This is an important role as whoever gets it will be carrying the franchise after this film. What will be interesting is to see who can bring the same game to this franchise after Willis is done.

Ben Foster elevated himself in the acting world, in my opinion, in the emotional war drama The Messenger, but he’s no stranger to the genre world. His roles in 3:10 to Yuma, 30 Days of Night, and last year’s The Mechanic prove he’s versatile as well as interesting.

Also, the source has this below “plot synopsis” for us about the film: Visionary filmmaker Ridley Scott returns to the genre he helped define, creating an original science fiction epic set in the most dangerous corners of the universe. The film takes a team of scientists and explorers on a thrilling journey that will test their physical and mental limits and strand them on a distant world, where they will discover the answers to our most profound questions and to life’s ultimate mystery.

Prometheus arrives June 8th, 2012.

Rock royalty Queen are known for their anthem hits and shattering soundtracks for films; while the song Hitman does not appear in the remake of the 1972 film The Mechanic, it is very applicable to the thunderous butt whoopin’ delivered upon all that a certain card-carrying representative of The Expendables makes in this film.

Jason Statham is in his comfort zone as Arthur Bishop, a ‘Mechanic’ [assassin] whose sole duty is to eliminate targets swiftly with a code of professionalism. He makes it look easy as he disposes of the dirty laundry sent his way by his employer – a secret group who pay well. He might be the best in the business right now, but he learned the ropes from his mentor and buddy Harry [Donald Sutherland], a wheelchair bound man who is set up for the murder of a group ‘Mechanics’ by the same men who pay Arthur’s salary. Bishop puts his personal attachment aside, follows the creeds that he has always stood by, and blows his crony away.

Harry’s son Steve [Ben Foster] has a death wish and is on a mission to find out who killed his dad as he takes to the street for some justice. Feeling guilty from his latest kill, Arthur begrudgingly takes Steve under his wing and a master and apprentice relationship is forged. He picks up the trade fast as he learns how to make depriving someone of their existence look like an accident. His skills improve and he becomes lethal himself, and staggers upon the one clue that leads him to who murdered his father.

The twists and turns that unfurl plot wise will come to no one’s surprise, yet that does not deter what is ninety minutes of pure adrenaline action that will get your testosterone flowing. The vivacity of the physical exchanges are grounded in real time as Jason Statham and Ben Foster do most of their own stunts giving the gunfights and hand-to-hand combat authenticity. I do not recollect seeing a single blue or green screen effects sequence that took me out of a given scene – and the editing was calm enough for me to enjoy the physicality of the actors.

Neveldine/Taylor are busy with Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance and have expressed little interest in doing Crank 3. Do not anguish over it because this version of The Mechanic is a gritty and sexy flick that is not your typical January “dump” movie, and it filled my cinematic convertible with enough fluids that I will not need a tune-up any time soon.

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

Arthur Bishop (Jason Statham) is a ‘mechanic’ – an elite assassin with a strict code and unique talent for cleanly eliminating targets. It’s a job that requires professional perfection and total detachment, and Bishop is the best in the business. But when his mentor and close friend Harry (Donald Sutherland) is murdered, Bishop is anything but detached. His next assignment is self-imposed – he wants those responsible dead. His mission grows complicated when Harry’s son Steve (Ben Foster) approaches him with the same vengeful goal and a determination to learn Bishop’s trade. Bishop has always acted alone but he can’t turn his back on Harry’s son. A methodical hit man takes an impulsive student deep into his world and a deadly partnership is born. But while in pursuit of their ultimate mark, deceptions threaten to surface and those hired to fix problems become problems themselves.

Source: IMDB

The Film:

A few years back, there was a boom of war films dealing with the Iraq conflict, but they didn’t do well at the box office. Some claimed “too soon”, others claimed that they weren’t that good to begin with, yet did anyone consider that they felt like agenda films? Republicans and Democrats are going to be at odds until this mess in the Middle East wraps up, if it does, and it’s hard to separate politics from a war film, especially since everyone has a political idea on what’s going on with the war.

The Messenger is a smart, powerful film. After seeing it, you feel like you just crashed into a brick wall.

Stripping politics and the nature of war away, we follow a soldier (Ben Foster) who is assigned to be in the Army’s Causality Notification Service, with Captain Stone (Woody Harrelson). The film is a raw, emotional look at the effects of war. Harrelson’s character comments on people who fail to realize what war is, as he talks about how people wave their little American flags, thank soldiers for their service, all of that patriotic stuff, but become shocked when he shows up to their door. If you didn’t know, the Causality Notification Service are the two soldiers who knock on the door of the next of kin, to regretfully tell them their loved one has died in combat. It’s a bitch of a job, something that can be easily manipulative in a movie.

Director Oren Moverman handles these emotionally charged scenes with restraint. Each person reacts differently to the news, but Moverman builds the sadness up with the dilemma Ben Foster’s character feels. There’s pain and guilt in his eyes, and at any second he could explode. Moverman reveals characters slowly, peeling back layers when needed, and it all works. I recall the scenes in We Were Soldiers when Madeline Stowe chooses to tell the families herself. It was your typical Hollywood phoniness. The Messenger is a stunning debut film from Moverman, a film that shows the tough job in the services might not be on the front lines.

The film has a subplot involving Ben Foster who strikes up a relationship of sorts with a widow (Samantha Morton) that doesn’t work as well as it should have, but one can forgive it, due to the superb acting and the intensity of the scenes when Foster and Harrleson are walking up to a house to deliver the news. The Messenger asks questions we have rarely asked ourselves when it comes to war: are we really ready for the true consequences of war? Raw, sad, real, and a few hundred adjectives later, The Messenger will leave you trembling; a film you won’t soon forget.

The Blu-ray:

Audio/Video: The details are extremely high, with the only flaw of the transfer is the bleeding of blacks into grays as the picture tends to get lost with no shadow detail, but this could be a production thing and not a transfer issue. Overall, the film’s lack of color actually looks quite bold in HD, far superior to the included DVD. The audio track is quite front heavy, which is the intended nature of the sound design, and is quite good. Being an early Blu-ray from Oscilloscope Laboratories, the results are quite good.

Commentary: Director/Co-writer Oren Moverman, Producer Lawrence Inglee and Ben Foster and Woody Harrelson are present for a soft, sometimes dry, but always interesting chat. We get some really good insights from the actors, as they say what in the film is improvised. Moverman is very articulate and while at times, the track has some dead air, what we get is highly engaging as a listen.

Notification: This is a wonderful documentary that features interviews with real Casualty Notification/Assistance division members as they reflect on the job and their worst experiences. It’s a powerful 25 minutes, filled with heartbreak and honor, but it serves as a fine backbone to the film. In SD.

Going Home: This is a traditional making-of that’s still really good as a watch. Military liaisons and members of the cast and crew talk about the film’s plot, production, and even some political messages, something of interesting importance. I can’t disagree, but I obviously felt that the film was rather neutral. In SD.

Variety Q&A Session: The only HD extra is a 27 minute panel discussion on the film with cast and crew, that serves as a visual commentary, as much is known already after you watch or listen to this, compared to the commentary.

All of this is housed in a fancy recycled packaging from Oscilloscope Laboratories that finishes out the extras with a short essay from Anthony Swofford, writer of Jarhead, the film on DVD on a separate disc, and a .pdf file of the film’s shooting script (viewable only on your DVD-ROM drive).

Conclusion: Emotionally draining, yet one of the best films from last year, gets a chance to further my recommendation via this wonderful Blu-ray set.

The Film: Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

The Blu-ray: Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

The Messenger

“Rampart” is focused on a single police officer during the scandal and based on a story by James Ellroy. More than 70 officers were implicated in misconduct including unprovoked shootings, beatings, planting of evidence, framing of suspects, stealing and dealing narcotics, bank robbery, perjury and covering up evidence (Variety).

Production Weekly also reports that The Messenger stars Ben Foster and Woody Harrelson are circling around this picture, possibly re-teaming with Moverman.

Moverman is already attached to go and put together the yet to be titled Kurt Cobain biopic, set not only to pen the story but to direct once more. Keep an eye out for the DVD and Blu-Ray release of The Messenger, set to hit stores on May 18th.

Directed by Simon West, the feature is set to be released on December 15th. Check out the official trailer from Millennium Films below.:

The Film:

If I ever live long enough to see such things as hyper-sleep or space travel come to fruition, I’m just going to skip it. How many science-fiction films do we need to see, where this amazing technology fails? In a future where we have this incredible ability to travel light years, why is it things don’t work? In Pandorum, Bower (Ben Foster) is accidentally woken up from hyper-sleep to find himself disoriented and alone. He forcefully wakes his superior, Lt. Payton (Dennis Quaid) to help him figure out what’s going on. Initially they think they are alone, and cannot figure out their mission or how to get to the bridge of the ship.

Elysian, their ship, is perhaps their tomb. The one thing that sticks out is the gorgeous set design. Hallways, huge spaces, the ship, are all done brilliantly, giving us a sense of scale and scope. The lighting helps bring us into the ship’s isolated feel. If you’ve seen the trailers, you’ll know that there is some sort of creatures in the film, and on an FX and make-up stand point, they too are amazing. The film is definitely impressive on a technical front, but cosmetic propensity aside, the biggest draw back the film has is the script.

There this attempt to be meaningful about the human will power to survive, but they bite off more than they can handle, even at a 121 minute running time. After the first act of exploring the ship and wondering what their mission is, the film tells us that humans have over-populated Earth and due to this population boom, natural resources were fought over and eventually were depleted. In a disparate attempt at survival we actively looked for another Earth-like planet to go to. So basically the Elysian is a Noah’s Ark and the mission is to relocate us to this new Earth. Pretty cool, and timely, as this issues are coming to reality for us now, but there’s literally too much going on, and very little resolution or answers given. It’s sort of a mystery when it comes to these cannibalistic invaders. They’re all Mad Max-like, but instead of gasoline, they are after food. Then we’ve got two human characters that seem all bad-ass in survival mode, one can not talk, and one is pure exposition, but why?

The nature of the title in relation to the film’s plot seems like a tangent. Pandorum is a certain state of mental denial and disillusionment, but what does it matter when we’re going to Earth 2? Action heavy, atmospheric, and great visuals almost save the film from some muddy ideas and plotting. He might be a bane to some movie goers, Paul W.S. Anderson (Resident Evil, Event Horizon) lands the producer role, even though the film feels more like his, than director Christian Alvert (Antibodies). I think crazy Ralph from Friday the 13th said it best about it having a death curse, except the “it” this time is humans, because after the set-up as to why we left Earth, the drama on the ship, and the film’s resolution doesn’t feel very hope inspiring as I think the filmmakers wanted it to intend. Did we learn from prior mistakes? Nothing in these two hours, made me think that this time we would respect our environment. Even though the film is a decent matinée flick for sci-fi fans, in terms of humanity and hope, we’re doomed. Maybe we, as well as, science-fiction movies need to accept the inevitability of our extinction. Now, there’s a great film idea waiting to be made.

The Blu-ray:

Audio/Video: Anchor Bay’s high def presentation won’t really “wow” many, but the film’s look is really stylized, forcing a hard proposition for the transfer. Dark blues and blacks are the focus, and the cinematography is really dark, making a proper assessment harder than normal. While details and clairty within the transfer are high, but blues and blacks make the appearance rather average in the HD world of things. Now, the Dolby audio just simply wrecks havoc. The sound design works wonderful in a home theater, with great atmospheric surround elements and deep-deep-bass. All in all, a decent HD effort.

Commentary: Say what you will about the film, the commentary is a pretty good listen. Full of info, the director Alvert and his producer chat about the production, themes, and interesting tidbits.

The World of Elysian: Even though it’s only 14 minutes long, this is a nice piece, especially if a commentary isn’t up your alley. It looks at effects, set design, the screenplay, all in HD.

Flight Team Training Video: Here’s an original piece, running a few minutes as if your an astronaut for the Elysian. Cute. In HD.

What Happened to Nadia’s Team: Another original HD short that shows us, um..what happened. It’s okay, runs 5 minutes.

Deleted Scenes: Over 28 minutes worth, and they are worth watching, as many expand the film’s future world. In HD (but color timing is off).

Trailers, a Still Gallery, and a Digital Copy finishes off the extras.

Conclusion: A confused piece of sci-fi, but worth renting. Blu-ray is decent too.

The Film: Rating: 2.5 out of 5 stars

The Blu-ray: Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

The Messenger is a smart, powerful film. After seeing it, you feel like you just crashed into a brick wall.

Stripping politics and the nature of war away, we follow a soldier (Ben Foster) who is assigned to be in the Army’s Causality Notification Service, with Captain Stone (Woody Harrelson).  The film is a raw, emotional look at the effects of war. Harrelson character comments on people who fail to realize what war is, as he talks about how people wave their little American flags, thank soldiers for their service, all of that patriotic stuff, but become shocked when he shows up to their door. If you didn’t know, the Causality Notification Service are the two soldier who knock on the door of the next of kin, to regretfully tell them their loved one has died in combat.  It’s a bitch of a job, something what can be easily manipulative in a movie.

Director Oren Moverman handles these emotionally charged scenes with restraint. Each person reacts differently to the news, but Moverman builds the saddness up with the dilemma Ben Foster’s character feels. There’s pain and guilt in his eyes, and at any second he could explode. Moverman reveals characters slowly, peeling back layers when needed, and it all works. I recall the scenes in We Were Soldiers when Madeline Stowe chooses to tell the families herself. It was your typical Hollywood phoniness. The Messenger is a stunning debut film from Moverman, a film that shows the tough job in the services might not be on the front lines.

The film has a subplot involving Ben Foster who strikes up a relationship of sorts with a widow (Samantha Morton) that doesn’t work as well as it should have, but on can forgive it, due to the superb acting and the intensity of the scenes when Foster and Harrleson are walking up to a house to deliver the news. The Messenger asks questions we have rarely asked ourselves when it comes to war: are we really ready for the true consequences of war? Raw, sad, real, and a few hundred adjectives later, The Messenger will leave you trembling; a film you won’t soon forget.

Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

In the pic, Foster (“3:10 to Yuma”) will play Steve McKenna, the young man who becomes an apprentice to a hitman played by Jason Statham. Sutherland will play the role of Foster’s father and Statham’s handler (Variety). The original, which starred Charles Bronson, became a hit which lead him and director Michael Winner to a fruitful collaboration that resulted in making the film “Death Wish”.

Source: You Tube

Source: Geek Tyrant