Kirjoittajan arkistot:noname

Harrison Bergeron

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The short story ”Harrison Bergeron” fantasizes how the world will look like in the future(2081), when everyone is forced to be equal. Everyone who is smarter, stronger, quicker or better looking than an average person, has to wear handicappers – radios to interfere smart one’s thougts, heavy bags to slow down strong and quick people, and ugly masks for beautiful people. The system is monitored by the US Handicapper General Diana Moon Glampers, whose duty is to make sure that everyone follows the equalizing legislation. And of course there is extremly hard punishments for those who doesn’t follow the laws.

The main characters of the short story are George Bergeron, his wife Hazel Bergeron and their son Harrison. In our time George would probably represent an average person, but in this short story he is forced to wear a handicap radio in his ear and a handicap bag around his neck. Hazel represents the average person of this short story – she is so unintelligent, that she can’t think about the same thing more than few seconds. Their son, Harrison, is extremely smart, handsome and strong. He is so perfect, that the government was afraid of him – perhaps the govenment thought that he would be leader the resistance movement or perhaps they thought that it would be easier take him to the jail. Anyway, Harrison escaped from jail and went to the studio and released people from their handicaps in live tv-show in order to show that they would be happier without handicaps. The story doesn’t tell why did Harrison does this – did he notice the errors of the system or did he just want to be  better than everybody else.

The government is described as a ruthless system, which doesn’t care about freedom and human rights. The main issue of the story is the relationship between the government and the citizens – if citizens don’t question the laws, laws become habits. And in the story George and Hazel are used to the handicap-system – George thinks that the handicaps are a part of him and he thinks that society would fall apart if people start cheating on laws, and they would slip back to ”dark ages” of competition. So the story is defensive statement for peoples freedom and capitalism.

Rogue Assassin (War)

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Rogue Assassin (also known as War) is a typical action film, though it has a fairly boring name. The summary of the plot sounds just as boring as the name of the movie: an FBI-agent dies as a bystander in the competition between two criminal organizations(Yakuza versus Chinese Triads), and his partner starts chasing the killer for revenge.

Altough the plot of Rogue Assasin isn’t the most imaginative, the movie has a certain tension, which leads to that the movie can be watched again and again. The plot contains lots of clichés such as ninjas with samuraiswords, rule breaking agents and mob bosses defending their honour. There is also some problems in the plot, but a normal viewer doesn’t pay attentintion to those, since the main focus is on the action.

Jet Li makes brilliant work as an assassin named Rogue. Stone-faced Li is an ideal choise for this role, and he is very believable as an ruthless killer. The character of Rogue is told to have worked for CIA, but for some reason he started to work for Yakuza and help them with their competition with the triads. Suddenly Rogue begins to kill people also from the Yakuza, secretly collecting fees from both sides. The film tries to give the impression that Rogue is just greedy and wants to push the two factions in full war in order to get more money, but the viewer can easily see that there is something more complex behind Rogue. The real motive of Rogue is kept as a secret till the end, and the reveal ads a quite intresting twist to the movie.

The second main character is John Crawford (played by Jason Statham), an angry and frustrated FBI’s special agent who has tried to catch the murderer of his partner over three years. The revenge soon becomes an obsession, and Crawford stops following the rules – so the suspects are usually beaten and even slightly tortured. Jason Statham is definitely one of the best action actors of  today, however in my opinion Statham is unimportant for this movie – he could be easily replaced with a fresh and unknow actor, to emphasize Li’s great performance – besides, Statham is a bit too rough to be an agent.

So there are some problems with the casting and the plot, but Rogue Assassin is an action movie, so the action scenes are what matters the most. And this movie contains a lot of action. Fist fights, gun fights, sword fights, car chase, motorcycle chase, explosions. And everything is very well done. Overall I’m very pleased with the action scenes and the special effects, tough the final fight could have been a bit longer.

So this isn’t a masterpiece worth of Oscars, but Rogue Assassin is still a very good flick which fits perfectly for friday night if you want some action.