The Near Midnight Meanderings On A Movie With A Microwave Meal Part 13: Red (2010)

Hello there. Hope you're feeling well today,

As a fifty five year old man I should look at an action movie where old people kick butt  and think "Yes!" But hey it's nearly midnight. I want a snooze.

And for me this is the movie's problem from the beginning. Bruce Willis (along with Morgan Freeman, John Malkovitch and Helen Mirren later) is an ex CIA agent (RED Retired Extremely Dangerous) face up to trained baddies young enough to be his grandchildren and don't say "Oh my back!" or "My knee's playing up".

(Though how he deals with Christmas decorations has my vote)

He also seems to tag a much younger girlfriend by a method I'm sure would not have e-harmony approval...yeah right.

In fact probably the closest depiction of what life would really be like is for someone that age is when we first see Morgan Freeman in a care home getting his kicks from admiring the backside of a nurse and watching TV.

So Willis with the girl in tow travel across America trying to work out why people are trying to kill him and have killed others. Thing is for a secret agent Willis is not so secret. Take the scene in New Orleans. Armed with an array of guns and smirks Willis shoots his way along a street in broad daylight. Yet there are no residents prepared to give a description of the gun toting baldy to the police and the local media? Apparently not.

Not only do geriatrics face off against younger opponents, they also do it stylistically (presumably from it's comic book roots) when in reality they'd have just got a round of if capable of just hitting them.

Red is a film not as clever or as funny as it thinks it is. Essentially it's well packaged rubbish. It's that packaging that makes it better than the Steven Segal movies in this series.

But only just.

Until the next time

The Near Midnight Meanderings On A Movie With A Microwave Meal Part 7: Pistol Whipped (2008)

Hello there. Hope you're feeling well today.

It's funny how some of  the movies I'm getting to watch in this random choice for this occasional chat seem connected. After all we have had two James Stewart movies and now we're on our second Steven Seagal.

Here though his presence is dominates the screen as usual. For what we see is fat Steven Seagal. Steven Seagal with a double chin. Other actors in this film are lucky to be noticed for he puts a whole new meaning to the word widescreen.

Now you might accuse me of bring hypocritical. I've never hidden that I'm not exactly slim in the body department either. But I've never been an actor in an action movie. And, more crucially I've never been an fat actor in an action movie beating off bad guys a lot of whom are old enough to be my grandson.

In one fight scene an Asian bad guy attempts to use martial arts to beat Seagal. What does Michelin Man do? He pushes him off with his paunch

Fighting aside Seagal's character is not perfect. Drummed off the police for suspicion of being dirty, divorced, a drunk, a gambler. A bad gambler at that. He has debts. Those debts are taken by a shadowy government department. We know it's shadowy because for a lot of the movie the face of it's boss is in shadows.

To honour his debts Segal has to kill bad guys that justice somehow couldn't reach. There essentially you have the plot. He tails these bad guys. He tails these bad guys with a Range Rover and his stomach. Yet their security guys still don't notice him. Perhaps they should borrow my glasses.

This movie seems to shot through fifty shades of grim grey. I literally mean the colour. Perhaps they couldn't afford, I don't know, lighting.

Oh and one other thing about the so called plot. The big reveal is not a surprise. It was as obvious as the arrival of a carnival from around a corner.

It's such a bad film that I suspect it went straight to  DVD Bargain basement. I did wonder whether if Steven Seagal from Under Siege had played it I'd have liked it better. The answer is no. For whilst it would be still rubbish it just wouldn't be as funny.

Until the next time.

The Near Midnight Meanderings On A Movie With A Microwave Meal Part 3:On Deadly Ground (1994)

Hello there. Hope you're feeling well today.

I've not seen a lot of Steven Seagal movies. Largely because they came at a time when I realised that there was no chance I could save the [insert area here] from the clutches of villainous domination without getting damaged physically in the process. In other words I was getting older.

However there was one exception to this. Under Siege was the sort of film where as long you didn't take it seriously you would enjoy it. There was a sense of people enjoying themselves which no other movie I've seen with Seagal has.

(Also it was the first movie I ever saw where when there was a scene where Erika Eleniak was practically topless and my first thought was "Are they real?")

But it appeared after that Seagal movies reverted to type. Because with slight quirks On Deadly Ground is really no different to most of his other stuff.

Basically the movie is about Seagal trying to stop villainous oil baron Michael Caine from controlling the Alaskan oil pipeline and endangering the environment and the Eskimo community there.

Seagal in an expert on dealing with oil rig fires. So expert that in the beginning he resolves one whilst smoking. He can also fight. In an early scene he beats a guy up whilst saying "What does it take to change the essence of a man".....what?

And when I described Caine as villainous. Well that includes his performance in this as well. The greatest crime committed on this movie was not on the environment but by Caine getting money from the producers assuming he wouldn't (given it's 1994) fax it in. Really it wasn't so much hamming it but providing the whole pig. His accent is part American from goodness knows where and part Mockney Cockney. I'm sure somebody was offended by it. Me? I laughed

Let me rephrase this. Michael Caine. No, Sir Michael Caine, is the worst actor in a Steven Seagal movie.

Commercial Break Time: Surely the most smug man in ad land is the guy who thinks he's clever because he's hidden the smell of a bacon from a room with Febreeze and his girlfriend is puzzled because whilst the room is fresh smelling he's reeking of cooked pork?

Well my friend you shouldn't be so smug that you know how to use a Febreeze bottle. I bet your girlfriend does too. Also she will wonder whether if you can hide any unpleasant odours from a room there are other secrets you're not telling her and will leave you. Not so smug now eh?

In the movie you will get a lot on the Eskimo way of life. Well the Eskimo way of life as it appears in a Steven Seagal movie anyway. Was it genuine? Absolutely no idea.

But of course what you get in the end are fights. Unrealistic as it happens. You just looked at them and thought physically it was impossible. Also you'll get things blowing up. Yet Seagal and Joan Chen look as if nothing had happened. In the film Seagal will lecture on the environment, and yet I'm sure all of the explosions it produced didn't exactly help the Alaskan landscape.

An awful movie. Will cross it off the list. Won't see it again.

Until the next time.