First on the agenda was a delightful little ditty called 'WAR'. If you've not heard of it, the movie comprises of Jet Li, Jason Statham and little else in terms of plot.
Now, I can understand the drawing power of this movie. For a 45 year old man who'd probably still have trouble getting into a nightclub without an ID, Jet Li kicks supreme ass.
YES! I can feel my ass getting kicked already, and this is just a jpeg.
But any other inclination to watch this movie is immediately murdered by one name: Jason Statham.
You know those days you sit there thinking..."Why the hell am I not famous?"
Well at the end of a long day's worth of shooting and grunting, I can guarantee you that Mr. Statham drives home to his penthouse suite in New York or whatever; He sits down on his leather couch in front of his 50 inch HD TV, and he thinks..."Why the hell am I famous?"
Let's for a moment take into account the formula that is required to 'make it' in the Hollywood industry these days. Sex sells, we know that, but there has been a surgence of good acting talent emerging recently.
So the two most important things you need to make it in Hollywood are sex appeal and talent, or a lot of either one of those two things. Failing that, you have to be either extremely clever, entrepeneural or as a last resort, absolutely loaded.
Jason Statham, by all accounts, appears to be none of these things. He can't even decide where he's from in this film. He spends half of the movie talking like he's been deported from Eastenders, and the other half slurring into West Coast American, so the whole portrait painted for us is that we have here a middle aged, balding, ugly cockney who seems to be having a stroke. That's 'War', in a nutshell. There wasn't even a war. It was a bitch fight between an Asian guy and an 'American', which led to the clever idea of showing subtitles in both Chinese and English. Whoo.
I won't spoil the ending for you. Hell, do you even care? I can't even remember it anyway. I almost forgot what movie I was talking about. It bemuses me how these Hollywood types continuously get work on the back bone of shoddy performances like this. Which brings me to today's topic:
My Top 3 Worst Performances On Screen
This list is by no means an all time definitive top 3 of bad acting, just the first few horrendously bad performances that came to mind. So here we go:
1) KEANU REEVES; Matrix Re-whatever.
I met Keanu Reeves once. We were in a bar in Soho. I bought him a few drinks and we ended up reminiscing about music, the film industry, his latest release, and the state of the economy.
Imagine my surprise at around 4am when I realised I'd been talking to a menu all night. I quickly realised my mistake, apologised to the menu for thinking it was someone else, and left.
Now I'm not saying that Keanu Reeves is...static, but he does seem to have a little problem making any kind of facial expression what so ever. Almost like he fell into a bucket of Botox when he was little. Don't get me wrong, I think he's great in a few other movies. I loved the first Matrix. There was just something about his repeat performances that actually made it look like he could do even less acting and get away with it. It's almost like he woke up one morning, realised he was both BLIND and DEAF, but was too ashamed to tell anyone about it, so he just carried on. Heck, there were even days he just didn't show up on set. If you skip through the dvd, you'll notice there are scenes where he's literally been replaced by a mannequin.
Freaky shit, no? Regardless, $281.5 million at the domestic box office says that not many people noticed he was missing, or cared for that matter.
2) Kiera Knightley; Any Pirates Of The Caribbean movie.
What is wrong with this girl's inability to make decent conversation at any point in her entire life? If I have to sit through Keira friggin' Knightley shouting at somebody over something completely unintegral to the plot just one more time, I'm going to find her house and schedule it for demolition. Is she like that in real life?
"Hey Keira, do you fancy going out tonight?"
"YEAH, SURE LOL. WHERE WE GOING?"
"You know what, forget it. I need to go and have my ears syringed!"
Note the following images:
I have it on good authority that these were all taken as she was presented with each of her birthday presents at her birthday awards ceremony last year; An awards ceremony created entirely by the tax payer's money in order that we might honour the shining star of excellence in the sea of blackened despair that is...Keira 'The Shit' Knightley.
3) It's saddening that the third worst performance that springs to mind is from the same series of movies as the second. I love the Pirates Of The Caribbean movies, but the combination of both Knightley AND Bloom in certain scenes sometimes makes me involuntarily soil myself.
Orlando Bloom should have had his name legally changed to Legolas, because quite frankly, he was born to play that role. Only that role. For some odd reason, playing that role on a continual basis seems to get him MAJOR work in Hollywood. They should have called the Pirates films "Pirates of the Caribbean and Legolas Also" because I literally can't see how the two characters he portrays in those films differ in any way.
He's ridiculously flamboyant whilst trying to pass it off as being masculine at the same time. This culminates in him often beating his chest at the most innapropriate moments to declare his authority over the situation, only for a second rate character to then say "Yeah alright mate, piss off, yeah?"
The most obvious example that comes to mind is when he's sat in Davy Jones' ship hull, and they're all sat around playing 'Liar's Dice', which as you might know, is the dice game currently all the rage in the Pirating world. Bloom ingeniously figures out that if he beats Jones in a game, he could essentially win his freedom.
At this point he could do one of two things:
1) Offer Jones a game of dice, in a friendly, curtious manner, befitting those of an aristocratic background such as his character was written.
2) With all the macho bravado of a raging bull in a phone box, he could stamp his foot, beat his chest and declare to a cabin full of uninterested buccaneers that he "challenges Davy Jones!" and by hell, he's going to challenge him in his Big Boy voice.
He chooses the latter. A pirate to his left says
"Alright Legolas, sit down. You're going to lose mate".
Sigh. Another million dollars in the bank, another million audience members smack their foreheads in disgust at their own naivety in thinking Bloom was bringing something new to the table. Thanks Bloom, thanks for nothing.
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