Australian Penthouse

Thanks to Paramount Pictures, Australian Penthouse is offering 5 readers the chance to win a DVD prize pack featuring kick-arse action movie JACK REACHER plus a Jack Reacher USB light and Jack Reacher dashboard mat (valued at $69.99).

THE MOVIE

FORMER US Army Military Police Corps officer and current drifter Jack Reacher (Cruise) takes it upon himself to travel to Pennsylvania after ex-US Army sniper James Barr (Sikora) is arrested for the apparent random murder of five people.

Reacher’s mission is simple: he wants to see Barr executed, as this isn’t the first time the sniper has gone violently rogue. In order to appease his own pedantic nature, though, and at the behest of District Attorney Helen Rodin (Pike), Reacher can’t help but conduct his own investigation into a case where not everything adds up.

Cruise puts in a believable performance as the no-bullshit drifter who will stop at nothing to uncover the truth. There are plenty of incredibly well-shot action sequences, buttressed with intriguing characters and engaging dialogue, as the mystery unfolds throughout the course of the film.

The film also boasts an all-star cast including Robert Duvall (Apocalypse Now), Rosamund Pike (Die Another Day), Werner Herzog (Rescue Dawn), David Oyelowo (Rise of the Planet of the Apes), Richard Jenkins (The Cabin in the Woods) and Jai Courtney (A Good Day to Die Hard).

DVD special features include a ‘Combat & Weapons’ documentary, whereas Blu-ray boasts two separate film commentaries and two documentaries: ‘When The Man Comes Around’ and ‘The Reacher Phenomenon’.

Based on best-selling author Lee Child’s popular series of novels, Jack Reacher was adapted for the screen and directed by Academy Award-winner Christopher McQuarrie (Best Original Screenplay, The Usual Suspects, 1995).

Check out the trailer:- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q-oxhxD32MM

THE COMPETITION

To be in the running to win one of five Jack Reacher DVD prize packs, answer the following question in 25 words or less: “If Jack Reacher was to roll into your town to solve one problem, what would that problem be, and how would he solve it?”

THE PRIZE

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Your home address

Question: “If Jack Reacher was to roll into your town to solve one problem, what would that problem be, and how would he solve it?”

JACK REACHER is available on DVD and Blu-ray May 22, 2013.

© 2012 Paramount Pictures. All Rights Reserved

TERMS & CONDITIONS:

Game of Skill

Competition commences on 10/05/13 and concludes on 30/05/13 at 12:00pm. Entry is open to all residents of Australia, but excludes all employees of Australian Penthouse. Entrants must provide their contact details and an answer to the question, “If Jack Reacher was to roll into your town to solve one problem, what would that problem be, and how would he solve it?” in 25 words or less. This is a Game of Skill which contains no element of chance, and which will be judged by members of the Australian Penthouse staff on 3/06/13. Five winners will receive 1 x DVD copy of Jack Reacher, 1 x Jack Reacher USB light and 1 x Jack Reacher dashboard mat (valued at $69.99), as detailed above. Prizes will be mailed to winners at the address nominated in their entries. The promoters take no responsibility for lost or misdirected entries, and no correspondence will be entered into.

Directors: Larry Charles
Cast: Sacha Baron Cohen, Ben Kingsley, Jason Mantzoukas, Anna Faris
Paramount Pictures

SACHA Baron Cohen’s personalised brand of ‘love it or hate it’ humour has come a long way since the street-not-so-wise antics of his retired Ali G character. With The Dictator, the raw social-commentary humour offered by the likes of Borat and Brüno has been somewhat organised thanks to the presence of fully scripted events.

That’s not to say that Cohen’s General Aladeen character is always on script, though, with many lines that seem to come off the cuff; sometimes to the point where the supporting cast momentarily drop character along with their jaws.

If you thought that Borat or Brüno were offensive, nothing has changed to make Cohen’s in-your-face comedy antics more accessible. In fact, if anything, The Dictator has the most potential to offend out of any of Cohen’s previous clownish personas. The chances are good, though, that you’re reading this review to see if The Dictator can hold up to the consistent laughs of Borat or Brüno.

The answer is, yes and no. The Dictator falls flat in some of the sequences that come across as though Cohen and co have stuck too closely to what’s scripted and, thus, what doesn’t come naturally to this type of comedy. But when General Aladeen is firing on all naively offensive cylinders, The Dictator reaps some of the biggest laughs out of his films to date.

Plot is light in the form of General Aladeen attempting to keep the ‘scourge’ of democracy out of his beloved dictatorship in the fictional Republic of Wadiya. Aladeen is forced to travel to America to address rumours that he’s constructing a nuclear weapon. As would be imagined, the lens that Aladeen sees the world through doesn’t quite match up to the freedom-loving values of the US of A.

While there are several genuinely hilarious cameos that would be spoiled by calling out, it’s the main supporting characters—Tamir (Kingsley), Zoey (Faris) and Nadal (Mantzoukas )—that help keep the energy high and provide Cohen with plenty of complementary comedic strength to bounce off.

Faris does a solid job of playing Aladeen’s love interest Zoey, which includes the return of her patented wide-mouthed shock face. Mantzoukas offers solid comedic chemistry with Cohen that makes their shared scenes hilarious, but it’s Kingsley’s straight-man Tamir that takes the cake, if only because it’s so odd seeing him in such a ridiculous film and somehow managing to keep a straight face throughout the madness.

After the comedic dust settles, The Dictator stands as a film that will solidify your existing feelings towards Sacha Baron Cohen’s outlandish chracters. If you don’t find him funny, you’ll probably find him less funny after you leave the cinema. If you love his style of boundary-pushing humour, though, the chances are good that you’ll love The Dictator and should find more laughs in it than any other comedy released this year.

THE DICTATOR is in cinemas now.

Review: Nathan Lawrence