An intriguing first scene that takes place in Berlin promised a good thriller; anything featuring Berlin is promising.
Nice font on the opening title, and the once omniscient James Rebhorn is briefly in it. Good job.
It’s so boring, though, and anything germane it had to say about amoral bankers was lost in the relentless, mind-crushing tedium. I was hoping for Jason Bourne meets Interpol. What I got was the urge to jettison The International (2009).
I lasted 46 minutes.
Terence Stamp as ‘Wilson’ in the sublime crime thriller The Limey (1999), a true gem from the tail-end of a decade littered with far too many guns and crooks.
“You tell him … you tell him I’m coming. Tell him I’m fucking coming!”
His best role, without question.
Another remake of Kurosawa’s Yojimbo (1961), this neo-western is rubbish and not even in a curious way.
I did have high expectations for the flick as Walter Hill is a top filmmaker and this was peak Bruce Willis, that post Pulp Fiction (1994) era when he would veer seamlessly between actioner and risky movies with a bit more depth to them. This is atrocious, though, from the stupid voice-over to the stupid things every character does, to the stupid framing and the sheer stupidity of the premise, and I felt stupid for sticking with it rather than just watching A Fistful of Dollars (1964).
Stupidity is the theme.
It’s funnier than all its considerable attributes as an action movie. For the carnage, it’s top tier, but it’s definitely more of a comedy than any other description.
Maybe it’s because so much of this ilk is a slew of totally witless dirge, Die Hard (1988) appears smart and a bit of an outlier.
And you see a character sparking up a fag in a limo.
I was dreading this movie would be too reliant on the standard As Good as It Gets (1997) OCD schtick to drive the narrative but it smartly sidestepped all the easy mechanisms. A highly entertaining dramedy with two plots going on seamlessly, a con and a character study intertwined, this is another solid entry in the Cage compendium.
One wishes Ridley Scott would make inconsequential but breezy fare like this rather than all his insipid train wrecks of late, which are too numerous.
And Bruce McGill is in it, showing once again that he’s in everything.
My attention was drawn to this as my ears were piqued, tickled even, by Tom Hardy’s bonkers accent in the trailer – whatever accent it’s meant to be, I was intrigued. That or the feeling it was picking up the aesthetic mantel of The Wild One (1953), that seminal exploitation movie that barely merits a second viewing because it’s shite. But it does have Brando being a committed Brando.
Sadly, and this is where my faith in peculiar accents was misplaced, I was annoyed beyond composure with the lead lassie in this and her grating, stomach-churning voice, Marge Simpson scraped down a blackboard with a bit of Karen Hill from Goodfellas (1990) chucked in the vernacular mix. The entire 30 minutes I could manage this film I was telling myself, “This is so bad. My ears are in pain. I hate folk on motorcycles.”
Nice bit of scenery in the picture, open landscapes and all that; it would have been better if you just jettisoned the shitty accents, all the motorcycles, and the story, which I gave up on.
This will be the only movie starring both Tom Hardy and Michael Shannon that I’ll turn off. Sorry, lads.
The biggest compliment I can bestow here is that Bradley Cooper isn’t annoying for one time only.
In addition to this magisterial feat, it’s a movie about misery that’s somehow captivating, and the third act is rather breathtaking in its audacity.
We have a proper movie on our hands.
It’s still incredible and funny as hell. In fact, this may be the funniest non-comedy movie ever.
‘Why would I shoot a bloke – BANG – and then put him in the bloody car and whiz him off to the hospital at a hundred miles an hour? It defeats the purpose of having shot him in the first place. What’s more, it’s bloody insulting, it’s bloody insulting. I mean, am I the only bloody standover man in the country who provides a medical plan for some of these characters?’
This was deeply uncomfortable to watch.
I know barely a thing about the people concerned but I felt like I was on the inside for the duration of the grisly unearthing of a sordid series of manky acts by one rotten creature. And an industry enabling it.
The movie is accomplished in this regard, though it was a box-office bomb (not exactly a shock) despite the talent involved.
Another example of journalism accomplishing what law enforcement should but does not.
Hell or High Water (2016) is very much the industry’s modern Western, luxuriating in a morbid obsession with the past and lost causes, the usual broken-home narrative and the criminals bred from it, a swipe at ruthless capitalism to boot.
But it looks outrageously cinematic, despite the galore of clichés on display. Jeff Bridges is in it and it’s his worse performance; he’s so grating I muted his dialogue and admired the visuals instead of listening to him. He’s some kind of revered ‘treasure’ these days and I have never understood it. He’s been phoning in his shaggy-dog act for two decades now and it’s sadly a guarantee you’ll have to endure this tired schtick in any movie he features in.
A shite actor of limited gifts in a good movie with better actors to salvage it. And your thrilling carnage.
And the incredible cinematography.
Wanderings and ... wonderings. 