Cop Out [Warner Home Video]

Clash Of The Titans:

One doesn’t exactly have to be an Oracle, a fortune-teller from Greek mythology, to realise before watching the film that Clash of the Titans is anything but epic. 

The film, directed by Louis Leterrier, follows the story of Perseus (Sam Worthington, with an incredibly distracting accent of no identifiable nationality), the mortal son of Zeus (Liam Neeson). To save the life of the beautiful princess Andromeda (Alexa Davalos), and stop the spread of evil minions from the Underworld across Earth, Perseus must battle Voldemort. Err, I mean, Hades (Ralph Fiennes). Along the way he is helped by a group of Greek soldiers with no individual personalities, who fall prey to various monsters with alarming alacrity. 

Clash of the Titans is little more than a series of unexciting action sequences, strung together by an uninteresting plot, and lead by some undistinguished voiceover narration. 

Of course, clichéd dialogue and crummy plots are what audiences have come to expect from action movies in this modern era, even if the films themselves are set BC.  The real Achilles heel of this film, unfortunately, is that it doesn’t give much else.  The CGI is dull, creating a range of ever more ridiculous monsters that fail to frighten. The action sequences are badly paced and, let’s face it, boring. For a film featuring gods, blood and guts, Clash doesn’t provide much visual interest. 

The fact that there aren’t any special features on this DVD, aside from a reel of deleted scenes, should tell you something. Though why anyone would want to watch more of this film than they had to, is beyond me. 

Clash of the Titans is to movies what Hades was to the rest of the Greek God family: kind of an embarrassment. 

In The Loop [Madman]:

In The Loop is a film in which a lot of swearing happens. Almost universally, the mouth of Malcolm Tucker (Peter Capaldi) is responsible. Tucker is the highly strung, aggressive Director of Communications for an unnamed British PM, who cuts a swathe of verbal destruction through gaffe-plagued ministers, departmental staff, lowly public servants and anyone else unfortunate enough to cross his path. No one is spared from his extreme alpha male bullying. In full flight it’s a wonder to behold; almost operatic.

Malcolm Tucker first cracked skulls in the BBC’s superb Yes Minister update The Thick of It. His is one of the few characters to make the transition to the big screen version, although In The Loop is not strictly a continuation, more a launching pad.

And speaking of launching pads, the spectre of an invasion of the Middle East looms. Intelligence has been doctored, allegedly. Ministers are making complete prats of themselves on national radio; bad publicity and dissent in the ranks runs rife, and so comes Tucker’s job to fix things, finding his way to Washington where competing departments and agencies are bouncing up against each other. Soon enough the case for war is lost in a fog of lies, deceit, mismanagement and petty personal vendettas. Sound familiar? Its high farce, satire and Politics 101, all in one big swearing, sweating ball.

Despite universally compelling performances from an eclectic cast James Gandolfini (The Sopranos), David Rasche (Sledge Hammer) and Anna Chlumsky (My Girl and My Girl 2) something elemental gets lost in translation, a certain British forlorn weariness and foot-shuffling despair the Atlantic Ocean wipes clean. In The Loop succeeds by sending you back to the source document, because I watched the first three series of The Thick of It in quick succession soon after and it was still utterly brilliant. Essential viewing, if not an essential movie. Now fuck off.