I'm not sure how you can take a set-up more foolproof than the one offered by BULLET HEAD and end up botching it almost instantly, but writer/director Paul Solet manages to do just that. Solet, who got some acclaim in indie horror circles a while back with 2009's GRACE, jumps right into the story with BULLET HEAD, which has three criminals--level-headed Stacy (Adrien Brody), cynical old-timer Walker (John Malkovich), and irresponsible junkie Gage (Rory Culkin)--making off with a safe from a bungled department store robbery that left several customers and their wheelman dead after trigger-happy Gage decided to raid the pharmacy and open fire. They hole up in an abandoned factory to wait for their contact to arrive to open the safe but that plan goes to shit when they encounter an unexpected obstacle: a battered, bloodied, furiously vicious and very intelligent pit bull who charges at them and has them running from room to room trying to get away and stay alive. But as soon as that simple, to-the-point pitch is established, Solet can't wait to get away from it, giving each of these low-rent reservoir dogs verbose backstories that eat up entirely too much screen time and kill any suspense and momentum the film had going. Brody gets a ludicrously long monologue about a past job involving "truffles" that goes absolutely nowhere, and likewise Malkovich and Culkin get their own long-winded filibusters as the film starts to resemble a David Mamet workshop. Even the dog gets a backstory, as we learn his name is "De Niro," and he's the champion of an underground dogfighting ring (other dogs are named "Eastwood" and "McQueen") based in that very abandoned warehouse and run by powerful crime boss Blue (Antonio Banderas), who inevitably shows up and isn't happy to find intruders. Other than a couple of blurred bits from the dog's POV early on, Banderas doesn't really enter the story until the last 15 minutes, when he immediately shoots someone and follows it with--what else?--a ten-minute speech.
In addition to the movie tough guy shout-outs with the names of the dogs, there's also a lot of Tarantino-esque riffing where Brody and Malkovich debate the merits of being a dog person vs. a cat person, and there's some occasionally witty dialogue after Culkin's idiotic Gage goes off to shoot up so he can get back to normal, and after he's gone for a while, Malkovich's Walker quips "Maybe we should go find him before he takes a selfie on the roof and posts it to Instagram." There's a couple of really good scenes--the discovery of a room filled with rotting canine corpses, and one outstanding suspense set piece just after the one hour mark that looks like Solet came up with that first and then struggled to build a movie around it--but this thing is all over the place. It's pieces of a '90s throwback Tarantino ripoff, a talky Mamet homage, a botched "one last job" heist thriller, a riff on AMORES PERROS, and a killer dog horror movie all cobbled together. It's obvious that the long, actorly monologues seemed appealing to the lead actors (though for some reason, Malkovich decided mumbling would be a good character trait), and to its credit, BULLET HEAD is a lot more ambitious and well-shot than most Bulgaria-lensed productions by Cannon cover band Millennium. But the end result is a rambling, aimless mishmash that sells itself as a nailbiting suspense thriller and can't wait to run as far away from its own premise as quickly as possible. (R, 94 mins)
THE PIRATES OF SOMALIA
(US/UK - 2017)
Based on the 2011 book The Pirates of Somalia: Inside Their Hidden World by Canadian journalist Jay Bahadur, the South Africa-shot THE PIRATES OF SOMALIA is, for the most part, a tone-deaf misfire. It doesn't help that Evan Peters' bland and unappealing performance as Bahadur doesn't really do much to make you care about the central character, but we learn so little about Bahadur before he takes off on his adventure that it just never seems plausible. It's 2008, Bahadur is a year out of college with a degree in business and economics and a newfound desire to be a journalist. Stuck in a dead-end job and living in his parents' basement, he impulsively decides to travel to Somalia to track down and interview pirates and hope that some magazine or book publisher back home will buy the story. What follows is part serious drama and part FEAR AND LOATHING IN SOMALIA, as Bahadur meets up with affable and well-connected interpreter Abdi (Barkhad Abdi, one of the film's few positives) and learns that in order to get interviews with the right people, he needs to bring along the drug khat as payment. This leads to several sequences of Bahadur and his newfound Somali pals chewing khat and writer/director Bryan Buckley (THE BRONZE) segueing into trippy, hallucinatory animated sequences that look like CHEECH AND CHONG'S WALTZ WITH BASHIR. Bahadur spends six months in Somalia, and while he never actually witnesses any piracy firsthand, the film does work in some references to the situation depicted in CAPTAIN PHILLIPS (including an animated recap), which of course co-starred an Oscar-nominated Abdi, almost serving as some kind of bizarro auto-critique on the pitfalls of typecasting. A subplot involving Bahadur growing smitten with the wife (Sabrina Hassan Abdulle) of pirate leader Garaad Mohamed (Mohamed Osmail Ibrahim) only adds to the tedium. The film goes on forever, which allows an embedded Bahadur to grow a shaggy, unkempt beard, which only succeeds in making Peters look like the Geico caveman. A disheveled-looking Al Pacino shows up for a day's work as a grizzled, burned-out, and completely fictional journalism legend who inspires Bahadur to go to Somalia, and Melanie Griffith has even less screen time as Bahadur's concerned mom. Bahadur's story is an interesting one, and he's become a respected journalist in the years since, but you'd never know it by watching THE PIRATES OF SOMALIA. (R, 118 mins)
BLADE RUNNER 2049 (US - 2017) Directed by Denis Villeneuve. Written by Hampton Fancher and Michael Green. Cast: Ryan Gosling, Harrison Ford, Jared Leto, Robin Wright, Dave Bautista, Ana de Armas, Sylvia Hoeks, Mackenzie Davis, Carla Juri, Lennie James, Barkhad Abdi, Edward James Olmos, Wood Harris, Hiam Abbass, David Dastmalchian, Tomas Lemarquis, Sean Young. (R, 164 mins) Ridley Scott's BLADE RUNNER, based on Philip K. Dick's 1968 novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, is so highly and rightfully regarded as an influential sci-fi masterpiece to this day that it's easy to forget that it only did middling business in theaters in the summer of 1982 and the reviews weren't all that great. Over time, thanks to incessant cable and TV airings and the reconstruction of the "director's cut" in 1992 (assembled from the workprint and Scott's notes; he was busy working on 1492: CONQUEST OF PARADISE at the time and wasn't directly involved in it other than being consulted) and later with Scott's official "final cut" in 2007, the film's reputation and significance grew. The compromised theatrical version was a thorn in the side of both Scott and star Harrison Ford, who wasn't pleased about adding hard-boiled voiceover narration and made every effort to ensure that it sounded as if it was doing it at gunpoint. The director's cut removed the narration and added the much-debated unicorn scene, meant to ambiguously convey that perhaps Deckard (Ford), the titular blade runner, was himself a replicant just like those he was assigned to pursue and "retire." In the unlikely event you haven't seen BLADE RUNNER since it was in theaters and all you know is the now-obsolete theatrical version, then you're going to be completely baffled as to what's going in BLADE RUNNER 2049, which uses the director's cut as its springboard. With Scott onboard as executive producer, the original film's co-writer Hampton Fancher (his first credit since 1999's THE MINUS MAN) contributing to the script, and acclaimed filmmaker Denis Villeneuve (PRISONERS, SICARIO, ARRIVAL) at the helm, BLADE RUNNER 2049 established its bona fides before filming even began. Villeneuve promised to remain true to the beloved original and he more or less does. It in no way insults or diminishes the memory of the 1982 classic, and it throws in plenty of winking callbacks, but at the end of the day, it's still a 35-years-later sequel that doesn't succeed in justifying its existence.
Set 30 years after the first film, BLADE RUNNER 2049 opens in an even more dystopian California. Due to repeated replicant rebellions like the one led by Rutger Hauer's Roy Batty, the Tyrell Corporation went bankrupt. Replicant production began once more when what was left of Tyrell's operation was purchased by billionaire industrialist Niander Wallace (Jared Leto). Blade runner K (Ryan Gosling) arrives at the isolated desert farm of Sapper Morton (Dave Bautista), an old-school Nexus 8 replicant with an indeterminate lifespan. After a violent confrontation, K does his job and takes him out before reporting back to LAPD headquarters for a "baseline" debriefing required of replicants. Yes, that's right. BLADE RUNNER 2049 immediately answers the million dollar question: blade runners are replicants, and they're now integrated into society, even though they're regarded as second-class citizens, or "skinjobs" and "skinners." Investigation of Morton's property reveals a box of human skeletal remains near a tree. Examination of the remains indicate that it was a woman who died giving birth, and further analysis of the DNA shows proof that the skeleton is that of a replicant, thus blowing the doors off everything known about the bioengineered "skinjobs," who can apparently sexually reproduce, one last experiment pulled off by the Tyrell Corporation before it imploded. K's investigation into the whereabouts of the woman's child leads him to numerous places--very slowly--and also involves his hologram love interest Joi (Ana de Armas); a "memory designer" (Carla Juri) who knows about a specific real or imagined event that's been planted into K's memory; Wallace's ruthless enforcer Luv (Sylvia Hoeks as Milla Jovovich) who's also out to find the now-adult child; and even a visit to a retirement home with Gaff (Edward James Olmos), who's still passing the time and busies his hands by making tiny origami animals.
Eventually, K ends up in the radioactive ruins of Las Vegas, where Deckard has been in hiding for 30 years after running off with now-deceased replicant Rachael (Sean Young) at the end of the first film. To say anymore would involve too many spoilers, but let's begin with the positives: it's just as visually stunning as you'd expect, thanks in large part to the work of the great cinematographer Roger Deakins, the Susan Lucci of D.P.s who's been nominated for 13 Oscars and has yet to win. The world of BLADE RUNNER 2049 is just as vividly dystopian as its predecessor in its own ways, this time mixing its neon-drenched cityscapes with dusty wastelands and the almost Overlook Hotel-esque appearance of the abandoned casino resort Deckard calls home. Ford's appearance here is not unlike Charlton Heston's extended cameo in BENEATH THE PLANET OF THE APES: BLADE RUNNER 2049 runs an ass-numbing 164 minutes, and in one of the most delayed entrances this side of Marlon Brando in APOCALYPSE NOW, Ford's first appearance doesn't even happen until nearly two hours in. Atmospheric slow-burn is one thing, but the ponderous and relentlessly gabby BLADE RUNNER 2049 is oppressively overlong, with scenes going on much longer than necessary and too many instances of characters introduced making overly verbose expository proclamations from the shadows only to slowly emerge in the light (Leto only has two scenes, and he enters both of them in this fashion). Everyone in this movie is a slow talker, and it probably adds 30 minutes to the running time.
Knowing now that Deckard is a replicant doesn't change the events of the first film since the director's cut more or less said as much, but Ford still managed to create a compelling and complex character. Here, Deckard just looks befuddled and grouchy. In other words, he looks like Harrison Ford, reliving his Han Solo and Indiana Jones glory days in present-day nostalgia trips that don't quite measure up to the classics that came before (STAR WARS: THE FORCE AWAKENS was fun, but have you ever met an INDIANA JONES AND THE KINGDOM OF THE CRYSTAL SKULL fan?). K is a character that, on paper, plays to the strengths of Gosling's moody persona as seen in DRIVE and ONLY GOD FORGIVES, but Nicolas Winding Refn made those enigmatic Gosling characters a lot more interesting in those films than Villeneuve does here. K's love for Joi is an interesting concept that never really feels developed, but then, nor do any of the characters. BLADE RUNNER is a hypnotic experience that feels new and compelling and fresh with each revisit. It's timeless. But for all the talk of replicants finding their humanity in BLADE RUNNER 2049, there's nothing here even remotely as memorable or gut-wrenching as Rutger Hauer's "Tears in Rain" monologue before his final, resigned declaration of "Time to die." And while Vangelis' synth score is one of the 1982 film's most memorable components, the score here by Hans Zimmer is so aggressively, overbearingly bombastic that it almost qualifies as self-parody. Vangelis enhanced the mood and the vision and contributed to the hypnotic nature. Zimmer's score stampedes and bulldozes over everything to the point where it's an overwhelming, suffocating distraction that actually detracts from the effectiveness of numerous scenes. I gave BLADE RUNNER 2049 time, fidgeting through its laborious first hour and legitimately intrigued by a major plot reveal that finally seems to set things in motion, but it resumed dragging ass shortly thereafter and Zimmer's score got even more obnoxious, and no matter how captivating the visuals were, I finally had to accept the fact that it was well past two hours into this thing, its contrivances and developments were getting more half-baked and nonsensical (I'm still not sure what's going on with the replicant "revolution" that gets brought up near the end and is instantly dropped) and the point had passed where I ran out of excuses and had to admit to myself that I wasn't connecting with it at all. BLADE RUNNER was slow in a methodical way that was never boring. BLADE RUNNER 2049 is so concerned with replicating that feeling that it never finds its footing and never gets any momentum going. Maybe I'll look at it again in a year.
GOOD TIME (US/Luxembourg - 2017) Directed by Josh and Benny Safdie. Written by Josh Safdie and Ronald Bronstein. Cast: Robert Pattinson, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Benny Safdie, Barkhad Abdi, Buddy Duress, Taliah Webster, Peter Verby, Necro, Rose Gregorio, Gladys Mathon, Saida Mansoor, Eric Paykert, Robert Clohessy, George Lee Miles. (R, 101 mins) In the tradition of SPRING BREAKERS, THE ROVER, THE WITCH, IT COMES AT NIGHT, and A GHOST STORY, GOOD TIME is another love-it-or-hate-it A24 pickup that gets great reviews from critics but a toxic reception in wide release and almost immediately becomes a revered cult movie. A Palme d'Or contender at Cannes and the most high-profile film to date from sibling indie auteurs Josh and Benny Safdie, who earned significant acclaim for their 2014 heroin addiction drama HEAVEN KNOWS WHAT (Josh, the elder of the pair, got some indie buzz for his 2008 solo effort THE PLEASURE OF BEING ROBBED), GOOD TIME is like nothing else you've seen in multiplexes this year. It's brash, ballsy, and out of its own time, and with its grainy look and a supporting cast of mostly amateur actors from Queens and Flushing, it resembles a 2017 interpretation of one of those really gritty NYC films of Abel Ferrara or Paul Morrissey, while owing a debt to the "No Wave" movement of no-budget DIY movies in the early 1980s that helped establish underground filmmakers like Jim Jarmusch, Eric Mitchell, Beth B, Susan Seidelman, Slava Tsukerman, and Amos Poe. The garish Argento colorgasms in Sean Price Williams' cinematography and propulsive, non-stop Tangerine Dream-ish score by Oneohtrix Point Never (Daniel Lopatin) give it an enervating, exhilarating aura that's hypnotic and surreal, like a nightmare from which its hapless shit show of a "hero," Constantine "Connie" Nikas can't wake. As played by Robert Pattinson, whose post-TWILIGHT career choices are proof positive that he's a serious actor who's made more money than he'll ever need and is drawn to challenging projects with very little mainstream appeal, Connie is a petty criminal and a total loser who doesn't realize he's a loser. He's got big ideas and seems to pull them off but they always lead to bigger problems and end up sucking more unfortunate bystanders into his toxic orbit. Nobody has a good time in GOOD TIME, which is one of these familiar "survive the night" scenarios, but pulled off with such imaginative panache that it ends up being one of the most stylish fusions of sight and sound this side of BEYOND THE BLACK RAINBOW.
After crashing a therapy session for his mentally-challenged, deaf younger brother Nick (co-director Benny Safdie), Connie talks his brother into accompanying him on a Flushing bank robbery that almost works. They wear very lifelike masks that don't attract attention from the other customers and the teller follows directions and doesn't hit the panic button. Of course it's too good to be true, since the dye packs explode in their getaway car. While fleeing the cops, Connie gets away but Nick is apprehended and taken to Rikers. Connie takes the stained money to a bail bondsman, who says he still needs another $10,000 to get Nick out. The rest of the film chronicles Connie's attempts to bail Nick out, running into one problem after another, starting with his older sometime-girlfriend Corey (Jennifer Jason Leigh), a hot mess in her 40s who seems to have stopped maturing at 17 and is so stupidly infatuated with Connie that she lets him badger her ("What the fuck's the problem? It's like a loan...you'll get it right back!") into unsuccessfully trying to use her mom's credit card for Nick's bail. That doesn't work, and Connie then finds out that Nick can't be bailed out anyway since he's been involved in a fight in jail and has been taken to a hospital in the city, prompting one of the least-plausible escape sequences you'll ever see, and eventually leading to the introduction of three other key characters: just-paroled Queens pusher Ray (Buddy Duress, star of HEAVEN KNOWS WHAT), 16-year-old delinquent Crystal (newcomer Taliah Webster), and security guard Dash (CAPTAIN PHILLIPS Oscar-nominee Barkhad Abdi), who runs afoul of Connie and Ray when they try to recover a drug stash at a dilapidated amusement park.
GOOD TIME always keeps you on edge, with the constant use of close-ups with handheld cameras, and the grainy, 16mm-looking imagery giving it a genuinely frazzled, scuzzy vibe. An absolutely magnetic, frenetic Pattinson has never been better, seemingly going full Method by the end, where it looks like he's been awake for a week even though the film takes place over a 24-hour period (there's a couple of time flubs that undermine the flow of the story, like one character mentioning it's "almost 9:00 pm," then a bit later, someone else saying it's 7:30 pm). GOOD TIME basks in the seedy underbelly of dangerous areas of working class Queens that you really don't see much of in movies anymore, giving it a distinctly 1970s mood but coming off like Nicolas Winding Refn, Gaspar Noe, and Larry Clark teaming up to make a Michael Mann movie. The Safdies take advantage of actual locations--some shots seem to have been captured on the fly, guerrilla-style--in places that don't appear to have changed much over the last few decades. It's only fitting that this film comes off like a welcome relic from another era, a late-summer shot of adrenaline that unfortunately will be loathed by the few mainstream moviegoers who don't ignore it in the first place. It's a powerfully off-kilter moviegoing experience where nothing plays out as you expect, from the opening credits taking place over 20 minutes into the movie to the way Ray ends up entering the story and briefly hijacking it (Duress gets a long speech and flashback sequence out of nowhere that's the most inspired non-sequitur aside for a character since Victor's trip through Europe in Roger Avary's THE RULES OF ATTRACTION). There isn't much here on a narrative or subtextual level--there's probably some parallels to be drawn from Connie, Nick, and Crystal all having absentee parents and being raised by their grandmothers--and it comes up a bit short on that front, but as a character study in lowlifes and for its colorful visuals and shot compositions and aural razzle-dazzle (goddamn, that score is incredible), GOOD TIME is a gem that sticks with you and is one of the audacious films of the summer.
EYE IN THE SKY (UK/Canada - 2016) Directed by Gavin Hood. Written by Guy Hibbert. Cast: Helen Mirren, Aaron Paul, Alan Rickman, Barkhad Abdi, Jeremy Northam, Iain Glen, Phoebe Fox, Richard McCabe, Monica Dolan, Francis Chouler, Michael O'Keefe, Laila Robins, Babou Ceesay, Armaan Haggio, Aisha Takow, Faisa Hassan, Gavin Hood, Ebby Weyime, Jessica Jones, Lex King. (R, 102 mins) An excellent ensemble piece that examines the war on terror without ever resorting to preachy pontification and ham-fisted political stances, EYE IN THE SKY is razor-sharp and relentlessly-paced, the kind of film where you'll lose count of how many times you find yourself holding your breath in edge-of-your-seat suspense. Working from a screenplay by Guy Hibbert (SHOT THROUGH THE HEART, FIVE MINUTES OF HEAVEN), South African director Gavin Hood (TSOTSI, the 2005 Oscar winner for Best Foreign Language Film) has explored similar areas before with 2007's RENDITION, but following Hollywood money gigs like X-MEN ORIGINS: WOLVERINE and the franchise non-starter ENDER'S GAME, EYE IN THE SKY is his most accomplished work yet. Not quite real-time but playing out over several hours, EYE takes place all over the globe but still feels confined and intensely claustrophobic, as drone surveillance over a safe house in Nairobi sets in motion a joint US/British/Kenyan military counter-terrorism operation. From the UK, Col. Katherine Powell (Helen Mirren) commands Las Vegas-stationed US Air Force drone pilot Steve Watts (Aaron Paul) to observe the safe house, with Kenyan intelligence agent Jama Farah (Barkhad Abdi) on the ground near the location. Two new recruits from the UK and the US are meeting with three high-ranking officials from a Somali terrorist organization, among them Powell's chief target, British-born Susan Danford (Lex King), who ran off to join the outfit six years earlier and changed her name to Ayesha Al-Hady. When Farah flies a small beetle drone into the safe house and everyone involved--Powell in Sussex, her boss Gen. Frank Benson (the late Alan Rickman) in London, Kenyan military, and US military in Vegas and at Pearl Harbor--see prepped suicide bombing vests, the mission escalates from capture to kill, with Watts and fellow pilot Carrie Gershon (Phoebe Fox) awaiting the order to bomb the target.
The problem: collateral damage in the surrounding residential slum, in particular a little girl (Aisha Takow), who's selling bread on the street corner right outside the safe house. While Powell and Benson believe bombing the safe house will ultimately save more lives than it will claim, a decision corroborated by the US Secretary of State (Michael O'Keefe), they're stonewalled by everyone from the British Minister of Defence (Jeremy Northam), the Prime Minister's Foreign Secretary (Iain Glen), and other politicos present, who feel that the fallout from a drone strike killing a little girl, and the possibility of the footage ending up on YouTube, could be a PR nightmare for the British government. While the clock ticks and the terrorists begin donning their suicide vests, the battery on the beetle drone dies and a decision must be made, a decision that can't be made when all of the politicians keep "referring up"--passing the buck to the next person of authority up the ladder in an attempt to dodge responsibility and avoid being the one who gets thrown under the bus. It's like a feature-length, drone warfare version of the MR. SHOW "Change for a Dollar" sketch.
Alan Rickman (1946-2016)
There's potential for some DR. STRANGELOVE-inspired satire, but Hood and Hibbert keep it serious with only a few overtly, intentionally funny bits of cynical humor, like Glen's Foreign Secretary being hobbled by food poisoning and diarrhea in Singapore, where he's attending the opening of a conglomerate with the acronym "I.B.S." The absurdly evasive and frequently cowardly indecisiveness of the politicians, the seething outrage of Mirren's Powell (who sort-of becomes this film's Gen. Jack D. Ripper, if you want to make STRANGELOVE comparisons), and the exasperated, eye-rolling frustration of Rickman's Benson (the much-missed actor is superb in his final onscreen appearance; his voice will be heard in the upcoming ALICE THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS) provide scattered moments of mostly nervous laughter for the audience, but for the most part, EYE IN THE SKY is played FAIL-SAFE straight and is nerve-wrackingly intense, which is not something one can normally say about a war film where most of the characters are sitting around staring at laptops, sending instant messages, getting on the phone, and watching massive HD monitors on the wall. It also earns points for a pulls-no-punches ending that almost certainly would've been dumped and re-shot had a major studio picked this up instead of the upstart indie Bleecker Street Films. You don't hear the term "crackerjack thriller" used much these days, because so few thrillers are worthy of the label. EYE IN THE SKY fits the bill, a film for grown-ups that's smart, well-acted, tightly-plotted, fast-moving, and admirably uncompromising.
THE BROTHERS GRIMSBY (US/UK - 2016) Directed by Louis Leterrier. Written by Sacha Baron Cohen, Phil Johnston and Peter Baynham. Cast: Sacha Baron Cohen, Mark Strong, Penelope Cruz, Isla Fisher, Rebel Wilson, Gabourey Sidibe, Ian McShane, Barkhad Abdi, Scott Adkins, Tamsin Egerton, Sam Hazeldine, Nick Boraine, Annabelle Wallis, Ricky Tomlinson, David Harewood, Yusuf Hafri. (R, 83 mins) With his mockumentaries BORAT (2006) and BRUNO (2009), Sacha Baron Cohen displayed a razor sharp wit in his holding up a funhouse mirror to America seen through the eyes of outsiders. He continued in a similar vein with the narrative comedy THE DICTATOR (2012). But with THE BROTHERS GRIMSBY, his latest scripting and starring effort, Baron Cohen pretty much abandons any kind of social/political commentary and goes straight for the grossout/raunch crowd, displaying a positively Sandlerian level of crude laziness with gags that play like he stole them from the dumpster outside the Farrelly Brothers' office. Baron Cohen is too smart to confuse any of this for bold transgression. The sole saving grace is the seething slow burn of veteran character actor Mark Strong, who manages to maintain his dignity to a point--that point being when Baron Cohen's script has him drenched in elephant cum. Twice. In what must set a new standard in damning with faint praise, the best thing one can say about THE BROTHERS GRIMSBY is that it's marginally better than DIRTY GRANDPA.
28 years after being left an orphan and separated from his beloved little brother, Nobby (Baron Cohen) is a soccer-obsessed father of 11 (with names like Skeletor, Tsunami, and Gangnam Style) and grandfather of one (Django Unchained), with his nympho wife Dawn (Rebel Wilson) and living in the depressing industrial five-nuclear-reactor town of Grimsby, the "twin city to Chernobyl." He gets word that his little brother will be at a London reception (yes, the establishing shot of London, with the London Eye ferris wheel and the Thames is accompanied by the caption "London, England") to honor young, wheelchair-bound AIDS activist Schlomo Khashidi (Yusuf Hafri), hosted by actress and humanitarian Rhonda George (Penelope Cruz). The long-lost little brother turns out to be Sebastian Graves (Strong), a lethal superspy working for a covert division of MI-6, there to take out international assassin Pavel Lukashenko (Scott Adkins). Nobby surprises Sebastian, who compromises the shot and ends up shooting young Schlomo, whose AIDS-tainted blood lands in the open-sore-filled mouth of celebrity attendee Daniel Radcliffe (played by an impersonator), while Lukashenko's remote controlled gun takes out the head of the World Health Organization. With the mayhem pinned on him and MI-6 deeming him a traitor, Sebastian is forced to go on the run with the hapless Nobby and follow the trail all the way to South Africa and ultimately to the FIFA finals in Chile to find Lukashenko and clear his name.
Along the way, it's endless toilet humor--literally in some cases. Nobby is forced to pretend to be Sebastian after the secret agent accidentally injects himself with heroin Nobby bought from a Cape Town dealer (Barkhad Abdi, obviously unable to parlay that CAPTAIN PHILLIPS Oscar nod into anything resembling a career bump). Nobby is sent to seduce the wife (Annabelle Wallis) of an arms dealer, but confuses her with hotel maid Banu (PRECIOUS' Gabourey Sidibe, in a humiliating role), who's wearing a similar dress, which leads to an extended shot of Baron Cohen with his face buried between Sidibe's ass cheeks, with an insert shot of what's supposed to be the Oscar-nominated actress' extremely unkempt crotch area. Sebastian is shot in the scrotum with a poisoned dart, forcing Nobby to suck the poison out of his brother's ballsack, Baron Cohen wrapping his mouth around Strong's stunt sack as Sebastian teabags Nobby ("You came on my face!" Nobby yells, with Sebastian replying "It was a tiny amount of pre-ejaculate at most. Grow up!"). Horny Dawn goes commando and pulls a BASIC INSTINCT on Nobby, opening her thighs and queefing in his face ("That wasn't me bum!" she says), and then ripping a loud fart ("That was me bum!"). At a health spa, Nobby falls face first into some wax and then lands on a guy's crotch, emerging with a curly goatee except for where the guy's dick entered his mouth. A weakened, AIDS-stricken "Daniel Radcliffe" is later shot at the FIFA finals, with his tainted blood going into the mouth of attendee Donald Trump. But the biggest set piece, and the one where Baron Cohen's career may very well end, has Nobby and Sebastian fleeing psychotic MI-6 mad dog Chilcott (Sam Hazeldine) and hiding inside the spacious confines of a female elephant's vagina. Just as Chilcott and his men leave, Nobby starts crawling out only to be stopped by an aroused male elephant who mounts the female, with Nobby and Sebastian sharing the vagina with a giant elephant cock. "You stroke him and I'll cradle the balls!" Nobby advises, as Sebastian is soon drenched in gallons of elephant jizz. When they try to exit, they're again thwarted by a second male elephant about to have his way with the female, followed by a line of elephants forming for what Nobby deems "an elephant bukkake fuck party." And then Sebastian is covered in elephant cum again, while Nobby is anally violated by another male elephant.
It's worth mentioning that Baron Cohen and co-writer Peter Baynham got Oscar nominations for writing BORAT, and that their other co-writer here (Phil Johnston), co-scripted WRECK-IT-RALPH and the current hit ZOOTOPIA. The director is former Luc Besson protege Louis Leterrier (TRANSPORTER 2, THE INCREDIBLE HULK), and the second-unit action duties were handled by JOHN WICK director Chad Stahelski. There is some genuine talent here and the end result is so utterly embarrassing that as the credits rolled, the exiting audience members (both of us) didn't even want to make eye contact. It's lazy, it's beyond juvenile, and it's simply not funny, whether it's the recurrent anal fixation, the pointless AIDS jokes, and consistently unfunny grossout humor at the expense of plus-sized women. "Shock" doesn't necessarily equal "funny," and Baron Cohen is a smart enough writer and performer to know the difference (the only sign of vintage Baron Cohen that shows is when Nobby discovers the rush of firing a weapon, concluding "I can see why people love guns! It completely distances you from the guilt of your actions!"). THE BROTHERS GRIMSBY is a draggy slog even at just 83 minutes, and the fact that there are seven credited editors is indicative of compromised product with which no one really knew what to do (half the shots and lines in the trailer aren't even in the finished movie, and the set-up is so rushed and truncated that it's never really explained how Nobby finds out Sebastian will be in London). Baron Cohen is all about poking people with sticks to get a response, but what exactly was the endgame here? Whatever went wrong, let's just hope that he got it out of his system and can go back to being the bold provocateur he's capable of being, because THE BROTHERS GRIMSBY would be damn near unwatchable were it not for the heroic efforts of Mark Strong.
