BRAWN TO BE WILD
(Gary Oldman, inset below). Instead, she is hiding in a safe house with Darius in the aftermath of an assault on the transportation cavalcade, initiated by Dukhovich’s gun-toting henchmen. The breach in security convinces Amelia that there must be a mole in a team led by Renata Casoria (Tine Joustra) and Jean Foucher (Joaquim de Almeida). She needs someone “out of the loop” to shadow Darius to the International Court of Justice, and Michael reluctantly agrees. En route, the two men bicker and Darius teaches Michael how to win back Amelia by reminiscing about his courtship of jailbird wife Sonia (Hayek).
The Hitman’s Bodyguard ricochets between European locations as the high stakes game of catch-me-if-you-can results in wanton carnage. A high speed chase around the canals of Amsterdam is orchestrated at a breathless pace, while Oldman’s pantomime villain hungrily chews scenery.
The identity of the Interpol traitor will come as no surprise, but brawn easily smothers brains in O’Connor’s loopy, crowd-pleasing script. Laurie (Katheryn Winnick) and unsympathetic stepfather Lon (Nicholas Pauling) send him for counselling where Jake describes nightly visions about an alien world where a lone gunslinger readies his pistol against a menacing man in black. The shrink dismisses Jake’s nightmares as manifestations of his grief.
Jake stumbles through a portal to a post-apocalyptic realm called Mid-World where a mysterious man named Roland Deschain (Idris Elba) hankers for revenge against evil sorcerer Walter Padick (Matthew McConaughey), who intends to destroy a tower at the centre of the universe.
Each assault on the monolith produces tremors in Mid-World and on Earth.
The Dark Tower fails to shift out of first gear. A solid performance from Taylor cannot distract from the painfully disjointed narrative and an absence of suspense. The apocalypse beckons and it can’t come quickly enough. MINUTES into this tub-thumping sequel to Oscar-winning 2006 documentary An Inconvenient Truth, it becomes apparent that there is one renewable energy source the world has yet to harness: former US Vice President Al Gore’s boundless determination to prick consciences about the effects of global warming.
He bangs a drum for action and words on climate change, spreading his message during a period of political upheaval including the election of Donald Trump, who who withdrew the US from the Paris climate accord. Breathtaking images of the statesman atop a rapidly melting glacier in Greenland are intercut with snappy soundbites that anoint Gore as the lone voice of reason capable of deviating us from self-destruction.