Latest Movie :
RecentGOSSIPS AND HAPPENINGS!
Showing posts with label action. Show all posts
Showing posts with label action. Show all posts

Iron Man 3 (2013)

Iron Man 3 (2013)

Directed byShane Black
Produced byKevin Feige
Screenplay byDrew Pearce
Shane Black
Based on
  • Iron Man by
  • Stan Lee
  • Larry Lieber
  • Don Heck
  • Jack Kirby
Starring
    • Robert Downey, Jr.
    • Gwyneth Paltrow
    • Don Cheadle
    • Guy Pearce
    • Rebecca Hall
    • Stephanie Szostak
    • James Badge Dale
    • Jon Favreau
    • Ben Kingsley

Iron Man 3 is a 2013 American superhero film featuring the Marvel Comics character Iron Man, produced by Kevin Feige of Marvel Studios and distributed by Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures.

PLOT

Tony Stark recalls a New Years Eve party in 1999 with scientist Maya Hansen, inventor of Extremis—an experimental regenerative treatment intended to allow recovery from crippling injuries. Disabled scientist Aldrich Killian offers them a place in his company Advanced Idea Mechanics, but Stark rejects the offer, humiliating Killian.
Years later, Stark's experiences during the alien invasion of New York are giving him panic attacks. Restless, he has built several dozen Iron Man suits, creating friction with his girlfriend Pepper Potts. Meanwhile, a string of bombings by a terrorist known only as the Mandarin has left intelligence agencies bewildered by a lack of forensic evidence. When Stark Industries security chief Happy Hogan is badly injured in one such attack, Stark overcomes his stupor and issues a televised threat to the Mandarin, who responds by destroying Stark's home with helicopter gunships. Hansen, who came to warn Stark, survives the attack along with Potts. Stark escapes in an Iron Man suit, which his artificial intelligence JARVIS pilots to rural Tennessee, following a flight plan from Stark's investigation into the Mandarin. Stark's experimental armor lacks sufficient power to return to California, and the world believes him dead.
Teaming with Harley, a precocious 10-year-old boy, Stark investigates the remains of a local explosion bearing the hallmarks of a Mandarin attack. He discovers the "bombings" were triggered by soldiers subjected to Extremis, which at this stage of development can cause certain subjects to explosively reject it. After veterans started exploding, their deaths were used to cover up Extremis' flaws by manufacturing a terrorist plot. Stark witnesses Extremis firsthand when Mandarin agents Ellen Brandt and Eric Savin attack him.
With Harley's help, Stark traces the Mandarin to Miami and infiltrates his headquarters using improvised weapons. Inside he discovers the Mandarin is actually a British actor named Trevor Slattery, who claims he is oblivious to the actions carried out in his name. The Mandarin is actually a creation of Killian, who appropriated Hansen's Extremis research as a cure for his own disability and expanded the program to include injured war veterans. After capturing Stark, Killian reveals he is the real Mandarin; he has kidnapped Potts and subjected her to Extremis to gain Stark's aid in fixing Extremis' flaws and thereby saving Potts. Killian kills Hansen when she has a change of heart about the plan.
Killian has also manipulated American intelligence agencies regarding the Mandarin's location, luring James Rhodes—the former War Machine, now re-branded as the Iron Patriot—into a trap to steal the armor. Stark escapes and reunites with Rhodes, discovering that Killian intends to attack President Ellis aboard Air Force One. Remotely controlling his Iron Man armor, Stark saves some surviving passengers and crew but cannot stop Killian from abducting Ellis and destroying Air Force One. They trace Killian to an impounded damaged oil tanker where Killian intends to kill Ellis on live television. The vice president will become a puppet leader, following Killian's orders in exchange for Extremis to cure a little girl's disability.
On the platform, Stark goes to save Potts, and Rhodes saves the president. Stark summons his Iron Man suits, controlled remotely by JARVIS, to provide air support. Rhodes secures the president and takes him to safety, while Stark discovers Potts has survived the Extremis procedure. However, before he can save her, a rig collapses around them and she falls to her apparent death. Stark confronts Killian and traps him in an Iron Man suit that self-destructs, but fails to kill him. Potts, whose Extremis powers allowed her to survive her fall, intervenes and kills Killian.
After the battle, Stark orders JARVIS to remotely destroy each Iron Man suit as a sign of his devotion to Potts. The vice president and Slattery are arrested. With Stark's help, Potts' Extremis effects are stabilized, and Stark undergoes surgery to remove the shrapnel embedded near his heart. He pitches his obsolete chest arc reactor into the sea, musing he will always be Iron Man.
In a present day post-credits scene, Stark wakes up Dr. Bruce Banner, who fell asleep listening at the beginning of Stark's story.

TRAILER


REVIEW

His goal is destroying America, and he bears grudge against it for everything from the killing of the Native Indians to its mis-adventures in the Middle East. He shoots videos wearing dark glasses, against images of explosions, spewing venom and promising death upon America, whose nature he sees best explained through fortune cookies. He promises terror is his middle name. Otherwise, he is called 'The Mandarin'.

By picking this famous super villain from Marvel Comic books and reinventing him thus, highlighting the sheer idiocy of terror as well as the huge impact of it, Iron Man 3 sets just the right tone for this third film in the series.

If the first part was about both Downey Jr and Iron Man finding themselves – and what a piece of serendipity it was, to choose the actor for the role – the second was about pitting him against one as megalomaniac as him to show him the other side of it.
In the third film, Tony Stark (Downey Jr) has apparently made peace with his demons as well as come face to face with gods and aliens (The Avengers). Where does he go from here? That's what this film seeks to explore, when Stark is faced with a global terrorist whose uncertain agenda somehow comes to be centred entirely around him.

He has perfected his gadgetry, has got an ideal computer that talks to him (the aptly named "Jarvis", voiced by Paul Bettany) and now even has multiple metal suits that pick up the signals he is sending out and rush to his rescue. However, far from settled in, Stark is both battling anxiety attacks and an inability to sleep since his big run-in with aliens. These two worlds meet in an encounter between Pepper Potts (Paltrow), who has moved in with him, and an Iron Man suit in an unexpected bedroom scene.

What do the multiple suits mean for a man who has been forever haunted by one question – does the man make the suit, or the suit make the man? Particularly for a man who has never allowed an easy answer to that question? Director Shane Black, better known as the screenwriter of action films such as Lethan Weapon and Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, taking over from Jon Favreau, handles this conflict well – especially in having the suit literally fly to Stark in pieces, so that at times Downey Jr is half-Stark and half-Iron Man, hurting as much as the latter doesn't in multiple encounters.

The action sequences are spectacular, particularly the destruction of Stark's sea-cliff home and the skydiving scene where Iron Man rescues people who have been thrown off the US President's plane. Stark also gets a chance to be back where he started and to see if he can do it all over again, with the help of a child.

What lets the film down is Pearce as the choice of the villain opposite Downey Jr's undiminished charm offensive. He is pale, puny and unimpressive, plus armed with a technology that is a lot of mumbo jumbo at best – it grows limbs but also fires people up from within, literally -- and saddled with a plan that hardly appears long-distance. Kingsley, on the other hand -- one of the film's hilarious highlights is when he is discovered for who he is -- could have easily filled in those boots.
Iron Man 3 also suffers for having just too many encounters between Stark and Aldrich Killian (Pearce), only consistently showing up the latter's weaknesses, rather than one dramatic and definitive one.

There's very little of that mock un-selfconsciousness and insouciance of the previous Iron Mans in Part 3, but trust Downey Jr to channel this growth of his character without losing basic sight of where it comes from.

It's he who lends this blockbuster its punch, and for now, it is still a heavy punch.

BUY DVDs/CDs OF IRON MAN 3

NORMAL

IN 3D

{[['']]}

The Avengers (2012)

Directed byJoss Whedon
Produced byKevin Feige
Screenplay byJoss Whedon
Story by
  • Zak Penn
  • Joss Whedon
Based onThe Avengers by
  • Stan Lee
  • Jack Kirby
Captain America by
  • Joe Simon
  • Jack Kirby
Starring
  • Robert Downey, Jr.
  • Chris Evans
  • Mark Ruffalo
  • Chris Hemsworth
  • Scarlett Johansson
  • Jeremy Renner
  • Tom Hiddleston
  • Clark Gregg
  • Cobie Smulders
  • Stellan Skarsgård
  • Samuel L. Jackson


Marvel's The Avengers, or simply The Avengers, is a 2012 American superhero film produced by Marvel Studios and distributed by Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures, based on the Marvel Comics superhero team of the same name.

PLOT

The Asgardian Loki encounters the Other, the leader of an extraterrestrial race known as the Chitauri. In exchange for retrieving the Tesseract,2 a powerful energy source of unknown potential, the Other promises Loki an army with which he can subjugate Earth.Nick Fury, director of the espionage agency S.H.I.E.L.D., and his lieutenant Agent Maria Hill arrive at a remote research facility during an evacuation, where physicist Dr. Erik Selvig is leading a research team experimenting on the Tesseract. Agent Phil Coulson explains that the object has begun radiating an unusual form of energy. The Tesseract suddenly activates and opens a wormhole, allowing Loki to reach Earth. Loki takes the Tesseract and uses his scepter to enslave Selvig and several agents, including Clint Barton, to aid him in his getaway.
In response to the attack, Fury reactivates the "Avengers Initiative". Agent Natasha Romanoff is sent to Calcutta to recruit Dr. Bruce Banner to trace the Tesseract through its gamma radiation emissions. Coulson visits Tony Stark to have him review Selvig's research, and Fury approaches Steve Rogers with an assignment to retrieve the Tesseract. In Stuttgart, Barton steals iridium needed to stabilize the Tesseract's power while Loki causes a distraction, leading to a confrontation with Rogers, Stark, and Romanoff that ends with Loki's surrender. While Loki is being escorted to S.H.I.E.L.D., Thor, his adoptive brother, arrives and frees him, hoping to convince him to abandon his plan and return to Asgard. After a confrontation with Stark and Rogers, Thor agrees to take Loki to S.H.I.E.L.D.'s flying aircraft carrier, the Helicarrier. There Loki is imprisoned while scientists Banner and Stark attempt to locate the Tesseract.
The Avengers become divided, both over how to approach Loki and the revelation that S.H.I.E.L.D. plans to harness the Tesseract to develop weapons as a deterrent against hostile extraterrestrials. As the group argues, Barton and Loki's other possessed agents attack the Helicarrier, disabling its engines in flight and causing Banner to transform into the Hulk. Stark and Rogers try to restart the damaged engine, and Thor attempts to stop the Hulk's rampage. Romanoff fights Barton, and knocks him unconscious, breaking Loki's mind control. Loki escapes after killing Coulson and ejecting Thor from the airship, while the Hulk falls to the ground after attacking a S.H.I.E.L.D. fighter jet. Fury uses Coulson's death to motivate the Avengers into working as a team. Stark and Rogers realize that for Loki, simply defeating them will not be enough; he needs to overpower them publicly to validate himself as ruler of Earth. Loki uses the Tesseract, in conjunction with a device Selvig built, to open a wormhole above Stark Tower to the Chitauri fleet in space, launching his invasion.
The Avengers rally in defense of New York City, the wormhole's location, but quickly realize they will be overwhelmed as wave after wave of Chitauri descend upon Earth. Banner arrives and transforms into the Hulk, and together he, Rogers, Stark, Thor, Barton and Romanoff battle the Chitauri while evacuating civilians. The Hulk finds Loki and beats him into submission. Romanoff makes her way to the wormhole generator, where Selvig, freed of Loki's control, reveals that Loki's scepter can be used to shut down the generator. Meanwhile, Fury's superiors attempt to end the invasion by launching a nuclear missile at Manhattan. Stark intercepts the missile and takes it through the wormhole toward the Chitauri fleet. The missile detonates, destroying the Chitauri mothership and disabling their forces on Earth. Stark's suit runs out of power, and he falls back through the wormhole just as Romanoff closes it. Stark goes into freefall, but the Hulk saves him from crashing to the ground. In the aftermath, Thor returns Loki and the Tesseract to Asgard. Fury expresses confidence that the Avengers will return if and when they are needed.
In the first of two post-credits scenes, the Other confers with his master about the failed attack on Earth and humanity's strength; in the second, the Avengers eat in silence at a shawarma restaurant.

TRAILER




BUY DVDs/CDs of THE AVENGERS 

NORMAL

IN 3D

{[['']]}

Thor- God of Thunder

Directed byKenneth Branagh
Produced byKevin Feige
Screenplay byAshley Edward Miller
Zack Stentz
Don Payne
Story byJ. Michael Straczynski
Mark Protosevich
Based onThor
by Stan Lee
Larry Lieber
Jack Kirby
StarringChris Hemsworth
Natalie Portman
Tom Hiddleston
Stellan Skarsgård
Colm Feore
Ray Stevenson
Idris Elba
Kat Dennings
Rene Russo
Anthony Hopkins


At the center of the story is The Mighty Thor, a powerful but arrogant warrior whose reckless actions reignite an ancient war. Thor is cast down to Earth and forced to live among humans as punishment. Once here, Thor learns what it takes to be a true hero when the most dangerous villain of his world sends the darkest forces of Asgard to invade Earth.

PLOT

In 965 AD, Odin, king of Asgard, wages war against the Frost Giants of Jotunheim and their leader Laufey, to prevent them from conquering the nine realms, starting with Earth. The Asgardian warriors defeat the Frost Giants and seize the source of their power, the Casket of Ancient Winters.
In the present, Odin's son Thor prepares to ascend to the throne of Asgard, but is interrupted when Frost Giants attempt to retrieve the Casket. Against Odin's order, Thor travels to Jotunheim to confront Laufey, accompanied by his brother Loki, childhood friend Sif and the Warriors Three: Volstagg, Fandraland Hogun. A battle ensues until Odin intervenes to save the Asgardians, destroying the fragile truce between the two races. For Thor's arrogance, Odin strips his son of his godly power and exiles him to Earth as a mortal, accompanied by his hammer Mjolnir, now protected by an enchantment that allows only the worthy to wield it.
Thor lands in New Mexico, where astrophysicist Dr. Jane Foster, her assistant Darcy Lewis, and mentor Dr. Erik Selvig, find him. The local populace finds Mjolnir, which S.H.I.E.L.D. agent Phil Coulson soon commandeers before forcibly acquiring Jane's data about the wormhole that delivered Thor to Earth. Thor, having discovered Mjolnir's nearby location, seeks to retrieve it from the facility that S.H.I.E.L.D. quickly constructed but he finds himself unable to lift it, and is captured. With Selvig's help, he is freed and resigns himself to exile on Earth as he develops a romance with Jane.
Loki discovers that he is actually Laufey's son, adopted by Odin after the war ended. A weary Odin falls into the deep "Odinsleep" to recover his strength. Loki seizes the throne in Odin's stead and offers Laufey the chance to kill Odin and retrieve the Casket. Sif and the Warriors Three, unhappy with Loki's rule, attempt to return Thor from exile, convincing Heimdall, gatekeeper of the Bifröst—the means of traveling between worlds—to allow them passage to Earth. Aware of their plan, Loki sends the Destroyer, a seemingly indestructible automaton, to pursue them and kill Thor. The warriors find Thor, but the Destroyer attacks and defeats them, prompting Thor to offer himself instead. Struck by the Destroyer and near death, Thor's sacrifice proves him worthy to wield Mjolnir. The hammer returns to him, restoring his powers and enabling him to defeat the Destroyer. Kissing Jane goodbye and vowing to return, he and his fellow Asgardians leave to confront Loki.
In Asgard, Loki betrays and kills Laufey, revealing his true plan to use Laufey's attempt on Odin's life as an excuse to destroy Jotunheim with the Bifröst Bridge, thus proving himself worthy to his adoptive father. Thor arrives and fights Loki before destroying the Bifröst Bridge to stop Loki's plan, stranding himself in Asgard. Odin awakens and prevents the brothers from falling into the abyss created in the wake of the bridge's destruction, but Loki allows himself to fall when Odin rejects his pleas for approval. Thor makes amends with Odin, admitting he is not ready to be king; while on Earth, Jane and her team search for a way to open a portal to Asgard.
In a post-credits scene, Selvig has been taken to a S.H.I.E.L.D. facility, where Nick Fury opens a briefcase and asks him to study a mysterious object, which Fury says may hold untold power. An invisible Loki prompts Selvig to agree, and he does.

TRAILER




BUY DVDs/CDs of THOR


{[['']]}

World War Z (Both in English and Hindi)

World War Z


Directed by
Marc Forster
Produced by
Brad Pitt
Dede Gardner
Jeremy Kleiner
Ian Bryce
Screenplay by
Matthew Michael Carnahan
Drew Goddard
Damon Lindelof
Story by
Matthew Michael Carnahan
J. Michael Straczynski
Based on
World War Z
by Max Brooks
Starring
Brad Pitt
Mireille Enos
James Badge Dale
Matthew Fox
World War Z is a 2013 British-American apocalyptic film directed by Marc Forster. The screenplay by Matthew Michael Carnahan is based on the 2006 novel of the same nameby Max Brooks. The film stars Brad Pitt as Gerry Lane, a former United Nations investigator who must travel the world to find a way to stop a zombie-like pandemic.
Pitt's Plan B Entertainment secured the film rights in 2007 and Forster was approached to direct. In 2009, Carnahan was hired to rewrite the script to the film. Filming began in July 2011 in Malta on an estimated $125 million budget, before moving to Glasgow in August 2011 and Budapest in October 2011. Originally set for a December 2012 release, the production suffered some setbacks. In June 2012, the film's release date was pushed back and the crew returned to Budapest for seven weeks of additional shooting. Damon Lindelof was hired to rewrite the third act, but did not have the time to finish the script and Drew Goddard was hired to rewrite it. The reshoots took place between September and October 2012.
World War Z premiered in London on June 2, 2013, and was chosen to open the 35th Moscow International Film Festival. The film was released on June 21, 2013, in the United States in 2D and RealD 3D. The film was a commercial success, grossing over $540 million on a $190 million budget and receiving generally positive reviews. Furthermore, the video release of this film was on September 17th, 2013 by Paramount Home Video, A sequel was cancelled during the film's troubled filming process, but is now in development once again.


PLOT

Former UN employee Gerry Lane, his wife Karin and their two daughters are in heavy Philadelphia traffic when the city is attacked by zombies. As chaos spreads, the Lanes escape to Newark, New Jersey and take refuge in an apartment, home to a couple with a young son, Tommy. UN Deputy Secretary-General Thierry Umutoni—an old friend of Gerry's—sends a helicopter that extracts the Lanes and Tommy to a U.S. Navy vessel in the Atlantic where scientists and military personnel are analyzing the worldwide outbreaks. Dr. Andrew Fassbach posits that the plague is a virus, and that development of a vaccine depends on finding the origin. Gerry reluctantly agrees to help Fassbach find the outbreak's source after it is made clear that he and his family will be removed from the ship if he does not.
Gerry and Fassbach fly to Camp Humphreys, a military base in South Korea, where they are attacked on arrival by zombies. Turning to re-enter the aircraft, Fassbach slips, falls and accidentally discharges his gun, killing himself. After being rescued by the base's surviving personnel, led by Captain Speke, Gerry learns that the infection was introduced to the base by its doctor, who was ultimately incinerated by a soldier with a lame leg whom the infected ignored. A former CIA operative, imprisoned at the base, tells Gerry to go to Jerusalem, where he says a safe zone has been maintained by the Israeli Mossad since before the outbreak's official acknowledgement. As Gerry and his team bike back to their aircraft, zombies attack, kill several soldiers and infect Captain Speke, who commits suicide to prevent himself from turning. Gerry and his pilot escape.
In Jerusalem, Gerry meets Mossad chief Jurgen Warmbrunn, who explains that months earlier, the Mossad had intercepted an Indian military message claiming that Indian troops were fighting the rakshasa, or the "undead". Israel had thereupon quarantined Jerusalem, erecting huge walls around it. Just as Jurgen shows Gerry that Israel is allowing survivors to take refuge in the city, loud celebratory singing from refugees prompts zombies to scale the walls and attack. Jurgen orders some Israeli soldiers to escort Gerry back to his plane. On the way, Gerry notices zombies ignoring a sick old man and an emaciated boy. Soon after, one of Gerry's escorts, a soldier who identifies herself only as "Segen", is bitten on the hand, which Gerry quickly amputates to stop her turning. Gerry and Segen escape on a commercial airliner as Israel is overrun.
Gerry contacts Thierry, and the airliner is diverted to a World Health Organization (WHO) facility in Wales. When a stowaway zombie attacks in mid-air, Gerry uses a grenade to blow the infected out of the aircraft, but this also causes the plane to crash. Gerry is injured, but both he and Segen survive. They proceed to the WHO facility, where Gerry loses consciousness for three days, then explains to the remaining WHO staff a theory he has, based on the people he has seen the zombies ignore: the infected do not bite the seriously injured or terminally ill, since they would be unsuitable hosts for viral reproduction. He suggests that they test this by deliberately infecting somebody with one of the facility's pathogens, but these are in a wing already overrun by zombies. Gerry, Segen and the lead WHO doctor go to get a pathogen, but are separated on the way; Gerry continues to the pathogen vault while Segen and the doctor return to the main building. A zombie corners Gerry inside the vault, prompting him to inject himself with a deadly, but treatable, virus and open the vault, thereby testing his theory. The zombie ignores him, as do those he encounters while returning to the main wing. Everybody rejoices at Gerry's success, and he is successfully inoculated against the virus.
Gerry and his family are reunited in a safe zone at Freeport, Nova Scotia. A "vaccine", derived from deadly pathogens, is developed and issued to troops battling the infected, acting as a kind of camouflage. The vaccine also helps survivors to reach quarantine zones. Human offensives begin against the zombies, and hope is restored. "This isn't the end," Gerry comments, "Not even close. Our war has just begun."

TRAILER



REVIEW

When the zombie movie as we know it first twitched into life, it was a niche concern, with budgets to match. An invasion of a farmhouse was fine, a city block just about doable, but anything bigger had to be relayed via a flickering TV or solemn radio transmission. Flash forward several decades and you have World War Z: a huge-budget summer release, starring one of Hollywood's biggest and handsomest names, that sets out to actually show a worldwide assault by the undead. The result is slick, tense and hangs together fine, far from the disaster many predicted during its tortured birthing. But it's also just a little bit bland and generic. In particular, horror fans jonesing for grand-scale carnage are unlikely to come away entirely satisfied.

The bleak book from which it takes its name and loose outline, by Max ‘son of Mel’ Brooks, zips all over the globe, looking at the horror from a range of perspectives. It has smart things to say about geo-politics. It also has some astounding images, like a submarine being overwhelmed by zombies on an ocean floor, or the US army’s Alamo-like stand against millions of the ghouls. Almost none of this has made it into the film. Instead, we travel around with Gerry (Brad Pitt), a family man who once ran UN operations into countries where normal mortals wouldn't survive a night. With military infrastructures in shambles and entire nations gone radio-silent, he alone must trace the source of the outbreak. That’s right — the fate of humanity lies in the hands of a man called Gerry.

World War Z’s opening salvo is terrific. Apocalyptic blockbusters usually take a while to crank up and tease what's coming, but this launches right into it without a single winking R.E.M. song. By the time you’re munching your first fistful of popcorn, an entire city (Philadelphia) is being overrun. Director Marc Forster plays the sequence beautifully, keeping the monsters virtually unseen and making the chaos unnerving in itself. It’s strong stuff. But it also sets the tone for what to expect in terms of gore, or lack of it. This is a movie in which millions of people die, but barely a drop of blood is seen. As for guts, forget it: these zombies — and the word is used regularly — don’t seem to have an appetite.
They're still scary, though, particularly when they’re swarming across the screen like pissed-off army ants. Simon Pegg and other zombie purists are likely to tut up a storm: these reanimated corpses don’t just run, but leap, clamber and power-slide about with inhuman gusto. It’s undeniably effective to see thousands of them descend upon their prey, all the while screeching like velociraptors and chomping their teeth. (The effects are handled well, though the editing is sometimes over-frenetic.) The shame is that, whether for budgetary reasons or to try to keep things more character-based, this type of vast-scale action is limited to a single set-piece, during the film’s mid-point Israel segment. Considering the movie’s title, it would have been nice to see a lot more war.

Instead, the majority of the run-time sees Pitt and an assortment of sidekicks facing down “Zeke” in a familiar array of bunkers, apartment blocks and labs. While it’s all handled with skill and the actors sell the fear, it feels like a slight gyp, especially when the climax of the movie — which was reshot at great expense — is on a smaller scale than the third act of Shaun Of The Dead. There is also more than one slap-your-forehead moment, like the bit where Gerry, a highly trained covert operative, forgets to put his phone on silent while traversing an infected zone. Silly Gerry.
The whole thing feels like a studio dipping its toe in the water: the wrapping-up line, “This isn’t the end... not even close,” makes it clear that there are plans ahoy for further instalments, should there be public appetite. In the meantime, this just about succeeds on its own merits. Few of the characters are memorable (Mireille Enos has the snooziest part as Mrs. Lane, and Matthew Fox barely registers as a paratrooper), but there’s imagery here that’s genuinely horrifying — not least a plane-set sequence which proves that people who fly economy really do suffer the most.

BUY DVDs/CDs of World War Z

In English

In Hindi


In 3D

{[['']]}

Gangster Squad (2013)

Directed byRuben Fleischer

Produced byBruce Berman
Ruben Fleischer
Dan Lin
Kevin McCormick
Jon Silk
Michael Tadross

Screenplay byWill Beall

Based onTales from the Gangster Squad
by Paul Lieberman

StarringJosh Brolin
Ryan Gosling
Sean Penn
Nick Nolte
Emma Stone
Anthony Mackie
Giovanni Ribisi
Michael Peña
Robert Patrick

Music bySteve Jablonsky

CinematographyDion Beebe

Editing byAlan Baumgarten
James Herbert

Studio






  • Village Roadshow Pictures
    Lin Pictures

    6.7/10-IMDb
    40%-Metacritic


    PLOT


    In 1949 Los Angeles, gangster Mickey Cohen (Sean Penn) wants to control all organized crime, arguing with local mobster Jack Dragna that they should not allow the East coastMafia to run the town.
    Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) detective John "Sarge" O'Mara (Josh Brolin) busts into a Cohen brothel to save a woman, newly arrived to Hollywood, from Cohen's thugs. Chief Bill Parker (Nick Nolte), impressed that O'Mara had knowingly raided a Cohen operation – and aware that O'Mara has special operations background and training at Camp X during World War II – tasks O'Mara to wage guerrilla warfare against Cohen, and appoints him to choose a small team that must work in anonymity, with no badges and no LAPD support.
    O'Mara's pregnant wife Connie (Mireille Enos) suggests choosing unorthodox veterans like himself, as young high-performers are probably already on Cohen's payroll. With Connie helping him to review personnel files, O'Mara selects a small squad of cops: Coleman Harris (Anthony Mackie) is a black cop who wants to cut off the heroin flow toCentral Avenue, wiretapper and family man Conway Keeler (Giovanni Ribisi) wants his son to know that he fought to make a difference, old timer and gunslinger/sharpshooter Max Kennard (Robert Patrick) and his young Hispanic partner Navidad "Christmas" Ramirez (Michael Peña) do not fit in well with the regular force and want in.
    O'Mara fails in an attempt to recruit Sgt Jerry Wooters (Ryan Gosling), a detective who prefers to do the minimum in his daily job. Wooters keeps in touch with childhood friendJack Whalen (Sullivan Stapleton), an informant with some connections to Cohen. Grace Faraday (Emma Stone) is Cohen's etiquette coach and girlfriend. Wooters and Grace begin a secret romantic relationship, protected by a reluctant Whalen.
    The squad raids an illegal Cohen casino in Burbank, but are confronted by corrupt Burbank cops. O'Mara and Harris are captured and held in the Burbank jail for pickup by Cohen's gang. When Wooters witnesses a young friend/shoeshine boy gunned down when Cohen's gang botches an attack on boss Dragna, he decides to help Kennard and Ramirez to free the other two from the Burbank jail and join the squad.
    With information from an illegal bug that they place in Cohen's house, the squad makes several successful blows at the heart of Cohen's criminal organization. The media refers to them as "The Gangster Squad". Keeler's expertise allows the squad to deduce the location of Cohen's significant wire gambling business, the heart of his empire. The squad successfully burns down the business, but Cohen's men inform him that they didn't take any of his money. Cohen finally realizes that they must be a group of honest cops, rather than thugs from mob boss Dragna trying to takeover his business. Cohen believes someone betrayed him and wired his house, causing Grace to run away fearing Cohen might know of her relationship with Wooters.
    Feeding false information to the bug in his house, Cohen is able to lure the Gangster Squad into a trap in Chinatown. Wooters takes Grace to Whalen to get her out of town, and learns about the ambush—he rushes to Chinatown just in time to alert the rest of the squad.
    While the Chinatown ambush is being thwarted, Cohen is hitting a number of other locations. Cohen's bodygurad has found Keeler's listening post and kills him. Cohen arrives at Whalen's looking for Grace (who hides and watches), and kills him. O'Mara's house is hit by a drive-by, and Connie gives birth to their son under the stress.
    Grace tells Wooters she is willing to testify against Cohen regarding Whalen's murder, prompting O'Mara and the surviving squad members to arrest Cohen at his heavily guarded Park Plaza Hotel. A long firefight breaks out, with Wooters being wounded in the process of killing the Cohen thug who had killed the shoeshine boy. O'Mara pursues Cohen and his bodyguard down the block, where the bodyguard gets the jump and is about to kill O'Mara. An injured Kennard, with his dying breath, manages to sharpshoot Cohen's bodyguard from a block away, saving O'Mara. O'Mara and former prize-fighter Cohen come to fisticuffs. As a crowd of onlookers and journalists gather, O'Mara defeats Cohen and has him arrested.
    As they'd been told, the Gangster Squad is never credited in taking down Cohen. Grace's testimony ensures Cohen is sentenced to 25 to life at Alcatraz, where he is welcomed violently by Whalen's friends. Grace and Wooters stay together and he stays on the force, while Ramirez and Harris stay on and become partners on the beat. O'Mara quits to live a quiet life in Los Angeles with Connie and their son.


    REVIEW

    You may have noticed that the trailers for "Gangster Squad" are peppered with hyperbolic review quotes provided by syndicated critics of dubious merit. They're a sure sign of a movie's mediocrity, and my favorite blurb hypes "Gangster Squad" as "the best gangster film of the decade!!" Man, what a drag. If that's true, the next seven years are going to be lousy for the world's favorite crime genre.
    To be fair, this tawdry dose of pulp fiction ("inspired by real events") is not a complete waste of time. It offers the marginal pleasure of an all-star cast slumming their way through a thicket of routine plotting, almost laughable dialogue and the constant blaze of tommy guns. The latter also resulted in a postponed release: A scene involving machine guns in a movie theater was cut after last year's tragic "The Dark Knight Rises" multiplex killings in Aurora, Colorado, and other scenes were rewritten and re-shot to fill gaps in the narrative.
    Not that it mattered much. No amount of tinkering could repair the film's tonal inconsistencies. A comedy specialist stepping into semi-dramatic territory, director Ruben Fleischer scored a modest hit with 2009's giddy, satirical "Zombieland" (he is currently filming a sequel), and delivered plenty of laughs on TV, directing segments of HBO's "Funny or Die Presents" and working with Jimmy Kimmel, Zach Galifianakis, Michael Cera and Will Ferrell, among others.
    In "Gangster Squad," however, Fleischer seems out of his element. His film has the familiar look and feel of a gangster classic, with plenty of dark, burnished hardwoods, shiny vintage cars and meticulous attention to period details of costume, architecture and interior design. Cinematographer Dion Beebe, who earned an Oscar for his work on "Memoirs of a Geisha" (and was nominated for "Chicago"), bathes "Gangster Squad" in a rich palette of smoky shadows and dazzling night-life opulence. Yet for all the production's post-war gloss and moody atmosphere, you still get the sense that Fleischer is barely suppressing an urge to spoof the genre.
    It's late 1949, and as the holidays approach, former-boxer-turned-Chicago-mobster Mickey Cohen (Sean Penn) has expanded Meyer Lansky's Jewish mafia to Los Angeles, where's he's planning to monopolize drugs and gambling and squeeze his bosses out of the equation. He means business, too: As the movie opens, Cohen sends a message to Chicago by chaining one of Lansky's soldiers between two revving sedans and pulling him apart like a bloody croissant.
    Early on, there's still hope that "Gangster Squad" might at least aspire to the crackling volatility of "L.A. Confidential," the brash brutality of "Mulholland Falls," the verbal and visual eloquence of "Miller's Crossing" or the classy opulence of Barry Levinson's "Bugsy" (partially set in nearly the the same place and time, and featuring Harvey Keitel as Cohen). That's just wishful thinking. If anything, "Gangster Squad" is an "Untouchables" wanna-be, as Irish LAPD sergeant John O'Mara (Josh Brolin) is given carte blanche orders by incorruptible LAPD Chief Parker(Nick Nolte) to recruit an off-the-books squad of crimefighters to topple Cohen's empire without the benefit of a David Mamet screenplay.
    It's all good fun at first, even when it's obvious that each of these stock characters is introduced with a single attribute that shallowly defines them for the rest of the movie. O'Mara is a no-nonsense strategist with a punishing right hook and a supportive, pregnant wife (Mireille Enos, from AMC's "The Killing") waiting for him at home. Sgt. Jerry Wooters (Ryan Gosling) is a ladies' man who's reluctant to get involved until he meets Cohen's red-dressed moll Grace (Emma Stone), who wonders "where've you been all my miserable life?" –- a line Stone nearly chokes on as her chemistry with Gosling in "Crazy Stupid Love" curdles into lukewarm mush.
    Grizzled officer Max Kennard (Robert Patrick) is a legendary sharpshooter; his young Mexican partner Navidad Ramirez (Michael Peña) drives a mean chase car; and officer Conway Keller (Giovanni Ribisi) is an expert in post-war surveillance -- a techie version of Charles Martin Smith's ill-fated accountant from "The Untouchables." Each of them gets a moment to shine, usually accompanied by a crowd-pleasing quip or throwaway sight gag.
    Those scenes benefit from Fleischer's comedic sensibility, but whenever "Gangster Squad" gets down to the serious business of cutthroats and killers, its jarring shifts from light humor to heavy bloodshed reflect the movie's tonal identity crisis. We're ultimately left with a few action highlights (including a technically impressive car chase) and some dazzling recreations of vintage Hollywood landmarks, including Slapsy Maxie's nightclub (a frequent Cohen hangout) and the infamous Garden of Allah apartment complex.
    We're also treated to occasional (muzzle-) flashes of brilliance from Penn. His Cohen is like a corked-up volcano, always on the verge of eruption. At one point, Cohen grows so murderously vile that evil has contorted his visage. Penn, at 52, has acquired facial cracks and crevices that deepen his formidable presence, and his already heavy eyelids look like they're almost melting over Cohen's cold, unforgiving gaze.
    So while the cast has a field day, Fleischer seems content to equate flashiness with quality, employing such visual tricks as variable slow-motion when bullets and bodies are flying, and digital wizardry designed to give explosions and other pyrotechnics a dynamic, almost three-dimensional life of their own. And while the ultra-slow-mo image of a Christmas tree ornament shattering in a hail of bullets may look pretty cool for a few seconds, it's merely a brief distraction from the shortcomings of Will Beall's screenplay, adapted (loosely, we can assume) from the book of the same title by Paul Leiberman.
    Beall's script reaches its nadir, oddly enough, with Brolin's closing narration, which is so sentimentally sappy that it deservedly drew groans from a preview audience. By the time it fades to black, "Gangster Squad" has squandered most of its early promise. Here's a telling comparison: I recently happened upon a showing of "Mobsters," the Christian Slater vehicle that's been a cable-TV staple since its release in 1991. Packed with B- and C-list costars like Richard Greico and Costas Mandylor, it's still a marginally better film than "Gangster Squad," and that's faint praise indeed.
                                                                                                                                     -

    BUY GANGSTER SQUAD FROM Amazon


    BUY GANGSTER SQUAD FROM Ebay


    {[['']]}

    Connected via:

    IconIconIconIconFollow Me on Pinterest

    Blogger Widgets

    Find us on Facebook

     
    Support : Creating Website | Johny Template | Mas Template
    Copyright © 2011. Read Review and Buy DVDs/CDs of Hollywood and Bollywood Movies in One Place | GiveMeThatMovie - All Rights Reserved
    Template Created by Creating Website Published by Mas Template
    Proudly powered by Blogger

    Receive All Free Updates Via Facebook.