stewate4

Rather contrived thriller. The most obvious difficulty is why a supposedly professional contract killer would go to the trouble of taking the cab driver hostage in the first place. Why not simply hire a car, change cabs between jobs, or try to do a better job of hiding what you were up to in the first place? As it is, Vincent (Tom Cruise) as the killer ends up with a very reluctant companion who he must know would try to foul things up for him. The only reason is to keep the two characters of the cab driver Max (Jamie Fox) and the killer together, which might make sense as a way of creating dramatic situations but stretches believability. However, if you can get past that, the very clichéd ending and numerous other plot holes, it's not too bad. I'll give it a 7/10 for sheer entertainment.

I never saw this on TV, but I picked the series up based on what everyone on the IMDb and Amazon were saying about it, and that it was a Joss Whedon show, and I liked his other series Buffy and Angel. Firefly has the same high quality of writing as these shows, but due to Fox's foolish decision to cancel the series the story arc never had a chance to really get going, though there are enough indications of where it was heading to make it extremely frustrating that the network never gave it a chance.

The firefly universe is an original one, owing little to any previous Sci-fi series I can remember with no alien races mentioned. Basically in this universe there are a number of hi-tech and economically rich core worlds, where the flying cars, laser weaponry, futuristic cityscapes and the other things familiar from other Sci-fi series live. However in the course of the series these are hardly ever visited. Instead the stories take place in the terra-formed outer worlds, where everything is very low-tech; conventional firearms, horses to get around, a frontier, often rather lawless, Wild West aspect to many of the places, where survival is very much a struggle but things are still kept together by visiting space traders, such as the Firefly class ship Serenity on which our heroes live and work. If the core worlds are the equivalent of modern day First World USA and Western Europe, these outer worlds are the equivalent of our more poverty stricken Third World.

Earth is never mentioned much, except when people refer to "Earth that was", which hints something rather drastic happened here in this universe's past, and when we first see it, it's in the aftermath of a civil war, between a centralised Alliance and a number of other worlds who want independence (the brownshirts), and in which the Alliance has won. The captain of Serenity, Capt. Malcolm Reynolds, and his friend and second in command Zoe Warren, both fought in this war on the losing brownshirt side. Other crew members are the pilot Wash (Zoe's husband), Jayne a mercenary employed as the ships muscle, and Kaylee the ship's engineer, as well as the 'companion' Inara, a very high class prostitute who rents on of the ship's shuttles (in this world this class of 'companion' is an honorable profession, more like a courtesan, and Inara was initially taken on board the ship to give them openings to high society).

The series starts as the ship takes on board some passengers including Shepard (sort of a priest) Book and a doctor called Simon Tam, to raise some money to keep the ship going (they are always rather hard up for money). I won't spoil anything by going into what happens, (you'll just have to get hold of the DVD's), but it's a great introductory story. All in all I recommend Firefly to anyone who likes Sci-fi, westerns or just a good story.

On this basis I can't wait for the film Serenity, when it comes out in 2005.

10 / 10

Finally picked up a copy of the DVD, as I'd heard about the film and was curious to see Amber Benson's work. I won't go into the plot beyond saying it's a comedy/drama based around the two main characters, Chance and her friend Simon. Like many Indy films it's a bit rough around the edges, but I enjoyed it a lot. Unlike some of the other reviews I thought the acting was for the most part good, particularly the two lead roles, Amber Benson as Chance, and James Marsters as her friend Simon, with interesting characters and story.

Having said that I can understand why other people wouldn't like it, especially if they are only used to seeing typical Hollywood style films or are expecting the stars to reprise their Buffy roles. Indy film fans, or people who like character based films are more likely to be won over.

Anyway, I'm giving it 8/10 as I liked it a lot.