Speed Racer

A certain friend of mine had told me several times several times that she loved the film Speed Racer, and I had ridiculed her for it. But given the fact that I had never actually watched the movie I had no right to judge, so I decided to actually watch the film. And when I did it suprised me. Although not by it's quality, but by how absolutly horrible it was.

Speed Racer is a reboot of the 1960 anime show of the same name, written and directed by the Wachowski brothers. The film follows Speed Racer (yes, that's actually his full name), played by Emile Hirshe, a teenager who loves racing and his family. However racing is shown to be extremely corrupt, and it follows Speed Racer's journey to win the Grand Prix without becoming corrupt himself. Now just by hearing the plot you would think that it's very simple and easy to follow. However I was completly unable to follow a large amount of what was happening. The movie is filled with unnessasary dialouge about the buisness of racing that's loaded with subtext that I was complelty unable to pick up on. I'm saying this as someone who had no trouble following Inception and Memento, and this is a movie made for little kids!

And that brings me to my second point, which is that if you are over the age of ten it's impossible to enjoy this movie. About a good third of the film is spent on horribly unfunny slapstick between Speed's chubby little brother and his monkey. Even in the relativly serious race sequences they find some way to work them in. Unlike charming comic distractions like Dug in Pixar's Up, they're obnoxious and dumb and ruin the chance of any adult enjoying the film. I thought I would never say this, but they're worse than Jar-Jar.

Another problem I have with the film is the use of special effects. The purpose of the film is to be a live-action cartoon, so everything but the actors is CG. Everything is extremely colorful and over the top, and it had the potential to be extremely cool and artsy. However they attempt a degree of realism, and it puts all the scenes in this ackward looking middle ground that causes everything to look cheap and bad.
Speaking of things that are cheap and bad, lets talk about the script. I think it speaks for itself so I'll dicate to you a conversation between two characters after a ninja attack.
Trixe: Oh my god, was that a Ninja?
Pops: More like a non-ja. Terrible what passes for a ninja these days.
Trixe: Cool beans!
It tries so hard to be ironically retro, but because it tries so hard we end up laughing at them rather than with them. Also there isn't a single character in this movie that has an ounce of dimention to them. Speed is the good guy and is always incredibly good, the bad guy is always incredibly evil and has no real motivation.

Finally there's the acting which contains some of the only redeeming qualities of the film. Emile Hirshe is excellent (although he makes some really ridiculous faces during the racing scenes) and so is John Goodman and their scenes together provide some of the only honest material in the entire film. But the acting also provides some negative elements, mainly Matthew Fox as Racer X. I love Matthew Fox on Lost and I think he deserves the Emmy, but he simply cannot play the tough guy and his acting in this movie is laughably bad. On the brightside though they were considering Keanu Reeves for the role who undoubtably would have been worse.

So Speed Racer is bad. Really bad. But I did enjoy watching it, even if it was just so I could laugh at it. So it's not completly without merit. But to actually enjoy it as a legitamate film is impossible for me, and I cannot fathom how someone else could. I'll leave you with a clip from the movie that sums up almost all my problems.

Red Dead Redemption

Now I don't usually review games, nor will I make this a regular thing, but what Rockstar has done with Red Dead Redemption is just fantastic. They take every ounce of this game and make it fit the genre perfectly, make it incredibly polished, and even make it encompass complicated themes. It's taking storytelling in the medium to a different level, and I can saftely say that it's the best game I've ever played.

Red Dead is set in the early 1900's and follows John Marston. John is a former outlaw who attempts to go straight but the government threatens to kill his family unless he hunts down his old friends. Effectivly it's the plot of A History of Violence set in the west, but that's no bad thing. During this time John comes to terms with the bad things he's done, reflects on what kind of a person he really is, and debates on wheather or not a person can truly change. Just like Cronenberg it intelligently disscusses indentity in a moving way. Not only is John a total badass he's a fantastic and relatable character who I really grew attached to as the story progressed. In fact by the end of the game I really became attached to most of the characters John met, and unlike the somewhat jokey GTA series they approached the characters and relationships in a really honest way. The fact that they dedicated two hours at the end of the game to John spending time on his farm with his family is a sign of how they care more about the story than just shooting guys in the face.

However John's story also functions as a metaphor for the death of western culture. Due to the spread of trains things like the Model-T Ford and automatic weapons are begining to make appearences. What's so tragic about this though is that you spend the first fifteen minutes of the game out in nature. Rockstar obviously put a huge amount of work into the surroundings because this game is beautiful. Simply watching the sunset in this game is a treat. They even created a realistic ecosystem in this game, with animals that behave realistically and prey on each other. So when you finally arrive in Blackwater and it begins to looks like modern society it seems so ugly and brutish it compared to the beauty that surrounds it. And it's tragic because you know that soon everything will look just like that. But another thing that Rockstar does is they paint John's old comrades actions as if they are simply fighting to preserve their way of life. So it's very sad when you actually have to hunt them down (reminded me of Shadow of the Collosus). So John's actions and surroundings serve the overarching themes of the story, making the gameplay itself completly relevant. That's a brillant example of how games can approach storytelling because if that isn't art I don't know what is.

The final thing that I found impressive was how it completly captured the genre. After finishing Red Dead I watched Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and I was awestruck. To the way all the plants looked, the mountains, the way people talked and dressed, even the way the trains looked it was dead on. The amount of detail put into this game is awestiking. You can enter every building in the game and all the interiors are detailed. The world itself is huge, covering miles and miles of terrain. It's like you stepped into the largest, most detailed Western ever, and you're the director.

This game conjured up more emotion in me than almost any film recently has, and if you have a Xbox 360 or a PS3 you have to get this game. It's evidence of how games are becoming a more sofisticated form of media and is maturing rapidly (other equally good examples include Mass Effect 2 and Heavy Rain). Even if you aren't a gamer this is a great time to start, because Red Dead is something everyone should experience.