Category: Our Critics

Like Speed Racer before it, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World takes a less-than-mainstream animated property and blows it up into an eye-popping feature for the silver screen. And like Speed Racer before it (but less deservedly so), Scott Pilgrim vs. the World has received a drubbing at the box office.

Sylvester Stallone. Jasan Statham. Jet Li. Dolph Lundren. Each has earned his reputation as a one-man army. The Expendables, then, conceived by writer-director-star Stallone as the ultimate men-on-a-mission movie, is a film in which many armies do battle.

Like the part of Kyle Pratt, played by Jodie Foster in Flightplan, Angelina Jolie’s role as eponymous heroine Evelyn Salt was originally written for a man. But particularly when it comes to serious action, Jolie has proven herself singularly able to run with the boys in the Hollywood arena.

Imagine James Bond starring in a heist film (Ocean’s Eleven or Rififi will do) crossed with every false reality movie you’ve ever seen, from The Matrix and The Cell to eXistenZ and Dark City.