Five Minutes watching: The Big Bang.

I don't watch a lot of movies, because I don't have time. But at the end of day of work, then class, then reading for the next class, and writing down what I wrote so I can remember it all, I'll turn on one of them pay channels I have for just such an emergency and catch five minutes of something.



This review is not to be confused with the television show the Big Bang Theory, a show which I've actually found to be at times ridiculously enjoyable despite it's now strained original concept. No, this is about the movie, The Big Bang, a film trying very hard to be noir, is about a world weary detective, a missing woman, the mob, hidden diamonds and the Higgs-Boson particle. Yes, that Higgs-Boson particle.

It stars Antonio Banderas, Sam Elliott, this guy who had to be seven feet tall, with cameos from Bill Duke and Snoop Dog. I don't think ever saw the inside of a cineplex. One night I saw the trailer online and thought it looked interesting, well, if it's on don't change the channel interesting, so when it popped up on Encore the other night I decided to tune in. That it was on the Black oriented Encore channel I found strange, until I sussed out Encore's version of black includes every movie starring a non-white person.

But I digress. The film, how can I describe it? You ever see a film that would be good if they remade it, and when they remade it they actually put some effort into it this time? Yeah, this was that movie. Because the story was actually only 30% Hollywood re-hash, the cutesy physics angle and associated wordplay wasn't' too cutesy, and I honestly didn't figure out the twist until the characters did. The down sides? A weird, supposedly arty, slantly camera angle that got annoying after a while, bad acting, and the special effects at the end could have used a bit more polish.

It's a film that if they remade it with George Clooney or Sam Worthington, better. And I don't mean a re-write, I mean a word for word - shot for shot remake of this, it would be amazingly good. Or keep it ethnic and use Terrance Howard, Chiwetel Ejiofor or Idris Elba. Even Mos Def who can act when he wants could have pulled it off. Some of the trouble was Banderas, whose wandering accent made pieces of dialogue and the whole voice over thing hard to understand, and whose acting left a bit to be desired. Like if he had tried actual acting.

Seriously, ramp up the production values by 20% (or use darker sets) and you might actually have a good movie here. As it is, it's the kind of movie you watch only because the trailer was good, and once you've started watching it you just want to see the end. It's not Shakespeare, or even anything close. So if you're not doing anything else.