The Bourne Legacy: More Like Leg-to-your-facey

First thing's first; The Bourne Legacy takes place at the same time as The Bourne Ultimatum. Also, it does not have Jason Bourne in it, except for in name. The main character here is Aaron Cross, played by the ever increasingly bad-ass Jeremy Renner (possibly the best thing to ever come out of Modesto, California). Aaron Cross is a member of Operation Outcome, which is similar to the previous films' Treadstone (of which Jason Bourne was a member) and Blackbriar (which was sent after Jason to silence him, after he threatened to expose them). If you're not familiar, all of those programs/operations are CIA Black Ops projects that are creating super duper field operatives.

Spoilers-ish, in this film the Outcome agents are treated with a virus that helps them increase their mental capacity and physical prowess by some percentage. This works out great for Aaron Cross because before joining the military he was a dummy! The army recruiter added 12 points to his IQ...durr. Anyhow one of the scientists involved in this virus engineering is Dr. Marta Shearing (Rachel Weisz, who I've been in love with since The Mummy). Aaron and Marta's paths cross (get it?) and they go off in search for a stem cell that can help Aaron's character stay smart indefinitely. 

The main bad (or good, depending on your political/conspiracy leanings) is Eric Bayer (Edward Norton, who is great and I wish he'd make more movies instead of being a selfish brat and only making things he "believes" in...ugh). His role is basically the same one that was played by Joan Allen (as Pam Landy) in the other Bourne movies, he's trying to find Aaron Cross before not so flattering information about the United States is released to the public.

Enough about plot. The movie's actually pretty cool, and the action set-pieces are great (much like in the Total Recall remake; however unlike the Total Recall remake, the dialog was not atrocious and non-action elements kept my attention). If you like action, and if you've seen any of the other Bourne movies and are looking in to this one, you are probably are, you should certainly see this movie. If you are cautious about throwing money away, you can see it in a matinee, but in a theater with the thundering surround sound is probably the way to go. I will say this: the car chase scene in this film takes place in Manila, and is very well done, as far as chases go, but will leave you wondering how in the hell they could shoot there (it looks a smidge crowded). 

This guy gets a 4/5, all-around good flick, good action, and Jeremy Renner getting another franchise to be a part of is good news for everyone. I think the next movie, "The Cross Identity" (probably), will start with Rachel's character being found face-down in a plate of Pad Thai somewhere off the coast of Thailand, and Cross teaming up with Jason Bourne to take down the baddies (or goodies). I'm very excited about this!  

*EDIT* There's also a Moby song at the end of the film and everyone knows that the way to Yev's heart is through a Moby song.

Quick note about Total Recall as I will not be writing about it:

I give it 1.5/5. The 1 is for the CGI and action sequences, which are good, as long as no one is talking. The .5 is for the cast, I love Colin Ferrell and wish he would be in more stuff; Kate Beckinsale is always cute; Jessica Biel is kind of a bad-ass here which makes me think of her in Blade Trinity, which makes me happy; Bryan Cranston is not cooking meth, but plays a believable baddy nonetheless; and
Bill Nighy might be one of my favorite current Brits. All those folks are great, but their dialog is horrible, so you can go ahead and just re-watch the Arnold campy classic movie instead.

Hopefully this will re-set my ability to write these things and I'll get more out there. Not going to write one for Dark Knight. If you haven't seen it, you're an idiot and should go. As always, comment/share/suggest! 

Kick-Ass Punches Butt!

After seeing the original trailer for Kick-Ass many months ago, with the falcon looking kid jumping from a tall building and landing directly on a taxi cab, I was intrigued. The movie seemed like it would be funny, crude, and at the very least an interesting look at mind of a high-schooler with delusions of grandeur. Kick-Ass did not disappointed in the slightest. Before I actually "review", let me mention the most talked about part of this movie, which is Chloe Moretz's Hit-Girl . The film has been slammed for allowing the 13 year old actress use very harsh language and create such mayhem and violence http://www.usatoday.com/life/movies/news/2010-04-15-chloe15_ST_N.htm. Personally, I think she did a great job, and handled the dialog and action scenes very well. She reminded me of a younger Dakota Fanning in Push. Both are troubled, haven't really had much of a childhood and are out to get the people that caused them to lose everything, and they do it in high-octane fashion.

Kick-Ass is based on a comic book of the same name written by Mark Millar and follows the story of Dave Lizewski (played by Aaron Johnson), who wants to take up fighting crime regardless of tiny annoying fact that, other than having some metallic plates in his body from a car accident stemming from an early crime-fighting adventure, he has no super powers. After developing his Kick-Ass persona, he teams up with Hit-Girl and Big Daddy (played by Nicolas Cage, who steals every scene that he is in), to fight the D'Amico crime family who run their operations out of a lumber company. The best parts of the film were ones that weren't shown in previews and trailers, which is a welcome surprise since that seems to be more and more common. One of my favorite scenes was towards the beginning of the film when Big Daddy and Hit-Girl are first introduced and are going through intense "training".

The film was actually much darker than I had originally thought it would be, but that was a welcome change from the screwball "ha-ha, I punched your nads" comedies that have been coming out for the last couple years. The comedic moments were well placed and well acted, giving the story light lifts every now and again when the subject matter got a little too-intense.

Since this is my first film review, I need to figure out what kind of system I want to use in terms of scoring, and I think a 5-point system would work best. Cliche-ly I give this film a 4 out of 5 stars. While Aaron Johnson still has a ways to go in terms of acting chops, Chloe Moretz and Nicolas Cage are both great, and make this a contender for what might be one of the years most surprising and best comic book films. Granted we still have almost the entire year to go, and haven't even gotten Iron Man 2 yet, I really do believe this film is very underrated, and comic book fans (which I admit I am not one of), will really enjoy the film.

Hopefully there will be more reviews later and this will turn into an actual "thing" but that's my test run for now! If you have any writing style or general suggestions I would love to hear them, thanks!