Smooth Criminals

By Punitha Yogaratnam

Takers

Rating(out of 5): * * * ½
(Sony Pictures)

Starring: Matt Dillon, Paul Walker, Idris Elba, Jay Hernandez, Chris Brown, Hayden Christensen, Tip :T.I.: Harris

 
Looking for an adrenaline rush? Look no further than the heist flick, Takers.

 
Picture this: Four guys walk into a high-rise building. After a quick change, they calmly walk into a bank and with ease they make a 'withdrawal'. An alarm rings and the building is surrounded by cops.
 

On the rooftop, a news crew lands their helicopter and is immediately confronted by another armed robber posing as a security guard. The robbers highjack the copter and take off. They land in a deserted parking lot a few miles away, blow up the copter and leave in their respective rides. It's like clockwork.
 

Cool Cats: Guys! We look so cool walking away in slo-mo while the copter blows up!

All this happens in the first few minutes of the movie so you know you're in for a thrill ride filled with explosions, shooting and fist-fights.
 

Takers is a combination of Ocean's 11 and The Italian Job. A group of cool, suave, handsome, well-dressed guys who almost make you liken them to the Rat Pack of the 60s. You can't help but like characters like A.J., the street-wise, tattooed guy with the signature Fedora.
 
The cutie in the group, A.J. is also not afraid to throw a few punches. He thinks he's a cool cat and I can't agree more. Leading the rest -- Jesse and his brother James Attica and Gordon Jennings – is John Rahway.

The story begins when former member Ghost comes to the pack with a proposal – rob an armored car filled with millions in broad daylight in the middle of town. The clincher? The guys have five days to plan, rehearse and execute the plan.
 

Back In The '60s: I'm missing Sammy, Martin and Frank

Hot on their trail are detectives Jack Welles and Eddie Hatcher, both with their own personal troubles, one emotional and the other financial.
 

Thrown in a few Russian Mafiosos and you have one hell of a action movie that's going to keep you on the edge of your seat.

Source: http://ecentral.my/movies/reviews/review.asp?

The Cove

 

TAIJI, JAPAN- A tense new film shows Japanese fishermen luring thousands of wild dolphins into a hidden secret cove in Japan where activists say they are captured for marine amusement parks or slaughtered for food. 

“The Cove” follows a team of activists including former dolphin trainer from the “Flipper” television series Ric O’Barry.

They battle Japanese police and fisherman to gain access to a cove in Taiji, Japan, where barbed wire blocks people from filming dolphin killings that begin in September each year.

The documentary opens in the United States on Friday but has yet to receive distribution in Japan, where O’Barry says 23,000 dolphins and porpoises are legally killed each year. 

The Japanese government said it has done nothing wrong and cites cultural differences in response to the film.

Dolphin meat is eaten by a very small percentage of Japanese people.

The film has already been praised by critics and won the audience award at this year’s Sundance Film Festival. “Eco-activist documentaries don’t get much more compelling than ‘The Cove’,” said Variety’s review.

O’Barry, who has been visiting Taiji several times a year for the past eight years and now wears disguises in the town to avoid the attention of fisherman and the police, predicted the film would have a big impact. 

“When the film is seen in Japan, it will shut ‘the cove’ down permanently,” he said in a recent interview. 

The 69-year-old says he began fighting against the captivity of dolphins when one of the animals he trained for the hit 1960s TV show “Flipper” voluntarily stopped breathing until it died. 

A spokeswoman for the Japanese embassy in Washington, Izumi Yamanaka, said in an e-mail the area surrounding Taiji had traditional dietary habits of eating dolphin meat and that Japan adhered to IWC rules.

“The Japanese government believes that it is most important to recognize national and cultural differences,” she said.

She added Japan complied with laws that advise pregnant women against eating seafood, including dolphin meat, with high levels of mercury, and would investigate assertions in the film that dolphin meat is sold in Japan disguised as whale meat.

Dolphin hunts are largely driven by a multibillion dollar marine amusement park industry located in the United States and around the world, who pay up to $150,000 per dolphin, according to O’Barry.

“People who see this movie are going to think twice before they buy a ticket to a dolphin show,” he said.

Ultimately the film is part of a larger story of the destruction of the oceans and planet, the filmmakers said.

“‘The Cove’ is a microcosm for the poisoning of the oceans,” said Psihoyos. “A hundred years from now they are going to say this is the generation that could have turned things around.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4KRD8e20fBo

“Ric is a hero,” said the film’s director, Louie Psihoyos, who has photographed for National Geographic magazine. “He had success, he had fame, he had money and he turned his back on all of that to follow his conscience.” 

“The film is about leading an ‘Ocean’s Eleven’ kind of team into this secret cove to try to reveal its dark secrets,” said Psihoyos, referring to the popular Hollywood film about a top notch team who break into impossible places. “It was extremely scary.

But “The Cove” largely examines environmental issues, including Japan’s efforts to persuade the International Whaling Commission (IWC) to lift a ban on commercial whaling introduced in 1986. The ban does not apply to smaller cetaceans including dolphins.-BBC