The Expendables

The idea is simple: The principal actors play members of an elite mercenary squad known only as “The Expendables.”  In execution, however, this means they’re a team of aging action stars trying to recapture the limelight, only ending up parodies of themselves—leather-clad, botox-faced yahoos on motorcycles looking like every affluent mid-life crisis this side of [...]

Salt

Salt is a Spy-Fi thriller so delightfully bad you can fly a 747 through its plot holes. As a bonus, the wonderful Andre Braugher is completely wasted in a cameo (as Secretary of Defense) so brief you’ll miss it if you blink. Evelyn Salt (Angelina Jolie) is a covert CIA operative. Released from imprisonment in [...]

Knight and Day

Guy meets girl.  Guy plants stuff on girl.  Girl gets through airport security an unwitting accomplice.  Guy kidnaps girl.  Girl gets hysterical.  Girl falls in love with guy anyway.  This is the Stockholm Syndrome plot of Knight and Day, and countless other action/rom-com/adventure flicks that treat the woman as the tag-a-long idiot, rather than a [...]

The A-Team

Hollywood lately has been making three kinds of movies: The remake, the reboot and the sequel/prequel.  When the ability to copy-paste a competent origin or continuation fails, there’s the fourth option: The franchise.  In this case, it took two writers and four producers to write a mediocre adaptation of Stephen J. Cannell’s TV series.  After [...]

Edge of Darkness

As David St. Hubbins might say, “It’s such a fine line, between stupid and clever.” Edge of Darkness begins with clever, and slowly works its way to stupid. After a seven-year hiatus from acting, Mel Gibson returns to the screen as Tom Craven, a homicide detective believed to be the target of a shooting that [...]