Monster Hunter

Cast: Milla Jovovich, Tony Jaa, and Ron Perlman

Director: Paul W.S. Anderson

103 minutes (12) 2020

Sony Blu-ray  

[Released 20th September] 

Rating: 7/10

Review by Christopher Geary

While searching for US troops missing in the desert, a team led by Captain Artemis (Milla Jovovich), are caught in an uncanny storm. Magically, they are transported to the fantasy realm of a parallel world, they discover strange ‘dinosaur’ bones, and find gigantic beasts roaming a sinister landscape. Against otherworldly shocks and unstoppable attacks their standard American weapons prove no more an effective defence than sing-along camaraderie, and soon the injured Artemis is left alone. Jovovich does her best as this feisty super-heroine, while she abandons Hollywood glamour in favour of a wholly grungy and gritty adventure of endurance for this military-action movie. Survival in this weird New World means using a bullet’s gunpowder to cauterise wounds.

Her recovery is enabled by the Hunter (Tony Jaa), a wily native with oversized weaponry. Once billed as a new Bruce Lee (see Ong Bak, 2003), Thai martial artist Jaa now tackles more diverse genre roles to become the new Jet Li. The language barrier makes dialogue in-jokes from some tough-talking clichés of typical actioners. Although always watchable, Ron Perlman joins the cast as the Admiral (whose role is ‘Mr Exposition’), and he regales us with tales of a fallen ancient civilisation, while his old galleon sails blithely over sandy seas. This trio join forces for the dragon-slaying job that builds up to an effects-laden climax, just before Artemis falls through a mysterious vortex and returns home, but her big problems with monsters are only just beginning.

Based on a videogame, this scenario offers a witty fusion of Toho’s varied kaiju franchise and sci-fi movies such as Pitch Black (2000), merged with Enemy Mine (1985). Despite a lack of SF world-building, like in the Alien, Dune, and Starship Troopers franchises, or the earthbound series of Tremors and Jurassic Park), this hyper-dramatic form of storytelling hardly needs any rationalist explanations for its generic mega-fauna. Not when the mad rush of inexplicable events and savage confrontations deliver thrillingly vast spectacle to delight fans of Doyle’s Lost World romanticism, and/ or Burroughs’ Barsoom - as epitomised by Disney’s under-rated John Carter (2012). 

Monster Hunter displays ravenous critters of all sorts. None of them are pleasant in any way, even if they’re relatively harmless herbivores. Further plot-twists suggest a sequel, or two, might eventually appear, while an (inevitable?) mid-credits teaser sequence hints at such developments. Undoubtedly, there are quirky details and odd elements here that only game-players are very likely to appreciate, but this impressive cinematic adaptation delivers more than enough superheroic thrills, and extraordinary visual effects, to please discerning fans or demanding viewers of pulp sci-fi styled fantasy.

Hitman's Wife's Bodyguard

Cast: Ryan Reynolds, Samuel L. Jackson, and Salma Hayek 

Director: Patrick Hughes

116 minutes (15) 2021

Lions Gate Blu-ray 

Rating: 7/10

Review by Steven Hampton 

After his debut feature, enjoyable Australian western Red Hill (2010), director Patrick Hughes graduated from Ozploitation to Stallone’s franchise for The Expendables 3 (2014), and so established his genre proficiency and shoot-’em-up credentials as a maker of big-budget, Hollywood star-packed, popular adventures. Hughes’ comedy actioner The Hitman’s Bodyguard (2017) was a rather slicker mismatched-buddy movie for Ryan (Deadpool) Reynolds as “Triple-A rated” security expert Bryce, caught in the danger zone between an Interpol manhunt and Euro enemies of an escaped assassin, free-wheeling Kincaid (Samuel L. Jackson), whose wife Sonia (Salma Hayek) proves more formidable than him. Action-audiences cheered, happy viewers laughed at a winningly romanticised finale, but a few snooty highbrow critics only sighed, as if they wondered: “Where are you going with this?”

Delayed by COVID, for a year, sequel movie Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard reunites leads Reynolds, Jackson, and Hayek, while also casting Morgan Freeman and Antonio Banderas, along for this even wilder ride, centred on deadly plots by vengeful Greek terrorists, after Kincaid needs rescuing from Mafia goons. Other characters drift into focus during this increasingly manic farce, but its trio of stars maintain the illusion of consistency well enough to always be at the centre of our attention. There’s a non-stop stream of trashy livewire banter, numerous movie references (including Overboard, 1987), and, as before, this new mission’s crazier stunts and dollops of slapstick humour owe plenty to big franchises, like Die Hard (with Mad Max flavour), but somewhat less to James Bond, except in a Johnny English styled parody of 007 antics. 

Stereotypes are very boldly over-hyped towards outrageous iconoclasm, and few players here are depicted as theatrical satire better than Banderas’ loony baddie-billionaire Aristotle, who openly wears ostentatious wealth on his tailored sleeves in garish displays of cringe-couture. Bryce and Sonia have ‘tragic’ histories they have tried to forget, but explored in flashback sketches with amusing punch-lines for (extra-) larger-than-life character-building scenes. Its multi-layered scenario romps through formats like a road-movie, with fugitives on tour, diving through European locations into disaster-movie and, ultimately, superhero cinema, much like those cross-genre escalations of the Fast & Furious franchise.  

It pulls no punches while following an eccentric trend for using some hilariously inappropriate, or seemingly ‘wrong’, selections of accompanying music and songs for sequences of hectic, splattery violence. Although it never manages to match up to ‘insane’ levels of instantly-memorable impact as the originator of this style, Kubrick’s SF classic A Clockwork Orange (1971), it does so with far better choices than were heard in Kingsman movies, and still maintains a quirky sense of irony. Bryce (or ‘Breece’, as Sonia insists on calling him) declares, in his close-protection trade, that “boring is always best” - but director Hughes ensures this inherently loud and purposefully vulgar movie is never less than watchable.

The Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard is out on digital, DVD, Blu-ray and 4K UHD now.