Scraping the bottom of the trench.

Jason Statham gets ONE semi-hearted jutsu scene at the beginning of MEG 2: THE TRENCH, then it’s just a dumb fish movie from there…

If you want a shark movie that’s stupid, try SHARKNADO. For a shark movie that’s boring, try THE MEG. If you want a shark movie that’s boring AND stupid, then MEG 2: THE TRENCH is your afternoon nappy time.

Jason Statham returns as conservationist Jonas Taylor, working with a team of undersea biologists led by Mac (Cliff Curtis). Gone are the principals from the last film – the lead scientist (Zhang) and Jonas’s love interest (Suyin) – unremorsefully written out of this script as dead… But the Chinese funding and Chinese market remain, so Jonas has informally adopted Suyin’s daughter, the young Chinese girl Meiying (Shuya Sophia Cai, who contributes nothing to this story), and lo, we have her Chinese uncle here, Jiuming (Jing Wu), as the lead scientist who owns a pet meg that he controls with a clicker. (Chekov’s Gun has entered the chat.)

And the finale takes place at a Chinese resort called – no kidding – Fun Island. When you provide the funding, you tell the filmmakers any old stupid name to call your locations, and they’ll say “Yes sir. May I have another?” Who says China doesn’t own America?

Opening sequence shows a megalodon rising out of the ocean to munch a tyrannosaur at the water’s edge – nice visuals, but total non-sense. As with the last movie, atmospheric pressure at gargantuan depths is given short shrift. No animal from 25,000 feet below sea level can simply rise to the surface and remain intact. Conversely, no surface dweller can descend to the depth of 25,000 feet unprotected and remain uncrushed. And I won’t even mention the simple physics impossibility of the meg jumping out of shallow beach water like the poster of JAWS.

Okay, I know it’s “just a movie” – but the movie itself keeps alluding to pressure (“Won’t he be crushed by the pressure?”), then simply takes the stupid way out (“Not if he blows out his sinuses”). And the filmmakers know what they’re doing, with the sly wink needle drop, Under Pressure. Now they’re just mocking us.

MEG 2 might be about fighting megalodons, but in the first act, you’ll be fighting sleep, as this slow-moving film talks its way out of not having the original principals, then foreshadows a mech suit that can smash rocks (which is never utilized to fight sharks), then shows us a meg taking orders from a beeper – honestly, we have zero investment in whether these dull, uninvolving characters get eaten or not.

Jason Statham’s opening scene is some welcome TRANSPORTER shit – fighting his way off a renegade ship dumping waste – but for the rest of the movie, he seems ill at ease just walking around speaking in that hybrid accent that he can’t quite do.

Mac’s mission is to send his crew below the thermocline to get eaten while doing no science. (I know, right? I thought, that can’t be the mission, and then writers Jon Hoeber, Erich Hoeber, and Dean Georgaris write exactly that.)

In the previous movie, they described the thermocline correctly as the barrier of freezing water under which life finds it almost impossible to exist; below that barrier, there was the supposed Mariana Trench floor, represented as a nitrogen mist from a 1970’s Alice Cooper concert. Below that “mist” was another world of WARM water where life (and megalodons) thrived. No such nuance here. Now the thermocline IS the mist barrier. Because if you’ve seen THE MEG and are stupid enough to pay for this movie, the filmmakers know you must be pretty darn stupid. Hence, stupider movie for stupider folks.

The team, led by Jonas, use their mech suits to interminably trudge across the sea floor to escape their damaged sub – a title card tells us they are at The Trench, depth: 25,000 feet. The mechs are only exoskeletons, their bodies are mostly covered by wetsuits, basically exposed to the bone-crushing pressure at this depth. (At 15,000 feet (4.6 kilometers) pressure is about 455 times the atmospheric pressure at sea level. Do the math on their frail skeletons.) One guy gets a lamprey on his face and screams like a girl, rather than utilizing the supposed power of the mech suit. Then he gets beheaded by an octopus; small dinosaurian lizards with no gills attack them; megs chase them. Of what use are those super suits and their guns if the filmmakers ignore all their powers?! Except for Jason Statham, of course, who can somehow employ the same punchaboo power at 27 atmospheres as he can at the surface, with his Sweet British Right Hook.

Three megalodons chase our heroes into an undersea station. Then begin to eat the station. Why? Are the sharks dismantling the station with their teeth for a science project or something? Chomping on the metal is not satiating their digestive systems, and it’s not garnering mates – so what is the purpose of these sea creatures expending that much energy trying to eat stanchions and pipes?

Director of no note, Ben Wheatley’s lack of clout probably contributed to lots of studio interference with this summer blockbuster. Don’t know how his agent swung the gig, but I’m sure the overall lack of quality can’t be attributed to him alone: all the banal dialogue, annoying people doing stupid things in contrived action sequences that have no purpose, sudden bursts of CGI action not to fit the story but to keep people awake, ridiculous cartoonish sequences (Jonas on a jet ski battling three megalodons), with such bad jokes and badly-acted punchlines, it’s like a script written by a kindergartener.

Page Kennedy is inexplicably still on the crew; his emotionless lines could have been given to any number of other extras trying to earn their SAG cards. Sergio Peris-Mencheta is the bad guy in the deep-sea outlaw lab, who looks like a Peruvian Josh Brolin. There are two women who look exactly alike – Melissanthi Mahut and Whoopie Van Raam; when one of their helmets explodes, and then we see her alive, we have to wonder at the confusing casting choices.

The three megs (and a giant octopus and the tiny dinos) follow our heroes to the SURFACE and cause special effects mayhem at Fun Island – without any consternation to their innards.

And Jonas jet-skis around the three megs trying to kill them with three explosives… but all he has to do is explode one shark, and the other two will feed off it, then leave Fun Island alone. Nope. Jonas destroys one, and instead of having a shark sandwich, the other two ignore it and chase him. Meanwhile Peruvian Brolin and his cartoon henchmen continue trying to shoot our heroes and kill them – up until the point our heroes are actually standing in front of them with their hands up. Then they won’t shoot at all.

Jiuming’s pet meg turns up. Maybe it responds to his clicker now, by not eating him? Or maybe it turned at the last moment to go after some dolphins? We stopped giving a fuck a long time ago.

What is most disappointing about MEG 2: THE TRENCH, is that in the final telling, the size of the sharks doesn’t matter in the least. It’s just an initial jolt, then the amazement wears thin almost immediately. And Jonas hunts them as if they are normal-sized predators, hitting them, throwing explosives at them, kicking them…

If the sharks think they are going to defeat the superhuman Jonas in another sequel… they’re going to need a bigger meg.

END

MMA (Mixed Martial Arts) vs. MMA (Massive Marine Animal).

Marine biologists unwittingly unleash a prehistoric Megalodon shark from under the Mariana Trench, and only one thing can stop it – Mixed Martial Arts. Well, not really – this movie is not the finesse of opening a bottle-cap with a spinning side-kick, it’s much more big and blunt.

In the stupid but fun THE MEG, our boy Jason Statham can’t really bring his jutsu disciplines to bear on this aquatic titan, so must float around doing other heroic things instead, like pinning a bell on it like Sylvester, piloting a submersible around it like James Cameron, and being snide towards it like Martin Brody.

Marine biologist Zhang (Winston Chao) believes the Mariana Trench “floor” (the deepest point on Earth) is nothing but a layer of mist, like a 70’s Alice Cooper concert, and the submersible he sends to explore it just dives right through, proving him right! Three supposed scientists onboard (I call them “supposed” because they giggle like grade schoolers at the word “insertion” [into the lower layer] – thank you, American “humor”) get stuck just below Alice Cooper’s dry ice. And something BIG attacks them…

Zhang can’t be that desperate to rescue them, because instead of sending down a rescue team, he takes a chopper with his fellow biologist Mac (Cliff Curtis) to go find the One Man Who Can Do The Job, rescue diver Jonas Taylor (Statham – why not just name him Jonah and get the biblical whale analogy over and done with?). Jonas had once been attacked by a giant mysterious sea creature in a deep Philippine trench, so apparently he’s now an expert on giant mysterious sea creatures.

This scene is the exact point the movie gets idiotic: instead of Zhang and Mac actively searching for Jonas on his tropical isle, they just hang out in his room (what if he’s out with a drunken ho? Do their trapped divers run out of air while Jonas gets his rocks off?). When Jonas arrives, drunk and disorderly, bantering about how they could never get him to deep dive again, they don’t open with the news of the trapped divers (one of whom is Jonas’s ex-wife – Jessica McNamee, looking like Adrianne Palicki) – instead, no less than 20 lines of dialogue go by before Mac reads the headline.

The filmmakers (screenwriters Dean Georgaris, Jon Hoeber and Erich Hoeber, and director Jon Turtletaub, NATIONAL TREASURE) are so intent on making Jonas a Flippant Hollywood Hero Trope that they throw all credibility out with their integrity. It’s no surprise to learn that THE MEG was in development hell since the story was bought in 1997 (from novelist Steve Alten, The Meg, Doubleday 1997). I’m guessing the producers were waiting for the stupidest script they could find that didn’t follow Alten’s story, which would appeal to the widest demographic of idiots. They found it.

As soon as I hear Jason Statham’s accent in a movie, I can tell what kind of movie it’s gonna be. For example: if he’s a hardcore Brit, it’s quality street. If he’s being forced to do one of his hybrid American-IndoEuro accents that he can’t quite pull off – like here – then it’s one of his “stupid” movies; the level of stupid depends on how much dialogue he has.

Big Chinese presence (well, we know where the main investors are from), with Zhang, his daughter Suyin (Bingbing Li) and granddaughter Meiying. And the megalodon eating its way through a Chinese beach. There’s also a Chinese dog named Pippin (named after the poor dog from the original JAWS – proving these filmmakers know their heritage). And the leading man is meant to be attracted to the leading Chinese lady. I say “meant to be” because the filmmakers set up an ongoing flirtation between Suyin and Jonas (from the point she sees him with no shirt on), that lacks any chemistry, with no callbacks to their in-gags, no slomo conjugation, not even a meaningful look into each others’ eyes, just an uninvolving watery subplot that dries up (didja see what I did there?). Other scientists include Ruby Rose, Ólafur Darri Ólafsson, Robert Taylor, Rainn Wilson as an investor, and Page Kennedy – a black guy who is not the first to die, but contributes so much zero personality and bad acting to the movie that he should have been.

Even though we’ve grown inured to big fish effects, after JURASSIC WORLD’s mosasaur, we can still appreciate the excellent giant shark effects here. Due to the mosasaur being oversized, we might shrug and consider the meg “not that big,” but it is represented as its reported fossil size of about 65-70 feet.

THE MEG likes to think it is lauding scientists and being scientific. Of course, the one thing the movie lacks is – ACTUAL SCIENCE. The reason a gargantuan animal from the deep cannot rise to terrorize us surface dwellers is because of the physics of water pressure. Mac even tells Jonas not to descend too fast in the sub due to depth compression; they even show Jonas trying to blow out his ears to equalize the inward pressure as he submerges too fast – in this same movie that is acknowledging the massive pressurization at the ocean’s depths, they have a sea creature from those depths rise up to the surface without any decompression ramifications.

The blobfish aka Psychrolutes phrictus aka sculpin. The horrors of being suddenly depressurized. Apply to giant shark. Totally different movie.

A deep-sea creature ascending to the surface from 2 miles below would blow up from the inside, at the least making all its expanded organs dysfunctional. It’s why the poor “blobfish” looks the unfortunate way it does. Us surface dwellers haul it up from its livable environment, where the pressure is up to 120 times higher than at the surface, then laugh at it being bloated due to depressurization. Imagine if the blobfish dragged you uncharitable pricks down to 2000 meters, and then laughed at your intestines being squeezed out through your rectum.

The rationale in the novel, on how the meg survived the ascent, would still have to magic against the physics of atmospheric pressure. Even in this movie, the “scientists” make a big deal about the thermocline, the barrier of freezing cold water under the relatively warmer ocean layer, where little to no life can exist; they mention this to accentuate that under this thermocline and Alice Cooper’s bottom layer of mist, there is warm water where life proliferates. Their cockamamy reason the meg escaped the depths is because a pocket of warm water broke through the thermocline like a tunnel to the surface– okay, but that still doesn’t explain the PRESSURE DIFFERENCE. Which means it’s no reason at all, and this shark should’ve turned back as soon as it reached a height where it felt its stomach turning inside out, instead of joyously dining off the China coast. (Taiwan and The Philippines are closer but it needed to get to China because – investors.)

But I guess everyone likes going out to eat Chinese.

END

Better Dead Than RED 2.

A bunch of stunts and car chases got together and called itself RED 2.

It convinced Bruce Willis and John Malkovich to reprise their roles as Frank Moses and Marvin, ex-CIA Retired-Extremely-Dangerous overactors, “indicating” their way through this spy comedy. Movie also convinced Helen Mirren to reprise her role as the most dangerous wetwork queen bitch, given a contract to kill Bruce and Malko, her best pals. Bryan Cox returns, lusting after Helen. And Mary Louise-Parker returns as Bruce’s delicate civilian love interest, so that I may lust after her.

There’s also a plot of a WMD about to be loosed on the world, so Frank and Marvin must find the eccentric professor who built it (for reason unknown). You lost me at why anyone cares about or listens to these old queens if they’re off the grid and about to be whacked. And who is the professor? Well, whenever a character in one of these ensemble movies is introduced by first seeing the back of his head, it’s always a case of speculating on which A-lister was conned into taking a cut in pay to be in this ensemble cast. Turns out the professor is Anthony Hopkins, conned into taking a cut in pay, so therefore, acting while giving only half a rat’s ass.

Forever pursuing Frank Moses – Neal McDonough as a CIA spook, who gives way too much of a rat’s ass. I mean, can you just leave these retired people alone for a second, CIA muttonhead? Maybe you’ll discern that killing them will accomplish nothing. And maybe you’ll keep all the bones in your hands and legs intact.

Catherine Zeta-Jones turns up, Russian spy, kisses Bruce in front of Louise-Parker. Now L-P jealous, but not enough to make it interesting. L-P, so hot and sensual, empathetic, caring, using the weapons she knows best in combat – breaking people by kissing them instead of shooting them. Now she make Bruce jealous. But not enough to make it interesting.

Apparently, it’s funny cos they’re old…

Who is responsible for this garbled mess? Director Dean Parisot (from the enjoyable GALAXY QUEST to the mediocre FUN WITH DICK AND JANE 2005); but more than the director’s fault – the editor, Don Zimmerman. It seems amazing that Zimmerman worked on those same two movies, as well as other A-List titles that never exhibited the haphazard piecemeal approach he effects with RED 2. Shots appear at random after the scene is over, reaction shots that go nowhere, mean nothing; further shots after the button has been pushed on a scene; a hodgepodge of meaningless angles after the point of the scene has been made, etc. After his body of good work, Zimmerman seems like he’s getting too old for this shit, as in apathetic. He could take a few lessons from the editor of CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE WINTER SOLDIER. Or maybe from a 7-year-old.

David Thewlis is a French spy called The Frog (and no one sees this as racist because…? American movie?); and Byung-hun Lee is the agency’s premier assassin who somehow can’t kill Frank Moses because – I don’t even care anymore.

One of the stupidest lines: Frank yells to Marvin during a gun battle, to take Frank’s girlfriend to safety, “Get her outa here!” To which Marvin asks, “When?” Frank’s yelled reply, “Now!” When someone says get her outa here during a gun battle, doesn’t it imply NOW? What did Marvin expect the answer to be: “In ten minutes”? Who wrote this redundant piece of idiot dialogue? Turns out, the same two guys who wrote the first movie. Now they’ve figured out how to phone in scripts.

Y’know, movies like RED 2 are the reason why Liam Neeson quietly usurped the Action Hero crown from Bruce Willis. It’s not so much that the movies themselves are bad, but that Willis is also bad in them, forcing his comedic shtick like amateur hour.

Eventually we just get sick of this many idiots firing automatic weapons and hitting this much nothing. Especially when their target – our heroes – are right in front of them and they don’t shoot AT them but fire warning shots into the air, and then AFTER the hero takes cover do they start shooting AT the hero’s location in earnest…. My head’s about to explode with how many times the bad guys have the drop on our heroes and DON’T shoot them.

Don’t make the same mistake with RED 2, Movie Maniac. When you see this movie – shoot to kill.

END

Red-Blooded American Funtime.

A shoot-em-up, rock-em sock-em age-fest.

RED is Bruce Willis, John Malkovich, Helen Mirren and Morgan Freeman; they’re ex-CIA, Retired Extremely Dangerous. You betcha – each of these operatives could wipe out whole cities: Willis with his arctic cool, Malko with his leering morbidity, Helen Mirren with her sexagenarian sexiness and Morgan Freeman with his pompous voiceover.

The four principals have more years between them than all the stars of HIGH SCHOOL MUSICAL combined. Ironically, watching HIGH SCHOOL MUSICAL can kill you faster than any RED.

From a DC Comics graphic novel (by Warren Ellis and Cully Hamner), RED follows Frank Moses (Willis) as he evades CIA operatives sent to kill him, led by Cooper (Karl Urban). It’s easy to evade bad guys in movies who still can’t aim after all those years of CIA training. Yes, it’s the yawn plot device of CIA trying to kill its own ex-operatives. Frank recruits his old team mates to get to the bottom of why. (Why? Because it’s the CIA, stupid! That’s what they do.)

Cooper culls Frank’s file from curmudgeonly CIA analyst, Ernest Borgnine (that guy’s still alive?!).

Poffy goes RED

Beautiful Mary-Louise Parker is Sarah, a cubicled government accountant who dwells romantically on her spy novels, merely a phone flirtation for Frank, until he inadvertently pulls her into the chase and she finds herself on the lam with an All-American Hero more virile than any Fabio-based cover model. Her wonderment, amusement and sensual excitement are pitch-perfect, with just that right dash of spinner cuteness. Positively glowing.Brian Cox is The Russian Guy. Was Rade Sherbedgia busy? In forbidden love with Helen Mirren. (Who isn’t in forbidden love with Helen Mirren?..)

Suddenly – Richard Dreyfuss! He’s a slimy weapons contractor (cough–Halliburton) who uses the CIA as his personal hit squad, under orders from the vice president — oh, so this is culled directly from the desk of the real-life Dick Cheney (Dreyfuss played that low swine in W.); here, the VP is Julian McMahon (appropriately, Dr. Doom from FANTASTIC FOUR, and the real-life son to a former Australian Prime Minister, William McMahon).

RED is solid action-comedy that doesn’t take itself too seriously, yet seriously commits to delivering cheeky China White straight-to-the-vein outlandish bombast. Just how drunk was the stunt coordinator who thought up the eye-popping gag of Willis stepping from a spinning car, guns aimed and blazing? And how uber cool (and sexually arousing) is Helen Mirren pumping an automatic machine gun or Bruce Willis in hand-to-hand combat beating up on some guy half his age?

Of course, the mindless action would be immaterial were it not punctuated by the personalities of the principals; Willis, Malkovich, Mirren and Freeman armed not only with guns that never run out of ammo, but a dry, deadly wit that only comes with the accumulation of years that these red-blooded wolves have spent howling at the moon.

END