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The Expatriate (2012)

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expatriateRoze-Rating: 2 / 5

This film is set in Europe about an ex CIA operative who is looking to move on with his past life of violence and concentrate on being a good father. All that suddenly changes when Ben Logan (Aaron Eckhart) and his daughter Amy (Liana Liberato) narrowly miss a hit murder while they were at the hospital over night. Due to the following day’s strange events, they realise that something has gone terribly wrong, and they may be in the middle of a termination plan as an attempt to cover up a government conspiracy. This also proves to be a time where father and daughter get to know each other even more, but maybe not for the best.

This was clearly a hit and miss film. It overall lacked originality, as you got the sense that it was going to be a Jason Bourne type film. The start may have resembled the Bourne films, but the rest was certainly not. From watching the trailer, you get the sense that it’s going to be an action spy thriller, with some decent action scenes, but this film didn’t seem to offer anything vital, especially to the genre it boasts. Usually with films like this, you expect it to at least shine at something, but this film honestly doesn’t, in terms of the genre, there aren’t any memorable action scenes, characters or quotes.

The film lacked memorable action scenes, and when they did come around, they were short, lacked conviction and didn’t offer any thrills. The character Aaron Eckhart had to play was showcased as an extremely intelligent CIA operative trained to kill, despite this impressive range of skills, the film makers didn’t use any of it to their advantage in any scenes, which made the character seem a lot less impressive and ultimately unrelatable. People want to see a bad ass agent go nuts and partake in crazy secret agent stuff, so that they can go home and think “I wish I was him”, but this character left so little to desire. There was also another problem I had with the film, the hit-men featured to “terminate” their objective were incredibly sloppy and lacked finesse, which are characteristics you wouldn’t expect from a man in that career. This just made the film a lot less believable, because as a professional killer, it would be pretty poor to be spraying bullets everywhere and hitting everything BUT the target intended, so I couldn’t take that aspect seriously.

When it comes down to the plot, there were too many links to Aaron Eckharts character to fully understand who he was involved with, which made it seem like it was made complicated for the sake of it without making it seem intelligent and concise. This made it very confusing at points, and in the end, it really wasn’t worth the brain power and confusion just for something quite petty.

The one bright spark of this film is the female role of Liana Liberato, playing Amy Logan, who was incredibly solid and did her role well. It was nothing more than just solid because the script didn’t leave her much to play with, but this film may give her the opportunity to test that acting skill in the future.

Ultimately for a film of this genre, there should have been more action, a lot more intelligence in terms of the plot and its characters and just a proper emotional connection between audience and character. Positive is that the two main characters pulled out a couple of good performances, but even they couldn’t save such a script.

The Amazing Spider-Man (2012)

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the-amazing-spider-manRoze-Rating: 4.5 / 5

There was a lot of confusion and pessimism towards this Spider-Man reboot. People were confused about the change of cast thinking that the previous Spider-Man trilogy had not finished, but with a cast like this, I think it was hard to figure out where it could go wrong. I myself was a huge fan of the Spider-Man trilogy and was pretty intrigued about this reboot, especially when I heard Emma Stone was in it, who is my favourite female actor at the moment. Going into the film I was expecting something familiar but I’m glad to say that there was a lot of things different about this film compared to the original and most of those things were huge positives.

A lot of the advertising at first for this film was that it would expose the “untold story” about Peter Parker in terms of where he came from and his parents. To an extent this film explores what exactly happened to his parents, how they were related to Oscorp and how they died but it only touches on it in small doses. If your going to see the film purely for that aspect of the film, then there will be a bit of disappointment, but I guess that’s where they attract you back into the character for this film but also the sequel. As usual these comic films have snippets at the end to leave you guessing who the next villain will be etc, and there’s a mysterious looking man who mentions Peters father, insinuating that there’s still a lot untold, this will be frustrating but I guess that’s where the fanboys come in and speculation begins, which is the whole spirit of these comic films, the film is one thing but the speculation and the hype also adds to the awesome experience.

The film features Andrew Garfield as Spider-Man and he totally triumphed, giving the web slinger a whole new identity compared to the original Spider-Man. From playing a few Spidey games and cartoons, the character seemed a lot more witty and annoying than Toby McGuires version, and I think that’s where Andrew Garfield got it right. He was more than just a nerd, he had attitude, heart and style, which is why the little touches like the skateboard and the way he treated his enemies as quite vital to the role. It was also awesome to find out that he was a childhood fan of Spider-Man and looked up to the character, so you knew that he was coming from the right places. Emma Stone as Gwen Stacy, DAYM, great person for the role, I mean she brings a lot to her characters and this character was never intended to be just cute and a damsel in distress, she brought a lot of charisma and humour to make her a much more interesting and smart character to root for. The chemistry between Garfield and Stone seemed very natural, I don’t know if it’s because they are an item (Damn you Garfield!) but what they were doing worked. Perfect awkward moments mixed with the dialogue, but when they kissed on that roof, Gwen looked a bit too turned on by the fact Peter was Spider-Man, but I’m not complaining. As for the rest of the cast, solid performances of course, especially Rhys Ifans playing over obsessed scientist Dr. Conners, who lets the pressure of Oscorp and his own desire for limb regrowth get to him, ultimately becoming The Lizard.

The action is great, some memorable scenes and I like how they stayed true to all of his trademark moves, seemed identical to the game at some points, which was pretty awesome. The effects weren’t cheap and the The Lizard looked pretty bad ass. Compared to the original, I can’t remember anything negative about the effects, but this version definitely brought something new to the film with the first person scenes, which made you feel even more absorbed into this world that they created. Overall pretty solid action.

I think the only negative of this film compared to the original is that the original had a lot more iconic moments which will live on, while this film didn’t really produce any except for the crane scene. The fact that the original had those iconic and memorable moments made leaving the cinema slightly dissatisfying, because I expected there to be a “with great power, comes great responsibility” line, but it never came, it was all disjointed. I think this film tried a bit too hard to be different from the original which is quite apparent with the way they did the origin story for this film, but it still works, so no complaints there.