Tag Archives: Denzel Washington

Gladiator II (2024) is an abomination.

Pathetic, absolutely futile cinema, I was convinced for a torrid opening 20 minutes that this putrid imitator was an AI … thing. Embarrassingly, it’s a verbatim rendering of the first one, with an added siege lifted from Game of Thrones season four, episode nine.

In what passes for a story, which is an appropriation of better material out there, characters do and say the most trite things; there is even a rip-off of that scene from Ben Hur (1959) when creepy Jack Hawkins licks his lips at Charlton Heston’s oar action.

It’s a fucking ridiculously stupid, cynical, pointless and rubbish film and I can’t believe it was made.

Why does anyone still have dealings with this director? He needs banned from making movies.

Shite.

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Courage Under Fire (1996).

A.K.A. the Meg Ryan movie that isn’t an insufferable rom-com – there is no diner buffoonery or a premise based around emails (it was 1998, I suppose) here. And she is fine in this. One might even mistake her for an actual actor, and I can comfortably say the same about Lou Diamond Phillips, who excels in this overlooked war drama as the dodgy one.

Nothing wrong with this film at all. Denzel great as always, a young Matt Damon shows up looking like a rake, the action is cracking, the story easy to follow, no thematic minefields on display, and I learned a few things watching it.

I’ll pass this knowledge on to someone one day if we ever discuss the Gulf War.

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Devil in a Blue Dress (1995).

Despite my deep admiration for Denzel’s acting gifts, this movie is of little note, and I lost all interest with the central murder or anything that anyone was taking about. There’s not even a good thing about this; it is merely a copycat of Chinatown (1974).

It made no sense. The protagonist is in mortal danger yet keeps rocking back to the danger zone that is his house. Characters bubble away about how awful they have all been, but only when there’s a gun to their heads. Three goon cops – one of them Tom Sizemore – keep arriving with the same roughhouse antics over and over. 

It was all just a pain to watch despite the perfectly fine performances. If it were even shot well I’d recommend it for something – but nah. Boring, boring, boring, more boring. 

A boring film. 

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Crimson Tide (1995).

Crimson Tide (1995) is fucking amazing, and it’s not just for the extended screaming stand-off between Gene and Denzel. It’s a film about an issue, a rather big issue, yet is shot with such electricity, edited and paced as good as any action-thriller, and with a Hans Zimmer score sounding like it was composed when he was conducting an esoteric shite. Even the intermittent pop culture references, weird as they are, kind of work, a way to relieve the unbearable tension.

You have five heart attacks watching this movie.

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