Safe
Writer-director Boax Yakin (Remember the Titans) must have had a blast dreaming up this movie, as it's basically one giant "one man vs. the world" plot, with his star fending off mobsters and criminals from just about every corner of the globe. Statham stars as Luke Wright, a former police detective who turned to martial arts cage fighting when that job fell through, due to corruption around him. When we meet Luke, he's penniless and broke. Some Russian mobsters have made his life a living hell after he refused to throw a fight, and now they've murdered his wife, and have threatened to murder anyone he gets close to. He's living a soulless and hopeless existence, and right when he's beginning to contemplate ending it all, he sees a scared little girl on the run from the same gangsters who destroyed his life.
The girl is Mei (Catherine Chan), a 10-year-old math wiz from China with a genius-level brain that can crunch numbers with the same accuracy as a computer. In flashbacks, we see how the head of the Chinese mafia (James Hong) kidnapped her, and forced her to work for them as kind of a human bookkeeper, keeping track of all their businesses, without leaving a detectable paper trail. Mei's latest assignment is to memorize a code that will unlock a safe containing millions of dollars. Now that she has the code in her brain, Mei becomes a sought-after person by just about every slimeball and lowlife in New York. The Russian gangsters try to steal her from the Chinese, wanting the code for themselves. Also thrown into the mix are some crooked New York cops (led by Robert John Burke), and even the corrupt Mayor (Chris Sarandon).
Luke gets involved, vowing to protect the girl from the people after her, since he pretty much has a history with everyone trying to capture and/or kill her. It's at this point that Safe pretty much stops trying to tell a story, and basically turns into one extended action sequence. Fortunately for the audience, it's an incredibly well executed action sequence. The fights in this movie are not only exciting to watch, but quite brutal. We're getting a rush from the action, but we wince at the same time, as a lot of the stuff Luke does to his enemies does look incredibly painful. The movie pulls no punches, and does a great job of cementing Statham as a true action star a lot better than most of his recent films have.
At the center of all the violence and over the top chase scenes is the relationship that builds between Luke and Mei. The movie gives us just enough reason to make us want to see them both get out of this alive, but wisely doesn't slow things down too much. This is not a character-driven film. It's driven by the stunts, and the incredibly well shot action sequences, which are edited in such a way so that we can actually tell what's going on. (A rarity with most action movies, I must sadly confess.) Still, there is some genuine emotion during the few scenes the two heroes get to share together, without having someone shooting at them. The movie feels a bit top-heavy with exposition at first, as the opening half hour is devoted solely to setting up our heroes, and their different situations. But, it does wind up working in the movie's favor, as it helps us cheer for them when they team up.
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Is that such a bad thing? Of course not. The movie works, and like I said, has a number of good laughs, though not quite as many as the previous collaborations between writer/star Jason Segel and director/co-writer Nicholas Stoller. It also gets a lot of mileage out of its lead stars, Segel and Emily Blunt, who have great chemistry together as the couple at the center of it all. They play Tom and Violet, respectively. As the film opens, they've been dating for a full year, and Tom proposes on their one-year anniversary. Everything seems to be going the couple's way at first. Tom is a chef at a successful up-scale restaurant, who seems to be on the fast track for a promotion to head chef. Violet, meanwhile, puts all of her efforts into planning the perfect wedding, all the while hoping that her dream job of working as a psychologist at a local college University will come through.
As is often in life, some unexpected bumps turn up. First, Tom's best friend, Alex (Chris Pratt), ends up marrying Violet's sister, Suzie (Alison Brie), after she becomes pregnant. Their lavish wedding ends up stealing the thunder of Tom and Violet's plans. A bigger blow for the couple rears its head when Violet gets that University job, except that it's not local - It forces the couple to not only delay their wedding plans for Violet's career, but also requires them to move out to Michigan. Tom plays the part of the supportive fiance, and goes along with the idea, even though it means leaving his success behind. When they arrive in Michigan, Violet finds her career flourishing, while Tom becomes depressed when he can't find decent work, and his life becomes increasingly meaningless and dull.
I also admired how the movie actually allows us to get to know these characters, before throwing them head-first into the plot. We get to experience Tom and Violet at their happiest, so that when things do start falling apart between them, we share their pain and want to see them work things out. Likewise, the break down of their relationship is gradual, and doesn't feel forced. There's an honesty to this couple that we don't see in a lot of other romantic comedies. It also helps that Segel and Blunt come across as a couple that we can get behind, and have a natural draw. Sure, they've acted together twice before (once in 2010's 
It's always refreshing to see a stop motion animated film on the big screen, and 
What they do have is a spirited, if not somewhat bungling, Pirate Captain (voiced by Hugh Grant), who believes in his crew 100%, even if they are frequently unsuccessful in their efforts of looting and pillaging. He sees his crew as the most loyal band that ever sailed the seven seas, and they see him as a great man, due to his bountiful beard, and the fact that he holds a "Ham Night" every week for dinner. The Captain's biggest dream is to win the coveted "Pirate of the Year" award, a prize that goes out annually to the pirate who steals the most booty. Unfortunately, the poor Captain is at a bit of a disadvantage, as he's currently the least-feared Pirate out there. Heck, his wanted poster only offers twelve doubloons (and a free pen) for his capture. Because of this, he is frequently laughed out of the running for Pirate of the Year by his more successful competition, like the stuck-up Black Bellamy (Jeremy Piven), or the sexy Cutlass Liz (Selma Hayek).
During his travels to prove his worth to earn the big prize, the Captain has a run-in with Charles Darwin (David Tennant), who is desperately seeking a girlfriend, but mainly has a monkey butler for company. The monkey can't talk, but can communicate with little signs ala the Coyote in the 
Still, that's not to say that there's nothing for kids to enjoy in 
John Cusack plays Poe, and it's a performance at war with itself. Sometimes, he wants to cut loose, eyes bulged, and screaming his lines, as if he is somehow channeling the spirit of Nicholas Cage. All too often, however, his performance is dour and serious. The Edgar Allan Poe portrayed in this movie hangs out with a pet raccoon, fights crime, and has a knack for deduction that rivals Sherlock Holmes. Why did Cusack feel the need to rope his performance in? Now that I think about it, the whole movie suffers from the same problem as the lead performance. It's constantly at war with itself. It wants to be grisly and violent, but it is never shocking enough. It wants to be a tense mystery thriller, but it is not smart enough. At times, it seems to be trying to have fun with itself, but then it goes right back to taking itself far too seriously. This is a movie suffering from a major identity crisis.
So, there's a mysterious masked killer kidnapping people, and killing them off in elaborate traps and set ups based on Poe's stories, such as 
The ad campaign for 
What it all boils down to is that this is a generic serial killer movie dressed up in slightly fancier garb. The use of Poe as a main character, and the references in both the plot and the dialogue to his classic stories gives the movie an interesting hook, but when it's all over, we really just have the kind of "hunt down a madman" thriller that we have seen one too many times. Some movies know how to overcome this burden, but 
In a way, this is both a blessing and a curse. I'm sure this approach is certainly more kid friendly, and helps the smaller members of the audience identify with with the animals up on the screen. On the other hand, it cheapens what could have been a much more powerful documentary. 
What we get in 
Pretty much all the rough edges and harsh realities of living in a dangerous and predator-filled rain forest have been sanded away, so that the story of little Oscar can follow a fairly predictable Disney formula of an orphaned youth overcoming the odds. In a day and age where kids can turn on Animal Planet, and see much harsher (and accurate) documentaries of animal life, this seems more than a little cloying. Still, there's no denying that directors Alastair Fothergill and Mark Linfield have captured some stunning nature scenery, as well as gotten us closer to a chimp's society than we could have ever dreamed. In fact, the best part of the movie is the end credits, and I mean that without a hint of irony. That's when we get to see some behind the scenes footage of how the filmmakers got some of these shots, and the hardships they had to go through, such as getting stung by bees.
Outside of the up close and intimate look at the chimps themselves, we also get some wonderful shots of the world around them, including time lapse photography of vines crawling up a tree, or a spider spinning its web. This kind of stuff is worth the price of admission alone, and is probably why I preferred the earlier DisneyNature films, which was mainly about the world around us. Without the anthropomorphized animals and the Tim Allen narration, this probably could have been stunning. Still, even with the filmmakers' constant manipulations, the chimps themselves do make a fascinating subject matter, and their expressive faces tell their story better than the narrator ever possibly could.
Our hero is Logan, a Marine fighting overseas as the film begins, and played with wooden indifference by Zac Efron. There's nothing particularly interesting about Logan to begin with. He's handsome, he's noble, he works hard, and that's about it when it comes to his personality. Despite this, Efron could have shown a bit more life in his performance. After a particularly intense battle, Logan spots a photo of a woman lying in the rubble of the battlefield. Lucky thing he found and walked over to that photo, as moments later, a bomb drops where he was standing just seconds ago, killing his comrades. Logan finishes his tour, but is obsessed with discovering who the woman in the picture is, and who it belongs (or belonged) to. He returns home briefly to Colorado to live with family for a while, but when he can't readjust to civilian life, he packs his bags and, with his faithful dog Zeus by his side, decides to walk cross country to search out who the mysterious woman in the photo is.
His travels take him all the way to North Carolina, which is quite an amazing feat to walk all that distance. What's even more amazing is how Logan managed not to get dirty, or even mess up or grow out his hair during those many long months of walking. He arrives at a farmhouse/dog kennel, where it just so happens that the woman in the photo lives and works there. She's Beth (Taylor Schilling), who works at the kennel, is a single mother to her seven-year-old son, Ben (Riley Thomas Stewart), and shares the home with her mother (Blythe Danner, who gives the most interesting performance in the film). Logan means to tell Beth about the photo he found that day, but he just can't bring himself to mention it. Part of this is because of Logan having issues with his own past as a soldier, and part of this is for plot convenience, so that the movie can drag out his secret as long as it can, until it is dramatically appropriate. He takes a job at the kennel, and becomes a natural taking care of the many dogs.
He also starts building a bond with both Beth and her young son. She starts sharing her private hopes and dreams with him, and little Ben starts taking him to the old tree house where he hangs out, which is accessible only by crossing a rickety old bridge over a raging river. As soon as I saw that broken down old bridge, I knew it would collapse at one point - most likely during the intense climax, and during a storm. Sure enough, as the climax approached, those storm clouds started rolling in, and all the central characters started heading for that bridge. Logan also gets to meet Beth's ex-husband, Keith (Jay R. Ferguson), who serves as the town Sheriff as well as the town bully. He's a one dimensional villain who exists solely to push Logan and Beth around, and threaten to take Ben away from them. As a villain, he couldn't be any less subtle if he was wearing a T-shirt at all times that had the words "HI! I'M A SLIMEBALL!" written on it.
So yeah, 
As the film opens, the women are lonely and largely unsuccessful in love. But then, that magical book by Mr. Steve Harvey just happens to drop right out of the sky, and gives them all the answers on how to "think like a man". This threatens to turn the tide in the battle of the sexes, as the men fear that the book is giving away all their secrets, so they decide to use the book against the women in their own relationships. Amongst the multiple plots, we have long-suffering Kristen (Gabrielle Union) wanting her boyfriend since college, Jeremy (Jerry Ferrara) to grow up, and move beyond the video games and cartoons he's obsessed with. Next up, single mom Candace (Regina Hall) falls for "mama's boy" Michael (Terrence J), who is forced to decide whether or not their relationship is more important than the one he has with his doting and over-bearing mother. A successful business woman named Lauren (Taraji P. Henson) falls for a wannabe chef named Dominic (Michael Ealy), and must decide if she can love him, even if he only brings home a tiny paycheck. Finally, Mya (Meagan Good) uses the book's advice on how to win over her lady-killer lover, Zeke (Romany Malco).
Like I said, nothing groundbreaking, and we can predict the happy endings almost as soon as the characters are introduced. But hey, at least the movie acknowledges its own stereotypes, by giving the guys simplistic labels such as "the dreamer", "the happily married guy", "the happily divorced guy", and "the player". Another plus, the movie has been cast very well. These are talented actors who know how to flesh out these simplistic characters. And while they don't exactly make them seem three dimensional, they do come across as very likable, and sometimes funny. Director Tim Story (
The movie does make a few missteps along the way, however. Most notably is the inclusion of Cedric (Kevin Hart), the "happily divorced man" I mentioned earlier. He doesn't really play a role in any of the stories, or the movie itself, and seems to have been shoehorned in to serve as a motor-mouthed comic observer and sometimes-narrator. He constantly stands on the outside of the action, and his sense of humor quickly grated on me. Fortunately, he's not an ever-present problem. There's another member of the guy group ("the happily married guy") who could have been removed from the movie completely without any problem. He plays no role in any of the plots, and the movie never focuses on his character or his relationship (we don't even get to see his wife). He exists simply as a talking head whenever the guys get together to talk about life, and never makes an impression of any sort.
The doctors run some tests on Hannah, and come to the conclusion that her collapse was the result of epilepsy, which she has suffered from childhood. Hannah spent a lot of time in hospitals when she was very young, but doesn't have a lot of memories. It's at that point that her father (John Schneider from TV's 
It turns out that Jason and some of his college friends are taking a road trip to New Orleans for Spring Break. He offers to drive her to Mobile, AL, which is where her birth mother supposedly lives. Jason is a handsome, supportive, and all around nice guy, so of course, there's no way that Hannah and him will be more than "best friends" by the time the movie's over. I mean, Jason's dating an icy blonde girl, who constantly glares at Hannah, and seems to enjoy bringing her down and being angry at her every possible moment, even though the movie never really paints a clear picture as to the source of the hostility. There's no way that Jason will finally realize that Hannah is the better choice, and dump the mean girl by the end of the movie, so just put all those thoughts out of your mind.
The road trip sequence, as the group of kids make their way to Mobile, is a particularly tedious experience. We meet Jason's friends, none of whom seem to belong in this movie. They belong in a particularly dumb and unfunny teen comedy. They're supposed to add comic relief, but instead add absolutely nothing. The screenplay seems to understand this, fortunately, for Hannah ditches the group as soon as possible to go to Mobile alone, and they're pretty much forgotten for the rest of the movie. Jason leaves his friends behind as well, and accompanies her on her search for her birth mother. Up to this point, 
Let's see, shortly after arriving in Mobile, Hannah tracks down the hospital where her birth mother tried to abort her, and finds that it's an abandoned old building. For some reason, she decides to break into the building. Why she thinks she'd be able to find any answers inside of a building that hasn't been used in years is beyond me. Both Hannah and Jason are arrested by the police for breaking into the building. While Hannah is being questioned, she tells her story to the officer, and wouldn't you know it, he just happens to know the nurse who's name is on her birth certificate! She uses the cop's information to track down the nurse in question, who is played by Jasmine Guy, in a particularly good and heart-tugging performance. Not only does the nurse have all the answers to Hannah's mysterious past, but she also just happens to have all the information she needs to find her birth mother, including the mother's business card with address and phone number just lying around her apartment. This allows Hannah to drop in on the mother she never knew, in a scene that should be powerful, but is really underwhelming and underwritten.
The implausibility of 
I was also disappointed with how the movie seemed to be preaching to the choir, so to speak. It pretty much assumes that its audience shares the exact same views that it does, so it doesn't bother to raise any of the obvious tricky questions or issues that its subject matter brings up. There's no room for a second opinion, it simply plows on ahead, and thinks we're with it all the way. Whatever your views on abortion is, this could have been a very powerful film if it didn't play things so safe, and tried to look at things from both sides. Unfortunately, we don't really get to hear from Hannah's birth mother. She has maybe three or four lines in the entire film, none of which give her a chance to explain her views.
