Chills & Thrills - Part II

Unleashed
Has way less action than you look forward to in a Jet Li-flick. Li plays a slave who has been brought up as a fighting machine. When he gets away from his master, he is taken in by a blind piano player (Morgan Freeman) and his niece. The long second act is devoid of action and makes us restless. The fights themselves are energetic but because of Li’s character, turn out to free-for-all affairs rather than the graceful martial arts fights Li is known for.

Red Eye
Loopholes in an implausible plot are somewhat hidden by the non-stop but routine action here. Cilian Murphy befriends Rachel McAdams at the airport and ends up sitting next to her on the plane but she soon finds out he has more on his mind than romance. There is very little setup and once the action starts, it almost never stops. That is a good thing since if it does, we will realize how silly the plot and Rachel’s actions are.

The Exorcism of Emily Rose
Bad marketing led to this being seen as a horror movie rather than the courtroom drama it actually is. Tom Wilkinson, a priest, is on trial for causing the death of Emily Rose and Laura Linney is defending him. He says she was possessed but the prosecution blames her death on lack of proper medical attention. Few scares(and almost all of them are shown in the previews) but the proceedings in the court are interesting.

Cry Wolf
A typical teen slasher flick but without much sex or gore. A bunch of school kids invent a serial killer when a woman is killed on-campus but it looks like their fictional creation might have spawned a real killer. The movie never really gets going till near the end. But at the end it throws in a couple of twists that manage to be surprising but only because they are so complicated and implausible.

Flightplan
Takes off as a gripping psychological thriller but crash-lands after turning into a routine action thriller. Jodie Foster plays a recently widowed single mom whose daughter goes missing on a plane she helped design but as she looks for her, it begins to look like the daughter might be a figment of her imagination. Some good tension as an increasingly worried Foster looks for her daughter. But we eventually get a ridiculous plot and loopholes large enough to fly the same plane through.

The Transporter 2
Has even more unbelievable action than the first one but is enjoyable in a cartoonish way. Jason Statham is now a chauffeur to a young boy and so jumps into action when the boy is kidnapped. Most set pieces are over-the-top and defy all known laws of physics. But the hand-to-hand fights have a lot of energy and a fight involving a hose had some truly amazing choreography.