A Ghoul Versus The November Man (Part 2)

Click here for Part 1!

Alice, in all her infinite wisdom, goes to meet with Edgar instead of hopping the first tram out of Belgrade. Good to see Kurylenko is still playing complete idiots, because Peter told her that Alexa was a world class assassin. The same assassin who saw her meeting with Edgar at the diner, but I'm sure she wouldn't, you know, BE FOLLOWING HIM OR ANYTHING. Edgar takes her back to his hotel where Alexa pops out and kills him. Oh gee, what are the odds? Alice runs, but we can't see what happens next because this film was edited by someone with extreme ADHD, so we go back to David who is going through Pierce's CIA file.

He discovered Natalia wasn't just Peter's lover, but was also the mother of his daughter. Oh snap! Well, it's been a minute already, better see what Hanley's doing. Pierce pistol whips his way into the shipping yard the CIA is holding him at, confronting him over why he lied about Natalia wanting him to rescue her. Hanley says Natalia had been acting strangely the last few months of her assignment, so the CIA planned to take her out. He figured sending Peter was the only way to save her life, because he really wanted her information about Mira witnessing the bombing. Hanley tries to say Federov masterminded the whole thing, but Peter knows better and asks who in the CIA was behind it.

A Ghoul Versus The November Man (Part 1)

“James Bond is back, and this time he's brought an R-rating!”

I think it's safe to say Olga Kurylenko is the Patron Saint of this blog. Some of my earliest reviews were of her video game based films Hitman and Max Payne, where she captured the spirit of what A Ghoul Versus... is all about with jilted line delivery and general vacuousness in regards to acting. She was dramatically improved in Joseph Kosinski's Oblivion, where she turned in a pretty good performance, but was right back to her bag of tricks in this year's DELIGHTFUL atrocity that was Vampire Academy.

This leads us to her latest film, the November Man. I know next to nothing about this film, as it was in and out of theaters pretty quick because Pierce Brosnan quite isn't the box office draw he used to be. Despite this short window, it did turn a profit, so much in fact that a sequel is already being planned. I saw a few trailers for this, it looked like James Bond only not quite. This film is based off the novels of the same name, and in true Hollywood fashion it's based off the SEVENTH book of the series. Chronology, what's that?

The movie is directed by Roger Donaldson, who has a somewhat respectable and varied filmography with films such as No Way Out, Cocktail, Species, and Dante's Peak. The movie was co-written by Karl Gajdusek, who was also the writer of Oblivion so hopefully he can continue his streak of making Kurylenko sound intelligent when she opens her mouth. Interesting bit of trivia here, the other writer of this movie is Michael Finch, who is currently writing the reboot to HITMAN. Good God, it's Six Degrees Of Olga up in this piece! And with that, it's time to see is Pierce Brosnan still has the suave and sophisticated spy game with A Ghoul Versus The November Man!

A Ghoul Versus Hitman (Part 2)

Click here for Part 1!

In FULL SIGHT of a few old men sitting outside the gas station, 47 opens the trunk and lets Nika out. She's really still traveling in the trunk? She's naturally very mad at him for this, but he says it's okay because he brought her breakfast. He then roughly grabs her, drags her to the passenger seat, and THROWS the food at her. As he walks back to the driver side, he makes eye contact with one of the old men and gives a “Geez, what's HER major malfunction?” look. The old man chuckles because abusing women is downright hilarious in this batshit insane universe that is Hitman.

47 warns Nika that her interference back at the station can't be allowed to happen again, in what is easily some of the worst line readings ever from a major Hollywood movie not involving a child. The video games have better acting than this.

Nika looks down and sees he's magically produced a gun from the same inventory he had those blades earlier. She instantly cowers, apologising to the psycho as I vomit. She says if he's looking for a reason not to kill her, she doesn't have one. She's not a whore by choice it turns out as Belicoff owns her, having bought her for $300 American, which admittedly is a bargain. When I tried to buy a terrible actress, the best deal I could find was Tara Reid for $700.

A Ghoul Versus Hitman (Part 1)

"Can we hire Agent 47 to take out this movie?"

Hitman is a video game franchise that stars the violently creative Agent 47 as he stealthily kills his way across the world in a variety of exotic locales. It is a stealth game series that is highly praised for its innovative open game play that encourages you to experiment, and is highly derided for its utter lack of taste. Games have featured latex S & M bondage nuns, while advertisements for these games have featured murdered women in lingerie. There's... there's some issues going on here and they are NOT pretty.

There actually is an overall narrative to the series, but I've never seen it because most of the games involved me screaming “That's bullshit! There is no way he saw me!” five hundred times and giving up. Thus I have no idea how loyal the film is to game but if it's anything like, oh say 100% of all video game to movie adaptions, I'm going to say not at all.  The film of the game came out in 2007, directed by Xavier Gens, who gave us the insane gorefest Frontier(s). From what I've been able to gather, he was fired after submitting his cut of the movie and someone else was brought it in to make it more acceptable. Reshoots followed, rarely a good sign in the industry.

It was written by Skip Woods, who has a Shakespearean resume of such epics as Swordfish, X-Men Origins: Wolverine, the A-Team, and A Good Day to Die Hard.  With a lover of gore over story and a guy who loves senseless action over story behind the reins of this, we're in for a lot of fun! Grab your favourite murder weapon and strap in for A Ghoul Versus Hitman.