Movie Review: Snake Eyes: G.I. Joe Origins (PG13 – 121 minutes)

Now that the Olympics are over, I can catch up on some of the other things I have been neglecting – first thing – a delayed review of Snake Eyes! When I first heard they were making this movie, I thought maybe they would let Ray Park get to play the character again.  That is once again not the case as he gets recast yet again. I am certainly not complaining, Henry Golding is wonderful.

I have zero knowledge of the original G.I.Joe toys or cartoons. I know they are by Hasbro, and that they were very popular in the 80s – and I know that knowing is half the battle. I certainly did see the two G.I.Joe movies, the first with Channing Tatum and the second with the Rock. Snake Eyes in those is basically a silent ninja all in black with a grudge against a ninja all in white on the bad guys’ team. 

This movie gives you Snake Eyes origin story. What’s that? You weren’t asking for his backstory? No worries, the majority of this movie plays like a really cool Yakuza martial arts thriller, and those are the parts I liked the most. We meet Snake Eyes as a child living with his dad in a very remote cabin.  We soon learn that his dad is in witness protection as a group of bad guys shows up and eliminates him. The killer has his dad roll dice to determine his fate and of course they come up snake eyes, and the child takes that name going forward.

We catch up with him as he is cage fighting for money. A yakuza boss shows up and offers him a job because he knows all about Snake (he really couldn’t find another name to use?) and his quest for his father’s killer. We then jump slightly forward to see that Snake is working for the boss and befriended another employee, Tommy.  Then, in a slightly confusing sequence – we learn that Tommy was actually undercover in the organization to keep an eye on the boss who had betrayed his family years ago. Snake saves him, and together they go on the run. Tommy takes Snake back to his family, where he undergoes three challenges to become a ninja of the highest order. 

That part of the movie is great, super interesting, fantastic action, and fantastic and engaging performances by Golding and Andrew Koji as Tommy.  It’s about at this point where the G.I.Joe bits come in: Snake learns Cobra (the bad guys) was actually behind the killing of his father because his father was a Joe, Tommy’s family has a magic weapon stone that they protect but are sworn not to use, and Cobra is after the stone, big time as they launch an attack on Tommy’s family’s compound – oh, and there’s a pit with giant snakes. It all gets to be a bit convoluted but stays entertaining.

Director Robert Schwentke does a great job with both halves of the movie, but they do feel a little like two separate things. I really enjoyed the first half but spent a lot of the second half rolling my eyes.  Golding and Koji are great, with Koji being even more interesting than Golding. It is pretty obvious from early on where his character is going, and I might be interested to see more from him.

Haruka Abe plays Akiko, Tommy’s head of security who goes from distrustful of Snake to suddenly in love with him? A little confusing there, but she did what she could. The standouts are, of course, Ido Uwais and Peter Mensah as the two masters on staff at Tommy’s compound who walk Snake through his challenges. They are both wonderful, action-packed, and bring a light fun touch that most of the rest of the movie was missing. Everyone else was working hard, these two were having a good time while working hard.

Ursula Corbero plays the Baroness and Samara Weaving plays Scarlett, the opposing sides of the same coin that feels forced into the story.

This movie is clearly setting up additional G.I.Joe movies which I found interesting, because it does not seem to be an IP that is having any kind of resurgence – the cartoon hasn’t stayed on, it hasn’t been rebooted (as far as I know), so the fan base is basically those who loved it in the 80s and want to see more. That can be a little tough to get the tone of the movies correct. It seems like this movie did that, but I would be curious to know what die hard Joe fans thought and if they even want more live-action movies.  Personally, I would have been happy if this was just an organized crime martial arts thriller – which it almost is, so I was almost happy.

6 out of 10

Movie Review: Black Widow (PG13 – 143 minutes)

 

After so many delays, it was an absolute delight to see Black Widow in a theater nearly full of Marvel fans. 

In case you are a casual Marvel Cinematic Universe fan who only saw Endgame – do yourself a favor and watch all twenty plus movies – but beside that you may be wondering how Black Widow can be starring in her own movie when she is clearly dead, having sacrificed herself to ensure the survival of her found family.  This movie takes place between Captain America Civil War and Avengers Infinity War.  In case you forgot, after the events of Civil War, Nat had bucked against the system, turning against General Thunderbolt Ross and his Sokovia Accords to help Cap and Bucky get to Siberia to stop all the other potential Winter Soldiers.  After a cold open highlighting Natasha’s seeming idyllic childhood in Ohio – a cover for an undercover Russian sleeper cell - we go forward to Ross being miffed and trying to hunt her down. 

Natasha, haunted by her past and troubled by her future, is trying to live off the grid when her ‘sister’ sends her a package from Budapest, bringing up memories of the mission we have she and Hawkeye mention a couple of times.  Nat heads to Budapest, encounters Yelena, and together they step back into conflict with the ‘Red Room’ system that trains Black Widows as assassins and killers while dodging the Taskmaster – a baddie who can replicate everyone else’s fighting style. This is a cool trait as it often pits Nat against various Avenger fighting bits. The Red Room has stepped up its game and found a way to remove nearly all of the human element from their agents while remaining very difficult to find. Nat and Yelena find their former ‘parents’ to get the information necessary to bring down the Red Room and its shadowy leader, Dreykov.

Directed by Cate Shortland, the movie certainly feels like an MCU movie with a great balance between action and comedy.  The scenes with the family unit reunited are charming and fun even though they layer over the horrible things the members were responsible for accomplishing.  I did think the actual mechanisms of the Red Room were glossed over a bit, but if you truly dug into that process, it may need to slide into R Rated territory, and that is not really MCU fare. What I liked best about the movie was Scarlett Johansson playing the ‘straight man’ to center and ground the film while everyone around her got to be bigger and a little more zany.

Scarlett has been playing this character since Iron Man 2, and here, really gets to allow Black Widow not only to accept her own history and fate but make peace with everything she has done. It gives her sacrifice in Endgame even more weight.  As a producer on the movie, she made the right call in allowing everyone else to step up and shine.

David Harbour and Rachel Weisz as Alexei and Melina respectively were great, as expected.  Weisz gives Melina a chilling coldness as she talks about the mind control technology she has perfected and casually tortures one of her pigs.  I knew Harbour would be fun and charming, and he is – but he is also good at the action and emotional scenes.

By now you have heard that the true standout in the movie is Florence Pugh as Yelena. She is fantastic in the action sequences, and completely sells herself as the next Black Widow. What I was not prepared for is how funny and entertaining she is. Her interactions with Natasha are brilliant – balanced between sibling love and rivalry. I expected Harbour to steal his scenes, I was not prepared for Pugh to steal the entire movie. It functions to set her up for future MCU appearances, and I cannot wait to see more of her character.

Ray Winstone is an interesting choice as Dreykov. He’s so incredibly cockney that the Russian accent feels very forced, but he certainly can play a villain.  I wanted him to be the voice of Rocket Raccoon from the beginning, so it is a bit of a treat to see him in the MCU, even if this villain is not as developed as he could have been. Likewise, the other slight disappointment is Olga Kurylenko as Antonia, she could have been given a lot more work to do and while her character was fascinating, it felt almost tempered, and I would have liked to see that character cut loose.

Overall, I certainly enjoyed the movie from start to finish and it was even more wonderful to see it in a theater where no one moved once the credits started rolling, because we all knew to stay put and wait for the end credits sequence.

8 out of 10 – Pugh has done wonders for the sale of pocketed vests, I’m sure.

Movie Review: F9: The Fast Saga (PG13 - 145 minutes)

 

What a fantastic flick to welcome folks back to summer blockbusters in the theater. If you want to hear me and a couple of other LAMB members rave about this highest level of quality nonsense, be sure to give the LAMBCast episode on F9 a listen: https://www.podomatic.com/podcasts/lambcast/episodes/2021-06-28T12_24_53-07_00

I could try to start this review with a quick summary of what happened in the previous 8 movies and who all these characters are, and what brought them to this situation, but honestly – it is not at all necessary. Suffice it to say that Dominic Toretto leads a ‘family’ of street racers who started in The Fast and The Furious in June of 2001.  In that movie, twenty years ago, they were stealing DVD players from trucks while driving. Now, 9 movies later, they are basically a group of international spies, hackers, geniuses, sharpshooters, hand to hand combat masters, and Corona drinkers (that part hasn’t changed).

The cold open gives us the visualization of the story that Dom has told us before, his father getting run into the wall while racing in 1985 and him going to jail for beating the other driver with a wrench.  We then get some fun credits and jump to present day where Dom and Letty enjoying married life with his son (with Elena), little Brian, completely off the grid and away from everyone else.  Well, Dom is enjoying being off the grid.  Letty seems very dissatisfied. They are suddenly visited by Tej, Roman, and Ramsey who bring news that Mr. Nobody’s plane has been brought down in a generic south American country. He had some dangerous cargo and sent a distress call that only our Fast Family would receive.  Dom refuses to go help, but Letty sets out to join the others. While reviewing the footage, Dom notices a duplicate of his cross necklace, and suddenly decides to join the mission.

During what is an insane opening action set piece that feels absolutely built to be added to the Fast and Furious bit of the Universal Studios tour (just give them their own ride in a full soundstage like the Transformers ride – they need it!), Dom realizes that his long-lost brother, Jakob, is his new foe.  Jakob steals the piece of tech and escapes by jumping his car OFF A CLIFF TO BE CAUGHT BY A PLANE WITH A MAGNET. And that is before Dom drives his cliff into the remains of a bridge to catch a cable and SWING LIKE TARZAN.  Just in the first action set piece!

The movie only continues to get more exciting from there, finding ways to bring back additional members of the Fast Family – including my favorite, Han, who died a few movies ago. It also gives both Mia and Letty, and even Ramsey more to do this time around. Director Justin Lin has outdone himself with this one, and I can’t even begin to speculate where the tenth movie will go. This one felt appropriate in a way as a near-finale because it brought back so many people, established Jakob, and then rehabilitated Jakob (I can only assume he will join the family next movie) – it even worked in a touching tribute to Paul Walker and gathered everyone for a barbeque and Coronas at the end. It is near perfection.  Oh, and they drive a car in space – THEY DRIVE A CAR IN SPACE.

I will say that I felt Vin Diesel as Dom was more invested in this one. While it may feel strange to say, this movie benefits from being Rock-less.  The Rock is a star, and he didn’t really ever fit in with the Fast Family as his nature is to outshine everyone around him. With him not in this movie, the family could retrieve their group chemistry and truly place Vin back at the center, where he wants to be. John Cena as Jakob is much more capable of joining an ensemble and working towards a group goal.

Jordana Brewster has always asked for more stunts and Michelle Rodriguez has mentioned in the past that she would not return if Letty didn’t get more to do. Both have action set pieces in this movie and more family scenes as well. It returned each of them to being some of my favorite characters.

Ludacris continues to shine as Tej, and he and Nathalie Emmanuel as Ramsey were wonderful in working out all the details of the completely insane plans. I loved Ramsey’s non-driving during the action set piece in Edinburgh. I also enjoyed the two of them teasing Tyrese’s Roman through most of the movie. Tyrese once again is exceptional and definitely provides the audience viewpoint in this insane world as he sums up the action from previous movies, to the point of mentioning how completely ridiculous some of their adventures have been.

Charlize Theron returns as Cipher – so far the only villain to not eventually be turned to joining the Fast Family, which I hope she never does, because after all, she did kill Elena.  She’s delightfully evil in this as she tries her hardest to out-bad-guy Thue Ersted Rasmussen’s Otto, the generic money-behind-the-villain’s-plot. She easily succeeds.

The return of Sung Kang as Han while eating a bag of chips was fantastic – I can only assume that Gal Gadot will return in the next one as Gisele just fell off a car and these folks have proven to be nearly impossible to kill. 

Michael Rooker shows up as Dom’s dad’s racing buddy Buddy. Helen Mirren returns for a bit as Queenie Shaw, the matriarch of the insane Shaw clan.  Don Omar returns briefly as Santos. Shea Whigham returns as Agent Stasiak. Even better was the return of Shad Moss (Bow Wow) as Twinkie and Lucas Black as Sean from Tokyo Drift. They have now been completely returned to the fold to the point that they got to join the barbeque at the end.

I love these movies – I love the inclusive cast, the international feel, and finally in this one it feels like the tone is completely understood and accepted by everyone involved – they all embrace the over-the-top nonsense joy. I think this might be my new favorite in the series.  It doesn’t matter if you have never seen any of the other movies because characters keep reminding everyone what happened previously, at least enough to let you enjoy the action of this one. Grab your family and some Corona and some popcorn, turn off your brain and hit the NOS button for an absolute summer tentpole blockbuster.

9 out of 10 – losing one point for not bringing Gisele back from the dead yet…fingers crossed for the next one.

Movie Review: Army of the Dead (R – 148 minutes)

 

I wanted to like this, I really did.  But I have now concluded that I have conducted enough experiments to state that in general, I do not care for Zack Snyder films.

This particular Zack Snyder movie is one that is meant to launch a new Zack Snyder universe of Zack Snyder zombie action. It begins by showing us a couple of army dudes transporting a ‘thing’ from a ‘base’ that is possibly alien.  A recently married-in-Vegas couple crashes into the convoy, releasing the ‘thing’.  We then get a couple of interesting sequences - one campy over-the-top montage of Vegas zombies as the outbreak sweeps through the city with all the tropes you expect: Elvis zombies, Stripper Zombies, party zombies, even hot tub zombies that are all played over a classically Vegas song.  This would lead you to believe that the movie will be a fun campy ride of a heist in a zombie infested Vegas.  However, you also get shots of what will be our main characters as a team fighting their way through the outbreak to escape the city, intercut with very somber shots of them holding pictures of their loved ones. This would lead you to believe that the movie will be a very dramatic character study of what happens to people when they lose loved ones in this outbreak. 

This type of back and forth with the tone continues throughout the movie.  Vegas is eventually sealed off so that the zombies do not spread to other cities. A fancy-pants business man shows up to request that Scott Ward put together a team and go into Vegas through the zombies to get his millions in cash that is in the safe of his casino. Ward eventually agrees and assembles his team of standard heist-movie-types: the tough guy, the lunatic(s), the safe-cracker, the navigator, the pilot, the obvious traitor, his old partner, etc.  But as a bonus, it also includes his estranged daughter who seems to be in a separate movie where she is volunteering at the refugee camp just outside the Vegas walls and trying to help people get flights/transportation out of the city, but that requires payment, and many of the people do not have money, so they are tempted to sneak into the city to get money, and the guards/staff are often terrible and taking advantage of them. Ward takes his team in, and as you can expect – things go awry.

Snyder directs it with all the love he shows to his work. This means some fantastically beautiful shots, some fascinating slow motion here and there (maybe too much), some fun action sequences, all shot with some new camera technology.  There is no denying his skillset, I just do not enjoy his finished products. He includes interesting characters, but the rapidly shifting tone felt jarring to me.  There are so many ideas introduced that have no payoff or are not revisited. I know the plan is for more movies prequels, sequels, and spin-offs, but I feel like this would have benefitted from more focus on it and less on possible future endeavors.  I could not find a character to root for because they were all a little grating – some more than others.

Dave Bautista does his darndest to center the movie with an interesting leading man. He is great and certainly watchable – he is certainly in the drama version of the movie, focused more on the strained father/daughter relationships than the loony zombie action. He chose this over the part James Gunn had written for him in the upcoming Suicide Squad (with Gunn’s blessing). Ella Purnell plays his daughter and I enjoyed them together because they were on the same page even though that was not the version I thought I had signed up for.  

Omari Hardwick plays Vanderohe and shifts back and forth between the horror-comedy and drama aspects. He carries a large buzz saw that is meant for slicing zombies, but he also is very philosophical and brings up one of the most interesting theories in the movie that is then not addressed again. He has many scenes with Matthias Schweighofer as Dieter, who is doing such a strong Flula Borg impression that I found myself wondering why Flula was not in the movie.

Ana de la Reguera plays Maria who is Ward’s old running partner and used to working with him. She and Vanderohe worked with him previously and help ground him.  Tig Notaro plays Marianne Peters, the pilot, and yes, she was blue-screened into the movie to replace Chris D’Elia. They did a great job, and for the most part, it feels like she was there the whole time being snarky and sarcastic – which is what you want from Tig Notaro. The team is rounded out by Raul Castillo and Samantha Win who play what seem to be influences who kill zombies for social media content.

Theo Rossi plays one of the terrible guys from the refugee camp and Nora Arnezeder plays Lilly – a ‘coyote’, who works getting people in and out of Vegas.  Well, mostly in. She is not great at the out part. Garret Dillahunt shows up to play the incredibly obvious traitor, Martin, who works for the guy who hires the team, Tanaka, played by Hiroyuki Sanada.

If this movie had been a simple straightforward heist-in-zombie-Vegas movie, I think I would have enjoyed it more. As it is, I feel that it tried way too hard to include way too many things and set up way too many spin-off or sequel options (slight spoilers here): organized zombies, zombie tigers, dehydrated zombies that come back when it rains, zombie kings and queens, robot zombies, zombie breeding, zombie communication, secret experiments, aliens, etc.  It is also way too long.  There is no reason for a movie like this to be two and a half hours long.  If you enjoy Snyder’s style, this will definitely make you happy. 

2 out of 10  

Movie Review: A Quiet Place Part II (PG13 – 97 minutes)

 

I had never seen the original A Quiet Place from two years ago, so I rented it on Amazon Prime prior to heading to the theater to see A Quiet Place Part II.  It was exceptional, certainly scary, but a family drama at its heart. 

I think it pays to watch the first one almost immediately before seeing the second one as the story picks up right after the events of the prior movie.  First, there is essentially a cold open replaying “Day 1” as like part 1, the movie gives you titles cards to let you know which day of the situation you are in.  The flashback to the beginning shows the Abbott family at a baseball game as father Lee goes to pick up oranges and water for the post-game treats.  The sequence has several purposes: it shows how close-knit the town is – everyone seems to know everyone else; it introduces us to Emmett, another local father with a kid on the team; it shows how Regan is teaching everyone around a bit of signing; provides a quick shot of the space shuttle toy on the shelf of the store the Abbotts will later visit for supplies; and most importantly, shows the initial appearance of the creatures as an object seems to be landing near the town from space.  

After that sequence, the movie picks up immediately after the events of the previous film, Evelyn and her three remaining children, Regan, Marcus, and the baby she just had, are in the basement having discovered that Regan’s hearing aid provides a distressing feedback signal to the creatures that causes them to pop open their face shields long enough for you to get in a killing blow.  Having killed one, but also set the barn on fire and flooded the basement (thank goodness, those stairs were not safe), they set out to find help.  Collecting the map that Lee had been using to mark the other bonfires he saw at night, they head toward one.  Marcus accidentally steps in a bear trap, screams in pain, and Regan and Evelyn use the hearing-aid-feedback trick to kill an approaching creature. Of course, the gunshot brings more, but Emmett rescues them and brings them into his shelter.

He reveals that he has lost everyone and has been alone since his wife got sick and died.  Catching a broadcast on the radio of “Beyond the Sea”, Regan realizes she can head to the island where the station is broadcasting from and send out the feedback to more people.  Being a teenage girl, she sets out on her own, and Evelyn begs Emmett to go after her.  Together, they struggle to get to the island while Evelyn and Marcus struggle to recover from his injury and keep a newborn quiet.

What is most impressive about these movies is that the story is so simple but the movies are so compelling.  Krasinski has been very open that he treats them as family dramas first, and the horror element is nearly an afterthought. Because of that focus, it is incredibly easy to get sucked into the story and the characters.

Emily Blunt is fantastic again as Evelyn, having perfected the patented Gillian Anderson wide-eyed panic-fear stare.   Since Krasinski (spoiler alert) sacrificed himself in the first movie to save the kids, he only appears in the flashback sequence in this one, which does deprive the movie of their incredible chemistry, but Blunt carries all her scenes on her own. 

While watching the two parts back to back is great for story, it is a little weird to see the two kids who clearly are two years bigger in this one.  As with part one, the true star of this movie is Millicent Simmonds as Regan, with Noah Jupe as a strong second as Marcus.  They each overcome various obstacles, emotional and physical, to take action to try to save not just their family but everyone around them.

Cillian Murphy plays Emmett, and while always a bit creepy, here he is truly haunted.  He at first wants to kick out Evelyn and the kids, having basically given up. Eventually Regan convinces him to think about someone else and help her out.  Things get a bit dicey when they run into Scoot McNairy and a group of, I guess you could call them boat folks?  Eventually he helps her reach Djimon Hounsou who has been broadcasting the signal from the island.

Overall, the movie is nearly as good as the first, certainly scary, but more thriller than pure horror.  There is not a ton of gore, but plenty of jumpscares.  The core of the film is the family and their relationship.  I will say I took advantage of the website DoesTheDogDie.com prior to seeing it, just to ensure I was prepared for whatever might be included. I will say, I have some additional questions – these movies never really address what exactly these creatures are all about, why they are here, or what their purpose is.  In the first movie, you only spend time with the family, so that is not a surprise. Here, because it begins with the flashback to day 1, I thought perhaps they might dig a little deeper into it. You find out they are aliens, but aside from that, no real knowledge. They do not seem to eat anything they kill, so I have to assume they are just murder machines that hate noise?  The planet they came from must have been crazy loud and these guys are just refugees looking for some peace and quiet at any cost.

8 of 10 – Bonus points for the tight run time. I definitely recommend watching them back to back if you have the option.

Movie Review: Those Who Wish Me Dead (R - 110 minutes)

It is great to be fully vaxxed and back at the movie theater, but it is even better to be pleasantly surprised by a movie I had written off before getting there.

Those Who Wish Me Dead is a very clunky title, but since it is based on a book, we will blame the book for that – after all, Firestorm was taken.  Here, Hannah is a smokejumper firefighter who has been relegated to spending the summer in fire country in a very lonely tower watching for lightning storms and fires in the distance.  She is suffering some major PTSD after running point on a forest fire the previous year and being unable to save three kids.  While she tries to recover, her ex, who also happens to be a local cop, is trying to keep wild fire fighters and locals in line and cuddling up with his very pregnant but also a survivalist wife. Unbeknownst to any of them, his brother and son are currently on the run from some bad folks, because he is an accountant working with the DA’s office in Florida, and responsible for the evidence to put away a big time criminal. The accountant grabs his son and takes off on the run to his brother and sister in law.

Big time villain Tyler Perry (did the character have a name? It doesn’t matter – it’s Tyler Perry) sends some devious but exceptionally capable hitmen after the accountant who swiftly figure out where he is going.  They beat him out there but miss the kid, who has the evidence, or at least that is what we are to assume, since his father gave him a note and told him only to give it to someone he can trust.  To distract everyone, the hitmen set a forest fire and the movie becomes a chase between Hannah, the kid, the cop, his wife the survivalist, the hitmen, and the fire.

The fires that sweep across the mountains of the southwest every year are getting more and more frequent, terrifying, and deadly.  This movie uses that fear as a backdrop for an interesting surface-level story.  We never really find out what the bad guy did, what the accountant did, or even what information he gives to the kid.  While that seems like it could be missing, it is not critical to the story, which is more about the action of the chase and Hannah’s redemption as a character. Directed by Taylor Sheridan, it certainly has a few weak moments, but I was pleasantly surprised by how engaging it was.

Angelina Jolie is just the right balance of crazy and grief as Hannah. The trauma of being unable to save three kids when your entire job is saving people is fairly well depicted as she tries to pull herself together, mostly unsuccessfully.  Since she has been mostly directing the last couple of years, it was fun to see her in this mostly throwaway action flick before the Eternals later this year.

Jon Bernthal (who will always be Shane even though he is the best Punisher we have had) is great as Ethan, the cop who is noticeably concerned about his ex and her inability to process while still focusing on his wife and their coming baby plus the worry of his brother on the run and coming to see him.  Medina Senghore plays his wife, Allison, and she got some of the best action sequences in the movie – although I am a little skeptical that a woman 7 months pregnant would ride a horse into a forest fire. But, as is mentioned multiple times, she is a survivalist who runs a survivalist camp.

Finn Little plays Connor, the kid, and he is quite good – very believable, with a simple and straightforward performance.  I can not help but wonder what was on the paper he managed to eventually get to the press, but I am also willing to accept that is not key to this story.

The two hitmen are played by Aidan Gillen and Nicholas Hoult.  Gillen’s American accent is improving and I appreciated how he seemed tired and frustrated through most of the movie but determined to get the job done.  He also seems terrified of his boss, Tyler Perry – but again, we do not get to learn why or what exactly they do.  

I spent most of the movie trying to figure out if Nicholas Hoult was really Nicholas Hoult because this was not a role I expected to see him in, but again, certainly threatening, capable, and chilling as a hitman who for a moment or two seems to have some qualms about their methods in chasing Jake Weber’s accountant, but in the end is going to carry out Tyler Perry’s commands.  What is Tyler Perry up to? 

Overall, the movie was a surprise for me, and with a tight runtime of just under two hours (most movies should be under two hours) it is a fun way to pass an afternoon in the theater – or at home, since it is also streaming on HBOMax. 

6 out of 10 – Would knowing more about what type of evil Tyler Perry is up to gotten more points? We will never know!

Movie Review: Wrath of Man (R - 119 minutes)

 

I went to see Wrath of Man in the theater, just happy to see something in the theater and really expecting this to be a movie that could have been a throwaway January dump flick in a regular year. There is definitely something to be said about a low expectations bar because I was pleasantly surprised!

Wrath of Man begins with an in-truck view of a cash truck heist.  It starts out pretty smoothly, but then things begin to go wrong and the guards and a couple of civilians get killed.  We jump forward a couple of months to joining new security recruit “H” as he starts working for the security company. He passes all the tests at just the right level and barely impresses his new supervisor, “Bullet”.  

After a few rides, he is on a run with “Boy Sweat Dave” (oof, these names) and Bullet when some nogoodniks attempt to rob their truck.  H swiftly and handily eliminates every single one of the crew that attempted to rob them, even their leader, Post Malone.

The rest of the security company employees are very impressed by H and even the cops seem grateful, since there are little to no consequences of H killing a handful of dudes. He’s back on the job almost immediately.  Which is a good thing, because then he’s on another truck that is almost robbed, but this time, the attempted robbers get one look at him and take off running.  While most of the security team is thankful, there are a couple who are a little curious why robbers are terrified of H.  The movie then has an interesting switch, and we start following another group of characters.  This group of recently returned army vets is struggling to get back to ‘normal’ and make ends meet when their commanding officer helps put into play a plan. The two storylines converge in a not-entirely-unexpected way that is still incredibly engaging and interesting while being brutal and action packed.

The movie is a remake of the 2004 French Film “Le Convoyeur” (Cash Truck) and I am very curious to look that up and see if the interesting story shifts were pulled from that or unique to this version. Having seen almost all other Guy Ritchie movies (I even saw Swept Away and that one about King Arthur), this feels similar but different to his first few Toff Guy movies. You can see the bones of Lock Stock, Snatch, and RocknRolla in it, but it is much less fun.  Shifting the storyline POV several times was very interesting and kept me guessing as to how the end might play out.  The set pieces were solid and the action good, and the climax more gunfire-heavy than I wanted, but it did fit the story.

Jason Statham was perfect in the lead as he always is in Guy Ritchie movies crafted for him. Of course, as with all Statham-Ritchie projects, I wanted Jason Flemyng there too, so I was disappointed he was not in this.  Statham glares and beats his way through every obstacle, perfectly staying within a well-fitted box.

Holt McCallany plays Bullet as a somewhat smarmy too-friendly partner. He fits the role well, and his partnership with Statham was a nice balance.  Having not seen Josh Hartnett for a while, it was nice to see him as Dave, even though his character was a bit of a tool.  Ritchie staple Eddie Marsan also shows up to run the security company with a barely passable American accent.

The group playing the army vets consisting of Jeffrey Donovan (maybe I should re-binge Burn Notice from the beginning), Scott Eastwood, Deobia Oparei, Raul Castillo, and Chris Reilly were very interesting and really had the most heavy lifting to do in the movie. In another version of this story, they would have been the leads and it would have been their movie. In fact – you’ve probably seen a version of that movie at some point.

And there is random Andy Garcia – just two scenes, for almost no reason, but I appreciated it.

Overall, the movie was very interesting, certainly engaging, and while a little gun-happy for my taste, it kept me intrigued right up until the end.  Worth a watch.

7 out of 10.