"Hum dee dum...all alone in rainy London. Damn, I feel a strange urge to write poetry." 28 Days Later (R, 108 min.) Wide release Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle (PG-13, 105 min.) Wide release

Thursday, June 26, 2003
Copyright © Las Vegas Mercury

Film: The sound and the fury

28 Days Later is much better than its title

Fighting against a title that sounds like a Sandra Bullock sequel--and an ad campaign that does little justice to its eerie London locations--28 Days Later barges into theaters this week like a rampaging collusion between Cronenberg and Romero. And while director Danny Boyle (Trainspotting, Shallow Grave) has sensiblities that are less compulsively detailed than the former's and more hyperactive than the latter's, he thankfully possesses the scariness of both.

The plot may be retro, harking back to such post-apocalyptic killer-germ movies as 12 Monkeys (1995) and even Things to Come (1936), but 28 Days Later has a zingy propulsiveness and frantic energy that feels entirely fresh. Boyle doesn't hang about, throwing us right into the middle of a terrifying and chaotic animal-rights raid on a London laboratory where angry-looking apes are being experimented on. The pissed-off primates, infected with a virus called Rage, soon make short work of their liberators and set out to infect the city.

Twenty-eight days later, an injured bicycle messenger named Jim (Cillian Murphy) awakes in a deserted hospital to a nightmare of silence and emptiness where the few remaining healthy souls slink from hideout to hideout in terror of the marauding "infected." Joining forces with a self-sufficient black woman (Naomie Harris) and a resourceful father and daughter (Brendan Gleeson and Megan Burns), Jim heads for an army post outside Manchester--and a horror more reminiscent of Darwin than Pasteur.

Aided by impressive sound editing and an inventive use of digital video, Boyle has given visual life to the phrase "quivering with rage": His red-eyed zombies vibrate like rotting tuning-forks and zip around in blurred, furious streaks. And if you ignore the lapses in logic--why don't the infected kill each other?--you can appreciate Boyle's wonderfully chilling images of vacant high-rise projects, their entrances jammed with abandoned shopping carts, and streets animated solely by windblown trash. Atmospheric and creepy, 28 Days Later is a surprising find in a Hulk-infected multiplex. Look for it.--Jeannette Catsoulis

Crouching tiger, hidden tampon

"This is such bullshit!" mutters Bernie Mac in Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle. And that apt summation, from the actor who manfully takes over Bill Murray's role, is about all you need to know about video director McG's sequel to his 2000 smash hit, based on the '70s TV show.

That and the fact that Demi Moore looks better in a bikini than Halle Berry did in her Die Another Day Ursula Andress outfit. Also, that between the kinetic fight scenes, there's some spectacular motocross action, guaranteed to wow young viewers.

More sensitive, mature souls may ponder not just the cringeworthy double entendres and antediluvian depiction of women (it makes Bond look boringly politically correct) but the fact that producer Drew Barrymore and her co-stars Lucy Liu and Cameron Diaz don't find the project so horribly offensive that they refuse to have anything to do with it. But money talks--as it clearly did for John Cleese, who appears, suitably shamefaced, in a painfully unfunny supporting role.

The plot, such as it is, concerns rings that hold the key to the federal witness protection program, and suitably sleazy baddies Justin Theroux and Moore. But who cares? As the film makes its disjointed way through references to everything from The Sound of Music, The Pink Panther, Flashdance and a thinly veiled dig at M:I-2, bored adults with half a brain will be fervently wishing they were watching any of those flicks instead. They're veritable masterpieces compared to this trash. It'll be a huge hit.--Anthony Allison