It’s the kind of criss-cross universe comparable to that of their comics that made geeks salivate at the mouth. They even started off pretty well. “Iron Man” had an inspired bit of casting in Robert Downey Jr. and ended up making $318.4 million domestically. They even threw in a cameo of Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury! Genius, I say.

Next came the more mediocre “The Incredible Hulk” which barely managed to top its Eric Bana-starring previous incarnation at the box office. But the films successfully began Marvel’s path to the upcoming “Avengers.” There were even rumors that “Hulk” star Edward Norton was so passionate about the character that he took on uncredited roles as both a producer and a screenwriter. He certainly wanted in on “Avengers.”

The company looked like it was different from the ignorant studios that seem to own Hollywood. They were giving fans what they wanted by hiring quality filmmakers and showing a dedication to the quality of their own projects–a live-action Pixar, if you will.

But the studio truly hadn’t been put to the test yet. Their next film was “Iron Man 2,” and it was a clunker if there ever was one. I mean, how do you mess up a film when you have Downey Jr., Jackson, Sam Rockwell and Mickey frickin’ Rourke!? Well, they managed to do it, alright. Audiences expecting the same smarts and energy as the first installment experienced shoddy storytelling, a plot that was not clearly fleshed out, and montages such as Tony Stark shooting lasers around a room and suddenly discovering a new atom… seriously?

What about the dark, alcoholic Tony Stark fans love from the comics? Why were actors like Rockwell and Rourke literally wasted, only performing in scenes necessary to move the plot forward but not to flesh out character? I mean, no one’s going to disagree that they are both excellent character actors.

The studio was clearly becoming a run-of-the-mill entity interested more in getting out quick, fast food-like product rather than giving people memorable films that entertain and refresh far beyond a 90-minute popcorn summer film. Rourke, known for his brutal honesty about everyone from himself to those he works with, outed the studio while he was out promoting the film “Immortals.” Rourke made the following statements about his experience working with the studio:

[W]hen I did Ivan Vanko in Iron Man, I fought… You know, I explained to Justin Theroux, to the writer, and to [Jon] Favreau, that I wanted to bring some other layers and colors [to the character], not just make this Russian a complete murderous revenging bad guy. And they allowed me to do that. Unfortunately, the [people] at Marvel just wanted a one-dimensional bad guy, so most of the performance ended up the floor.

[It’s] ****ing too bad, but it’s their loss. If they want to make mindless comic book movies, then I don’t want to be a part of that. I don’t want to have to care so much and work so hard, and then fight them for intelligent reasoning, and just because they’re calling the shots they… You know, I didn’t work for three months on the accent and all the adjustments and go to Russia just so I could end up on the floor. Because that can make somebody say at the end of the day, oh **** ‘em, I’m just going to mail it in. But I’m not that kind of guy. I’m never going to mail it in.

If they let you, play the bad guy with other dimensions other than one-dimensional. You have to fight for that though, to bring layers to the character. Otherwise, if you’re working for the wrong studio or let’s say a director that doesn’t have any balls, then they’re just gonna want it to be the evil bad guy. […] So, if you’re working with some good studio guys that got brains and you’re working with a director with a set of nuts that’ll let you incorporate that then it’s fun. Otherwise, you end up with what happened on “Iron Man.”

That sounds like enough explanation as to why “Iron Man 2″ felt like it was made by a 13-year-old boy. The films just got worse in quality with the release of “Thor” and “Captain America.” I mean, they picked the guy who directed “Jumanji” to direct “Captain America!” The same guy who was quoted time and time again wanting to downplay the patriotic side of Captain America. What? I thought these guys were trying to be more faithful to the characters they showed on screen. His name is Captain America! The film was awful. The special effects showing Chris Evans as a scrawny pre-Captain America were just sad and awkward. The action scenes were so cardboard that the film felt like it had no personality. And it all just felt like one big rush to the setup for “The Avengers” at the end. Clearly, Marvel Studios had become interested in simply making mindless comic book movies, which is the reason they took control of these projects in the first place.

The studio also dumbly fired Norton when it came time to cast The Hulk in “The Avengers,” and it replaced him with Mark Ruffalo. Here was their explanation:

We have made the decision to not bring Ed Norton back to portray the title role of Bruce Banner in the Avengers. Our decision is definitely not one based on monetary factors, but instead rooted in the need for an actor who embodies the creativity and collaborative spirit of our other talented cast members. The Avengers demands players who thrive working as part of an ensemble, as evidenced by Robert, Chris H, Chris E, Sam, Scarlett, and all of our talented casts. We are looking to announce a name actor who fulfills these requirements, and is passionate about the iconic role in the coming weeks.

I’m not the smartest guy in the world, but I can read between the lines. Basically, they needed someone who was more of a puppet than Norton and whose voice would not interrupt theirs. So much for being a novel idea.

Has Marvel Studios really been a success? Not really. “Iron Man” and “Iron Man 2″ managed to pull in heavy sums, but “The Incredible Hulk” couldn’t even match its production budget with its domestic haul. Neither “Thor” nor “Captain America: The First Avenger” could even touch the $200 million mark. The hauls they brought in were almost guaranteed just based on curiosity with the movie going public. I, for one, am not looking forward to “The Avengers.” Why should I? Marvel Studios has become just like the studios they were a reaction to. They make mindless entertainment that barely scratches out a profit and they allow no creativity, which we know leads to the lasting success films need.

We’ve already had Ruffalo out there comparing the Avengers to Occupy Wall Street, and behind the camera we have Joss Whedon, whose film credits include directing a whopping total of one picture. Marvel Studios is now just a part of the crop of studios turning out everything from crap to liberal crap and then not understanding the financial results. Waste your hard earned money on something more worth it.

Yes, it’s that easy.

Yikes:

You visited a Russian prison to prepare for your role in Iron Man 2. How did you prepare to play an ancient Greek Titan king for Immortals?

I showed up. The director spent three years working on the overall look of the film and that really helped. They paid me a lot of money for a few days of work so I was happy to go. It’s just a shame I didn’t get to work with the hot blond chick, Isabel Lucas. [below] I also loved Frieda Pinto, but she has a boyfriend. She’s a really nice person and I have great respect for her as an actress — and I think most actresses are c*nts with a capital K.

[...]

When are you going to write a memoir?

Why bother? Other people write books about me, so I don’t need to. I’m not interested in my legacy. When you’re dead, you’re dead. I don’t give a f*ck. I will be up in heaven. Hopefully.

Full interview here.

The new swords and six-pack abs flick dabbles in the elements that made “300″ such a guilty pleasure. Merciless fight sequences. Monosyllabic heroes. More digital effects than “Green Lantern” and “Sucker Punch” combined.

—–

Add the future Man of Steel, Henry Cavill, and you’ve got a giddy blend of action and mumbo jumbo plotting. Then again, did anyone cheer on “300″ for its nuanced storytelling?

Cavill stars as Theseus, a Greek peasant trying to protect his town from King Hyperion (Mickey Rourke), a ruler renown for his insatiable appetites. He’s always chomping something, with flecks of food clinging to his scruffy beard. Fruit, meat, scenery, there’s nothing ol’ Hyperion won’t munch on. But he really hungers for world domination, and if he finds a magical bow he might just get it.

The Epirus Bow fires magic arrows and can free the Titans, a race of zombie-like ghouls imprisoned years ago by Zeus and his fellow gods.

Said gods can’t interfere with humanity even if it means watching as Hyperion gets close to the bow. But Zeus, played in human form by John Hurt, has been coaching Theseus for years in the hopes that he would lead the charge against Hyperion.

Director Tarsem Singh (“The Cell”) treats the film’s digital effects like a child discovering finger paints for the first time. “Immortals” can be beautiful to behold, but “300″ featured a far more rewarding tapestry of fantasy backgrounds. Every time Singh pans back, and back, we’re taken out of the movie and left to marvel at how many computers made it all possible.

Those digital effects can still dazzle, but they become yet another distraction during a climactic sequence with the aforementioned Titans.

“Immortals” exists for its battle scenes, and it’s here where Singh reveals a singular talent. The action is intense and unrelenting, with severed heads and other body parts coming our way thanks to the unnecessary 3D conversion. Singh’s camera doesn’t shake once, and he captures the ferocity of hand-to-hand combat without any “Matrix”-style wizardry – at first. The third act battles take a turn for the monotonous, swapping in video game style antics for quasi-realism. What a shame.

Bloody swordplay is serious stuff, and “Immortals” goes about its business with grim-faced determination. Stephen Dorff tries to inject some levity into the story as a wise-cracking thief who teams with Theseus, but the script barely acknowledges his presence.

That leaves Cavill to carry the hour, and he does so by flashing glimpses of what we’ll surely see when he dons Superman’s red cap in 2012. He’s got the sculpted physique demanded by the genre, and while “Immortals” is hardly an acting showcase he manages to give some texture to Theseus’ plight.

“Slumdog Millionaire’s” Freida Pinto plays an Oracle who can see briefly into the future. Had her character had clearer vision she’d tell Pinto one more rail-thin role and she’ll be stuck shooting made-for-TV movies and infomericals.

“Immortals” wraps with the inevitable sequel tease, and perhaps we’ll see it before any “300″ project hits theaters. Either way, “Immortals” delivers the essential action set pieces genre fans demand – and not a blessed thing else.

“Beauty, Disrupted,” Otis’s revealing autobiography, attempts to set the record straight on her combustible marriage to “The Wrestler” star. The book is far more than the “she said” side of a shattered romance. Otis shares her tumultuous days as a young model, recounts the repeated sexual abuse she suffered through the years and tells how she conquered addiction through a sturdy application of Buddhism and inner strength.

Otis, a married mother of two who now calls a small Colorado town home, has been writing fiction for years based on her dysfunctional California upbringing before the notion of an autobiography came up.

”I actually created what I hoped would be a television show called ‘Marin Diaries,’” Otis says. Rourke’s public comments about their relationship convinced her to set that project aside to tell her own story.

“On one hand, it had nothing to do with Mickey, and on the other hand, it was, ‘oh, no you don’t,’” she says of Rourke’s media blitz, which she says included a false accusation that she was once gang raped. “I had been silent for so long and very diplomatic. In a way it’s very textbook abuse survivor, continue to protect and be silent about it.”

“Beauty, Disrupted” details how Rourke controlled Otis’s modeling career, physically abused her, and repeatedly put her in harm’s way. The latter ranged from an impromptu dinner with noted mobster John Gotti to the time when she shot herself in the shoulder after Rourke put a loaded gun in her purse.

Rourke is a big part of “Disrupted,” but “the theme of victim and perpetrator goes throughout that lifetime for me,” she says.

The brunette stunner entered the modeling industry as a teenager, and she quickly fell prey to industry scoundrels as well as an unspoken rule to stay as thin as humanly possible. The unprepared Otis, who grew up with an alcoholic father, eventually took up cocaine and heroin to cope. It wasn’t until years later, after learning she had three small holes in her heart, that she realized she suffered from an eating disorder.

Writing “Beauty, Disrupted” wasn’t difficult for her, but seeing the manuscript in front of her proved a challenge.

“It was real, and not just in my head,” she explains. But the hardest part was yet to come – recording the audio version of her life story.

”That was me putting myself to the test, having to talk out loud through a rape scene with men I didn’t know,” she says.

Otis is talking more than ever now to promote her book, but it’s also a chance to sound off on what she hopes will change in both the modeling industry and popular culture.

The 43-year-old Otis can still turn heads, although she’d much rather talk about the joyful insanity of having two toddlers under her roof. When asked about the current state of our pop culture, an edge overcomes her voice.

“I think, in general, the premature sexualizing that’s going on in our culture is unbelievable. We’ve got ‘Toddlers and Tiaras’… are you fucking kidding me? It’s pedophilia… it should be illegal,” she says. “Sex is something sacred, and our bodies are something sacred. There’s so much exploitation going on, and the media isn’t helping… there is a line that we cannot cross… somebody’s got to behave like the adults.”

That’s something that was missing during her early modeling days, and she suspects little has changed since then.

“From the outside looking in I still see really young girls in that industry  in sexually provocative ads or scantily dressed and really young girls who are really, really skinny,” she says. “This is the one industry where 98 percent of the people they’re employing are minors, but there’s no union, no health insurance, no mentors, no rules and no regulation.”

For many readers, “Beauty, Disrupted” will be a chance to relive the Otis/Rourke romance. Even Otis can look back on that period with a modicum of fondness.

“We shared a great love… we were in each other’s lives for a long time. Part of this book is taking responsibility and not pointing the finger and saying I had nothing to do with it,” she says. “That relationship is so many people’s relationships in its dysfunction, in its obsession.”

She doesn’t expect Rourke will want to talk about the book, or their past, any time soon.

“I had such hopes for so long that they’re could be some closure, but there are some people who don’t change,” she says. “I hope he’s happy, but looking at him I still see a lot of suffering.”

Otis attempted at an acting career in the early 90s, co-starring in the steamy drama “Wild Orchid” alongside Rourke. She admits she was terrible and says they couldn’t pay her enough to take a second stab at it. She’d rather concentrate on her family, her husband, and her writing career.

Not every famous person gets a second chance like Otis. Too many succumb to drugs, alcohol or the tangential fallout from celebrity.

Otis was one of the lucky ones, and she rattles off the reasons why.

“Hard work, discipline, lots of therapy, and really making a choice to live in another way and then doing whatever the fuck it takes to get there,” she says regarding her road to recovery. “Even if it means going to therapy five days a week … whatever it takes.”

Sylverster Stallone’s glorious throwback to the brawny 80s is also about something, and it’s not Bourne-ian self-discovery. It’s about something that actually matters. And in this age of nihilism when believing in anything bigger than self is considered old-fashioned, unsophisticated and naïve, that’s both refreshing and important.  Mickey Rourke, who has a small but showy supporting role as the proprietor of the tattoo parlor that serves as the Expendables’ hangout, explains it with a single word. I won’t spoil anything, but without this scene, this important turning point, “The Expendables” wouldn’t be half the movie it is. 

Stallone plays Barney Ross (probably not his real name), the leader of a band of American mercenaries who, along with Christmas (Jason Statham), Gunner (Dolph Lundgren), Yang (Jet Li), Toll (Randy Couture), and Caesar (Terry Crews), is willing to go most anywhere and kill most any bad guy for a price. The story opens with a well-crafted action sequence involving Somalia pirates that not only establishes how deadly competent our guys are, but also that they’re not cold-blooded killers.  These are men with a moral code and one of their own breaking that code will be the root cause of deadly complications and a couple over the top action sequences to come. 

The plot gets a nudge courtesy of a self-referential Meeting of The Titans. Ever in search of a job, Barney meets with “Church” (Bruce Willis), a CIA spook in need of some housecleaning that won’t make headlines and Arnold Schwarzenegger, a long-time rival. Cinematically this is far from a great scene, but Stallone the director isn’t looking to please the American Film Institute and the early morning packed house I saw this with buzzed to life during every satisfying moment. 

The mission is to go to South America to rid the world of a Castro-like dictator who’s made a deal with the devil in the form of an ex-CIA baddie played to the hilt by The Mighty Eric Roberts. And what irony that “Eat Pray Love,” starring the less-talented and charismatic Roberts opened the same day.  Yes, this weekend it’s Roberts vs. Roberts – Men Who Do vs. Women Who New Age. 

Though getting on in years (Stallone is 64), these are still formidable men, experienced enough to know how the world works and that wringing your hands over the nuance of it all is just an excuse for cowardly inaction. They also understand that when a tin-pot dictator brutalizes the self-determination out of his own people, his being in favor of national health care doesn’t make that okay. These are also men who worry about their own skin. No paycheck is worth dying for. But loyalty to one another is, and sometimes they can even be shamed into action — a likely suicide mission — by the bravery of one woman (Giselle Itie) who’s willing to stand for something.  But these aren’t men who talk a whole lot, and when they do it’s usually in the form of affectionate crowd-pleasing insults that might not move the plot or add character dimension, but once again Stallone (who co-wrote the screenplay with Dave Callahan) knows his audience.   

Satisfying is probably the best way to describe this labor of love conjured up by a superstar who sat in the direct-to-DVD bin for almost a decade waiting for America to come to its collective senses and figure out how much we missed him and his kind of action filmmaking.. There’s also a kind of validation that comes with the price of admission, especially for those of us who couldn’t figure out why in the hell anyone would call metro-sexuals angsting over calling evil what it is and apologizing for America an action movie. 

“The Expendables” proves us right. 

Matt Damon sucks and the eighties freaking ruled.

Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) has privatized world peace. Yes, all on his own as Iron Man, Stark has whipped the world into behaving itself and it’s completely gone to his already bloated head. Obviously this wasn’t accomplished through the changing of our enemies’ hearts, but rather through the superior firepower that comes with being Iron Man. This is the reason/excuse our government, led by the oily Senator Stern (a very funny Gary Shandling) uses to demand Stark turn over the suit to the Pentagon. During a hearing televised on CSPAN, Stark can’t bring himself to politely decline. With his ego red-lining, (he has saved the world, after all), he both insults the Senator and dares him to try and take the suit away from him.

Game on.

In this vacuum steps a rival arms dealer, Justin Hammer (a delightfully twitchy Sam Rockwell), who’s desperate to replicate the Iron Man technology and scoop up all that Pentagon money while at the same time fulfilling a desire to humiliate Stark by elbowing Iron Man into irrelevancy. Hope arrives in the form of Ivan Vanko (a quietly menacing Mickey Rourke), a Russian scientist burning with both a hate for Stark and the technical know-how to fulfill Hammer’s mercenary desires.

As a whole, if you look real close, the film’s overall narrative doesn’t hold together all that well. But the individual pieces are so delightfully scripted and performed you don’t really notice… or care. Through the first act and right up until the dynamite initial–and very well staged and shot–encounter between Stark and Vanko, everything pops as all the familiar themes and characters effortlessly pick up right where they left off. And while the second act, except for an awkward and surprisingly claustrophobic sequence involving Stark’s birthday party, never ceases to hold your attention and entertain, the structure just isn’t there, nor is the action.

There is a lot going on with the characters, though maybe too much. The relationship between the luscious Pepper Potts and Stark is as Tracy/Hepburn as ever, but the troubling dynamic between Stark and his deceased father feels artificial, especially when it results in the solving (seemingly out of nowhere) of one of Stark’s biggest problems.  One area where you do feel the narrative pieces fall satisfactorily into place is with the arrival of Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson). Much track is laid for the Avenger team Fury’s putting together and you will want to hang around for a post-credit scene.

One area where the sequel improves on the original is with its climax. This time it’s big and lusty and exciting as opposed to rock ‘em sock ‘em robots duking it out on the Hollywood freeway. But back to the lack of lift….

There were three moments in the first “Iron Man” that took my movie-loving breath away. Stark’s initial escape in his crude Iron Man suit, his first flight, and that delicious moment when he figured out that being a superhero means no longer watching helplessly as tragedy plays out on the television. Iron Man flying off to lay waste to those Jihadists terrorizing that village was a moment this country had been collectively waiting for our Hollywood Masters to deliver since the attacks on September 11th.

The best way to describe the sequel is to think about what the original would’ve been like without those moments; worthwhile and fun but far from a classic.

Jon Favreau’s direction and the snappy dialogue, like most of the performances (as Black Widow, Scarlett Johansson is a little in over her head with this cast, but kick some ass she does) are uniformly excellent, and if I haven’t said so before, Robert Downey Jr. is a friggin’ movie star in the very best sense of the word. Is there another actor out there capable of throwing around a character’s rank narcissism and irreverence but never at the expense of sincerity? He’s a marvel to watch, if you’ll pardon the pun.

If anything, this second Iron Man chapter is even more patriotic than the first. The military, as personified by Don Cheadle’s Lt. Col. Rhoades, is treated with utmost respect and Stark’s language about what he’s doing is never qualified with any of that maddening, namby-pamby United NationSpeak that’s plagued every movie made since Bush beat Gore. Stark says with no embarrassment whatsoever that he is “securing America,” and that he’s proud to “serve a great nation.” He even throws a kind word to the Boy Scouts of America. And later, a very funny and not-so-subtle riff on the megalomania surrounding Obama iconography ranks as iconoclastic when compared to what we’re seeing from today’s lockstep film industry.

So go! Have fun. Take the kids. And thank Favreau and company for proving that in the talented hands of those willing you can still make timeless universal themes cool, entertaining, and very profitable.

In the immortal words of Justin Hammer: “God bless Iron Man. God bless America.”

The list of films I’m literally counting down the days to see each summer gets shorter every year. This is either due to my advancing middle age or Hollywood’s advancing suckery. Regardless, few films were as pure pleasure of a surprise as the original “Iron Man,” which seemed to come out of nowhere in 2007 and knock us all out. Part of the thrill was watching Robert Downey Jr. become an icon before our very eyes. Not since Johnny Depp’s Captain Jack Sparrow effortlessly stepped from his sinking ship and onto that pier had a film character created such a reservoir of a goodwill that a franchise was both inevitable and welcome.

So, likes “Pirates 2,” we eagerly anticipate “Iron Man 2.” As news dribbled out, a big plus was the return of the main players and the casting of Mickey Rourke as the villain, Whiplash; the big who cares was Don Cheadle stepping into the role originated by Terence Howard; the big minus was the casting of Scarlett Johansson and not just because she’s Scarlett Johansson. What she represents is the film’s second villain Black Widow (UPDATE: this may be incorrect. I was going by BW’s comic origin story. Sam Rockwell’s Hammer is either villain #2 or #3, depending on how the film uses Black Widow) and the whole idea of a second villain brings back unpleasant memories of Batman Returns and Spider-Man 3. Meaning, overstuffed plots with too much going on resulting in the lack of a focused story impossible to lose yourself in. 

Unless the film critic mentions the dreaded shaky-cam, reviews don’t normally have much of an effect on me. It’s just one person’s opinion, no less or more valid than the neighborhood mailman, crossing guard or the illegal aliens who take care of my yard. But when a review makes sense, when it locks a piece into place that was already floating ’round my mind, that’s when it gets my attention. And today’s review in the Hollywood Reporter diminished my expectations … some — which isn’t necessarily a bad thing: 

Well, that didn’t take long. Everything fun and terrific about “Iron Man,” a mere two years ago, has vanished with its sequel.

In its place, “Iron Man 2″ has substituted noise, confusion, multiple villains, irrelevant stunts and misguided story lines. A film series that started out with critical and commercial success will have to settle for only the latter with this sequel; Robert Downey Jr.’s return as Tony Stark/Iron Man will assure that.

Den of Geek is a little more enthusiastic, but in an exceptionally well-written review, they seconded the confirmation of my concerns:

Yet there’s no getting away from it: Iron Man 2 is a film that can’t quite recapture the magic of the first instalment. You can’t fault the fact that it tries: it throws as much as it can at you, admittedly stretching elements a little too thinly, but it’s doggedly determined to give you your money’s worth. There’s little doubt that you get it, too.

I’m sick of over-stuffed films.

One piece of good news is that over at AICN, Harry Knowles is gushing over the sequel’s “awesomery.” A great word and because I share it, I’ve always admired Harry’s movie enthusiasm, but our tastes are wildly different (though there was a moment of unspoken kinship over our mutual loathing of “Transformers 2.”)

Doesn’t matter, though. Nothing does. This is “Iron Man 2,” and when this sucker opens next Friday, I’ll be there — eager, excited and ready to fall in love with Tony Stark all over again.

This child-like anticipation which cannot be diminished by age, circumstance or a couple of troubling reviews represents The Magical Power Of Movies when Hollywood gets one right … and with “Iron Man,” Hollywood got one right, and then some.

Along his lonely way, Eli stumbles into a town resembling those of the Old West. The leader of the town is a self-appointed, ruthless leader named Carnegie, played by Gary Oldman who is simultaneously a cross between Mickey Rourke from 9 ½ Weeks and Mickey Rourke from The Wrestler, as well as the whole process of evolution between the former and the latter. Carnegie is an evil megalomaniac who sends his lowlife savages in search of the Book, convinced that possession of a copy of the now-extinct Bible can help him spread his rule and establish control over degraded humanity.

In case abusing his concubine, killing some people, and treating the rest like dirt was not enough to convey that Carnegie is a bad guy, we are shown that his favorite read is Mussolini’s biography. Yet, with all the weight of culture going against him, Carnegie is the only person who had managed to forge some semblance of a settlement with brewing elements of potential civilization.   His wild town—reminiscent of an Old West settlement but surrounded with cannibals instead of Indians—is the only semi-safe and positive place in an otherwise out-of-control and collapsed world. He is assembling a hierarchical society and he needs the Book to bring, as he thinks, “all the weak and wounded” under his dominion. His intentions are sinister and self-serving, but he seems to be the only person who understands the real power of the Book and its ability to transform and civilize the brutally egotistical and animal nature of disintegrated humanity . . . while at the same time correctly assessing any man’s, including his own, inability to re-create functioning societal interactions without a binding belief system.

Eli, on the other hand, is hell-bent on delivering the Book all the way west, as if Carnegie town, the etalon of the west, isn’t west enough. Eli is unwilling to bestow the power of the Book to the maniacal ambitions of Carnegie who, nevertheless, manages to usurp the Book by exchanging it for a hostage, Eli’s model-looking girl companion (the precise type of a woman you must leave home when you are going on a mission for God, which to his defense Eli attempts to do but finds himself powerless against the Biblical urge of Hollywood producers to stick an out-of-context young pretty face in everything they do). 

When the salivating Carnegie breaks open the thoroughly locked Bible, he tragically realizes that it is written in Braille and there is no one left who can read it since there is no one left who can really read anything anyway.

At the end of the movie, to our—and even to Ray Bradbury’s—surprise that Michael Moore is not the only person he should be mad at for stealing his ideas and book titles, we find out that Eli, in fact, memorized the entire Book. He IS the book and he finally gets himself to the place where the book was needed, where God, as Eli claimed, wanted him to deliver the Book…and that place is…—and this is where I wanted to deliver my popcorn, in partially digested form, to the row in front of me—that place is San Francisco.

Alcatraz prison has been turned into a citadel of cultural values and is protected by a hi-tech armed force, making it into a cross between Berkley and Guantanamo Bay. It is here that some surviving intellectuals—including a cross between Howard Zinn and the wacky Christopher Lloyd character from the Back to the Future franchise—collect surviving cultural values, print them, and distribute them to survivors, cannibals and murderers . . . who, when they are not busy eating and killing each other for old radio parts, are of course going to read Yeats and Keats.

As the head intellectual leads Eli through the sterile archives of stored masterpieces, he points out the fact that they had recovered some pieces of Mozart and Shakespeare but hadn’t had gotten any copies of the Bible yet, and now, well, they have gotten that too … delightful, isn’t it?  Wait now. This guy Eli carried this book (or himself) through dirt and blood, killed and mutilated people who endangered his mission, was chased by cannibals and maniacs . . . and after all this, the intellectual goes …”oh, perfect we got ourselves yet another bestseller.”  That’s all?  You’re kidding me, right?

This comfortably secular and politically correct ending is sad not because it is formulaically stupid but because it robs the movie of the great potential of actually being a movie about spirit as opposed to a movie about a religious book that it lamely is.  As with most current American artistic expression, The Book of Eli blindly follows the established academic elites’ anachronistic view of a cultural value as something belonging to a museum, library, archive, university and solely validated by peer views, professional commentators, Al Gore, and accepted intellectuals—basically, anyone but the people by whom and for whom those values are created.

Ironically and particularly with the Bible, it was a different story.  The Word of God was delivered directly to the people who needed it, who in their despair and ignorance depended on it not as a cultural value but as a living breath of divinity upon which depended their very existence.  It was given to the likes of people who inhabit Carnegie’s wild settlement and it was given to people like Carnegie, willful and often times evil kings, who nevertheless had the ability to deliver the Word to the people who needed it, because the Word had the power to cut directly to the people, bypassing those who tried to use It for their selfish purposes.  It was given to ruthless emperors like Constantine and mass executioners like Paul and it transformed them.

The Word of God was given to lowlifes and prostitutes, to criminals and sinners, to murderers and tyrants. In short, the Book was given to everyone but the scribes and Pharisees, the self-appointed custodians of agreed values, the professors and intellectuals. If anything, the Word was the simple liberating truth of passion that defeated the established complex dictatorship of the mind.

And this is the real story of the Great Book of Eli instead of the religious bestseller carried by a guy named Eli who, even in a post apocalyptic wasteland, feels the urge to conform to elite snobbery which, for what we know, might have been responsible for the apocalypse in the first place.

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See trailer here.

Something must be seriously wrong with “Killshot,” the straight-to-video flick starring the resurgent Mickey Rourke. The movie features not just Rourke, but rising star Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Diane Lane, Rosario Dawson and Thomas Jane – reputable actors, all.

And it’s under the direction of John Madden (“Shakespeare in Love”), working from an Elmore Leonard story. And it still rocketed past every movie theater save one in Arizona earlier this year, netting a measly $18,000?

The film, heading to DVD May 26, deserved a better fate.

Sure, it’s not as snarky as a great Leonard adaptation like “Get Shorty,” but it’s vigorously entertaining and another sign Rourke’s artistic rebound is the real deal – even if the film was shot before the actor’s comeback saga started.

The ex-”Wrestler” plays Blackbird, a killer for hire who shot one too many people on his latest assignment. Now, it’s his turn to run, but a chance encounter with a puffed-up thug named Richie (Gordon Levitt) stops him cold. The kid reminds him of his own little brother who died during a botched hit when he didn’t follow his older brother’s professional code.

Hit men take said codes very seriously.

Richie is all mouth and attitude, but he touches something inside the hardnosed hit man.

Their paths end up crossing a separated couple (Diane Lane and Thomas Jane) trying to see if their marriage deserves a second chance.

The storylines here need more room to breathe, but they aren’t the main attraction in “Killshot.” It’s the fine cast, an eclectic assortment of stars who rise above the narrative gaps. The weakest link might be Gordon Levitt, working so hard against type the cords stand out in his neck. Yet somehow the performance still clicks, mostly because he shares his scenes with Rourke.

The former ’80s mainstay finds another role uniquely suited to his battered visage. He’s playing Hollywood’s latest cliché, the conflicted hit man, but Rourke finds the humanity – and danger – lurking within the stale concept.

“Killshot” sounds like a grade-B thriller right down to its cheesy title, and its DVD debut only reinforces that impression. But the format’s lower expectations, and a cast worthy of a theatrical release, provide some unexpected rewards.

“The Informers,” a drama with a similar grade of actors, earned a wide theatrical release last month. So why couldn’t the far superior “Killshot” get the same level of respect?

Christian Toto is a contributing reporter for The Washington Times, MovieMaker Magazine and The Denver Post. He blogs about film at whatwouldtotowatch.com