Hey, everyone. "Moriarty" here with some Rumblings From The Lab.
What amazes me is just how much movie watching this guy gets done from his barstool. And just how clear-eyed he seems to be behind those omnipresent sunglasses.
Anyway, here's Atlanta's own fratboy-turned-permanently-buzzed-lawyer, Steve Dallas, with a look at a film that Paramount Classics is currently rolling out in limited release:
M.
Thanks to the people at Chud.com,, I caught a screening of Vinnie Jones' MEAN MACHINE tonight. Like many of you, I really enjoyed his previous work with Guy Ritchie - LOCK, STOCK & TWO SMOKING BARRELS and SNATCH. This film features many of Guy Ritchie's regulars, and it was made by his production team. He even gets a producing credit. I came to the theater tonight wanting to like this film. In the end, I just couldn't. MEAN MACHINE is not an awful film. In fact, It contains some genuinely funny moments. But almost all of them are in the third act, and the payoff isn't worth the hour you spend getting there. For a comedy, I didn't laugh very much.
The movie is a riff on THE LONGEST YARD, a film I've enjoyed countless times on TBS. Vinnie Jones plays Danny Meehan, a past-his-prime soccer star who gets into trouble with the law. Sentenced to four years in prison, the warden soon takes him aside. The guards have a semi-pro soccer team, and the warden wants Danny to coach them. The captain of the guards doesn't want to be displaced as coach, and he warns Danny not to accept the job -or else. Danny suggests to the warden that his soccer team would play better if they played a warm-up game against the inmates. The warden agrees, and the stage is set for quintessential grudge match - convicts vs. guards, in the game of their lives. But first, Danny will have teach a group of prison misfits how to play as a team.
Yeah, whatever.
Matthew Vaughn has made some really good films. SNATCH & LOCK STOCK were clever, cool pictures with great dialogue and an interesting (if convoluted) story. Both films were engaging and well written.
MEAN MACHINE is a remake of a 1974 Burt Reynolds movie. It's not clever. It's not cool. In SNATCH & LOCK STOCK, the dialogue was an integral part of the film. Here, it feels like an afterthought. Maybe what passed for a story 30 years ago just doesn't cut it today. Maybe you just don't get that spark, that synergy, when your outcomes and ideas are limited by what someone thought would work 30 years ago. Some stories are timeless. This one isn't.
Matt, I know you read the site. What the hell were you thinking? It's not that I care about your film destroying the "legacy" of THE LONGEST YARD - it's not like it's HAMLET, or PSYCHO or something. I'm just disappointed you couldn't come up with an original storyline. You wanted to make a soccer film - Great! Look what Steven Chow did with SHAOLIN SOCCER. You've pushed the envelope before. This time, you licked it. There are thousands of struggling screenwriters out there with fresh ideas for films. Hire one. The economy isn't great, and they really could use the work. I think you're better than this. I know your cast was.
This story was not good. It wasn't funny, and it wasn't credible enough to qualify as drama. The dialogue was miserable - 75% of the first half hour was nothing but exposition. Vinnie Jones is led around the prison, and every character comes over and reads the description on the call sheet. Vinnie basically spends the first 45 minutes reacting. He has very few lines, and its VERY hard to craft comedy from silence. The only thing that works is the broad physical comedy of the soccer match and practices ("number 23"... funny as hell. ). There is some genuinely funny stuff in those scenes, but nothing worth waiting an hour for.
The acting is not good. Many of the players are recognizable from their turns in LOCK STOCK & SNATCH, so we know they've got chops. I haven't seen the script, but I don't think they had a lot to work with. God, it's amazing what a difference a plot makes. The supporting cast was reduced to playing off their mannerisms. They were there to play soccer, and they didn't really have any use off the field. One exception was Jason Statham (Turkish from SNATCH), who plays Monk. He's the psychopath they keep locked in the basement. Apparently, he killed 23 people using his bare hands. He's great. Steals every scene he's in.
Vinnie Jones is another matter. I've enjoyed his work in the past, but tonight I found him dull. Agonizingly dull. I hate to say it, but it was painfully obvious that he can't carry a film on his own. I've heard others talk about his range in this film. I didn't see it. Sure, he's playing a different character from LOCK STOCK, SNATCH, or even SWORDFISH. But his performance is monotone. Worse than Lazenby's Bond in ON HER MAJESTIES SECRET SERVICE. Just plain flat. His character isn't interesting, and neither is he. Although he was a great soccer player, and he looks like a natural in those scenes, For the rest of the film he's just dull.
Technically, the film was a mess. The editing was choppy, and the scene changes were very abrupt. Someone remarked after the film that it looked like Roger Christian (BATTLEFIELD EARTH) had shot it. They had a great set - the now defunct Oxford Prison, but it's wasted by bad… something. I don't know, maybe I need to go to film school to describe it properly. The film just looks bad. The color matching was off throughout, especially in the soccer scenes they worked so hard on. The press notes say that one of the reasons Barry Skolnick was hired was his enthusiasm for the game. Perhaps they should have gotten someone who knows how to film a match.
Despite all of this, MEAN MACHINE isn't all bad. The first hour is painfully dull to sit through, but once they started playing soccer, I actually enjoyed it. The soundtrack is fun - If you listen closely, you'll hear homages to Rocky, the old Monday Night Football theme, the love theme from Titanic, and just good old soccer hooligan music. There are some genuinely funny moments, mostly involving the announcing duo, the psychotic goalie, and a really fat Iranian, but they're not enough to carry it. In the end, this is a really funny soccer match saddled with a very bad film. If you go in expecting LOCK STOCK, you will be disappointed. With lower expectations, you might actually enjoy it. Skip the first hour, and it'll be a hoot.
