The Bottom Line

Death Race

Written and Directed by: Paul W. S. Anderson
Starring: Jason Statham, Joan Allen, Ian McShane, Natalie Martinez
Rated: R for strong violence and language.
Parental Notes: This is a big, bad, nasty action movie, and not suitable for youngsters. Teens will probably dig it if they like mindless violence, but the R rating is well-deserved.

"Death Race" opens with one of those terse written explanations you might expect on the first page of a video game manual -- a backstory which serves as a flimsy excuse for the action you're about to see. The story for "Death Race" tells us that it's 2012 and prisons are run by private corporations for profit. The most profitable prison is Terminal Island, which produces pay-per-view races between the prisoners in armored and be-weaponed cars. Win five races and you get your release papers -- but of course nobody has ever won that many races. Most folks just die, and millions of viewers tune in to watch them do so.

Our hero is Jensen Ames (Jason Statham), a former race car driver who was framed for his wife's murder. Evil Warden Hennessey (Joan Allen) wants him to take the place of a recently-deceased driver named Frankenstein -- she can't let word slip that the incredibly popular driver is dead or she'll lose viewers. Fortunately, Frankenstein wore a mask, so all Ames has to do is not talk to anyone and drive well. The plan is for Ames to win as Frank and get his release that way, enabling him to go look after his now-motherless baby daughter. Ames joins Frank's team -- Coach (Ian McShane), a grizzled old-timer with a few tricks up his sleeve; Lists (Frederick Koehler), a nervous young fellow who knows all there is to know about cars; Gunner (Jacob Vargas), a grease monkey who's seen it all; and Case (Natalie Martinez), who was Frank's navigator in the race that killed him.

The race takes place in three stages, which strongly resemble levels in a video game. There's the first level, where we learn the rules and watch as Ames gets the hang of the car. The drivers and their busty female navigators (bussed in from a women's prison, since scantily-dressed bad girls are good for ratings) try to survive their laps and take out as many of the other drivers as they can. In the second level, Hennessey has a trick up her sleeve to make things harder for the surviving drivers and Ames must ally himself with Frankenstein's arch-rival, Machine Gun Joe (Tyrese Gibson) in order to survive. In the third level, the game -- er, movie -- pulls out all the stops.

The dialog-heavy scenes between the racing sequences feel a lot like cut scenes -- those pre-scripted little movies in video games that help move the plot along. They're workmanlike and not terribly impassioned. But that's just fine -- viewers aren't going to buy tickets for "Death Race" in hopes of thrilling character development, but to see racing and death. The movie provides both in graphic splendor.

The racing sequences are long, mind-boggling stretches of inspired lunacy. The cars have weapons ranging from machine guns to napalm, and defensive mechanisms like smoke-plumes and heavy armor which can be sent tumbling into other vehicles. There are booby-traps on the track which drivers can trick other cars into setting off. We get to see cars slamming into spiked walls, crushed against each other in collisions, blown up by grenades, and so on. The drivers are gouged, scraped, set on fire, and other assorted horrible things. And since this is an R-rated movie, we get to see most of it in detail.

"Death Race" has no pretension or aspirations to brilliance -- it is a straightforward action movie which delivers automotive destruction and delivers in spades. If you're looking for interesting thematic elements, complex characters, or much in the way of a plot, you will be out of luck. But if all you're looking for is a fun way to kill a couple hours while watching things blow up, "Death Race" is your movie.

Tropic Thunder

Directed by: Ben Stiller
Starring:: Ben Stiller, Jack Black, Robert Downey Jr.
Rated: :R for pervasive language including sexual references, violent content and drug material.
Parental Notes:: This is not a kids' movie. It's a totally over-the-top comedy aimed at movie-savvy adults and includes plenty of vulgarity, violence, stupidity, and other inappropriateness.

Hollywood has a fondness for making movies about itself, whether they're serious or comedic. "Tropic Thunder" is a satire of Hollywood, of action movies, of the movie-making process, of just about anything it can get its vulgar, over-the-top hands on. Like other cranked-up comedies in recent years, it'll probably make you laugh -- but you might feel guilty afterwards.

The story is rather convoluted, but revolves largely around a nightmarish film production in Vietnam. A film crew, led by young director Damien Cockburn (Steve Coogan), is trying to make an adaptation of Sgt. Four-Leaf Tayback's (Nick Nolte) novel about his rescue during the Vietnam war. But Cockburn has cast several huge stars who are all very difficult in their own ways, and the film is already a month behind schedule even though they've only been filming for five days.

With his studio head Les Grossman (a hilarious cameo I won't spoil the surprise of) breathing down his neck, Cockburn cooks up a wild plan with the help of Tayback: turn the main actors loose in the jungle with cameras hidden in the trees and set up ambushes and explosions. Have them improvise the movie. Of course, things don't go exactly as planned. For one thing, there's a drug cartel operating in the area, and when they see five American soldiers, they assume they're DEA agents and set out to capture them.

Some of the best moments in the film come from the interactions between the main characters. Aussie Kirk Lazarus (Robert Downey, Jr.) is a five-time Oscar winner who has undergone a semi-permanent skin-tinting surgery to play the central African-American role of the film-within-a-film. Lazarus takes his craft so seriously that he never drops character. This aggravates Alpa Chino (Brandon T. Jackson), a rapper and genuine African-American who doesn't appreciate Kirk's attempts to play a black man.

Tugg Speedman (Ben Stiller) is an action star who wants to make the jump to more dramatic stuff, but his one attempt -- "Simple Jack," a movie about a mentally handicapped farmer who thinks he can talk to animals -- flopped. He wants to get talk shop with Lazarus, and gets to in some hilarious scenes: the Aussie has zero respect for him, but can't resist pontificating about his craft.

Heroin addict Jeff Portnoy (Jack Black) is best known for his movies where he plays all the members of a large, flatulent family (sound familiar?). He spends most of the jungle trek in semi-delirious withdrawl, useless -- unlike young Kevin Sandusky (Jay Baruchel), who seems to be the only actor on the film with any common sense. He's also the only one who can read a map or who has actually paid attention to what the movie as a whole is about. Of course, since he's young and inexperienced, the others mostly ignore him.

As you might expect from a film which includes a white actor playing a white actor playing a black man, "Tropic Thunder" doesn't care much about being politically correct. Or tasteful. If you can't handle murderous toddlers, disturbing body hair, an energy drink named "Booty Sweat," or a torn-apart body being treated with an utter lack of respect, "Tropic Thunder" is not the movie for you. But if you like your comedy dial turned to eleven and are looking for something surreal, irreverent, and packed with mayhem, it will hit the spot.

The X-Files: I Want to Believe

Directed by: Chris Carter
Starring: David Duchovny, Gillian Anderson, Amanda Peet, Billy Connolly
Rated: PG-13 for violent and disturbing content and thematic material.

Unlike the last "X-Files" movie ("The X-Files: Fight the Future" in 1998), "The X-Files: I Want to Believe" is largely a stand-alone. There are no government conspiracies or aliens. This is a quiet, thoughtful film about the characters and their nature -- for the most part, at least. It wouldn't be "The X-Files" if we didn't have a least few weird things, like body parts frozen in a lake, a psychic crying tears of blood, and a mysterious medical procedure or two.

Your humble reviewer was quite a fan of the show back in the day, but gave up watching when FBI Agents Mulder and Scully hooked up and had a (mysteriously super powered!) baby. There are some references in the new film to things from the later seasons, but nothing critical to understanding the story at hand, so even those who barely remember what the show was originally about should be able to stay afloat.

The story picks up some years after the show ended. Scully (Gillian Anderson) is now a doctor at a hospital, and deeply engaged in one of her cases, a boy with a terminal brain disease. She refuses to give up on him, in spite of the hospital board's belief that there's nothing to be done. Mulder (David Duchovny) is in hiding, which apparently consists of living in a house not far from Scully's with no security. The FBI is still unhappy with him for things he did before leaving the show.

However, an FBI agent has gone missing and a local man claims he is having psychic visions about her, so the FBI decides to forgive all of Mulder's past indiscretions and bring him in to help on the case. He agrees, on the condition that Scully come with him. She's reluctant, given the amount of time she's putting in on her work with the boy at the hospital, but ultimately agrees.

What follows is a strange, meandering investigation of the self-proclaimed psychic (who looks to have his own motivations for pretending to have visions) and the vanished agent, who turns out to be just the tip of the proverbial iceberg Scully's work at the hospital continues, and the story of her attempts to get the hospital and the boy's parents to agree to an experimental treatment seem completely unrelated to the investigation storyline. However, it isn't unrelated to the film's themes, which are choices and belief (and perhaps, the choice to believe).

Anderson and Duchovny have a great deal of ease together onscreen and seem to fall right back into the characters without any preamble. They're still Mulder and Scully, even if they're not in the FBI or facing down treacherous government conspirators. The supporting cast, particularly Billy Connolly as the possibly-psychic fellow, do solid jobs as well.

"The X-Files: I Want To Believe" has a noticeably different feel to it than the television show did, and it's hard to say whether the fans will like it or not. Moviegoers looking for a thoughtful thriller that's as much about characters as it is about the mystery will be in luck, but folks in search of aliens, explosions, and conspiracy theories will be disappointed.

The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor

Directed by: Rob Cohen
Starring: Brendan Frasier, John Hannah, Maria Bello, Jet Li, Michelle Yeoh, Isabella Leong, Luke Ford
Rated: PG-13 for adventure action and violence.
Parental Notes: The violence here is mostly cartoonish, offscreen, or against undead characters. This film is lighthearted and probably fine for preteens and kids who aren't afraid of mummies, zombies, or similar monsters.

"The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor" has exactly three major things in common with the first two Mummy films: the villain is a dessicated corpse, Brendan Fraser is in it as Rick O'Connell, and John Hannah is in it as Jonathan Carnahan. That's it. New director, new location, new writers, new location, new villain, even a new actress as Rick's wife Evie (Maria Bello, who is lovely but doesn't quite nail the character).

It's not a bad movie, it's just not exactly good, either. Like 2006's "Snakes on a Plane," this is a movie where you can tell from the title if you'll like it or not. If "The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor" is a title that makes you think, "awesome!", go see it. If not, you should probably skip it.

It's been some years since the events of the last film, and Rick and Evie are in retirement. Evie is writing books loosely based on their adventures and Rick is trying (and failing) to learn to fly-fish. The quiet really doesn't suit either of them, and it doesn't take much to get them out of retirement on a mission for the government, taking a priceless relic to China.

Meanwhile, Rick and Evie's son Alex (Luke Ford) has dropped out of college yet again and gone on an archaeological dig. He finds the tomb of the Dragon Emperor (Jet Li), an ancient warlord who conquered all of Asia before he and his massive army were put under a curse. Some baddies force Rick and Evie to help them wake him (a process which involves the aforementioned priceless relic), and soon the undead emperor is off looking for an elixir to return him to his proper immortal state so he can revive his army and conquer the world. Rick, Evie, Alex, Jonathan, and a mysterious Chinese gal named Lin (Isabella Leong) team up to stop him.

The film is full of awesome special effects shots and some good martial arts sequences. There's a scene involving two undead armies facing off which is fairly impressive -- giant computer-generated armies are becoming rather commonplace, but this face-off between some half-disintegrated zombies and an army of cracking terra-cotta warriors is a rather new application of the technology.

Li and Michelle Yeoh (she plays the witch who cursed the emperor when he went back on a promise to her) do great jobs of being awesome, and Hannah and Fraser are as amusing as they can be with the mediocre script. Bello has big shoes to fill, replacing the wonderful Rachel Weisz as adventurous librarian Evie. She does her best, but fans of the first two movies may find her performance lacks the spark Weisz brought to the character.

"The Mummy" was better than "The Mummy Returns," which in turn was better than "The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor." The franchise's slide is continuing. If you're a big fan of any of the actors or of mummies in general it's probably worth seeing, but otherwise, save your money.