Review

Review Date: 19-June-11
Spoiler Rating: Low
Juju Judgment: Juicy

Green Lantern (2011)

As superpowers go, Green Lantern's are pretty much the coolest. He can fly like many of his brethren and breathe in outer space, but on top of that he can bring to life whatever he imagines. Is that helicopter crashing? No problem. He can turn it into a classic car and give it a ramp to drive on. Is the sun's gravity trying to suck him in? Not to worry. He can strap himself to backward-moving jets. In moments of crisis he's a god of invention. His superness is essentially cerebral.

The limitlessness of this power, along with its cosmic origins, offers a lot of potential to a movie, and Green Lantern makes decent use of it. The film's mood and special effects have a gee-whiz feel that works well for a hero who wears a bright green body suit and hangs out on other planets. When the visuals aren't popping some of the context-setting scenes drag, but at least they are enhanced by star Ryan Reynolds. With his usual wealth of charm, he endears the viewer to the contradictory qualities of Hal Jordan, a test pilot whose good heart is hidden by a dread of taking anything too seriously. (This is due to losing his father at a young age, another thing he shares with many superhero brethren.) One can understand why Hal's love interest (Blake Lively) feels affection for him even when frustrated by his cavalier attitude, and why a fallen alien bestows a ring of power upon him which entails the protection of the universe.

The intergalactic army to which Hal is thus inducted is led by a dude (Mark Strong) whose name is Sinestro, so even without knowing the Green Lantern comics or watching the teaser scene during the credits, you know he's going to go bad. Yet in this first installment he's chiefly a harsh mentor. The villain is a corrupt life force that resembles something nasty from a bathtub drain, only it's asteroid-sized and wants to destroy Earth. Set against Hal's new role, Sinestro and this entity establish the theme of fear versus will, which is quite philosophical for a gee-whiz action flick. With such compelling characters and concepts, the movie doesn't much need actor Peter Sarsgaard as a nerdy scientist who himself becomes corrupted. Much as I like to see Sarsgaard's sleepy-eyed face in any movie (although here it's made hideous), his character is merely a skewed version of Hal, a guy with a father issue who hasn't squandered his gifts but doesn't get any credit for them, and whose alien-driven alteration occurs simultaneously with Hal's own. Yet in both weak and strong moments Hal speaks for himself, so why the counterpoint? It seems the screenwriters thought they needed a local menace because the evil space hairball and Hal's struggle with heroism weren't enough of a threat. I hope the next Green Lantern outing maintains the space-adventure atmosphere while giving Hal and Sinestro plenty of room to enact the ideological conflict they represent.

Copyright © 2011 The Jujube (M. I. Kim). All rights reserved.