In short: Hypnotic (2023)

Police detective Danny Rourke (Ben Affleck) stumbles upon a very curious case: a sinister looking gentleman (William Fichtner) somehow convinces random civilians into helping him commit complicated and suicidal robberies. Even more curious: all of this seems somehow connected to the kidnapping of Rourke’s little daughter by another random stranger some time ago.

Before Rourke knows it, he is teaming up with a backstreet hypnotist (Alice Braga) and starts following the trail of a weird conspiracy surrounding an operation of government mind controllers with a deep love for red blazers.

Clearly, Robert Rodriguez didn’t go into this trying to make your bog standard contemporary action thriller but mixes it up with the traditions of the 70s paranoid thriller, as well as some X-Men style not quite superhero psi stuff. In the film’s good moments, this works out rather well. Particularly early on, before the film starts to explain way too much, Rodriguez regularly reaches an un-real and somewhat nightmarish mood of paranoia – the culmination here is certainly the scene in the police station where our hero gets in trouble with his partner, though there is also a really nice bit where Rourke finds himself mind-whammied into a murder attempt.

The more standard big budget action thriller elements never work out quite as well: the action is – atypical for Rodriguez – more competent than great, and the plot never quite has the drive it should have. On the other hand, Hypnotic pulls off its two big twists rather well, including a pretty clever sequence of reveals too fun to spoil here. I can take or leave the final one, however.

I do believe Hypnotic’s main problem is its lead actor. Affleck’s unwillingness or inability to express any human emotion beyond indigestion is of course legend by now, but it’s poison for any emotional effect the film should have on its audience. On paper, Rourke goes through a psychological and physical wringer, and it should be easy to make us sympathize with him and his plight, perhaps admire his gumption. Alas, Affleck doesn’t express any of this, leaving a vacuum where Hypnotic’s emotional heart should be.

That the film stays watchable throughout is a little wonder; though the kind of wonder that makes me particularly wistful for a better casting decision.

The New Mutants (2020)

After a catastrophic event which apparently destroyed her whole township with her family within it, Dani Moonstar (Blue Hunt) finds herself in the clinic of one Dr Reyes (Alice Braga). It’s a bit of a strange place, with Reyes alone taking care of only a handful of patients. Apart from Dani, there are Rahne Sinclair (Maisie Williams), Ilyana Rasputin (Anya Taylor-Joy), Sam Guthrie (Charlie Heaton), and Roberto da Costa (Henry Zaga). All of them are mutants whose lack of control over their powers has cost loved ones (or in Ilyana’s and Rahne’s case, not so loved ones) their lives.

As Reyes tells it, she is supposed to help the kids achieve control over their powers so they can take the next step her mysterious superiors have chosen for them. Not surprisingly given this language, the place is also a cage, surrounded by an indestructible force field, and Reyes changes tack between helpful counsellor and prison warden with disturbing ease.

Ever since Dani has arrived, the clinic seems to have become haunted, too, and the young mutants will have to confront their greatest fears, learn to work together, and uncover the true goals of Reyes. Well, a bit of smooching is also involved, because that’s what future X-Men are supposed to do in their downtime, just ask Chris Claremont.

After it has been shuffled through release dates for years for no fault of its own, Josh Boone’s The New Mutants has turned into the last of the Fox style X-Men movies, a state of affairs that has not helped the reception of the film much, I believe. Then there are also the expectations of the first adaptation of a particularly beloved comic to cope with. These expectations, a film can only survive if it is an absolute masterpiece, which the film at hand isn’t. So it’s no surprise that New Mutants hasn’t been a smashing success even with the nerd press or those parts of the mainstream who don’t automatically rant nonsense about the end of cinema through superhero movies.

However, while not a masterpiece, Boone’s film isn’t a bad one at all. At the very least, even if one is unkind towards it, the it is made pretty interesting by the decision to replace some standard superhero movie tropes with (light) horror touches (and a lot of nods towards the third Nightmare on Elm Street). After all, the backgrounds of troubled teenagers in the real world are only one step away from being a horror movie anyway, mutant powers only sharpening the metaphor, as is right and proper for the franchise as well as the specific comics this adapts. The realization of the horror sequences shows rather clearly why the film is only a good movie instead of a great one in my book, though. They are just not that creepy, Boone never quite finding a visual language that makes the weight of horror the protagonists feel towards them completely believable. In part, that’s really a problem of visual choices by the director, in part it’s the film’s very middling effects as well as the less than creative design work done to bring elements of the comics on screen. It’s not Shazam level terrible, but it does weaken the film’s emotional heft considerably.

On the other hand, the film’s narrative (script by Boone and Knate Lee) does have a pleasantly clear idea of what it wants to be about and the ways it believes teenagers can overcome heavy emotional loads (and horror movie scares) through the power of diverse families of choice. There’s an obvious reason why the kids are repeatedly shown watching Whedon’s “Buffy”, and while this sort of thing is obviously a simplification of how we get through life, it does speak to some things I at least believe to be true and important, while treating its characters and their concerns with respect and love.

There is little in the film that doesn’t directly speak to its thematic concerns, leading to a very focused and low key movie that only fulfils the expectations on the amount of action and loudness a modern superhero movie has to show as much as it needs to if it actually wants to get a budget. Though the climactic action scene really not being that great a catharsis it should narratively and thematically be seems to have a lot to do with that budget not being high enough.

Yet still, The New Mutants is a very interesting, and often also a very entertaining, film, ending the Fox X-Men movies on an unexpected yet fitting note.

In short: Predators (2010)

A bunch of action movie clichés is abducted by aliens and parachuted onto a jungle world.

Now Tough Guy American Mercenary (Adrien Brody, speaking with a very silly Deep Manly Man Voice that gives Christian Batman a run for his money), Sniper With A Heart (Alice Braga), Danny Trejo (Danny Trejo), Russian Guy With Extra Large Gun (Oleg Taktarov), Untrustworthy Psycho In Prison Uniform (Walton Goggins), Big Black Man From Africa (Mahershalalhashbaz Ali), Yakuza Dude (Louis Ozawa Changchien) and Baby-Faced Doctor (Topher Grace) find themselves hunted by a trio of the loveable Predator species.

After some fighting, some dying and little thinking, the survivors meet  Larry Fishburne, who has survived quite some time on the planet and now proceeds to not just chew the scenery but eat it whole. Very probably with ketchup.

Anyway, the meeting with ole Larry doesn't turn out too well, and so the survivors of the survivors have to carry the fight to the aliens in the hope of stealing their spaceship.

I have to admit that Predators has exceeded my expectations regarding its quality quite a bit. Of course, I have seen both Alien(s) vs. Predator films, and therefore expected this one to be about as fun as getting my head mashed in with a big rock while Justin Bieber sings in the background, which probably is the kind of  expectations most easily exceeded.

Obviously, the movie is as dumb as a rock, and pretty darn silly to boot, but so was the best/only good film of the Predator franchise too (Vietnam "trauma" subtext notwithstanding). However, that first Predator was also a pretty great action movie, interested in the things all pretty great action movies are interested in - explosions, people dying in painful ways and gunfights - and in that respect it was an admirable success.

Although Predators isn't quite as good at the action as the old McTiernan piece (and hopefully does contain fewer future politicians in its cast), it seems to try to go back to the roots of the series by making an entertaining action flick with neat looking aliens as the main bad guys, and not whatever Aliens vs. Predator was supposed to be. As long as nobody is talking and the film doesn't attempt characterization, director Nimrod Antal delivers an entertaining joy ride of a film with more than enough dumb fun to keep me happy.

Dialogue and characterization are really bad, though, with "ethnic" characters I would call racist if the white people weren't painfully flat cardboard cut-outs, too. As it stands, the film's script just doesn't contain people as much as it does moving fleshbags the scriptwriters once saw in other movies and have transported into their own without a second (or first, I suspect) thought. There's some rambling dialogue about the protagonists being monsters themselves etc etc that's supposed to provide thematic depth, but it is much too superficial and ill thought-out to work. The actors are doing what they can with what they are given (which in Fishburne's case means provoking tears of laughter), but it's not much.

However, the shooting and the shouting stays fine throughout, so if you're going into Predators looking for cheap thrills, you're in for a good time.

 

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