BOATLOADS OF SPOILERS BELOW
I'd never seen FALLEN. You'd think Nick Kazan script + Denzel Washington + great supporting cast (Elias Koteas, Donald Sutherland, John Goodman, Aida Turturro, James Gandolfini) + great premise (detective watches a serial killer he caught get put to death; serial killer is really a demon who can jump bodies; demon comes back and frames/torments detective) would equal a great movie. But it doesn't.
First, the film is horribly slow and boring. This thing drags. Directory Gregory Hoblit chooses to use a washed-out, shaky POV shot to represent Azazel, the demon. And he does it literally every time something happens with the demon. So you see this nauseating shot hundreds of times. The plot, as such, is underbaked. You'd think an immortal demon would really have it out for the man who's getting in his way and have a great way to annoy him or kill him. You'd also think the demon would have some sort of big plans after thousands of years. Nope. Apparently all he wants to do is sort of mildly annoy Denzel. Which he does by framing him for some murders. Which could've been good, if that was the first act break. Then you'd have an entire movie of Denzel trying to figure out what's going on (his enemy's really a demon!) all the while avoiding the cops and trying to clear his name. But that action doesn't come until the end of the film, which is too late. Also, Azazel literally has no plan or anything. He's not trying to spark the end of the world (although he does write "Apocalypse" in chunks on various bodies), he's not trying to rule the world, he's not trying to let Satan out of hell. Just annoy Denzel.
The rules are also unclear. Azazel can jump into any body he wants. Except Denzel at the beginning. But by the end of the movie he can get into Denzel for some reason. That'd be fine if Denzel was somehow corrupted and it was all part of Azazel's plan. But it's not setup that way, so it just feels random.
There's no arc for Denzel's character. The obvious one would be a man who lost his faith, and in encountering the supernatural, he gets it back. That would easily mesh with the "action" as it were.
Denzel's got a retarded brother for some reason, I guess so he seems like a good guy for taking care of him. And so Azazel can eventually kill him. Azazel doesn't even seem that evil. He kills a couple people and then Denzel's brother. The film could've upped the body count and made him more threatening.
Finally, there are some really silly beats. For example, Embeth Davidtz is being chased by Azazel in various forms through a crowded street. Instead of Azazel getting in a fast, strong body and running her down, he jumps from body to body. So you've got a "chase" scene where a girl's running and various strangers are touching each other down a line, with the demon body-swapping in serial. All accompanied by a cheesy "whoosh" sound. This isn't cool or threatening, it's just stupid. The demon inside a big, strong guy is possibly threatening; the demon inside an old lady, not so much.
On to SPEED...
I hadn't seen SPEED since the theater and didn't remember it being that great. It's got a fantastic premise and was competently directed. But that was all I could remember.
Well, I was wrong. SPEED is a very good action movie. The premise is just as great as ever, the bad guy's clever, and the obstacles and escalations are great. Keanu gets dropped in a shitstorm at the beginning and things just keep getting worse for him throughout.
There are perhaps two weaknesses in SPEED. Keanu's character (Jack Traven) has no arc to speak of. He's not a reckless guy who learns how to reign it in to keep others safe; he's not a do-er who figures out you should look before you leap.
And after the bus blows up, the movie keeps going for a half hour and gets a bit silly. Dennis Hopper's character is so smart and methodical with his planning of the elevator job and the bus caper that what happens after his plans are foiled seems a bit reckless. He thought far enough ahead to get money away from hundreds of cops and escape onto the subway with a hostage wired with a bomb, but because Traven's chasing him, he loses his shit and kills the subway driver? That doesn't make a lot of sense.
However, with the action, you don't really miss the arc. And there's almost a solid hour of bus stuff just getting worse and worse, so you tend to forgive the movie for the third act. (And Keanu's awful retort to Dennis Hopper after he knocks his head off with a subway light -- "I'm taller.")
DIE HARD 3 marked John McTiernan's return to the franchise. And a great idea in having Hans Gruber's brother come back for revenge on John McClane. And a cool premise with Jeremy Irons running McClane all over town on a scavenger hunt (under threat of blowing shit up) as a distraction to robbing the Federal Reserve.
There's plenty of great action. And screenwriter Jonathan Hensleigh does a good job with the action beats, with plenty of smart twists and turns, like the heroes getting out of handcuffs using a metal scrap embedded in McClane's arm from an earlier slide down a fraying cable.
Where the film slips is that McClane has little to no arc -- just warming up to calling his wife whom he hasn't talked to in over a year. So Hensleigh tries to give one to Sam Jackson's Zeus, a racist who hates white folks. Except that Jackson doesn't really start to like white people. He just warms up to McClane a bit. If that situation was played out in reverse, with a racist white guy, people would find it patronizing.
Another problem is that Irons' plot falls apart when you look at it. The first task he gives McClane is to walk around Harlem with a sandwich board stating "I hate N-words" (it actually says the N-word, I'm just being polite). And McClane is nearly killed by a street gang; Zeus jumps in to save him. If Zeus didn't, McClane would die. Now, Irons wants McClane dead. But he needs him alive long enough to keep running goofy errands on the scavenger hunt and keep the police tied up so he can rob the reserve. He plans on killing McClane via sniper at Yankee Stadium at the end of the day. Irons clearly didn't plan on Zeus being there or helping out, so that's clearly a big plot hole.
Another silly bit is that the way McClane catches Irons is... Irons has McClane and Zeus tied up to a bomb on a ship. McClane asks for some aspirin -- Irons suffers from migraines -- and Irons tosses him a bottle. After our heroes get off the ship just ahead of the bomb, McClane looks at the aspirin bottle and it's stamped Nord de Lignes, a big truck stop north of the border in Canada.
Here's the several problems with this.
1) Generally, if someone suffers from migraines, they have prescription migraine medicine like topamax or imitrex. Aspirin and the like don't really help with migraines.
2) I've never known truck stops or any other store for that matter to stamp aspirin bottles with their name/location
3) McClane somehow gets to fly to Canada with his gun and shoot at the bad guys; the US has no jursidiction north of the border. And McClane is a New York City cop, so he has no jurisdiction outside of the city
4) This whole beat is convenient. If McClane didn't ask for aspirin and Irons toss him some and the bottle was stamped, etc., McClane never would have found him. If McClane had somehow tricked this information out of him, that would've been fine. That shows our hero being smart, rather than our hero relying on a happy coincidence to solve his problems.
5) How the hell did the good guys find the bad guys? Presumably this is a major area filled with shipping containers, trucks, etc. The bad guys could just hide out there.
And then you've got McClane shooting an electrical wire with two bullets and dropping it on a helicopter and then saying "Yippee-ki-yay, motherfucker." Sigh.
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