Stealth

Stealth
Sony Pictures (July 29, 2005)
Director: Rob Cohen
Cast: Josh Lucas, Jessica Biel, Jamie Foxx, Sam Shepard

View the trailer


Sometimes I think the movie trailer gods love me, seeing as how they've blessed me with the trailer to Stealth, which conveniently is also set for release on my birthday. I first saw the trailer to this soon-to-be masterpiece last night before Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Cash Cow, and the minute the, well, minute-long trailer was over, I knew I had to review it. It made me feel something deep down—something warm and tingly. Sure, the feeling was a little unnverving and maybe even a little frightening, but it was also exhilarating—like that feeling you get at the bottom of your stomach when you're going down the first hill of a rollercoaster.

Or maybe the feeling had something to do with the three borritos I ate before the showing.

Regardless, the epic tour-de-force known as the trailer to Stealth begins with an innovative shot of Lucas, Biel, and Foxx walking toward the camera, an obvious and unique homage to the 1983 classic, The Right Stuff. Now, this shot has been ripped off mimicked countless times in other movies, but in Stealth it serves a larger purpose. What sets this particular shot apart is the fact that it also sets up two key themes of the trailer: (1) Jessica Biel is hot, as evidenced by the (gratutious, but welcome) shot of her in a bikini on some tropical locale right out of an issue of Sports Illustrated Swimsuit; and (2) Ray notwithstanding, Jamie Foxx is only capable of playing the ebonics-speaking, flashy, hot-shot womanizer. The first quarter of the trailer exemplifies both of these themes in order to set up the eventual conflict that arises when Hal 9000 an advanced artificial intelligence that's built into a jet is added to the squadron.

"It has their skills. It has their speed," the trailer warns us as it shows the three pilots worriedly discussing their dwindling prospects of continuing their careers as pilots. (This is one of the points where the trailer's logic seems incomprehensibly built by "The director of 'The fast and the Furious' and 'xXx.'" To wit, the jet's AI probably cost billions of dollars to develop, and presumably the jet had to be specially made to accommodate it, thus raising the total cost of the endevor even more. Compare this to the pilots' $20/hour salaries and the negligable improvement in performance from the humans to the computer, and you've got a great example of Defense Department waste. ...Now that I think about it, maybe the logic isn't so incomprehensible.) Regardless, the trailer goes into its intermission without too much conflict.

However, things really come to a boil when the squardon decides to fly around randomly during an electrical storm. Validating Murphy's Law, the till-then inocuous AI is hit by a bolt of lightening and this, naturally, triggers something that allows the AI to "become aware of itself." The logical next step for any newly self-aware computer is, of course, to waste all of its fuel and ammunition by flying around and bombing civilian targets. Further, the military apparently decided on the ill-fated flyover mission to equip the AI jet with a wide array of state-of-the-art weaponry, including a bomb that can defy the laws of thermodynamics by igniting spent exhaust into a floating ring of fire.

So to sum it up, this trailer is great.

All that being said, there are a few things that aren't great with the trailer. The acting is a little wooden and the plot is a little slow to develop. However, aside from that the trailer is a rollercoaster ride that'll leave you on the edge of your seat begging to be put out of your misery for more.

Commando

Commando
FOX (October 4, 1985)
Director: Mark L. Lester
Cast: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Rae Dawn Chong, Dan Hedaya, Vernon Wells, James Olson

View the trailer


*Don't worry, this review is completely free of spoilers*

It's always difficult judging a movie by its trailer when you've already seen the full movie, but I thought there was just something classy about starting off with the mega roller coaster that is Commando. But good reviewers are able to rise above preconceived perceptions of movies and deliver an objective press release, so I feel I can do the same.

The trailer for Commando, like many other movies released before the early-90s, is characterized by the fact that it gives away practically the whole movie. (This one is nothing compared to The Graduate's trailer, but that's another review for another time.) It starts off by playing a sort of synthesized pseudo-Caribbean beat, foreshadowing the later conflict between man's nature and free will that will soon take place on some random island nation. From there, the narrator goes into setting up the plot of the movie: namely, Arnold is a badass, some other badasses kidnapped his daughter (who, the narrator reassures us, "is the only thing he will kill for"), and so he has to go kick some ass.

The first act ends with a montage of Arnold putting on his killing gear, accompanied with the tagline "Somewhere, somehow, someone's gonna pay." The trailer then goes into the intermission by showing the movie's logo, finally putting to rest any lingering fears that you might accidentally be watching the trailer to Some Like It Hot.

Fortunately for all of us, someone--more than one, actually--does pay. Commando is less about plot than it is about showing Arnold's massive build or showing said massive build killing things. However, Act 2 of the trailer is infinitely more light-hearted than the first; by this point, Arnold's acting chops are fully realized, and he goes from just being a mindless destroyer of worlds to a mindless stand-up comedian. Arnold's timing is pitch-perfect, and this bit of levity fleshes out the trailer and makes it feel more complete.

Artistically, the trailer also comes into its own in the second act when the pseudo-Caribbean drums are made louder, and the movie's sounds are muted. Unfortunately, the drumbeats don't often sync up completely with what's happing on screen, and this tends to pull the viewer out of the trailer-made reality and into this one. However, this is a minor complaint, especially because the music changes toward the climax to become more dramatic; this is, of course, used along with the visuals and the deep-voiced narrator to set the stage for what is quite possibly the most dramatic line in the trailer: Arnold's crazy-eyed, knife-wielding intonation, "Let's party." Sends shivers up your back.






Remember, dear reader, when I promised this review would be spoiler-free?

I lied.

Right off the bat

So I guess this is the obligatory first post, and the requisite explanation of what the hell I plan on doing here.

So we all know the saying that you shouldn't judge a book by its cover. But why the hell not? So that's exactly what I'll be doing here... just with movies.

Each week (read: whenever the hell I feel like it), I'll be writing up a short review of a movie, based solely on seeing its trailer. Maybe if I get ambitious, I'll move onto actually reviewing books by their covers too. But probably not.

Anyway, stop reading this post and go check out my first review, of the Academy Award-winning opus, Commando.