Hello! Guess who saw the movie ON THE BIG SCREEN yesterday? Yes - yours truly!
And I loved it! Shared a "love seat" with my hubby. A true romance night out!
So what can I say. Loved the movie. Hubby loved it, too! He said that it's easily the best of the four movies because it has a very interesting story. Yes, you read right. The end is almost philosophical, Philip K. Dick-like. Nope, this is no irony.
So, here's my executive summary of what I think of the movie or the facts I noticed:
- The posters with JC and Dolph are just wrong because Scott Adkins has 90% of screen time and the marketing guys betray him because it's HIS movie. Dolph and JC are just small add-ons. And Scott does a fantastic job, IMHO.
- Hubby said that it's a shame that they market this as a UniSol movie because it's a totally different thing than the other three. It has a real story, a good one, and people who saw the first UniSol and didn't like it would never watch this one because of the marketing. And he said it's a shame that it's DTV. I totally agree. I mean, I love the first one but this here REALLY has a story to tell.
- Especially during the first hour the violence level is unrealistically high, but the portrayal of violence itself is still very realistic, if you know what I mean. I love over-the-top violence but this was too realistic, too harsh for me. No comic relief. Men, women, children killed. No one-liners. *gulp*
- Only after one hour there's a change when the first real "super power" fight between Scott and Andrei Arlovski takes place in a shop for sporting equipment (BASEBALL BATS AHEAD!). This is over-the-top violence, it looked great, it was fun and I tought "Finally I can enjoy the violence".
- The final fight betwen Dolph and Scott - great! Firearms, blades, hand-to-hand. YAY! And Dolph has THE BEST line of the whole movie. *The* one-liner. Wait for it.
- The final fight between JC and Scott - sucks. JC's a zombie act and you can spot the double in every move. Seems that JC is either very lazy or can't raise a leg or and arm anymore. Sad.
- Scott has a few very cool moves during his final fight sequence. Not comparable to the mayhem in Undisputed 2 + 3 but still... you can cherish the few things you see. Looooved when he closed his legs around one opponent's neck, hanging down, swinging around, bringing the guy to the ground. Icing on the cake.
- Ok, this may be a weird comment but I liked the fact that in a pole dancing club scene and a whore house scene all the women except for one clearly had natural breasts. Some quite small, one quite big, only one looking like silicone. Nice! Natural women. Kudos to the casting department.
So, watching this I thought "The Shining!!!" in one scene, "Memento!!!" in a few others, "Philip K. Dick!!!" in the end. It has harsh violence, over-the-top action and - if you are willing to see it - an intelligent story behind it that makes you think of how this might evolve and what the implications are. Yes, apart from the fact that Dolph has not that much screen time, it is story-wise easily the best of the four in the franchise. And it has almost nothing to do with UniSol 1 - 3 and the marketing is misleading. But it's great. Watch it!
i hope your wrong mosquito