In a 23rd Century Britain where oil and electricity are just a distant memory, Kingsmen rule the few remaining people with a rod of iron, exacting the severest penalties for the smallest crimes. Sixteen year old Flick Carter has saved the life of an injured Scav. But it’s not just the Kingsmen who want to get their hands on the boy and his secrets; there are forces far more dangerous who will stop at nothing, not even murder.
Wanted for a murder she did not commit, Flick is forced to flee. In a town of just 150 people, there’s nowhere to hide. So you run. Or you die.
Note for parents: Contains scenes of death and violence, and very occasional swearing.
Saoirse Ronan (Hanna, Atonement, The Lovely Bones) stars in this movie adaptation of Stephanie Meyer's 2008 novel, The Host.
At first you'd be forgiven for drawing parallels with Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and yes we have glowing alien centipedes that inhabit the brains of their hosts, but that's pretty much where the similarity ends. You see, these aliens are nice.
And that's the problem.
We have an exciting first reel (do they still have reels? maybe I should just say first 20 minutes...) in which Melanie (Ronan) is chased down, tries to kill herself but is saved, healed and implanted by a "Soul" called Wanderer. Then we find out that the Souls' take over of humans is not as complete as they'd have us believe, and Melanie is still in there, fighting to regain control. She manages to make Wanderer flee into the desert where she's found by Uncle Jeb (William Hurt).
After that it goes all new age eco weird.
There's the usual Meyer inter-species love triangle, but the twist this time is that it's a four-way triangle with only three bodies (you just know how that's going to end...), but the two boys are pretty bland and uninteresting, the obsessive baddie cop "Seeker" (Diane Kruger) sent out to catch Wanderer/Melanie (who has been nicknamed Wanda in an effort to get the movie over a bit quicker) is ineffectual, which means we're left with the internal two people in one body conflict to carry the tension. And it fails. It just comes over as one person with an occasional twitch and a reverbed voice over from time to time.
But the chrome Lotus Evoras were nice (as was the chrome R44), and the cavern complex with hand-cranked mirrors for lighting was truly stunning.
But scenery and shiny cars a good movie do not make. Shame. 5/10
Back in the day, GI Joe was the American version of what we called Action Man, a 12" action figure that many of us played with as kids (actually, Palitoy produced Action Man under licence from Hasbro, but let us not worry about such things). Then in the 1980s, Hasbro started producing the 3 3/4" line, which is what you see in the shops today.
G. I. Joe: Retaliation is a sequel to 2009s GI Joe; Return of the Cobra. It stars Dwayne Johnson, with Channing Tatum, Adrianne Palicki, DJ Cotrona, Jonathan Pryce and an extended cameo from Bruce Willis.
Zartan the shape shifter (Pryce) has taken over the White House and is holding the real president (Pryce) hostage. Johnson and the Joes are off on a ridiculously stupid mission stealing nukes from the North Koreans, when most of them are wiped out by an air strike courtesy of Zartan. The remaining Joes, along with a bunch of mystery ninjas now have to save the world, defeat Zartan and a bunch of mystery ninjas and restore the good pres.
The action sequences, fights etc were all well done; there's even a fight across a sheer cliff face on the end of climbing ropes. That pretty much is it for good points. The rest of the film is a confusing nonsensical illogical mess. I never did figure out the ninjas: at the outset I couldn't work out who were the good guys and the bad guys, and at the end I still couldn't work it out.
Channing Tatum had the right idea: Get killed off early on, then you can't be blamed for the rest of it.
On the plus side, My Cineworld card has paid for itself this month, with another DVD I can avoid buying. Chuck toys at each other and shout blam blam blam. 3/10
Book 1 (Wanted) is still waiting for the results of the final round of beta reading (due after the Easter hols). Then it just needs formatting and prettifying ready to push the button later in the month.
Book 2 (Hunted) is now underway and plotted out. I've signed up to Camp NanoWrimo for April, http://www.campnanowrimo.org with a target of 50k words (less what's already written) I've decided I need to be pushed more, and this seems like a good way to do it. That would have me on track for finishing the first draft sometime in May – assuming I keep up the pace – which would be good. Again I'm aiming for a total around 90,000 words (Wanted is 92,000)
April is actually quite a busy month, with a trip to Liverpool for location scouting, and a production of The Admirable Crichton, so I think it's going to be tougher than the regular Nano in November.
We shall see...
