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Post by imayne on Dec 4, 2013 23:40:17 GMT -5
Former DEA agent Phil Broker moves to Rayville, LA, but a schoolyard bullying incident involving his daughter indirectly winds with with Broker getting tangled in the machinations of small-town drug dealer Gator Bodine (James Franco) his girlfirend Sheryl Mott (Winona Ryder) and some seriously badass bikers.
I give it a "Good". In part Franco and Ryder are what lift it above the usual material.
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Post by bigdaddy on Dec 5, 2013 21:49:06 GMT -5
She's the best part in it. I don't know WHY the rest of the movie doesn't work as well as she does...she is on top of her game, by the way. It's a Statham movie, and lately they have been hit and miss at the box office. For the record, it's a cut above his usual fare, but not a classic. I don't know WHY it's not running on all cylinders, either. The script by Sly Stallone? Who knows? But it was released over here in that dry gluch period between Thanksgiving and Christmas, when all the turkeys are let loose on the screen to be shot down and die... This one is not THAT big a turkey...Stratham movies post TRANSPORTER, usually gross around 30 mil, and this one should hit that...and I'm GUESSING folks will be impressed with Winona As The Bad Gal range and she'll get some bounce from it.
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Post by imayne on Dec 5, 2013 22:29:45 GMT -5
I largely put the fault of HOMEFRONT to the direction of fight scenes. So many closeups and shaky cam shots that they feel lightweight and without sense of urgency even if they breeze through, and while it aids pacing it actually hurts the movie by not making the stakes look high enough. Look at KILLER ELITE to see another Statham film with far better directed fights.
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Post by ILoveWinona on Dec 6, 2013 4:41:26 GMT -5
These two reviews are annoying ----- www.nola.com/movies/index.ssf/2013/11/homefront_movie_review_jason_s.html ----- The first doesn't even mention her name, the second one spells her name wrong. ----- It took thirty-fives before she appeared on screen, but the wait was worth it, Winona played an enjoyable role as one of the bad guys. ----- I did like the way the fat bully in the school playground gets his, and that can snowball into such violence for the rest of the movie. ----- I saw the movie at the Regal Cinema at Boulder Station hotel for the 5:10 P.M. Wednesday showing and there were only twelve other people in the theater. ----- A little trivia ---- Winona played Sheryl in "Homefront" and played Cheryl in "The Informers". ----- Three other Winona films had Winona's character with the same exact name ----- "Mermaids", "Autumn in New York" and "The Last Word". ---------- Rusty
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Post by ILoveWinona on Dec 8, 2013 9:19:20 GMT -5
Entertainment Weekly magazine Dec 12, 2013 issue states ----- Homefront R, 1HR, 40 Mins. ----- Jason Statham goes head-to-head with James Franco and Winona Ryder as a bonkers, meth-dealing Bonnie and Clyde. The movie knows exactly what it is and delivers the goods. ----- "B-" ----- Chris Nashawaty ----- That is a good review for the movie. ----- Rusty
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Post by imayne on May 8, 2014 11:43:59 GMT -5
BTW, saw NO MERCY (1986) with Richard Gere and Kim Basinger recently and it totally felt like this movie done right. Similar premise: tough outsider cop takes on exotic bad guys in a Southern setting (New Orleans). I dunno if anyone else has seen that film, but it's useful to see where that one succeeded where this one didn't.
For me while that movie was an equally formulaic action film, there were two ways in which it shone.
The first was in how Gere's character's outsiderness really came through. More is delved into his family background and problems. his wife leaving him, his tough line of work, the death of his partner at the hands of a ruthless Southern Neonazi Eurotrash Crime Boss that starts the whole ball rolling. The fact that he's shown to have been based in Chicago and it opens with him in Chicago. Makes his foreignness in the Deep South really come through. And the Deep South really feels threatening: you know he's in hot water not just from the local toughs but the cops who don't like other folks butting in on their turf. Compared to Homefront where all there is a none too threatening corrupt Sheriff closing one eye as the local toughs go about their biz. Gere's character is as badass and invincible as a Statham character, but he's more troubled, more introspective, and as such he was able to anchor the entire film in a character that you can root for even as you see him kick massive butt. For me the problem was that Statham's character never got to those lengths in terms of trouble the movie dealt him and him being ill-equipped to handle it. So he had a British accent, was a widower and a single dad, but there was nothing that could signal anything as lost as the likes of a divorced Chicago cop being stuck in the Deep South.
The second is that there's an energy and style, a certain loopiness to the action sequences that makes the film feel more hallucinatory, more weird than is needed. There's a fight scene in a Chicago stockyard where the bad guy shoots at the cows and causes them to stampede all over Gere who is hiding under them. The terrific finale is set in a burning flophouse where the bad guy suddenly seems to have acquired the ability to ram through walls with his body. Basinger's nerdy criminal accomplice, the genteel yet sinister New Orleans suburbs, its smoky Chinatown and decadent clubs, all combine to give the film a certain bizarreness that lifts it above stock action film settings. In HOMEFRONT the bikers look like bikers, the dealers look like dealers, the Biker chicks look like Biker chicks, the Deep South looks strangely gentrified and posh without much of a sinister current under it. There's nothing about its world that seems just that bit offputting for the film to be anything more than fast paced and slick. NO MERCY was as slick, but it was also appropriately bizarre in that nothing about the South looks as expected, yet it's still recognizably the South.
I hope others here can chime in on this film. It's really an 80s action film that should be known, seen and appreciated more. Some films you don't know how good they are till years after and this is one. Not a classic, but very rewatchable. Director was Richard Pearce who did some other rather commendable films (LEAP OF FAITH with Steve Martin for one) and writer was James Carabatsos who wrote HAMBURGER HILL and knows how to keep it tough, lean and even lyrical. I would say Winona and Franco did a lot to make HOMEFRONT watchable, but I'd like to hear other thoughts first.
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Post by Jay on May 9, 2014 7:40:37 GMT -5
I gave it an "average". Admit I was a little disappointed. There are better Jason Statham movies for pure action. The plot was thin but you knew that going into it. I guess my biggest criticism is that Kate Beckinsale was a more believable skinny meth chick than WR. Anyway, kudos for the effort and the risk in trying something different.
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Post by imayne on May 11, 2014 22:17:37 GMT -5
Kate Bosworth. Not Beckinsale.
I however do find that Franco and Ryder made the film a lot more watchable than it should have been, and a lot more interesting. In movies like this generally you just get black and white --- good guys are good, bad guys are bad, good guys gotta beat up bad guys, the end.
With Franco and Ryder you get characters that are distinctly gray, as in they're both shifty eyed little weasels, but they're not without some decency, and their aspirations of wanting a better life are made to feel surprisingly identifiable. There's also some distinct comic potential to be made out of how the whole ball starts rolling thanks to a schoolyard altercation, but alas not enough was made of that.
Still, I think Ryder is the most underrated actress at doing weaselly and conniving there is. It's something about her I've liked ever since THE CRUCIBLE, and I hope she does more of it...
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Post by Jay on May 12, 2014 7:38:27 GMT -5
You got me. Bosworth is correct. Now that I think of it, Beckinsale would be a huge miscast in that role.
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Post by imayne on May 12, 2014 22:57:13 GMT -5
Beckinsale did start out a straight dramatic actress though, and who knows, under the proper casting she might be great in such a role. Bosworth I didn't expect to be so good either, given the most I saw her in was the poorly received SUPERMAN RETURNS and the cartoony Spaghetti Western THE WARRIOR'S WAY, then again, her role in the latter should have convinced me she can do Scrappy Southern. But I think there's something very personal to this role as well as the roles Winona picked for TURKS AND CAICOS where in both she describes her characters as "damaged, desperate and dangerous" or along those lines. Ryder plays her role as this ravaged beauty who once decided to lead a life of crime and never looked back or repented, and paradoxically, retains a shred of decency in an environment that does not require any. I kind of like to see it as her commentary on the time she was in the spotlight and the arm candy of every "It" guy in Hollywood. The movie does have far more gray than you'd otherwise expect from the usual Reagan-era throwbacks that Stallone is synonymous with. Just not that enough to make it stand out or be especially memorable.
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