The summer movie
season comes to an end for all intents and purposes this weekend.
It's been a great one. Don't let anyone tell you a summer that
included Mad Max: Fury Road, Inside Out, and Creep
was bad. I haven't even gotten to Mission: Impossible –
Rogue Nation yet, but I've heard that's excellent, too. Long
story short, Hollywood has had a strong summer, and I'll be sad to
see it go. This weekend has a couple new releases, one of the
sequel-remake-reboot variety we're so used to for summer movies, and
the other of the counter-programming variety that has done very well
these last few months. Let's take a look.
The Transporter: Refueled
Director: Camille
Delamarre
Writers: Adam
Cooper, Bill Collage, Luc Besson
Starring: Ed
Skrein, Ray Stevenson, Loan Chabanol
After three slick,
enjoyable larks as professional getaway driver Frank Martin, Jason
Statham decided he was done with the Transporter series. So
producers made a TV show out of the premise – it certainly has that
Incredible Hulk-MacGyver retro, repeatable quality to
it – which appears to be done after two seasons. That's a long way
to say that Ed Skrein, who was the first actor to play Daario Naharis
on Game of Thrones, is now the third actor to put on the
driving gloves.
Skrein's got more
of a pop star look than Statham – he'd be right at home in a movie
about the Pet Shop Boys' '80s scene – but he can play reluctantly
heroic. Based on the trailer, it looks like he can put up his dukes,
too. There's a simple formula to these pictures, so it is unlikely
Refueled will diverge much, or at all, from it. What matters
is whether Skrein can put some heroic stoicism into the tale of a guy
who's really good at driving, and whether the action and 'splosions
are not too similar to the ones that happened earlier in the series.
A Walk in the Woods
Director: Ken
Kwapis
Writers: Rick Kerb,
Bill Holderman
Starring: Robert
Redford, Nick Nolte, Emma Thompson
A couple of elderly
friends (Redford and Nolte) reunite after spending decades apart.
Their choice of bonding? Hiking the Appalachian Trail, all 2,200
miles of it along the eastern states. The tone appears to be more
whimsical than full-on character drama, which is nice to see from
these two grizzled pieces of anthropomorphic leather.
Redford returns
home after decades of living in England and decides to live a little
since so many people he knows are dying and, as displayed in the
trailer, he is bad at etiquette at those things. So he calls up a
bunch of old friends to go on an adventure with him on the trail.
Everyone but the gruff Nolte turns him down. So these two old men
agree to bury whatever hatchets they have from their past and get to
being cranky. Every story beat is probably obvious and predictable
from the word go, but if these veteran actors are charming (they
are), it can be a worthwhile moviegoing experience.
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