Milla Jovovich

‘A Perfect Getaway’ With Steve Zahn, Milla Jovovich Delivers Thrills

BrianTT — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 11:18:14 -0600

Rating: 3.5/5.0

CHICAGO – David Twohy’s “A Perfect Getaway” is a surprisingly effective thriller, featuring good-to-great performances from Milla Jovovich, Timothy Olyphant, Steve Zahn, and Kiele Sanchez, and a taut, interesting screenplay with enough twists and turns to keep the audience entertained for its scant running time.

In a season that has been dominated by effects-heavy and usually over-long blockbusters, it’s almost refreshing to see an old-fashioned thriller like “A Perfect Getaway,” a film that doesn’t turn the genre on its head as much as just try to deliver as good a time as possible within its constructs.

Cliff (Steve Zahn) and Cydney (Milla Jovovich).
Photo credit: Javier Pesquera and Rogue Pictures

“A Perfect Getaway” opens with home video footage shot at a wedding. Cut to Cliff & Cydney Anderson (Steve Zahn & Milla Jovovich), a young couple on their honeymoon on the beautiful island of Kaua’i. The couple is all smiles, driving a jeep through the brush and taking a helicopter ride. In the air, they spot a beach that can only be reached on foot or by kayak and agree to take the 3-day hike to get to it.

On their way to the trail, the Andersons run into another couple named Cleo & Kale (Marley Shelton & Chris Hemsworth). The drifter-looking hitchhikers are the opposite of the Andersons. He’s tattoo-ed. She wears dreadlocks. And the buttoned-up couple and the hippie one butt heads. Think Cleo & Kale will eventually end up on the same trail as our heroes? Don’t get ahead of the movie.

On the journey itself, Cliff & Cydney cross paths with the adventurous Nick & Gina (Timothy Olyphant of “Damages” and “Deadwood” & Kiele Sanchez of “Lost”). He claims to be a former soldier and happens to be tough enough to kill a goat for dinner while on the adventure. This is not your normal honeymoon.

Three couples. One trail. It’s not long before a gaggle of giggling girls tell our characters that there was a recent murder in Oahu where a man and woman killed a couple before hopping over to Kaua’i. Is one of the three beach-bound couples the killers? Which one? Are Nick’s stories true? Are Cydney’s? And what role do those hitchhikers play?

Nick (Timothy Olyphant) and Gina (Kiele Sanchez).
Photo credit: Javier Pesquera and Rogue Pictures

Twohy, the writer/director of “Pitch Black,” has a blast playing with his audience, dangling potential twists and turns in their face and enjoying every cliche of the genre. Cliff happens to be a screenwriter, which allows for tongue-in-cheek conversations about “red herrings” in which Twohy can wink at his own audience. He’s having a blast and it’s clearly infectious to his cast. Olyphant gives yet another charismatic, intriguing performance and Zahn is simply never bad. The ladies hold their own with these always-good actors.

Of course, any thriller with a big twist (that I think at least half the audiences will see coming from the first reel…I honestly did myself and the film holds up well even if you figure it out) needs to have a crazy final act. And “A Perfect Getaway” goes completely nutty.

After Twohy reveals his endgame, he goes off the rails like a kid in a thriller-making candy store. He uses different film stocks, freeze frames, flashbacks, and much more. What has been a relatively traditional thriller becomes something completely unique. It will likely turn off some audiences, but I found it refreshing to see something so weird it what is usually a predictable genre.

Not all of the final act decisions pay off. There are a series of flashbacks that fill in far more holes than they need to and try to develop characters in a way that Twohy simply didn’t need to do. Right when the film needs to be turned up to 11, Twohy pulls back and hurts his own climactic pacing.

Even the mistakes of the final act come from a filmmaker who refuses to stick purely to cliche or predictability. Twohy and his cast are clearly having a blast. Don’t be surprised if you do too.

‘A Perfect Getaway’ stars Steve Zahn, Milla Jovovich, Timothy Olyphant, Kiele Sanchez, Chris Hemsworth, and Marley Shelton. It was written and directed by David Twohy. It opens on August 7th, 2009. It is rated R.

By BRIAN TALLERICO
Content Director
HollywoodChicago.com
brian@hollywoodchicago.com

‘Resident Evil: Extinction’ Screams Readiness For Franchise Extinction

HollywoodChicago.com — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 10:36:22 -0600

AUSTIN, Texas – “Resident Evil: Extinction,” which opens on Friday and to the dismay of many critics didn’t screen across the U.S., is yet another cineplex excursion that’s beneath contempt.

Milla Jovovich in “Resident Evil: Extinction”.
Photo courtesy of IMDb
Directed by Russell Mulcahy, who is best known for the serviceably charming pulp translation of “The Shadow,” the franchise is injected with a promising Mad Max riff by writer and producer Paul W.S. Anderson – yet does nothing with it.

At best, I’ve always thought of Anderson (who directed the first film and wrote the second) as a poor man’s Stephen Sommers. To have the second consecutive sequel where Anderson couldn’t be bothered to direct (only write and produce) really says you’re in for “B”-movie hack hell.

So “Extinction” is another video game-based sequel by test-marketed numbers where everything about it was cooler in the trailer. The Mad Max stuff turns into mostly trucks driving in a desert while an imaginative attack by zombie crows plays like a video game of “The Birds”.

Ashanti in “Resident Evil: Extinction”.
Photo courtesy of IMDb
At a certain point – maybe somewhere in the first act where there aren’t characters as much as feet-entering, low-angle frames – the desert-scape starts to reveal a 16th-wave Sergio Leone influence (but mostly from testosterone guitars).

The males do their acting with beard stubble while the women grit their teeth to look all hardened. All the while, model and actress Milla Jovovich is the most confounding presence of all.

I spent most of the film trying to figure out why such a luminous woman has her face so consistently digitally airbrushed. While she may have just liked how writer/director Kurt Wimmer spruced her up in “Ultraviolet,” almost every close up of her has Photoshop skin tones.

Milla Jovovich in “Resident Evil: Extinction”.
Photo courtesy of IMDb
Outside of her lithe figure, I never even understood why she was repeatedly cast as an action heroine. Perhaps Sony is still paying writer Luc Besson’s bill of goods. Jovovich really only acts in two modes: frailty and penis envy. In both instances here, she has a gun.

While zombies safely remain the screen villain with the most tender, thinnest and most sliceable flesh this side of Orcs from “Lord of the Rings,” some of the Jovovich’s balletic slicing is the best action in the movie (though a lot of it is frequently ruined with lazy CGI gore).

If you aren’t sufficiently scared, the sound design will dwarf you into submission by going from silent to loud like a Pixies’ slasher score.

“Extinction” is a zombie movie bored with zombies. When one character is bitten in the first 10 minutes and keeps it a secret for the rest of the film, you wish it might’ve become bored with zombie clichés.

This is heroically juxtaposed when another character – who isn’t given solely callow character beats – nobly sacrifices himself in an explosion.

Milla Jovovich in “Resident Evil: Extinction”.
Photo courtesy of IMDb
This third “Resident Evil” is what it is: another soulless studio flick where everyone involved is going through the motions (especially the audience). While it has the beats of a movie, it’s purely product and you can’t even really begrudge it for that.

It’s a movie only ’roided zombie fans, optimistic executives and mothers can love.

Like the other two flicks, “Extinction” does have one nifty scene: the last one, which is a cliffhanger. For maybe a few naïve seconds, you’re enticed for a hypothetical movie that – depending on the box office – might or might not follow.

It’s not until you remember the tedium you’ve just sat through (itself a prolonged drag of the last movie’s cliffhanger) that it may dawn on you that the “Resident Evil” movies only find themselves when selling a completely different movie.

See our 31-image “Resident Evil 5” video game slideshow.
Read our “Resident Evil: Extinction” theatrical review.

By Shane Hazen
Staff Writer
HollywoodChicago.com