WHEN I first laid my eyes on 51st State, it was a reflex action on my part to utter: "Another bone-dry British excuse for a film!" As you may well known, I grew up on a steady, unhealthy diet of Hollywood flicks (movies, it used to be called).
Then I saw Samuel Jackson's face. Hey, what is this guy doing here? It turned out to be a joint venture of some sort because I had erroneously thought it was another Channel 4-type film.
And it was all because of that guy, Robert Carlyle who played Felix De Souza in the movie.
I do know a number of De Souzas so it came as a shock to find one white guy having a "serani" name. Anyway, that's beside the point.
I trawled through the Net and found out that 51st State was released in 2002. How come nobody told me that? I missed it too but caught it on the backswing when it re-surfaced on Astro.
What was even a bigger surprise for me was that the director is one Hong Kong guy named Ronny Yu. Never heard of him, until now.
On the plus side, Ronny did a good job. I enjoyed watching the movie. It was a bit offbeat but fun in the final analysis.
The plot was slightly off the main course. It's all about this American chemist Elmo McElroy (Jackson) who holds the secret formula to the greatest breakthrough in designer drugs.
Apparently, the blue pill can send its consumer off to a new level in ecstasy. But the whole deal fell through when too many crooks got involved.
Right in the middle of it all is Dakota Palmer (Emily Mortimer) who's a very efficient assassin, who also happens to be De Souza's former girlfriend.
That's when the fun begins. After watching for 20 minutes, I was hooked, while I was having my TV dinner. I like the part when Dakota "accidentally" shot De Souza in the butt.
If I was wondering where did all the bullets and explosions came from, I wondered no more after discovering that Hong Kong import Ronny Yu was the mastermind behind all the action scenes.
I had this almost irresistible urge to say "seen it all in The Killer (starring Chow Yun-fatt).
Granted that this is not the best action movie in the world but if you have nothing to do on a sad afternoon and it's raining heavily outside, this is one movie that will chase your blues away.
Look, you can't have Oscar-winning movies on Astro all the time. That costs money.
51st State has all the makings of a movie that appeals to the working masses.
It has lots of fight scenes, a bit of sex (nothing shocking) and some bad language (nope, your mum won't frown).
I guess it's the kind of fare that regular cinema goers would feel that they have got their money's worth.
It's 92 minutes long and Quentin Tarantino might just smile when or if he sees this film.