"I see all this potential and I see squandering. God damn it, an entire generation pumping gas, waiting tables, slaves with white collars. Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don't need." - Brad Pitt as Tyler Durdin
What the hell happened to the buddy-cop movie anyway? I'm racking my brain way back to "Lethal Weapon" and I don't remember anything. Wait, I guess there were the "Bad Boy" movies. Also, "Stop or my Mother will Shoot." So, it's not just that they went away as much as they started to straight-up suck.
I know "The Hitman's Bodyguard" isn't technically a buddy-cop movie, it's a buddy-hitman movie. But it has the same style, plot construction and tone as the best of the sub-genre like "Lethal Weapon."
Michael (Ryan Reynolds) is one of the most competent bodyguards on the planet. But when a client of his is killed, he plummets down to the bottom of the bodyguard rankings. Now, he's still great at his job, but he's also a washed-up mess.
Meanwhile, the President of a war-torn nation is
on trial for war-crimes, including genocide, and Kincaid (Samuel L. Jackson) is
the one witness who can bring this monster down. "The Hitman's Bodyguard" doesn't exactly hit the ground running. It's slow at first. The film should have shed about ten minutes, but you just have to be patient. When the first attempt to get Kincaid to the Hague goes tragically wrong, the only surviving Interpol agent, Amelia, (Elodie Yung) breaker of Michael's heart, contacts him because she just has no other choice.
Much to Amelia's surprise, Kincaid and Michael are mortal enemies. But she convinces the two of them to put their murderous differences aside long enough to get Kincaid to the stand.
The fact that each of these men want each other dead is really the hook in this film. And it is used beautifully. Not only are there plenty of laughs to lift from
the situation, but it makes the action sequences deeper.
These men have dozens of chances to kill each other, but they stand side by side, surviving the onslaught of bullets and bad guys together. I expected to see one of these guys just shoot the other. And that's what adds some tension to what would usually be standard action sequences.
I also expected Mike and Kincaid to start getting along, which doesn't happen until late in the film. The bonding that does happen is doled out in small, hilarious doses. The funniest damn scene in the whole movie is the backstory of Kincaid and his wife, Sonia (Salma Hayek.)
The bulk of the film is just a standard, racing the clock action film. Mike and Kincaid rush to the Hague, with lost of bodies left in their wake. And those people became corpses in many hilarious ways.
Director Patrick Hughes is certainly comfortable with killing lots of people, including innocent bystanders by the ton.
In the end, he ties it up nice and tightly with a bow.
"The Hitman's Bodyguard" is tight as an action movie and hysterical as a comedy.
No, it isn't the best action film of the year. That honor still belongs to "Atomic Blonde." But as an action film, it's tight, and as a comedy, it really is funny as hell.
So You-ou-ou will always love "The Hitman's Bodyguard."
Okay that was really forced and may not even make any sense.
When I started Belgian director Fabrice du Welz' "Message From the King," I could not help from being reminded of Steven Soderbergh's 1999 masterpiece, "The Limey" starring Terence Stamp. "The Limey" is a sort of art-house "Death Wish." It is a vengeance story fueled mostly by Stamp's stoic performance.
Jacob King's (Chadwick Boseman) entrance into Los Angeles is crude and abrupt.
He has come because his sister, Bianca, had left an alarming phone message and he flew in from Cape Flats in South Africa to make sure she was happy and healthy.
After beating his way to the truth about what happened to his sister, he finally goes to the morgue and finds her. Not only was she dead but she had been brutally tortured first.
Jacob goes straight into Charles Bronson mode. His ruthless cruelty does not seem to have any limit. Like Stamp's performance in "Limey," Boseman keeps his stoicism despite his savagery.
About halfway through the film, I was half-convinced that "Message From the King" maybe was a remake of "The Limey."
Jacob goes after lead after lead, obtaining most of their information cruelly. He starts with Bianca's neighbors and her drug dealer, Frankie (Tom Felton.) He orders each of them to give him what little information they have. His constant question: who do you work for? After all, their boss knows the whole story behind how, when and why his sister died.
The search brings Jacob to a charming but suspicious dentist, Wentworth (Luke Evans) upon whom he focuses his investigation.
Wentworth leads Jacob to big-shot film producer, Mike, (Alfred Molina) an unwitting accomplice. Wentworth had Bianca's murder orchestrated. Mike had just told him to 'take care of'' Bianca. And boy, did they. Why, we still don't know.
Now, Wentworth has figured out that Jacob is a threat. He gets two cops and gives them fifty-grand apiece to pick Jacob up and kill him. Fortunately for Jacob, these cops are no smarter than the rest of their ilk. He gets away, which is good because you can not just end a movie at the one-hour mark.
Now, it is time for a trip to the hardware store. It's a cliche, but it's a fun one. Jacob goes back to his hotel and he builds a bomb.
As it turns out, everything, the dentist, the cops and other thugs Jacob runs across all connect with Mike and his predilection for creepy-as-hell sex.
Bianca had seen something she should not have seen and she had in her possession a video she should not have had of her, her friends and Mike playing out his deviant fantasies. She was murdered simply because she had leverage on Mike.
Jacob confronts Mike at his home. He quickly kills him. Then Wentworth shows up, just ahead of all the lower-level thugs. All the rotten eggs in one basket.
All the pieces tie themselves together nicely and all there is left is to do is wonder what Jacob is going to do with that bomb. Gonna be fun.
I kept wondering why so few vengeance films are better than the barrage of others that follow the same formula.
Part of its success is, of course, a matter of how good the screenplay and direction is. Some people are talented and some are not. So many of these films just use the pretense as a starting point for their simplistic blood and violence. That is why most of these vengeance movies suck.
The other ingredient in the good vengeance movie recipe is love. "The Limey" worked because Stamp's character, Wilson, is not a violent man by nature and is motivated by a desperate love rather than sadism. Jacob is exactly the same. He is grieved by Bianca's death to the point where he goes against his gentle nature and explodes into a flash-bang of brutality.
Like "The Limey" and "Death Wish," "Message From the King" rises above most of the cheap pictures in the vengeance sub-genre.
There is a story to be found in every moment in time. Chaotic or serene, it makes no difference. What may look like a flash-quick firefight can have its own narratives with their own tales.
When Chris, (Cillian Murphy) Stevo, (Sam Riley) Bernie, (Enzo Cilenti) Frank (Michael Smiley) and Justine (Brie Larson) meet up at the start of "Freeze Fire," there is so much testosterone and prick swinging that it is hard to tell which character is which, let alone size them up.
The five of them have come to the docks in late seventies Boston to buy some guns from a man called Ord (Armie Hammer.)
Ant there is more masculine banter. (If you have seen any heist movie since Quentin Tarantino's 1992 masterpiece "Reservoir Dogs," you know the kind of ball-beating I'm talking about.)
Ord is then joined by the rest of his crew: Vernon, (Sharlto Copley) Gordon, (Noah Taylor) Harry (Jack Reynor) and Martin (Babou Ceesay.)
Here's where things get sticky. As it turns out, Harry, from one crew, had jumped Stevo, from the other crew the night before. Now that is just a bit of bad luck.
And Stevo, he did have that beat-down coming.
That sparks the fuse.
Harry takes out of his gun and shoots Stevo. Now we really are off to the races.
What follows is an intense, precise and particular gun-battle. Everybody joins in and everybody is targeted.
Just when it looks like the fight could peter out, something neither of the gangs had counted on showing up: snipers.
Now, if the two crews would just cooperate, they could just take care of the snipers together. But Nooooo! They have to be buttholes, shooting each other and at the snipers at the same time.
"Free Fire" does have its down moments as well as the exciting ones. You have to quiet things down at least as long as it takes for Stevo to smack himself up and for Ord to smoke a little weed. Otherwise, it would just be rude. We are civilized!
Wheatley somehow manages to keep up the film's arduous pace. Each member of both crews is on their elbows and knees and shot at some point. He seems to have a talent for taking the fight and making it nice and visceral. We jump at every shot. We breathe alongside these people.
I invoked "Reservoir Dogs" earlier. "Free Fire" is not quite up to those standards, but it does have that same level of immediacy.
It is the intensity of a story inside one small moment and easily one of the best movies to come out this year.
It's been absent from our action films for too long. Remember when bad guys were killed over and over until you didn't think there could possibly be any bad guys left? It was awesome. But nowadays, everybody shoots for that PG-13 rating. Even the last two Die Hard movies were PG-13. And when they do release an R-rated film, even those are watered down.
From Batman to the Avengers to even John McLane in recent years, the good guys nowadays refuse to spill blood. And I'm all for that in real life. In real life, for God's sake, everybody restrain yourselves. But what I want out of action movies is bodies. I want protagonists like Riggs, not Murtaughs! (Even Murtaugh was willing to spill his share of blood. "No way you live. No way.") You know, when the bad guys can't shoot at all but every good guy is like the greatest shot ever, taking out thug after thug after thug? Ah, the amorality. I miss those days.
Well those days are back with a vengeance with David Leitch's "Atomic Blonde."
We are blessed with one of those wonderful good guys in Lorraine Broughton (Charlize Theron) who, as a side note, could easily kick Detective Riggs' or John McClane's asses. She could even take on Ichi the Killer.
From the start, Leitch presents Lorraine as invincible. We just know that nobody is ever going to be able to kill this agent.
Lorraine is an undercover MI6 agent sent to retrieve very sensitive information against the backdrop of the week when the Berlin wall falls. The cold war may be coming to an end, but behind the scenes, intelligence agencies are still undermining their foes. What, did we expect trust between our superpowers to come immediately?
Lorraine is sent to investigate the murder of another agent and track down a list that will expose double agents and puts everybody in the Western intelligence community at risk.
Her superiors warn her not to trust anybody and send her off to Berlin. When she arrives, she meets her contact in a charming and violent car chase sequence.
Her contact is Percival, (James McAvoy) an agent already embedded in the area. It is hard to tell at first if he is a devil-may-care kind of nonchalant guy or if he is just reckless. As the pair of them start hunting down the list, Percival gives Lorraine cause to doubt him from the start.
She meets French intelligence agent Delphine Lasalle (Sofia Boutella) who is simply way over her head. This is her first assignment and it is clear to Lorraine that she does not yet have the cunning for a mission as convolutedas this one.
Percival traces down a man who has the list, or at least has it committed to memory. Now the goal is to get him out of Berlin and onto Western soil.
Betrayal comes fast and hard early and the story turns in so many ways that we are dizzy by the spinning.
The fun is seeing Lorraine caught into trap after trap and overcoming every single hurdle thrown her way. She uses any weapon she can find including pots and pans, a freezer door, loose rope laying around, stiletto heels and so many other objects one can not keep count. She is a talented and versatile killer. She can shoot, she beats her enemies to death, she stages car crashes designed to kill a single man, and of course, she can just stab the hell out of anybody.
Leitch treats this film like an insane body cam video. He delights in staging fight sequences that play out without cuts. It is like a collaboration between Jim Jarmusch and John Woo. "Atomic Blonde" definitely makes action movies fun again. Think the Bourne movies and a rock of crack having a love baby.
When the movie ended and the lights came up, I felt satisfied, just like one feels after having visited a Brazilian Steakhouse.
So indulge yourself. Watch and just enjoy the violence.
It's like witnessing a moment of cool in film history.
Gloria, played by Anne Hathaway with, (and I have to say this), horrendous bangs, is a loser. She sleeps all day, sometimes deliberately, sometimes accidentally. She has no drive and has not worked in a year. She is also a blackout drunk and her boyfriend has tossed her out on the street.
She has no other choice than to go home, so she moves back
into her parents' empty house. She runs into Oscar (Jason Sudeikis), an old friend from back in the day who owns a bar.
Then, twenty minutes into the film, it takes a sharp turn. The day after she gets back in town, she finds out that the city of Seoul
has been devastated by a giant monster.
The creature appeared and then vanished out of thin air
above the city.
Is there some kind of connection between Gloria and the
monster? She certainly thinks there is.
And it soon becomes obvious that she's right. At a specific place in her hometown, at a designated time, it seems
Gloria is somehow controlling the creature. It mimics every movement. Each
gesture, each step.
Then a giant robot appears with the monster like they are a comedy duo, part of a bit. The robot appears to be controlled by Oscar. Think Optimus Prime
meets Godzilla.
Sadly, before too long, Oscar understandably decides
controlling a giant robot can actually be a jolly good time. This transforms
him from the warm, compassionate hometown friend into a dangerous scoundrel.
This puts Gloria and Oscar at odds. That is to say Oscar
starts being a real dick, alienating Gloria and his friends.
It is worth noting that Sudeikis makes a surprisingly convincing villain.
"Colossal" makes a clear statement about the raw
nature of power. It can turn you evil and it will drive
you mad. Sometimes to the point of murderous. You need only look at the world, and our country, to understand how vital it is that people understand this truth.
The film has a Joe Dante (Gremlins, Matinee) vibe to it. It is mischievous,
sarcastic, darkly funny and violent.
What "Colossal" gives us is 105 minutes of a damn
good time. It might not be the best horror film I have seen this year,
but it certainly is the most entertaining.
If you're familiar will this blog, you will have noticed by now that most of the films I discuss are films I like. If I dislike a movie, I take no pleasure in deconstructing it.
Likewise, if I see a wildly entertaining blockbuster that essentially has no real substance, there's nothing to write about.
For instance, I've adored some
of the action films from earlier this summer, like "Guardians of the Galaxy: Vol 2" or "Wonder Woman." But I just don't have anything to say about this.
But I do have to speak about this. "Spider-man: Homecoming" was just a complete effing mess.
After watching it with Joia, you know her as Mrs. Spice, I just stood up and said, "Honey, I have to say something. That sucked asssssss!"
She agreed and said she wished she had brought her Kindle so she could read during this horribly paced, seemingly endless disaster.
To be fair, there was one sequence that was about five minutes long during a confrontation between Peter and the villain. It was terse and made my heart sink into my bowels.
So, out of a 2h 14m cluster-eff, there's about five good minutes buried within.
I'm not going to go on about it. Just don't say I didn't warn you.
"I see all this potential and I see squandering. God damn it, an entire generation pumping gas, waiting tables, slaves with white collars. Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don't need."
What the hell happened to the buddy-cop movie anyway? I'm racking my brain way back to "Lethal Weapon" and I don't remember anything. Wait, I guess there were the "Bad Boy" movies. Also, "Stop or my Mother will Shoot." So, it's not just that they went away as much as they started to straight-up suck.
When the first attempt to get Kincaid to the Hague goes tragically wrong, the only surviving Interpol agent, Amelia, (Elodie Yung) breaker of Michael's heart, contacts him because she just has no other choice.
These men have dozens of chances to kill each other, but they stand side by side, surviving the onslaught of bullets and bad guys together. I expected to see one of these guys just shoot the other. And that's what adds some tension to what would usually be standard action sequences.
Director Patrick Hughes is certainly comfortable with killing lots of people, including innocent bystanders by the ton.
No, it isn't the best action film of the year. That honor still belongs to "Atomic Blonde." But as an action film, it's tight, and as a comedy, it really is funny as hell.
When I started Belgian director Fabrice du Welz' "Message From the King," I could not help from being reminded of Steven Soderbergh's 1999 masterpiece, "The Limey" starring Terence Stamp. "The Limey" is a sort of art-house "Death Wish." It is a vengeance story fueled mostly by Stamp's stoic performance.
After beating his way to the truth about what happened to his sister, he finally goes to the morgue and finds her. Not only was she dead but she had been brutally tortured first.
Jacob goes after lead after lead, obtaining most of their information cruelly. He starts with Bianca's neighbors and her drug dealer, Frankie (Tom Felton.) He orders each of them to give him what little information they have. His constant question: who do you work for? After all, their boss knows the whole story behind how, when and why his sister died.
The search brings Jacob to a charming but suspicious dentist, Wentworth (Luke Evans) upon whom he focuses his investigation.
Now, Wentworth has figured out that Jacob is a threat. He gets two cops and gives them fifty-grand apiece to pick Jacob up and kill him. Fortunately for Jacob, these cops are no smarter than the rest of their ilk. He gets away, which is good because you can not just end a movie at the one-hour mark.
As it turns out, everything, the dentist, the cops and other thugs Jacob runs across all connect with Mike and his predilection for creepy-as-hell sex.
Jacob confronts Mike at his home. He quickly kills him. Then Wentworth shows up, just ahead of all the lower-level thugs. All the rotten eggs in one basket.
I kept wondering why so few vengeance films are better than the barrage of others that follow the same formula.
The other ingredient in the good vengeance movie recipe is love. "The Limey" worked because Stamp's character, Wilson, is not a violent man by nature and is motivated by a desperate love rather than sadism. Jacob is exactly the same. He is grieved by Bianca's death to the point where he goes against his gentle nature and explodes into a flash-bang of brutality.
There is a story to be found in every moment in time. Chaotic or serene, it makes no difference. What may look like a flash-quick firefight can have its own narratives with their own tales.
Ant there is more masculine banter. (If you have seen any heist movie since Quentin Tarantino's 1992 masterpiece "Reservoir Dogs," you know the kind of ball-beating I'm talking about.)
That sparks the fuse.
Just when it looks like the fight could peter out, something neither of the gangs had counted on showing up: snipers.
Wheatley somehow manages to keep up the film's arduous pace. Each member of both crews is on their elbows and knees and shot at some point. He seems to have a talent for taking the fight and making it nice and visceral. We jump at every shot. We breathe alongside these people.
I invoked "Reservoir Dogs" earlier. "Free Fire" is not quite up to those standards, but it does have that same level of immediacy.
Well those days are back with a vengeance with David Leitch's "Atomic Blonde."
From the start, Leitch presents Lorraine as invincible. We just know that nobody is ever going to be able to kill this agent.
Her superiors warn her not to trust anybody and send her off to Berlin. When she arrives, she meets her contact in a charming and violent car chase sequence.
She meets French intelligence agent Delphine Lasalle (Sofia Boutella) who is simply way over her head. This is her first assignment and it is clear to Lorraine that she does not yet have the cunning for a mission as convoluted as this one.
When the movie ended and the lights came up, I felt satisfied, just like one feels after having visited a Brazilian Steakhouse.
Gloria, played by Anne Hathaway with, (and I have to say this), horrendous bangs, is a loser. She sleeps all day, sometimes deliberately, sometimes accidentally. She has no drive and has not worked in a year. She is also a blackout drunk and her boyfriend has tossed her out on the street.
Then, twenty minutes into the film, it takes a sharp turn. The day after she gets back in town, she finds out that the city of 
Is there some kind of connection between Gloria and the
monster? She certainly thinks there is. 
Then a giant robot appears with the monster like they are a comedy duo, part of a bit. The robot appears to be controlled by Oscar. Think Optimus Prime
meets Godzilla. 
It is worth noting that Sudeikis makes a surprisingly convincing villain.
If you're familiar will this blog, you will have noticed by now that most of the films I discuss are films I like. If I dislike a movie, I take no pleasure in deconstructing it.
