The Last Shot

FBI agent Joe Devine (Alec Baldwin) hits on the idea of posing as a movie producer to mount a sting operation against a mafia racket. Under false pretenses, he recruits Hollywood hopeful writer Steven Schats (Matthew Broderick), and then gets so wrapped up in the process of actually making the film, that he almost fogets about catching the bad guys. It’s a great cast (Tony Shalhoub, Tim Blake Nelson, Toni Collette, Ray Liotta, and more) but they’re all wasted on a poor screenplay. It doesn’t really work as a comedy, because it’s not very funny. And as a touching film about hope and ambitious movie-loving spirit, it doesn’t have enough heart.

Peter F. Hamilton – Pandora’s Star

In a Peter F. Hamilton novel of this size, nothing is going to happen for the first two hundred pages, so I was happy enough to write them off as expected.

By page 500 I was thinking that there were way too many characters and parallel stories going on, and that the book could have used some serious editing. The plot lines were interesting, but every time one would threaten to really come alive, Hamilton would switch to someplace dull instead, and spend time warming up another thread.

By page 700, I was having serious doubts about him being able to wrap everything up neatly by the end of the book, and I had a quick glimpse at the last page. To my horror, the last sentences, printed in bold, were “The End of Pandora’s Star. The Commonwealth Saga will be concluded in Judas Unchained“.

Well bugger me sideways with a rusty pitchfork, it’s a two-parter. A quick check on Amazon showed that the second part isn’t due out until October. Does the cover blurb give any indication that this is only the first volume of a set? Does it heck.

I got pissed off by 900-page doorstops in 2003, and I still haven’t recovered. I only started Pandora’s Star because I generally like Hamilton’s stuff, and I was looking forward to immersing myself in this one for a while. Had I known that even after spending three weeks on it, I still wouldn’t know how it ends for another six months, I wouldn’t even have started it.

John Scalzi – Old Man’s War

Old Man’s War is a refreshingly old-skool space opera, with echoes of Heinlein’s Starship Troopers and Haldeman’s The Forever War. In a hostile universe, humans are forced to fight for every inch of territory. Their soldiers: geriatrics who are promised a new life in the military. It follows a fairly standard recruitment-training-fighting-reflection story arc, but that doesn’t detract from the sheer energy and fun bursting off the pages. It may not have the same emotional depth as The Forever War, but it plays with some cool ideas, raises some interesting questions, and has restored my faith in science fiction as a genre to read for entertaininment.

Richard Morgan – Market Forces

Market Forces is very different from Richard Morgan’s first two books. It’s set in the relatively near future (50 years or so), where vast corporations dominate the economic and social landscape, and executives duel each other for promotions in souped-up cars, on deserted and neglected motorways (cars and fuel being far too expensive for the vast majority of the population). Like Altered Carbon and Broken Angels, it’s a very aggressive, testosterone-heavy story, but with the more familiar setting Morgan is free to riff on some more political themes. It’s also much bleaker and cynical book than you would think. Given the number of shots at personal redemption Chris Faulkner, the main character, is given, you’d think he’d take at least one of them. But the book is much stronger for not choosing the happy ending and the easy way out. It makes a poweful emotional impact.

Sue Grafton – R is for Ricochet

Much of the latest Kinsey Millhone mystery is summed up by the very last paragraph of the book: “So here’s what I’ve learned. In the passing drama of life, I’m usually the heroine, but occasionally I’m simply a minor character in someone else’s play.”

Kinsey hooks up with Cheney Phillips, and gets to have some fun in the romantic arena. Henry’s love life is up in the air. And there’s a big money laundering fraud going on, but that’s mostly taken care of by Reba Laffery, a kind of agressive, risk-happy anti-Kinsey. Kinsey is supposed to be shepherding Reba after her release from prison, but she finds herself caught up in Reba’s tangle of loves and lies.

Reba, however, is quite capable of taking care of herself, and she does just so, leaving Kinsey to get on with her own personal issues. It’s a lightweight, as Graftons go, but it’s plenty of fun. And it’s nice to see Kinsey getting a slice of happiness for a change.

Robots

Young robot follows his dream of being an inventor to the big city, only to find that his hero Bigweld has fallen prey to corporate interests. With a ragtag group of friends, he then has to find a way to restore balance to the Force. (Oh hang on, wrong film. Anyway…)

For an animated feature with so much visual interest and promising storylines waiting to be told, it wastes its potential with movie in-jokes, robot puns, and a weak plot. Robin Williams replays the Genie from Aladdin, only with less screen time devoted to his character, which makes the tomfoolery seem forced and clinical. The rest of the robot cast are bland and undistinguished–even Rodney, the hero. It’s emotionally flat, and disappointingly by-the-numbers.

The Forgotten

This is much worse than just a bad film: it is actively evil. It starts out with a highly emotive and disturbing premise: Telly Paretta (Julianne Moore) is told that her son, whom she believed died in a bus accident, never actually existed. It gets you to empathize with this character, and gets you intrigued by the potential for a conspiracy and cover-up story. Unfortunately, it all turns out to be a simplistic Twilight Zone re-hash. I don’t know exactly how often the “it’s all an alien experiment” plot card has been played in bad science fiction books and films, but I reckon that “WAY TOO” is close enough.

But that’s not the worst of it. The worst part is the ugly and jarring happy ending that betrays all the compassion you have invested in the main character (which might be substantial–the hooks at the start of the film are effective, and they go right for the heart).

After her confrontation with the alien, Telly is broken. She has uncovered the secret, and the secret is that the aliens are uncaring creatures who consider us nothing more than bugs for their little experiments. They are even ruthless enough to kill one of their own scientists when he fails to provide results quickly enough. She has lost her son, her husband, her former life, and by catching a glimpse of the puppet master behind the curtain she has learned how insignificant the whole human race is. Major bummer. You know what we really need now? A happy ending! How about, the aliens wipe the slate clean with an omnipotent “let’s make it like it never happened” sponge, and everything will be just peachy! Telly gets her son back, other characters who died are restored to life, and everyone smiles.

Er, no. That’s just fucking stupid. The film is about loss, despair, and coming to terms with failure in the face of overwhelming odds. Closing with a three-minute family reunion sequence is more than just lazy filmmaking–it’s offensive.

Films don’t usually leave me feeling angry. This one did.