Tag: Alan Ritchson

Fast X (2023): Action/Adventure/Crime

A man who once suffered from Toretto and his gang shows up years later for revenge.

Yet another unnecessary and ludicrous addition to the franchise fatigue. I was not meant to watch it, but after repeatedly hearing how “dumb” it allegedly is, I watched it only to write this review and offer my 2 cents.

A film is not dumb. The writers who write these kinds of scripts are not dumb either. The same applies to the directors, producers, and distributors. A film has no intelligence to be smart or dumb, but it can be superficial or profound, depending on how much it delves into its subject matter and/or how much it spoonfeeds you the answers to the questions it poses.

Having established that, we are left with two options:

1. The filmmakers consider the audience dumb and, therefore, produce nonsensical films thinking that the audience will react with astonishment!

2. The filmmakers think that the audience is oblivious to narrative quality, they have as low standards as they have, and they will get their fat paycheck regardless of how low that quality is.

Neither dumb nor oblivious is a positive way to think of your audience. Your audience is the people who will pay for the tickets and will produce you money in return. So, cars that defy the laws of physics, tech-savvy characters who are also prolific in fighting, non-existent technology created only to serve as a gimmick, indifferent drama/parody that you only want to fast forward, hearing the already funny word “family” for yet another 56 times (as per IMDb), and bad editing that is meant to “make” the film but instead “breaks” it even more, characterises the film, in a nutshell.

Universal seems undecided as to what kind of company it wants to be. This year, they released (and they keep releasing) incredibly diverse films where, while most of them deserve praise, Fast X most definitely doesn’t. Anyway, it is their money as much as it is the audience’s choice not to pay for the ticket. Let’s see whose loss it’s going to be.

Thank you for reading!

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Solidarity for all the innocent lives who suffer the atrocities of war🙏

Stay safe!

Ghosts of War (2020): Horror / Thriller / War

During WWII, five American soldiers are sent to a French Chateau to make a stand, not expecting to encounter a sinister supernatural force.

The “thriller” and “war” genres are indicative from the get-go. Even though it gets quite brutal but also comedic straight after, their arrival at the French mansion brings a certain mystery with it. Admittedly, the introduction of the interior of the mansion is quite spooky and entertaining, decently maintaining the balance between “horror” and “comedy” and, consequently, the audience’s attention. The “Nazi shootout” sequence becomes the film’s climax with all of us deeply enjoying their vicious deaths. The “facing the ghosts” sequence is also enjoyable and should have given the film the ending it deserved. That could be a happy ending, depressing ending, jaw-dropping-twist ending… An ending nonetheless. But the filmmakers thought otherwise! Before I move to the ending, I’d like to say that the acting is brilliant and all actors deserve to be praised. Excellent job!

Writer/director Eric Bress comes back as a director for his second film after The Butterfly Effect (2004) and, up to the point that I mentioned, does a very decent job. His directing still remains intact after that but his writing, eventually, damages the rest of the film. I cannot tell you why without spoiling it for you so, should you decide to watch it, stop here and see for yourselves. You are more than welcome to come back to my review after you have watched it.

Stay safe!

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Spoilers Alert!

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The ending is nonsensical because it tried to copy two films with similar, but successful for their narrative ending: The Thirteenth Floor (1999) and Dark City (1998). These fall under the jaw-dropping twists I mentioned earlier and, back then, gave the films the endings that everyone was talking about after watching them. In Ghosts of War this is most definitely not the case. It’s like Agent Smith (the ghosts) infiltrated the matrix and now Neo (Chris) would collaborate with the machines (the scientists) to restore the balance. It could not make less sense.

Other than nonsensical though, the ending is dangerous. What the filmmakers did here is dangerous. They associated the Nazis with ISIS. They “juxtaposed” their crimes as if that makes them the same. The Nazis and ISIS are not the same. I’m not going to give you a history lesson, but when the era is different, the culture is different, the history behind them is different, the motives are different, and then when one atrocity is related to war and the other (mostly) to terrorism… the comparison is not even wrong, it doesn’t exist. There is nothing to compare.

Filmmakers and studios need to be careful, nowadays. They hold responsibility for what they release and careers can be ruined in a blink of an eye.