Good God! A TV Show…

Why is every Russian girl appearing in the movie called Natasha? (c) net wisdom

First of all, I didn’t hate it. The movie was strange though, it couldn’t hold my attention with neither plot nor action. But it felt like a parade of familiar faces (mostly from TV shows):

• annoying speed girl with egregiously bad hair from Heroes as a random junkie;
• Sucre from Prison Break (Amaury Nolasco) as a tattooed monster on steroids;
• Olga Kurylenko (latest Bond, also adaptation of Hitman, where she played a junkie skank) as Russian girl Natasha, guess what, a junkie skank. Now, that’s consistency. And she manages to be BAD even at that. Moreover, she is not that beautiful in dynamics. Her 1.5 facial expressions kill all the fun there is.
• Greasy police captain from Life (Donal Logue) as beard-y mullet-y homeless looking ex-partner of Max.
• Chris O’Donnell. Am I walking near the graveyard or what?
• Crazy Mama Grey (Kate Burton) from Grey’s Anatomy as a big boss from the Company.
• Nelly Furtado as a grieving widow. WTF, people?

Movie Pros:

• Cool narrative in the beginning. Too bad they dropped that later.
• Good visuals from time to time. I liked the eternal snow floating in the air, somewhat feather-ly look.
• Shadow wings as hallucinations (not the grotesque CG’s attached to them; would look much more stylish without them).
• Tattoo salon owner – awesome guy, fantastic voice.

Less pros, more fun:

• When Mona Sax (very Russian name, huh) asked some local thug who the alleged bad guy was, and he said to look for Lupino (woof, woof), the ultimate wack job, they actually showed Lupino smiling his ‘evil’ smile, brandishing a huge knife and sweating. How thoughtful of them.
• Max triggered the fire alarm in the Aesir building, so it started raining inside as well as outside. Very noir-ish.
• The ‘УЕТЫРЕ ПАЛЬТА. СОБОЛЬ’ writing on the wall (literally: ‘EOUR COATZ. SABLE’). Love how they compile some meaningless Cyrillic letters to represent the Russian interior.
• The bad guy sniper hit the drug stock three times never touching Max who was in the middle of some advanced Yoga Asana bending down veeeery slooooowly.
• I kept hearing ‘baby’ when Beau Bridges was addressed (B.B., get it?). Cracked me up each time.

I won’t get into impossible stuff like surviving the freezing water in heavy clothes, that shit doesn’t bother me, it’s a movie. I won’t even concentrate on the fact that they called those gargoyles ‘valkyr’. But Mila Kunis is no A. Jolie who can look badass effortlessly just standing there doing nothing. I loved Mila in American Psycho II: All American Girl, it was bad as well as amusing, a guilty pleasure. But in MP she could muster a badass impression for few seconds, no more, looking helpless all the time.

A consolation prize for those who watched it till the end:

• Natasha gets killed very early;
• Chris O’Donnell’s character gets killed in the middle.

Not a gamer myself, I understand (thanx, wiki) that the original game had a decent storyline, intriguing dark atmosphere and a lunatic protagonist with a wicked half smile and two guns. I have a soft spot for Marky Mark but his yelling didn’t count as lunatic.

I don’t get it and I guess I never will: why they need to take some good stuff and gloss it over with shit do some Hollywood magic to turn it into blockbuster?!

P.S. It sucks to be the action hero these days: your father’s best friend hates you and is going to murder you, your wife, children and even a pet. Bad karma. Lots of bad karma.