Film Review: Mortal Engines

"Sixty Minutes Is All It Took To Bring Humanity To The Very Brink Of Extinction. Mankind Mobilized, A New Age Arose..."

Executively produced and partially written by the mastermind of fantasy cinema, Peter Jackson (The Lord of the Rings), Mortal Engines, the debut big screen release from long-time Jackson collaborator, Christian Rivers, acts as a live-action adaptation of the 2001 book of the same name from the series of novels, The Mortal Engines Quartet, from English author Philip Reeve. With Jackson purchasing the rights to Reeve's award winning novels all the way back in 2009, the nine year production process finally pays dividends this week, offering the chance for audiences both privy to the novels and those completely unaware of Reeve's written world to breathe in the supposed beginning of yet another groundbreaking science fiction franchise, and with the added incentive of Jackson's central involvement in the project something to particularly savour after his successes in the decade plus Middle Earth based filmography, what seriously could go wrong? Shockingly, pretty much everything, with Rivers' debut unfortunately an overly messy, unnecessary complicated and spectacularly dull adventure spectacle which substitutes basic and effective storytelling for a plethora of digital effects within a movie which once again proves how difficult it can be to transfer particular stories from paper onto the big screen. 

Suffering from the infamous Dune complex, which in other news is set to be once again revisited by the second best director working at the moment, Denis Villeneuve, very. very soon, Mortal Engines opens by describing a seemingly post-apocalyptic futureworld in which societies are now based upon huge, mechanical mobile machines, and even when the reasoning for such a dramatic shift isn't really explained to an effective extent to fully latch on aboard with straight away, such an opening is only the start of the varying issues at the heart of a movie which dreams big but ultimately falls into a two hours plus cinematic nightmare. With a central storyline which does manage to feel like a blended hybrid between the works of Frank Herbert, Tolkien and Star Wars, Rivers attempts to bring the Mad Max sensibility of the central landscape at the heart of the novels from paper to screen doesn't work whatsoever, with an over-reliance on CGI rather distracting and painfully bland to view upon the big screen, a particularly strange weakness when the technology has worked so well on previous ventures of a similar nature. With the always reliable Hugo Weaving (Lord of the Rings) well and truly chewing the scenery in the eyebrow raising central antagonist role, the film's best element is undoubtedly Hera Hilmar (The Fifth Estate) as the film's primary hero, a scarred, vengeful wasteland dweller who is unfortunately completely let down by her Han Solo rip-off of a love interest as played by Robert Sheehan (Mute) who seems to have fallen off the set of Gods of Egypt thanks to some truly awful, cringe-laden acting abilities which threatens to derail the movie as soon as he appears on screen. With a final act so obviously yet another contemporary take on the attack on the Death Star, one particular narrative twist did indeed make me bark out loud in laughter due to its' sheer absurdity, and with another three books potentially in place to be developed, the opening chapter of Jackson's latest adventure franchise begins in completely the wrong gear.  

Overall Score: 3/10

Film Review: Hacksaw Ridge

"Most Of These Men Don't Believe The Same Way You Do, But They Believe So Much In How Much You Believe..."

Eleven years after the non-stop intensity of Apocalypto, everyone's favourite crazy American Aussie returns to directorial duty with Hacksaw Ridge, a similarly profound and incredibly violent tale focusing on the true events of The Battle of Okinawa in the early months of 1945 and specifically upon the actions of Desmond Doss, the only conscientious objector to ever receive the Medal of Honour for his services during the taking of the titular Hacksaw Ridge, a cliff face of the Maeda Escarpment surrounded by Japanese forces. Taking on the challenge of a non-fiction wartime miracle, Mel Gibson's latest suffers from a fundamental flaw of being a movie of two halves, with the first half being primarily a cheesy, eye-gouging hour of character development which evokes everything from Forest Gump to Full Metal Jacket and a second half which can only be regarded as a simply stunning visualisation of the madness of war and one which ranks up there with the best there is to offer in regards to on-screen depictions of the Second World War. 

In the lead role as Desmond Doss, Andrew Garfield attempts to shows off his best Virginian accent amidst a performance which reeks of similarity to his character in Martin Scorsese's Silence in terms of his seemingly unbreakable penchant for sticking to his faith, whilst the rather formulaic and obvious narrative twists doesn't exactly give much meat to any other character throughout the course of the movie, particularly Teresa Palmer who is wasted as Doss' wife, Dorothy, who seems to be key in the first half of the movie but then disappears into the abyss of two-dimensional nothingness come the second act. Star of the show however is a joint title for both Hugo Weaving and Vince Vaughn, with the latter channelling his meanest R. Lee Ermey and provoking a rafter of laughs from the audience during a superb Drill Sergeant scene which of course harks back to Full Metal Jacket, a film which similarly suffers from a superb first act but then loses steam after the half way mark. After the brilliance of Apocalypto, Hacksaw Ridge does seem like a fall back into second gear, with Gibson's latest more of a crowd-pleasing romp in contrast to his other work yet for the time it was on screen, it was a solid and overly violent roller-coaster. Well, just in its' second act. 

Overall Score: 7/10