I just recently watched two new editions to Netflix instant, Arena and Safe. Go watch them, they are two good/bad movies. Safe has Jason Statham and Arena has Sam Jack. Plenty of action, violence and more than enough gore to be worthwhile. Watch them and then come back and read this, or read it now and just don’t cry about spoilers, that is what UFR is for.

Safe

This movie is exactly what you would expect from a Jason Statham movie. It is fun, has some great/ironically funny scenes, as well as plenty of action all while bumbling through a nonsense story.

Since Statham plays the exact same character every movie I can’t figure out why they still bother with a back-story in his movies. Why not just have a series of 60 minute specials where we just know going in who he is? In this one he is an ex-cop and now a cage fighter who suddenly turns into a more well trained version of the current James Bond but with the fighting capabilities of a top pro, yet he was a burnout throwing fights. Point is the best way to watch this movie is by skipping ahead or doing something else the first 30ish minutes and just filling in on what “story” you missed as you go.

So it turns out there is a little asian girl, whose dad had to be Rain Man, who gets kidnapped because she knows a long complicated code to a safe that contains $30 million. There are rival gangs and crooked cops out trying to get her for themselves. Meanwhile, Statham has been beaten up and should have been killed if he weren’t Jason Statham. But now he is back out on the street and now he wants to help save this little girl.

Then a whole bunch of nothing happened before one of the final scenes. This random bad guy we just met for the first time has the girl and wants the cash. He meets Statham at some desolate place where the bad guy won’t leave without the cash and the girl dead. So it is decided it is time to fight. The two guys put their guns down and the bad guy proceeds to take off his glasses and put them in his front pants pocket. Has he never been in or seen a fight before? I thought he was supposed to be a guy that can beat Statham in a fight or he wouldn’t have agreed to fight. Glass in the pants pocket is as good as broken why not put them down when you put the gun down? That bugged the shit out of me. Anyway jokes on me because his glasses didn’t break in his pocket because the little girl shoots him and he doesn’t fall forward, but that is another story. It does not excuse him from using his brain.

Regardless on the good/bad movie scale I give it a 6.5, if that makes you not want to watch it then I give it a 7/10. It is a good time but not as good as...

Arena

I actually watched these movies back to back so I was still a bit agitated about that guy and his glasses when started this one. That led to an “Oh great another go kill each other reality show movie” note in my phone. Turns out it was not just another one of those movies. Well actually it was but it was a hell of a lot of fun. It did not feel fucked out by any means. And the fact that some guy supposedly in Twilight is in it he does a pretty good job and he fits the part physically.

Basically somewhere, someplace in Europe most likely they kidnap big strong men without much to live for and force them into fights to the death broadcast over the internet. In fact they got really creative with the websites name... death fights. Weird thought, has a chick ever been kidnapped and thrown into a death fight? Or has a dude ever been kidnapped and put into the sex trade?

So the Twilight guy gets kidnapped by some hot chick who by the way is full frontal nude in quite a bit of the movie. But she tases him, takes his id and has him brought in. By the way there are enough tasing in this movie that they should have had it officially sponsored by MONARCH.

They show this weird scene where she hangs his id on a mirror filled with other peoples id’s supposedly saying these are all the people I have kidnapped. There had to be 50 of them. So then right after that they show her arguing with Sam Jack, who runs this whole thing, about whether Twilight has what it takes to fight. If the mirror scene was her saying I have kidnapped 50 or so people to fight then why would she need to fight to get this guy in? Shouldn’t she have some credibility by now?

So he fights (holy gore) and wins and cuts a deal with Sam Jack to get set free if he wins 10 total fights even though nobody has ever won more than 5. In one of those fights he squares off against a guy who had a nail gun in his hands and was shooting at him from about 5-10 feet away with it. Since I am only half of an idiot I know these guys are professionals and that they could get past the tip of the gun needing to be suppressed for the nails to shoot out. But what they can not get past is the fact that those nails do not come out anywhere close to straight. The instant they come out of the gun they are flopping around. Did they really have an entire set filled with people that have never tried to shoot nails out of a nail gun?

Another nice annoying scene was basically the end. Sam Jack is dead to rights at the hands of Twilight. It has come out that he was actually undercover the entire time... what a twist... he has already stabbed Sam Jack in the chest and was about to finish him off when the cops burst through the door. They stand shocked to see what they thought was a fallen member of their team still alive. In that little moment of shock, Sam Jack managed to spring up and run away from the entire swat team they sent in despite leaving about a three foot wide trail of blood behind him. He got away.

All in all Arena is a blast. Fighting, gore, naked chicks, action, comedy and pretty well written for a bad movie. That got me thinking what happened with this? Why are there glimpses of really good writing amongst so much crap? The original screenplay was written by Michael Hultquist and Robert Martinez, who also wrote Victim which is also on Netflix instant, until they were replaced by Tony Giglio who wrote such gems as Death Race: Inferno and Death Race 2. Basically the two original writers created a good story and they brought in this Giglio guy to Hollywood it up, aka make it worse.

Maybe you do this maybe you don’t but occasionally I will throw a movie on in the background while I am doing something else. Just something familiar that I can look up and watch for a few minutes whenever I wanted. The other night I put The Hunger Games on and almost immediately turned back to Arena. Just sayin’, take Jen Lawrence out and the nod at least for most guys goes to Arena. I give it a 9/10 on the Good/Bad scale.

mlz

Thursday, May 9, 2013