Need for Speed

Braking Bad

Grade: C –

Director: Scott Waugh

Director: Aaron Paul, Imogen Poots, Dominic Cooper and Scott Mescudi

MPAA Rating: PG-13

Running Time: 1 hr. 10 min.

On the heels of two Emmys for his role as Walter White’s meth-dealing sidekick on the hit series Breaking Bad, it’s natural—indeed, obligatory—that Aaron Paul would his parlay his notoriety into an expanded acting career. Still, the first half of my opening sentence portends Paul’s challenge: the iconic television series gave him fame, but will audiences ever view him as anyone other than Jesse Pinkman?

Unfortunately, in his first star vehicle, Paul is just spins his wheels. Need for Speed is adapted from the hit video game series, and if that isn’t enough to give you a start on the ride to the multiplex, note the fact that it’s directed by Scott Waugh, who cut his teeth helming the visually slick, narratively empty agitprop Act of Valor.

Paul plays Tobey Marshall, a grease monkey and sometimes illegal street race driver in upstate New York. Strapped for cash, Tobey accepts an offer from Dino Brewster (Dominic Cooper), an old adversary of utterly unexplained origin, to build a souped-up Mustang. Tobey accomplishes his job, but an impromptu post-sale street race goes tragically wrong when Dino wrecks Pete (Harrison Gilbertson), Tobey’s young and mouthy friend.

Tobey takes the rap for Pete’s death, and after two years in the clink, emerges with revenge on his mind. His plan involves driving cross-country to California and beating Dino in the DeLeon, an invite-only underground car race run by a rich hipster known only as the Monarch (Michael Keaton). Along for the ride in the Mustang is the car’s broker, Julia Maddon (Imogen Poots), and together they must dodge Dino’s deadly obstacles just to make to Cali.

With its visual bombast, paper-thin characters and forced testosterone-injected bravura, “Need for Speed” is a brazen non-Michael Bay Michael Bay movie. The plot is both ludicrous and simplistic, hinged together by the ubiquitous roar of muscle cars and some impressive stunt work. Tobey and his miscreant gearheads hold themselves on the right side of some unspoken racer’s code, unless it applies to the untold innocent motorists and bystanders endangered by their illicit doings.

Poots hails from west London, but she contorts her polished Chiswick lilt into a brogue straight out of the East End. Meanwhile, Keaton preens in extreme closeup throughout, his unceasing nattering via the Monarch’s Internet podcast quickly becoming tiresome. The rest of the supporting cast is instantly forgettable, the consequence of writing that doesn’t supply any foundation for the characters’ backgrounds and motives. A scene in which one buddy (Rami Malek) strips completely naked while quitting his cubicled 9-to-5 is completely divorced from the rest of the storyline.

Paul acquits himself as well as possible, breathing occasional emotion into an emotionless screenplay and preserving a modicum of optimism for his next film role. Still, here he’s ultimately a cog in a corporate marketing engine so hollow it makes The Fast and the Furious look like Bullitt. Let’s just call it Braking Bad.

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter

Split THIS Union!

Grade: C –

Director: Timur Bekmambetov

Starring: Benjamin Walker, Dominic Cooper, Anthony Mackie, Mary Elizabeth Winstead and Rufus Seawell

MPAA Rating: R

Running Time: 1 hr. 45 min.

As a stylized mashup, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter (hereafter just Dishonest Abe) doesn’t live up (or down) to its titillating premise. Re-imagining the Rail Splitter’s life as a revenge quest against the coven of vampires who killed his mother and, later, threaten the Union, the film is not without its provocative passages. But, this adaptation of Seth Graham-Smith’s 2010 epistolary-style novel, written as a faux-biography of Lincoln, distends from its self-serious plot and cartoonish presentation.

Years after the death of his mom (Robin McLeavy), a vengeful Young Mr. Lincoln (Benjamin Walker) is recruited by flamboyant vampire hunter Henry Sturges (Dominic Cooper) with promises of retribution. Armed with a silver-lacquered axe, Abe swings into gory action, checking off Sturges’ hit list with nocturnal fury.

Once Lincoln falls for Mary Todd (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) and gets a taste of politics, however, he holsters his hatchet and sets his sights on higher office, where Lincoln hopes to take a holistic approach to exorcising the bloodsuckers intent on taking over the United States.

Director Timur Bekmambetov (Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, seriously) only hints at the campy fun that should have been the film’s heartbeat, first during a chase and battle through a horse stampede, and later onboard a runaway munitions train that somehow travels at the same speed as The Underground Railroad (watch and you’ll see what I mean).

But with decades of vital American history to traverse, Dishonest Abe soon adopts a cursory countenance that makes for—dare I say—dull viewing. Walker is fine as the early unknown Abe, but it feels like he’s just playing dress up as the bearded, rutted 16^th president brooding over, well, everything.

Moreover, shoehorning the scourge of slavery and the whole of the Civil War under the rubric of a (un)death struggle against Nosferatu proves more kitschy than clever, down to the obsequious inclusion of Will Johnson (Anthony Mackie), Lincoln’s African-American boyhood mate and eventual 19^th century edition of Reggie Love. The whole morass eventually devolves into a murky computer-generated spectacle—layered with needless 3-D, natch—lifted from the long-since tired 300 palette. Likewise, Dishonest Abe is drained of its energy and eventually becomes a bloody bore.

Neil Morris

Captain America: The First Avenger

Seal Team of One

Grade: B –

Director: Joe Johnston

Starring: Chris Evans, Hayley Atwell, Hugo Weaving, Tommy Lee Jones, Stanley Tucci, Sebastian Stan, Toby Jones, and Dominic Cooper

MPAA Rating: PG-13

Running Time: 2 hr. 1 min.

Captain America: The First Avenger ably accomplishes its primary mission: serving as the latest – and perhaps last – place setter for Marvel’s long-gestating Avengers ensemble. What is shrewdly surprising about this rockem sockem, old-fashioned origin story of runt-turned-super solider Steve Rogers (Chris Evans, formerly “flaming on” in The Fantastic Four) is that the film tempers the jingoism you’d inherently expect from the chronicles of a super hero named, well, Captain America.

Repeatedly rejected for military induction during World War II because of a menagerie of maladies, bird-chested Steve Rogers is plucked from a life of back alley beatings by Dr. Abraham Erskine (Stanley Tucci), a Bavarian expatriate whose Super Solider serum transforms Rogers into a brawny world-beater.

Although patriotic, Rogers’ true mom-and-apple-pie motives are simply beating up bullies and protecting his friends. The clever irony is that the Captain America moniker and image are initially the crude creation of politicians who co-opt Rogers as a travelling War Bond fundraiser. Indeed, the closest Rogers gets to Hitler is punching out his likeness during a garish revue complete with chorus girls crooning a rah-rah show tune called “Star Spangled Man” (composed by Alan Menken), an assignment that re-emasculates Rogers and a scene that’s the film’s unquestioned highpoint.

Rogers eventually finds his way to the war front to combat the rise of Johann Schmidt, aka Red Skull (Hugo Weaving), the Frankensteinian product of Dr. Erskine’s early serum experimentations. Formerly a Hitler confidant, Schmidt supplants the Führer’s aims of world domination with his own by installing himself head of his own evil organization, HYDRA, and harnessing energy from the “Cosmic Cube” (last seen in the post-credits kicker to Thor), or as he call it, “ze powa of ze Gauds.”

Despite the weighty issues at play, the conflict between Captain America and Red Skull never transcends into a pitched battle between all-powerful adversaries. Essentially, Rogers barges through and takes on Schmidt and his HYDRA minions whenever he pleases. Their obligatory climactic clash is so disjointed it’s hard to tell exactly what happens, aside from Capt. saving the good ‘ole U.S.A. from a bunch of bombs with the names of various American cities written on them.

Directed by Joe Johnston, the imagery assumes a dieselpunk quality reminiscent of Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow. On the other hand, the converted 3D visuals oscillate between useless and graceless.

Captain America is enlightening in two respects. First, it again confirms that Tommy Lee Jones makes everything better – he steals every scene he’s in playing a gruff Army colonel (natch). For that matter, amiable performances by Evans, Tucci and Haley Atwell as Rogers’ comely British love interest help paper over more than a few uneven patches.

Moreover, it affirms the appeal of an enthusiastic super hero, as opposed to the many born reluctantly from tragedy, orphanage, ego, and accident. Like the masses, Steve Rogers possesses the heart and desire; all he lacks is the ability.

True, Chronicles of Narnia screenwriters Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely minimize any narrative missteps because they take few creative risks. Still, with charm, a little humor, and fists/feet/shield of fury, Captain America is hokey, pulpy fun…no more, no less.

Neil Morris