One Ring to Rule Them All

Like super heroes, not all comic book movies are equal. Marvel has done a mostly terrific job with their franchises, with a slew of super types getting ready for an Avengers movie next year. The DC hero, Green Lantern, gets the big screen treatment this year with director Martin Campbell (Casino Royale, Edge of Darkness) at the helm, and an A-list cast that includes Ryan Reynolds, Peter Sarsgaard, Angela Bassett, Michael Clarke Duncan, Geoffrey Rush (voice) and Tim Robbins.

Martin does the best he can with what a slew of screenwriters have given him. The film looks good and Reynolds is passable as the hero, but the script is talky, predictable, clunky, and not nearly as tight as, say, Iron Man or its sequel. Sarsgaard, an actor I pay attention to, is almost unrecognizable as the nasty villain Hector, and he chews the scenery and does the best with the clichéd dialogue and one-dimensional character he’s saddled with. The once-great Tim Robbins dials in a performance as a senator who….I won’t even bother. Suffice it to say he’s got nothing to do as a mere plot device any actor could have played.

And I won’t even go into the plot, except to say that a test pilot is chosen by a magic ring to save the earth, and the universe, by creating odd, Wonder Twin power-like objects to fight his battles with.

So where does this leave us? Green Lantern is a visually agreeable movie, the cast is fine and the story plays well enough for a super hero flick. I lump it in there with the 2003 Hulk, mindlessly entertaining but hardly memorable. But I like my super hero movies smart, like Iron Man, Christopher Nolan’s take on Batman and, hopefully, the forthcoming Captain America.