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Thursday, March 27, 2025
Review: "THE BEEKEEPER" Swarms with Vicarious Vigilante Fun
Tuesday, March 25, 2025
Review: "ULTRAVIOLET" is Mostly Misspent Potential
Friday, June 27, 2014
Extreme Sports Remake of "Point Break" Begins Filming
Top Extreme Sports Athletes to Perform Daring Action Stunts in Various Locations on Four Continents
BURBANK, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Alcon Entertainment’s action-thriller “Point Break,” starring Édgar Ramírez, Luke Bracey, Ray Winstone, Teresa Palmer and Delroy Lindo, begins principal photography today, it was announced by Alcon principals Andrew Kosove and Broderick Johnson.
The production will film on four continents, including North America, Europe, South America and Asia, and features stunts performed by the world’s top extreme sports athletes, as opposed to stunt performers. Locations set for filming include Germany, Austria, Italy, Switzerland, France, Mexico, Venezuela, French Polynesia, India and the United States. Alcon will release through its output deal with Warner Bros. Pictures.
Ericson Core (“Invincible”) is directing from Kurt Wimmer’s (“Salt,” “Law Abiding Citizen”) screenplay. Ramírez (“Zero Dark Thirty,” “Che: Part One”) stars as Bodhi and Bracey (“G.I. Joe: Retaliation,” upcoming “The Best of Me”) will portray Johnny Utah.
In “Point Break,” a young FBI agent infiltrates an extraordinary team of extreme sports athletes he suspects of masterminding a string of unprecedented, sophisticated corporate heists. Deep undercover, and with his life in danger, he strives to prove they are the architects of the mind-boggling crimes that are devastating the world’s financial markets.
The film marks an extraordinarily ambitious shooting schedule involving some of the most daring stunts ever committed to film. Extreme sports featured include surfing 70-foot waves, snowboarding, wingsuit flying, free rock climbing, and high-speed motorcycle stunts.
Johnson and Kosove are producing, along with John Baldecchi, Chris Taylor and Kurt Wimmer. Studio Babelsberg will also co-produce. RGM Media principal Devesh Chetty and investor John McMurrick, Chairman of Marloss Entertainment, will serve as executive producers.
Renowned extreme athletes performing stunts in the film include surfers Makua Rothman, Billy Kemper, Brian Keaulana and Ahanu Tson-dru; snowboarders Lucas DeBari, Ralph Backstrom, Mitch Toelderer, Mike Basich and Xavier De La Rue; motorcyclists Riley Harper and Oakley Lehman; wingsuit stunt pilots Jeb Corliss, Jon Devore, Julian Boulle, Noah Bahnson and Mike Swanson; and free climber Chris Sharma, among others.
Director Ericson Core, who served as director of photography on such films as “The Fast and the Furious,” will also serve as director of photography. Other behind-the-scene team members include Oscar-winning editor Thom Noble (“Thelma & Louise,” “Witness”), production designer Udo Kramer (“North Face,” “The Physician”) and Oscar-nominated costume designer Lisy Christl (“Anonymous,” “White House Down”).
“Point Break” is inspired by the classic 1991 hit starring Patrick Swayze and Keanu Reeves. It is scheduled for release on August 7, 2015, and will be distributed in North America and in select territories around the world by Warner Bros. Pictures, a Warner Bros. Entertainment Company.
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Thursday, January 30, 2014
Review: "Equilibrium" Borrows from Dystopian Classics (Happy B'day, Christian Bale)
TRASH IN MY EYE No. 165 (of 2006) by Leroy Douresseaux
Equilibrium (2002)
Running time: 107 minutes (1 hour, 47 minutes)
MPAA – R for violence
WRITER/DIRECTOR: Kurt Wimmer
PRODUCERS: Jan de Bont and Lucas Foster
CINEMATOGRAPHER: Dion Beebe
EDITORS: Tom Rolf and William Yeh
COMPOSER: Klaus Badelt
SCI-FI/ACTION/DRAMA with elements of mystery and thriller
Starring: Christian Bale, Taye Diggs, Emily Watson, Sean Bean, Sean Pertwee, William Fichtner, Angus Macfadyen, Dominic Purcell, Matthew Harbour, and Emily Siewert
The subject of this movie review is Equilibrium, a 2002 dystopian science fiction film and action movie from writer-director Kurt Wimmer. Starring Christian Bale and Taye Diggs, the film is set in a fascist future where all forms of feeling are illegal, and the story focuses on a law enforcement officer who rises to overthrow the system.
In a dystopian future, the totalitarian regime of the city-state, Libria, has eliminated war by suppressing emotions. The rulers believe that ultimately emotions cause humans to kill one another. The cost of ridding the world of violent emotions, however, is the loss of love and kindness. Books, art, music, or any kind of creativity that might arouse the emotions are also strictly forbidden, and such material is contraband to be destroyed on sight. Feeling is a crime, and those who insist on feeling are called sense offenders. Sense offenses are punishable by death, and the government requires its citizens to inject themselves with a drug called prozium, which keeps their emotions in check.
Of course such a government would face rebellion, and it does from the regions outside the city known as the Nethers. To fight sense offenders in the city and in the Nethers, the government created an elite unit made of a special kind of police officer/warrior known as the Grammaton Cleric. Stronger, inhumanely agile, and quicksilver fast, clerics use a form of fighting known as “the Gun-Katas,” which mixes martial arts and firearms handling that makes it possible for one cleric to kill a room full of armed men in the span of several seconds.
The best of these warriors is John Preston (Christian Bale), who destroys sense offenders with ease (and perhaps relish, if he could feel emotions). However, when Preston misses a dose of Prozium, he begins to have feelings again, and he experiences a pang of conscience when he must kill in the Nethers. Suddenly being capable of feeling, he finds himself drawn to a sense offender scheduled for execution, Mary O’Brien (Emily Watson). There is, however, danger in Preston’s feelings. His new partner, Brandt (Taye Diggs, who gives a nice sheen to Brandt’s bold and ruthless ambition), is, like Preston, intuitive – able to sense when someone is have feelings and emotions, and Brandt is determined to make a name for himself – even if it means bringing Preston down.
Some might mistake writer/director Kurt Wimmer’s 2000 film, Equilibrium, for a clone of The Matrix (1999). The fancy, martial arts fighting (Gun-Kata, a style developed by Wimmer and the film’s choreographer, Jim Vickers) certainly encourages that belief, but unlike The Matrix, wire work martial arts (or wire-fu) – using wires to lift the actors high off the ground – wasn’t used here.
Equilibrium actually borrows from or resembles (in part or whole) such classic science fiction novels dealing with dark futures as Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, George Orwell’s 1984, and Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, and even a bit of William F. Nolan and George Clayton Johnson’s Logan’s Run. In the case of Equilibrium, the filmmakers make the right choice of focusing on crime (feeling) and punishment (death) rather than on the practicality of these future laws against emotion and feeling. In that way, the plot is free to unfold as a narrative about the struggle for freedom in a futuristic setting. In terms of entertainment, that’s better than an examination of the hard science of using drugs to suppress emotions or even telling the story from a sociological point of view.
Christian Bale is expert at playing the tightly coiled male or the stoic warrior. However, he’s also quite artful at slowly revealing his emotional side in ways that endear him to the viewer. Watching his government-issued impassive and detached façade crumble to reveal a fully functional human is a joy. Bale may not be the leading man, but he is a leading man. Good performances from Taye Diggs, Emily Watson, and Sean Bean add credibility to Equilibrium’s concept. Still, it would have been nice to see more character in the supporting characters.
7 of 10
B+
Friday, August 4, 2006
Updated: Thursday, January 30, 2014
The text is copyright © 2014 Leroy Douresseaux. All Rights Reserved. Contact this site for syndication rights and fees.
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Thursday, February 3, 2011
Review: Angelina Jolie's "Salt" is Good For You

Salt (2010)
Running time: 100 minutes (1 hour, 40 minutes)
MPAA – PG-13 for intense sequences of violence and action
DIRECTOR: Phillip Noyce
WRITER: Kurt Wimmer
PRODUCERS: Lorenzo di Bonaventura and Sunil Perkash
CINEMATOGRAPHER: Robert Elswit
EDITOR: Stuart Baird, John Gilroy, and Steven Kemper
COMPOSER: James Newton Howard
Academy Award nominee
ACTION/THRILLER
Starring: Angelina Jolie, Liev Schreiber, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Daniel Olbrychski, August Diehl, Hunt Block, Andre Braugher, and Olek Krupa
Written by Kurt Wimmer, the writer/director of the film Equilibrium, Salt was originally about a male character named “Edwin A. Salt,” and Tom Cruise initially wanted to play the character. A little more than half a decade later, the character became a woman, now played by Angelina Jolie. The resultant film is, in the hands of the supremely skilled director, Philip Noyce, one of 2010’s best movies.
Salt focuses on Evelyn Salt (Angelina Jolie), a CIA agent recently released from a North Korean prison. Salt’s plans to celebrate her wedding anniversary with her husband, arachnologist Michael Krause (August Diehl), is interrupted by a sudden turn of events at the CIA. Vassily Orlov (Daniel Olbrychski), a Russian defector, arrives with shocking secrets. During Salt’s interrogation of him, Orlov reveals details about “Day X,” a Russian plot to destroy the United States by using highly-trained, English-speaking, Russian sleeper agents. And Orlov claims that Salt is one of those sleeper agents.
Suddenly, a rogue CIA agent, Salt is on the run, and she uses every tactic, accent, and disguise she knows to elude her pursuers, clear her name, and find her now-missing husband. Her CIA supervisor, Ted Winter (Liev Schreiber), believes that she may not be an enemy, but U.S. counter-intelligence agent, Peabody (Chiwetel Ejiofor), absolutely believes that Salt is an enemy. To save herself, however, Salt may end up doing the very things Orlov said she would.
Salt has two stellar supporting actors in the talented Liev Schreiber and Chiwetel Ejiofor, who both deliver their usual good work in this film. Outside of Asian cinema, no one is capable of delivering terrific work in both dramatic films and action movies the way Angelina Jolie does. Jolie makes Evelyn Salt the kind of secret agent/spy who is every bit the man James Bond or Jason Bourne is.
Salt is a magnificent CIA/spy film, however, because of the work of director Phillip Noyce (Dead Calm, Clear and Present Danger). The Australian director is a master of the thriller: action thriller, historical thriller, political thriller, social thriller, suspense thriller, and thriller thriller. From the beginning of Salt, it was as if Noyce threw a rope around me and dragged me along for a ride, and what a great ride Salt was. Its action is so visceral and its narrative so visually powerful that you might choose to ignore the set pieces that seem way, way farfetched. I can find very little about which to complain or criticize.
At times, Salt is like a comic book superhero story, and it occasionally seems as much a fantasy as it is a CIA thriller. Noyce took his more-than-capable dramatic action star, Angelina Jolie, and spun what will hopefully be the beginning of a beautiful new spy thriller franchise.
8 of 10
A
NOTE:
2011 Academy Awards: 1 nomination: “Best Achievement in Sound Mixing” (Jeffrey J. Haboush, William Sarokin, Scott Millan, and Greg P. Russell)
Friday, February 19, 2010
Review: "Law Abiding Citizen" Has a Rage On
Law Abiding Citizen (2009)
Running time: 108 minutes (1 hour, 48 minutes)
MPAA – R for strong bloody brutal violence and torture, a scene of rape, and pervasive language
DIRECTOR: F. Gary Gray
WRITER: Kurt Wimmer
PRODUCER: Gerard Butler, Lucas Foster, Mark Gill, Robert Katz, Alan Siegel, and Kurt Wimmer
CINEMATOGRAPHER: Jonathan Sela (D.o.P.)
EDITOR: Tariz Anwar
CRIME/SUSPENSE/THRILLER with elements of action and mystery
Starring: Jamie Foxx, Gerard Butler, Colm Meaney, Bruce McGill, Leslie Bibb, Michael Irby, Gregory Itzin, Regina Hall, Emerald-Angel Young, Christian Stolte, Annie Corley, Richard Portnow, and Viola Davis
In the 1970s, movie studios produced what were called black exploitation, or “Blaxploitation,” films. The films starred predominately black actors and featured subject matter of interest to Black people, such as racism, violence, and crime, although not all Blaxploitation films dealt with those subjects.
I believe that there are also “Whiteploitation” films. I call them that because they are films that exploit the fears of White Americans, especially fears concerning urban crime and violence, particular crime committed against white people by brown people (African-Americans, Latinos, Asians, etc.) and lower class whites (white trash).
The recent film, Law Abiding Citizen, focuses on an assistant district attorney at odds with a criminal mastermind who virtually controls a city from the confines of his prison cell. This could be seen as a white exploitation film, exploiting issues of violent crime and a broken justice system in hopes of tapping into the resentments of its predominately white audience. While Law Abiding Citizen
In the film, Clyde Shelton (Gerard Butler) is traumatized by the brutal murders of his wife and daughter at the hands of two men during a home invasion. Nick Rice (Jamie Foxx) is the ambitious, hotshot, young prosecutor, assigned to the case. Nick offers one of the suspects a light sentence in exchange for testifying against his accomplice, but the criminal who gets the plea deal is actually the worse of the two. Rice ignores Shelton’s objections to this deal.
Ten years later, Shelton kills the two men who murdered his wife and child. Thrown into prison, Shelton begins a campaign of vengeance against the entire system. Soon, Nick Rice and the city of Philadelphia are held in a grip of fear, with authorities powerless to halt Shelton’s reign of terror. With police Detective Dunnigan (Colm Meaney) at his side, Nick desperately races against time to stop a deadly adversary who seems always to be one step ahead, even though he’s in prison!
When it was about victims of violent crime and revenge, Law Abiding Citizen had potential. When it became a suspense thriller, it became just another… well, suspense thriller. The film makes some legitimate points about victims of crime and the criminal justice system, which makes it similar to “Whiteploitation” flicks like Death Wish
Law Abiding Citizen mixes elements of V for Vendetta
I also want to give the producers credit for hiring a perfectly capable African-American director and for giving us a satisfying ending.
5 of 10
B-
Friday, February 19, 2010
NOTES: 2010 Image Awards: 2 nominations for motion picture actor (Jamie Foxx) and director (F. Gary Gray)