Review No.111: Blackthorn

There are a lot of movie endings that are constantly debated - was Shane really dead when he left on that horse? Did Thelma and Louise really plummet off that cliff? And did Butch and Sundance get finished off at the end of their film? Thankfully Mateo Gil's Blackthorn attempts to answer that question by telling us that they weren't the outlaws shot up in Bolivia but Sundance still ended up dying. Butch Cassidy however retired to a secluded Bolivian village, changed his name to James Blackthorn and spent his time raising horses as well as sleeping with women much younger than himself. Things start to go wrong when Blackthorn decides to return to the states, to be with the son that doesn't know he's his father, when he's attacked on his way across the border meaning his horse bolts unfortunately the animal had all of Blackthorn's money on him. The man who shot at him is Eduardo Apodaca who is being chased by a posse after he stole money supposedly from a tyrannical mine owner eventually Blackthorn agrees to keep the man alive if he splits the money with him. From there it becomes an old-school western with Blackthorn and Apodaca on the run from the posse we also see how Butch Cassidy came to be in that situation as flashbacks show us he and Sundance with our protagonist now being played by Jaime Lannister from Game of Thrones. The past does catch up with Blackthorn to an extent when he is recognised by a doctor who informs Butch and Sundance's old nemesis Detective McKinley, played by  that he's found the famous outlaw. So the whole thing builds to a crescendo where once again Cassidy is being pursued by the Bolivian military however will he survive once again?

Blackthorn certainly has an interesting premise however a film that keeps referencing the brilliant Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid must have to be compared to it and for me there is no comparison. Whereas the 1969 film had a real sense of fun in it Blackthorn is very serious and plodding with the gun battles not having one iota of excitement certainly in my opinion. What Blackthorn does have going for it is a brilliant central performance from Sam Shepard who is utterly believable as a grizzled ex-outlaw who has lost everything, apart from of course casual sex with beautiful Bolivians, and is now trying to live out the sunset of his life with loved ones. Shepherd raises the film and makes it seem important while having a great chemistry with Stephen Rea as McKinley as the two verbally spar with aplomb in the latter stages of the film. The Bolivian locations are also well utilised, as they were in my previous film Even the Rain, with the old school Western vibe really shining through. My main problem was that I really didn't care about most of what happened and therefore the film came across as a collection of various scenes rather than a complete movie. The flashback scenes added nothing for me and I would've much preferred just to see Blackthorn explain what happened in his past rather than seeing it ourselves and I found it rather sacrilegious for other actors to play roles made famous by Newman and Redford. I am a big fan of a western however this didn't have the grit of something like True Grit so despite Shepherd and Rea's best efforts Blackthorn really was a bit of bland affair albeit one with a much more definitive ending.

Verdict: A collection of scenes rather than a full movie Blackthorn is lifted by a glorious performance from Sam Shepard and some wonderful Bolivian backdrops so for that reason the film gets 5.5/10

Review No.54: Underworld Awakening

I apologise dear readers for staying away for a week or so but for some of the films on this list I have to do a little research before delving in. When I say that I'm mainly talking about the sequels that have come out this year to earlier films that I haven't yet watched which over the coming months will include the Ice Age, Ghost Rider and Twilight franchises but first up was the Underworld films. I decided to watch Underworld and the sequel Underworld: Evolution but not the prequel as I surmised that that would not give me any extra information in terms of the characters' journeys. The first film saw vampire Selene help her kind in a war against the Lycans, a superform of werewolves, however she found out that a bunch of the vampire elders had conspired against her so destroyed them. In the second film she and vampire/lycan hybrid Michael learnt more of the history of the two races while trying to simultaneously survive and have sex with each other at the same time. In Awakening the threat to the vampires and the lycans is from the humans who have kidnapped Selene and Michael and have frozen them both with the former waking up twelve years in the future a time in which the humans have tried to kill of as many of both species as they can. Predictably Selene escapes with a young girl who turns out to be her and Michael's daughter she is helped by a vampire named David and sheltered briefly by his father played by Charles Dance until she is cast out following an attack by a breed of super lycans. These lycans are later revealed to be Stephen Rea and his son who were supposed to have been working on a vaccine to stop the lycans but in fact were creating a more powerful strain. As you would imagine though Selene is able to finish them off with ease and she and Eve then try to find Michael or at least set up for yet another film in the franchise.

When sitting down to watch Underworld Awakening I wasn't expecting much as the first two films had essentially involved CGI wolves, Kate Beckinsale in leather and a lot of shooting. However for me this was certainly the better of the two sequels if not quite up there with the original mainly as the threat to the lycans came mainly from men. I liked the fact that it concentrated on parent/child relationships and I feel that there was more dialogue here than there had been in the first two films despite the fact that this was drastically shorter than both of those. I feel then that that's definitely one of the negatives here as are the sections which just revert back to the tried and tested Underworld format albeit with slightly larger lycans. Beckinsale essentially is on autopilot throughout although there are some good hammy performances, as there always are in the Underworld films, from the likes of Charles Dance and Stephen Rea in addition I did like the fact that the woeful Scott Speedman is nowhere to be found here. In closing I would say that if you wanted more or less the exact same thing from your Underworld films then you're in luck with Awakening, which to be fair does have a little more to offer, but it's far too short and reverts back to an easy formula on too many occasions.

Verdict: Despite some promise this film is too short and diverts back to the Underworld format which I'm not a fan of so I'm going to award it 4.5/10