Up and Coming Weekly is a weekly publication in Fayetteville, NC and Fort Bragg, NC area offering local news, views, arts, entertainment and community event and business information.
Issue link: http://www.epageflip.net/i/362354
AUGUST 13-19, 2014 UCW 17 WWW.UPANDCOMINGWEEKLY.COM Who Am I This Time? An unstable undercover agent creates multiple personalities in Legends by DEAN ROBBINS Martin Odum (Sean Bean) is a CIA agent who transforms himself into a different person for each undercover job. For example, he goes to great lengths to style himself as a creepy outsider to infiltrate a domestic terrorist group, masking his British accent with a stutter. Legends keeps you on the edge of your seat as Martin tries not to blow his cover under tremendous pressure (Wednesday, 9 p.m., TNT). That would be enough of an accomplishment for a new series, but Legends adds an intriguing twist. Martin is a psychological wreck who has trouble working with his colleagues and his supervisor, Crystal (Ali Larter). Apparently, his unstable personality is what allows him to lose himself in a character. In fact, he's so unstable that we're not surprised when a mysterious figure accosts Martin and suggests that he's not who he thinks he is. Suddenly the key question isn't "How will Martin stop that bomb from going off?" It is, more elementally, "Who is Martin?" So far, the series' only lapse is having Crystal go undercover as a stripper. I hope Legends gets around to asking the question "Who is Crystal?" — and it would be nice if the answer were something more than just "a sex object." Wahlburgers Wednesday, 10 pm (A&E) This reality series was a hit when it premiered earlier in the year, and God knows why. Singer Donnie Wahlberg and actor Mark Wahlberg hang out with brother Paul, who runs the restaurant Wahlburgers in their native Boston — and that's about it for plot. In season two, Paul gets into a fantasy football league, and Mark helps a friend with dental problems. I mean, we all have dental problems of our own, right? Why spend a half- hour looking at someone else's X-rays? I'm not saying I don't watch Wahlburgers. I'm merely trying to figure out its appeal. Is it redemptive to see life's minutiae elevated to the level of performative spectacle? Or is our obsession with the Wahlbergs simply an act of displacement — in other words, a sublimation of our fear of the void? Okay, enough philosophical questions. Let's see how the dental work turned out. The Border Wednesday, 10 pm (FX) In season two, a detective from the U.S. side of the border (Diane Kruger) and her Mexican counterpart (Demian Bichir) continue to delve into the drug war and its attendant corruption. I don't understand why critics like this series, other than my sneaking suspicion that critics are masochists. The Bridge earns their affection in the now-standard way: putting an artsy gloss on a grimly boring plot while throwing in enough torture to make them feel like something significant is happening. This week's episode is a bust in terms of storytelling, but it does showcase a character gagged, flayed and duct-taped to a chair. "Help me, please," he moans. Funny, I was moaning the exact same thing. Wicked Tuna: North vs. South Sunday, 10 pm (National Geographic Channel) I'm a fan of the Wicked Tuna reality series, in which Gloucester fishing boats go head-to-head to catch invaluable bluefin tuna one by one. So you can bet I'm excited by this spinoff, in which our New England heroes sail to North Carolina's Outer Banks to challenge Southern tuna fishermen on their own turf. The Southerners are more godly than the New Englanders, praying for divine help in catching the fish. "The three things I hold dear are God, family and fishing," drawls a Southern captain named Britton. The fishing techniques are different in the Outer Banks, but the caveman behavior is much the same. The fishermen taunt their rivals, scream at the fish and howl with joy when they get a bite. There's no shortage of catches in the first episode, so everybody's happy. Well, everybody except the tuna. Clearly, they need to pray a lot harder. I generally like Luc Besson because he doesn't take himself too seriously. You know how I can tell he doesn't take himself too seriously? Upon close inspection his movies are fun and look cool, but every single plot originated in the mind of the same 12-year old boy that wrote The Fifth Element. His most recent film, Lucy (90 minutes), is a Scarlett Johansson vehicle that promises an hour and a half of ScarJo running, shooting and kicking people while also being really, really smart. Lucy (Johansson) is an American woman living in an Asian country that I initially thought was Singapore for no real reason. Internet Movie Database has since informed me that she is a student living and studying in Taiwan. Anyway, she is dating a dumb guy who is into unspecified illegal goings on, possibly just drug running but also possibly money laundering and other bad stuff. Luc Besson must have watched a whole bunch of Tarantino films because he starts the movie with a seemingly endless back and forth between Lucy and her boyfriend. Unlike Tarantino dialogue this nonsense adds nothing to my enjoyment of the film, slowing it down right when it should be catching my attention. To sum up: he wants her to take a briefcase into a hotel and give it to someone. She, probably because that request is totally shady, refuses and tries to leave approximately 30 times, then ends up with the briefcase handcuffed to her arm. Instead of (a) walking to the nearest police officer, (b) heading to a locksmith, (c) buying a hacksaw from a hardware store, (d) slamming the briefcase into the head of the boyfriend until he gives her the key or (e) anything marginally based on common sense, she walks the case into the hotel. Needless to say, this was the worst of all possible choices. Lucy, sort of trashy and sort of dumb (the chipped nail polish says it all) ends up in the middle of some gangsters doing gangster stuff and whimpers her way into even more trouble via hilariously translated directions to open up the briefcase alone because what's in it might kill everyone in the room. Turns out that it's some made-up drug called CPH4. She is promptly turned into a drug mule to convey the drug to somebody who will sell it in Europe. Why she gets this job is left to our imagination, since it makes absolutely no sense to force someone into being a drug mule when there are dozens of ignorant young men convinced that they won't get caught lined up to do it willingly. Whatever, Luc Besson. A series of nonsensical events leads to the bag rupturing inside Lucy's stomach, immediately gifting her with the kind of superpowers that someone dropped into a vat of toxic waste can only dream about acquiring. She kills a bunch of people, making no distinction between bad guys and random taxi drivers, and then heads to a hospital where the carnage continues. She can now control her body to the extent that surgeons hacking into her stomach cavity does not interrupt her emotional chat with her mother about the nature of love. Her mother, probably assuming that Lucy has taken massive amounts of Ecstasy, is like, "Whatever, I love you too, bye." Lucy then heads back to the first gangster to telepathically extract the location of the other drug mules so she can intercept them and get the bags of drugs they carry in order to sustain her long enough to…do something? It's not quite clear, and then it doesn't matter because her face melts, and then she takes more drugs and she's okay, but time is running out. More cool fighting, then Morgan Freeman is there staying calm, cool and collected while Lucy reunites with the Godhead or whatever. It's all very conceptual. If that's your thing, you'll probably enjoy the film. Just don't overthink it. Don't Overthink It Lucy (Rated R) by HEATHER GRIFFITHS HEATHER GRIFFITHS, Contributing Writer. COMMENTS? Editor@ upandcomingweekly.com. 910.484.6200.