Conan the Barbarian

Foreword: I will consciously avoid comparing Conan to its 1982 predacessor in this review. I have seen a few reviews complain about how this movie isn't like the Schwarzenegger picture (ignoring that both of them are loosely based on Robert E. Howard novels), but I think each movie is a product of the contemporary Hollywood culture surrounding it. The question with this newer one shouldn't be "is it better than the old one?", but rather "is it worth seeing?"

Conan is a torn movie. It can't quite decide if it wants to be a dark fantasy revenge flick about a barbarian who is hellbent on taking bloody vengeance to the murderers of his father one by one, or a sword-and-sorcerery quest movie about a barbarian teamed up with a nun trying to save the world from an evil overlord. I'm probably wrong about this, but I feel that the latter element was forced into the script by executives who realised that the teens who made Pirates of the Caribbean big are now young adults. The result is a film that dares to take more chances than Sherlock Holmes did, but ends up being just a tad too formulaic and conventional toward the end to be really ground-breaking or memorable in the long term.

You know that age-old cliché about the rough, manly action hero who has to escort a snarky princess or other higher-class girl, and ends up falling in love with her despite the fact that she spends half her time telling him what to do and the other half bitching? Well, when the aforementioned nun is introduced into the plot and starts complaning to Conan about how important it is to put her safety above his goals, he tells her to shut up and stuffs a rag in her mouth. In Conan, the "princess" has to learn to take on the ways of the man, instead of the other way around, which is one of the chief examples of it not being another cookie-cutter adventure movie. It's a shame that near the end of the movie, the subplot goes way too near to chivalric save-the-damsel territories for my liking.

The action is a mixed bag. Early in the movie, the outdoors battles are well shot and coreographed, but all the action indoors is made up of jumbled, quick edits and confusing camera angles. Later, the action settles somewhere in the middle, though the swordfighting remains very well acted throughout. There's a big action scene right before the action climax which I think was really annoying and unentertaining. It was like the scriptwriters were told to add in something that'll make a cool boss fight in the video game adaptation. Luckily, it was made up by the real emotion that the final confrontation has.

The look Conan should have had.

And that leads us to acting. Let me tell you something: Jason Momoa freaking owns this movie. From the trailers, I was afraid he'd just look weirdly girly and spin around with his sword like a ballerina for the whole movie, but I was proven 100% wrong. Momoa doesn't just do a good job: he sells the role, and the whole movie. I never got the feeling of acting from him. The only time he loses his credibility at all is when he's doing "love scenes", but luckily those are few and far between. Ron Perlman as Conan's father is good enough, but I know he could do better. He looks oddly confused most of the time, like he wasn't quite sure what he was doing. Stephen Lang as the main villain is pretty basic, but he manages to be menacing and gives the simplistic character a good shot.

This is another one of those movies where Finland doesn't get a 2D showing. Not only is the 3D in Conan pointless, but the movie has those dark scenes where it's hard to tell what's happening due to the 3D, and in one sweeping shot of a city, both me and my brother noticed the buildings moving at different paces, looking like cardboard cutouts being moved poorly across the screen. I'm tired of having to write a paragraph saying: "the 3D is pointless, see it in 2D", but that's the sad truth again. I have nothing against 3D, but I wish I was at least given a choice to spare my money and not have to get it.

With that out of my system, the sum-up: I recommend this one, I really do. At points it may feel a bit too much like a remake of The Scorpion King, but it's got its heart at the right place, and it's not entirely without balls. The sets and costumes are great, as should be expected from any movie that tries to sell its world to you this bad. It's fun, pure and simple.

It's just a shame that they wrecked the Phantom's hideout. Where will the Ghost Who Walks stay now?

Captain America: The First Avenger

"I've knocked out Hitler two hundred times."

I can't believe it took a month for this movie to come out in Finland after its so-called "world premiere". I don't mind the cold weather or high taxes here, but the movie release dates suck. At least this didn't take as long as the Disney movies do...

Captain America: The First Avenger is the fifth installment of the Marvel Movieverse, but takes place before any of the others. Aside from framing scenes at the beginning and end, the movie details the history of the eponymous superhero during the early 1940s. Steve Rogers (played by Chris Evans) is a frail but idealistic Brooklynite youngster who is denied recruitment to the U.S. army time and time again due to his asthma. During one of his attempts at recruiting he is overheard by Dr. Erskine, the leader of a supersoldier program. Rogers is recruited to become the prototype of a new generation of soldiers, but ends up being the only one of the bunch.

Stuck with a single supersoldier with no combat experience, the army decides to do what any sensible organisation would. They make him a mascot for their propaganda machine. Rogers in discontent with dancing and singing, though, and strives to get to real heroics. Meanwhile a grim Nazi mystic named Johann Schmidt, or Red Skull (played by Hugo Weaving), who has a connection with Rogers, uncovers an object you might have seen in Marvel's earlier summer release and uses it for his own ends.

Now let's get something out of the way: I personally have almost no patience for nationalism in movies, and even less so for Yank nationalism. It should be an indicator of something when I say that this movie never made me groan or roll my eyes. Braveheart was more overbearingly American than Captain America is, and Braveheart was supposed to take place in freaking Scotland. So to my fellow Europeans or what have we, I implore you: give this movie a chance. It never tells us the importance of liberty and freedom and the apple pie. It's written for everyone, not just for Yanks.

With that said, I liked this movie. It wasn't perfect, but it was probably my favourite superhero movie thus far. Like with Thor, the structure of the plot is its weakest component. The time in between Cap's first mission and the final battle is too short. The movie could have been ten minutes longer, with the time used to either add in some slightly more subtle action or a scene with Rogers visiting his neighbourhood and reminiscing about old times or something. As it is, the movie's speed keeps picking up after the superpower injection, and it suffers from not slowing down enough before the third act

The performances are good more often than not. Chris Evans manages to be idealistic and righteous without being arrogant or holier-than-thou, and he emotes really well. I'm not sure (and am too lazy to check) how they accomplished the differences between his appearance before and after the injections, but whatever the effect, it's really convincing. I kinda wanted him to pull out a skateboard at some point, though. Hugo Weaving could be a bit hammier for increased enjoyability, but I think it would have just turned Red Skull into Agent Smith, which would have been distracting. Hayley Atwell plays the British love interest well enough, though I found the character a bit bland. Tommy Lee Jones does his usual thing as Colonel Totally-Not-Patton, finally redeeming himself for agreeing to do Men In Black 2. Dominic Cooper tries to measure up to Robert Downey Jr. as Howard Stark, but he's kind of forgettable.

The action is great, and there's a wide variety of it. We get sneaking around, fist fights, shield-throwing, gunfights and chase scenes. Some of the bigger action scenes are a bit confusingly written, though, such as a scene where the bad guys' lair isn't in alert while the good guys are swarming around and blowing shit up until Red Skull himself notices it, or when the allied army forsakes all contemporary military tactics and does a WW1-style charge toward the enemy.

I recommend Cap to anyone who likes superhero films or action films. It's a movie about the little guy getting a chance to do big heroics, and despite the name and the setting, it's applicable to all nationalities (yes, even Germans). If you've never seen or read Captain America before, then this is a great way to introduce yourself to him. Don't miss the film.