Way of the Gun (2000)

Welcome back, glad I have had so many view from the Frozen review.   Now for something completely different.   

Movie: The Way of the Gun (2000)
Rating: R

Starring: Ryan Phillippe as Mr. Parker, Benicio Del Toro as Mr. Mr. Longbaugh, Juliette Lewis as Robin, Taye Diggs as Jeffers, Nicky Katt as Obecks and James Caan as Joe Sterno
Score: 6.5 out of 10 stars
Family Friendly: 0/5 (Violence, a lot of violence)
Recommended: If you wanted to see a Micheal Mann film with a low budget....

Plot Summery (No Spoilers):
Two Criminal microminds try to kidnap a expectant mother for ransom, and nothing goes right for them.   



Plot Summery (Spoilers): (From Wikipedia)

Parker and Longbaugh are at a sperm donation facility, where they overhear a telephone conversation detailing a $1,000,000 payment to a surrogate mother for bearing the child of Hal Chidduck. Parker and Longbaugh resolve to kidnap the surrogate, Robin, but their attempt escalates into a shootout with her bodyguards, Jeffers and Obecks. The kidnappers are able to elude the bodyguards, who are arrested.

Jeffers and Obecks are bailed out and returned to Chidduck by Joe Sarno. As Sarno begins coordinating Robin's rescue, Longbaugh contacts the surrogate's gynecologist, Dr. Allen Painter, and orders him to a truck stop to examine Robin. After the examination, Painter returns to Chidduck, and it is revealed that the doctor is Chidduck's son.

Longbaugh calls and demands a $15 million ransom. Jeffers and Obecks, tempted by the money, begin forming a plan to save the child and keep the money. As Longbaugh hangs up the telephone outside a motel, he is approached by Sarno, who offers to pay $1 million if they surrender Robin and simply walk away. Longbaugh declines the offer and returns to his room, where Parker and Robin are playing cards. Sarno then returns to Chidduck's home to plan the next step.

Jeffers comes to realize that Robin is Sarno's daughter. Jeffers, Obecks, and Painter leave to meet with the kidnappers, while Sarno departs separately with the ransom. At the motel, Parker is having second thoughts. As he confers with Longbaugh outside the motel room, Robin takes the opportunity to seize a shotgun and barricade herself inside.

A woman and a gun

As sirens are heard in the distance, Parker and Longbaugh hastily escape, and Robin emerges just as Mexican police arrive, followed by Jeffers, Obecks, and Painter. As Painter and the bodyguards try to persuade Robin to leave with them, the officers pull their guns and order everybody onto the ground. Parker and Longbaugh open fire from a nearby hilltop, and the shootout leaves the two officers dead and Obecks wounded. Jeffers shoves Painter and Robin into his car and drives off.

Parker and Longbaugh torture Obecks to learn Robin's location, while Jeffers confines Robin in a room in a Mexican brothel. Jeffers forces Painter to perform a Caesarean section to retrieve the baby, despite Robin's confession that the child is hers and Painter's and is not Chidduck's. Meanwhile, the heavily armed Parker and Longbaugh infiltrate the brothel. The ensuing gunfight, which leaves Parker wounded, turns into another standoff, until Painter shoots Jeffers. Outside, Sarno arrives with a group of men and the ransom, which they stack in the courtyard. Parker wants to kidnap Robin and Painter again, but Longbaugh, guilt-ridden after seeing her condition, responds: "She's had enough". Despite realizing that the money is bait, Parker and Longbaugh charge headlong into an ambush.

All of Sarno's men are killed in the ensuing firefight. However, Sarno manages to shoot and cripple the already wounded Parker and Longbaugh, and then calls for an ambulance. Painter emerges with Robin and the baby. Lying in a pool of blood, Parker and Longbaugh call out to Sarno, informing him that the baby is in fact Robin and Painter's, and thus Sarno's grandson. Parker wonders aloud if this fact will influence Sarno to let them keep the child. Robin and the baby are then taken away in the ambulance with Painter, Sarno and the money, leaving Parker and Longbaugh to die.

Days later, Chidduck's wife reveals that she's pregnant.

My Thoughts:

Yes, she is that woman from that TV show...

I am a bit conflicted with this movie.   Mostly since it is about three steps away from being a great movie, and two steps away from being utter trash.   

Back in 2000 there was a bunch of "Reservoir Dogs/Pulp Fiction" clones, movies with impressive output of violence slathered over with pseudo-deep thinking.  By and large these films took everything that is bad about a Quentin Tarantino film, and remove all the good points. The writer of 1990s crime classic "The Usual Suspects" went out and made a film called "The Way of the Gun".  When Way of the gun came out, it was quickly banished as one of these knockoff films and buried.

Somehow it didn't die, and slowly has gained a  cult movie reputation .   Its biggest weakness is that it tries to be too cute with the plot.   Otherwise it is a solid, if flawed movie. 

Our "Heroes" ready for the final fight...

The entire movie is really a reverse of what you normally see, and sometimes that really works, and sometimes it falls flat on its face.   It has protagonists who are petty criminals, and it turns out the villain, played by the always great Caan, is actually in most movies would be the hero, saving his daughter from a bad fate.   Also the casting Ryan Phillippe as a bad guy is also counter to what was expected.  

Some things are done very well, it still looks good 14 years later, as you can see by the screenshots.   Also some of the acting is very well done.   Caan is great as the villain, and Juliette Lewis does very well in moving like a women who is about to deliver a child.   Most of the acting talent is however the better end of the TV side of skill.   

One thing that this movie will be known for years is the excellent "Gun play", that for a movie at least, that most people use guns property, follow safety rules even in a firefight, and guns DO need to be reloaded.   And not just as the dramatic point, but all thought-out a gunfight.  

Reloading

Yep, more reloading

This movie does bring up a question of violence in movies.  As you are well aware, I normally dwell on the content of movies, perhaps it is the juxtaposition of my latter day saints religous views with the sex and violence of movies, and that I do enjoy violent movies.   This movie has a R rating, which it should, and it brings up a philosophical question.   What is more harmful, showing the actual violence realistically, with blood, people dying, and even innocent bystanders hurt and killed, or something like avengers where a entire city is basically crushed, with 10,000s of deaths, and not even a mention of this.   I have come to the point that I really think that Hollywoods CGI destruction fests that are PG-13 are much more harmful to society then a R rated film that shows the real cost of violence.   

The way of the gun is a violent movie.    There is no if and or buts about it, as people are shot, one person is tortured, and one moment of body horror as one of our So-anti-heroes that they are the villains does a Hollywood style dive into a dry fountain, and finds as he lands that the entire bottom is covered in beer bottles.  The torture sequence did cause me to knock it down a entire point as it was unneeded, and very violent.   

This movie uses guns a lot.   In fact, I would call it gun porn.  Every character with a speaking role will have a gun at some point in time except for the couple who unborn child is being ransomed.  However in it favor it is thought of as one of the few movies that shows how police, military, and other trained professionals will handle guns, with fingers not on the triggers unless firing, proper room clearing techniques, and as mentioned, reloading is part and parcel of the movie and its action sequences.  

   

Mexico....

Some of the set piece action sequences are very good.   The actual kidnapping sequence is okay,  but the low speed chase (that right, it is brave enough to do a low speed chase with a hostage) makes for a great action sequence.   The shootout to get to Robin is decently well done, and last but very not least, the ending firefight is one of the best shootouts in the movies, up with Heat and the other classics.

What you always wanted, to have a child in a Mexican brothel.

This movie is not nice to woman.   Not that it nice to men, but it has the visceral darkness that many 1990-2001 movies had.   The opening sequence is semi-famous, where a incredibly foul mouth woman played by a young Sarah Silverman who eggs on a fight to get punched, and the fact that Robin is in bad hands throughout the movie.   Just so you know in case your are sensitive to such things.

Another nice thing is that it shows that 15 million dollars is not a small amount of cash.  As in volume.   It takes a lot of space to have all that currency and the movie actually shows it.   Impressive non-hollywood when it normally would be a briefcase of cash.  

In the end, it is what it is.   A movie that is violent, from the "amoral 1990s", and at times talky.   It has some strong points, such as the great action sequences, and some major weak points, such as the characters who are shown to be dumb having very witty conversation.   The acting is uneven, with the couple who surrogate is kidnapped putting in sub-par performances, while Caan and Del Toro doing well.   In the end it falls under the magic 7.0 that I use as a good movie.   However those who like violent westerns and crime movies in the mold of 1970s movies like Thief or the works of Peckinpah or  Elmore Leonard might find it a good watch.

Some final images...

Prisoners (2013)

Time for the second review dealing with Torture, but this time a much closer to home form of torture.   What would you do to get your daughter back?  That is the general theme of Prisoners, the dark and very underrated 2013 film. 

Movie: Prisoners (2013)
Rating: R

Starring: Hugh Jackman as Keller Dover, Jake Gyllenhaal as Detective David Loki, Viola Davis as Nancy Birch, Maria Bello as Grace Dover, Tarrence Howard as Franklin Birch, Melissa Leo as Holly Jones, Paul Dano as Alex Jones

Score: 8.5 out of 10 stars
Family Friendly: 2/5 (dark themes, personal violence)
Recommended: Anyone who enjoyed Zodiac  and anyone who wants to see the best ensemble acting of 2013.

Plot Summery (No Spoilers):

Two families meet for thanksgiving, and the youngest daughters go missing, driving everyone involved to the edge of darkness in each persons heart. 

Plot Summery (Spoilers):

Hugh Jackman (aka Wolverine) is a god fearing preper who in the opening sequence is taking his son to hunt deer.  Soon you learn it is thanksgiving, and the Dovers go to the Birch family to share thanksgiving.  

In the moment that I have been told that is every parents nightmare  (I am childless, and at the current rate, will remain childless) the two youngest girls go missing.   Soon the police id a suspicious RV, and find a man-child (Alex Jones, played by the always excellent Paul Dano) in on it.   He is the main suspect. 

Detective Loki questions him, but is unable to pin any crime on him, as the RV is clean and there is nothing to hold him on.   Jackman's Keller assaults Jones and then is told to calm down and be with his family.

The plot then goes into two main threads, both of them excellent, one is Detective Loki's investigation as he increasingly deals with darker matter as he carries out his investigation, and we watch the two families deal with the horror of missing the girls.

Keller decides to take the investigation in his own hands, and kidnaps Alex Jones (the character, not the crazy radio host) and ties him up in a old apartment complex to question him.   Leading to the moments where Keller does anything to try to save his daughter. 

Near the third act the plot gets more convoluted and to sum it all up, Alex Jones mother is not really his mother, but her and her late husband would kidnap kids to make religious parents loose faith.  Loki is forced to kill her and rescue the remaining girl, while Keller is buried in a pit on the property to die.   The last moments of the film is Loki perhaps hearing Keller to rescue him.


My thoughts:

My thoughts focus on these catagories

excellence in acting. 
Well crafted storytelling
God, faith, and and prepping
Plot Issues

Excellence in Acting

This is one of the best acted films of 2013.   Everyone is at the top of their game.   Jake Gyllenhaal does a older reprise of his excellent Zodiac characterization, but with many minor changes.   He is able to carry the movie, but even if he does excellent work, the amazing work by his fellow cast almost overshadows him. 

Maria Bello is a gorgeous woman and talented actress, and has the thankless role of a woman who cannot handle the situation.   She plays it with aplomb, going from cheerful, to stunned, to the so depressed she can't get out of bed.  

Tarrence Howard takes a very unexpected and wonderful turn as the emotional center of his family, playing a role that many times would be reserved for the female, but works so well as the father of his family that you buy it from the first moment to the end of the movie.  

Viola Davis plays the wife of Howard's sensitive type, and is the rock to the family.   She is unforgettable as the woman who daughter is missing and makes the final choices on what the Birch family will do to resolve the horror of their missing girl. 

Then we have Paul Dano and Hugh Jackman.  Both play their near leading roles with skill.   Dano has a very tough role.  As anyone who seen Tropic Thunder knows, you never want to go full retard. (Before anyone gets offended, that is the quote of the movie, and send the complaints to the producers of the movie) But Dano's LSD addled man-child really is a amazing performance, both showing the raw emotion and the complete confusion on why he is being singled out for Keller's desperate drive to find his daughter. 

Jackman's character of Keller could of easily been cartoonish, and to many Hollywood directors, he would be.   He is a God fearing man who feels duty bound to protect his family, thus is a prepper once you see his basement, a recovering alcoholic, and is willing to do horrible things so that he might have a chance to get his daughter back.   Any of these traits with a lazy director or actor could be made excessive, but it hangs in balance and you feel compelled for Keller, even when he makes bad choices.  

Also, Melissa Leo (who been in in dozens of TV shows and movies, most famous most likely for "Homicide, life in the street") is unreconizable under her makeup, but plays the villain with just the right taint so that near the end, you look into those eyes and you know she is capable of what she done. 

Well crafted storytelling

I will be first to say that plot issues exist in this movie.   However the movie is well told and compelling as we move forward.  Late in the third act it gets a little over complicated (But not as disappointing as say, Sunshine) but the well shot, top performances and general plot movies it along for much of the movie.   It also has little things that made me enjoy the film.  

Of the main families, one is white, one is black, and its not even mentioned.   They are both middle class and nothing feels wrong with it.  It also handles some subjects that movies almost always get wrong.

God, faith, and and prepping

God and faith is something that Hollywood movies almost always get wrong.  Most of the time, you can tell the director feels that it so quaint that it is silly.   However in this movie you see a deeply flawed person in Keller who has faith, and while he in no way lives up to the heights of his faith, you can see that his faith is one of the foundational eliments of his life and it how he is able to hold on for the most part.   And is never condescending.  

Also Keller is a Prepper, and while I expected him to be made into a fool for it, it is just shown as part of his charicter, a man who is dedicated to protect his family, and the crisis when his daughter goes missing and what steps he is willing to get her back. 

Plot Issues

At times the plot goes for too many plot twists, this movie would of been a truly great film except that it falls apart a bit at the end, with a suicide as the cutoff moment  where it goes from perfection to a flawed masterpeace.  Everything up to and including that moment is brilliant, and then it falls to "Just" a 7 out of 10.  

This is a adult movie.  I am not talking about it being Porn, but it is a movie intended for mature adults and how they deal with horrific situations.   There is no teen romance angle, or other distractions, it is just pure storytelling of a investigation and two families being torn apart by the seismic forces of a missing member.   It is a top five movie of 2013. 

Zero Dark Thirty

Okay, today I will be posting the first of two reviews that deal with torture and the American mindset.   This one deals with Zero Dark Thirty (2012), and I will be following it up with Prisoners (2013), both of which I feel are highly underrated as movies. 

Zero Dark thirty is one of the more honest portrayals of the war on terror.   It was blacklisted for the very reason that it did not try to make political statements about the war, and instead told a story, that depending on sources is very true or at least reasonably true, and shot in a near documentary style.   


Movie: Zero Dark Thirty
Rating: R

Starring: Jessica Chastain  as Maya, Jason Clarke as Dan, Kyle Chandler as Joseph Bradley
Score: 9 out of 10 stars
Family Friendly: 0.5/5 (Brutal violence in the first 23 minutes of the film)
Recommended: Anyone who can stand the first 23 minutes and can enjoy a film that assumes that you are intelligent.  

 Plot Summery (No Spoilers)

The story of a CIA worker Maya as she follows a lead that leads to the events that lead to the raid that killed Osama Bin Laden. 

Plot Summery (Spoilers)

Starting with a brutal CIA interrogation of a Al-Qaeda moneyman in a undisclosed site, the movie first twenty minutes is dedicated to show, not tell, what enhanced interrogation is.   The man being questioned is holding back information on a future attack, and they are racing to find this information before the terror attack happens.   Then 23 minutes into the movie, the 2004 Kohbar attack happens (where 22 non-Saudi's where shot in a mass shooting).  And Maya, who has been following along, presents the idea to tell the isolated terrorist being questioned that the attacked failed and he gave information since they now know what the attack was.   Soon the man is telling all that he knows, and he tells of a messenger from Bin Laden named Abu Ahmed.   Other detained prisoners say the same thing, that Abu Ahmed is one of, if not the most trusted men to Bin Laden.

Maya, relentless in her pursuit,  follows this lead.  As attacks are shown, including the London attacks and the Fort Chapman attack (which is the biggest single lost of CIA personnel in history).   Soon she thinks she knows who Abu Ahmed really is.  And he is traced to Pakistan.   A tale of spycraft goes on as this man is pinpointed to a walled off compound in a Major Pakistani city.  Unsure if its a drug dealer or Bin Laden, the US sends in a Seal Team, and the last 1/3 of the film is the raid on the compound and the assassination of Bin Laden.  


My Thoughts

Okay, I have a lot of thoughts on this film, so I will break it down into the following subjects. 

1) Torture
2) Spycraft
3) Mary Sue Maya
4) Political stuff
5) Why you should stop worrying and love this film



Torture

Lets not dance around the issue, the United States of America tortured real and suspected terrorists.   No I do not think that Bush needs to stand for war crimes, nor do I think its a nice thing to do to people.   

However, causing discomfort, humiliation, Sleep deprivation, and many other forms of torture have been used for centuries, and in 2400, will still be used.   Intelligence is not worried about legally admissible evidence, it is about obtaining information that is vitally important to the state.  Just as the Military is about using lethal force to carry out the policies of the state.   I am not saying we are mistake free, the biggest being not understanding that you never want to give intelligence agencies to do law enforcement for the very reason that the concepts of rights is not in the vocabulary of any intelligence  agencies.    

The brilliancy of this movie is that it does not condone nor condemn this, it presents it to the public in a matter of fact way that is needed for us in a democratic society to make the choice on where we want to go.  

This does not mean that the actions carried out by our country are not horrific.   I have friends who think water-boarding is a fun way to baptize terrorists, and others who find the idea of causing discomfort to a non-POW prisoner as a war crime.  There is no clean answer to this and anyone who says otherwise is far too sure of the vagaries of the wind in life.   My opinion has always been that a good society needs a core of bad men in the shadows to secure the good society from other bad men.   Perhaps it is just the Hobbes from my college days that stuck with me.

(Note: I use men in the gender neutral, I am not a social justice worrier who will clutter my poor writing with him/her and so on.) 

Spycraft

After that long passage on torture, guess what, this movie really isn't about torture. After 23 minutes it actually goes into the real movie, which is amazing.  It is what is rare today, a true spy film that does not depend on bond gadgets or Borne Ubermen.   It is a story of a core of Intelligence officers who give up family, a decade of life, and in some cases, their lives on the hunt for a 6'4 Arab who does not have working kidneys. 

The movie assumes you are are in the same zip code of intelligence as the very smart officers.  No one stops and tells the audience "By the way, ISI is the Pakistani intelligence service", or any other hand-holding.   It tells the story and you better strap yourself in as the cards fall and the circle on the target gets smaller and smaller till the moment of the raid. 

The Spycraft is at all nodes, ranging from spy satellites, computer databases, questioning, picking up suspects, hunting down a cell phone in a crowded street, to old fashioned gumshoe work.   And its played brilliantly, including one of my most enjoyed moments, buying a car.

One of the characters, Dan, has a contact in Kuwait, and needs to get information.   The friend points out that Dan is not a real friend, he just asks and never gives in return.  Dan accepts that, and says "Do friends buy Lamborghinis for each other?" and proceed to go to the dealership, and let the contact pick out a car.   In return he wants just one phone number.   It is well played in the movie and shows the pure drive the United States had in hunting down Bin Laden. 

Mary Sue Maya

The movie does have a issue, and it is not what most talk about.  Maya, played by the amazing actress Jessica Chastain (Who was robbed of awards due to political stuff) carries the movie, this is a movie about her, as she single minded drive to  hunt Bin Laden.   It is deeply compelling, but there is one major flaw.

She does not make mistakes. 

On review it gets old that she is always right, never even makes a minor mistake (even if its a office politics or some other minor flaw) and it does lead to the fact that she is a Mary Sue.  This is the only major flaw of this film. 


Political stuff

 This movie makes a major mistake.   It does not make Bush the younger a buffoon, it does not make Obama as the savior.   In fact, outside of the late great James Gandolfini playing a obvious Leon Panetta (head of the CIA under Obama) most major political types are never mentioned.   It makes no moral mallet over the head that torture is wrong (even if anyone who says that it says torture is a good thing needs to rewatch the film).   It almost to the point makes sure that it tells its story as it sees itself, and not what it "should" be. 

Thus Hollywood freaking hates this film.   It was buried in the awards (not even giving a director a nomination) since it dared not be the standard Hollywood fair that assumes that the person watching needs to be spoon fed and told what to think.   It

Why you should stop worrying and love this film

Bin Laden body was still being eaten by fishes when this film went into production.  It is noteworthy for three things that will make this film a classic. 

1) Old fashioned storytelling. 
2) brings up the torture issue while it still fresh, even France took years before they admitted they did what they did in Algeria in movies. 
3) People keep talking about strong woman.   Perhaps it the female director, but there is more truly strong female characters in this film then you can see in a year of multiplex watching. 


And no, I didn't discuss the raid.   Why?  As every movie goer needs to see this unspoiled as much as seeing the ending of Das Boot.  

Enders Game

Can a classic science fiction novel is made into a hollywood film?  Is there a chance they can make it right?   I will say that the novel itself is a book I adored as a teen, and still like as an adult.   It is also a special effects tour de force, so I will have a few images for the readers.  Here is my review of Enders Game (2013) the surprisingly decent and fascist telling of a beloved Science Fiction novel of the same name.


Movie: Enders Game (2013)
Rating: PG-13

Starring: Asa Butterfield as Ender Wiggin, Harrison Ford as Colonel Graff, Hailee Steinfeld as Petra Arkanian, and Ben Kingsley as Mazer Rackham.
Score: 6.8 out of 10 stars
Family Friendly: 3.5/5 (violence)
Recommended: Anyone who has read he book first

 Plot Summery (No Spoilers)




Ender Wiggin, a schoolboy, is the selected in the near future for training to fight aliens who stuck earth, and earth is looking for a commander... 

Plot Summery (Spoilers)

 Earth was attacked, and a hero, Mazer Rackham, rams his ship into the mothership of the aliens and stops the attack, and earth begins to build a fleet of ships and militarizes.  Ender Wiggin is a smart, smallish boy who has potential for the earth's defense force (the International fleet) and when faced with a bully, not only defeats him, he beats him so that he will never threaten Ender again.   This turns out to be the last test for Ender, and he is promoted to Battle school.  

Battle school is the core of the film.   Battle school takes place on a space station above the earth, with children (young  teens in the case of the movies) are trained for a future in the military.  Of course, some of the best training for kids is games, and two of the games are noteworthy, A laser-tag like game, and a computer game to test the students mental state. 

The laser-tag like game consists of a zero-gravity area and if the player is hit by a laser, he becomes frozen.   Ender quickly shows his leadership and tactical abilities in the game, being promoted up to new teams, meeting friends and enemies, and finally obtaining his own team. 

 The computer game consists of variang challenges, including a challenge that the player is not supposed to win, with a Giant asking a player, who currently a mouse, to drink one of two cups.   Both are poison, and its to see how the students react to not being able to win.   Ender figures out a third way to get past this challenge.

Then we get to the end of the battle-school a rival (Bonzo) of Ender confronts him in the shower.  Ender proceeds to win the fight, but Bonzo hits his head and is killed.   This leads to him being promoted and sent to Command School.

At command school, he is presented with another game, a accurate simulation of the upcoming war with the aliens, and meets a unexpected teacher,  Mazer Rackham who stopped the last invasion has been kept alive so that he might teach his successor,  Ender and his troop of follow kids start to play the game.  

This leads to the climatic battle, where Ender seeing that he has a near hopeless situation,  sacrifices everything to carry out a suicide strike on the alien planet, killing all the alien queens.  He thinks he won the game, till he finds out that he won the war.   It wasn't really a game.


Ender is smart enough to know that he really is not a hero, but a Genocidal evil kid, and is horrified.   His boss Graff is of course overjoyed that Ender was able to make the tough choices.   And Ender flips out.  

He is called by dreams to explore a area, and finds the last queen, who is dying, however she has one egg left, and Ender with Xonocidal guilt, agrees to take the egg and find a world where the alien race can live again. 



My thoughts:  I was planning on bashing the film, as it is disappointing to the books.  Still it is a solid movie that is enjoyable.   It has some strong points.  The visual effects and the acting ability of the cast (including the child actors) is superb.   However the need to cram a ton of plot into a marketable movie means that the plot, which is more then solid, does not have the time for you to buy as a viewer on why Ender is accepted as a leader.   This is a critical flaw.  In addition, the Aliens, which are a key concept to understand the plot, and not really discussed till late in the movie.

I will start on the actors.   The major "kid" actors are excellent.   Butterfeild, Hailee Steinfeld
 (Most famous as the girl from "true grit") and Abigail Breastlin (famous for Little Miss Sunshine) all do amazing jobs.   The other child actors do yeoman work.  

One major plot point that is dropped from the movies from the book is Enders sister and brother.   Both are products of the earth eugenic program to create the commander that Earth needs, but Peter is a sociopath, and his sister Valentine is too nice.   In the books they become bloggers who change the world.   (To be fair, the novel is from 1984 and predicts the internet, the jump to security over freedoms, children's love of video games, and other issues.   I can accept that the writer had too much belief in blogging.)


There is a theme of Fascism.  Seeing kids being trained from a young age to march off to war and to fight does launch some sectors of your brain that normally do not get fired.   Also it is clear that the earth's government is clearly highly militarized and it does lead to genocide.

   

In most movies, the kid actors is what leads to the failure of the movie.  In Enders Game, it the adult actors who fail to carry the water as it seems that they do not have the star power or taking the material seriously unlike the kids.    It quite surprising, and Ben Kingsley as Mazer Rackham is phoning it in the movie, hoping his odd choice of tribal tattoos would overlook his not trying.

In the end, this is a solid movie.  It does have some pace issues.  It screams as two part movie, or better yet, a HBO style miniseries to let the material breath and let the world that Ender lives in breath and come to life.   

Also, the person requesting that I review Enders Game requested that I discuss the Latter Day Saint angle of Enders Game.   Unlike some of Orson Scott Cards books, this does not have a heavy Mormon influence.   (Both the blogger and the writer of the book Enders Game are members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints - AKA Mormon)  I am also aware aware that some homosexuals protested this film as the writer is opposed to Gay Marriage. (Insert joke pointing out that one of the key moments of the book is two naked male teens wrestling all lathered up in a hot shower).   After some thought I could come up with only two concepts that have some sort of Mormon influence.   One is that while Ender is set up as a "savior" Christ like figure at first, he chooses violence as the answer, and only later sees that redemption comes from peace and reconciliation.   This is a common Christian theme, and is not exclusive to Mormons.   In addition Enders dreams leadinding him to find infomation and taking actions that directly save him is a very Latter Day Saint concept, and most likely is the strongest Latter Day Saint influence. 

Still, the book is excellent, (and the sequel, Speaker for the Dead is a all time classic) and the movie is enjoyable as both popcorn fare, and also as a strong, if flawed telling of the novel.