Those Who Wish Me Dead

Angelina Jolie is hotter than ever.

(2021) Action (New Line) Angelina Jolie, Finn Little, Jon Bernthal, Aidan Gillen, Nicholas Hoult, Jake Weber, Medina Senghore, Tyler Perry, Boots Southerland, Tory Kittles, James Jordan, Lora Martinez-Cunningham, Howard Ferguson Jr., Ryan Jason Cook, Laura Niemi, Dylan Kenin, Faith Lynch, Alexander Wagerman, Mason Howell, Calvin Olson, Sofia Embid. Directed by Taylor Sheridan

 
I have to admit that I’m not a big fan of kids in peril movies. Too often Hollywood films that put children in the path of evil adults portray the kids unrealistically, either as much smarter than the adults that are after them, much braver than the adults around them, or much cooler than anyone in a similar situation would be. While kids do come in all shapes and sizes – and personality types, including heroic – Hollywood tends to idealize them in one way or another which can make an entire film ring false.

Forensic investigator Owen (Weber) discovers that the district attorney he works for has been killed in a freak gas explosion. He doesn’t believe it for a moment – after all, Owen discovered some disturbing information about some very powerful people. Realizing that the death was no accident, he gathers up his son Connor (Little) and makes a run for Montana, where his brother-in-law, Deputy Sheriff Ethan (Bernthal) might be able to help.

But there are a pair of vicious hired hitmen on their trail, Jack (Gillen) and Patrick (Hoult) and when they ambush and kill Owen, Connor gets away into the Montana woods. There he meets up with Hannah (Jolie), a smokejumper who is currently working in a fire tower after a mistake on her part led to the deaths of her crew, including several children they were in the process of rescuing. She has been covering up her pain with a surfeit of drinking and one-of-the-boys behaviors that have led to her being sent somewhere where she can get her head together. A fire tower is certainly a place where there isn’t much to distract you.

Unless it’s the sudden appearance of a young, terrified boy on the run from ruthless assassins who have set a raging out-of-control forest fire to literally smoke the boy out and keep the local law enforcement busy while they complete their nefarious task. Can Hannah’s survival skills help her protect Connor from the men who wish him dead?

In all honesty, I have to admit that while these types of pictures tend to not thrill me much, Little actually does a pretty fair job of playing the kid realistically; numb and terrified. However, he is overshadowed by the main stars – Jolie, in a return to the front of the camera (she has spent the last few years concentrating on her directorial efforts) reminds us that her star quality has never left. She continues to be absolute money in the bank when it comes to these sorts of physically demanding action roles. Few other actresses handle physically demanding roles as ably as she does.

And lest we forget Bernthal, the one-time Walking Dead baddie who has been on the cusp of being a big star for awhile. This role won’t push him over the edge in either direction, but he continues to be impressive. I’m hopeful that Marvel makes a new Punisher movie at some point with this guy; he deserves the kind of career push that kind of movie would give him.

The action sequences here tend to be pretty big and well-choreographed. That’s not the problem. The problem here is that the plot is just oh-so-predictable and while the characters are given some backstory, they feel kind of shoehorned into cookie cutter cliches of psychologically wounded leads 101. The roles never really feel authentic and the story never takes an unexpected turn. I’m not saying that moviemakers have to reinvent the wheel with every film – that’s simply not a realistic expectation – but this one is a bit too by-the-numbers for me to give it anything but a mild thumbs up.

The movie was one of those released simultaneously in theaters and on HBO Max; it is still out in some theaters but is no longer available on the streaming service at the present. It will be made available on most VOD services starting July 2nd and will be on HBO (and by extension, HBO Max) sometime later this year.

REASONS TO SEE: Jolie retains her star power and Bernthal continues to get better with every role.
REASONS TO AVOID: An utterly pedestrian plot.
FAMILY VALUES: There is plenty of sometimes brutal violence and profanity throughout.
TRIVIAL PURSUIT: Nicolas Cage was at one time considered for a role as one of the hitmen.
BEYOND THE THEATERS: Fandango Now (effective July 2)
CRITICAL MASS: As of 6/18/21: Rotten Tomatoes: 63% positive reviews; Metacritic: 59/100.
COMPARISON SHOPPING: The Professional
FINAL RATING: 6/10
NEXT: Walking While Black: L.O.V.E. is the Answer

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The Nice Guys

An outtake from The Shining?

(2016) Action Comedy (Warner Brothers) Russell Crowe, Ryan Gosling, Angourie Rice, Matt Bomer, Kim Basinger, Margaret Qualley, Yaya DaCosta, Keith David, Beau Knapp, Lois Smith, Murielle Telio, Gil Gerard, Daisy Tahan, Jack Kilmer, Lance Valentine Butler, Ty Simpkins, Cayla Brady, Tammi Arender, Rebecca Dalton Rusk, Terence Rosemore, John L. Morris, Michelle Rivera, Nathaniel “Nate” Scott. Directed by Shane Black

 

1977 in Los Angeles was an interesting place. It was the golden age of porn; bell bottoms and flower shirts were the fashion, and guys with too-long locks and elaborate facial hair were on the prowl for chicks with teased hair. Smog choked everything and in the post-Watergate atmosphere, it felt a lot like innocence had been irrevocably lost. This is where and when I grew up.

Shane Black gets it note-perfect, and while I admit I had very little to do with the porn industry as a teenager (other than as a prospective consumer) this feels like the L.A. I grew up in. This is the kind of town where a sports car might crash from a hilltop road into your background, disgorging a beautiful naked porn star (Telio) whose final words are “How do you like my car?”

This is also the kind of place inhabited by Jackson Healy (Crowe), a Bronx-bred tough guy who is the kind of guy you call when you want someone hurt, but not killed. He’s also a bit of a knight in not-so-shining and dented all to hell armor, hired by a young woman named Amanda (Qualley) to discourage a guy who’s been stalking her.

That guy happens to be Holland March (Gosling) whom Healy appropriately sends to the hospital with a spiral fracture of his arm. But as it turns out, he’s been hired to find Amanda – he’s a private detective, albeit one who drinks far too much and isn’t nearly as bright as he thinks he is. After their encounter, Healy is visited by a pair of mobsters (Knapp, David) who are trying to intimidate him about the whereabouts of Amanda. March gets away from the two of them, leaving one of them with permanent blue dye all over his face.

Realizing that he’s stepped into something that doesn’t smell so good, he enlists the guy he sent to the hospital – March – to find out what’s going on and locate Amanda, who’s disappeared off the face of the Earth. At first none too pleased to be teamed up with him, March begins to grudgingly respect his new partner. The two are helped by March’s precocious daughter Holly (Rice) who is a better detective than either of them.

It turns out the case is related to the porn industry, the California Department of Justice whose head honcho (Basinger) turns out to be Amanda’s mother. On the trail is the chief bad guy John Boy (Bomer) who is thus named because he has a similar mole as Richard Thomas of The Waltons. And with avant garde pornographers, vicious hit men, and Vegas mobsters to contend with, these two ne’er-do-wells will have their work cut out for them if they plan to live to see 1978.

Black has always been a terrific writer, going back to his Lethal Weapon days and to an extent, he’s mocking the genre he helped create (the buddy cop movie) with this film, which would come out ten years after this film was set. As I mentioned earlier, he gets the period stuff right on with the fashions, the smog, the soundtrack and even the vibe. This is most definitely the City of Angels I remember.

He also casts his film nicely. Both Gosling and Crowe take to their parts like they were born to them, and the chemistry between the two is what carries the movie and holds it together. Crowe, who carries himself as a big guy, does the tough-with-a-heart-of-gold as well as anybody and while Gosling is often the comic relief, he never stoops to making his character a laughing stock, although March easily could be considering all the poor choices he makes.

Rice should also be given some credit. The movies are filled with precocious kids who are smarter than the adults in the movie, and often these types of characters are annoying as the fluctuating price of gas. However, Rice makes the character credible enough and vulnerable enough to avoid that pitfall, although again I do wish the adults here didn’t have to be quite so dumb.

The action sequences are decently staged as are the comedy bits, although I think most of the best comedy moments can be found in the trailer which is a bummer. At times, it feels like it is one irritable police captain away from a TV cop show from that era – Starsky and Hutch much?  There is also a little bit of a reach in the plot department in terms of the conspiracy going on in high places, although the movie is well-written overall in terms of plot construction. However, it feels a little bit like a noir film with a funk soundtrack, if you get my drift. Some of it just doesn’t work.

Overall though this is far more entertaining than a lot of stuff out there. It’s smart, it has some decent performances and it captures a place and time better than most. Some might find the immersion in the porn culture a bit distasteful but Black doesn’t stick it in your face overly much. Well, maybe not to me. While I have friends who dug this a lot more than I did, I can say they’re not wrong in giving this film the kind of love they’ve given it and as far as I’m concerned, Shane Black is the kind of director who always seems to make movies that are worthwhile viewing. Boom shaka laka laka, baby.

REASONS TO GO: Smart dialogue and plot construction. Crowe and Gosling have genuine chemistry.
REASONS TO STAY: Originally started life as a television pilot and has that kind of TV quality to it. A little far-fetched in places.
FAMILY VALUES: Violence abounds as well as sexuality and nudity with plenty of foul language and a smattering of drug use – all 70s-centric things.
TRIVIAL PURSUIT: In the elevator scene, the same background Muzak plays as in the similarly-set scene in The Blues Brothers.
CRITICAL MASS: As of 6/20/16: Rotten Tomatoes: 91% positive reviews. Metacritic: 70/100.
COMPARISON SHOPPING: Inherent Vice
FINAL RATING: 6.5/10
NEXT: Warcraft