Mark VanTassel

Robert Jordan passed away five years ago, leaving his epic Wheel of Time incomplete. Brandon Sanderson stepped into the job, adding three more novels to wrap the major plot lines. This series is 14 books long, and includes over 3,000 named characters. I cannot imagine the level of effort required to step into this project.

Beyond the technical difficulty, the Wheel of Time has sold over 40 million copies. That is a lot of fans to please (or anger.) Mr. Sanderson, I can just imagine you at your computer chanting, “No pressure, no pressure…” while you work. Thank you for meeting (and sometimes exceeding) my expectations; you did a fantastic job.

To avoid any confusion, this is a review of a movie starring Jason Statham, titled Safe.

I love action movies. They are a form of wish fulfillment. I certainly wouldn’t want the problems action characters face, but I very much want their superhuman skills. As such, these movies succeed or fail in entertaining me based on action choreography, camera work, pacing, and avoiding something so very very stupid I cannot ignore it. I’m EXTREMELY tolerant about that last requirement.

Good story telling is nice and so are things like musical score, cinematography, and great acting. However, when I watch this genre, I’m willing to let quality slide farther than in other genres. See my review of Prometheus for examples. This creates an unfair standard, but I’m okay with that. Now that you know about my biases, you can judge how much value to place on my opinions.

Content: Violence: pervasive. Swearing: lots. Drug use: alcohol and I think some tobacco. Sex: none.

I would see this movie again and recommend it to friends. Not recommended for children.

*** Spoilers Follow ***

Fun factor: 8/10 with two points deducted for confusing camera work. Safe doesn’t sink to shaky-cam but at times it comes pretty close. This style worked for me during car chase footage, where it effectively conveyed a sense that things were happening so fast, even a superhero like Luke Wright couldn’t keep up. It failed in some of the fight scenes where I’m sure people are just as confused, but as the viewer I want to see what is happening.

Satisfaction: 9/10. A couple of bad guys don’t get what’s coming to them. Otherwise, they wrapped the story up nicely.

Plotting: 8/10. Once again, the film makers dipped into cliche a bit too much. Specifically, our hero is slowly revealed to have a greater and greater skill set. So why didn’t he think to ask Mei if she had a cell phone before deciding their hiding place was safe? Also, the gangsters initially use Mei to replace computerized financial record keeping. She knows their business inside and out, yet as the story develops she assumes that once she delivers the long boring number to its destination, they will kill her. The writers never explicitly state that Mei is the only copy of these business records, but they imply it. It seems, then, that the gang cannot really afford to kill her out-of-hand.

Also, Luke’s mental state is not consistent. For example, when his wife is killed he is so upset he refuses to fight back, apparently hoping that the bad guys will kill him. Late in the film, one of the villains taunts him about his dead wife’s looks and Luke is able to make a joke about it. This could be explained by Luke finally having his ‘game face’ on, but I didn’t buy it.

Grand tally: 8/10. Safe does a better job with police response than most action films, meaning that when the shooting starts, the police actually respond. I found the acting adequate throughout and pretty good in spots (for the genre.) The action was fun and mostly plausible–it could happen… sort of… Overall, I’m glad I bought the ticket.

Content — Sex: mild and mostly off-screen. Swearing: there was some but I don’t remember much. Drug use: quite a lot of alcohol consumption. Violence: quite a bit and pretty disturbing.

I learned about this movie’s existence from an early viewer ranting about the poor quality of the acting. Having now seen the acting in question, I wonder if that particular reviewer likes anything, ever. Prometheus has problems but not with the cast.

The visuals are superb.  My favorite sequence was arrival. Seeing the world from far out, then closer and closer was a lot of fun.

My problems were all about plotting. Specifically, people had to make unintelligent or nonsensical choices in order to move the story forward.

I am conflicted about this film. Ridley Scott creates beautiful work and is one of the few people whose name will get me into a theater for a horror movie. I knew going in that this was a prequel to the Alien series, which was a big selling point for me. In short, I wanted very much to like this movie, but ultimately I probably would not recommend it to a friend or watch it again.

*** SPOILERS FOLLOW ***

The following items are what I most noticed while sitting in the theater. This is not a complete list–that would be tedious.

The trope where people show up in a strange place and immediately decide to take their helmets off is overdone throughout entertainment.  In this case, the ship’s captain uses the ground team’s suit comms to order them to keep their helmets in place. So naturally the entire team removes their helmets. Surely at least one of them would say, “I think I’ll wait and see what happens to you…” (Afterward, why didn’t the rest of the crew quarantine them?)

In keeping with the trope above, the party separates. Ostensibly, they do it because two of the ground team are freaked out. Naturally, these two get lost and run in to a small snake-eel thing. In a move I felt was not only stupid, but out of character: rather than being afraid, one of these cowards tried to make friends with the creature. Naturally it killed him.

The first two examples are forgivable. In real life, people make predictable mistakes over and over. Had these been the film’s only flaws, I wouldn’t mind. However, near the end, Elizabeth uses the autodoc to deliver her alien ‘baby’ via c-section. Within the film, this is a real surgical procedure where the autodoc uses a laser scalpel to make a large incision in her abdomen and extract the monster. Then she takes her newly stapled incision and runs, jumps, climbs, rolls… you get the point. Some of the necessary muscles are not connected and neither pain meds nor willpower could overcome the problem.

The game’s been out for months. I’ve completed it three times and spent a number of hours in multiplayer. Why wait so long to review it? Because I have been searching for something original to say while I give myself time to digest the experience.

Gameplay: 8/10 — I play on an Xbox 360 and Bioware put too many functions on the A button. Shepard takes cover when I try to evade, evades when I want to sprint, and goes into cover when I want to interact.  Also, I never get to combine the powers I most wanted to use. Bioware needs to rethink their approach to class creation. Also: I am generally unhappy with the tweaks to weapons between ME2 and ME3. And putting the player in darkness–with a flashlight–with NO ambushes = lame. (Is Shepard too poor to buy night vision?)

Story: 8/10 — This should really be 6/10 but Bioware included so many wonderful things here, they deserve bonus points. I particularly enjoyed the missions on and around Rannoch as I figured out how best to resolve the differences between the Geth and Quarians. Points deducted for dropping the dark matter plot line from ME2 and nearly dropping the Keepers plot line from ME1. I should ding them additional points for failing to foreshadow the Crucible in the first two games, but what’s there is fantastic.

The End: 0/10 — I could go on for pages, but I won’t. It’s been covered brilliantly here: Mass Effect 3 Ending: Tasteful, Understated Nerdrage. What hasn’t been said, or at least hasn’t been said very much, is the most obvious: ME3 is a game. I play games to win. In Mass Effect 3, I didn’t lose but it sure doesn’t feel like victory either. By offering a conclusion with so many parallels to a draw, Bioware has reduced their beautiful franchise to the world’s most complex form of tic-tac-toe.

Marketing: 0/10 –Bioware promised me a game where my choices matter and where there would be wild divergence in the available endings.  They did not deliver. Classic false advertising.

Final Tally: A bungled ending can ruin an otherwise stellar piece, while a brilliant conclusion can make a very average story come alive. ME3 is not merely a game, it is the conclusion of a series. The end of the end, as it were. Thus, the final scenes carry more importance than anything that came before. In these final, critical moments, Bioware stole from me the gaming aspect of my game. My arbitrary final grade: 3/10.