Page 4 of 6
REMEMBER ME I'm not saying it's impossible for the surprise ending of Remember Me to work (not to worry; no spoilers here); however, it needs to be attached to a project a lot more distinguished than the one on display here. But because the bulk of Remember Me is clumsy, mawkish and marked by some truly heinous dialogue, the conclusion proves to be staggering in its tastelessness, and one gets the impression that scripter Will Fetters came up with this "gotcha!" moment first and then banged out enough drivel leading up to it in order to have a completed screenplay to shop around. Twilight's Robert Pattinson maintains his gloomy 'tude here as well: He's cast as Tyler Hawkins, who loves his precocious little sister (bright Ruby Jerins), runs afoul of his distant dad (Pierce Brosnan), and still misses the older brother who committed suicide six years earlier. Through labored screenwriting, Tyler meets and falls for Ally Craig (Emilie de Ravin), who's also been touched by a death in her immediate family. Most of Remember Me is banal and insipid, conditions brought on as much by director Allen Coulter's inability to stage a scene as by Fetters' cringe-worthy lines. Pattinson and de Ravin are earnest but never quite connect as screen lovers, while Tate Ellington's character of Aidan Hall, Tyler's roomie and best bud, is the most obnoxious sidekick/comic relief seen in many a new moon: The character's description of his penchant for bedding women of all nationalities -- "I've planted my flag in every country!" -- is particularly gag-inducing. Nothing, however, is more retch-worthy than that ill-conceived climax, which will strike the easily manipulated as deep but will cause most discerning viewers to recognize it for a cheap trick that should come with some sort of trigger warning before it unfolds. *
REPO MEN Not to be confused with 1984's dissimilar Repo Man but easily able to be mixed up with 2008's identically plotted Repo! The Genetic Opera, Repo Men mostly plays like an uninspired rip-off of Logan's Run plus Brazil plus Total Recall plus Monty Python's The Meaning of Life plus ... well, I could do this all day. Suffice it to say that there's little here to excite anyone except maybe the gorehounds. A futuristic saga with more blood than brains, this centers on Remy (Jude Law), whose career as a repo man for a company called The Union means that whenever someone falls behind on their payments for the mechanical organs keeping them healthy, it's his job to track the person down and forcibly remove the expensive piece of hardware by any means necessary (as expected, the client often doesn't survive the procedure). Like any good citizen of this country, Remy only cares about things that directly affect him, so it's only after he's injured and subsequently outfitted with a new heart he can't afford that he thinks, "Hey, maybe what I've been doing to people isn't so nice!" No kidding. Now equipped with a self-serving conscience, he finds himself on the run, being chased by his partner and best friend, Jake (Forest Whitaker). Whitaker's inventive performance is an asset, but Repo Men, based on Eric Garcia's novel The Repossession Mambo, isn't able to take its potentially provocative storyline past the alternately silly, lazy and illogical scripting by Garrett Lerner and Garcia himself. To be sure, there are moments of inspiration (the child surgeon, for example), but for the most part, here's another piece of clunky sci-fi hardware that could use an overhaul. **
SHUTTER ISLAND Just how obvious is the big "twist" that concludes Shutter Island, Martin Scorsese's adaptation of Dennis Lehane's novel? So obvious that some folks who haven't read the book are figuring it out simply by watching the trailer. But just how accomplished is the picture anyway? Enough that viewers will happily be led down the rabbit hole by a director with the ability to distract them with every technique at his disposal. Delivering yet another topnotch performance that might help him win some sort of lifetime achievement award before he even hits 40, Leonardo DiCaprio stars as Teddy Daniels, a U.S. federal marshal who, with his new partner Chuck Aule (Mark Ruffalo), travels to a mental asylum located on a remote island off the Massachusetts coastline. The year is 1954, and the lawmen are there to investigate the disappearance of one of the inmates. But although the head of the facility (Ben Kingsley) assures them that they'll have the full cooperation of the entire staff, it soon becomes apparent that everyone has something to hide, and Teddy must suss out the truth even while plagued by debilitating headaches, gruesome flashbacks to his World War II years, and disturbing hallucinations involving his deceased wife (Michelle Williams). Scorsese's in pulp fiction mode here (see also Cape Fear and The Departed), which essentially means that this is one of those pleasing instances when "B"-movie material is given the "A"-list treatment. The screenplay by Laeta Kalogridis is packed with so much intriguing incident that it's easy to not even notice the plotholes until post-movie reflection, and all the craftspeople who won Oscars for Scorsese's The Aviator are back on board, resulting in an immaculate presentation that fully engages the senses. And while the major plot pirouette will disappoint discerning viewers, it's followed by an ambiguous coda that insures all moviegoers will exit the Island with at least something to ponder. ***
Mobile
