Catching Up: The Bank Job/The Ruins/10,000 B.C.

I've done some catching up with some early releases from this year via DVD. They are the kind of movies I may have had a slight interest in at the time they were in theaters, but ultimately judged as "rentals." I was correct to wait in all instances.

The best of this particular trio is The Bank Job, a competent heist picture by Roger Donaldson. It is the (somewhat) true story of a gang of thieves who tunneled into the vault of a London bank in 1971. This film supposes they were set up by British intelligence to get some photos which were embarrassing to the Crown.

I've never understood the necessity of pushing the "based on a true story" angle for films. Does anyone really care? Apparently marketing has judged that people do, because if a film is based on a true story we know it right away--it's usually in the advertising and one of the first title cards in the credits. But do people choose a film because it might be true? I have trouble believing that.

I do love heist films, and this one is okay. It's not up to the level of classics like The Asphalt Jungle, Rififi or The Hot Rock, but it has its moments. Part of the time it seems the endeavor, which involved renting a store a few doors away and tunneling underneath into the vault (which Woody Allen would spoof in Small-Time Crooks) seemed ridiculously easy. Donaldson does a nice job of keeping a lot of balls in the air, and there are many factions with different pursuits involved, but I readily knew who everyone was and what they wanted.

The Ruins is based on a successful horror novel by Scott Smith, which I reviewed on this blog previously. Frankly, for the splash the book made, I'm surprised that this production wasn't more high-profile; it was released and died a quick death, and doesn't appear to have cost much money, using unknown actors (unless you're a big Jena Malone fan).

The story concerns a group of young people on vacation in Mexico who decide to have an adventure and visit a Mayan ruin that is not in the guide book. They soon realize they're in trouble when locals won't let them leave, and the vines that cover the ruin seem a bit more sentient than they should be. The short running time is economical, perhaps too much so, as the horror has more to do with how a small group of people deal with an impossible situation more than the killer vines, which frankly are pretty silly (M. Night Shamalyan had a similar problem with menacing vegetation in The Happening). The book allows for more psychological drama, while the film just covers the bare bones.

As cheesy as The Ruins is, it's worthy of an essay in Cahier du Cinema compared to 10,000 B.C., an absolute dog from the mind of master hack Roland Emmerich. It's hard to know how to start ripping this film, so I'll start with how fantastically historically inaccurate it is. While it is an improvement from its inspiration, 1,000,000 B.C., which had Raquel Welch in a fur bikini under threat from dinosaurs (a plot that might please Mike Huckabee but not anyone with a shred of scientific knowledge), 10,000 B.C. is horribly confused in time and geography.

We start with a tribe who are remarkably diverse--they have members who are Caucasoid, Negroid, and Mongoloid. They speak like Indians from old Westerns, and hunt woolly mammoths. One day an advanced group, who can ride horses, kidnap some of their numbers. A young hunter and a few associates set out to rescue them (including his love, played by Camilla Belle).

While watching you may try to figure out where they are supposed to be. As mentioned, the main tribe is a mixture of races, which of course would be unlikely given the time period. The invaders would seem to be Egyptian, considering they are building pyramids (although the pyramids of Egypt were built far later). But along the way the main tribe comes across people who are clearly African. It's enough to make you curse the filmmakers out loud.

The screenplay, by Emmerich and Harald Kloser, is howlingly funny in a bad way. Belle wears only one expression during the film, a look of incomprehension, perhaps as to why she took such a bad part. The special effects are neither special or effective. And what was with the giant killer birds? I'm not sure they can be found in the fossil record.