Kristanna Loken

Like a spoof mash-up of Mad Max and Machete, this nutty action movie throws us into a Wild West dystopia with enough wit and energy to overcome its clunky production values. A whiff of serious subtext helps too. Although it's essentially just a riotous B-movie thrill ride without much of a plot.

The story takes place in the near future, after the Corporate Wars destroyed the world. Now the former company executives are under death warrants, chased by superstar bounty killers through the desolate landscape. One of the most notorious killers is Drifter (Marsden), who has a bounty on his head after sniffing too close to a major scandal. As he heads to the Council to clear his name, he and his new gun caddy Jack (Hardley) are chased by the glamourous killer Mary Death (Pitre). And all of them are being pursued by the relentless Van Sterling (Busey), whose shady boss (Loken) is working on some sort of nefarious plan.

The film's luridly colourful design echoes its graphic-novel origins, as do the comic-book animation segments. And the violence is relentlessly blood-spurting, keeping us laughing so we don't notice how cheesy the effects and action really are. Fortunately, everything is underscored with sardonic humour, rude jokes and melodramatic characters, each of whom has a torrid history. This allows for plenty of irrelevant innuendo, especially between the inexpressive Marsden and the striking Pitre.

Continue reading: Bounty Killer Review

Several significant plot holes prove a frustrating and unnecessary distraction from the exhilarating, ante-upping, unflagging action of "Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines," an otherwise worthy, series-fulfilling successor to the groundbreaking looming-apocalypse flicks that made the careers of Arnold Schwarzenegger and James Cameron.

One nuclear-crater-sized chasm of common sense comes at a pivotal moment when the film's three heroes -- future human freedom fighter John Conner (Nick Stahl), his future wife and first lieutenant Kate Brewster (Clare Danes), and yet another time-traveling Terminator (Schwarzenegger relishing again the one role in which he's truly awesome) -- magically turn up deep inside a top-secret military base without any explanation of how they breached security.

They've come to stop Kate's father (David Andrews), an Air Force general in charge of an artificial intelligence project, from throwing the switch that will give the dangerously self-aware SkyNet defense computers access to all military systems, leading to the nuclear annihilation of mankind.

Continue reading: Terminator 3: Rise Of The MacHines Review