RUNNER RUNNER Review

Runner Runner is a film that would seemingly be posed as a well-received thriller-infused drama about the high stakes world of online gaming, the billions of dollars in revenue it provides and the dirty schemes the people who run these sites use to cheat schmoes sitting in their living rooms and betting their life savings. It would seem that way, it certainly has all of the components. Both of its leading actors, Justin Timberlake and Ben Affleck, have careers as hot as they've ever been at the moment and director Brad Furman's previous film was The Lincoln Lawyer, a gritty legal drama with a slick persona at the center that didn't necessarily break any barriers, but played to its strengths and began the career renaissance Matthew McConaughey is now experiencing. So why, with all this potential, all these favorable facets coming into play as well as the added bonus of having a script penned by Brian Koppelman and David Levien, they guys that also wrote Rounders and Ocean's Thirteen, end up being little more than a slog of tedious and boring beats we've seen a million times before with little more to offer than pretty scenery via Costa Rica? While that script is certainly one of the major culprits it seems as much as there are good things working for this film there are just as many if not more negative aspects working against it. I hate to rag on a film that clearly is trying for a certain style and has a clear intent of what it would like to be and the kind of quota it is trying to fill as far as entertainment value goes because Runner Runner clearly knows what it is and how far it can go, but even within these limitations it fails to meet the most basic rules of being a movie and that is first and foremost being entertaining. There is nothing to keep us invested, no characters to sympathize with or plot twists to intrigue us further. From the moment we are introduced to Timberlake's character and presented with his dilemma and then subsequently presented with Affleck's position in the whole thing we can see where things are heading and thus, they do.

First Trailer for RUNNER, RUNNER

When your movie has two guys in peak form at the top of their careers with a director whose last film began the rejuvenation that is now informing Matthew McConaughey's career there will naturally be interest in the film and those things, more than anything are what intrigue me about Brad Furman's (The Lincoln Lawyer) latest Runner, Runner. I said last week with the premiere of the Prisoners trailer that September, as it has the past few years, continues to stack up a pretty impressive line of films where we are usually given Hollywood's leftovers. Go ahead and add this one to the list because despite the fact that it looks rather generic and chummy, it has Ben Affleck (fresh off Argo winning best picture and many in the industry sympathetic for him after not being nominated for best director) chewing serious scenery and hamming it up while Justin Timberlake (at the height of his musical game having the biggest selling album of 2013 so far) gives the dramatic material another go. I didn't bother to finish Trouble With the Curve last fall, but I liked In Time well enough that despite the fact Timberlake is a better comedian he might still have range enough for more serious roles. What helps this trailer from coming off as nothing more than a generic 90's movie rip-off is the fact that the directors previous work was a finely tuned dramatic thriller that had a nice gritty tone to go along with it and this film seems to be very much in the same vein. Affleck likely won't be winning any more Oscars for this one, but it will be a fun, distracting time at the movies with what will hopefully be re-enforcement to how gifted an actor Affleck still is along with his directing skills. I like everyone involved here and I'm hoping for the best so I'm certainly looking forward to the film. Runner, Runner also stars Gemma Arterton, Anthony Mackie, Ben Schwartz, Dayo Okeniyi, Oliver Cooper and opens September 27th. Hit the jump to check out the trailer.

HANSEL AND GRETEL: WITCH HUNTERS Review

Where to even begin with something such as Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters? To be honest I was somewhat excited for this film despite the fact knowing going into it that it was probably going to be pretty horrible. I read the Seth Grahame-Smith novel Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter last spring in anticipation of the summer film adaptation but was sorely let down by that film (though it has improved to a fun, campy thrill on repeat viewings). It must have really burned the producers of this film to see that action/horror mash-up make it out of the gate first as their film has been complete for over a year now and has been doing little more than collecting dust. Why the delay? I can only imagine. I can't really see this film being much better after a years worth of tinkering and the 3D post conversion doesn't take THAT long; I can only think that after the release of Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol the producers wanted to wait out 2012 and let Jeremy Renner become even bigger star with The Avengers and The Bourne Legacy which might guarantee them a bigger draw when they dropped it on unsuspecting movie-goers in late January. The strategy seems to have worked as Hansel and Gretel cleaned up at the box office and have proven that with a ridiculous, even outrageous premise one might still find an audience in those looking to see their favorite childhood fairy tales adapted for the big screen with a dark twist about them. The film is about as brainless as you  might expect, but I would be lying if I said I didn't have a pretty great time with the film as it flew by at a rip roaring pace and delivered grand entertainment value on a limited scale. I know it's dumb, I realize it will be completely forgotten about in a few weeks time, but I also know I became immersed in their world and didn't mind spending the hour and a half they required tagging along and killing some witches.