Kaiji 2 The Ultimate Gambler

Ratings: 7.0/10

Film Class: B

Genre: Suspense Drama

After months and months of waiting, I've finally managed to watch my highly anticipated Kaiji 2. Kaiji 1 really grew on me. It's not super intellectual, but I love seeing how an underdog average guy outsmarts and defeats a scheming evil empire.

Kaiji 2 still didn't portray the lead star, "Kira from Death Note", as a cool and zai character but still as the whimpy, impulsive, gambling addict. What makes him different from everyone else who was in debt is undying determination to save himself and others. 

After surviving the death-defying game from Kaiji 1, Kaiji finds himself back in debt and ends up in the "underground". The "underground" is a prison where an evil empire puts its debtors to work as slaves. How Kaiji ended up in the "underground" again is not explained, and I find it too coincidentally ridiculous that he would go back to his old habits of gambling even though he knows how inhumane the "prisoners" are treated in the hell hole. 

The storyline is fine, as long as you don't examine it too much. Cos frankly, I don't think it makes much sense, about Kaiji ending up in the "underground" again and how he's so determined to save his "friends" from that place. It was implied many times throughout the movie that the reason why he was able to win the game from part 1 was cos of his determination to live. Yet, ironically, he chooses addiction over life. Guess he didn't really learn from his mistakes after all... only to set out on yet another seemingly impossible mission. 

He's given a 14 day free pass to roam the streets, after outsmarting the "underground" guards who had been conning the inmates and winning cash to buy him temporary freedom. On the surface, he must find a way to multiple whatever cash he has into millions, 20 million to be exact, so that he can clear himself and his so-called "friends" from debt. 

An opportunity is given, when he gets ear about the "swamp", a pachinko machine which gives out beastly returns. One problem, the machine is in a casino owned by the evil empire... and it's rigged to be unbeatable. 

I've never played pachinko, and though I know it's a popular game in Japan, I have no "feelings" for it. So when 1/4 of the movie is about Kaiji with his group of confederates sitting in front of a giant pachinko machine and slotting cards in exchange for small brass balls which rolls from the top and having to end up at a final hole in order to win, it didn't hymn well with me. 

Though I thought the ultimate game wasn't as interesting as the previous "E-card" game from Kaiji 1, I really loved the take-home message. Even though the movie's more than 2 hours long, it didn't feel that draggy. It was fairly fast paced throughout but the main difference between this sequel and it's predecessor, is that for Kaiji 1, I was cheering him on, but for Kaiji 2, I was watching it more for the challenges/games because we all know how it's ultimately going to end...

Headhunters

Ratings: 6.6/10

Film Class: B

Genre: Thriller

Roger is a successful headhunter who also moonlights as an art burglar. To maintain his extravagant life with his beautiful wife, he breaks into houses and steal valuable art pieces from the people he comes across, using his job as a disguise. However, things get complicated when he realises he's been baited to break into what he thought was his biggest and final heist. 

I was surprised to find out that Nikolaj Coster-Waldau also acted in this film, and if you're wondering who that is, he starred as Jaime Lannister in "The Game of Thrones". And if you're still wondering who he is, just ignore what I just said because I also only know him from "The Game of Thrones". 

Headhunters is a Norwegian film, and it reminded me of another movie, "Open your Eyes", starring Penelope Cruz. Open your Eyes is a spanish movie which blew me away with the sudden change of mood when the plot spiralled out of control. This, however, wasn't that insanely twisted. Still, it's not what it seems. As the plot progresses, the film gets darker and darker... till the point that it gets quite disturbing. 

There's no one to really cheer for, because the villain's (Nikolaj) more charismatic than the protagonist, Roger. No doubt there were suspense along the way, but at some point, I started to lose interest and everything just went downhill for me. It didn't pack a kudos killer ending, and though it opened cool, it ended flat.

The Watch

Ratings: 5.5/10

Film Class: C+

Genre: Comedy

Evan (Ben Stiller) is a nice guy, a nice boss living in a nice town. Everything changes when his employee was murdered, prompting him to start a neighbourhood watch to nab the killer. However, things isn't as what it seems, because the murderer happens to be extra-terrestrial. 

Can Evan and his watch of brothers stop the impending alien invasion? You won't have to sit through it to know the answer. 

The Watch is a predictable, crude and pretty lame movie. The storyline's predictable, the humor's crude, and there's too many loopholes, even fingerholes (reference to the movie) in it. The acting was horrendous, with the exception of the 4 leads, but it just felt like a low class film. The director obviously couldn't be bothered with the plot and the script writers obviously just wanted someone to make a verbally-pornographic-alien movie.  

The Achilles heel of the aliens really smashed it for me, it was so off and ridiculously crappy that I couldn't even be bothered to talk about it with my fiancée after the movie. The opening was quite engaging, but everything else went downhill after. I just wonder to myself, are directors that free and rich in US to find decent actors to star in crappy movies? That's one way to screw the reputation of established actors... (pardon the language, but if you're gonna watch it, you better get used to it)

The Expendables 2

Ratings: 8.8/10

Film Class: A

Genre: Action

Comparing The Expendables to my early post on The Raid: Redemption, the former makes the latter look real bad. I understand it's not a fair comparison, but Hollywood is truly Hollywood, the leading district for film makings. 

The Expendables is an elite group of mercenaries who would normally take up assignments for money. However, they find themselves fighting for a cause when faced with an adversary who made the mistake of pissing them off.

The Expendables 2 pack more action, more one-liner (maybe more) jokes, and more coolness than most other action films. The reason is simple... on which what sells this movie... the classic "action heroes" during my younger years. Terminator, Rambo, Universal Soldier, Die Hard and Transporter all features 1 kick-ass action "hero", each so successful at least trilogies were made, and not surprisingly, they're all, yes ALL in this one freaking show. 

Like how Jason Maraz would say it, 50, no, 1,000 ounce of awesomeness. *major spoilers ahead* It's a pity we didn't see much of Jet Li in this sequel, but the increased screen time for Bruce Willis, Arnold and Chuck Norris was more than what I had wished for. Most characters had their own screentime/heroic/comedy moments. I loved the new addition to the team, the sniper kid. By kid I don't mean a young boy, but that's what they call him. 

However, I wasn't too fond of the choice of the female lead because there was nothing real cool about her. Jean-Claude Van Damme's the evil villain this time round, even though the word "villain" in itself means "evil" but another "evil" is necessary to show how bad he is. Still, he's not a character that one can truly loathe because come on, we all know him to be the heroic Universal Soldier after all. 

I thought Jason Statham's 5-minute scene of knife throwing sucked the coolness off everything else. Imagine him being dressed in a priest's cloak, pulling down his hood and throwing knives at high speed at his enemies. One shot, er.. one pierce one kill. Accuracy, speed, lotsa stabbing, blood splattering and cool poses. That was easily one of the most awesome knife fighting scenes I've seen. 

Chuck Norris's appearance was the best comic moment, whopped with Dolph Lundgren's constant eccentric humor, I was laughing, wide-eyed gasping and cheering for all the characters in this fun-filled  entertaining classic. It's a classic in the making, in the present age with all the classics in it. 

And as one of the characters mention, "They should belong in the museum", I thought it was apt. Not because they were old and soon to be forgotten, but because they were all legendary and will always be remembered. 

The Expendables, ironically, will never be expendable. I've mixed feelings about a 3rd, if there ever will be one. But The Expendables 2 sure tops my list of Coolest movies. Sometimes it's not just the action, but with the characters and the humor which makes the whole deal... 

The Raid: Redemption

Ratings: 7.2/10

Film Class: C+

Genre: Action

The Raid: Redemption is "over-raided". I expected non-stop mindless action but what I got was close to 40% storyline. It didn't deliver the punch I needed to keep me at the edge of my bed during a late Saturday night... 

I had wanted so much to catch this that I didn't even hesitate 2 seconds when it came out in DVD, even though the price was a whopping $24.90. On the other hand, I had also wanted to watch a Japanese movie, Kaiji 2 for so long... yet was able to resist the temptation of throwing the same price for it. I went back to my local video shop 5 times hoping for Kaiji 2's price to lower, but 2 seconds was all it took for me to grab this DVD. Man, I've really gotta repent and redeem myself... 

A rookie member of the special squad is thrown into a covert mission to extract the notoriously ruthless crime lord from a 15-story apartment block. Everything was going well until the 5th floor, where their presence was spotted and when the entire building was locked down. Groups of gangsters then start appearing from all over to hunt down the outnumbered special squad... 

Where's the redemption in this movie? There's a possibility that it refers to one important character (not the lead) but on 2nd thought, it wasn't redemption it was brrooothherrlly opps* *major spoilers ahead*, it was brotherly love instead. 

The crime lord is protected by 2 of his closest henchmen, 1's a smartie, the other a "mad dog". And 1 of them happens to be the brother of the rookie member. 15-story building... but does that mean 15 storeys of hardass action on each floor?  

Nope, after the 5th storey, I didn't even know which floor they were on most of the time. All I know is that the special squad was hunted down like little lambs. One by one they got wiped out... and at first I didn't quite recognise the lead. But it became obvious after his first one-man show on one of the floors. 

The crime lord was a disappointment, to be wiped out so quickly without a good fight... and the "mad dog" stole everyone's limelight, including the 2 leads'. There were guns, knives and bare knuckles, all in moderation. Nothing too explosive, nothing too cut-throat, nothing too hard-hitting. Whoever tells you this is one of the best action films in decades has not seen a true action-packed film yet...