GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY

(James Gunn, 2014)

James Gunn understands the appeal of his material better than anybody else to tackle a Marvel movie so far. That translates here as a certain joy in the universe in which this story is set, in a love for these characters and even for the tropes of the super-hero spectacle which so weary many critics.
And that makes Guardians of the Galaxy feel fresh and different as Marvel movies go. It helps that this is a very different angle on this universe - the vast "cosmic" side of Marvel's world has only been suggested by the Avengers and Thor, but here Gunn embraces it wholeheartedly, and there is a genuine pulp relish in the numerous alien races and worlds he parades before us.
Not only that, he takes just the right tone. If this film recalls Star Wars in any way, it is the shorthand presentation of so many concepts and ideas. Gigantic skull of an ancient celestial being housing a city of people mining it for natural resources? Sure, why not? Gunn shows his characters accept that with just the right amount of awed bemusement, and then his crowded story rattles along, and we follow along in its its wake. By not focusing too much on the details of this universe, he makes us go with it, which is the best possible way to enjoy a movie like this one.
This applies to two of his lead characters too; Rocket Raccoon (nicely voiced by Bradley Cooper) and living tree-man Groot (Vin Diesel) are perhaps the most high-concept creations in any Marvel film so far. And here they are entirely successful; giving the film much of its humour and, in the last act, a large amount of its emotional impact.
The story follows Peter Quill (a likeable Chris Pratt). As a boy, he watches his mother die of a terminal illness in hospital, and as he flees, grief-stricken, he is abducted from Earth by the Ravagers led by Yondu (Michael Rooker). We meet him again as an adult; a cocky, wisecracking thief who finds himself in possession of a mysterious Orb. This orb is coveted by many other parties however, and in classic super-hero comic style, Star-Lord (the name Quill is unsuccessfully attempting to assume) has to fight the people who will become his friends before they are all arrested and imprisoned by the Nova Corps (a sort of Interstellar police force).
These friends include the humourless fighting machine Drax (Dave Bautista) and Gamora (Zoe Saldana), a famous assassin adopted by Thanos (voiced here by Josh Brolin) who sees her chance to atone for crimes committed in his name. Together they must face off against Ronan (Lee Pace), a Kree religious fundamentalist who wishes to use the power of the Orb to destroy half of the universe.
Despite Gunn's skill with a set piece, the best stuff here is the character interaction. When all of the Guardians are together, their bickering and grousing is genuinely hilarious and illuminating. The Rocket-Groot dynamic recalls Han Solo and Chewbacca  but is lent a unique edge by Rocket's self-loathing. Drax is unable to understand any figurative language, while the attraction between Quill and Gamora is never overstated but gives a couple of scenes a nice frisson. The cast - bolstered by work from the likes of Peter Serafinowicz and Glenn Close - are all fine, with Pratt perhaps the stand-out. His Quill anchors many scenes with references to Earth pop culture and knowingly sidelong angles on the action, while the mix tape his mother made for him as a boy forms the film's soundtrack, giving it a fun tone unlike any other super-hero or science fiction movie.
Quill's transformation into a hero is kept bearable by his own self-conscious assessment of it, which is the film in microcosm. Self-aware and with a sense of humour about itself, it nevertheless works as a pure piece of old-fashioned pulp.
It may all boil down to spaceships crashing into each other and hand-to-hand combat, but it does those things with brio and wit, and is thoroughly entertaining, and even occasionally beautiful, in that its visual scheme recalls nothing quite so much as the science fiction of the early '80s, notably Mike Hodges' Flash Gordon.

STAR TREK INTO DARKNESS

(JJ Abrams, 2013)

Strange that after expending so much energy to create an entirely different (but consistent in continuity terms) branch in time for his reboot of Star Trek, Abrams goes straight back to the well here, lifting scenes, situations and characters directly from the greatest of the original run of Star Trek films, Nicholas Meyer's 1982 Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.
And early on, you almost believe he might pull it off. This film is so confident and bold from the off, dropping right into the action as Captain James T. Kirk (Chris Pine) and Ships Doctor "Bones" McCoy (Karl Urban) flee an alien race during an attempt to save their nascent species from destruction by an active volcano. Kirk and Bones are such strong, archetypal figures that no introduction is necessary - this does feel like an episode in a long-running series at that point. The other familiar characters are all introduced in the same scene; science officer Mr Spock (Zachary Quinto), who is ying to Kirk's yang, communications officer Lt Uhura (Zoe Saldana) and engineer Scotty (Simon Pegg), alongside the more thankless Misters Sulu (John Cho) and Chekhov (Anton Yelchin). Also introduced is Abrams' breathless, epic approach to action scenes, all spectacle, lens flares (more on those in a moment) and ceaseless movement, interrupted by the occasional awed shot of something massive (usually in this film an enormous spacecraft).
Then the plot kicks in; a Federation agent named John Harrison (Benedict Cumberbatch, utterly stealing the film) appears to be waging a one man terrorist campaign against the Federation itself. After losing his mentor Admiral Pike (Bruce Greenwood) in one of Harrison's attacks, Kirk and the Enterprise are dispatched to the Klingon homeworld to hunt him down. Only everything is much more complicated than it at first appears, and even Harrison has more to him than is obvious on the surface...
Welded to all of this is a learn-and-grow character arc for Kirk which never really makes much sense for the character or the film. Pine is good - his Kirk honours William Shatner but is very much his own take - but the film doesn't need this story of his realisation of what it takes to be a leader, and the final act sequence between Kirk and Spock, nodding shamelessly towards the far superior scene in Wrath of Khan, is a curiously hollow moment. Wrath of Khan has 20 years of weight pressing upon the relationship of its Kirk and Spock, and the fact that the actors were ageing gave it an undeniable resonance this film cannot hope to replicate. Instead the explicit invitation to compare Star Trek Into Darkness with that older film does Abrams' film few favours.
That is not to say its a complete disaster. The cast are all good, nailing their roles in a few instants. The action rolls along in a pleasurable surge of incident and colour. Abrams' style is mixed; sometimes beautifully concise, others shockingly ugly. His use of lens flares remains a problem, but he can tell a story, and he puts his budgets up on the screen. Its just a bit of a shame he squandered this much of a budget on this story, already so well told once before...

THE LOSERS

(Sylvain White, 2010)

The Losers was released in the same year as The A-Team and The Expendables, all three of them action movies with big doses of comedy about combat units composed of larger-than-life macho personalities either betrayed or on missions or both. And while it doesn't quite have the gloriously unhinged sense of fun of Joe Carnahan's The A-Team, The Losers is a more enjoyable movie than Stallone's The Expendables. It doesn't take itself remotely seriously - not even as seriously as the comic series upon which it's based, which is a decent pastiche - and it's absolutely stuffed with dumb action movie cliches. Director Sylvain White's roots as a music video director are obvious in the hyper-kinetic ADD editing, and often quirky angles and a few laughable money-shots, but its frequently beautiful for all that, has a few really funny sequences, and a strong cast for this sort of material.
The Losers of the title all have silly macho names (so much so that Zoe Saldana's Aisha laughs when they're introduced to her and says "Really?") like Clay, Roque, Pooch, Cougar and Jensen. They have a single personality trait each - Jensen (Chris Evans) is the jokey motormouth computer whizz, Cougar (Óscar Jaenada) is the cool, deadly, near-mute cowboy hat-wearing sniper, Pooch (Columbus Short) is the down-to-earth one (he has a pregnant wife) and pilot and driver, Clay (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) is the leader with a weakness for women, and Roque (Idris Elba) is the second-in-command, with a weakness for arguing with Clay. They banter and bicker in the usual cliched fashion throughout, but a lot of that is amusing, and it sets up a nice dynamic with the pyromaniac action scenes.
The plot sees this group abandoned and stuck in Latin America after a moral decision in the middle of an operation leaves them considered as enemies by their own Government. Jason Patric's villain is behind all this, of course, and he gives them something to focus on. Patric plays this character as a straight-up comic figure; theatrical, sarcastic, enjoying his own nastiness. He may be the best thing in the film.
It is nicely atmospheric in parts - location shooting certainly helps - and is entirely predictable every step of the way, but is made no less likeable for that.