Mike Watches A Movie: Angels and Demons

Angels and Demon’s Review

Please note that I’m going to spoil the plot here, so don’t read on if you care about that.

I’ve never read any of the Dan Brown books. “The Da Vinci Code” has been in my “to read” pile now for about 5 years and I just haven’t read it. There’s no real reason for this other than the fact that I’ve just had other books I’ve wanted to read. I’ve heard that some people love these books and I’ve also met people who give a hearty “harrumph” every time Brown’s books are mentioned. What may have swung me to not reading the books is that the Harrumphers (Which I think is a word I just made up) are usually people who’s opinions I trust, where as the people who loved the books are people who I usually disagree with on what constitutes “good”.

A while back I did actually see the TDC movie and my overall opinion of it was, meh. I didn’t think it was bad and there was some lovely camera work, but it just didn’t enthral me. Tom Hank’s was quite good as the lead character Prof. Langdon and Ian Mackellen did a decent job as the traditional eccentric British Old Man™ that has graced films for decades. It’s been a while since I watched the film, but at the time it just didn’t do it for me. I’d probably sit through it again but it would be if I was stuck in a hotel room on a Sunday afternoon and it just happened to be in the hotel’s DVD collection, you know?

I actually saw Angels and Demons before I saw TDC and, at the time, I kind of liked it. It didn’t rock my world or anything but I appreciated it. This is a movie I would actually choose to watch under less duress (Poet, didn’t know it)

We recently got a Blu Ray Player, so I’ve been picking up some Blu Ray’s that I thought would make the most of the set up. I’ve bought The Hobbit and Blade Runner, which are two films I have never seen and thought I’d try them out and I also picked up Angels and Demons off Amazon for £8. I ultimately plumped for this for a couple of reasons. Firstly, I hadn’t seen it in a while and wanted to see if I still liked it. Secondly, I recalled the movie having a lot of sumptuous shots of Rome and The Vatican, which would no doubt look nice in glorious HD. Thirdly; my mum likes Dan Brown and had never seen the film, so I imagined she’d like a chance to see it.

After watching it again, I still enjoyed it but on a second viewing there are a lot of things about the story that I don’t like, that I didn’t really notice the first time around. I should mention that there are two versions of the movie on the Blu Ray Disc. There’s the Theatrical version and the extended version. I watched the Theatrical version. There may be bits on the extended version that address some of my problems with the movies overall plot. I went with the Theatrical version though because this is the version most people would have seen and I also wanted a viewing experience that was true to the first time I saw the movie, so my eventual viewpoint would be balanced. If any big fans out there have seen the extended version and think there’s anything in it that counter acts any points I make in my review, go stuff yourself! I keed, I keed! Feel free to comment and I’ll take it on board.

To lay out the basic plot for you, the story begins with the much loved Pope dying of a stroke. The Cardinals are in the process of trying to elect a new Pope when disaster strikes, as the four leading Cardinals in the Papal Race are kidnapped. Enter our hero Professor Langdon, played by Tom Hanks playing Tom Hanks. He’s a bit tetchy with The Vatican as they won’t let him into their precious archives. He’s writing a career defining book but needs to view one of the texts that The Vatican have stored to complete it. However, he is invited to help with the search for the cardinals due to the possibility of The Illuminati being involved; a subject which he knows a lot about.

So far, so good. We are soon introduced to his sexy accomplice (I believe this is a common theme with Dan Brown books) who is played by Ayelet Zurer. She’s a researcher from the Hadron Collider in Cerne. Her research partner was killed and a tube of anti matter was stolen. To both our main characters horror, not only have the cardinals been cardinal-napped but the container holding the anti-matter is stashed away somewhere in The Vatican and will explode at Midnight! Cue running around Vatican City for 2 hours trying to find the cardinals and stop the bomb going off!

Now, as a plot, that’s quite good. The idea works quite well. Hanks enters a dry yet firm performance and the supporting cast who put this story together are equally strong. The problem with the plot is that it just tries to be too cute at times and really does shoe-horn a twist at the end, when a twist isn’t needed. The actual story of Hanks using his super special sign decoding abilities to try and locate the cardinals is a good one. What makes it even better is that they don’t turn Hanks into a completely infallible genius. Yes, he does eventually get the locations right but he’s usually always 1 or 2 steps behind the killer, so it’s normally too late to be much good. 

The first time he tries to find a Cardinal, he gets the location wrong, pretty much damning the poor man to death. The death scenes for the Cardinals are all well done and suitably gruesome. They are all branded with one of the four elements (Earth, Fire, Wind, Water) and then killed in relation to that theme. For example, Cardinal number one is branded with “Earth” and is then filled with soil. A horrid yet thematically pleasing death, I think we can all agree. In fact, all 3 of the first cardinals die, but every time Hanks gets a little bit closer to saving them until he finally gets it right on the fourth one. I like that a lot because the film makes Hanks earn his success. He has to work at it and fail a few times before finally succeeding on the last Cardinal. That bit of the plot gets thumbs up from me.

Sadly, the plot starts to get silly and convoluted at this point. It comes to light that The Pope was actually, *gasp*, murdered! E gads! This news leads the Pope’s aid, played by Ewan McGregor, to decide to clear out the whole of Vatican City until peace is restored. The Cardinals, led by Armin Mueller-Stahl, stubbornly refuse and also refuse to clear St Peter’s Square. This is one of the bits in the film that really costs it credibility. Mueller-Stahl’s main reason for not evacuating is, and I paraphrase here, “We’re all going to go to heaven anyway, so it doesn’t matter if we die”. What? Now I know that the higher ups in the Catholic Church have a reputation for being a bit odd sometimes, but there is no way that a leading Catholic Cardinal would condemn and entire square full of innocent Catholics to death in that manner. I’m all for suspending my disbelief and everything, but that’s a pretty big jump to take. I just don’t buy that Mueller-Stahl would be that cold, nor that extreme. This is The Vatican we’re talking about here, not Al-Qaeda.

Still, I can accept this for the sake of drama (There’s less at stake if there isn’t a square full of people who can die in a blazing inferno of death™ so I’ll be a bit lenient). Ewan McGregor has what I consider to be the best acting performance in the film. I really like his portrayal of the character, at least until the final act when it gets silly. For most of the film he plays a quiet and thoughtful character, whose only motivation is seemingly to stop everyone dying in a horrific explosion. It’s quite hard to dislike a character with that motivation to be fair. It’d be like disliking a character who wants to stop puppies being drowned or a character who wants to prevent the spread of AIDS by letting people wear condoms (SATIRE!)

Ewan is made to look like a dedicated Catholic and an all around good egg. We’re informed that he was orphaned at a young age and the Pope adopted him. It’s also revealed that he learnt to fly helicopters while undertaking his military service (Could this become important later? Hmmm, we’ll have to see). As you can imagine, this whole Pope dying thing has upset him a tad, and the fact there’s a bomb due to vaporise The Vatican and a large chunk of Rome as well, really has made this the wrong week for him to quit smoking.

The movie eventually introduces us to our lead villain who is an unnamed assassin played by Nikolaj Lie Kaas. There’s deliberate mystery behind the character and Kaas plays him with a cold detachment that makes him both un-nerving but also not that memorable. They immediately try to make you think he’s all mysterious and professional by showing him having money wired from whoever is hiring him to a super duper secret bank account, on the Isle of Man. Seriously? The Isle of Man? Since when did deadly assassins stop putting their blood money into Swiss banks? Has the credit crunch hit that hard that he had to get an account on the Isle of Man instead? I mean, at least give him an account in Monaco to give him a bit of Bondesque street cred.

So anyway, Kaas is alright as a villain and they try and give him a bit of character depth by insinuating that he only kills people he has been told to kill or people who are armed. This explains why he doesn’t just sneak up and shoot Tom Hanks in the head, which would be advisable considering the fact that he’s TRYING TO UNDO HIS EVIL PLANS! The assassin and Tom Hanks eventually have a big face off where the assassin simply tells him not to follow him, otherwise he’ll shoot him. Hanks doesn’t follow him, because his character isn’t an idiot, and the assassin lets him go and save Ewan McGregor from supposed danger. 

It should be noted that Hanks and Zurer run right past Kaas at one point on route to saving Macgregor and he doesn’t care. THIS ASSASSIN IS TERRIBLE AT HIS JOB. Tom Hanks had seen his face and could possibly identify him yet he still lets him run off to save the day. If I’d paid Kaas for this assassin job, I’d want my money back! It should also be noted that Kaas is sent an email telling him that a get away vehicle is waiting for him. Everyone and his brother can clearly see that this car is going to explode once he turns the key in the ignition and, low and behold, the car blows up. I mean, I was practically yelling at the TV at the assassin not to turn the car on and he still does it and it still blows him to smithereens. Good riddance to bad assassin is what I say. You wouldn’t catch Ezio Alditore falling for that one.

I do feel a little harsh on Kaas here as he does the best with the part that has been written for him. When his character is coldly killing people, he does have a genuine menace to his actions. Everything he does is both clinical and also exerts that kind of melancholic ease that only a cold blooded European Assassin can provide. It would have worked better if he was just a killer, killing people who got in his way, rather than trying to give him a warped sense of ethics. This sort of character doesn’t need that kind of development. He’s a hired gun, hired to do a job. He’s also got his own liberty to think of. If you were an assassin and someone was getting dangerously close to ruining your plans, you’d bump the guy off using your mad assassin skillz (the “z” makes it cooler) to ensure that he couldn’t, I don’t know, RUIN YOUR EVIL PLAN!

Now it already takes a leap to accept that they wouldn’t just empty the square when the bomb threat came through, and they had video proof of the bomb. Add to that the fact that the assassin is letting our protagonist live for no other reason that he doesn’t seem to care about doing his job properly, then the plot hole sharks are starting to circle this movies drowning narrative as it thrashes away in the story sea.

So anyway, I mentioned that Hanks and Zurer are rushing back to The Vatican to save McGregor from his impending doom. This doom is in the form of our other main character, head of the Swiss Guard and general old grumpy man in a suit, Commander Richter, played by Stellen Skarsgard. Skarsgard is openly hostile to Hanks from the minute he shows up and spends a large part of the film scoffing at his ideas. He’s your run of the mill sour authority figure, who spends the movie barking at anyone within a 1 mile radius.

As the movie progresses, it begins to tease is that Skarsgard may be our villain of the piece. It is revealed that Zurer’s research partner kept a journal. A very thorough one it would seem, so thorough in fact that it might hold clues to his murderer. Skarsgard steals the journal and locks it in his Bond Villain style drawer in desk (You know, one of those ones that slides out so it no longer looks like it’s actually part of the desk and also has a computer monitor in it). This prompts Zurer to ask “what are you hiding?” to which he replies “What are you hiding?”. Well, considering that she left the journals out in the open, in an unlocked drawer, I would say she was pretty much hiding nothing in that regard. She couldn’t have done a worse job of hiding those journals, if that was her plan.

Throughout the movie they continue to build drama between Skarsgard and McGregor’s character. McGregor eventually cracks and orders a full evacuation of the square, along with a helicopter for the Cardinals. Skarsgard countermands the order and then locks himself in the office with McGregor for some Good Ol’ Fashioned Swiss Guard Priest Killin’™ (Or so it would seem)

Hanks and Zurer get to The Vatican just in time to get the door to the office broken down. McGregor is on the floor, branded with the symbol of two keys in the shape of an X , while Skarsgard is standing above him with a gun. Naturally, the guards shoot and kill him instantly, rather than capturing and killing him. Another priest runs in and leaps across the room to strangle McGregor. Again, rather than pulling the priest off Macgregor and taking him away for questioning, the guards shoot him dead. But don’t worry friends; the nonsense has only just started!

Hanks, Zurer and McGregor find the bomb but there isn’t enough time to diffuse it. By this point the helicopter has landed outside The Vatican. Oh if only there was a priest somewhere in the vicinity to the bomb who knew how to fly a helicopter! Praise the Lord for Deus Ex Machina!

So yes, McGregor takes the bomb, flies the helicopter to a safe distance, and then parachutes to safety while the helicopter explodes in a brilliant show of light. The Vatican is saved and it looks like The Cardinals are going to vote McGregor in as Pope. But then the twist kicks in. Remember the Bond Villain desk? Skarsgard’s last act is to pass Hanks a mysterious key. This is, of course, the key to the Bond Desk. While Zurer fiddles with the desk to find the journals, the mysterious TV screen presents itself and wouldn’t you know it, the key Hanks has is for the TV screen. The TV screen has recorded what really happened in the office and, in a completely unnecessary storyline twist; it turns out that our lad Ewan was the bad guy all along! 

His reason for such villainy? He can’t bloody stand science that’s why! The scientists were experimenting in Cerne to try and create the “God Particle”. The Pope thought this was a good idea as it would scientifically prove that God existed. McGregor disagreed and murdered him, with the ultimate goal of a much stronger and anti science Pope like himself taking over. Hanks rats the now evil McGregor out to the Cardinals who sick The Swiss Guard on him. McGregor decides it would be a better idea to just kill himself and he does so in brutal fashion. The movie ends with the Cardinal who Hanks saved becoming Pope. Hanks, due to saving the Pope and all, is finally given the material he needs to finish his book, provided he agrees to leave it back to the Vatican in his will.

Angels and Demons is a film that I was enjoying just fine before the pointless twist at the end. Sure, there are quite a few plot holes in the story at times, but the film also kind of earns these plot holes because it needs them for the story to actually have something at stake. We need to have the square full of people because it puts more pressure on our heroes to save the day. The reasons why the people are in the square don’t really make sense and they really have to make The Cardinals look pretty cold and uncaring to pull it off, but you are prepared to let it go in order to progress the story.

All the Deus Ex Machina things make a bit more sense with the twist ending, which is one of the positives about it. The fact that the helicopter is there makes sense because McGregor orders it personally, which plays into his plans.

I honestly think that this movie would have been a better film if they had just had McGregor save the day and then perish in the helicopter. Everything else from that point could still happen. They could have still elected the surviving Cardinal as The Pope and Hanks could have still got his book. I actually like how the ending would be much more a downer too. The twist ending just has a forced feeling of triumph about it. 

The twist ending does tie up a number of loose ends and they do their best to make it fit the plot, but I just don’t buy it. At no point do we see if McGregor is doing this on his own or whether he has help. If he is doing it on his own, then I don’t believe he could, no matter how much I suspend my disbelief. If he has help, why don’t we explore that part of it more? Sure, he hires Kaas’s assassin, but does he put the bomb in Kaas’s car? Does McGregor’s character even have the knowledge to place a bomb in a car like that? Did he hire someone to do it? I actually think this is quite important. If you’re going to have a car bomb go off to conveniently kill a character you need out of the way for plot reasons, I think you need to earn it through a proper explanation. The writers here don’t earn it. They just say “oh there’s a bomb in the car” and leave it at that. Come on, you could at least have McGregor have a throw away line like “I’m not the only person to feel this way” to at least tease that he might have had some help at some point.

Surprisingly, despite complaining about this film for nearly 3,500 words. I do quite like it. I enjoyed watching it and, as mentioned before, I would watch it again. Rome and The Vatican look lovely in HD and the main characters hit most of the marks they’re supposed to. You could argue that some of the characters are a bit simplistic at times, but I actually don’t think that’s a problem. A character can have a simple motivation so long as they own it and aren’t afraid to chase it at every turn. The problems arise when you start trying to give a simple character extra depth when extra depth isn’t required. All of the characters in this film are better when they follow their basic principles and motivations. Kaas is best when he’s an assassin coldly killing people for a pay cheque, McGregor is best when he’s trying to keep people safe from the bomb and Skarsgard is best when he’s stomping around and sneering about how this poncy “sign reading” stuff is a load of old knackers. 

Up to the ending, this film was hovering around a 6.5/7.0 out of 10. However, the ending drags it all the way down to 5.0. I’m all for a twist now and then, but there has to be a reason for it. This film would have been much better with a straight regular ending. The twist is honestly there for the sake of having one. It doesn’t enrich the story or make it more enjoyable. It’s a forced “happy” ending when one just isn’t required.

Final Score 5 out of 10

Conclusion:
I’m not going to tell you not to see this film. If you’re prepared to accept what it is, you’ll be able to enjoy it. I’ll be honest and say I did enjoy it but that still doesn’t mean it’s a critical success. There are a number of movies that I enjoyed that completely fall down when you try to critically analyse them. The question is would you want to spend 2 hours of your life with these characters? At the end of the day, I answered yes. The movie will hold your attention. Its story flaws drag it down in my opinion, but they didn’t drive me to turn on the film entirely. While the flaws mean that this isn’t a good movie, they don’t make it without worth. Hence the rating being bang in the middle of the spectrum.

I hope you enjoyed this review. I apologise for the absurd length of it. This is the first time I’ve ever tried doing a film review. If I do anymore in the future, I’ll try and chop the length down. Please feel free to let me know what you didn’t like in this and offer some improvements.

If you’ve made it all the way here, thanks for reading!

My Favourite 11 Wrestling Shows

I love pro wrestling, so I thought I'd write a blog about my favourite wrestling shows. Big whoop, wanna fight about it?

Enjoy

11: ROH Super Card of Honour 1

This show is from Wrestlemania weekend in 2006 and has two of the greatest matches I’ve ever seen on it. One is a 6 man tag match featuring wrestlers from a Japanese company called “Dragon Gate”. The match is insane with all sorts of high spots and crazy head drop moves. My MOTY for 2006 in fact. The main event is Daniel Bryan facing Roderick Strong. They go for nearly an hour and it’s one of the finest bouts I’ve ever seen. Two classic matches on one show. The rest of the card is the usual ROH stuff, but the two main events make it amazing

10: WWF Royal Rumble 2001

The Rumble match on this show is fantastic. Kane is dominant and eliminates 11 guys on route to making the final two. Honky Tonk Man makes a cameo and takes a guitar to the face. Steve Austin bleeds so much you’d think he’d need a transfusion. One of the best Rumble’s ever. Under card is amazing too with Jericho  and Benoit having perhaps the best ladder match of all time. Kurt Angle and HHH have a great title match too. All in all, perhaps the best Rumble from top to bottom ever.

9: WCW Spring Stampede 99

Best show WCW did during the Monday Night Wars in my opinion. Opener is Blitzkrieg Vs Juventud Guerrera in what is a contender for best opening match of all time. From that we go to Hak Vs Bam Bam Bigelow in what is perhaps the best hardcore match WCW ever put on. Benoit and Malenko team up to face Saturn and Raven, stealing the show in the process. Even the matches you’d think would suck (Disco Inferno Vs Konnan) are still a lot of fun. It’s amazing to watch a show this good, when you consider how horrid the product was in general during this time.

8: ECW The Doctor is in 96

One of ECW’s best arena shows. Main Event is Rob Van Dam Vs Sabu in a stretcher match, which may be their best match together. Mountains of crazy spots and some actual psychology to boot. This was also Chris Jericho’s last ECW show as he takes on Scorpio in a near fall fest that never fails to excite. Shane Douglas and Pittbull #2 have a match that is straight out of Memphis as Douglas hits Pittbull with everything not tied down in an effort to steal a win. There’s an insane tag title four way dance featuring The Gangsta’s. Louie Spicolli and Johnny Smith also have a solid match on the under card. Great show that highlights why ECW was so popular in it’s heyday.

7: TNA Unbreakable 2005

This was TNA’s last pay per view before getting on Spike TV. The build up for the show had been online only and had actually been some of the best TV that the company had ever done. Raven and Rhino take part in a great match that harkens back to their Hardcore Title Feud back in 2001. Bobby Roode and Jeff Hardy have a pretty good match, which was the first time they’d really tried to push Roode to any level up the card. But the highlight is the main event. A triple threat match between Samoa Joe, AJ Styles and Christopher Daniels. Simply put, this is one of the greatest matches that I’ve ever seen in my life. All 3 men were “on” in this one. I can’t do this match justice, you just have to see it. There is no shortage of huge moves and unique double teams. Each man has a role to play (Joe as the monster, Daniels as the conniving heel, AJ as the gutsy face) and all 3 do it to a level of perfection that I don’t think I’ve ever seen them do as well before or since. An all time classic that elevates a very good show to an excellent one.

6: WWF Backlash 2000

The WWF had countless classic shows in 2000 but this would be my pick of the litter. All things considered, Wrestlemania 2000 was a relative disappointment, so WWF needed to rebound with a great show, and boy did they EVER! From top to bottom, I think only one match is bad on this show and everything else is perfect for what it needs to be. The opening match (Edge and Christian Vs Road Dogg and X-Pac) gets the crowd pumped and features some great action. The match between Dean Malenko and Scotty 2 Hotty is probably the best Light Heavyweight Title match the WWF ever did, featuring great psychology and story as Malenko attacks Scotty’s legs to slow him down. The 6 man hardcore match is zany fun that doesn’t outshine the other matches. Big Show Vs Kurt Angle is  a comedy match that is genuinely funny (Big Show dresses as Hulk Hogan and NAILS it!). The Dudley Boyz (The z makes it cooler) finally put Trish Stratus through a table after weeks of trying (Turning themselves face in the process). Jericho and Benoit beat the ever loving crap out of each other in a hard hitting semi-main. And then there’s the main event. Good grief. The Rock and Triple H have a match that pulls at every part of your emotions. The Rock is perfect as the hero who has the odds stacked against him. The story is timeless and the match is a classic. One of the greatest shows ever

5: WCW Wrestle War 92

Old School WCW here people. This show is just one of those shows that is chicken soup for the traditional wrestling fans soul. It’s a show that features not just great wrestling but also one of the best violent main events of all time. WWF/E’s greatest gimmick match may just be Hell in a Cell. It’s the match that carries the most reverence in WWE’s litany of stipulation matches (At least it used too anyway before they watered the concept down in recent years). WCW’s answer to that match was The War Games. The War Games featured two rings surrounded by a giant cage. Two teams of 4 or 5 competed in it with a member from each team entering after time intervals. It was traditionally one of the most bloody and violent matches the company had. I think the War Games from Wrestle War 92 might be the best War Games match ever. Some may disagree but I honestly think that none of the others are as good as this one. It features Bobby Eaton, Steve Austin, Rick Rude, Sting, Barry Windham amongst others (How’s that for an all-star cast?). It’s bloody, it’s violent, it’s drenched in drama and I could probably watch it every day of my life. Just epic, epic stuff. The rest of the show holds up though. The Steiner Brothers face Tatsumi Fujimami and  Takayuki Iizuka in an excellent tag team match that has great technical wrestling and hard hitting suplexes. Brian Pillman and Tom Zenk have an excellent match too that features a good story, being that both men are friends as the match starts. A great show that I always enjoy watching.

4: Pro Wrestling NOAH Tokyo Dome Show 2004

Oh my. Words fail me on this one. The early parts of this show are solid, if uneventful, but the second half will rock your world back and forth! Where do you start with some of the matches on this one? First off, you have Yoshinobu Kanemauru Vs Jushin Liger, which would be a MOTN on any other sane show, as exciting as it is. It’s not even the second best match on this show. KENTA and Marufuji defend their tag titles against Kendo Kashin and Takeshi Suigara in a brilliant match, which may honestly get better every time I watch it. Great double teams and the makeshift pairing of Kashin and Suigara work so well together that they actually make you believe they can win against the established champs. Wrestling legends Mitsuharu Misawa and Keiji Mutoh face off for the first time ever in a hard hitting tag encounter. However, the main event is what steals the show. Kenta Kobashi and Jun Akiyama beat two shades of nonsense out of each other in one of NOAH’s most epic main events. Kenta Kobashi is the reigning GHC World Champion and shows in this match why his reign may be the best ever. Heart stopping near falls and incredibly scary looking head drops. This match may be NOAH’s greatest match, and that’s saying A LOT! Don’t like Japanese wrestling? You will after this, you’ll have no choice.

3: WWF Wrestlemania III

This show just makes me happy. Every time I watch it, I find something new about it that I liked that I didn’t recognise the first time around. Some of the matches are bad but are saved more than not by the excellent crowd, who seemingly pop for everything. Everyone has gushed over how great Randy Savage Vs Ricky Steamboat is. Everyone has dissected the Hogan Vs Andre match. Yes, it’s a horrid wrestling match. It may be one of the most awful matches ever, but I don’t care. The actual wrestling may suck but the story is brilliant. Hogan is on the defensive from the first 30 seconds onwards and spends the whole match trying, and failing, to get any traction against the monster. Finally, he manages to get the Giant off his feet and they go home almost immediately after. I don’t care who you are, you have to admit that the booking of this match is spectacular. The show itself is just so much fun. There’s such a feeling of optimism about it. The crowd are having the time of their lives and you can’t help but get wrapped up in it. It’s that optimistic joy that grabs you and holds you to its bosom. Wrestlemania III just makes me happy. I look at that crowd and listen to them cheer and it raises my heart above the trees. One of the best of all time

2: WWF Wrestlemania X-Seven

Similar to the NOAH show, this one is a slow starter but the second half is the best the WWF has ever done. Any show with the following list of matches can only be classed as one of the greatest in my eyes. You’ve got Chris Benoit Vs Kurt Angle, Shane McMahon Vs Vince McMahon, TLC II, Triple H Vs The Undertaker and Stone Cold Vs The Rock. I mean, good Christ alive, has there ever been a show that loaded where all the matches actually deliver? Unbelievable stuff. The only downside is the way the show ends. Stone Cold wins the title but becomes a villain in doing so. Vince McMahon and Stone Cold shaking hands is the moment the Attitude Era died. I think it’s all been down hill since. That being said, this show is awesome. We may never see it’s like again.

And finally!

1: ECW Heatwave 98

I love this show. It only has 6 matches and I love every single one of them. I could recite this whole show in my head from start to finish. The opening match is Jerry Lynn Vs Justin Credible and they go hell for leather. No one ever got the best out of Credible like Lynn did. Justin Credible owed his main event run in ECW to Lynn. Lynn selflessly made Credible look like a star every time out. This match is no exception. Lance Storm and Chris Candido keep the momentum going and then Masato Tanaka and Mike Awesome steal the show! Seriously, I almost crapped my pants the first time I saw the Tanaka Vs Awesome match from this show. I think it would be impossible to get across just how much I enjoy this match. There have been better matches, but I just love it. The combination of the hot crowd and the fact that both men are letting it all hang out make this one of the all-time ECW classic matches. The show follows it with Rob Van Dam and Sabu Vs Hayabusa and Jinsei Jinzaki. This match goes about 5 minutes too long but does have some good spots in it. Taz and Bam Bam Bigelow face off next and have a really intense brawl that has an unforeseen and unforgettable ending! The main event is an insane 6 man tag match featuring The Dudley Boyz against Tommy Dreamer, Sandman and Spike Dudley. A crazy brawl that involves, amongst other things, a blow up doll getting piledriven, Spike diving off a ladder to the outside and a run in from “The Original Gangsta” New Jack. This show never fails to excite me. It has 6 matches that are all unique. You have a fast paced opener, followed by a much more old school technical match, followed by an insane Japanese Hardcore Match, followed by a tag team spot fest, followed by an intense scuffle with a “big fight feel” and finishing up with an insanity filled 6 man brawl. My favourite show ever!

What’s yours? I’d love to know!