The Michigan Daily - michigandaily.com Wednesday, October 17, 2012 - 7A The Michigan Daily - michigandailycom Wednesday, October 17, 2012 - 7A 'Arrow'hits a high mark CBS FILMS "So how much are they paying you to be in this movie?" Clever confusing 'Psychopaths' Superhero show works within limitations By SAM CENZHANG Daily Arts Writer A compelling superhero origin story has a lot in common with a successful television pilot. The past few years have seen a glut of blockbust- ers explaining Arrow a superhero's traumatic past Pilot and whence his Mondays at18 p.m. powers came, then launching The CW their respective franchises with the initial, bring- the-team-together fight. Just like in a pilot, character outlines and plot elements have to be made clear without dwelling too much on background or exposition, because, after all, we're there to see some ass-kicking. What makes the "Arrow" so successful really doesn't have much to do at all with the eponymous Green Arrow's ori- gin story, which the pilot leaves deliberately vague. To sum up: Wealthy playboy Oliver Queen is stranded on an island and presumed dead, then mysteri- ously becomes a martial arts and archery master and comes back to wreak havoc on the corrupt wealthy of his city. The absent mythology is unmissed. The episode had plenty of cheesy expository lines and hammy voiceover from Queen (Stephen By AKSHAY SETH . Daily Arts Writer The first scene in Martin McDonagh's recent film "Seven Psychopaths" evokes classic Tarantino - a forcibly boring **- setting, pains- takingly "nor- Seven mal" characters Psychopaths and, of course, dialogue. Pithy, At Quality 16 nonchalant, and Rave beautiful dia- logue. From a CBS Films distance, it's just two run-of-the-mill mob hitmen shooting the shit as they prepare to brutally execute their boss's ex-girlfriend. But sitting in the theater, it's a bracing display of how effective writing can take complete hold of how the most overused, rundown movie tropes can come to life on screen. Those first five minutes, along with a few more moments littered throughout the movie, are some of the most entertaining snippets of film released this entire year. The rest of the flick, for lack of a better phease, sucks. It's boring, scatterbrained and overwhelm- @ ingly plagued by McDonagh's feeble attempts at ridiculing the predictability of modern Holly- wood. Even though the assertion is valid, it's psychopathic (get it?) to try and demonize the notion of predictability by making a film so completely defined by its own unpredictability. Don't get me wrong - some strangeness can go a long way. But McDonagh isn't just satisfied by making his plot weird. No, he has to randomly stick in three more bizarre stories that serve only to disrupt the film's already off- kilter pacing. Why do the stories seemingly appear out of thin air? Perhaps the-oldest excuse in the book: The main character, Marty (Colin Farrell, "Total Recall"), is a Hollywood writer suffering from alcoholism and a severe case of writer's block. Marty's current project is a script called "Seven Psycho- paths," about a group of uniquely insane individuals on a quest. The problem is, Marty doesn't know who the psychopaths are, or what the quest is. The onlythings set in stone: The movie can't have too much violence and can't end in a massive shoot-out. It's a shitty idea and Marty, knows it. So as he struggles to string something together before deadline, our beleaguered protagonist hesitant- ly accepts the help of Billy (Sam Rockwell, "Moon") and Hans (Christopher Walken, "Click"), scam artists who make a living by kidnapping dogs and then return- ing them for the reward. Maybe it should have oniy been four psychopaths. As it so happens, the duo's lat- est victim is a shih-tzu owned by the fiercest dog-loving mob boss in town (Woody Harrelson, "The Hunger Games"). Finally, just as the fun starts and the dog hunt begins, McDonagh's film col- lapses in on itself and simply stops being entertaining. The surpris- ing part is that the performances by the three leads never slip into that same category. All the cheesy impersonations aside, the fact of the matter is that Walken is the type of actor who could stand in a corner reading an encyclopedia and somehow manage to make it entertaining. So when "Seven Psychopaths" starts to feel drawn out and irrel- evant, the character the audience really looks toward is Hans who, through his wonderfully accented quirks and mannerisms, is able to keep them chuckling along. But McDonagh has never really had a problem coming up with fascinating characters or the necessary dialogue to keep them interesting. The trouble is that after looking past all the clumsily executed side-stories and sub- plots, no concrete narrative exists to dictate the flow. And maybe that lack of structure is exactly what McDonagh was going for, but for god's sake, Marty, why does it have to be so damn boring? Putting the hood in Robin Hood. Amell, "Hung"); it is, after all, a CW production. Despite that, it moves at a brisk pace, and if anything more had been added, it probably wouldn't have sus- tained the viewer's credulity or attention. It's clear that the Green Arrow of the original comics is heav- ily indebted to Batman, right down to having an "Arrowcar" and an "Arrowcave" - no, seri- ously. Visually, it's all too easy to compare "Arrow" to Christopher Nolan's trilogy. It's a little unfair that any superhero story with- out too much sheen immediately becomes categorized as a "Dark Knight" clone, but that speaks to the ubiquity of the Nolan movies more than anything else. To its credit, "Arrow" doesn't really try too hard to be "The Dark Knight." The glimpses of Starling City, the New York clone du jour, show a clear (but not too onthe nose) contrastbetweenthe lives of Queen and his plutocrat friends and those of the strug- gling poor. The action sequences are appealingly acrobatic and choreographed. Most impor- tantly, there's not a whiff of the self-important, intellectual pon- derousness that critics of "The Dark Knight" accused of drag- ging down that franchise. While the dialogue is at times stilted and certain plot elements exas- perating, the show is ultimately enjoyable for its straightforward approach. Stephen Amell is a surpris- ingly solid presence as the Green Arrow. He had a hard time not sounding lame with the afore- mentioned voiceover, but Lau- rence Olivier himself would have struggled with lines that clunky. To Amell's credit, he rises above the requisite CW cheese, bring- ing a certain asshole-ish dlan to the millionaire playboy fagade that serves as his cover and a strong physicality to his scenes as justice personified. "Arrow" is a series that is well aware of its limitations, and never tries to overstep them. The pilot demonstrated that the show is well able to sustain attention through a dynamic hour, balancing generally well- executed action, with sprinkles of exposition, and the end of the episode managed not to be the most hackneyed possible plot twist. For a CW superhe- ro series, consistently staying out of its own way is a serious accomplishment, and "Arrow" is on target. (Oh God). THE LOSING STAFF HAS TO POST A PICTURE TO FACEBOOK WEARING THE WINNERS' COLORS. WE DON'T LOOK GOOD IN GREEN. DON'T LET US DOWN!