Hollywood Is Far From Paradise
June 6th, 2007
Prepare to die - Hitcher Life's a beach - Paradise Lost
What has happened to Hollywood? Has it reached the end of the line? What are the scriptwriters doing? Is this the decade of remakes, sequels and prequels? Fantastic Four 2, Spiderman 3, Ocean's 13, and so on!
So in keeping with the trend this week's first movie review is a remake, the second a ‘copy cat'.
The Hitcher directed by Dave Myers is a far distant cousin of the original Hitcher (1986) by Robert Harmon with its brilliant cinematography - a near-masterpiece B-movie. This remake fails to deliver.
Sean Bean is miscast as the psychotic killer and eponymous hitchhiker, intent on one last killing spree. Cue a couple of college students who are going to see their friends and make the eternal mistake of giving a lift to a stranger.
The killer always finds his prey wherever they are and kills whoever stands in his way, but don't ask how and why, because I don't think even the director knows the answer. With executive-producer Michael Bay, director of films like The Rock, Armageddon, Pearl Harbor, and Bad Boys, we are invited to a feast of car chases ending in spectacular crashes and shootings, but all to no avail. At the end, the film turns into a teenage chick flick that ends with the ridiculous line, "I don't feel anything." Is another monster born?
Turistas aka Paradise Lost is not a remake, but somehow manages to be as bad as a silly remake, which is an achievement!
American college student Alex, his younger sister Bea, along with their close friend Amy are backpacking through Brazil. They meet up with similar companions: a wild and crazy British duo together with an Australian traveller (Melissa George of Home&Away) all on a cross-country rite of passage bus trip .
They survive when the bus crashes off a cliff, but are lured to a bungalow in the jungle. The owner is a crazy doctor practicing in the black market of providing human organs.
Long sequences of partying on the beach provide little in the way of entertaining distraction. We are forced to watch a gory operation on one of the girls while the crazy doctor gives a long-winded lecture about tourists who rape the land of Brazil and the rich Americans who come to the country to buy the organs of poor Brazilians.
The film is so tedious that at times I missed the gornography of films like Hostel and Saw whose success this film desperately craves. Where as in these films some movie goers were compelled to run horrified from the theatre, Paradise Lost is just mind numbing.
Images: IMDB
The Hitcher
Director: Dave Meyers; Cast: Sean Bean, Sophia Bush, Zachary Knighton, Neal McDonough; 83/2007; Rated 15.
Paradise Lost
Director: John Stockwell; Cast: Josh Duhamel, Melissa George, Olivia Wilde, Desmond Askew; 93/2006; Rated 18.
Nikfarjam's Top Five - 4-11 June
1. Zodiac
2.Taking Liberties
3.Joe Strummer
4.Painted Veil
5.Water
