Word: plot
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...plot is not particularly original. The film is mostly a transposition of 2004’s “Open Water.” Instead of being stranded in the middle of the ocean with a group of sharks, the protagonists of “Frozen” battle freezing temperatures, lack of food or water, and a pack of hungry wolves below...
While the plot may not be particularly inventive, the brilliance of the film is that, compared to modern horror film standards, freezing temperatures and a pack of wolves do not sound particularly frightening. However, Green portrays the group’s desperation in such a hauntingly realistic manner that he manages to make frostbitten faces and frozen limbs be just as disturbing as the most expensively elaborate special effect...
Between its plot and the actors’ delivery (“Nail this job and consider yourself a part of the club,” says James’ unseen C.I.A. correspondent, while Charlie Wax tells the gangs he shoots up to “Wax on, wax off”), “From Paris With Love” so embraces cliché that it almost becomes tongue-in-cheek. Indeed, a lot of the movie finds humor in appropriating the hokey reality of action movies such as “Rush Hour.” There...
...James discovers, the drug-busting mission they set out on is really a mission to trace the money back to a circle of Pakistani terrorists. These Pakistanis are the center of a labyrinth of cocaine and prostitution, and hang around with explosive vests on their tables. Furthermore, their plot is to infiltrate the U.S. Embassy with explosives hidden beneath their burqas...
Given the racial profiling going on in America against Arabs, and more relevantly, the current controversy regarding burqas in France, this plot development is a sensitive one that deserves to be handled with care, and it’s here that the mixture of comedy and action becomes a problem. The comedy seems to sound at the wrong points; Charlie’s unerring deductions seem a testament to defamatory racial stereotypes. The only attempt to bring attention to the fact that the Pakistanis in the film should not be judged as a group happens during a dinner party. Charlie...