally only seen in Kevin Costner films (Waterworld, The Postman, et al).

To do this, he needs a key ingredient (that shares a name with popular Hemorrhoids treatment "Preparation H") from a Dutch scientist from the past, Johan van der Smut AKA "Goldmember" (Mike Myers again). However, Evil's plan is foiled early doors by British agent Austin Powers (take a guess, his initials are MM). Or so it would seem.

M equivalent, Basil Exposition, cock-blocks a potential threesome with Japanese twins to inform the newly-knighted Powers that his father, Nigel (played by the actually-knighted Michael Caine), has been mysteriously kidnapped. The only clue to go on is the Golden Members the kidnapper has painted on the overpowered guards. Can you guess who's behind this?

As the convolution reaches breaking point, Powers travels back in time (been there, done that in the preceding film), picks up Beyoncé as easily as she picks up the pay cheque for her role as Foxy Cleopatra, jumps back to the future, and after following a lead provided by Fat Bastard (played by, yes, you guessed it, Mike Myers) tracks down the recently-escaped Evil, Goldmember, and his Dad in order to save the day.

And if all that sounds exhausting you’d be right. Indeed, by the end, trying to follow the plot had become such a pain in the proverbial that I felt in dire need of Dr Smut’s Preparation H myself.

But you have to rewind to the opening scenes for the airborne explosive action. The film begins with what initially looks like an over-the-top action sequence. Actually it’s a fake trailer to "Austinpussy", a pretend Austin Powers biopic directed by Steven Spielberg.

It's a great moment of self-parody, with some brief but hilarious cameos from Tom Cruise as Powers, Gwyneth Paltrow as Powers-girl Dixie Normous, Kevin Spacey as Evil and Danny DeVito as Mini-Me.

As part of the sequence we see a chopper in pursuit of the motorbike-riding Dixie. Powers skydives out of a plane into his car, the Shaguar, in order to take care of the chopper and save Dixie.

Powers lines up the Shaguar to charge at the onrushing chopper, and then as it nears, launches into an acrobatic somersault - clearing the chopper and enabling him to fire at the bearded pilot, causing the helicopter to burst into flames.

Powers casually lands on the road by the rubble, before Cruise removes the glasses and utters the franchise catchphrase “Yeah Baby!”

Exploding helicopter innovation

Nothing special about the explosion, but the ridiculously implausible stunt does merit appreciation - the leap, somersault, gunfire combo, over an in-flight chopper. We know absolutely nothing about the reason why the helicopter pilot deserves to fall to a fiery end - we just know it's right, and bask in the resultant warm glow.

Positives

The opening trailer featuring the explosion is a genuinely enjoyable scene. I'm also sure I'm not the only one that has a soft spot for the shadow scenes from all three of these films. Simple. Childish. Hilarious.

Negatives

While a step up from The Spy Who Shagged Me, by the end you're left with the question of 'wouldn't it have just been better for everyone (other than Mike Myers) if this hadn't been made?' - the answer being a decisive 'Yeah Baby!'

Favourite quote

Nigel Powers: "There are only two things I can't stand in this world. People who are intolerant of other people's cultures... and the Dutch."

Review by: Joseph Clift

Still want more? Then check out the Exploding Helicopter podcast episode on Austin Powers In Goldmember. Find it on iTunes, YourListen, Acast, Stitcher, or Podomatic.

Skyfall

The name’s Bond. Emo Bond.

Yup. Forget Brosnan’s lazy charm, Connery’s flinty coolness, crap Roger’s independently moving eyebrows. This time Sam Mendes – renowned for his emotionally wrought character studies – is in the directorial driving seat, so it’s all about 007’s angst and inner pain. We can only be grateful that Skyfall, unlike American Beauty, doesn’t open with our hero disconsolately cranking one out in the shower.

So, the story: Bond gets ‘killed’ in the opening scene (except of course he doesn’t) and cyber-terrorists steal a hard drive containing a list of secret agents’ names, which they then leak online. It’s Wikispooks, essentially.

We soon find Bond living in a beach hut, drinking heavily and even growing a beard to show us how much he’s really hurting inside. When the MI5 headquarters in London are blown up, he comes out the shadows so he can look pained and bicker with M (Judi Dench). During re-training, our struggling hero can’t shoot straight, fails the fitness tests and even throws a hissy fit during the psychological assessment. Are you getting the picture yet – he’s REALLY VULNERABLE, okay?

Given all this navel-gazing, Skyfall is unquestionably more talky-talky than most Bond movies, which in itself isn’t a bad thing. (Quantum of Solace, produced during the Hollywood writer’s strike, had about six lines of wonky dialogue). Most of the actors – Judi Dench, Ralph Fiennes, Rory Kinnear – are pretty solid. Young Ben Whishaw, as Q, is great in the single scene – a verbal joust with Bond – where he’s allowed to do more than rat-a-tat at a laptop, squeaking: ‘They’ve hacked into our system!’. (Note: this happens a lot.)

But we already knew Mendes could ‘do’ talking – the problem is he just isn’t really into the action stuff, and it shows. He’s the directorial equivalent of the brainy, speccy boy at school, and there’s a sense that the livelier scenes for him must feel like a double Games lesson in the rain.

Can't you see he's hurting, he hasn't shaved

A big set-piece in a Shangai casino is a massive damp squib. Filming the scene apparently chewed up entire weeks and millions of pounds, but somehow it’s arse-numbingly boring.

Bond simply breezes into the enemy’s lair, announces his real name, chats up the baddie’s girlfriend, beats up some henchmen, narrowly avoids the obligatory deadly animals in a pit and breezes out again. So, when did that ever NOT happen? It’s all been done before with much more aplomb, and Mendes brings nothing fresh to the mix. It’s Karaoke Bond, essentially.

The movie’s big success is Javier Bardem, playing the bonkers, campish villain. He’s a truly bizarre sight, his big, meaty Spanish features topped with a straw-coloured wig that makes him look like a Catalan cousin of the late, unlamented Jimmy Savile. This unsavoury impression is heightened when he starts stroking a tied-up Bond between the legs. You half expect him to suddenly spout: “Now, then. Now, then...”

However, even a creature so magnificent as Jimmy Bardem is soon neutered by the lumpen direction and formulaic plot. Almost as soon as he’s introduced, the flaxen fanatic gets caught – with suspicious ease – and is taken to MI5’s new secret HQ. Once there, he trades insults with M, chews a bit of scenery then promptly escapes again. As Q helpfully exposites, while rat-a-tatting on a keyboard: “He’s actually been PLANNING this for years…”

Now, that shuffling, grating noise you can occasionally hear throughout this 20-minute sequence is the sound of Heath Ledger spinning in his grave, because the whole thing is a bare-faced lift from his identical stunt as The Joker in The Dark Knight. Except this time, obviously, the entire conceit is transparent from the outset – and thus a bit pointless.

Now then, now then, Mr Bond

However, it’s in the film’s final act that things really unravel. There are lots of uncertainties in the world, but one thing you could always count on was an explosive final half hour in a Bond movie, involving a huge set (preferably inside a volcano), hundreds of disposable extras, a cat-stroking maniac and some proper excitement.

Instead, Bond drives M to his bleak ancestral home in the Highlands so they can sort out his ‘mommy’ issues. There’s a misjudged, semi-comic turn by Albert Finney as the family retainer and, just as the movie should be cranking up to grand finale mode, the audience spends a full ten minutes watching what looks like out-takes from Emmerdale.

Finally, as night falls, Jimmy Bardem and a gang of goons arrive in a huge helicopter. It lands. The baddies jump out. They shoot big guns at the house, and Bond, M and Albert fire rifles back. The helicopter takes off again, ostensibly so it can resume shooting at the house, but really so Bond can blast it with a couple of gas canisters that happened to be hanging around in the kitchen (just next to the teabags).

Inevitably, the chopper crashes and a CGI fireball fills the screen, much as a palpable sense of anti-climax fills the mind of the viewer.

Exploding helicopter innovation 

Not much to report, really. Once hit, the big, Chinooky-type chopper slowly sinks and crashes into the side of the house, lighting up the night sky with a massive explosion. Mendes’ deft and realistic touch with an action scene is once more in evidence, as Bond and Bardem remain entirely unscathed by a huge volley of burning petrol and molten metal, despite standing right next to – and, in Bond’s case, virtually underneath – the unfortunate conflagrating vehicle.

Positives 

There are a lot of individual good scenes, and it’s a genuine pleasure to see talented actors in a generic movie raising the bar with more than the usual action guy tough talk…

Negatives

…but Skyfall often meanders and forgets that it is, after all, supposed to be a Bond movie. Despite all the critical hoopla, it reminded me in parts of Timothy Dalton’s discouraging turn as ‘new man’ 007 in the Eighties. Existential angst does not a good Bond movie make.

Favourite quote 

“Now, then. Now, then.” [Javier Bardem]. Note: I may have just imagined that, due to the wig.

Interesting fact 

What with Bond's 50th anniversary, Dame Judi's final turn as M, the celebration of British-ness theme, the celebrated home-grown director, post Olympics and Jubilee euphoria – this movie was never going to get anything other than a soft and comfortable critical landing. What most reviewers seemed to miss is that, for long stretches, it's actually pretty boring.

Review by: Chopper

Still want more? Then listen to the Exploding Helicopter podcast episode on Skyfall. You can listen via iTunes, Player FM, Stitcher, Acast or right here...

Deadly Prey

There are good films, and there are bad films. There are even ‘so bad they’re good’ films. And then there is Deadly Prey (1987).

This movie exists in its own universe. Like a comet, it hurtles past the Good and Bad constellations, briefly orbits planet So-Bad-It’s-Good, before exiting our galaxy for as yet uncharted regions of critical understanding.

But, lest we become lost in deep space, let us pause to consider the plot, which is very much rooted in our own earthly world.

In the backwoods outside Miami, a team of mercenaries – led by ruthless Colonel Hogan (David Campbell) – is rigorously preparing for a covert mission. To hone his soldiers into finely tuned killing machines, Hogan has adopted an extreme and unconventional approach at his training camp.

You see, the Colonel is the type of man who laughs at mere assault courses, who snubs his nose at bayonet-holed straw dummies. Not for him the tired fakery of pretend military exercises, oh no: Hogan prefers to keep it much more real and lethal.

In fact, his approach revolves around having his soldiers hunt and kill ‘runners’ – ordinary people kidnapped off the street and forced to flee for their lives in a secluded wood before they’re caught and killed.

The film opens with the latest ‘runner’ being easily chased down and murdered. Unimpressed, Hogan orders his men to head into town and bring back some fresh meat. By a huge coincidence, the elite mercenaries make the mistake of snatching Mike Danton (Ted Prior).

Unbeknown to them, Danton is highly trained ex-soldier and Vietnam veteran, who doesn’t take kindly to being used as glorified human bait. Instead of trying to scarper out the woods, Danton turns the tables on his kidnappers and starts to hunt them down, picking them off one-by-one.

So, given these kill-or-be-killed stakes, only one question remains: can Colonel Hogan and his mercenaries kill Danton, before Danton kills them?

Now, this may not sound like a plot that you’d need a PHD in astrophysics to understand, but – much like the mysteries of our solar system – Deadly Prey asks questions baffling enough to leave even Stephen Hawkins’ electronic voice box speechless.

Why, for instance, does Danton spend the entire film running around naked, except for a pair of skin tight denim shorts cut so short they verge on the pornographic?

Why, despite fighting for his life against a team of elite soldiers, does Danton decline to pick up a gun? I made it fully 49 minutes before Danton, having fought off numerous assailants, finally thinks to picks up a weapon. (Having said that, Danton had in fact killed 20 people by this point with relative ease, so maybe that’s a moot point.)

And why does Danton’s girlfriend, having seen him kidnapped and bundled into the back of a van, call – not the police or any other recognisable form of law enforcement – but her freaking dad, for heaven’s sake?

I know I ask these questions, but your time would be better spent searching for the origins of the universe than trying to find answers in the plot. With Deadly Prey it’s not so much a case of suspending your disbelief, as completely erasing it.

This is nowhere more evident than in the credulity-shattering scene where Colonel Hogan, examining the crumpled corpses of two of his men, is suddenly struck by a chilling realisation.

“I know this, I know this style… It’s my style… Danton? Mike Danton, it’s gotta be.”

“Know him?”

“Know him? I trained him.”

Really, where does one start? With the fact that Hogan and Danton just happen to be old foes from the army? That, by complete chance, they find themselves pitted against each other courtesy of a random kidnapping?

I especially enjoyed the in-no-way-unbelievable revelation that the Colonel can recognise precisely who killed the two men by the nature of their butchery. What did our hero do, carve ‘Danton wuz here’ into their abdomens? Utter piffle.

Still, for all its brain-dead tomfoolery, Deadly Prey is a thoroughly enjoyable romp, particularly when Danton tears about the woods employing the kind of advanced cub scout skills seen in First Blood or Predator.

Yes, the acting is universally horrendous but, combined with the lamentable editing which leaves everything happening a beat too slow, the film gradually begins to take on an odd, mesmeric charm.

This works best in moments of inspired gonzoid genius – such as when Danton severs an opponent’s arm during a fight, then uses the dismembered limb to beat him to a bloody pulp. It’s like the famous Monty Python and the Holy Grail black knight scene, only played straight – and all the funnier because of it.

So there’s certainly plenty to enjoy, and that’s even before we get to the exploding helicopter.

Intent on finishing off Danton, Hogan deploys a chopper to track down and kill the pesky veteran. Caught in open ground, it doesn’t look good for Danton as he desperately tries to evade machine gunfire from the aerial vehicle.

Finally, after ineffectually firing his own machine gun at the helicopter, Danton remembers his weapon is also fitted with a rocket-propelled grenade. One shot later, and Colonel Hogan has no more air support for his manhunt.
Artistic merit

One moment the chopper is there: the next it’s a dirty great fireball. It’s almost like they didn’t actually blow up a real helicopter. That’s low budget filmmaking for you.

Exploding helicopter innovation

First, and only, known destruction of a helicopter by a man wearing stone-washed, skin-tight denim shorts.

Positives

While it makes precious little sense, Danton’s refusal to pick up a gun until halfway through the film does have some benefits.

Sans gun, Danton has to improvise weapons and traps out of sticks, branches and whatever else is lying around the woods, making for some highly entertaining methods of despatching bad guys.

Negatives

The music in the film is bizarre. A keyboard heavy ballad, it sounds like the score for a daytime soap opera rather than a testosterone-fuelled, macho action movie. Again, cost considerations probably played a part in all this.

Favourite quote

Exposition is an art. When it’s done well, it can effortlessly give the viewer vital information about the story without getting in the way of scene. Conversely, when it’s done badly an actor can be left slowly chewing big chunks of indigestible dialogue.

Deadly Prey’s scriptwriters imaginatively opt for a third way and seek to short-circuit the whole process. So when Danton unexpectedly runs into yet another old army buddy, we get to hear the immortal zinger: “Mike Danton? I haven’t seen you since you took a bullet trying to save my life.”

Were there any other important details you needed about their relationship?

Interesting fact

The cult around Deadly Prey’s has steadily grown over the years. So much so, that it appears a sequel Deadliest Prey with Ted Prior himself is on the cards for next year.

Review by: Jafo

Surrogates

Imagine a world where you can sit on your arse all day in the comfort of your own home and get someone else to do your work for you. Sounds great doesn’t it?

In fact you could argue that people living on benefits in this country currently enjoy this luxury (ooh, little bit of politics there). But wouldn’t there be a price to pay for creating a bland and safe facsimile of society? What would happen to our self-esteem and social skills? Wouldn’t we all just end up sitting around in our pants, stuffing our faces with crisps, looking like Elvis circa 1977?

This is the dystopian future envisioned by Jonathan Mostow in the surprisingly cerebral sci-fi actioner Surrogates (2009). In the future people don’t go out in the real world. Instead, they sit at home, remotely controlling idealised robotic versions of themselves, living out their lives vicariously through these “surrogates“.

Tom Greer (Bruce Willis) is one such sluggard. He’s an FBI agent called in to investigate the deaths of two people who mysteriously die when their surrogates are destroyed - something that should be technically impossible.

Greer’s sleuthing leads him to the anti-surrogate movement whose leader The Prophet (a bizarre mix of Bob Marley and Martin Luther King, played by a virtually unrecognisable Ving Rhames) wants to wipe out surrogacy. He wants to get everyone back to experiencing life directly, or at least washing once a month.

Ving Rhames: With a wig dafter than Bruce Willis'

But, just in the same way you can never be sure that the 18-year old underwear model you think you’re talking to in a chat room isn’t a 44-year old truck driver from Burnley, nothing is quite what it seems. Slowly Greer realises the murder is part of a vast and terrible conspiracy.

In a genre dominated by dumbed down studio fare with no intellectual returns, I found Surrogates to be an unexpected pleasure. The film reunites the team behind Terminator 3, writers Michael Ferris and John Brancato, along with director Mostow. They create a fully realised, plausible universe with great touches such as robots “jacking” with electronic “drugs”, beauty salons that resemble garages and roadside surrogate battery chargers.

Willis is not his usual bullet proof self and shows a refreshing vulnerability when dealing with some of the movies philosophical themes. Similarly, his flawed relationship with his wife Maggie (Rosamund Pike) elevates the film above the standard sci-fi action fare that normally relies on fancy effects and a blue tint for its authenticity.

Mostow keeps the action moving and at an economical 90 minutes the film doesn’t outstay its welcome either. Fortunately, amidst all the futuristic fun there’s still time for the retro thrills of a helicopter explosion.

Willis is in a police chopper tracking the murder suspect. The police on the ground move in and corner the suspect not knowing he is in possession of a developmental weapon which has the ability to kill people through their surrogates. After using it to wipe out the pursuing police the weapon is unleashed on chopper, overloading the pilot’s circuits and blowing his eyes out.

The out of control chopper spins wildly for what seems an eternity, clips the top of a building, before crashing down, flipping over like a child’s toy until it explodes.

Artistic merit

Whilst you have to appreciate the way Mostow’s prolongs the suspense, the helicopter was only ever heading one way - and that was down.

The crash itself looks surprisingly cheap and CGI’d compared to some of his previous efforts. The washed out yellows looked uncannily like the old Amiga game Persian Gulf Inferno.

Exploding helicopter innovation

None

Do passengers survive?

Survive is perhaps not the most apt verb in the scene is a robot. The chopper pilot does not surface after the fireball but Willis escapes with his arm torn off seeping some sort of green fluid which may or may not be absinthe.

Positives

The fact that in this fantasy world everyone has flawlessly beautiful surrogates to hide the fact that in the real world they are so ugly they couldn’t get a date from a calendar is a concept anyone familiar with Second Life will well appreciate.

Negatives

As with most sci-fi you can pick holes in the minutiae until the cows come home. Why, for example, have coffee shops for robots that don’t need to drink coffee? Don’t be a smart arse, its called artistic licence.

I won’t spoil it for you but the dénouement is too farfetched to be plausible for such a massive company with undoubtedly hundreds of fail safes to prevent their units from malfunctioning on a monumental scale.

Favourite quote

(Willis questioning an attractive female surrogate lawyer)

Female Lawyer: Agent Greer, we're not doctors. Tom Greer: Honey, I don't know what you are. I mean, for all I know, you could be some big, fat dude sitting in his arm chair with his dick hanging out.

Interesting fact

Oddly, Disney did not hold any press screenings for Surrogates. This is normally the sign of a studio in full damage limitation mode with an absolute turkey on their hands that they don’t want universally panned before it’s had a chance to see the light of day.

Perhaps Disney should have had more faith as subsequent reviews have been, at worst, “mixed”. Disney’s failure to back a sci-fi film with brains does the film and the movie industry in general a disservice.

The future isn’t particularly dangerous, in fact crime is virtually non-existent, but there is no underestimating mankind’s desire to do as little as possible. First came the remote control and now this.

Review by: Neon Messiah

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

Morlocks

“Let me see if I’ve got this straight: you want me to travel through a rift in time, find and repair a device you lost and broke, while all the trying to avoid rampaging creatures from the future – that about sum it up?”

It most assuredly does. And even I, in my lofty position as the editor of a micro-niche film blog about exploding helicopters, couldn’t have put it better.

Credit for the above succinct summary of Morlocks’ plot goes to its hero, a certain Dr Radnor (David Hewlett). He’s a top boffin scientist who, much like this viewer, seems to be struggling to make sense of things in this turgid time-travelling saga.

With America’s economy on its knees, a top secret military unit – led by the shady Robert Picardo – has developed a time-travelling device called ‘the latch’. They plan to preserve Uncle Sam’s industrial might by bringing technology back from the future, thus preventing the US from becoming an insignificant and irrelevant bit player in global politics, an impotent shadow of its former glorious self. In other words: Britain.

Unfortunately, the grand plan runs into a hitch when the future turns out not to be the giant Apple Store they’d hoped for, but an apocalyptic wasteland inhabited only by murderous creatures (Morlocks).

Things go from bad to worse when the latch – now missing somewhere in the future – begins to malfunction, threatening the present-day world with obliteration courtesy of a massive time rift that no-one can be bothered to explain. That’s presumably because, by this point, even the writers were exhausted by garbling up so much nonsensical pseudo-science.

David Hewlett, looking as happy
as I did after watching Morlocks

As the one scientist with the cranial capacity to save the day, Radnor is sent into the future with a team of soldiers to fix and retrieve the device. Will he succeed? Or will the world end in…in…an undefined, non-specific way. Oh, the drama!

Sadly, given this is a film about travelling to the future, I was left wishing I could travel back in time: ideally to a point 90 minutes earlier, when I first decided to watch this torpor-inducing piece of tomfoolery.

One never likes to be unkind to made-for-cable fare – with all the limitations on time, budget and talent that the genre inevitably involves – but this was just toss. It was so bad, that even those familiar genre clichés, normally guaranteed to raise a smile, failed to entertain.

Normally, there’s nothing I love more than watching a film’s dead meat, sorry, unfortunate extras (here fatally cast as soldiers sent to the Earth’s apocalyptic future) meet predictable and pointless deaths. Note: Star Trek raised this phenomenon to the level of high-art, with ‘landing parties’ proving deadly for anyone who wasn’t a regular character.

However, in Morlocks the senseless extras carnage all has a routine, by the numbers feel. If you’re going to serve up a cliché then it should be delivered with gusto and brio, not sloppily ladled out with the bored disinterest of a school dinner lady.

Denied such pleasures, my only interest comes from trying to work out whether certain characters have crossed the ‘immunity threshold’ – namely, have they established themselves sufficiently to indicate they’ll make it to the end of the film unscathed. Such pursuits provide about the only glimmers of entertainment amidst the dross. Still at least there is an exploding helicopter to talk about.

Yes, the special effects are this good

At the end of the film, the surviving characters have returned from the future. Unfortunately, a bunch of Morlocks have tagged along and are with causing havoc at the military base.

Two of our remaining heroes jump aboard a helicopter to attempt an escape. Hovering just off the ground, a couple of Morlocks jump onto the tail of the chopper, causing the pilot to lose control.

The helicopter crashes into ground and partially explodes, but fortuitously the cockpit remains intact allowing the two occupants to flee the wreckage and dive inside a nearby tank. With the Morlocks occupied on the wreckage of the chopper, our heroes fire the tank’s cannon destroying the Morlocks and what’s left of the chopper.

Artistic merit

This was an every-expense-spared helicopter explosion rendered in grade Z CGI. Much like the rest of the film, it is distinctly underwhelming.

Exploding helicopter innovation

This helicopter explosion is directly caused by Morlocks (who it turns out are actually genetically mutated humans). That’s definitely a first.

Do passengers survive?

Yes, the two occupants of the helicopter who scramble to safety had long since passed the immunity threshold by this point in the film.

Positives

Sorry, I just can’t think of one.

Negatives

As films about time travel are written by Hollywood hacks and not quantum physicists, there’s usually an irresolvable paradox lurking somewhere in the plot: Morlocks is no exception.

Here the insoluble question is: why bother to save the present, when the future’s totally buggered? Inevitably, no-one stops to consider this.

Interesting fact

Morlocks is a very loose adaptation of HG Wells’ The Time Machine, which begs an interesting question: if Wells had possessed the power of time-travel and seen what a mangled dog’s breakfast someone would make of his novel, would he still have written it?

Review by: Jafo