Three Quickies: The Raid, The Dictator & Dark Shadows

I’ll kill three birds with one stone today, and review three new films in this post. I’m not going into masses of detail, but hopefully you’ll get a good overview whether these movies look like they’re up your street.

The Raid: Redemption

The Raid: Redemption is an Indonesian action film, holding back no bars to become the most violent and adrenaline fuelled action adventure of the year.  Make no mistake that this film isn’t for the gentle souled, and rated a UK 18 or US R should give you this indication.

Join a special arm of the law as they attempt to clear out a building in the heart of a poor estate run by a drug lord gangster. He has control over the residents and the surrounding property, and the law never gets involved as he’s untouchable. Until now. I wouldn’t want to give anything away, so I won’t divulge the finer details of the plot, but it doesn’t go as simply as planned. The action scenes are well choreographed and the energy is raw and visceral, something you don’t see very often from a lot of Hollywood films. The music is tense and palpable and the relatively unknown cast make a good effort at this future cult classic. This film is fully subtitled too, in case you wanted to know.

The Dictator

This is the lately character dreamt up in the world of Sacha Baron Cohen, after successful outings with Bruno (no pun intended), Borat, and of course Ali G. Whereas the previous films contain a level of ‘real-life’ situations where we can enjoy the public’s reaction to vulgar and in your face comedy, this one is a little different. It’s completely scripted, which actually ends up being the biggest downfall of this movie. It’s not to say it wasn’t funny, or it wasn’t worth seeing, but it’s what made it not quite as good as the others.

I felt like Baron Cohen questioned his humour at some stages, where the punch lines often went unnoticed to faint smirks in the aisles. Borat was laugh out loud funny, but the Dictator just wasn’t. It’s still worth watching though if you love his unique brand of comedy, but it’s hardly going to convert you love him if you don’t already. Perhaps one to wait for DVD, where you can enjoy it with a takeaway on the couch.

Dark Shadows

Again, I wasn’t entirely convinced by this film. It was classic Depp, the master of the character actor and his range really knows no bounds. The cast was well thought through too, obviously with Helena Bonham Carter playing an important role as she does with any Tim Burton film. You see the name Tim Burton and you automatically expect to see Bonham Carter and Depp, if you didn’t then you’d wonder what was wrong.

The film was pleasant to watch, and somewhat funny, but the story felt liked it dragged in places, and no much really happened. The script was also fairly bland, and needed a little more excitement. I don’t regret going to watch it but I really wanted more as I’m a huge Sweeney Todd fan. Dark and adult Tim Burton films are an exciting prospect but this fell somewhere in the middle and felt like it aimed at an almost ‘Twilight aged’ audience. The soundtrack was fun and the costumes and set design was outstanding, but you can’t overlook the weaknesses in the storyline and script. Still worth seeing though on a quiet evening.

The Raid: Redemption was the highlight from the last few films I’ve seen and The Dictator and Dark Shadows were good, but not great. 4 stars, 3 stars and 3 stars respectively. Happy film going!

Tags: borat, dark shadows, johnny depp, new movies, the dictator, the raid, world cinema

Category: Film Reviews