Martin Campbell
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The girl, Beatriz (Mia Sanchez), was a child-trafficking victim, and a dogged FBI agent, Vincent Serra (Guy Pearce, who himself starred in Memento 22 years ago, a film to which Memory occasionally nods), is hoping she will be the witness to help him take down a massive human-trafficking operation.
Pearce, who late in the film explains why he is so protective of Beatriz, is surly throughout, perhaps recalling that he was the star of a much better movie about impaired memory, Christopher Nolan’s 2000 “Memento.”
Pearce’s very presence in a memory-loss thriller is a nod to “Memento.”
Many will surely recall his starring role in Memento (2000) and notice the similarities.
You may recall that Pearce made his professional breakthrough as the lead in Christopher Nolan’s “Memento” (2000).
Alex writes instructions on his left arm so that he won’t forget his assignments (and see also Pearce’s performance in “Memento” (2000)), but his recall issues show themselves for perhaps, ten percent of Alex’s on-screen minutes.
No Time to Die (2021)
Directed by Cary Joji Fukunaga
influenced by Casino Royale (2006), GoldenEye (1995)
Themes
As such, it pointedly references and reprises the first Craig film, 2006’s “Casino Royale.”
While the heavy existentialism bogged down Quantum of Solace and Spectre , its employment in Casino Royale and series apex Skyfall feel fresh and inspired.
This is how long Daniel Craig has played James Bond: when Casino Royale was released in theaters, Billie Eilish, who co-wrote and performs the “No Time to Die” theme song, was 5 years old.
But even TV doesn’t work like that anymore, so the movie keeps calling back to Spectre , Skyfall , and the 15-year-old Casino Royale —although the references often feel less like the product of cumulative character-building and more like enticements to stream MGM’s back catalog.
What started with the excellent franchise-launching Casino Royale, slipped with the decent but definitely underrated Quantum of Solace.
Of chief interest here are the themes – of love, loss and trust – that have been brewing since Craig’s first outing in Casino Royale and the death of then lover Vesper Lynd.
This is, in many ways, a deliberate departure from 2011's Green Lantern movie. Not that you'll be thinking about the Ryan Reynolds bomb here.
The big question remains if Lanterns will satisfy comic book fans hoping for a Green Lantern series that will make Ryan Reynolds’ 2011 film a very distant memory.
Don’t expect to see Hal Jordan in full Green Lantern regalia very often this season. Not only is the character over dressing for the job he wants, but “Lanterns” is running in the opposite direction of the “Green Lantern” movie, which flopped commercially and critically. Part of the reproach stemmed from an over-reliance on cartoonish CGI effects, including a suit with pulsing green veins and an awkward digital mask. The suit may be canon in the comic books, but “Lanterns” needs to distinguish itself from its most recent onscreen iteration, and ditching the costume for traditional human duds is part of the brand makeover.
And yet, Green Lantern has proven to be one of the hardest nuts to crack in live-action with 2011’s disastrous feature film turning the Green Lantern Corps. into a universal laughing stock.
That said, Lanterns’ atypical structure suggests the series’ creators understands their source material way better than Ryan Reynolds’ Green Lantern did. (To be fair, it would be tough for them to understand it worse than Ryan Reynolds’ Green Lantern.)
Ryan Reynolds' feelings about 2011's "Green Lantern" are well known at this point.
Most of what Green Lantern borrows from is the original Superman film starring Christopher Reeve.
Director Martin Campbell is not shy about making reference back to Donner’s Superman, with a bit of Lester in there.
Star Wars (1977)
Directed by George Lucas
influenced Green Lantern (2011), Casino Royale (2006)
Plot
I imagine the ultimate effect of it to be that of a new Star Wars film directed by someone with a working frontal lobe--that is, the bar has actually been raised for maybe the first time in thirty years.
Spectacular and pompous, grim and glib, and disconcertingly choppy, it grabs bits from Star Wars, The Mask, Top Gun and Superman, in a sort of superhero chop suey.
Parts of this will remind you of Star Wars.
The story seems determined to hit every cliché in the universe, the dialogue is consistently trite and therefore instantly forgettable, and every film reference (tons of Star Wars, The Last Starfighter, Superman) only reinforces the realization that this movie can’t even gain any upgrade in class with its thievery of superior movies.
Only a committee that's constructing the next "Star Wars" would start a fantasy flick with a backstory that begins "millions of years ago," when faceless forces of good (aka "will," aka the color green) confront the faceless forces of evil (aka "fear," aka the color yellow).
A long, tedious narration kicks things off, reminiscent of Star Wars ' mind-numbing exposition.
As a vehicle for the impudent comic stylings of Ryan Reynolds , this cheerfully demented origin story is many, many cuts above “Green Lantern,” and as a sly demolition job on the superhero movie, it sure as hell beats “Kick-Ass.”
It doesn’t take Deadpool more than about a minute to include a jab at Green Lantern (2011), star Ryan Reynolds’s much-maligned green-clad superhero-movie bomb, but that is pretty much a given in a movie where the opening credits refer to the director as an “overpaid tool” and the writers as “the real heroes.”
The script throws abuse at Hugh Jackman, Reynolds’ dreadful work in “Green Lantern,” James McAvoy and Patrick Stewart, Wham!, Salt-N-Pepa and even Marvel founder Stan Lee, who is cast as the DJ in a seedy strip club.
If not wholly infectious, it’s endearing, spiritually righting some of the actor’s past wrongs (“Green Lantern” and “X-Men Origins: Wolverine,” where Reynolds’ take on Deadpool was so confused that it was long assumed the character would never get another crack at the big screen).
(We also get references to Reynolds’ ill-fated turn as “Green Lantern,” his heavily criticized appearance as Deadpool in “X-Men Origins: Wolverine” and his 2010 “Sexiest Man Alive” People magazine cover.)
That's apparent right from the title sequence, which instead of using real actors' names merely credits "British Villain" or "This Idiot" along with mercilessly tweaking star Ryan Reynolds' past as the veteran of People pin-ups and the crashed-and-burned "Green Lantern."
As penned by screenwriters John Turman (making his feature debut), Michael France ("Goldeneye," "Cliffhanger") and James Schamus ("Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon," "The Ice Storm"), the screenplay - which is the to be expected combination of Kong and Stevenson's "Dr.
To start, Lee and his regular writer James Schamus -- in addition to two other scribblers, Michael France (Cliffhanger, Goldeneye) and John Turman -- have gone to great lengths to scientifically explain the Hulk's origin.
It’s a bit reminiscent of Ang Lee’s Hulk: a mix of larger-than-life monsters and a hefty dose of the id.
This isn't a respectable failure, like, say, Ang Lee's Hulk, which was a movie that took chances that never paid off.
Sure, there probably have been worse introductions to superheroes on screen–Ang Lee’s “Hulk” is one and the first Tim Story “Fantastic Four” is another–but Campbell is a better filmmaker than the latter and working from far better source material than the former, so one wonders how this could have faltered so badly.
The "Hulk" movies don't work, though they've tried and tried again.
The Connery who played Bond in that film and in "From Russia With Love" had a masklike countenance and an edge of cruelty.
Furthermore, I consider Daniel Craig to be the most effective and appealing of the six actors who have played 007, and that includes even Sean Connery, from his (and the franchise’s) debut in 1962 with Dr. No, through From Russia with Love (1963), Goldfinger (1964), Thunderball (1965), You Only Live Twice (1967) and, after a one-picture hiatus, Diamonds Are Forever (1971).
In “Casino Royale”, M (Judi Dench) refers to Bond as a “blunt instrument”, but Craig delivers much more than this in an excellent performance; the flat out best acted Bond since Connery’s work in “From Russia With Love”.
Two important things: this is, for starters, the absolutely lowest stakes that any Bond film ever plays with, outside of maybe - maybe - 2006's Casino Royale .
There hasn't been a truly vicious brawl in the Bond films since Sean Connery and Robert Shaw duked it out in From Russia With Love.
Iron Man (2008)
Directed by Jon Favreau
influenced Green Lantern (2011)
Themes Characters Visuals Plot
No, they're not all The Dark Knight , but by my reckoning we have to back all the way to the first Iron Man in 2008 to find a comic book movie with such a low sense of its own importance.
Reynolds' interpretation of the Green Lantern's journey is similar to what Chris Pine gave us with James T. Kirk in 2009's Star Trek , although it's a cut below how Robert Downey Jr. traversed Tony Stark's parallel character arc in Iron Man .
In practice, though, Hal is rather limited by the overly familiar concepts advanced by the movie’s four writers, who effectively turn “Green Lantern” into a sort of poor man’s “Iron Man” with corny special effects (presented in the usual eyeball straining 3-D).
He was able to summon some of the creative energy that Chris Nolan brought to "The Dark Night," or Jon Favreau (in a comic way) to "Iron Man."
Unfortunately, the idea that Geoff Johns’ “Secret Origins” would be used as a template are dashed fairly early in favor of a blueprint that comes from previous comic book hits “Iron Man” and “Spider-Man.”
But since the surprise double-whammy of Iron Man and The Dark Knight in 2008, we've had better-than-to-be-expected luck with the inherently limited genre: an overwrought but intermittently compelling Iron Man 2 , a mildly diverting Thor , a classy X-Men: First Class .
Taken (2008)
Directed by Pierre Morel
influenced The Foreigner (2017), Edge of Darkness (2010), Casino Royale (2006)
Themes Characters Visuals Plot
Interestingly, the movie is also the polar opposite of another popular film on a similar subject that appeared a year or so before this one: Liam Neeson's "Taken."
Films like Taken may seem unrealistic and brutal but they’ve also managed to tap into something very carnal.
For me though, Gibson’s avenging dad routine couldn’t begin to measure up to Liam Neeson’s ferocious interpretation of this same role in last year’s surprise box-office smash, Taken.
Warner Bros.' relentless aping of the Taken ad campaign, from the trailers on down to the very color scheme of the one sheet design, for Martin Campbell's big screen adaptation of his own 1980s BBC television miniseries, initially strikes as comical, but after seeing this version of Edge of Darkness, it comes off a bit desperate.
Borrowing in equal parts from Mel’s own “Ransom” and “Payback” as well as the recent and unexpectedly popular “Taken,” “Edge of Darkness” serves up a grim and rather lack luster revenge tale.
A tsunami of raw paternal energy propelled us through 2008's " Taken ," and "Edge" cries out for some of that single-minded force.
The Count of Monte Cristo (2002)
Directed by Kevin Reynolds
influenced by The Mask of Zorro (1998)
Themes
Viewers unfamiliar with the original work or previous adaptations will obviously recognize the underlying, universal revenge theme as well as similarities to films such as "Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan" and "The Mask of Zorro," both of which borrowed some elements or at least were inspired by Dumas' work.
So why is this year’s reimagining of The Count of Monte Cristo the best swashbuckler since The Mask of Zorro ?
Enjoyable swashbuckler that’s similar to The Mask of Zorro in that it benefits from being played mostly straight – it’s well made with good performances and some impressive set pieces including a stunning Gratuitous Balloon Entrance.
To further prove that Bondian stuntwork can be met with awe instead of laughable improbability, Campbell delivers a second set piece from a museum to an airport with nearly equal aplomb paying homage to the decade of the last solid Bond adventures with nods to Raiders of the Lost Ark.
A truck chase later in the film is quite reminiscent of the one in “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” but it’s still able to add its own touch here and there.
By the time you’re trying to unravel the conundrum that is this new James Bond, you’ve entirely forgotten that scene with the fuel truck at the airport that made you think of Raiders of the Lost Ark in the first place.
(Unfortunately, the final showdown, like the Steve McQueen- Edward G. Robinson confrontation in "The Cincinnati Kid," features card combinations you wouldn't see in a real poker game if you played every day for a thousand years.)
Back to basics in more ways than one: The first thing we're reminded of is that 007 (played by Daniel Craig) is a killer, less the soign playboy of the later, swanky blockbusters than Ralph Meeker as Mike Hammer in Aldrich's Kiss Me Deadly, a thug in a tux.
Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit (2014)
Directed by Kenneth Branagh
influenced by Casino Royale (2006)
Characters
From there, Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit settles into a familiar espionage-flick groove, borrowing from both its predecessors and also the Bond franchise (Ryan’s shell-shocked reaction to his first kill as an operative blatantly recalls Daniel Craig’s ambivalence at the beginning of Casino Royale.
If Casino Royale merits five stars and The Bourne Supremacy four, then Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit deserves no more than three.
What remains undecided at this point is whether or not this fifth Ryan production will represent a Casino Royale -style reboot for the franchise.
On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969)
Directed by Peter R. Hunt
influenced Casino Royale (2006)
Characters Themes
The first was On Her Majesty's Secret Service, starring another freshman Bond--Aussie model George Lazenby, who took over from Connery in 1969 but never made it to a sophomore outing.
It's also the least silly film in the series since On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969), giving it the illusion of something like depth.
She transcends it on the level of Diana Rigg in “On Her Majesty’s Secret Service”, which was not surprisingly the last Bond film where Bond actually fell in love.
That would be a shame, because “Casino Royale,” though half an hour too long, is the first semi-serious stab at Fleming, and at the treacherous terrain that he marked out, since “On Her Majesty’s Secret Service,” in 1969.
Not since the phenomenal 1969 Bond adventure, "On Her Majesty's Secret Service," has there been such an emotionally rich 007 story arc and payoff.
Furthermore, I consider Daniel Craig to be the most effective and appealing of the six actors who have played 007, and that includes even Sean Connery, from his (and the franchise’s) debut in 1962 with Dr. No, through From Russia with Love (1963), Goldfinger (1964), Thunderball (1965), You Only Live Twice (1967) and, after a one-picture hiatus, Diamonds Are Forever (1971).
The biggest surprise for a series that is well into its fifth decade is that the script does not rely on the very efficient set-piece formula established by “Goldfinger” in 1964, when Bond went from a modestly successful pair of thrillers (“Dr.
This action-packed movie is receiving accolades, with some calling it the best Bond film since Goldfinger (1964) and Craig drawing favorable comparisons to Sean Connery.
If you count "Casino Royale," it is the 21st Bond film, not that 007 will ever really come of age.
A surprise reference to “Goldfinger” is worked in beautifully, while “He just smiled at me – and set the house on fire” and “Yeah, you’re right, we should just deal with nice people” bring a bitter hurt unknown to, say, Pierce Brosnan’s Bond, the non-brute with the invisi-car.
Here's the biggest surprise of the year: the new Casino Royale is the best James Bond film since Goldfinger (1964).
In fact, an extended cat and mouse pursuit in the Irish woods evokes, whether intentionally or not, a similar sequence in First Blood , the first Rambo movie (perhaps at least partly because of the similarity in Irish and Pacific Northwest climates).
Although parts of The Foreigner echo the likes of First Blood and Point Blank/ Payback , there’s more going on here than simple revenge.
So anyway, Hal is the recipient of Green Power, and on the Yellow Power spot we have Hector, a weedy balding professor and "loser" (according to the thoughts of his senator father, played by a Tim Robbins who's made up to look kinda like Jeff Morrow in " This Island Earth ," in one of the film's neater "knowing" touches) who's infected with the fear material when conducting a semi-autopsy on a dead alien Lantern league guy.
Reynolds' interpretation of the Green Lantern's journey is similar to what Chris Pine gave us with James T. Kirk in 2009's Star Trek , although it's a cut below how Robert Downey Jr. traversed Tony Stark's parallel character arc in Iron Man .
As with every other off-planet actor in the movie, Strong's bulb-headed alien makeup forcefully recalls the cornball days of early Star Trek cranial prosthetics.
Sector 2814 is an uninspired vision of alien life, computer wallpaper masquerading as a planet, whose bulbous-headed immortals, like Angela Bassett’s unfortunate ‘do, feel like dreary vestiges from the Star Trek and Star Wars universes.
Green Lantern opening voice-over informs us, in a massive data dump of exposition, that the Guardians, ancient keepers of the universal order who resemble the large-skulled aliens from the pilot episode of Star Trek , have created a "galactic community of peacekeepers."