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Posts Tagged ‘Gerard Butler’

‘The Bounty Hunter’ trailer escapes

December 21, 2009 - 2:16 pm

By Jay A. Fernandez

Columbia Pictures has released a trailer for its March release, “The Bounty Hunter,” starring Jennifer Aniston and Gerard Butler.

With an intriguing set-up — down-on-his-luck bounty hunter takes a job to bring in his ex-wife — the film should crackle with barbed dialogue, street-level action mayhem and black-comic chemistry. What Andy Tennant’s film looks like instead, on the evidence of this trailer, is a movie trying hard to provide those things while remaining determinedly generic and flat.

Robert De Niro and Charles Grodin had more obvious chemistry in the priceless “Midnight Run” (also a mis-matched bounty hunter plotline). Or check out the “Date Night” trailer for some genuine laughs with a couple that actually engages your interest form the get-go. (See those trailers below.)

Aniston and Butler come off as two movie stars in another uninspired rom-com with characters no one will be invested in. Part of the problem is that we don’t get to meet the characters individually, see a hint of their personalities or obstacles without each other, so that their confrontation at the race track has some kind of bounce.

But maybe the movie’s great, who knows? What do you think?

With ‘Law Abiding Citizen,’ Overture could finally make some mayhem

October 15, 2009 - 2:17 am

By Steven Zeitchik

Law After two years, some impressive specialty results but no big openers,  (highest-generating wide release: "Righteous Kill," at $40m), the Starz-affiliated Overture looks to finally have a broad hit. And it took an absurd pulp movie — though also a thrilling and fun one — produced by another company to do it.

F. Gary Gray's "Law Abiding Citizen," which goes wide this weekend, is many things. Plausible is not one of them. The story of a justice system brought low by a one-time victim (Gerard Butler, even less convincing than usual) now bent on gruesome revenge on the D.A. who failed him (Jamie Foxx, solid as usual), various elected officials and seemingly the entire city of Philadelphia, has little in it that could be called high-quality. It's preposterously constructed, at times awkwardly directed and often hamfistedly acted. And yet it's irresistible. To not crave it is to not crave cheesesteaks. You know it's artificial and bad for you, but why wouldn't you have more? (Butler's character, a nihilistic killer with remarkable technical craftiness — like Hannibal Lecter by way of MacGyver — is especially fun to watch as he plays a cat and mouse game with Foxx.)

cont reading button With Law Abiding Citizen, Overture could finally make some mayhem

Gerard Butler tries to get back on his Gamer

September 1, 2009 - 7:31 am

By Steven Zeitchik

Gamer Ubiquitous sports commercials aside, there are four things that will sell the upcoming "Gamer," and they all start with Gerard and end with Butler.

The actor who catapulted to fame as an action star in "300" has been toiling in Nora Ephron territory recently, with "P.S., I Love You" and "The Ugly Truth" among his more recent efforts (and, yes, "RocknRolla," for the three people who saw it). But Lionsgate and Lakeshore — not to mention fans of non-cliched filmmaking — hope the syrupy taste washes out with the release of Butler's futuro-actioner "Gamer" this weekend. (The companies also, incidentally, are hoping for a comeback from writer-directors Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor, whose "Crank: High Voltage" struggled when Lionsgate released it earlier this year.)

The interesting subplot here is whether Butler can make the transition back to where he started, something he'll try not only with this pic but with Overture's upcoming vigilante thriller "Law Abiding Citizen" (Well, actually the really interesting subplot is whether the movie's premise — a world in which people are controlled as though in a multiplayer video game — can catch on given the checkered record of video game themed movies, but that's another post.) It's not easy to go from action hero to romantic leading man and back again; about the only guy in the modern era who's pulled it off with regularity is Tom Cruise. More often than not, the transition looks like Harrison Ford's, or worse, Nicolas Cage's.

cont reading button Gerard Butler tries to get back on his Gamer

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