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Two-time Academy Award® nominee Ethan Hawke plays Edward Dalton, a researcher in the year 2019, when an unknown plague has transformed the world’s population into vampires. As the human population nears extinction, vampires must capture and farm every remaining human, or find a blood substitute before time runs out. However, a covert group of vampires makes a remarkable discovery, one which has the power to save the human race.While
Daybreakers presents vampiric traits that distinguish its vampires from others in the many films that have ridden 2009's vampire movie wave, there is a lack of humor here that makes this film sour compared to sweeter ones like
Cirque du Freak: A Vampire's Assistant. Maybe that's because the plot in this horror feature from Peter and Michael Spierig! (
Undead) is more akin to zombie films like
28 Days Later. The year is 2019, and nearly all humans are converted vampires searching in vain for blood during a blood shortage, as they drain remaining humans into extinction. Nightly, CNN airs segments about the Blood Crisis, while vampire citizens around the globe attack each other like cannibals. Humans are farmed like cattle while tied to blood-draining machinery in the top-secret pharmaceutical corporation run by evil CEO Charles Bromley (Sam Neill). Sound like a heavy-handed metaphor for our oil wars?
Daybreakers can definitely be viewed in that light, as a story about greed and consumption. Stylistically, it looks like a cross between
Alien and
Batman, with its Giger-esque set design and blue-tinted hue to represent night fallen on society. The lead actors help to salvage this movie. Edward Dalton (Ethan Hawke), chief hematologist at Bromley, straddles the vampire and human wo! rlds, with the aid of humans Lionel "Elvis" Cormac (Willem Daf! oe) and Lisa Barrett (Harriet Minto-Day), to search for a blood replacement to placate the starving masses. These three protagonists carry the film, though not well enough to call
Daybreakers any sort of genre breakthrough. --
Trinie Dalton
Stills from Daybreakers (Click for larger image) Two-time Academy Award® nominee Ethan Hawke plays Edward Dalton, a researcher in the year 2019, when an unknown plague has transformed the world’s population into vampires. As the human population nears extinction, vampires must capture and farm every remaining human, or find a blood substitute before time runs out. However, a covert group of vampires makes a remarkable discovery, one which has the power to save the human race.
Stills from Daybreakers (Click for larger image) At a remote desert truck stop the fate of the world will be decided. Evils armies are amassing. Armed & united by the archangel michael a group of strangers become unitting soldiers on the frontlines of the apocalypse. Their mission: to protect a waitress & her unborn child from the demonic legion. Studio: Sony Pictures Home Ent Release Date: 05/11/2010 Starring: Paul Battany Lucas Black Run time: 100 minutes Rating: RAs pure ! check-your-head-at-the-door popcorn entertainment, the apocalyptic action-horror hybrid
Legion delivers in nearly every frame--its story of a band of strangers fighting an army of angels and demons for the fate of mankind is proudly loud, bullet riddled, and knee-deep in gore and CGI. That doesn't mean it's particularly good or even coherent--the story has renegade angel Michael (a glum Paul Bettany) come to the aid of diner owner Dennis Quaid (equally glum) and his patrons (a cross-section of stereotypes embodied by a capable cast, which includes Lucas Black, Charles S. Dutton, Tyrese Gibson, Kate Walsh, and Jon Tenney) as a host of heavenly and diabolical beings, dispatched by an angry God, descend on the diner with the intent of killing waitress Adrianne Palicki (
Friday Night Lights), whose unborn child may be the salvation of humanity. The orgy of special effects--endless hails of bullets and a menagerie of unpleasant demonic creatures, the most unsettling! of which is the ice cream man (Doug Jones,
Hellboy)--i! s eye po pping but ultimately repetitive, and since no character rises above a cipher in director Scott Stewart's script (cowritten with Peter Schink), the whole affair feels unwieldy and eventually tiresome under a barrage of hackneyed dialogue. Naturally,
Legion ends with the possibility of a sequel, though one wonders where the story can go after Armageddon.
--Paul Gaita Stills from Legion (Click for larger image) James Reece (J! onathan Rhys-Meyers), personal aide to the U.S. Ambassador to ! France, is secretly moonlighting as a low-level CIA operative. Looking for more action, Reece accepts a job that teams him with wise-cracking special agent Charlie Wax (John Travolta), a trigger-happy loose cannon sent to Paris on a mission of international importance. Now, Reece finds himself on the wildest ride of his life as the new partners pull out all the stops to annihilate the enemy in this explosive, white-knuckle, non-stop thriller.An uncomplicated, moderately entertaining action film,
From Paris With Love offers an enthusiastic performance by John Travolta as a
just-this-side-of-crazy agent and Jonathan Rhys Meyers (
The Tudors) as the low-level operative newly partnered with him. Outwardly an aide to the U.S. Ambassador in France, James Reese (Rhys Meyers) is also a low-level CIA operative, tasked with generally mundane duties. Then his inside contact offers him a high-level assignment that could lead to a promotion to full agent. All Reese has ! to do is drive CIA agent Charlie Wax (Travolta) around Paris on an undisclosed mission. But Wax is a shoot first, don't bother with questions kinda guy, and the straitlaced Reese quickly finds himself riding shotgun to a killing-spree through Paris' underground drug sub-culture. The drugs lead the obviously opposite duo to a hidden terrorist cell, and they race to stop the suicide bombers' plot. Wax's wise-cracking, one-on-many fight scenes are adequately entertaining--especially when he flings bad guys down a curving staircase, as Reese tries to avoid getting hit by the bodies--but the action generally leaves you wanting more. An undesirable characteristic in an action movie. Based on a story by Luc Besson, (
The Fifth Element and
The Transporter movies), one can't help wonder if the complexity of the story and characters could have been improved if he'd written the screenplay himself. However, the simplistic story offers a few surprises and laugh! -worthy one-liners. The climactic final chase scene--Agent Wax! hanging out the window of a speeding Audi, armed with heavy artillery and a driver with nerves of steel, as he attempts to stop one phase of the planned attack--is as impossible as one could hope for in this kind of movie. And hearing Travolta call his burger a “royale with cheese†is almost worth the rest of the movie.
--Jill Corddry
Stills from From Paris with Love (Click for larger image) Studio: Sony Pictures Home Ent Release Date: 05/11/2010 Run time: 109 minutes Rating: Pg13As pure check-your-head-at-the-door popcorn entertainment, the apocalyptic action-horror hybrid
Legion delivers in nearly every frame--its story of a band of strangers fighting an army of angels and demons for the fate of mankind is proudly loud, bullet riddled, and knee-deep in gore and CGI. That doesn't mean it's particularly good or even coherent--the story has renegade angel Michael (a glum Paul Bettany) come to the aid of diner owner Dennis Quaid (equally glum) and his patrons (a cross-section of stereotypes embodied! by a capable cast, which includes Lucas Black, Charles S. Dut! ton, Tyr ese Gibson, Kate Walsh, and Jon Tenney) as a host of heavenly and diabolical beings, dispatched by an angry God, descend on the diner with the intent of killing waitress Adrianne Palicki (
Friday Night Lights), whose unborn child may be the salvation of humanity. The orgy of special effects--endless hails of bullets and a menagerie of unpleasant demonic creatures, the most unsettling of which is the ice cream man (Doug Jones,
Hellboy)--is eye popping but ultimately repetitive, and since no character rises above a cipher in director Scott Stewart's script (cowritten with Peter Schink), the whole affair feels unwieldy and eventually tiresome under a barrage of hackneyed dialogue. Naturally,
Legion ends with the possibility of a sequel, though one wonders where the story can go after Armageddon.
--Paul Gaita Stills from Legion (Click for larger image) 
