Fist_of_Heaven Reviews

The Big White (2005)

Fargoesque!

[8/10 · 21 September 2005]

The Big White focus on travel agent Paul Barnell (Robin Williams), and him trying to overcome his financial dilemmas. After failing to cash out the insurance policy of his brother, who is missing since 5 years and assumed dead, he stumbles across a frozen corpse. A new opportunity arises, but not without problems! While trying to get the corpse to pass of as his dead brother, Paul need to handle the two hit men (W. Earl Brown and Tim Blake Nelson) wanting their corpse back and keep one step ahead of insurance agent Ted (Giovanni Ribisi).One heck of a stew is cooking!

You can't avoid comparing The Big White with the Coen brothers' Fargo, since they're similar in style and story. Fargo, however, is better. But this film is far from bad, and it's not as black a comedy as the Coens-flick.

Acting and characters are wonderful. The script works perfectly. The pace is sometimes on the slow side, but not for long. The story is a mixture of love, comedy, drama, sadness and perhaps a wee bit of hatred. Good stuff for a movie in other words! You won't get disappointed by this film, unless you've got something against the similarities with Fargo. If you loved Fargo, you'll like this one. Perhaps even more. 8/10

Rancid (2004)

It's actually good, no matter what others say

[7/10 · 2 July 2005]

Rancid is an average thriller with a quite good story. There's not anything that's really bad with this movie, rather it's that nothing is quite great. As someone said, you're left with a small feeling of nothing. Now, this can be said of thousands of Hollywood films, too. The reason why they get a higher score is probably because they got a cast that's more mainstream and probably some cool action scene! The performance in Rancid is good. Well-casted and well-acted. Matthew Settle, Fay Masterson, Currie Graham and Patrik Ersgård are all doing a good job. Personally, I think Patrik Ersgårds character and acting lifts the movie a bit. Michael Wiseman and Siena Goines are the weaker links in this chain. The characters are interesting enough.

The dialog is without marks, actually quite good I'd say. The movie is rather fast-paced, compared to most Hollywood-thrillers. The editing is so-so. Music and overall "look and feel" is about average.

There's no reason to choose another thriller over this one. It feels authentic, and maybe that's the downside to it? It's just not enough "Hollywood" to give you that adrenaline. Personally, I prefer Rancid over any action-packed thriller. And that feeling of nothing I mentioned? Well, it's not a feeling of bad, is it? Go see it, rent it or whatever. It's worth it, if only to rest your eyes from all mainstream actors! 7/10

National Treasure (2004)

Ridiculous

[3/10 · 15 January 2005]

I'm just gonna go straight to the point. The story is this movie's biggest fault. If you're an American, you'll probably find it entertaining and maybe even good. But as a European you can only laugh. Not only are the British painted out as the big, evil 'entity' with world-domination on its agenda, but the story steals perhaps one of France's most legendary figures too. That's really what this is: a movie trying to connect the thousands of years of history of Europe to the young United States of America. It doesn't hold up.

If you have read Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code, you'll recognize the story as well. Kinda of a rip-off actually. Same treasure, a lot of clues at famous places, mean guys wants it for themselves, etc. And that's another weak point of National Treasure's story, the treasure is boring. It's just a big pile of money! Big deal. Had it been the Holy Grail or some world-changing information that someone didn't want to get out, or keep for themselves, that could've made a captivating motive. National Treasure is just a tour of historic places and objects in USA, with even more (although stolen) history added to it. Boring and most of all ridiculous.

The Matrix Revolutions (2003)

Not the ending I'd hope to see

[6/10 · 5 November 2003]

A "good" conclusion for this trilogy, granted. However, having seen the second Matrix-film (The Matrix Reloaded), and now this third and last installment in the series, my opinion is that the Wachowski-brothers didn't have material to fill three full-length movies. The pace of the storytelling in Matrix Revolution is very uneven. Some scenes are rather dull and lengthy, and doesn't really progress the story anything. Compared to the first and second films, there isn't as much cool hand to hand combat to speed things up. All-in-all, it's not as interesting to watch, perhaps because you already know what's gonna happen... My ranking of these three films is the same as the order the were released in, i.e. the first is the best and the last is the worst. I wish it'd been the other way around...