My love for Blu-ray threatens every bit of financial security I’ve managed to build up over the years. Amazon.com is my dealer, and I am its numero uno degenerate junkie. The challenge is that most of my embarrassingly large DVD collection actually looks perfectly fine in 1080p, thanks to the enhanced technology of my Blu-ray player. Not all of my DVDs do; for some reason, 20th Century-Fox films tend to look a little blurry. But even Warner Bros. titles purchased fifteen years ago in those hybrid cardboard/plastic cases, when DVD technology was just starting to take off, look great. Not Blu-ray great, but plenty sharp and perfectly acceptable — which leaves me with no real excuse to buy them again on Blu-ray.

Still, what’s a junkie to do when “The Matrix” (the freakin’ “Matrix!”) Blu-ray goes on sale for $5.99? No sales tax. No shipping fees. Just that warm, ticklish feeling in the tummy that comes with the sound the UPS truck pulling to a stop in front of the house.

For those of you who share this dreaded disease, here’s something of a buying guide on some recent Blu-ray releases. Some of these I’ve rented, some I’ve purchased, and some have been sent to me as screeners. The pile got a little overwhelming, so rather than knock them out one at a time, this felt like the most efficient way.

Title links will take to you directly to my dealer, Amazon.

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I Don’t Know How She Does It (2011)

Sarah Jessica Parker, Greg Kinnear, Kelsey Grammar, and Pierce Brosnan are all game, but the script, based on Allison Pearson’s best-seller is a complete letdown. Maybe in 1983, a film about a woman attempting to juggle a high-powered career as a wife and mother might have resonated, but these days that theme’s been completely played out. With its cutesy voice-over and trite romantic complications, what we really have here is a sitcom episode stretched out over 90 minutes. Most off-putting, though, is a hostile mean-streak directed at that legion of left-wing apostates known as stay-at-home moms.

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This is the film that rightfully announced the arrival of director and future Oscar-winner Peter Jackson and another eventual Oscar-winner, Kate Winslet, as the major Hollywood players they would later become. “Heavenly Creatures” is based on the eerie, unsettling true story of Juliet Hulme and Pauline Parker, two disturbingly close friends and social outcasts who create an intense and obsessive fantasy life that eventually leads to murder.

Jackson’s ability to focus on the characters and their intense relationship goes a long way to explain why his “Lord of the Rings” magnum opus was so successful. This is a complicated psychological relationship-drama few directors could pull off so well, and there is no spectacle or CGI to hide behind.

Moreover, the undeniably brilliant, off-kilter tone of the story is handled with perfect precision by the director, and this, I think, is still the greatest feat of his career. “Heavenly Creatures” is a one-of-a-kind achievement that in lesser hands would’ve crashed and burned as absurd camp. (more…)

If you’re already a fan of director Julie Taymor’s look at the fascinating if sordid life of Mexican painter Frida Kahlo (and I am), Blu-ray is really the way to go. Taymor did a marvelous job translating her considerable theatrical experience to the screen, and the lush, Oscar-nominated art direction that adds so much to the look and feel of the story is simply gorgeous in high-definition.

This is one of the better biopics of the last ten years, a passion project of Salma Hayek’s, and she is superb in the title role that rightly won her an Oscar nomination. What ultimately makes the story of two openly communist artists worth watching (besides a solid screenplay and a number of flawless performances) is that it’s the story of a woman whose heart is at war with her bohemian politics. All that free love talk conflicts with her sincere love for her mentor Diego Rivera (an outstanding Alfred Molina), and ultimately they end up settling down into  what they might call a “bourgeois existence.”

Edward Norton has a small but memorable role as a surprisingly sympathetic Nelson Rockefeller, and Antonio Banderas shows up as David Alfaro Siqueiros, a fiery communist painter (who, in real life,  participated in an assassination attempt on Leon Trotsky). It’s a single scene cameo but one of the best  in the film. Trotsky is also a major player in the latter half of the story in the person of Geoffrey Rush, and you’ll also spot the superb Diego Luna, as well as Valeria Golino and Saffron Barrows.

The one weak spot is Ashley Judd as Italian photographer Tina Modotti. Her accent is so bad you just know that somewhere Kevin Costner is smiling.

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The Blu-ray cover art tells us “Real Steel” is “Rocky” with robots! but that’s a little too kind. This story of a down-on-his-luck promoter trying to eke out a living in the year 2020 where robot boxing’s taken the place of the real thing, is probably a little closer to another Sylvester Stallone film, “Over the Top.” To be fair,  though, “Real Steel” is a whole lot better than Stallone’s arm-wrestling cheese-a-thon, but both are glossy B-films and both involve losers who live on the fringes of an athletic subculture before a son they barely know is dropped unexpectedly into their lives.

Hugh Jackman is terrific as Charlie Kenton, the promoter in question and a degenerate gambler and former boxer who lives a step ahead of a beating at the hands of his many creditors. Director Shawn Levy is equally good at showing us around the world in which our characters inhabit, where robot boxing is the top sport in the country and exists at every conceivable level — from nationally televised events as big as the Super Bowl to underground matches where the wagering and bloodlust rival a good old-fashioned cock fight.

Like most fathers in these kinds of stories, Charlie’s never known his son, Max (Dakota Goyo). Charlie’s been too busy aimlessly moving from one hustle to the next. After circumstances I won’t spoil bring the two of them together, Charlie’s still not interested in any kind of father/son bonding until he sees an angle where he can make $100 thousand by spending a few months with the boy.

With  money in hand, Charlie buys a new robot, but Charlie being Charlie, this new beginning is hardly that before he ends up flat broke again with no prospects other than the inevitable day his creditors catch up to him. His only hope is to steal the pieces of a new fighting robot from a junkyard, and this is where Max comes across Atom, an old sparring robot built to take a ton of punishment but not trained to win. Need I tell you where this is going?

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SIGOURNEY WEAVER: ‘ALL FILMS WILL EVENTUALLY BE 3D’

Weaver believes 2D will go the way of black and white, and I don’t completely disagree. Hollywood is absolutely freaked out over piracy, so freaked out they’ve embraced their own Patriot Act with SOPA, and the real benefit of 3D is how it makes piracy that much more difficult. A lot of piracy is done via camcorder, someone sneaking a small camera into a theatre. You can’t do that with 3D.

The problem, and it’s a major one, is that many of us don’t like 3D. If we did, 3D televisions would be flying off the shelves, when just the opposite is happening.

Never in my life have I enjoyed a film more in 3D than 2D. I hate 3D and find it a distraction. Moreover, I think it’s become a crutch for filmmakers. CGI spectacle is much easier to create as opposed to doing the truly hard work of crafting the kind of story that draws you in much more powerfully than heavy glasses.

‘MONEYBALL’ IS ON THE MONEY ON DVD

Finally saw “Moneyball” last week and can’t recommend it enough. Brad Pitt’s performance is only outmatched by a brilliant screenplay written by Aaron Sorkin. Well, it’s co-written, but the feel and rhythm of the story and dialogue tells you it’s really Sorkin’s vision and imprint that guides the thing.

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No one will aver accuse me of being a Chuck Todd fan, but let’s give the man credit where it’s due. Though he’s careful with his language, Todd not only sees through what Colbert’s doing, he’s also troubled that much of the MSM is complicit in furthering the Stewart/Colbert left-wing agenda:

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HuffPo:

“He is making a mockery of the system,” Todd said. “…Is it fair to the process? Yes, the process is a mess, but he’s doing it in a way that feels like he’s trying to influence it with his own agenda and that may be anti-Republican.”

He cautioned the media to be “careful” about amplifying Colbert’s message, and said it should not be treated as “shtick” or satire.

“What is his real agenda here?” he said. “Is it to educate the public about the dangers of money and politics, and what’s going on? Or is it simply to marginalize the Republican Party? I think if I were a Republican candidate I would be concerned about that.”

Todd concluded by saying that he “idolized” American politics and didn’t want to see people become more cynical about them.

Less than a few minutes ago, Colbert was on MSNBC’s  ”Morning Joe” being fawned over by Scarborough, his guests, and his audience. All rather nauseating.

I also disagree with Todd’s claim that Colbert is doing something noble in going after these Super PACs, but we’ll leave that debate for another day (more on that here).

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Buried near the bottom of a mostly glowing feature piece written by George Soros’ disciple Ken Vogel at the left-wing Politico:

Brad Smith, a past FEC chairman who now heads the Center for Competitive Politics, which advocates for less campaign finance regulation, also counts himself a fan of Colbert’s campaign finance jokes in the past, but thinks that this year, he’s off base.

“I think his super PAC stuff has largely been misleading the public,” he said. “He’s giving very misleading impressions about how disclosure obligations work, and he’s given a misleading understanding about why there are rules about coordination in politics.”

The rule banning coordination is “intended to prevent campaign contributions from being essentially a substitute for bribery,” he said, and is not really as ridiculous as Colbert and Stewart try to make it seem.

More broadly, he takes issue with those who look at Citizens United as some kind of cataclysmic event.

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GEORGE LUCAS INSISTS IT’S POSSIBLE TO ‘NUKE THE FRIDGE’

Dear George,

Please see: Holes, first rule of.

Signed,
America

People wouldn’t have cared anything about the fridge thing had the rest of the movie not been so awful… and stupid. I doubt very much an inflatable life raft works like a parachute when it’s filled with people and thrown out of a plane. But we suspended disbelief for that because the third act of “Doom” made us wet our pants.

THR REVIEWS ‘RED TAILS’

The experience of black American aviators in World War II gets a whitewash in Red Tails. The story of the 996 pilots (and some 15,000 ground personnel) who distinguished themselves in the air in the face of institutional racism is a great one and, at least, will come to the attention of more people due to this long-gestating project from Lucasfilm. But every character here is so squeaky clean, and the prejudice as depicted is so toothless and easily overcome, that the film feels like a gingerly fantasy version of what, in real life, was an exceptional example of resilient trail-blazing. The tale’s considerable built-in inspirational value will move and impress black audiences of all ages and would do the same to a wider public if sufficiently promoted, but the determinedly simplistic approach will curtail interest among any viewers hungry for some real history. The anticipated low interest level for this material overseas is cited as a major reason the project took so long to get off the ground.

Related: George Lucas Heading For a Big Disappointment with ‘Red Tails’

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John Wayne is not only the only actor to place posthumously on this annual Harris Poll that asks Americans who their favorite actor is, the Duke is also the only actor — living or dead — to find a slot on this poll every year since the survey began in 1994:

In 2011 he was the voice of Rango, he was Captain Jack Sparrow (again) and he was also a journalist. And, again this year, Johnny Depp has the distinction of being America’s Favorite Actor. Next on the list are two actors who haven’t actually acted in a movie this past year. Tied for number two are Denzel Washington, who was in the second spot last year, and Clint Eastwood who was number 9 on the list last year.These are some of the results of The Harris Poll® of 2,237 adults surveyed online between December 5 and 12, 2011 by Harris Interactive®.

Rounding out the top five favorite actors is Larry Crowne or rather Tom Hanks in the number 4 spot, up from a tie for number 6 last year, and at number 5 the only actor to have been on this list since it began in 1994, the Duke himself, John Wayne down from the number 3 spot last year.

After being part of a three-way tie for number 6 last year, George Clooney now holds that position by himself. Up from number 10 to number 7 is Sandra Bullock who is the only woman in the top ten and dropping from number 4 to number 8 is Harrison Ford. There are two new additions to the list this year. At number 9, returning to the top ten after a two year absence is Will Smith and debuting at number 10 is funny man Adam Sandler.

Here’s this year’s breakdown:

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As a kid — I’m talking 11, 12 years old — I used to grab my weekly allowance and lie to my parents about going to the museum downtown. Instead, I would go to the movies, because this was back in the good old days when kids could still sneak into R-rated movies. There was more than one downtown theatre in those days, and I always went in search of double or triple features, and sometimes the first flick was an older film. And you have to remember that back in the mid-seventies, things were different. Downtowns weren’t as cosmopolitan then. They were urban, and that was the audience the theatres targeted.

Don’t get me wrong, there was a lot of crap. In fact, most of the films were completely forgettable horror and action programmers that had no redeeming value, even to someone like myself who adores B-movies. More than once I walked out and ended up killing the day buried in comics at a used bookstore. But every once in a while, the first feature would be an older film, something that had been popular just a few years earlier. And this is where I fell in love with Bruce Lee, George Romero, Leatherface, Shaft, Superfly, and Coffy.

I had never even heard of Pam Grier before, but within five minutes she was added to my short list of those who reflect all that is ideal in womanhood — strong, smart, independent, sexy, womanly, a lady, a sense of humor — a list that to this days includes Raquel Welch and Angie Dickinson. Ten years later I would add a fourth and final name to that list, and a few years after that she actually married me.

Yes, Pam Grier is stunning to look at, but beautiful women are really a dime a dozen in Hollywood. What Grier really is is pure, 100%, undiluted movie star — and that is about as rare of a human species as you will ever find (especially today). Whether it was a small role in Andrew Davis’ “The Package” or her unforgettable turn as a junkie prostitute in “Fort Apache The Bronx,” you can’t take your eyes off her. And God bless Quentin Tarantino for seeing that, as well.

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“I wash my hands of this.”

The mainstream media will spend ten days losing their ever-loving minds blaming a Sarah Palin campaign map a killer never saw for that killer’s actions, but this news about a confessed terrorist admitting that a clip from Brian De Palma’s “Redacted” “prompted” him to murder two American airmen gets buried at the bottom of a Salt Lake City newspaper article:

Uka gave a teary confession as his Frankfurt state court trial opened in August, saying that the night before the attack he had seen a video on Facebook that purported to show American soldiers raping a teenage Muslim girl. It turned out to be a scene from the 2007 Brian De Palma anti-war film “Redacted,” taken out of context.

Uka told the court the video prompted him to do anything possible to prevent American soldiers from going to Afghanistan. Under German law, the court is still required to hear all evidence in the case, even though Uka has confessed.

The defendant had already killed two U.S. airmen when he turned his pistol on Brewer, a 23-year-old from Gray, Tennessee, who was on the bus waiting with others to be taken to nearby Ramstein Air Base to fly to Afghanistan.

Remember how, during the lead up to the release of the “Passion of the Christ,” the leftist media was on high alert waiting for synagogues and crosses to be burned? And yet, not a word in the national media about how this particular Hollywood film “prompted” the murder of two American servicemen.

Buried. Memory-holed. Never happened. Carry on.   (more…)

‘ACT OF VALOR’ TV SPOT & FEATURETTE TAKE YOU IN THE LINE OF FIRE

Today, we have a new TV spot for Act of Valor, as well as a five-minute long featurette that offers a better look at the overall filmmaking style of the project, along with the hazardous locations, up-to-date Navy technology/vehicles, and physically-exhausting combat maneuvers on display in the movie.

Act of Valor was scripted by Kurt Johnstad (300) and is reportedly based on several real-life incidents involving Navy SEALs. Those stories were thereafter reconstructed and tied together to form the film’s central narrative, which follows the Bandito Platoon as it works in collaboration with the C.I.A. and sets out to stop a global terrorist plot that threatens to result in the coordinated killing of thousands of U.S. civilians.

GEORGE LUCAS: OTHER THAN A FIFTH ‘INDIANA JONES’, I’M DONE WITH BLOCKBUSTERS

King George is butthurt and taking his ball home with him:

Lucas seized control of his movies from the studios only to discover that the fanboys could still give him script notes. “Why would I make any more,” Lucas says of the “Star Wars” movies, “when everybody yells at you all the time and says what a terrible person you are?”

In the interview Lucas acts all astonished that after he tinkered with three of the most beloved films ever made, fans got upset. And he apparently holds the opinion that we shouldn’t be upset because he has the “right” to tinker with his films.

Lucas can’t possibly be this stupid.

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Writer/co-director Gavin O’Connor’s “Warrior” opens with an emotionally bruising scene that not only sets the tone of this intensely moving story but beautifully uses silence and what remains unspoken to communicate a gulf so wide between an estranged father and son that it seems impossible to bridge. Dad is Paddy Conlon (Nick Nolte), a bear of a man who traded in the drink for the forgiveness of Jesus Christ. Today, alone in his beat up, working class house, his only companion is the terrible cost abusive alcoholics pay for their sobriety, the memories of the physical and mental abuse inflicted on a family eventually lost.

The son is Tommy Conlon (Tom Hardy), a former Marine just home from Iraq, who didn’t drop by after fourteen years to see how dear dad was doing,. He’s here to hurt the old man in every way possible without laying a hand on him. Tommy expected to find a drunk, and Paddy’s sobriety only angers him more. Dad doesn’t deserve forgiveness, Christ’s or anyone else’s. Tommy is a seething young man made dysfunctional by the baggage he carries around like the bulk of his muscle — an unreachable force of anger and bitter resentment that extends to his older brother Brendan, as well.

Brendan didn’t run away from his father like Tommy and his mother. He was older, had a girlfriend, and had already planted the seeds of a life. Eventually, he married that girl, went to college, became a teacher, had kids, and bought a house. Though they’re very different in so many ways, Tommy and Brendan do at least have one thing in common. No matter how many days sober, they will never forgive their father.

Paddy is a former martial-arts trainer, and this experience is the only thing these three still have in common. For reasons I won’t spoil, Tommy needs to make some quick cash, and that means getting back into the octagon and the competitive world of mixed-martial arts. The same goes for Brendan (a former UFC contender) who refuses to accept charity or file a bankruptcy to save his family from financial ruin. “I don’t do things that way,” he tells a banker, and though he’s a little long in the tooth, into the octagon he goes looking for whatever prize money he can scrape up.

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ARMOND WHITE SETS THE RECORD STRAIGHT

Why “Rise of the Planet of the Apes” was Better Than “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo”

Armond White: It’s a way of looking at the entire year of film and giving people an overview of what the films were attempting and what other films achieved. I looked at The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo– the David Fincher version as a remake, so I contrasted it with Rise of the Planet of the Apes which was also a remake but a far superior remake. Certainly a less pretentious piece of film making, also, not a hateful illustration of human ugliness. It’s a movie that’s kind of a wild vision of contemporary frustration which I think is more helpful than the brutality that was on display with The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. So on two levels– as a remake there was something better than The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo and also as a movie dealing with contemporary concerns there was a better film than that one. Which happened to be Rise of the Planet of the Apes.

Armond Explains Why “Jack and Jill” is Better Than “The Descendants”

Armond White:  I will defend Jack and Jill. I get a kick out of the things Adam Sandler does. And one of the things that he does, and he does it explicitly in Jack and Jill, is that he deals with ethnicity. And he deals with family pride and family shame. These are the same subjects as The Descendants except it kind of glosses it over and uses superficial tv drama and morbidity to disguise the fact that its story is actually about ethnicity. It’s actually about how white folks came to Hawaii and took over and owned the land. And so it’s cast primarily with European descendants. And I’m watching the movie and thinking where are the indigenous Hawaiians? And this might be so in many cases but the film doesn’t deal with it. It’s just a superficial soap opera about the travails of the middle class and I was not interested in that. See Jack and Jill. It was all about ethnicity and what it is about ethnicity that we all have in common. And it can be tragic but Adam Sandler finds the humor in it. And it’s wonderful.

More at the link.

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If there’s anyone the entertainment media elite hate more than our GOP candidates, it’s the great unwashed who dare vote for someone who isn’t Barack Obama. In a bizarre but seething article — at an entertainment site, no less — film critic Ken Tucker was unable to control his contempt for We The People Who Think Ken Tucker Is Wrong About Everything. GOP supporters, like the ones who enjoyed themselves at last night’s debate, are now fair game — even in bathroom reading like Entertainment Weekly. But it’s Tucker’s cynical use of Martin Luther King that’s beyond the pale, even for Ken Tucker.

Ken Tucker

Lowlights from an elitist frustrated over his inability to defend President FailureTeleprompter: [emphasis added]

Huntsman was undoubtedly relieved he didn’t have to stand on-stage Monday night to face the most raucous, roused-rabble audience of any Republican debate held thus far.

[T]he people in the seats hailed lustily the history lesson offered by “Professor” Newt Gingrich: “Andrew Jackson knew what to do with his enemies — he killed them.”

It was a wild, schizo crowd. They yelled their approval of Rick Perry’s suggestion that America should “go to zero on foreign aid.”

The audience showed a nasty streak in the booing Fox questioner Juan Williams for asking Gingrich[.]

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***UPDATE: One of the folks involved in the event was kind enough to forward the video. It’s a must-watch. The great Frank Luntz gets bigger laughs than Colbert (who gets none) and not because these South Carolina moms “don’t get” the joke. These are smart women who know Colbert’s joke really isn’t. Watch how many of them describe Colbert as a left-winger and, quite hilariously, as a “Charleston dandy.”

Man, I love the American people.

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Because those left-wing journOlists at Politico share Colbert’s agenda to define GOP candidates as out-of-touch, because Politico shares Colbert’s goal to deny free speech to millionaires not named Stephen Colbert and corporations not named Politico, it makes sense that after gushing all over Colbert in somewhere around 258,223 stories, Politico would bury the lede in the 258,224th:

Via POLITICO’s Mackenzie Weinger in Myrtle Beach, S.C., Stephen Colbert made his appearance at the Café Moms town hall via a recorded video message:

Stephen Colbert made a cameo appearance at the Café Moms town hall meeting in Myrtle Beach on Monday with a recorded message asking the audience if they agree with Mitt Romney’s line that “corporations are people.” …

“My next question for the Café Moms South Carolina town hall is: What do you think about South Carolina’s favorite son forming an exploratory committee to run for president? While you discuss that I’m going to call my mom.”

And snark, snark, snark, and blah, blah, blah.

The real story, however, is found (as it usually is at Politico) near and at the bottom:

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NETFLIX USERS STREAM 3000 LIFETIMES’ WORTH OF VIDEOS IN 3 MONTHS

And Hollywood thinks they can put this genie back in the bottle. Never.

DID YOU KNOW KING KONG ALMOST BATTLED FRANKENSTEIN’S MONSTER?

Alternate title: Did you know the greatest movie ever almost got made?

TELEVISION SERIES THAT OUTSTAYED THEIR WELCOME

They forgot the season premiere of “Thirtysomething.”

COMING SOON TO HOME VIDEO

TEXAS KILLING FIELDS, JAN 31:  Anchor Bay Films is proud to announce the release of TEXAS KILLING FIELDS on both Blu-ray™ and DVD  January 31, 2012.  Directed by Ami Canaan Mann, produced by Michael Mann and Michael Jaffe, and based on the real life, headline-making series of unsolved murders, TEXAS KILLING FIELDS is a haunting story of two detectives and one desperate race to catch a killer. The release also contains audio commentary with Director Ami Canaan Mann and Writer Donald F. Ferrarone.

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There’s a HUGE left-wing agenda behind what Comedy Central’s Stephen Colbert is doing, and it’s a serious agenda that has nothing to do with satire. Colbert’s goal is two-fold: he’s attacking constitutional free speech by attempting to make a mockery of a new Supreme Court ruling that finally allows private citizens and corporations to have as much say in the political process as Stephen Colbert and corporations like, say, Comedy Central. Like the corrupt media, Colbert believes he’s the only multi-millionaire who should have unlimited free speech – free speech, which, in fact, is funded by the multi-national corporation that owns Comedy Central, Viacom.

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The second thing Colbert is doing is using partisan satire to Speak! Truth! To! The! Out! Of! Power! — like Mitt Romney. In order to help the Obama campaign define the GOP frontrunner as a heartless corporatist, Colbert is running commercials like the one below. Naturally, Colbert disguises all of this as nothing more than fun and games, but anyone paying attention knows better, and you can bet Obama’s MSM Palace Guards most certainly know better, which is why left-wing news outlets like Politico and “This Week” are giving a comedian more play than they ever gave Fast and Furious, Solyndra, Jeremiah Wright, the number of people who have stopped trying to find work, or Bill Ayers.

You see, Colbert is a smart guy, and like most left-wing partisans disguised as satirists, he knows that under the conceit of “a humorous break in the news of the day,” the MSM will offer up a ton of print and broadcast time to his attacks on free speech. Colbert knows this because he knows the MSM despises the new Supreme Court ruling for the same reasons he does. The MSM believes that only MSM gajillionaires backed by multi-national corporations should enjoy the right to unlimited political speech. Of course, the MSM also loves the side-order of Republican bashing.

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Supposedly based on a true story, director Gary McKendry’s  “Killer Elite” boasts a terrific premise. After a close call involving a child, Danny (Jason Statham) decides that it’s time to get out of the elite assassin-for-hire business. After a year of bliss in the wilds of Australia with a lovely blond lovely and innocent enough to save any man’s soul , Danny’s friend and mentor, Hunter (Robert De Niro), is kidnapped, and the ransom is a job. An Omani sheik promises to execute Hunter unless Danny avenges the death of the sheik’s three sons at the hands of a trio of British SAS officers. The sheik not only wants the three deadly and highly-skilled SAS agents killed, he wants them to confess to their crimes on tape. In exchange, Hunter will be freed, carrying six million in cash as a bonus.

Danny’s also up against the clock. He has to finish the job before the aged and ailing sheik dies, so he quickly assembles a team of fellow mercenaries to track down the three men and figure out a way to not only get them to confess but also to make their deaths look like an accident. The hitch in the plan is Spike Logan (Clive Owen), the leader of a secret organization of  former SAS-types who have banded together to protect themselves from outside forces… such as Danny.

The set-up is solid; in fact, it’s inspired — not only in its simplicity but in making the audience understand immediately both the stakes and how difficult the mission will be. The problem is the execution, which is nowhere near as exciting or clever as you anticipate. The killing of these SAS agents is absurdly easy, as is extracting their confessions. Once the second act kicks in, you sit back expecting the script to take us into the fascinating details of how assassins who work at the highest level operate. Unfortunately, nothing that follows even rises to the level of a standard “Mission: Impossible” episode.

De Niro looks good in the role of a grizzled mercenary unwilling to give into age, but he’s barely in the movie. Statham, a genuinely charismatic action star who needs to pick better scripts, is perfectly capable of carrying a film on his own, but all he’s given here is a choppy plot disguised as an international thriller, plus a few unexciting action sequences filmed with the shaky-cam and edited for maximum confusion.

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**UPDATE: I was a little careless with my language below. Readers have correctly pointed out that “Shark Night” is rated PG-13 and that there is no “gratuitous nudity.” This is correct. What there is, though, are a lot of young, very fit people running around with hardly any clothes on even at the silliest of times (not a criticism). So gratuitous near-nudity is a better description.

In the undeniably entertaining “Shark Night,” director David R. Ellis brings to life a couple of one-dimensional, stereotyped, Southern, racist rednecks to… lecture… us… about… bigotry… Talk about a disconnect. Naturally, there’s a young black man and Hispanic woman who are racially taunted by these two inbred-looking good ole’ boys, but when the film itself engaged in this kind of racial stereotyping (and more), I began to wonder if “Shark Night” was working on the kind of  high level, self-aware social satire only a dog could hear.

For instance, the black guy and the Hispanic woman are naturally a couple — can’t have them romantically mixing with Caucasians, I guess. ***SPOILERS*** Also, both are the very first victims of the shark. But it’s when the shirtless Black guy fights the shark with — ready for this? — a spear, that I began to see the real genius in this film’s penetrating racial commentary.

Or not.

Anyway, “Shark Night” is pure B-movie dumb in the finest way possible. Though no legitimate masterpiece like last year’s epic “Piranha,” you will be entertained throughout. Mixed in with the dumb is a little suspense, gratuitous nudity, gore, action and more dumb. “Shark Night” proudly is what it is and, by design or accident, more insightful when it comes to racial issues (that expose the Hollywood left) than the Academy Award-winner “Crash.”

It’s also a much better movie than “Crash.” Not that that’s a high bar.  

But the real brilliance in the storytelling comes from a shark-attack story where the gaggle of lovely, barely-clothed victims-in-waiting reside on an island. Oh the contrivances you’ll witness to get them into the water, especially after they know what’s in the water. 

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