Month: May 2017

SHORT TAKE

Yet ANOTHER in a series of weaker and weaker installments of Pirates of the Caribbean movies, which, nonetheless, still has a few surprisingly good moments (and I do mean teeny tiny moments), mostly thanks to Geoffrey Rush, about the importance of fatherhood.

SPOILERS

I admit, I saw Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales anticipating, regretfully, that I would have to write a scathingly dismissive pan for this fifth installment in this series of decreasingly inventive franchise offerings. While I was, unfortunately, not wrong, there is reason to reinforce my belief that “NO one TRIES to make a bad movie”.  Amazingly, I found aspects to commend and which deserve some applause.

Before I get there I have to first express dismay – did the director just tell the crew: “Follow Depp around as he pin balls from place to place as Jack Sparrow and we’ll write a script around whatever he’s doing”???

Don’t get me wrong – I didn’t want to not like this movie. I even went wearing my Pirates of the Caribbean earrings my kids gave me for Mother’s Day years ago for the opening of a previous P of C installment.

But these movies suffer from what in the sci fi world could be described as “replicative fading” – the tendency of copies of copies to become less well defined, more replete with mistakes and less richly detailed than the predecessors until at last the descendants are no longer viable. Do they not think they have perhaps milked enough out of an idea which began as a SINGLE EXHIBIT IN A DISNEY THEME PARK RIDE!!!  I think this parrot has ceased to be (apologies to Monty Python and the Dead Parrot sketch).

The stories, after the first one wherein Depp brilliantly stepped onto a dock from the crow’s nest of a sinking ship, now seem to slap dash about from one preposterous situation to another as Depp bounces around doing pratfalls: falling off a tall fence into a muddy pig pen, being dragged down the street with his foot attached to a rope by horses pulling a….well, a HOUSE down a street, evading ghost pirates by lassoing a ghost shark, and pirouetting on a board as a guillotine slides back and forth within inches of his neck. His previous incarnations of the worst pirate Commadore Norrington had ever heard of: engaged in a sword fight while running in a water wheel, fought with squid headed sailors, and drunkenly swung invincibly from chandeliers, ropes and off house tops. All this with ZERO suspense as we know he will escape unharmed.

Sparrow’s antics are often reminiscent of other more original vaudeville-like routines from other movies and eras: Chaplin’s Little Tramp’s breakdown in Modern Times where the Tramp misses being crushed by centimeters as he cavorts through gears and machinery; or perhaps Baby Herman’s parkour crawl from Who Framed Roger Rabbit around the increasingly dangerous kitchen as Roger attempts to rescue him; or maybe just the Three Stooges as they endure falls, impacts and encounters with lethal implements with only minor scratches and the occasional blackened hair to show for it.  But Depp’s Sparrow simply leans heavily on these creative giants, no longer bringing anything original or inventive to the slap stick. While there are a lot of cartoon deaths, you know Sparrow will live to stagger another day. Without him there IS no Pirates franchise. So there’s really no serious tension.

Meanwhile, though they can’t do without him they don’t seem to do much with him either. His character has become less the center of focus and more like Puck, flitting between the other characters, igniting chaos and consequences with which the others must deal, getting himself away repercussion free.

While I really don’t mind that, I do mind the fact that the writers don’t even TRY to convince you anything bad will happen to Sparrow any more. The unlikelihood of Sparrow being even injured takes away all healthy suspense and tension from the film, which, in turn, takes away all the ebb and flow of emotion which sparks humor.

As for the other characters:. Disney HAD to try to set up the “next generation” Will-Elizabeth paring. But Brenton Thwaites who plays Henry Turner, son of Will Turner and Elizabeth Swan,  and Kaya Scodelaria, who plays Carina Smyth, the supposed leads/new love interests  have absolutely….no…chemistry…between … them….what-so-ever. While Will and Elizabeth (reprised briefly here by Orlando Bloom and Keira Knightly) had a life long history which made their bond credible, Henry and Carina have only just met under absurd circumstances. They are arrested, escape, captured, and rescued from execution via one more ridiculous scenario after another: Because she is a women expressing an interest in science she is declared a witch. Henry is the sole survivor of a shipwreck so is condemned to death. Carina finds out Henry is after the Trident as well so springs him from his chains in return for an alliance but is herself arrested and sent to the gallows. Henry hires Jack’s old crew to save both Carina and Jack from execution — and on and on. It’s silly, and as though the writers couldn’t think of a legitimate plot, they just invented one “escape room” after another to challenge their intrepid heroes. When in doubt – have someone chase them and, like Bugs Bunny, they always manage to get away.

And you know what else is annoying: They absolutely WASTE David Wenham (Faramir from Lord of the Rings)  in  unrecognizable makeup and cliche bad guy lines and Paul McCartney!!!!! in a cameo under Halloween quantity makeup and facial hair.

NO ONE TRIES TO MAKE A BAD MOVIE:

There is a small gem to be dug up. Once again reinforcing my belief that NO one tries to make a bad movie, P of C: Dead Men has an underlying thread of essential purpose hiding, like Paul McCartney, under all the totally unnecessary and fairly ludicrous accessories.

Both the lead characters – Henry and Carina – are on Chataquas inspired by their respective fathers. Henry is trying to find Poseidon’s Trident in order to use it (somehow) to release Will from his curse and return him back to the family fold. Carina is determined to follow her father’s diary to find this same Trident as a legacy to him.

Once again, instinctively, against the will and wishes of every P.C. promoter in Hollywood, they can not seem to avoid the irresistible truth that FATHERS ARE AT THE CORE OF EVERY CHILD. For better or worse the fathers of Henry and Carina are the true leads of this movie – mostly unseen in the former case and a mystery in the latter, the fathers propel the plot (such as it is) and most of the motivations.

Which brings me to a shining moment of three dimensional coalescence in the form of Geoffrey Rush’s Barbossa. Rush is an astonishing actor: David Helfgott in Shine, Hans Hubermann in The Book Thief, Lionel Logue – King George’s teacher – in The King’s Speech, Javert in the prose version of Les Miserables, Peter Sellers in The Life and Death of Peter Sellers, Philip “I don’t know, it’s a mystery” Henslowe in Shakespeare in Love, even the voice of Nigel the Aussie Pelican in Finding Nemo – the man is a versatile, nuanced, and powerful actor; a chameleon, like Dustin Hoffman, who can singlehandedly suck you into the world of the movie in which he resides. Make no mistake, even Rush can not shore up this shaky step down into the sink hole that has become the Pirates of the Caribbean movies.

However, Rush manages to knead a few lovely moments out of this Playdough of a script and gift us with a last couple of surprises. When Carina tells Barbossa where she got her father’s diary, Rush doesn’t have to say a word, but like the walk Jimmy Stewart’s George Bailey takes at the train station in It’s a Wonderful Life when George decides to sacrifice his own future for his brother’s happiness, we watch Barbossa’s face as he walks away from the young woman that fate has thrown in his path. We understand in the next few seconds by his expression, his gaited walk and his thousand yard stare that he has just realized Carina is his daughter. Of course it is on the strength of Rush’s portrayal alone which makes this moment both believable and moving and which makes his inevitable sacrifice for her later the real genuine and satisfying ending to this series. There is NOTHING before this in the plot which would suggest this connection; nothing in the way the actress behaves, nothing she says, which would give the audience a fair hint that she and Barbossa had a connection.  It was as though the script’s instructions were: “On the word ‘orphanage’ Geoffrey Rush proceeds to act the SNOT out of the moment to carry this scene, because we’ve been too busy working in absurd Captain Jack ‘schticks’ to write an actual plot.” 

Barbossa’s death should have been the penultimate scene of the movie. From the first there has been the push and pull of Barbossa and Sparrow. Without Barbossa there is only the Sparrow clown left and had the creators ANY sense at all they would have let this franchise end – not with a bang but with the whispered word “Treasure” – Barbossa’s description to Carina of what she is to him just before he dies.

FINAL GRIPES:

We homeschooled six kids from Kindergarten through high school graduation, so we were around our kids a LOT. And I have told them, probably, hundreds of times: You can get away with a lot if you can make me laugh. And I could have forgiven much in this movie if they had been funny. But sadly, even though this is supposed to be a comedy, the moments are barely worth the occasional smile.

Pintel and Ragetti – the pirate Abbot and Costello part of Barbossa’s crew – the thick bald guy and the skinny one whose eye keeps popping out – who provided occasional Greek chorus like quips during the first movies have been replaced with a forgettable pair who I would not be able to point out in a line up. Pintel and Ragetti were sort of adorable buffoons. The new guys are neither recognizable nor have any distinguishing characteristics to make them stand out in the crowd of pirates.

I’m not sure the writers and producers really know their audience any more – which is a downright tragedy for a franchise that’s been going on for 14 years.

ONE SMALL CONSOLATION

It was actually quite nice to see Bloom and Knightly reprise their respective roles at the tip end as Turner and Swan and reunite after the curse is broken.

SAVE US!!!!!

HOWEVER, the writers apparently think they will be able to squeeze yet another pathetic replicant out of this failing enterprise. There is a reveal after the credits finish rolling as Turner and Swan lie contentedly asleep together as husband and wife. (And, yes, I’m one of those people who stay to marvel at the enormity of digital artists there are, listen to the epilogue medley of themes, and watch for “fun” credits such as “hand models” and “bee wranglers” – OK so I’m easily amused. AND I’ve been doing this YEARS before “Easter eggs” started cropping up in the credits.) Clues during this extra scene indicate there likely will be yet ANOTHER P of C!!! This speculation is hammered home if you check out us.imbd.com. Type “Pirates of the” into the search engine and you will find “Pirates of the Caribbean 6"…………………………. *sigh*

In 1979 I was in college and dating my now husband of 35 years.  We saw Alien at the movie theater and it made my unflappable husband yelp and startle out of his chair (first and last time I ever saw him do that) and terrified me to the point that in one still memorable scene involving a wet storage facility, a cat and dripping water I thought – “This is no longer fun, I am in pain I am so stark staring terrified.” Alien was, at that point, simply the scariest movie I had ever seen. Though I have been known to watch movies I liked, even Jaws, 4 or 5 times, it took me the full 17 years until the first sequel before I would even consider watching this gut clenching film again. (Note: Of course, my far more jaded kids saw it and went “Meh, I’ve seen scarier.” Repressing the urge to disinherit them, I realized I had hyped it so much and explained scenes to the extent that they were quite prepped for it – so that was not a fair evaluation.) I have seen every Alien movie since (aside from the Predator cross-breeds), including the iconically awful why-are-you-running-in-front-of-the-spaceship-that-is-about-to-squish-you Prometheus. Whenever Cinema Sins does a review and someone does an Indiana Jones fleeing the boulder run Jeremy, the narrator, always quips that they must have gone to the "Prometheus School of Running Away from Things". While Alien: Covenant is not as bad as Prometheus, it is no where near as good as the best of the franchise, Aliens, nor as roller coaster terrifying as the founder movie, Alien (though to be fair, over the last 38 years WE, like my kids, have all been prepped on these stories to the point that a lot of the raw suspense has been removed, replaced with its creepy cousin anticipatory suspense).

SPOILERS!!!

The premise to Covenant is that the titular colony ship on a 7 year trip with 2,000 passengers and over a thousand embryos is hit with an energy neutrino surge which overloads their systems, killing 47 passengers and burning their captain  (James Franco in what has to be the shortest, most unnoticed cameo in the history of scary movies. Stan Lee gets more screen time in the Marvel movies) to death in his hypersleep chamber (see my article on the evils of hypersleep pods).  Without their proper commander, the leadership of the vessel falls under the questionable control of a self-doubting, vacillating and weak but well meaning First Officer who unwisely agrees to take a detour from their assigned path to investigate —- a John Denver song. Sounds like the beginning of a joke, but this is what happens. The song is being inadvertently transmitted, (or perhaps is part of a trap – we are never made clear on this point), by David, android and sole remaining survivor of the goofy crew Prometheus, who hijacked an alien spaceship and landed on the alien creators’ home world. David looks like the Covenant's android Walter. David and Walter are played by the reprising Michael Fassbender who seems to be condemned to star in the least worthy installments of some amazing franchises, like X-Men and now Aliens. (Although he was also in X-Men: Days of Future Past which WAS a good movie.) 

I want to make a side note and mention that Fassbender does a good acting job here. He convincingly portrays David and Walter as two distinct characters with opposing motivations and personalities. Not a mean trick given both are androids with supposedly muted emotions. But Fassbender does a good job of making one clearly different from the other – one an easily recognizable good guy and the other a slick manipulative camoflaged bad guy

The homeworld of the alien creators is now a barren wasteland with no fauna of any kind but flora which includes a questionable, fungal looking and black pod.  But our intrepid heroes continue to speculate about where they should put their summer homes on this bizarre choice to call home.

This is where things get REALLY dumb. Let me list just a few questions I have:

1. The crew, without testing for parasites, bacteria or anticipating the unexpected, opens the hatch without hazmat, protective gear or even a helmet. Haven’t they ever even HEARD of War of the Worlds? In this case we are the Martians as it turns out.

2. When on an uncharted mysterious planet, where there are no animals or even insects, is it wise to stick your face near a cluster of black bulbs which could either be fungus or poop?

3. When a crewman is inexplicably smitten with a sudden and debilitating illness, starts throwing up black blood and seizing, is it the most sensible course of action to bring them RIGHT into the transport ship?

4. When a crewman is locked in a room with an obviously dangerous creature that just blew its way out of another crew member, should you: let the other crewman out? Or run away to find a weapon with which you are unfamiliar while the creature EATS your fellow crewman? And contagion isn’t an issue because the rupturing crewman just sprayed blood all over you and you end up barging into the med chamber with your weapon anyway.

5. When shooting at an alien creature should you fire wildly in the direction of the rest of the ordnance?

6. What is THAT much ordnance doing on a transport ship which was originally onboard a colony ship? And why would you bring it ALL with you on an away mission? And why, when going to all the trouble to BRING this much firepower, would you then leave it behind in the transport ship instead of taking it with you to do the walkabout?

And that’s just one scene.

Not even the prologues they have released, one about the crossing made by David and Elizabeth from the Prometheus movie and the other about the last meal the crew has together before the ill fated entry into the hypersleep pods, really brings any light or aid to mending this swiss cheese script.

I skipped over the part about the captain burning to death. (And, BTW, how they got James Franco to play this barely-seen captain is more of a mystery than why they released this movie with all these plot holes in the first place.) During this particularly gruesome and pointless death scene the poor wretch is trying to get out from the inside and his crewmen are trying to get him out from the outside. Neither is successful and he burns to death in the pod. My simple question is: WHY wasn’t there an emergency release hatch? Inside? Outside? No? So we just lock them in like they were the Hope diamond and content ourselves with the belief there will never be an emergency during which they might need to escape? Such as the hypersleep pod catching FIRE!? OK Just thought I’d ask.

This is all not to say that Covenant isn’t a scary piece of work. It is. But the problem is two fold.

First, the plot has so many ridiculous holes that you should be able to read the script right through it even in the bad lighting and foggy mood mist in which they filmed the entire planet-side portion of the movie.

Secondly, and I’ve complained abut this before in movies…there is no humor. This is a flaw it shares with the original Alien, also directed by Ridley Scott.  The original Alien was so tense that after a while your adrenal glands just shut down. There was no let up from one incredibly tense moment to the next. And Ridley Scott makes the same mistake here. One of the things that makes Aliens (plural) a far better film is that the suspense is relieved with legitimate bits of lightness. It doesn’t take much in a horror film. In Aliens, directed by James (Titanic) Cameron, after their rescue ship crashes, one of the soldier wails “What’ll we do now?” Paul Reiser (an actual comedian in real life) quips, “I don’t know, let’s make a campfire and sing songs.” You chuckle in surprise, the tension is released and you are now prepared to get the pants scared off you again in about another 5 minutes.

Without this emotional hill and valley your audience will just continue to rocket ship up and up the tension ladder until eventually, without oxygen it will burn out. By the end of the movie the scares just aren’t that scary any more. I’m sorry, but Cameron should have directed this venture. Scott makes the same mistakes in Covenant as he did in the original Alien, has not really brought us anything new and so Covenant just feels like a rehash of the same stuff. Only we, as an audience have had 38 years to ready ourselves for the adventure. It is still a thrill ride, but I really wish they had given more thought to the premise and plot.

The McGuffins are plentiful and too too obvious. And characters do things that are unbelievably stupid. In one case a young woman crewman goes off, on this extremely hostile and unknown planet, where she has just seen one of her fellow crewman ERUPT with a creature which turns around and rips into another crewman, to BATHE?! By herself!? Of course, one of the aliens gets her. Duh!

Going to investigate the first office/captain goes with their host, David, an increasingly untrustworthy android who looks like their good android, Walter, but who they have no reason to trust and a lot of reasons to question. David tries to protect the alien who ate the crewman from the captain. The captain kills the alien anyway. David objects. Now you’d think this would put the captain on guard as to where David’s allegiances lie, right? But no. The captain continues on BY HIMSELF with David, doesn’t even radio in as to where he’s going or with whom, down into a dungeon-like area where there are alien pods and is easily convinced to LOOK INSIDE ONE!!! In all the Alien movies, this is the first time I have ever thought – “OK, buddy you are about to get what you deserve.” What he did was so dumb I figured David was doing the rest of the crew a favor by getting rid of this bozo.

The kids in Nightmare on Elm Street make fewer boneheaded choices than this colony ship crew who are supposed to be trained to know better. I could go on with other inadvisable decisions made by various members of the good ship Covenant crew but I think you get the picture.

For some never adequately explained  reason, but shown in flashback, David, upon arriving at the alien creator homeworld on which they now stand, unleashes cannisters of black goo from the hijacked ship to convert all animal life, including the alien creators, into variations of aliens. Further this conversion takes place with the instantaneous and explosive eruption of baking soda mixing with vinegar or sodium with water. This explosive and instantaneous conversion reaction is never seen again.

Covenant is about as scary as a haunted house but makes about as much logical sense as Gracie Allen. People do monumentally irrational things to further the plot and I suspect both Cinema Sins and How it Should Have Ended will have a field day with this one. The intent was to tie in the end of Prometheus with another step towards the beginning of the origin story, Alien. It does that adequately, I guess, but there was just no NEED for the plot to be this poor.

Perhaps, as Alfred Hitchcock once so memorably said of the Academy’s delay in giving him an Oscar, it was “a matter of carelessness.” Meanwhile, please give James Cameron back the directorial reins.<—-FROM ALIENS, A FAR FAR BETTER MOVIE

WARNINGS: Aside from the obvious, extreme and ubioquitous violence, there are also nude scenes – though with married couples, and a LOT of gratuitously used "F" bombs.

I met with Clay Hebert, director of Spamalot, a hilarious play being produced for the first time in Lake Charles to run for two weekends from May 5 – 14 at ACTS theater. It is also the closer of ACTS 50th anniversary season.

<==================PLEASE ORDER TICKETS HERE!! DON'T MAKE US SEND THE KNIGHTS WHO SAY "NI" AFTER YOU!!!

For those of you over 35 or who are British comedy afficianados, most are lucky enough to be familiar with Monty Python – a troupe of British comedians spawning the likes of Terry Jones, Terry Gilliam, the late Graham Chapman,  Eric Idle, Michael Palin, and John Cleese.

These men have been instrumental in (some might say to blame for) everything from A Fish Called Wanda, Fawlty Towers, Time Bandits, and The Secret Policemen's (Other) Ball to Great Railway Journeys of the World and Sahara with Michael Palin, as well as John Cleese's ecclectic turns as: one of the incarnations of Q, the eccentric James Bond inventor, a serious turn in Branagh’s  Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein as the ill fated Professor Waldman, and Nearly Headless Nick from the Harry Potter franchise  – quite literally the sublime to the ridiculous (and I will leave you to figure out which is which), AND (drum roll) Monty Python and the Holy Grail – of which Spamalot is the musical manifestation.

For anyone under 35 or who is NOT familiar with British comedy you are in for an extraordinary surprise treat. I asked Clay how he would describe this play and he suggested: “SNL Meets King Arthur”, and as a "happy go-lucky feel good laugh fest". “The cast are having so much fun it is contagious” – much the feeling one would get when watching the original British crew doing anything Python-esque.

Clay said this is his first time directing, aside from a few 15 minute student productions. The cast is a substantial 20 (10 guys and 10 women). The original script called for some actors to carry 7 characters. But Clay thought it made more sense to break those up. He also chose, as was his directorial prerogative, to re-cast some of the male characters as female. He is not, he explicitly explains, gender switching, but is making it obvious that the characters, who were written as male, have been re-cast as female. The Knight of Ni and Black Knight, for example are both being played, as female characters, by Kathy Heath. Patsy is Kelly Roland. So any of you purists out there just be warned to not complain or you will be chopped down with a HERRING! Or subjected to a killer rabbit. These threats will, of course, make sense once you’ve seen the play.

In addition the Voice of God and Tim the Enchanter are played by Payton Smith, Bob Goodson plays Sir Robin (who runs away a lot – Robin, not Goodson), Corey Tarver is Galahad, King Arthur is Mark Herbert, Lancelot is Aaron Webster and Taylor Novak-Tyler plays Bedevere. In an extraordinary bit of bravery on the part of Clay he is also directing Markie, his wife and mother of his three children. Markie plays The Lady of the Lake. I asked him what it was like to direct his spouse and he quipped: “She understands I am the boss in the theater…..and she is the boss everywhere else.”

A cautionary note is warranted – Clay would consider this a PG-13 outing. With small children of his own he recognizes the need for discretion, although there is no explicit or blatantly “adult” material. A lifetime Python fan myself I would explain that it deserves the warnings one might reserve for a harmlessly intended mischievous romp written by brilliant comedians with the minds of just pubescent teenaged boys and a taste for puerile scatalogical humor. In short – hysterically funny.

I admit I was not a big fan of The Fast and Furious movie franchise. But just for a lark my husband and I went as a date to this latest installment and I was pleasantly surprised … then later startled.

LOTS of SPOILERS – I MEAN, REALLY, IF YOU HAVEN’T SEEN IT AND DON’T WANT TO RUIN ANY SURPRISES THEN WAIT TO READ THIS BLOG UNTIL AFTER YOU’VE SEEN THE MOVIE:

This outing – number EIGHT! – is best described as Bond meets Smokey and the Bandit. We have Cipher, a megalomaniac played by Charlize Theron, who, one cat short of a super villain, wants to get a hold of some nukes and their codes so she can keep the rest of the world under her manicured thumb. We have wise cracking questionable good guys, preposterous set ups for car chases involving dozens, if not hundreds of vehicles, a submarine, a Lamborghini, a tank, explosions, cars under the auto control of Cipher who guides them into a lethal high speed battering ram elegantly assembled like a troupe of ballerinas, a spy plane, black Ops, and Dwayne Johnson ripping out a concrete bench just to do curls. Part of the genuine charm of these movies is that they wisely do not take themselves too seriously.

In what is SUPPOSED to be the plot, Theron, as Cipher, extorts co-operation from Dom (Vin Diesel) by kidnaping his ex-girlfriend, Elena, who has, unbeknowst to Dom, borne him a son. Theron threatens mother and child so Dom, during a mission for American Black Ops spy, played gleefully by Kurt Russell,

turns on his crew to steal an EMP. Dwayne Johnson and Jason Statham make up the other leaders of the good guys who are frantically trying to catch up with and figure out why Dom has turned on them. Luke Evans makes a fun cameo which, if you blink you might miss – so don’t blink. And how can you NOT like a movie which includes DAME Helen Mirren as Statham’s MOTHER and some snarky dialogue between them.

Mirren's parts of the movie are worth the price of admission alone. This is the only F&F movie she had appeared in and she makes the most of enjoying the heck out of it. (Apparently she is a fan of the franchise and stated that she would be willing to be in a sequel, so they took her up on it!)

And oh yeah – Statham gets to kick some SERIOUS booty while protecting a BABY AND the crew get chased by a SUBMARINE!!!

Turn your brain off and it is a LOT of fun.

(As a side note, Mirren’s role here reminds me of another, albeit much darker, similar one she played with Bob Hoskins way back in the previous millenium, in 1980's The Long Good Friday – as Hoskins’ gangster moll/wife in a British Godfather-ish movie which, despite the extreme violence and language is a brilliant movie.)

Now to the startling epiphany. Summed up in a line by Cipher, I realized – intentionally or not – the F&F group had made a much deeper, more philosophical point than first meets the eye

In one scene Dom meets with Elena and sees his son for the first time. Dom is separated from them by a thick glass wall. Elena tells Dom to save their son at all costs – and later does give her life for her baby. After Cipher has butchered Elena in cold blood she tells Dom that his pain of loss for Elena and fear for his child are not real and he should ignore them as she has. That it is merely a genetic hold-over which evolved as a necessary response in order to protect the continuation of the human species – a survival instinct so that one would keep track of one’s progeny when by a watering hole so that the crocodiles would not eat them. She then blankly states the line that startled me: “I am the crocodile at the watering hole.” I realized that this moment was the crux of the REAL plot of the movie.

There was no furthering of the titular story with this scene and it could easily have been cut. But it is the pivotal expository moment of the true theme.

The crocodile was worshiped by the Egyptians at the time when they were putting the Israelite children to the sword and throwing them into the Nile to be eaten by crocodiles. Cipher, who calls herself a crocodile,  wants to nuke a few cities to make the Superpowers “accountable”. She has no belief in family, is willing to casually commit the mass murder of millions, and has no problem with slaughtering an infant with her own hands. Can anyone say: Population control, planned parenthood and…evolution.

Strict atheist evolutionists, even ones who claim to be benign, have no place to stand on moral ground. If there is no God and there is no real bond between humans except as that “artificially” manufactured by our gene pool in order to perpetuate its own survival, then the murder of an infant, or of anyone, can rationally be justified. Cipher murders a bound helpless mother, threatens an infant and casually constructs situations in which hundreds of bystanders are put in harm's way, all to gain the ability to incinerate millions based upon her own rules – she wants to make herself a god with the power of life and death over everyone else, unaccountable, herself, to no one.

On the other hand you have Dom who quite simply will do anything to protect this innocent infant, his son. Elena also willingly places her son’s life ahead of everything, including her own life. And at one crucial point Dom leaves an object hanging from their prison wall which will prove to be the Cipher/Devil’s downfall – Dom’s cross.

Now it turns out to have a transponder in it which allows the good guys to find the plane. But that’s just part of the plot McGuffin. He could have used anything for this but the chosen image was the symbol of Christianity. Other Christian acts are central to the defeat of the antagonist: During the course of the resolution, a rehabilitated bad guy is “resurrected”, like the Widow's Son,  from the dead by the good guys, and reunited with both his mother and brother to sneak aboard the plane and rescue the baby. He places his life and the differences he has with Dom aside to literally put himself between the innocent child and death.

That entire scene is really adorable BTW – Statham places headphones with children’s music playing on the baby’s ears, then proceeds to parkour his way, in classic action adventure style, around a plane full of bad guys, taking out henchmen, deflecting bullets from Dom’s infant son with his own Kevlar protected body, periodically checking to be sure the baby is content and his diaper is clean. And up to now I thought Wolverine was the best babysitter ever!!

And at the end of the movie, Dom, finally united with his son, holds him up and says, “So all this was about you.” And he’s right, because it is.

So, whether they meant to or not, you have clearly established Christian symbols on one side: the Cross, reformed bad guys, multiple family ties, and self-sacrifice for the sake of an innocent child. On the other you have pure evil: someone who cold bloodedly cares not for life at all – who cherishes only death, even her own as she faces down a gun barrel. She looks for reasons and excuses to rationalize and find opportunities to rain down death on others: nukes, car crashes, dropping cars onto bystanders from car garages, heat seeking missiles, execution-style murders, all the while using infant-murdering Darwinian evolution rationalizations as an excuse to avoid her own culpability or even feel guilt.

The good guys’ philosophy is one of family and children and Christianity. The bad guys are on the side of secular atheist life-dismissive evolution. And here you have the core and soul of the movie. Cipher represents the Devil, the temptress trying to lure Dom into evil, and merciless ruthless evolution. Dom stands against her, representing family, protection of the innocent, and Christianity, with the Cross as his LIFE preserver.

Regardless of what you believe, and I happen to believe that evolution would have only been possible with the Hand of God, this is how the plot pans out. And kudos to Chris Morgan and Gary Scott Thompson for penning this stylish and clever spoonful of sugar mad dash action adventure to explore a profound philosophical dispute, painfully relevant to the demographic audience they are targeting, behind the guise of the wildest Fast and Furious ride ever.

There is a bit of enthusiastic hanky panky but with a married couple and there is some (I thought) gratuitous bad language. The violence is mostly cartoonish but way too much for anyone under, say, 13. As per my usual caution – if you have any doubts, you parents go see it FIRST, before allowing your kids to see it.