UNKNOWN (2011) - Liam Neeson has a slight memory problem...

Unless you've been living in North Korea for the last couple of decades, being force fed daily rations of propaganda films and polishing your Kim Jong Il pins, chances are you know who Liam Neeson is. You probably also know that the guy can play a pretty convincing badass. He shot, stabbed and throat punched half of Europe in Taken, beat the shit out of Batman himself in Batman Begins, cut dudes in half with a lightsaber in Star Wars prequels, and even his voice as Aslan, the lion in the Narnia movies, managed to make Mufasa burn with jealousy at the sound of a superior Irish voice. As if that wasn't enough, apparently he has a talent for bashing people's faces in in real life, seeing as how he was a champion boxer as a teenager. That being said, it doesn't take much to get me to watch a movie with Neeson in it, so I was waiting to get my hands on Unknown since I caught a glimpse of the snazzy trailer.

Liam's got ladies for every month of the year. This month, it's January.

Dr. Martin Harris (Neeson) and his wife Liz (January Jones) have just arrived in Berlin. He is scheduled to speak at a biotechnology conference in the city, but their trip suddenly takes a turn for the unexpected as Martin remembers he misplaced his briefcase at the airport. He takes a cab driven by a pretty blonde back to the airport, which ends disastrously after the car plunges into a river after a freak accident. The girl saves the unconscious Martin and drags him to shore, where rescuers try to help him, and she leaves the scene of the accident. Martin wakes up in the next scene, completely confused as to his situation. A doctor informs him that he's been in a coma for the past four days, and that he had no I.D. on him, so they couldn't find any family to contact. Martin is eventually released from the hospital and goes out to look for Liz, remembering his reservation at the hotel and making his way there.

Visit Berlin! Experience the coma of a lifetime after a horrible car crash!

At the hotel, Martin gets the shock of a lifetime when his wife refuses to recognize him, and introduces him to her husband, another man by the name of Martin Harris (Aidan Quinn). Martin is escorted out of the hotel, and he's forced to try and piece together the fragments of his memory in order to figure out just what the hell is going on. He eventually gets ahold of Gina (Diane Kruger), the cabbie who saved his life. She reluctantly agrees to help him, while Martin also seeks help from an ex-East German secret police officer named Jurgen (Bruno Ganz). Jurgen finds a series of numbers written in Martin's notebook, which he figures must be some sort of code. As if shit wasn't confusing enough for the poor guy, he and Gina are also attacked by a gang of assassins, in a sprawling car chase through Berlin and several shoot outs. Martin must find out who he is, why the hell someone is impersonating him, why angry Germans are out to kill him, and why his bimbo of a wife is ignoring him.

If only all taxi drivers were as hot as Diane Kruger...

Martin slowly but surely begins to realize what is going on around him, and events will ultimately lead up to a thrilling, explosive climax. Without going any further into the plot, I'll state that the story has its good share of twists and turns, and never lets up on the tension. Although some of the twists are a bit obvious, the movie had me guessing several times and it all adds to the fun of the movie. Neeson is great at portraying the conflicted Martin Harris, and Diane Kruger does a good job as well. By far my favorite role was Jurgen, played by the excellent Bruno Ganz, who did a fantastic job as Adolf Hitler in Downfall and is just a very, very convincing actor. The rest of the cast was okay, but nothing else really stood out from the film.  

Somebody's gonna get stabbed.

Unknown draws inspiration from several other flicks, but sticks to its own guns enough to make the movie refreshingly original and interesting. Aside from some obvious half-assed CGI near the end, it looks as slick as any other action blockbuster you'd expect. The ending was satisfying enough, and wraps up things quite nicely. It's a good return to form for Neeson, who has by now firmly established himself in the parthenon of ass kicking leading men. Let's hope he keeps his game up.


TL;DR - Liam Neeson's back in ass-kicking mode, and yes, it's wonderful - 7.5/10

THE HANGOVER 2 (2011) - This time... it's in Thailand

I loved the original Hangover. After having to wade through tons and tons of unfunny "comedies" and endless Judd Apatow movies, The Hangover was a pretty fresh movie that made a huge star out of the fat & bearded Zach Galifianakis. It also made heaps of cash at the box office, which wasn't surprising since it was damn funny. A lot of R-rated comedies settle for gross out humor and raunchy stuff to get laughs, and although The Hangover wasn't above making bodily fluid jokes and waving exposed weiners around, the bulk of the movie just had hilarious dialogue and a great cameo from Mike Tyson. Now the sequel is here, and I fully expected another hilarious romp filled with drunken debauchery and all that.

The Wolfpack is back, but this time, they've added an Asian. Hooray for diversity.

The movie opens a few years after the events of the first flick. Stu (Ed Helms) has left his mean bitch fiance from the first movie and is now engaged to a lovely Thai chick, who he plans to marry in a few days. Despite his concern, his buddies Phil (Bradley Cooper), Alan (Galifianakis) and Doug (Justin Bartha) convince him to party it up a bit before the wedding. Unfortunately, his fiancee's brother comes along with them, a Stanford med student named Teddy (Mason Lee). Even worse for Stu is the fact that his future father-in-law adores his son Teddy but absolutely hates Stu. That night, the guys have a campfire out on the beach and have a few beers, and of course we know what's waiting for them in the morning...

"What should we do for the sequel? Let's shave Alan's head. WHAT A LAUGH."

Alan, Stu and Phil wake up with a massive hangover (surprise, surprise) in a shitty hotel room in the middle of a sprawling city. Alan's head has been shaved bald, Stu has a Mike Tyson tatoo on his face and Phil is back to being his foul mouthed asshole self. Just as they're beginning to realize that they've royally screwed up again, they're attacked by a vest-wearing monkey. Phil also realizes that they've lost Teddy, and Alan finds a naked, passed out Mr. Chow lying on the ground. Chow wakes up and tells them they had a great night of drug fueled partying throughout Bangkok, and agrees to help them try and find Teddy. The crew sets out on their romp through the city which will see them face off with drug lords, transvestite hookers, a fat Paul Giamatti, and other assorted wonders.

Mr. Chow keeps the movie from being a catastrophe.

If you're reading this and wondering why I'm disappointed with this movie, let me explain. The Hangover was fresh and original and a lot of the humor came from the surprises that kept popping up throughout the movie, like Mike Tyson's cameo, or the photos during the credits, or the bare assed Mr. Chow leaping on people. The sequel tries so hard to be exactly like the first movie that it succeeds almost to a fault. It basically feels like you're watching the same movie again, except this time you know all the punchlines. It doesn't have the spark of the original, and most gags run on for longer than they should, and instead of having new jokes we get dumb stuff like more penises on the screen and more songs by Stu about spending a night with a Thai tranny. Crude can be funny, but crude isn't a substitute for funny. You'd think they would've learned this by now. Galifianakis does his best to keep the laughs coming, and he does a decent job, but everyone else just seems to be doing it by the book and it doesn't have nearly as much charisma as the first one. It just feels like a copy and paste job from the first movie and worse of all, it feels... tired.

The cast wondering where all the funny jokes went...

I loved the original Hangover, and I'll admit I was hoping for a sequel and for everyone to return. They did, but they forgot to bring their A-game this time, and it's a big let down. It's got plenty of laughs, no doubt. The frustrating thing is that this had a lot more potential and now I fear for the third movie which is no doubt already planned out. I'll be generous with the score seeing as how the drug-dealing monkey made me nearly piss my pants from laughing, but I'll deduct points for the trauma of seeing Paul Giamatti's waistline on-screen.

TL;DR - Almost a straight copy of the first Hangover, but without as many laughs - 5/10

FAST FIVE (2011) - Saving the best for last

The original Fast and the Furious was a slick if terribly cheesy action movie that kicked off the whole street racing rage back in the early 2000s. Suddenly, every middle school kid started to dream about owning a rice rocket Honda or Toyota and imagined themselves drag racing outside of their school to impress that one chick that ignored him everyday in 4th period science. It made a star out of Vin Diesel, and made bucket loads of cash. Unfortunately for the series, it turned out a bunch of completely crap sequels, which went from bad to worse and only now in this latest one do we get a good flick to enjoy. I groaned when I read they were making Fast Five, but after seeing the trailers I started to wonder if they might have finally made a goddamn decent movie after all. And sure enough, they've managed to make what is in this Guy Movie Blogger's opinion the best movie in the series.

Everybody's back.

The movie opens with a sensational set piece with Dom Toretto (Vin Diesel - in case you've been living under a rock) getting busted out of a jail bus and making his way to Rio de Janeiro, where he reunites with his sister Mia (Jordana Brewster) and his buddy, ex-cop turned criminal Brian (Paul Walker). In need of some cash to avoid the authorities, they take on a job stealing some high-priced cars from a high speed train. Aboard the train they're joined by a some shady Brazilians, but the job quickly goes bad when they discover DEA agents are aboard the train. The Brazilians go crazy and kill all three agents, and try to kill Dom and Brian. After escaping with a Ford GT that the Brazilians were particularly keen on getting their grubby hands on, Dom and Brian find a special GPS chip in the car. The chip contains a list of safe-houses used for storing $100 million in drug money belonging to the ruthless Reyes (Joaquim de Almeida) who basically runs Rio. After Reyes threatens to kill Mia, and now being blamed for the deaths of the three DEA agens, Dom and Brian decide to rob the safe-houses and get the hell out of Rio.

Whenever The Rock is on screen, expect people to get their shit ruined.

While Toretto plans the heist, the DEA sends Hobbs (Dwayne Johnson - The Rock), their best agent to capture Toretto and his gang. He is joined by  local hottie cop Elena (Elsa Pataky), who Hobbs considers one of the few trustworthy Brazilian cops. Hobbs is no joke - the guy is built like a freaking woolly mammoth, drives a f*cking tank, and won't take shit from anyone. Back at their hideout, Brian and Dom have rounded up a new crew with some familiar faces from the earlier movies: smooth-talker Roman (Tyrese), computer whiz Tej (Ludacris), hot Jewish chick Harabo (Gal Gadot), driver Han (Sung Kang) and two random Puerto Ricans who I didn't recognize. The rest of the movie sees them try and figure out how to steal the cash from under Reyes's nose while avoiding Hobbs and his team of agents.  At the same time, Toretto's gang might also be forced to deal with threats from inside their own group.

Steroid sales have gone up 500% after Fast Five was released.

I think it doesn't really need to be said that people don't flock to the latest Fast and Furious sequel expecting to see Oscar caliber acting, but rather good action and plenty of adrenaline-filled stunts. But compared to the absolutely terrible sequels that came before Fast Five, this one has everyone at the top of their game, which was pretty surprising. Vin Diesel was born to play the role of Dom Toretto (and Riddick) and Walker does a decent job. The standout without a doubt is Johnson who nails his part as the badass Hobbs. He eats up all the scenes, drops one-liners like it's going out of style and he seems like he's having an absolute blast. He and Vin have a great beast mode fight scene that had made me giddy like a ten year old as they smashed through walls and generally beat the living shit out of each other. Everyone is in on the joke - Fast Five is ridiculous, why not just embrace it and have fun with it?

Gal Gadot + Jordana Brewster. YUMM.

 The story and plot has been done to death a million times, and except from a few twists near the end, it's all pretty predictable stuff. Good guys steal from bad drug kingpin, blah blah blah. It doesn't really matter though, since almost from beginning to end, Fast Five is basically a 2 hour chase scene that never lets up. The action scenes are flat out the craziest shit I've seen all year, and very thrilling to watch once you accept it for the brainless fun that it really is. By far the best is the 30 minute long final heist racing through downtown Rio de Janeiro at breakneck speed, with everything from shootouts, cop cars getting smashed by a giant bank vault, buildings exploding, jumps, etc. It's gloriously reckless, a little stupid, violent, fast paced, brilliantly shot and very, very fun. It's absolutely bonkers.

DAT FINAL HEIST SCENE.

It's no surprise that the ending sets up the movie for yet another sequel, but whereas before I would've been aching to blow up the studio responsible for cinematic turds like Tokyo Drift, I actually have some hope for the next one if they manage to go back to basics like this flick has and if they get The Rock back. The dude has single handedly brought the series back to decent ground.Fast Five is a perfect popcorn action movie, check your brain at the door and enjoy it. That last heist scene is worth the admission all by itself. Also, make sure you pay attention after the credits for a sneak peek at where they'll probably go with the next sequel.

TL;DR - The best movie in the series is also the best action movie so far this year - 8.5/10

SOURCE CODE (2011) - Bombs (and time travel) on a train

For the last couple of years the world of movies has taken over by sequel mania. It's been a never ending stream of sequels, remakes, "re-imaginings" or blatant rip offs of older movies and it shows no sign of stopping. There's been a few good ones, but also a whole bunch of terrible ones. Every once in a while, we get a decent, original story and it's always a breath of fresh air. 2009 had Duncan Jones direct Moon, which was a good sci fi flick and had an interesting concept and terrific performance by Sam Rockwell. Jones now turned his attention towards the action scene and his new film is one of the best movies this year.

I hope you like explosions, Jake.

Source Code opens with Colter Stevens (Jake Gyllenhaal) waking up on a train, with no memory of how he got there or why. We learn that Colter is an Army helicopter pilot and has been in combat in Afghanistan, and apparently is one tough bastard seeing as how he survived a disastrous mission and saved the life of his buddies. Across from him sits Christina (Michelle Monaghan), who starts a conversation with him despite the fact he has no idea who she is. Confused, Colter makes his way to a bathroom where he is shocked to discover his reflection on the mirror shows the face of another man. A bomb explodes on the train, killing everyone on board, and all of a sudden, Colter wakes up inside a dark, capsule looking thing with a uniformed woman (Vera Farmiga) speaking to him on a computer monitor.

I'd ride an exploding train to sit with Michelle any day of the week...

Colter is told that he is in fact working inside the Source Code, a rift in time that allows a user to re-live the last 8 minutes of a person's life. He has been placed into the body of Sean Fentress, a teacher and passenger on the train, to try and find out who has put the bomb on the train. Colter must find the people responsible and prevent an even bigger nuclear attack against a major city. He is placed back into the Source Code and each time he relives the last 8 minutes, but small differences begin to appear, as he starts to predict things like accidents, things people say, etc. Colter also begins to doubt the official explanation given to him by Vera Farmiga's character, and he not only has to stop the bombing, but also investigate just why they won't give him any more information about where he is or about the project's secretive boss (Jeffrey Wright).

... and then instantly regret it.

At first the glance, the plot might seem a bit confusing, but if you've seen movies like Memento or The Prestige, you'll know that by paying attention it really isn't all that hard to follow along. Gyllenhaal does a great job with his role, showing both the take charge side of his soldier character and the confused side of the guy inside the Source Code capsule. He is surprisingly convincing as a grizzled veteran, and does his action scenes pretty well. Michelle Monaghan is in most of the movie, and does a great job with adding little changes to her constantly replayed scenes. Everyone else puts in a decent effort as well. The real highlight is the thriller basics in the story. The movie plays out like a fast-paced action flick but has some great plot points that leave you wondering.

Lady, who the hell are you?

It is refreshing to see a nicely crafted action movie that doesn't include Shia LeBeouf, the number "2" in the title, or relies on some shitty 3D to sell movie tickets. Source Code is a damn enjoyable movie and it kept my attention throughout the whole running time. It's pretty smart and provoking as far as most action flicks go, and has likable leads and manages to make Jake Gyllenhaal a convincing action hero for the most part. My only real gripe was the fact that I didn't really love the ending, as I was expecting them to go in a whole different way with it, but it suits the movie just fine. Recommended.


TL;DR - Maggie's brother tries to save the day, 8 minutes at a time - 8.5/10

STRIKING DISTANCE (1993) - Willis, serial killers, and boats

As a huge action movie addict, it's no surprise I'm a big Bruce Willis fan. I think Die Hard might be the best action movie of all time, and most of Willis' other movies are pretty cool too and he's rightly regarded as one of the all-time classic movie tough guys. He beats people senseless, gets hammered drunk, shoots at least twenty guys per movie and always has great one-liners. That being said, I had never heard of Striking Distance before this week. No one ever recommended it to me, I never saw it on T.V., never even saw it on a Blockbuster shelf. So while cruising Imdb.com I saw it listed in Willis' filmography, so I figured, what the hell, it was probably worth a watch and set out to find a copy.

Just cruisin' with pop.

Tom Hardy (Bruce Willis) is a veteran cop with a big problem. He testified in a police brutality case against his partner, who just happens to be his psychotic cousin Jimmy DeTillo (Dennis Farina). Hardy comes from a family of police officers, with his father, uncle and two cousins serving as officers in the Pittsburgh police department. After Jimmy is found guilty of police brutality, every cop in town turns against Tom, considering him a traitor and a rat for selling out one of their own. In midst of all of this, Tom has been investigating a series of grisly murders of young girls by a killer known as the Polish Hill strangler. The investigation is going nowhere, with very few leads, but Tom believes that the killer is definitely a cop because of the way he always manages to stay several steps ahead of the police.

Sarah Jessica Parker is surprisingly hot as a cop. It's the uniform.

Driving to a police function with his father, they respond to an emergency call claiming the Polish Hill serial killer has been spotted. They join the high speed chase of the subject, nearly killing themselves several times and finally end up ramming the killer off the road, smashing both the cars in the process. Tom passes out, and wakes up to find his leg torn to shit and his father dead of a gunshot, with the killer nowhere in sight. After recovering from his injury, he's transferred out of the regular force and sent to the River Rescue unit as punishment for questioning the Polish Hill investigation. Tom is assigned a new partner, Jo Christmas (Sarah Jessica Parker), who he dislikes at first.

Meet Jimmy: Tom's psychotic, police-brutality loving cousin.

It's not long before more bodies start to show up in the river, and now it's apparently become personal, because all of the victims are women that Tom knew in the past. Tom and Jo begin to investigate the murders, and Tom becomes suspicious of Danny DeTillo (Tom Sizemore), his cousin and brother to the dead Jimmy, who dropped out of the force and has a lot of bad blood with Tom. Despite the  fact the police force hates his guts, Tom digs deeper into the murders and begins to doubt the official story about his father's killer, the identity of the Polish Hill serial killer, and the fact that his uncle and cousin might not be all the seem to be.

Little known '90s fact: cars could fly.

Even though Striking Distance might sound like it's got a complicated plot, it really doesn't. The story is pretty predictable, and I guessed the big plot twist near the end really early in the movie. Basic story aside, most of the characters aren't really interesting. Tom is a classic Bruce Willis cop character, with drinking problems, bad relationships with women, etc. Sarah Jessica Parker mostly just fills the love interest role and looks good in her dress or underwear. The villain, who I won't reveal even though the reveal is pretty obvious, isn't that good either. The best parts of the movie are undoubtedly when the action kicks in: the car chases and boat chases are good stuff, really frantic and some slick camera work. Surprisingly, the gun play is kind of low level for a 90s action flick, but what little there is makes up for it. Any music there might have been was totally forgettable.

The classic Bruce Willis shooting face!

Striking Distance is a basic action movie which doesn't even come close to matching the Die Hard series of awesomeness. The plot drags along and there just aren't enough thrills to make up for a weak story and even weaker cast apart from Willis and Sarah Jessica Parker. I enjoyed it, but wouldn't go out of my way to watch it again. It's just not that good.

TL;DR - Tries and fails to match Die Hard's excitement. Not bad, but not good either - 5/10

TRON: LEGACY (2010) - A feast for eyes & ears

The original Tron was a landmark movie for special effects and computer graphics. In the 1980s, computers were just starting to come into their own in the movie business and the ability to create the sort of images we take for granted today was unheard of. Think about it: movies on the Lifetime channel probably have CGI a hundred times better than what was possible in the '80s. The computers used to make Tron had about 2 MB of memory, less than even the cheapest cell phone today, but at the time, it was the coolest thing to ever hit the screen. It's no surprise that Tron became a cult classic, and it's equally no surprise that Disney knew it'd have to pump out a sequel sooner or later when the technology wow-factor came around. So now, twenty something years and $150+ million later, we got TRON: Legacy.

The CGI is amazing. The acting isn't.

The movie opens with a flashback to 1980s, featuring a young Kevin Flynn (Jeff Bridges) tucking in his young son Sam to bed and telling him about work at his EMCON company. Flynn leaves after promising to see Sam in a bit, and later vanishes without a trace. Twenty years later and Sam (Garrett Hedlund) has grown up into the company's biggest shareholder in the wake of his dad's disappearance. Apart from dropping by once a year to play tricks on the company executives, Sam hardly seems to care about his company, and is sort of a loner - living in a garage with his dog and riding his sleek bike around while looking cool in leather jackets.

Olivia Wilde in 3D - puts butts in seats

One night, Flynn's old friend Alan Bradley (Bruce Boxleitner) tells Sam about a page he received, which strangely seems to have come from Flynn's old video arcade. Sam reluctantly heads over to investigate, and finds an old mainframe waiting for him. After messing around with the keys, he is transported into a virtual world inside the computer - the Grid. Immediately after arriving in the Grid, Sam gets into trouble. He's picked up by programs and sent off to the games. The games are essentially gladiator fights to the death, and while fighting the most feared program on the Grid, Rinzler, Sam is discovered to be human. He's taken to see CLU (young, computerized Jeff Bridges), who is a copy of his father Flynn, and has become a dictator in the Grid. CLU fights Sam in the arena, and just as he's about to kill him during a light cycle race, in comes Quorra (Olivia Wilde) to save his skinny ass.

Quorra takes Sam to her hideout, which is revealed to be Flynn's home. Flynn has been trapped in the Grid for over twenty years, hostage to CLU and unable to escape. After being reunited with his father, Sam learns that the page he received originally came from CLU, as he is desperate to get out into the real world and enact his vision of a "perfect system." Flynn warns his son that it would be catastrophic if CLU got out, and both of them, alongside the oh so sexy Quorra have to do everything in their power to prevent CLU from making it into the real world, while trying to get Sam and Flynn to make it out themselves.

The de-aged Bridges. You either like it, or it freaks you out.

Right from the start, the trailer for Legacy made it pretty clear that this was obviously an effects driven movie. The light cycle scenes are insane, as is the club fight scene near the middle of the movie. On the big screen and with brutal surround sound it's really good stuff. Some of the other scenes with long shots showing the entire virtual city are pretty rad as well, and of course if you like electronic music, you'll dig the Daft Punk soundtrack. Hedlund and Wilde do a good job with their parts, though nothing spectacular really shines through. Jeff Bridges has by far the most interesting role as Flynn, but it's almost a shame how little we actually get to see of him. Also criminally underused was Tron, who gets a rushed plot twist of his own near the end which feels a bit cheap.

The Dude abides in cyberspace!

Tron: Legacy is enjoyable, there's no doubt about it. The visuals are snazzy, the music is good, and fans of the original get their long lived patience rewarded (only a 30 year wait, right?). At the end though, I was left wondering if some of that ridiculous $170 million budget could have been spent crafting a story that could match the spectacle that unfolds on the screen. Sure, it's an extravagant orgy of light, color and sound and it's exhilarating to watch it on a huge screen and with massive speakers, but Bridges seems wasted and the only thing memorable about it is the obvious set up for a sequel. Maybe third time's the charm and Disney will prove me wrong when it comes out.

TL;DR - Visually dazzling and a glorious soundtrack. Just don't ask for a great plot too - 6/10

TOMORROW, WHEN THE WAR BEGAN (2010) - Red Dawn: Aussie Style

I am not Australian (too bad, I know). But if I were, here's a few things I would be worried about: cane toads overrunning my house, radiation from Japan's nuclear reactors, the Wallabies getting embarrassed at the Rugby World Cup, or getting killed by snakes, spiders, bogans, Jacki Weaver, sharks, etc. One thing I'd most likely not lose any sleep over would be the unlikely prospect of my country being invaded by a million-man army from a bunch of Asian countries in the middle of the night. But hey, we Americans didn't worry about the Russians invading back in the 80s, and look what happened in Red Dawn. If it wasn't for our patriotic Wolverines and heroes like Patrick Swayze and Charlie Sheen, we'd all be speaking Russian, comrades.

Yeah, let's go camping in "Hell." Sounds safe and all...

Ellie Linton (Caitlin Stasey) is a regular teenager living in a small town in Australia. The summer is coming to an end and along with her best friend Corrie (Rachel Hurd-Wood), she plans a weekend camping trip to a remote spot called "Hell" way out in the bush. After begging her parents to let them borrow the family Land Rover, they get a group of their friends together for the trip. Local Greek guy and general bad boy Homer (Deniz Akdeniz) is on for the ride, as is Corrie's boyfriend Kevin (Lincoln Lewis), super religious Robyn (Ashleigh Cummings), Ellie's crush and badass Asian guy Lee (Chris Pang), and the rich, out of town girl Fiona (Phoebe Tonkin). They pack up and drive out far away from the town of Wirrawee, where they spend a chill weekend just hanging out.

No radio, no power, no phones, no YouTube cat videos. The shit's really hit the fan now.

In the middle of the night, Ellie and the others wake up to the sound of hundreds of jet planes flying over their campsite headed towards the city, which they shrug off as just some military exercise. When they make their way back into town, they find that all of their parents are gone, and all of the town folk are nowhere to be found. Some bastard has even shot Ellies dog. The phones are dead, power is out, and no one knows what the hell is going on. They wait till dark and sneak up to the local fairgrounds, where they realize Australia has been invaded by a huge army from some unnamed Asian countries, apparently out to get some of dem precious Australian resources.

Parents are annoying anyway. Maybe concentration camps aren't so bad after all.

All of their families have been rounded up and are imprisoned by the soldiers. While making their way out of the fairground, they get ambushed by soldiers, and they fight back, Ellie killing them by blowing up a lawnmower. Together, the teenagers realize they have to fight back against the invasion. Yeah, it sounds a lot like the plot of Red Dawn, but the story develops in some different ways, and the kids have to grow up quickly and plan out their attacks carefully. Along the way they'll find out more about the invasion and go through some more bitching action scenes (the truck chase with dune buggies was pretty legit).

Everything in Australia is dangerous. Even lawnmowers. Especially lawnmowers.

First, let's get the gripes and bad stuff out of the way. Some of the dialogue is cheesy. I mean, extremely cheesy. So are some of the scenes in the beginning, which don't make much sense, like coming back home to a deserted town with no power or phone lines working, only to open your MacBook Pro that's apparently still on standby. Or some of Lee's lines which feel kind of forced. Or the scene where Ellie and Fiona are waiting to blow up a huge fuel truck and decide it's a good time to start some girly talk while enemy soldiers sneak up behind them.

Goddamn Commies hating our freedoms.

The good stuff? Well, for a movie with a modest budget like this, the action sequences are pretty convincing and well-shot. There's none of that shitty Sci-Fi channel CGI with fake explosions and terrible slow motion. The action bits are fun to watch and pretty exciting. The cast is likable as well, which is always important when you're dealing with a nonsense plot like one of the most remote countries on Earth being invaded by a massive army and teenagers saving the day. There's a good amount of humor mixed into the movie, which I enjoyed a lot more than the attempts by the plot to create any sort of real drama. The Greek guy Homer is hilarious in most scenes, and the stoner dude near the end had me cracking up as well ("Woof! Woof! Dogs... how funny are they!") Homer and Ellie were the stand out characters for me, but to be fair everyone else held their own. Also, I might have a new crush on Caitlin Stasey. Maybe it's her dirt bike-riding, chainsaw-using, AK-47-shooting ways or maybe it's the accent, but I just have this unexplained longing now to move to Australia and find me a hot Aussie girl. She's fooooooiiiine.

You can liberate me anytime you want, Ellie.

It's too bad I've never read any of the books this movie is based on, so I can't comment on how faithful an adaptation it really is. In any case, it was an enjoyable flick - one of those silly but ultimately fun to watch movies.... like just about everything I watch and review on here. My main criteria for movie ratings is the fun factor. Did I enjoy the movie even if the story was shaky and I was intensely jealous of not having an old Land Rover like Ellie? Pretty much, yeah. I just wanted to vicariously defend Australia by blowing up some country-invading bastards. Since I'll never manage to get the Australian accent down without sounding like a retard, I guess this movie will have to do. If you can't be arsed to watch my favorite Aussie flick this year Animal Kingdom, or you want chicks, explosions, and laughs instead of bleak, family crime drama, watch this instead.

TL;DR - Australia does Red Dawn but with less Charlie Sheen and more hot girls with guns - 7.5/10