Homefront

"Homefront "

"As Reported by Dollyforme"

I’ll be honest, this is not a very good movie – not at all. Very predicable and low budget.

SO? Why watch it? Well, another hot 40’s Hollywood actress is in it – AND play a BAD GIRL – as in one of the bad guys in this movies. She looked great and was fun to watch her scenes in the movie – she can be VERY bad when she wants to be!

If you don’t know who I’m talking about - Winona Ryder (born Winona Laura Horowitz; October 29, 1971) is an American actress. She made her film debut in the 1986 film Lucas. Ryder's first significant role, in Tim Burton's Beetlejuice (1988), was as Lydia Deetz, a goth teenager, and won her critical and popular recognition. After various appearances in film and on television, Ryder continued her acting career with the cult film Heathers (1988), a controversial satire of teenage suicide and high school life that drew Ryder further critical attention and commercial success. She later appeared in Mermaids (1990), earning a Golden Globe nomination, in Burton's Edward Scissorhands (1990), and in Francis Ford Coppola's gothic romance Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992).

Having played diverse roles in many well-received films, Ryder won a Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress and an Academy Award nomination in the same category for her role in The Age of Innocence in 1993 as well as another Academy Award nomination, as Best Actress, for Little Women the following year. She later appeared in the Generation X cult hit Reality Bites (1994), Alien Resurrection (1997), the Woody Allen comedy Celebrity (1998), and Girl, Interrupted (1999), which she also executive-produced. In 2000, Ryder received a star on the Walk of Fame in Hollywood, California.

Ryder's personal life has attracted significant media attention. Her relationship with Johnny Depp and a 2001 arrest for shoplifting were constant subjects of tabloid journalism. She has since revealed her personal struggles with anxiety and depression. In 2002, she appeared in the box office smash Mr. Deeds. In 2006, Ryder returned to the screen after a brief hiatus, later appearing in high-profile films such as Star Trek. In 2010, she was nominated for two Screen Actors Guild Awards: as the lead actress in When Love Is Not Enough: The Lois Wilson Story and as part of the cast of Black Swan. She also reunited with Burton for Frankenweenie (2012).

OK, then enough of her – THIS MOVIE is a Half-satisfying little piece of gristle about a single dad and ex-Louisiana-state narc (Jason Statham, with English accent intact – no kidding) trying to live the quiet small-town life with his pre-teen daughter.

Too bad the local meth cookers and biker gangs won’t leave them alone. So he must kill them, singly or in groups. James Franco is slightly miscast as the meth kingpin, with Winona Ryder more convincing as a compromised barmaid.

Better lines might have helped. The screenplay is by Sylvester Stallone (he also co-produced), who hasn’t improved his dialogue skills since the days of Cobra. The biggest risk that the producers of Homefront take is in the casting of a non-American lead in what is very definitely a down home, gun-&-family, flag-wavin’ action opus. Any doubt that the production was squarely aimed at that demographic is dispelled with one glance at the US one-sheet, in which Brit tough-guy Jason Satham wears a Toby Keith-esque Stars’n’Stripes shirt - the likes of which never appears in the film.

Journeyman director Gary Fleder’s slick vision of Sylvester Stallone’s script is a flyover-state fantasy, in which a man of honour, ex-undercover narc Phil Broker (Statham, dependably stoic) must rebuild a life a with his too-cute daughter, Maddy (a terrific Izabela Vidovic) after a biker gang drug-ring sting goes bad.

One of only a handful of surprises in the mix is the name cast in showy but decidedly supporting roles, a skeletal Kate Bosworth, compelling as a fired-up addict who clashes with Broker; and, above all others, A-lister James Franco as ‘Gator, the small-time Louisiana meth dealer who uncovers Broker’s true identity and brings bloody vengeance into the new life that the ex-DEA agent has made for himself.

Franco’s casting is not by chance. The ultra left-leaning real-life antics of the star, along with the hillbilly scourge that is the meth epidemic and the lawlessness perpetrated by leather-clad organised crime, are the most frightening threats to an American ideal still clung to by the Red Staters who will buy into this old-school action set-up.

This America is the America of Western mythology, existing beyond traditional justice (Clancy Brown’s posturing sheriff is an ineffectual buffoon), in which a lone gunfighter (or, in Statham’s case, martial-arts maestro) stands up for all that is honourable.

Archetypes that populated the dusty prairie town’s of old Hollywood are everywhere, from Rachel Lefevre’s sweet school marm to Omar Benson Miller’s upstanding best buddy (tellingly, the film’s only African American cast member) and Frank Grillo’s seething and sweaty killing machine.

So anachronistic is much of Fleder’s film, it comes as no surprise when Franco’s Gator, having broken into Broker’s home, finds all he needs to know about the man’s past by rummaging through some boxes in the basement. Why Broker would have his old files lying around after having been relocated or why they exist in hard form at all, and not on a hard drive in Washington, is never explained.

So – in a nut shell, kinda a crappy movie, but has some good fight scenes in it and Winona Ryder getting all skanky as an ageing middle-woman under pressure is fun to watch. Worth a buck at your closet redbox.