Badmovies.org Forum

FIREWALL (2006)

(maybe some slight spoilers below)

Ok action movie with Harrison Ford and Paul Bettany that is YAFHM (yet another family hostages movie).  It was enjoyable such that it was, but my biggest complaint with FIREWALL is the bad guys just really were not as BAD as they were pretending to be.  This seems to be a common affliction with Hollywood created bad guys.

I mean come on ... you want to cower a family AND the male head of household?  A "real" bad buy, one as BAD as this movie was trying to set up, would rape the females.  Or at least beat the snot out of at least one of them.  What does Paul Bettany do to show he is serious?  He kills one of his OWN MEN?  With this simple act, he shows how ruthless he is (ie, he is not ruthless enough to kill one of the hostages) and increases the odds for Harrison Ford's retailiation later.

Let's get with the program, Hollywood.  Bad guys should be BAD, ruthless, mean and do ANYTHING to win.  They don't play by the same rules.  I'm tired of watered down bad guys that talk the talk, but do nothing else.  Say what you want about the movies, but Lithgow's character in CLIFFHANGER was a pretty decent bad guy as was Dennis Hopper in SPEED; neither got their badness diluted.

DARK STAR (1974)

What can I say about John Carpenter's first outing that has not been said? Here is Andrew's review (http://www.badmovies.org/movies/darkstar/index.html) which serves far more-to-the-point than I could offer.  Thanks to reading Andrew's review, I've been wanting to see this one for a long time, and finally got it from Netflix.

One of the things that I noticed about this movie is that it is FAR, FAR, FAR more enjoyable and better in EVERY respect than MISSION TO MARS (oh man I HATED that movie): acting, direction, effects and production values.  Okay, some of that is toungue in cheek, but not really.  Give me DARK STAR over MISSION TO MARS any day.

Another thing I noticed about this movie is the prescience of elements that would later appear in THE THING.  The isolation, the all-male crew, the wierd personalities that begin to grate on each other, the hopeless ending.  In a way this foreshadowing of what was to become one of Carpenter's greatest films (arguably the best) added an additional element of joy - like watching a star major leaguer in high school or something.

Bad Movie fans, if you haven't seen DARK STAR, watch it; you won't be disappointed.

Firewall: I though it was pretty much OK, with some decent acting by Ford and Bettany, but exactly the type of movies Ford shouldn't be doing anymore. C'on, if somebody erased the production year and put a date ten years older nobody would notice. At least it is better than "K-19" or "A Hollywood homicide", so we sohuld be thankful.

Dark Star: No matter how hard I try, although I like the movie and it is VERY well made for such a small budget (the editing on those elevator scenes was great), I always think it is more a Dan O'Bannon movie than a John Carpenter one, as I feel his unique style wouldn't emerge until "Assault to police precint 13", a few years later.

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Good to know someone else shares the same opinion as me on these two movies. M2M sucked so badly. I still can't believe Brian DePalma directed that piece of garbage.