The Reaping
Norbit
The Shooter
The Reaping
The only really terrifying thing about the supernatural horror movie "The Reaping" is just how bad it is. Supernatural horror movies tend to be bad anyway but this one is almost possessed with awfulness. The film starts out ludicrously enough with the face of Katherine Winter (Hilary Swank) being burned out of several photos. Only the face though 's not the rest of the combustible paper. Right after this supernatural act of arson she gets called into a small God-fearing town by too-nice-to-be-true Doug (David Morrissey) to investigate what appears to be an exact re-enactment of the 10 biblical plagues. Katherine is a former Christian missionary turned zealous miracle debunker after her daughter was savagely murdered in Africa. But even the ultra-skeptical Katherine is a bit unnerved by some of the strange goings-on in the town, not least of which is an angelic-faced child who appears to be the offspring of the devil. It's all mildly amusing until the film's fire-and-brimstone finale which is so shockingly stupid it's enough to make your head turn. It all goes to show that the old adage "you reap what you sow" most definitely does not apply to Hollywood, which no doubt reaped a tidy sum from this nonsense.
( Tim Ochser )
Norbit
Eddie Murphy co-wrote and has three starring roles in "Norbit" whose only real distinction, as far as I'm concerned, is that it didn't make me laugh once from start to finish. Not even a snicker or a snigger, much less a chuckle or a guffaw. My facial muscles almost formed a smile about midway through the movie but then I realised that I was thinking about something else. Norbit is a nerdy orphan adopted by the foul-mouthed Mr Won (also played by Murphy) who eventually grows up to marry the even more foul-mouthed and over-sized Rasputia (again Murphy). But Norbit really loves his childhood orphan sweetheart Kate (Thandie Newton) who shows up years later to buy the orphanage in which they grew up. It's pointless to go into any more detail than that because the movie's plot is lost amid the ceaseless barrage of crude, tasteless, vacuous and lazy jokes. Some critics have complained about Murphy's use of stereotypes in "Norbit" but the fact is his characters are so crude that they're more like stereotypes of stereotypes. If it gives you any idea of just how bad "Norbit" is, it managed the impossible feat of making "Big Mama's House" look almost intelligent in comparison.
( Tim Ochser )
The Shooter
In "The Shooter" Mark Wahlberg plays Bob Lee Swagger, a former sharpshooter and war veteran who lives as a recluse in the Wyoming wilderness. His experience has taught him to distrust the establishment. "Let's see what lies they're trying to sell us today," he mutters as he opens up the daily internet news sites. Colonel Isaac Johnson (Danny Glover) makes a trip to meet Swagger and recruits him to foil a suspected presidential assassination. But it soon becomes clear that Swagger has been set up to take the fall for the assassination attempt. What follows is a story in which our hero must not only evade capture and recover from a bullet wound, but he's got to figure out who set him up and why. "The Shooter" combines elements of classic 70s conspiracy thrillers with the pyrotechnics of contemporary action blockbusters. One man's quest for justice against a corrupt system is generously sprinkled with lots of bad guys who get picked off and more things that blow up. The film takes shots at oil companies, Donald Rumsfeld and the war in Iraq. But these bits were a little too preachy for my tastes. I felt like they hired Michael Moore as a political consultant, although Swagger does make clear at the outset that "I don't like the president. I didn't like the last one." Swagger seems to be this generation's answer to Rambo, updated for a post 9/11 world. He's a war veteran and a patriot, but his country doesn't seem to have his or his fellow Americans' best interests at heart. Lucky for us, he's a one-man force of nature meting out justice to those who have compromised us. Wahlberg may indeed be stepping into the vacuum left by the action stars of the 80s. This wouldn't be a bad thing at all since he exudes brains as well as brawn and is a bona fide acting talent, unlike Stallone, Willis and Schwarzenegger who brought monosyllabic caricatures to life. But don't expect too much from "The Shooter," a film which sticks firmly to the conventions of its genre. It's slightly above-average for an action film, and this is mostly due to Wahlberg's undeniable screen presence.
1/2 ( Sherwin Das )
