AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |
Back to Blog
Anaconda filmleri12/18/2022 ![]() ![]() Along amongst the cast, Voight seems to understand just how silly Anaconda truly is. It’s really scary to think about what the film would have been like without Voight shaking things up. I mean, he literally strangles a character to death with his legs! But, thanks to Voight’s crazed energy he’s still the most compelling character in the movie. ![]() It’s as if Voight showed up on set and looked at what was going and then said to himself, “Well, Jon, it’s all up to you.” Serone is really a pretty vicious character. Voight growls, snarls, and glares as if the fate of the world depended upon it and he rips into his Paraguayan accent with all the ferocity of a character actor who understands the importance of being memorable in an otherwise forgettable movie. Instead, Voight gives a performance that seems to be channeling the spirit of the infamous Klaus Kinski. Wisely, Voight doesn’t waste any time trying to be subtle or in anyway believable in the role of Serone. But really, the biggest special effect in the movie is Jon Voight. When it finally does, it’s actually a pretty impressive throw-back to the type of cheesy by entertaining monsters that used to show up in drive-in movies back in the 50s and the 60s. It takes a while for the snake to show up. Voight plays Paul Serone, a Paraguayan who says that he can help the documentary crew find an isolated Amazon tribe but who, once he gets on the boat, basically takes over and announces that he’s actually a snake hunter and he’s planning on capturing the biggest anaconda in existence. Owen Wilson is his usual quirky self, delivering his lines in his trademark Texas stoner drawl. And then you’ve got Ice Cube coolly looking over the Amazon and basically daring the giant snake to even think about trying to swallow him. You’ve got Jennifer Lopez, delivering her lines with a lot of conviction but not much sincerity. They’ve all got their own unique style of acting and seeing them all on the same small boat together is just bizarre. It’s that they all seem to come from a totally different cinematic universe. I mean, it’s not just that you wouldn’t expect to come across these four people all in the same movie. I mean, let’s just consider the most familiar names in the cast. Whoever was in charge of casting this movie managed to assemble the most unlikely group of co-stars that you would ever expect to see in a movie about a documentary crew who run into a giant snake while sailing down the Amazon River. Those after that sort of thing could do a lot worse than return to this, if only to play 'guess the accent' with Mr Voight.In many ways, the 1997 monster film Anaconda is an incredibly dumb movie but let’s give credit where credit is for. Still, there are worse creature features than this, with worse CGI, being churned out now (I'm looking at you Mega Piranha). The snakes, meanwhile, actually look good in animatronic form but rather disintegrate when director Luis Llosa has to rely on cheap 1997 CGI. Voight is at his slimy best and Ice Cube and Lopez perform at least adequately. It makes what threatened to be a drab conflict between Stoltz and Voight's 'experts' something much more fun, as the out-of-their-depth crew battle mutiny and large slithery things with far too much intelligence than they should have. Somehow, from somewhere, completely not inkeeping with his character, Jonathan Hyde becomes the comic relief. Jennifer Lopez and Ice Cube become the film's Riggs and Murtaugh. Jon Voight appears attempting an approximation of several accents. The Christian symbolism which started ill-advisedly with Trejo, is dropped. Pretty soon though, the film goes through a change in fortunes. The 'hero', it is suggested, is going to be Eric Stoltz, now only famous for the amount of times he has found himself the subject of 'where are they now?'-style magazine features. Danny Trejo shows up, promisingly, and then jumps ship pretty damn quickly. ![]() A scrolling title bar tells dubiously of 'man-eating snakes'. A large part of that is perhaps down to the fact that, somehow, despite all of the odds and the problems with it, it really isn't that bad a film. 'the 'hero', it is suggested, is going to be Eric Stoltz, now only famous for the amount of times he has found himself the subject of 'where are they now?'-style magazine features'Īnaconda is a throwback to 1960s creature features, was directed by the man who manoeuvred Tom Berenger through Sniper and holds a distinctly wobbly 4.3/10 rating on IMDb, yet, somehow, it has become the schlocky Animal Horror that it is OK to like. ![]()
0 Comments
Read More
Leave a Reply. |