Bryce Zabel's MOVIE SMACKDOWN!

The Taking of Pelham 123 (2009) -vs- Crimson Tide (1995)

The Smackdown.  People trapped inside the cold steel of big machines. Check. Ticking clocks relentlessly counting down to disaster. Check. Battles of will between A-list actors. Check again. Director Tony Scott must have known he had a good thing in 1995's "Crimson Tide" and was looking to repeat it with this year's re-make of the classic "The Taking of Pelham 123."  As far as action directors go, Scott (brother of Ridley) is in the very elite. He makes movies that are almost always worth the price of a ticket at the cineplex. The best are tense, scary, hard-edged ones where his screenwriters give him high stakes and the dialogue to support them (often for Denzel Washington) and then he paces the hell out of the film itself. We have a real fight on our hands with some Scott-on-Scott violence.

The Challenger. The 2009 "The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3" takes its inspiration from the 1974 film "The Taking of Pelham One Two Three" which took its inspiration from the same novel written by John Godey. In the hands of current screenwriter Brian Helgeland, the central idea -- bad guys board a New York subway and take the passengers hostage while demanding a huge ransom -- remains the same. He's given us a few new twists, like the lead hijacker, Ryder (John Travolta) is now an ex-con and the negotiator, Walter Garber (Denzel Washington) is now a transit executive. Then director Scott bends and twists it through pacing, tone and special effects. In this film, Travolta drives the action but it's Washington who gets put on the spot in one particularly tough moment when, without benefit of waterboarding or other enhanced interrogation techniques, the hijacker gets the negotiator to confess to a crime of his own. It's one of those "what would you do" moments and particularly effective as played by Washington.

Deja Vu (2006) -vs- Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)

 Time It Was 

The Smackdown. Maybe it's because the summer of 2009 has given us another Tony Scott film in "The Taking of Pelham 123" and another episode in the Terminator franchise with "Terminator Salvation," but this Smackdown from 2006 has been getting lots of traffic. 

If people from the future could travel back to the past, wouldn't they have already done it? Would it be better to see into the past or into the future? Do they both exist simultaneously, along with the present, because time is relative to where you are? If you like these kinds of questions, we have a couple of films to really put your through Olympic-sized paces in the Suspension of Disbelief event. We've put a couple of major star vechicles in our time travel machine, both of them about scooting back through the years in order to change the future, both directed by major directors with reputations for getting the action up there on the screen. "Deja Vu" is the more cerebral -- "Terminator 2: Judgment Day" is the more literal -- but both of them cause your brain to short-circuit if you think too much about twists-and-turns of time travel as they would have you believe it works. But this is an entertainment site, not a physics lecture, so let's get to it.

The Challenger. The ever-likable Denzel Washington stars in the Tony Scott-directed "Deja Vu," a collaboration that must work for both men since they've done so many films together. This one starts with a terrorist bombing of a New Orleans ferry as a way to get at that time-honored sci-fi question -- if you could go back in time, could you also change the future? This film posits that with all those nifty satellites we have scanning the globe that there's a way to use them to "triangulate" and snoop on anybody we want exactly four days in the past. Okay, that's a stretch,  but it works well-enough that this flashy Jerry Bruckheimer produced, Tony Scott directed movie still works. In a heavily-plotted script by Bill Marsilii and Terry Rossio, Washington's ATF investigator uses this hot-new technology to time-travel back to save the life of a woman who holds the key to the terrorist's identity. Naturally, he will fall in love her. Even more obviously, this will never pass the logic test, but even so, the action and suspense never really flags. Bruckheimer and Scott, as a team, have reputations for delivering a great evening's entertainment with lots of loud explosions, fast cuts, and crazy violence -- they don't ask for too much thought but they do provide maximum diversion. The film works.

Fire in the Sky (1993) -vs- Communion (1989)

The Smackdown.  The truth about alien visitors may actually be different than what Hollywood has traditionally told you. On the one hand we've had the space brothers who have come to help us save the planet and ourselves ("Close Encounters," "The Day the Earth Stood Still").  On the other hand, we've had the cosmic badasses who've come to create hell on Earth ("War of the Worlds," "Independence Day").  The two films in our Smackdown ring each suggest another alternative.  The aliens are here for purposes that are more mysterious and/or unknowable.  They're not cuddly scientists like "E.T." but bizarre and harsh. Both "Communion" and "Fire in the Sky" tell us that they're here taking people out of their homes and neighborhoods in the middle of the night, tagging them like deer in a Lyme disease study, probing and poking them in ways that suggest rape as much as anything else. Possibly more unsettling is that these two films were both based on books which were based on true stories.  You may scoff at the word "truth" here but, the fact is, the central characters in each -- Whitley Strieber and Travis Walton -- have both passed lie detector tests.  Show me a Hollywood agent who could do that about today's phone list and you'll begin to appreciate the accomplishment.  The questions -- as we continue our film exploration of alien contact -- are, which version comes closest to what might be the truth about alien intentions here on Earth, and which one is the better film?

The Challenger. "Fire in the Sky" tells the story of Arizona woodcutter Travis Walton who was, allegedly, abducted into a spacecraft in the mid-70s in full view of his crew. They were returning from a job, late at night, when they all saw the same thing: a physical craft, hovering in the air above them quite close, full of lights and structure. Walton went out to take a look, ended up in a beam of blue light and disappeared. His friends ran in fright. Walton was gone for five days, causing authorities to suspect his co-workers of murder. When he returned, he had a spectacular story about being inside an alien craft. And, like I said, he and his crew all passed lie detector tests. The film version stars D.B. Sweeney as Walton in a script from Tracey Torme who'd already made a name for himself in the UFO genre with the CBS miniseries "Intruders." As a personal aside, I remember, as a near-graduate in broadcasting at the time, covering this story based on the dispatches from the Zodiac News Service while doing the "news" at Eugene's hippie FM station, KZEL. The story in my mind turned out to be different that the film they made. The film is about 80% centered on the five witnesses who didn't get abducted. Instead they have to face the folksy and skeptical lawman Frank Watters played by James Garner.

The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor (2008) -vs- The Mummy (1999)

EDITOR'S NOTE: Ten years ago, "The Mummy" was packing the theaters with its re-imagining of the classic creature-feature. It went on to take $155-million at the box office here in the U.S. and a whopping $416-million worldwide. Given its budget of $80-million, its producers made a pretty tidy profit. In honor of that achievement, we present Tyger Torrez's 2008 Smackdown that put the original in the ring with the latest incarnation (pardon the pun).

 Who's Your Mummy Dearest? 

The Smackdown.  For years, everyone knew the Big Three of Classic Horror: Dracula, The Wolf Man, and Frankenstein.  That other Undead Dude, The Mummy was second-tier, a guy with a few flicks but not the endorsements ('Count Chocula', anyone)?   It's like he was the forgotten step-child.  All that changed, of course, when Universal decided to dust off the title to remake (sorry, 're-imagine') and cast Brendan Fraser (Link from the classic  'Encino Man') in the 1999 version of "The Mummy."  The re-boot made a load of dough.  Money means more Mummy Mayhem, namely: "The Mummy Returns", a sequel of-sorts; "The Mummy: The Scorpion King;" and recently, "The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor."  Four films in less than a decade.  Let's see how the original (well, the new original) holds up against the upstart, or our latest installment.  Let the mummification begin!

The Challenger.  The prologue to "The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor" starts in Ancient China where an Evil Emperor, Han (Jet Li) is conquering the known world.  He has a vast army and his priests have shown him how to shape shift and control the elements.  But that's not enough: he wants Immortality!  It just so happens there's a Witch (Michelle Yeoh) who knows the Secret. The Emperor wants her for himself but she's in love with his general.  She gets the point (literally) that Han's not a nice man and puts a curse on him and his army, turning them in Terra Cotta statues (because, apparently, in the Far East they didn't believe in wrapping their mummies in bandages).  The proverbial sands of time pass and Alex O'Connell, the grown Son of Rick (Fraser), finds the Tomb of the Dragon Emperor.  When bad guys awaken him, Alex is joined by his parents Rick and Evelyn (here played by Maria Bello) who are all too eager to quit their boring retirement and kick some mummy ass.   Rick goes three-for-three by putting down the Emperor with the requisite magic blade and saving the world (again).

Angels & Demons (2009) -vs- The Da Vinci Code (2006)

 Church Vestments, Murderous Hearts 

The Smackdown. Nothing succeeds like excess, no question. Translated to movies: Bigger violence, mightier superheroes, escalating hype. If the box office roars, the basic material will be sequeled, prequeled, reimagined until the legs fall off.

"The Da Vinci Code" hit all the marks in 2006: An international cast, well known locales and a wildly controversial premise to inflame a global audience. The Catholic Church condemned the production, partisans -for and against- lined up long before the book-to-movie reached the screen. Even now, the background noise obscures the relative merits of the film. All that buzz was an answered prayer for the film makers: "The Da Vinci Code" earned upwards of $750 million and author Dan Brown found an audience even larger than his popular book did.

Now, the production team is back: Director Ron Howard, screenwriters Akiva Goldsman, David Koepp and Columbia Pictures mining gold from an earlier Dan Brown novel now presented as a sequel: "Angels & Demons."

This sets up an irresistible Smackdown! but let's understand a few ground rules: These films are works of dramatic fiction, not documentary in nature. As such I view neither one as an attack on the Catholic Church or the nature of Jesus. As a lifelong observant Catholic I rest easy knowing my faith is not assailed by historical misstatements and preposterous notions offered as plot devices in these movies. I live with the reality, positive and accepting of human frailty, reinforced over a lifetime. Hey, even the Vatican newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano describes "Angels & Demons" as harmless entertainment.

As a basis for judgment, that works for me.