‘Green Lantern’ let down by awful script
Green Lantern
(Cert 12, 114 mins, Action/Sci-Fi/Romance/Comedy)
When an old adversary called Parallax re-emerges in the Lost Sector, venerated Green Lantern warrior Abin Sur (Temuera Morrison) is fatally wounded in the ensuring melee and his ring chooses cocksure United States Air Force test pilot Hal Jordan (Ryan Reynolds) as a worthy successor.
While Hal is impetuous and weak, he is blessed with humanity and the most important attribute of all: he looks smokin’ hot in a skin-tight green bodysuit.
Saving the Earth from Parallax puts a dampener on Hal’s on-off romance with fellow pilot Carol Ferris (Blake Lively).
Alas, the plucky gal has a stalker: scientist Dr Hector Hammond (Peter Sarsgaard), who is exposed to a wisp of Parallax’s evil and begins to mutate into a hideous harbinger of doom.
Torn from the pages of DC Comics, Green Lantern is a special effects-heavy battle of the planets that fails to light up the small screen. Martin Campbell’s soulless film casts a dim glow thanks to a smattering of crisp dialogue (“Watch your back,” someone warns Hal; “That’s impossible,” he retorts cheekily) and slick set pieces.
Reynolds is the leading actor of his generation when it comes to losing his clothes, regardless of whether his nudity serves any narrative purpose.
Here, he wisecracks and flexes his abs without breaking a sweat but he generates pleasing screen chemistry with Lively.
As the earthbound villain, Sarsgaard is pitiful rather than insidious, and he looks almost as old as his screen father, Tim Robbins. Terrible dialogue doesn’t magically improve when delivered as a rallying cry over James Newton Howard’s sweeping orchestral score.
Rating: 2/5.
