SEVEN PSYCHOPATHS (2012)

A screenwriter (Colin Farrell) is having troubles with his drinking, his relationship with his girlfriend and coming up for an idea for his next script.  His best friend (Sam Rockwell) is an unhinged douchebag who (along with Christopher Walken) make money by kidnapping dogs and then collecting the reward.  What an asshole.  Anyway, so one day Rockwell kidnaps the prized dog of a local gangster (Woody Harrelson) who will stop at nothing to get his dog back.  That's not the strongest setup ever, but it does have potential to lead up to some awesomely over-the-top stuff going on...but no.  Instead, we have Rockwell talking nonstop while being self-destructive and crazed and for some unknown reason Farrell just sticks with him throughout it all.  Doesn't this guy have any normal, non-crazy friends?

With a title like SEVEN PSYCHOPATHS my mind was exploding with all kinds of awesome possibilities, but instead we get stuff like a serial killer that hunts serial killers.  Wow.  That's deep.  I too am a fan of Dexter.  Or a guy who hates somebody so much he follows him into Hell.  Amazing.  That's deep.  I enjoyed WHAT DREAMS MAY COME also.

Maybe if you've only seen three movies in your entire life, SEVEN PSYCHOPATHS will come off as original and clever, but as a grumpy old coot that's seen a lot of goddamn movies (example: the Vietnamese psycho's story reminded me of a 8-minute Australian horror short film I saw back in the early 1990's.) SEVEN PSYCHOPATHS started out promising enough for the first few minutes, but by the halfway point I was beginning to daydream hard.

Mild violence, lots of talking, miscasting, mild nudity, Shiner Bock beer, gangster with big shiny gun and old Cadillac convertible, more talking.  Worth a watch, I guess.  Or not.

TOTAL RECALL (2012)

A hundred years from now war has left all but Australia and parts of Europe uninhabitable.  For whatever reason the people in Australia travel each day through the Earth and work at factories in Europe.  I'm not really sure why.  Anyway, factory worker Colin Farrell is unhappy with his life (even though he has an attractive wife), so he goes to a artificial memory implanter to get some spy memories installed and low and behold: he's already a spy!  Right then the fuzz bust in and start killing everybody.  Farrell escapes, but now he's on the run and even worse, his hot wife is also out to kill him.  Ends up Farrell is in the middle of a epic battle between Europe and the "terrorists" of Australia who don't like the way the Europeans are treating them.

Sounds convoluted (and it is), but I don't really care cause all I want to see a fun sci-fi action movie.  Any semblance to a well-told story is just a bonus.  Fortunately there are a few cool action scenes (the elevator chase, "the Fall" sequence), but unfortunately the filmmakers unwisely chose to pollute their own film with almost nonstop lens flares.  It was nuts.  Imagine watching a normal movie with some asshole constantly shining a flashlight in your face and that's what this movie was like.  I've never seen anything like it before and I hope I never see anything like it ever again.  Also, I wasn't impressed with Bryan Cranston as the bad guy.  He's a great actor, but he didn't come off as evil enough and that fight scene between him and Farrell was sad.

Not a bad story and some of the action scenes were fun, but the lens flares nearly ruin the film.  Worth a single watch only.  Oh yeah, the three-titted character from the original is back.

Original - Total Recall (1990)