GUN MACHINE By Warren Ellis – Reviewed

Ellis writes comics normally, and not your average superhero fair, but intelligent and thought-provoking action driven comics. Like Red, that the Bruce Willis and Helen Mirren film was based upon. This is Ellis’ second novel, the first being a really weird, sex-fuelled road-book across the US.

This novel has its own share of weird too, but this time the plot is a little (really little!) more traditional. Detective Tallow watches as his partner is shot by a crazy man with a shotgun and shoots the man dead. In the apartment across the hall there is a hole in the wall caused by the shooting. On further investigating Tallow finds the mother-load of weaponry, an entire apartment decorated in guns of every kind. When he enlists the help of two CSIs to help test and record the guns they find that each of the hundreds and possible thousands of weapons have been involved in a murder. Tallow has just fallen into investigating one of the worst ever serial killers New York City has ever seen…

And that’s just the start of it: native American Indian history, conspiracies and corruption, this book contains a riveting mystery and a mass of detail that draws you in.

The first few pages of this book are quite shocking brilliant, as Ellis shows off his imaginative turn of phrase and pours on the style, which drifts into an intricate plot. Tallow is the down at heel cop who needs the brutal murder of his partner to bring him back to life, and his slightly depressive, possibly suicidal tendencies manifest in a compulsion to catch the killer at any cost, including his own life, and make the dramatic chase all the more exciting.

This is not your standard crime thriller, this is a whacked out, dope-fuelled hurricane of a crime thriller, a strange and compelling mystery. Ellis writes like a demon possessed and I can’t wait to read his next novel, bring it on.

LOOPER – Reviewed

When I saw the poster for this I got excited. With the two figures holding guns in different directions, and a review quote stating the film was this decade’s The Matrix, nothing was going to stop me watching it.

Unfortunately the film is nothing like The Matrix. The 1999 Wachowski brothers’ classic is a SF action thriller. In no sense of the words is Looper an action thriller. It’s more a drama with SF at the heart of the story, but virtually ignored in visual terms.

Set in the near-future, the story follows Joe (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), a looper. Loopers are assassins working for some form of mob in the future, sent back in time (30 years) to await their victims, who are also sent back through time where they do not yet exist. The murders are therefore untraceable. Every now and then a looper’s older self is sent back to be killed by his younger self 30 years before with a nice big payoff, and 30 years of freedom until they are sent back in time to be killed by their younger self. You still with me? One thing the film does do well is explain this.

So, Joe’s older self is sent back in the form of Bruce Willis, and instead of killing him, older Joe escapes and tries to survive, and to change the future by killing the person he believes will grow into the murderer of his wife and himself. Meanwhile the mob are trying to track down both Joes to kill both of them to close the loop.

The film is set in a futuristic Kansas City, which is seen only briefly. Half of the film is set on a farm in the middle of nowhere, where younger Joe holes up, awaiting older Joe, and falling in love with the lovely Emily Blunt.

The story travels a fairly predictable path, apart from the premise there is nothing new here. Visually this is more of a farm story, it only gets a bit exciting when an old looking Willis goes on the rampage, which is fun.

Despite a mostly decent story, and some good actors, the film ultimately falls flat because at two hours it’s too long, too boring, too dull. The brief moments of action and excitement are too few. The future Kansas City is barely glimpsed instead of explored, too much time is spent with no action, and when you get to the end of the film you’re just a bit glad it’s all over.