TrekSucksHard
09-11-2007, 11:19 PM
You know, I really try hard to like Robert Rodriguez, when I watched his first film El Mariachi I thought this was going to be a major new force on the independent filmmaking scene- a guy who makes a pretty good story and does it on a small budget.
Then came Desperado- it was basically the same as El Mariachi except done with a bigger budget. Then came Once Upon a Time in Mexico- which could have been an epic send-off for the trilogy but got bogged down in too many subplots (although the inclusion of Johnny Depp nearly saved it).
My question is: is Robert Rodriguez a one-trick pony?
Surely not- he did re-energize my faith in him when he came out with Sin City- but then again, he was merely copying Frank Miller's comic book on a frame-by-frame level. What can he do with more original stuff?
So now comes the release of Planet Terror- the full 2-hour long movie that was part of the Grindhouse double-bill with Quentin Tarantino's Death Proof. Grindhouse didn't do that well in the box-office so Planet Terror was lengthened, re-edited into a longer movie and released on its own (along with the 5-minute Machete trailer starring Danny Trejo).
The story is pretty-much bare-bones stuff: a group of rogue soldiers end up exposing a small town's inhabitants with some weird gas that turns them into Zombies. Some townspeople (led by a one-legged stripper and a James Dean type-rebel gunslinger) survive and start to shoot their way out. Other implausible characters include a psychotic doctor (Josh Brolin) who plans to murder his wife, a BBQ chef (Jeff Fahey) who slurps down BBQ sauce while battling zombies, a mad Brit scientist with a penchant for collecting men's balls (I kid you not) and Bruce Willis as the rogue military commander who started the whole mess.
The action is somewhat repetitive, plus there is plenty of gore (the hospital scene before the zombie attack already gave me the creeps and nearly made me retch the hotdog I was eating) and many of the characters have so little screen time that their backgrounds are never really explored- just hinted at- which makes it all the more frustrating because it doesn't give you much sympathy for them. And to add Rodriguez's fetish for exotically placed weapons (on the stripper's peg leg, no less) makes for a whacked out viewing experience. There are some jokes and situations that gave me a chuckle every now and then (like the no-brainer bit and the short interaction with Rodriguez's son) but most of the times the humor fell flat.
Robert Rodriguez is capable of doing great movies- but he seems to miss more than he hits. I hope the next thing he does is better; he needs to grow up and get serious (and lay off the silly jokes).
Rating: 4 out of 10. Pretty gory stuff but compared to the Dawn of the Dead remake and 28 Weeks Later- I think this is the better zombie movie to have come out since Romero's Land of the Dead...
Then came Desperado- it was basically the same as El Mariachi except done with a bigger budget. Then came Once Upon a Time in Mexico- which could have been an epic send-off for the trilogy but got bogged down in too many subplots (although the inclusion of Johnny Depp nearly saved it).
My question is: is Robert Rodriguez a one-trick pony?
Surely not- he did re-energize my faith in him when he came out with Sin City- but then again, he was merely copying Frank Miller's comic book on a frame-by-frame level. What can he do with more original stuff?
So now comes the release of Planet Terror- the full 2-hour long movie that was part of the Grindhouse double-bill with Quentin Tarantino's Death Proof. Grindhouse didn't do that well in the box-office so Planet Terror was lengthened, re-edited into a longer movie and released on its own (along with the 5-minute Machete trailer starring Danny Trejo).
The story is pretty-much bare-bones stuff: a group of rogue soldiers end up exposing a small town's inhabitants with some weird gas that turns them into Zombies. Some townspeople (led by a one-legged stripper and a James Dean type-rebel gunslinger) survive and start to shoot their way out. Other implausible characters include a psychotic doctor (Josh Brolin) who plans to murder his wife, a BBQ chef (Jeff Fahey) who slurps down BBQ sauce while battling zombies, a mad Brit scientist with a penchant for collecting men's balls (I kid you not) and Bruce Willis as the rogue military commander who started the whole mess.
The action is somewhat repetitive, plus there is plenty of gore (the hospital scene before the zombie attack already gave me the creeps and nearly made me retch the hotdog I was eating) and many of the characters have so little screen time that their backgrounds are never really explored- just hinted at- which makes it all the more frustrating because it doesn't give you much sympathy for them. And to add Rodriguez's fetish for exotically placed weapons (on the stripper's peg leg, no less) makes for a whacked out viewing experience. There are some jokes and situations that gave me a chuckle every now and then (like the no-brainer bit and the short interaction with Rodriguez's son) but most of the times the humor fell flat.
Robert Rodriguez is capable of doing great movies- but he seems to miss more than he hits. I hope the next thing he does is better; he needs to grow up and get serious (and lay off the silly jokes).
Rating: 4 out of 10. Pretty gory stuff but compared to the Dawn of the Dead remake and 28 Weeks Later- I think this is the better zombie movie to have come out since Romero's Land of the Dead...