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jackgoodway
Reviews
Love/Hate (2010)
High Quality Irish TV
Comparisons to "The Wire" are wide (and above) the mark; but LOVE/HATE does mark an ambitious and dramatic departure for Irish television.
Gritty, brutal, authentic, entertaining and accessible despite a grim portrayal of a corner of Dublin's gangland underworld.
Having the watched the compact (4 episodes) first series, The Law or Garda are absent from proceedings, mainly due to the gang's amazing ace lawyer. While divisive and simplifying the storyline somewhat, but this does give the close knitted band of characters free reign, to have their own suspicions, in-fight and dispense their own kind of justice; following the murder of one of their number.
The strong performances all round, departure in production value, plus the tone and intensity; rather story telling craft, mark this series out as one to watch. With the promise of better to come.
Repo Man (1984)
Brilliant Film
Fist of it's joke that this film has such a low average...yet strangely understandable. If somebody you meet like this film as much as you do you're probably going to get on.
It's cool, kinda makes you tremor how cool it is - in that clever, offbeat, deadpan funny, satirical, great soundtrack, location, fashion observant, paced kinda way - it's not even trying to impress you, but it's incontestable. Take it or leave it.
The characters are fantastic. It's cool and meandering non-sequiturs have been mined in some part by Tarantino, and it's offbeat style and characters blown up and magnified by the likes Wes Anderson.
The lines...ah the lines; rival The Big Lebowski or Napoleon Dynamite easily (in fact all those funny offbeat films that reference the early 80's kinda are trying to get a bit of this, it's what Joy Division is to the post-punk revival)
The story has an offbeat charm that marry's the live of punk turned repo man in a dustbowl boarder town, with magic realist sci/fi conspiratorial nonsense. It's tone, vibe and sensibility is groundbreaking, in terms of offbeat indie comedy. Okay the Estevez character could be a bit more chatty or developed - even though he is a casted out punk interloper, but that's a minor criticism.
Taken (2008)
Get the Girl, Kill the Baddies
I wouldn't want to be an Albanian in Paris after this movie!! I found The failure of this films dialogue to distinguish between 'Albanian' and the rellepent sex traffickers, who have taken the Nesson's ex-special ops character's daughter (who looks nowhere near 17), irresponsible at best; especially with it's vigilante storyline. Imagine if there was a film where 'Americans' was constantly used to refer to pedophiles?? Kazakhstan got off lightly with Borat!
Otherwise it's a simple, adrenaline fueled/ing throat punching, bottle brandishing rampage. Neeson's accent is pretty ropey but paradoxically he preforms well as the likable yet lethal Dad, lending weight and unexpected muscle to this dark revenge romp. The two (better) films which Taken kidnaps are the brooding "Eastern Promises" and the fantastic Paris set "Tell No One"...from which Taken's first half hour of paced drama is borrowed from; before the real fun begins.