Gary Oldman really should have better things to do after his DARKEST HOUR Oscar triumph than dropping in for Bruce Willis duty on a straight-to-VOD Lionsgate/Grindstone clunker like KILLERS ANONYMOUS. So should Jessica Alba, who has even less to do here than Oldman, yet both are prominently displayed on the cut-and-paste poster art for this utterly dreadful dark comedy that squanders them and an interesting premise and crosses its fingers hoping that frantically piling on one nonsensical twist after another in the final act will gaslight you into thinking you're watching a more clever movie than you are (and just take a moment and look at that poster--it looks like the graphic design team had a 5:00 pm deadline and started working on it at 4:57). KILLERS ANONYMOUS opens with a prologue where Oldman's unnamed character (a mystery man known only as "The Man") is summoned from Los Angeles to London by underling Jade (Alba) to assess a botched assassination attempt on a popular US senator (Sam Hazeldine) who's a rising star with presidential aspirations. Jade is killed during the opening credits (and that's it for Alba, who couldn't have worked on this for more than a day) by Krystal (co-writer Elizabeth Morris), who heads straight to a meeting of Killers Anonymous, a support group for assassins dealing with job-related stress and burnout. It's a potentially amusing idea, but once everyone arrives--there's also group leader Jo (MyAnna Buring); player Leandro (Michael Socha); mild-mannered Calvin (Tim McInnerny); sensitive Ben (Elliot James Langridge); 'fookin' 'ell, mate!" LOCK STOCK knockoff rage case Markus (top-billed Tommy Flanagan); and new member Alice (EMPIRE's Rhyon Nicole Brown), a mysterious American who's hesitant to say much--the film stops dead in its tracks as director/co-writer Martin Owen (LET'S BE EVIL) gives each of the characters their own long monologue about who they are and what brought them to KA.
This goes on for about an hour, intermittently broken up by frequent bitching about quiet Alice by resident loudmouths Markus and Krystal, and while it might be a nice acting class exercise for the cast, it doesn't make for a very engaging film. Owen occasionally cuts away to Morgan (Isabelle Allen), a teenage runaway who's hiding in a crawlspace and eavesdropping on everything, and to a grimacing Oldman, whose enigmatic "The Man" is positioned on a nearby rooftop listening in on the bugged session while on the phone counseling a troubled killer (Suki Waterhouse) back in L.A. Not unlike a deadening mash-up of early Guy Ritchie, SMOKIN' ACES, and THE ICEMAN COMETH, the pointless and self-indulgent KILLERS ANONYMOUS is an absolute endurance test that doesn't have a single clever or even remotely amusing moment in its 96 excruciating minutes, which is pretty tough to accomplish considering the offbeat black comedy potential of a support group for assassins. Your first inclination would be to think that this must be some unreleasable dud that was shot four or five years ago and is only now being dusted off because of Oldman's DARKEST HOUR awards run. Nope...production began in July 2018, a good three months after the Oscars. Gary Oldman showed up on the set of KILLERS ANONYMOUS a newly-anointed Academy Award-winner. Did he lose a bet? Was his family being held hostage? Was he choking in a restaurant and Owen was there to successfully administer the Heimlich, making Oldman feel obligated to do him a solid in return? What is Gary Oldman doing in this movie? What is Jessica Alba doing in this movie? Hell, I don't even know what Tommy Flanagan is doing in this movie. (R, 96 mins)
ASTRONAUT (Canada - 2019)
It's hard to watch ASTRONAUT and not think that it might exist in some alternate post-CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND where an elderly Roy Neary is still watching the skies. That's because Richard Dreyfuss stars in this slight but sincere Canadian drama from debuting writer/director Shelagh McLeod. Dreyfuss is Angus Stewart, a 75-year-old retired civil engineer, astronomy enthusiast, and recent widower who's been forced to sell his home and move in with his daughter Molly (Krista Bridges), son-in-law Jim (Lyriq Bent), and adoring young grandson Barney (Richie Lawrence) after recurring TIAs and a diagnosis of atrial fibrillation and angina. Though Barney loves having him around and learning about space, his presence causes tension between between Molly and Jim, so he reluctantly agrees to move into a nursing home after Molly finds him in the midst of another mini-stroke. Though he befriends other residents--including a flamboyant Art Hindle and Graham Greene as a partially paralyzed stroke survivor--the irascible Angus quickly grows bored with the rigidity of the facility's director (Mimi Kuzyk), and at Barney's suggestion, enters himself in an online lottery created by Elon Musk-like multi-billionaire Marcus Brown (Colm Feore), where the winner gets a seat on Brown's ultimate dream project: the first commercial space flight. The age cut-off is 65, so Angus simply shaves off a decade and divulges nothing about his worsening health situation. And of course, he makes the cut.
A film aimed at senior audiences who might balk at all the R-rated talk and geriatric threesomes in Clint Eastwood's THE MULE, ASTRONAUT is corny, maudlin and shamelessly manipulative. But Dreyfuss admirably resists his innately hammy impulses and turns in a heartfelt performance as a man who knows the end is near and just wants one shot at his lifelong dream. There's certainly a strong argument to be made that everything that unfolds is just a fantasy of dying man, and an attempt at suspense in the third act where Angus' expertise in engineering helps avert a potential disaster for Brown is a little too hokey, but this is really all about Dreyfuss. He shows a genuine camaraderie with young Lawrence and his scenes with Bridges have a realism to them that will resonate with anyone who's lost a parent and knows the other doesn't have much time left. ASTRONAUT loses its way a little in the home stretch, but it's the kind of film that probably would've been a minor sleeper hit of the STRAIGHT STORY sort in the late '90s. And it gives Dreyfuss--last seen embarrassing himself by playing a deranged criminal mountain man like the love child of Walter Brennan and Strother Martin in the dismal Gina Carano actioner DAUGHTER OF THE WOLF--a worthy late-career dramatic lead. Call it MR. HOLLAND GOES TO SPACE. (Unrated, 97 mins)
The third entry in the ESCAPE PLAN franchise, ESCAPE PLAN: THE EXTRACTORS was already completed when ESCAPE PLAN 2: HADES went straight-to-DVD exactly one year ago, and it seems to inherently realize that everyone would hate it. That includes star Sylvester Stallone, who hyped ESCAPE PLAN: THE EXTRACTORS in a recent interview by declaring ESCAPE PLAN 2 the worst movie he's ever made. An interesting approach to plugging your latest project, but at the same time, he's not wrong. More or less pretending the dreadful ESCAPE PLAN 2 never happened before anyone even had a chance to see it, THE EXTRACTORS abandons the high-tech, borderline sci-fi of the first sequel and instead expands on a storyline from the 2013 original, which only did modest business stateside but was a blockbuster hit in China, thus leading to these two cheaply-made and largely China-targeted sequels. Chinese tech giant Zhang Innovations is looking to set up shop at an abandoned factory in Mansfield, OH. But the delegation, headed by Daya Zhang (Malese Jow), is ambushed at the local airport by a heavily-armed crew of mercenaries led by Lester Clark Jr (Devon Sawa), and whisked away to Devil's Station, a black site, hellhole prison in Latvia (but played by the Ohio State Reformatory in Mansfield, as seen in THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION), with Clark demanding a ransom of $700 million and all of Zhang Innovations' secrets from its CEO, Daya's father Wu Zhang (Russell Wong). En route to Latvia, Clark also abducts Abigail Ross (Jaime King), the girlfriend of prison security expert Ray Breslin (Stallone), in a calculated effort to kill two birds with one stone: Clark Jr's missing-and-presumed dead father was once Breslin's corrupt business partner (played by Vincent D'Onofrio in the first film) and he had a side deal going with Wu Zhang that didn't end well. Obsessed with avenging his father, Clark Jr has devised a way to exact vengeance on both Wu Zhang and Breslin by kidnapping the most precious things in their lives. Of course, this means Breslin assembles his team to attempt an extraction, including Trent (Dave Bautista) and Hush (Curtis "50 Cent" Jackson), and they're joined by Daya's disgraced current bodyguard Bao (Harry Shum Jr.) and her former bodyguard and ex-lover Shen (Max Zhang, who also teamed with Bautista in this year's earlier Chinese import MASTER Z: IP MAN LEGACY)
Boasting a ludicrous 52 credited producers (shockingly, Stallone isn't one of them), ESCAPE PLAN: THE EXTRACTORS is as by-the-numbers as it gets, though at the very least, it's an improvement over the miserable ESCAPE PLAN 2. Bautista probably put in two, maybe three days work ("I'm gonna go check it out," Trent says as he splits from the rest of the group, disappearing for long stretches as Bautista likely headed to straight to the set of AVENGERS: ENDGAME), and I'd be surprised if 50 Cent was there for more than one. But Stallone gets a bit more to do here, and has a well-choreographed and quite brutal climactic throwdown with Sawa, the now-40-year-old FINAL DESTINATION star surprisingly convincing as the bad guy. Stallone can't possibly need this gig, he but seems to be somewhat more invested in the proceedings, perhaps because his buddy John Herzfeld (2 DAYS IN THE VALLEY, 15 MINUTES) is at the helm rather than ESCAPE PLAN 2's DTV/VOD hack Steven C. Miller, the helmer of many of Lionsgate's landmark "Bruce Willis Phones In His Performance From His Hotel Room" series (Stallone and Herzfeld previously collaborated on 2014's ill-advised, barely-released REACH ME, the IT'S A MAD, MAD, MAD, MAD WORLD of inspirational self-help dramas). The bottom line: it's utterly inessential Stallone, but it's got a couple of nicely-done fights (including one with Max Zhang and Daniel Bernhardt, as Clark Jr's chief henchman), it isn't afraid to kill off characters you least expect, and it doesn't overstay its welcome, with the super-slow closing credits rolling at the 78-minute mark, and that's counting the first two minutes of the film being nine straight production company logos. (R, 87 mins) DAUGHTER OF THE WOLF (Canada/US/UK - 2019)
Steven Soderbergh's 2012 action thriller HAYWIRE was supposed to make a star of former MMA fighter Gina Carano. It didn't quite pan out that way, but she's had supporting roles in FAST & FURIOUS 6 and DEADPOOL while keeping busy starring in several straight-to-VOD titles like IN THE BLOOD, EXTRACTION (one installment in Lionsgate's landmark "Bruce Willis Phones In His Performance From His Hotel Room" series), SCORCHED EARTH, and now DAUGHTER OF THE WOLF. Carano is Clair Hamilton, a career military vet with an estranged son named Charlie (Anton Gillis-Adelman), who's been living in the Pacific Northwest with her father. But when her dad dies, and with Charlie's father out of the picture (killed in an IED blast in Afghanistan when Charlie was an infant), Clair has no choice but to be the parent and repair the fractured relationship with her son. Her plan hits a snag when Charlie is kidnapped and the ransom demand is exactly the substantial inheritance left to her by her wealthy father. She hands over the money as instructed, but two of the three kidnappers try to kill her anyway. She returns fire, killing two and seriously injuring the third, Larsen (Brendan Fehr), forcing him to take her to her son, who's being held by the plan's mastermind, "Father" (Richard Dreyfuss). Father, a grizzled mountain man unencumbered by the law, has a longstanding history of abducting boys and either taking them in as pseudo-adopted sons or selling them off to potential buyers, which is his intent for Charlie as his ultimate vengeance against Clair's dad for an unpaid loan from years earlier. Human trafficking seems like a rather extreme way to get back at a dead guy, plus Father--whose living conditions don't seem to gel with his inexplicable financial security--didn't count on Clair using all of her extensive military training and survival skills to take them on in the brutal cold of the snowy, treacherous mountain terrain.
Directed by David Hackl (SAW V, INTO THE GRIZZLY MAZE, and the John Travolta lineman dud LIFE ON THE LINE), DAUGHTER OF THE WOLF is a pretty dull and tedious affair, plodding along at a slow pace as Carano and Fehr do little but trudge through the snow on their long journey to Father's hideout. There aren't any Oscars in Carano's future, but HAYWIRE proved she's capable of headlining a well-made action vehicle, but that's not what she gets here with its predictable plot, clumsily-staged shootouts, primitive CGI splatter, and phone-app-level explosions. Speaking of Oscars, the only real point of interest here is a slumming Dreyfuss, who's become quite the hammy VOD fixture of late between this, BAYOU CAVIAR, ASHER, and the Netflix movies THE LAST LAUGH and POLAR. He's embarrassingly bad here, playing this supposed criminal mastermind as the deranged love child of Walter Brennan and Strother Martin. The character isn't threatening or scary in any way and half of his dialogue is unintelligible, but Dreyfuss at least seems to be enjoying himself, which is more than can be said for anyone watching DAUGHTER OF THE WOLF. (R, 88 mins)
POLAR (Germany/US - 2019) Directed by Jonas Akerlund. Written by Jayson Rothwell. Cast: Mads Mikkelsen, Vanessa Hudgens, Katheryn Winnick, Matt Lucas, Richard Dreyfuss, Johnny Knoxville, Ruby O. Fee, Fei Ren, Anthony Grant, Josh Cruddas, Robert Maillet, Julian Richings, Lovina Yavari, Ayisha Issa, Anastasia Marinina, Pedro Miguel Arce, Ken Hall. (Unrated, 118 mins) Based on Victor Santos' Dark Horse graphic novel Polar: Came in From the Cold, the Netflix Original POLAR is garish, grotesque, highly-stylized, and absurdly over-the-top, which is pretty much the methodology of veteran music video director and occasional filmmaker Jonas Akerlund. Best known for his work with a variety of artists including Roxette, Madonna, Prodigy (he directed the video for their controversial hit "Smack My Bitch Up"), U2, Maroon 5, Beyonce, the Rolling Stones, Rammstein, Metallica, and Taylor Swift among many others, Akerlund has sporadically dabbled in film going back to 2003's meth addiction black comedy SPUN. POLAR is the first of two movies he has coming out in early 2019--the long-delayed Norwegian black metal saga LORDS OF CHAOS is due out in February but was shot back in 2016. Akerlund's approach to POLAR is to throw everything at the wall and see what sticks. Some of it does, but it generally feels like an even more cartoonish JOHN WICK fused with elements of PUNISHER: WAR ZONE, and John Waters. It's the kind of film where nearly every scene ends with someone getting their brains blown out. It's the kind of film where a guy gets shot in the balls with a nail gun and then takes a drill to the head. It's the kind of film where the corpulent, cackling villain has a skin condition that requires repeated shots of him being slathered with thick, gooey lotion. It's the kind of film where a farting 500 lb guy is tortured and then shot to pieces, with wet, chunky bits of flesh and fat splattering all over the room and everyone in it, accompanied, for some reason, by the 1983 Kenny Rogers/Dolly Parton hit "Islands in the Stream."
When just-retired assassin Michael Green (Johnny Knoxville) is killed by a team of hired guns in Chile, his about-to-retire colleague Duncan Vizla, aka "The Black Kaiser" (Mads Mikkelsen), is assigned by his handler Vivian (Katheryn Winnick) to find and eliminate the culprits. Vizla isn't interested--he's tired of the life and he just wants out. But he works for Damocles, a DC-based black ops outfit run by the nefarious Mr. Blut (Matt Lucas), and they have a rather ruthless clause in their contract: all assassins are forced into retirement at age 50, and if they die--either in the line of duty or by another unfortunate "accident"--and are without a next of kin, their pensions (Vizla has managed to save up $8 million) are reabsorbed by the Damocles Corporation. Mr. Blut drives up his profits by having his retiring assassins whacked, and when Vivian sends Vizla to Belarus to kill the guys who offed Green, he discovers that Green's killers worked for Blut and it's all a set-up to take him out. Of course, he manages to escape and tries to go off the grid in his secret hideaway, a cabin in the middle of nowhere in Montana. But Blut and his crew of killers relentlessly pursue him, eventually finding him and kidnapping the one friend he's made--emotionally troubled, withdrawn neighbor Camille (Vanessa Hudgens)--which inevitably turns Vizla into a one-man wrecking crew of vengeance.
Do any new hires at Damocles read their contract? Blut has these young assassins going after Vizla, but don't they know that if they stick around long enough, they'll be killed when they turn 50? Logic really isn't the priority here, but for a while, POLAR is reasonably entertaining in a trashy way. The gore and nonstop violent mayhem are almost comical in their excess (the scene where Vizla wipes out an entire army of Blut henchman with a pair of laser gloves linked to a pair of hidden machine guns is pretty impressive), and there's some gratuitous nudity and sex (including Mikkelsen ambushed and running around in the buff in a blizzard after an extremely vigorous seduction by a sultry assassin sent to kill him). There's also plenty of oddball humor, like Vizla having a piece of pie with an avuncular doctor (Ken Hall) who just gave him a rectal exam, or Camille talking Vizla into speaking to local schoolkids about his many travels around the world, which leads to him demonstrating ways to sever someone's arteries and asking the kids "Have any of you ever seen a dead body that's been in the sun for three weeks?" and passing a picture around.
But after a while, POLAR takes an ugly turn and stops being mindless fun. Vizla is found and taken in by Blut's goons, who then kidnap Camille and get her hooked on heroin like Gene Hackman in FRENCH CONNECTION II, while Blut spends four days torturing a shackled Vizla, slicing, dicing, snipping off pieces of flesh, gouging out his eye, etc. Mikkelsen is appropriately badass as the situation demands, Winnick has a definite femme fatale flair as the duplicitous Vivian, and Richard Dreyfuss drops by for an amusing cameo as Porter, an aging Damocles retiree who successfully managed to get away and now spends his days disheveled and shitfaced in a Detroit karaoke bar. Hudgens, looking a lot like a young Meg Tilly here, does what she can with a rather thinly-drawn character who, of course, has a dark secret that she's hiding, and Lucas, who previously worked with Akerlund in the barely-released 2013 dud SMALL APARTMENTS, dials it up to 11 as the world's least convincing megalomaniacal black ops mastermind, whether he's haplessly shouting "Guards!" when there aren't any around or standing helplessly as Vizla storms his compound and his security team says peace out and just leaves him on his own. But Akerlund also doesn't know when enough is enough. Watching Lucas squirt lotion and slather it all over himself isn't funny once, let alone ten times, and Akerlund spends entirely too much time with the obnoxious antics of the grating team of assassins sent to kill Vizla. At just under two hours, POLAR is bloated and overlong, and its go-for-broke attitude eventually grows exhausting. Akerlund even has the balls to re-stage the OLDBOY hallway scene, already several years past its sell-by date when REPO MEN did it nearly ten years ago, this time utilizing the editing skills of the dubious Doobie White, last seen hyper-cutting the most recent RESIDENT EVIL outing into headache-inducing incoherence.
AMERICAN RENEGADES aka RENEGADES (France/Germany/Belgium - 2017; US release 2018)
Remember the Luc Besson-produced Navy SEALs actioner RENEGADES that was supposed to hit theaters in the summer of 2016? Distributor STX kept bouncing its release date around (a local Cinemark multiplex near me had a RENEGADES poster in a Coming Soon display for most of 2016) and by late 2017, removed it from the schedule completely. While it played everywhere else in the world in 2017, it didn't open in the US until the last week of 2018, unceremoniously dumped in a handful of theaters and on VOD by the financially-strapped EuropaCorp and sporting the nostalgically jingoistic, Cannon-esque retitling AMERICAN RENEGADES. That's probably not quite what everyone involved in this $75 million production had in mind, but looking at it now, it's not difficult to see why it panned out that way. AMERICAN RENEGADES is lugubrious, dead-on-arrival dud that must rank among the dullest men-on-a-mission military actioners you'll ever see. In a prologue set in 1944 Nazi-occupied France, German officers confiscate priceless art and 2000 bars of gold and move them to a secret vault in a bank in the small Yugoslav town of Grahovo. Local partisans exact revenge on the Nazis by blowing up a dam and destroying the village. 50 years later (1994 period detail is largely limited to a fight scene set to Ini Kamoze's "Here Comes the Hotstepper"), an elite team of Navy SEALs led by Matt Barnes (STRIKE BACK's Sullivan Stapleton) and Stanton Baker (Charlie Bewley) extract war criminal Gen. Milic (Peter Davor) from his Sarajevo stronghold and turn him over to their commander, Adm. Levin (J.K. Simmons, cast radically against type as "J.K. Simmons"). Meanwhile, Baker is romantically involved with local bar server Lara (Sylvia Hoeks), who informs him that her grandfather was one of the Yugoslav partisans who blew up the dam and that the 2000 gold bars are safely nestled in the ruins of the bank, now 150 feet down in an area lake. She offers Baker and the rest of the team a deal: the gold is currently valued at $300 million, half of which is theirs if they can use their SEAL skills to retrieve it, with her ultimate goal to give $150 million to the displaced and the suffering in war-torn Bosnia. They go along with the plan, but only have 36 hours to pull it off since Adm. Levin has decided to ship them back home, as pro-Milic insurgents have put a price on all their heads.
There have been countless "men-on-a-mission" movies going back to the 1960s. How does this KELLY'S HEROES premise not work? Well, if you're co-writers Besson and Richard Wenk (THE EXPENDABLES 2, THE EQUALIZER), you come up with tired one-liners that clang to the ground and if you're director Steven Quale (FINAL DESTINATION 5, INTO THE STORM), you handle the action scenes as lifelessly as possible, with half the movie taking place underwater where it's impossible to tell what's going on. It also doesn't help that, with the exception of Bewley because his character is involved with Hoeks' Lara, there's almost nothing to differentiate any of the square-jawed SEALs on the team. Top-billed Stapleton registers zero (remember how he was the star of the 300 prequel and had it stolen right out from under him by Eva Green?) and the climax only comes to life once they're above water and have their asses saved by a hot-dogging chopper pilot improbably played by Ewen "Spud from TRAINSPOTTING" Bremner. Simmons had just won his WHIPLASH Oscar when this began filming in the spring of 2015, and he's clearly bringing some of that demeanor to this, as his bloviating admiral provides an R. Lee Ermey-esque spark when he's chewing out the SEALs. AMERICAN RENEGADES looks like a pretty expensive, large scale action movie, but the script needed some punching up, the actions sequences need more energy, and the cast needed to be populated by more engaging actors than Sullivan Stapleton and Charlie Bewley. (PG-13, 105 mins)
ASHER (US - 2018)
A longtime pet project for producer/star Ron Perlman, ASHER is the kind of indie that probably would've gotten some film festival accolades and ended up being a modest sleeper hit 15 years ago, but in 2018, it's inevitably relegated to the VOD scrap heap. It's really no great shakes, and fans of the '80s TV series BEAUTY AND THE BEAST already know that Perlman can play someone with a soft side, but ASHER is really just a harmless, low-key character piece that's a nice showcase for the more introspective side of a veteran actor who's spent most of his career under a ton of makeup or playing ruthless bad guys. Perlman is Asher, a disciplined, loner hit man for Brooklyn-based Jewish crime boss Avi (a kvetching Richard Dreyfuss). Spending most of his time in solitude listening to old records, cooking, and enjoying fine wine when he isn't on jobs assigned to him by his dry-cleaning handler Abram (Ned Eisenberg), Asher feels the years catching up with him, especially since Avi's only been using him sparingly and giving all the prime jobs to his younger ex-protege Uziel (Peter Facinelli). Bullet fragments remaining in his back from years earlier have affected his blood and weakened his heart, and when an out-of-order elevator forces him to walk six floors up for a hit, he's sweating profusely and so winded that chest pains cause him to collapse in the doorway of the target's neighbor, Sophie (Famke Janssen). Sensing his own mortality and wanting more to his life than killing people, Asher takes tentative steps toward romancing Sophie, a ballet teacher who's preoccupied with taking care of her dementia-stricken mother (Jacqueline Bisset). It isn't long before Asher finds both his and Sophie's lives are in danger when Avi gets word of an attempted coup by his own men, something Asher knows nothing about but is lumped in with the guilty when Avi decides to bring in a new crew to clean house and wipe out his old one.
Watching ASHER, I couldn't help but be reminded of the Ben Kingsley/Tea Leoni-starring YOU KILL ME, another generally light-hearted hit man comedy from a decade or so ago. It's all very familiar, but in the hands of a journeyman pro like Michael Caton-Jones (MEMPHIS BELLE, THIS BOY'S LIFE, ROB ROY, THE JACKAL, and uh, BASIC INSTINCT 2), ASHER is happily content to be what it is. Perlman is excellent as the tried-and-true "hitman with a heart of gold" who's so old school that he still presses his clothes and shines his shoes before heading out on a hit. He feels like a relic surrounded by increasingly younger colleagues, including loud and arrogant new guy Lyor (Guy Burnet), who's introduced mouthing off to Asher and mocking his heart problem, to which Asher replies "Is this your first job? You'll probably be the one who fucks everything up." Jay Zaretsky's script indulges in some humor that ranges from dark to quirky, whether it's Sophie, who has no idea what Asher does for a living, telling him that her mother wants to die and jokingly suggesting that he kill her, or the amusing sight of Dreyfuss' Avi dishing up steaming bowls of matzah ball soup for his goons. Other than one truly awful CGI explosion that looks like stock footage from a 25-year-old Bulgarian action movie, ASHER is an enjoyable and often sweet look at a lifelong old soul looking for something more in his twilight years. It isn't anything deep and meaningful, but the two stars are very appealing together, and it's a must-see if you're a Ron Perlman fan. (R, 104 mins)
THE LAST LAUGH (US - 2019) Written and directed by Greg Pritikin. Cast: Chevy Chase, Richard Dreyfuss, Andie MacDowell, Kate Micucci, Chris Parnell, George Wallace, Lewis Black, Richard Kind, Ron Clark, Carol Sutton, Chris Fleming, Allan Harvey, Kit Willesee. (Unrated, 98 mins) In the prime of their careers, a comedy starring Chevy Chase and Richard Dreyfuss would've been a major cinematic event. But in 2019, it's THE LAST LAUGH, a Netflix Original film that they seemed to have covertly stashed away on their site in their version of a January dump-job, calling as little attention to it as possible. Both actors have checkered histories of mercurial behavior and bridge-burning, with Chase the guest of honor at a brutal 2002 roast that was actually uncomfortable to watch, with almost none of his friends or former colleagues even caring enough to show up, the end result so unpleasant and mean-spirited --even by roast standards--that Comedy Central announced they'd never re-air it. Almost none of his SNL and COMMUNITY co-stars have anything good to say about him, and while he turns up in occasional cameos (most recently as Burt Reynolds' best friend in THE LAST MOVIE STAR), he hasn't headlined a film since FUNNY MONEY, a German-made comedy that went straight-to-DVD in 2007. Oscar-winner Dreyfuss certainly had his moments, clashing with Robert Shaw on the set of JAWS and most infamously with Bill Murray on WHAT ABOUT BOB? but he seems to have mellowed with age, keeping busy in projects of varying quality in film and TV, with his last really high-profile big-screen role being Dick Cheney in Oliver Stone's W back in 2008.
Written and directed by Greg Pritikin (one of the writers of the abysmal sketch comedy bomb MOVIE 43), and co-produced by arthouse horror filmmaker Osgood Perkins (THE BLACKCOAT'S DAUGHTER), of all people, THE LAST LAUGH has Chase and Dreyfuss hitting the age where they're apparently required to contribute to the "Geezers Behaving Badly" genre, and the only surprise is that Morgan Freeman isn't in it. Chase is Al Hart, a retired Hollywood talent agent--if the opening scene is to be believed, he once managed the likes of Buddy Hackett, Carol Channing, and Phyllis Diller--with nothing but time on his hands, listening to old jazz records and falling asleep to late-night reruns of THE LAWRENCE WELK SHOW. His wife recently died, and his granddaughter Jeannie (Kate Micucci) is concerned about him living alone after a couple of minor falls. He agrees to visit the Palm Sunshine retirement community, where he runs into wildman resident Buddy Green (Richard Dreyfuss). The community cut-up and elderly stoner, Buddy was also Al's first client over 50 years ago, when he abruptly quit comedy to focus on his family and become a podiatrist. A widower enjoying the friends-with-benefits arrangement he has with his "horny" lady friend Gayle (Carol Sutton), Buddy loves Palm Sunshine, but Al isn't ready for retirement. All he knows is work, and he wants to give Buddy the shot he never took all those decades ago, convincing him to polish his one liners and hit the comedy club circuit from L.A. to NYC, promising him a shot on Jimmy Fallon once they generate some word-of-mouth momentum.
So begins the usual road trip, one that commences with Al trying to start his car but turning on the windshield wipers instead because...he's old, I guess? THE LAST LAUGH always goes for the easiest, cheapest laughs, like a detour to a Tijuana where they wind up in jail where hard-partying Buddy has a bout of Montezuma's Revenge, forcing Richard Dreyfuss to be shown shitting himself in a crowded jail cell. In Texas, Al meets hippie poet Doris (Andie MacDowell), who still lives the Woodstock lifestyle and introduces him to weed and shrooms, where just the sight of Chase, channeling Clark Griswold at his most befuddled, making goofy faces while hitting a bong before the shrooms lead to a trippy--and endless--musical number is apparently supposed to be hilarious. I get it--it's a simple, feelgood comedy for elderly audiences, but it constantly aims for the gutter, where, as per the Burgess Meredith Amendment set forth in GRUMPY OLD MEN, the humor is seeing old people being vulgar, whether it's copious F-bombs or other anatomical or bodily function references (cue Buddy telling a dick joke where the punchline involves "coming dust").
And like a lot of comedies of this sort, the filmmakers really overshoot the "age" aspect of it. Chase is 75 years old and playing a generally healthy character of seemingly sound mind. Why then, is he asked to portray Al as an old fuddy-duddy who suddenly can't figure out how to start his car and pines for the good old days of Lawrence Welk? They make a point of him never smoking pot back in the day, but would this guy have been listening to Lawrence Welk in the 1970s when he was in his 30s? Considering the people Al supposedly managed, these characters should be played by guys in their 90s, like Mel Brooks and Carl Reiner. Dreyfuss is 71 and playing 80, and he seems more hip and with-it than Al, making Chase the straight man while Dreyfuss hams it up. Dreyfuss seems to be having a good time doing it, at least until the requisite Serious Revelation and the arrival of Buddy's uptight son (Chris Parnell) in the third act completely throws things off course. Buddy's routine really isn't even all that funny (though the audience is always seen doubled over in hysterics), but some genuinely hilarious guys show up in supporting bits--Lewis Black as one of Al's bitter former clients, Richard Kind as a big-time Chicago comic, and George Wallace as Johnny Sunshine, a Palm Sunshine resident who takes it upon himself to function as the town crier, beginning every morning being rolled around in his wheelchair to announce who fell or died the night before. Wallace's character is a good indication of where THE LAST LAUGH could've gone. It could've approached this premise with a mix of dark humor and honest emotion, but instead takes the easy way, with Chase tripping balls and Dreyfuss shitting his pants. I don't care how big of assholes these guys were in their heyday. They deserve something better and more substantive in their emeritus years than THE LAST LAUGH.
In the late '90s and into the early 2000s, movies like CHILL FACTOR, SNOW DOGS, BOAT TRIP, and RADIO managed to successfully squander any momentum Cuba Gooding Jr. had after winning a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for 1996's JERRY MAGUIRE. He floundered in the world of straight-to-DVD for the better part of the next decade and a half, generally regarded as a worst-case scenario of the myth of the "Oscar curse," though it's safe to say THE PIANIST's Adrien Brody has usurped the title from him by now. Gooding occasionally managed to nab supporting roles in A-list productions like AMERICAN GANGSTER and THE BUTLER, but he finally enjoyed a bit of a career resurgence with his acclaimed, Emmy-nominated turn as the defendant on FX's 2016 limited series AMERICAN CRIME STORY: THE PEOPLE VS. O.J. SIMPSON. With the sleazy New Orleans noir BAYOU CAVIAR, the 51-year-old Gooding not only stars but makes his writing and directing debut and, right on schedule, the momentum of his PEOPLE VS. O.J. SIMPSON comeback comes to a screeching halt. Over-plotted and unfocused, the absurd BAYOU CAVIAR has some potentially interesting ideas and intriguing twists, but Gooding and co-writer Eitan Gorlin just can't pull it together, the film tripping over itself with a surplus of extraneous characters and go-nowhere subplots that are abandoned as soon as they're introduced.
Gooding is Rodney Jones, a one-time Olympic silver-medalist boxer who's fallen on hard times and is now a bouncer at a New Orleans club. The club's douchebag manager Rafi (Sam Thakur) mouths off to the owner one too many times, and when that owner is powerful Russian crime boss Yuri (Richard Dreyfuss), it's inevitable that Rafi is killed and his body chopped up and fed to the 50 alligators kept in a giant pond at Yuri's compound. Now in the non-negotiable employ of Yuri, Rodney is given an assignment: stage some incriminating photos of Isaac (Gregg Bello), the lawyer son-in-law of Yuri's Jewish attorney Schlomo (Ken Lerner). The aging Schlomo wants to retire to Israel with his wife and has been preparing Isaac to take over his duties, but Yuri only trusts Schlomo and doesn't want to lose him. In the meantime, Rodney makes the acquaintance of Kat (Lia Marie Johnson, who has a strong resemblance to Miley Cyrus, which might've been inspired casting if she wasn't way out of this film's price range), a young woman who lives with her shut-in, bayou trash mother and green card-seeking Mexican stepdad and dreams of being the next Kardashian-esque reality TV/social media star. Brainstorming for a way to put Kat on the map, Rodney talks his photographer friend Nic (Famke Janssen), who has a history of being sexually inappropriate with her clients, into shooting a sex tape. They've got the perfect patsy with Isaac, who's introduced pouting when his pregnant wife doesn't want to have sex, and who happens to be Kat's mother's landlord. Kat ends up seducing Isaac and Nic, hiding in Kat's closet, captures it all on video, but no one involved--Rodney, Nic, or Isaac--is aware that Kat is only 16 years old.
Yuri wants the tape but all hell breaks loose with a series of double-crosses--including Kat's stepdad trying to blackmail Isaac (which requires him stealing Nic's laptop in one of the most laughably contrived scenes in recent memory)--and time-killing plot detours, like Katherine McPhee as a married woman having a torrid lesbian fling with Nic, which serves no purpose other than Gooding wanting to see McPhee and Janssen make out. BAYOU CAVIAR sounds like it should be trashy fun, but Gooding treats the material much too seriously and with a far too heavy hand (Nic, complaining about a client accusing her of harassment, grumbles "Welcome to Trump's America" for no reason whatsoever). If Rodney and Nic were affable ne'er-do-wells haplessly getting in over their heads, say in a BIG LEBOWSKI kind-of way, BAYOU CAVIAR could've been an enjoyably tacky B-movie, but only Dreyfuss seems to recognize the material as the swamp-dwelling junk that it is, hamming it up with a garbled Russian accent in his few brief appearances. Gooding doesn't even have the sense to exploit the completely bonkers idea--straight out of Tobe Hooper's EATEN ALIVE--of Yuri having 50 flesh-hungry alligators on his property. If you've got an gator-infested pond and Dreyfuss chewing on a dubious accent, ready and willing to gorge himself on the scenery like it's a pot full of steaming borscht and you don't take advantage of that, then what's the point? (Unrated, 111 mins) THE SUPER (US - 2018)
Like Cuba Gooding Jr., Val Kilmer had it pretty good in the 1990s. His iconic performance as Doc Holliday in 1993's TOMBSTONE even gave him a catchphrase in "I'm your Huckleberry" that was quoted almost as much as Gooding's "Show me the money!" from JERRY MAGUIRE. And like Gooding, Kilmer's career precipitously nosedived with a series of box-office flops like AT FIRST SIGHT, RED PLANET, THE SALTON SEA, WONDERLAND, and SPARTAN. But unlike Gooding, who seems like a genuinely good guy and remained well-liked by his peers even as his star dimmed, the abrasive Kilmer torched almost every bridge on his way down, with his mercurial, bullying behavior on the set of 1996's THE ISLAND OF DR. MOREAU the stuff of Hollywood legend, and so beyond the pale that even Marlon Brando--no stranger to causing all sorts of calamity and hostility on a movie set--had to step up and tell his younger co-star to take it down a notch. Like Gooding, Kilmer has spent the bulk of the 2000s and onward lost in the world of straight-to-DVD paycheck gigs, their paths inevitably crossing in 2009's HARDWIRED. Luck didn't seem to be on Kilmer's side when he did manage to land a major-studio job--he proved surprisingly adept at comedy in Shane Black's 2005 masterpiece KISS KISS BANG BANG, and he was fun as megalomaniacal supervillain Dieter Von Cunth in 2010's MACGRUBER, but Warner Bros barely released KISS KISS and nobody went to see MACGRUBER. Around 2006, Kilmer began appearing in some truly awful films (PLAYED, MOSCOW ZERO, THE CHAOS EXPERIMENT, AMERICAN COWSLIP, and several ill-advised collaborations with one-time BFF 50 Cent) and was as relentlessly busy as Nicolas Cage is today. But his appearances at your nearest Redbox kiosk tapered off around 2014 and speculation about his health became a popular tabloid subject after he was repeatedly seen in public with large, bulky scarves covering his neck. In 2017, after repeatedly denying rumors that he was gravely ill, Kilmer finally fessed up and revealed that he'd been battling throat cancer for two years. His voice reduced to a raspy whisper, Kilmer returned to acting with a small role in the 2017 bomb THE SNOWMAN, unconvincingly and distractingly dubbed by someone who sounded nothing like him.
Given the condition of his voice, it's likely that the now-59-year-old Kilmer will be dubbed in all future projects going forward (he's in the TOP GUN sequel currently in production), much like the beloved British actor Jack Hawkins in the last decade of his career, when throat cancer robbed him of his voice and actors Charles Gray and Robert Rietty were called upon to expertly mimic him until his death in 1973. As in THE SNOWMAN, the person dubbing Kilmer in THE SUPER makes no effort to sound like him, giving him a thick Ukrainian accent as a voodoo-practicing building super in a Manhattan high-rise. Notable as a rare big-screen (or, least VOD) project for producer and LAW & ORDER creator Dick Wolf, THE SUPER stars Patrick John Flueger (of Wolf's NBC series CHICAGO P.D.) as Phil, a widower ex-cop who quit the force following his wife's death in a fire so he could take care of their daughters, Violet (Taylor Richardson), now 14 and rebelling, and Rose (Mattea Marie Conforti), now 7 and a daddy's girl. Phil gets a job as a super at the building, working with weirdo Walter (Kilmer), who spends a lot of time chanting in the basement and creeping around Rose, and ladies man Julio (Yul Vazquez), whose services go above and beyond the janitorial for some of the more attractive female residents.
Building manager Mr. Johnson (Paul Ben-Victor) is doing his best to ignore the string of disappearances from the high-rise, and the cop in Phil is sure that Walter is behind it, even framing him by planting evidence--the handle of a cane belonging to an elderly tenant who's gone missing--in his apartment. But there's clearly something more going on than a mere serial killer, including Phil suffering from horrific dreams of the victims, Rose repeatedly wandering off in a trance and staring at the boiler, and the possibility that obvious red herring Walter's chants and spells are being deployed to ward off something supernatural. Written by John L. McLaughlin (BLACK SWAN) and directed by German filmmaker Stephan Rick, THE SUPER opens big with a very nicely-done 13-minute prologue that could function as a stand-alone short film, and after establishing Kilmer's Walter as a total creep in what's shaping up to be a throwback to a '90s "(blank) from Hell" thriller, it pulls the rug out from under you, especially with a third-act twist so ridiculous in its Shyamalanian chutzpah that you can't help but shrug and roll with it. It's not necessarily a very good movie, and the ending lands on the side of unsatisfying, but it has enough good moments to qualify it as decent guilty pleasure material, and it's twisty enough that it probably would've been a huge hit in theaters 15-20 years ago. (R, 89 mins)
David Morse has long been one of those respected character actors whose presence always gives a boost to whatever he's in, whether he's making good projects better or bad projects bearable. He'll go down as one of the greats of his kind, but MCCANICK, which gives the actor a rare big-screen lead, offers the unthinkable: a bad David Morse performance. MCCANICK didn't get much of a release--eight screens for a gross of $2000--but it did get some notoriety as the final work of GLEE star Cory Monteith before his overdose death in July 2013. It's a departure for Monteith and his performance is enough to show that he had ambitions beyond GLEE, but aside from him, the cliched MCCANICK is an almost complete disaster, and it pains me to say that star/producer Morse is a big reason why. Morse stars as Philadelphia narcotics detective Eugene "Mack" McCanick, the kind of cop who has a punching bag hanging in his kitchen. It's his 59th birthday and he just found out that Simon Weeks (Monteith) has been paroled. Seven years earlier, McCanick busted a 17-year-old Weeks, then a small-time hustler and male prostitute, for the murder of a closeted Congressman who regularly cruised for young men. McCanick is enraged about the early release, but is warned by boss Quinn (Ciarin Hinds) to stay away from Weeks. Of course, McCanick ignores him and misleads his partner Floyd (Mike Vogel) into pursuing Weeks, which only results in McCanick accidentally shooting Floyd. Ordered to go home, McCanick instead gets drunk and goes on a city-wide rampage trying to find Weeks.
Director Josh C. Waller and writer Daniel Noah are intentionally vague about the truth behind McCanick's motivations: does he have a score to settle with Weeks? Does it have something to do with McCanick's estranged cop son? Does he feel a paternal instinct to help Weeks? Did he frame Weeks? Does Weeks, as Quinn suggests, have some information on dirty cops that might bring them all down? Once revealed, the ultimate answer is ludicrous at best and offensive at worst once you consider the absurd lengths McCanick goes to in order to "just talk" to Weeks. MCCANICK starts out as a tough, gritty cop thriller, and for a while, it works in spite of the cliches. But then the silliness kicks in and it starts to drag badly--why would Floyd call McCanick in a dingy apartment building where he knows McCanick is trying to stealthily corner a suspect? And watch the filmmakers awkwardly cram in a bunch of exposition in the middle of a pursuit, as if McCanick would really choose that time to go into why his marriage fell apart and why his son hates him. Most laughable of all is McCanick demolishing someone's apartment then pausing to pensively regard his distorted reflection in a mangled toaster. Oh, the symbolism! As McCanick's actions become increasingly illogical and cement-headed, Morse's performance goes off the rails. His strengths as an actor have always been in his quiet, controlled intensity, not in sub-Nicolas Cage meltdowns. By the end, it starts to look a lot like a David Morse vanity project that was understandably hijacked after the fact by Monteith's death. How else do you explain the closing credits starting not with an "In loving memory of Cory Monteith" (which is saved for the very end), but instead with with a lone "David Morse as Eugene 'Mack' McCanick," then a fade, then the rest of the cast scrolling by in the typical fashion. Morse is a great actor, but MCCANICK shows that even the best in the business can have a really off day. (R, 96 mins)
SQUATTERS (US - 2014)
Or, "OMG I'M, LIKE, SO HOMELESS! :(" Debuting on DVD two years after it was completed, the useless SQUATTERS has vague cover art and a trailer that suggests it's a home invasion suspense thriller of sorts, but it's really a sappy, simplistic drama that comes off like a homeless version of TRUE ROMANCE with all the insight of a spoiled 13-year-old who hasn't heard the word "no" nearly enough. Riddled with one plot convenience and hackneyed contrivance after another, SQUATTERS tells the not-very-compelling story of Kelly (Gabriella Wilde, from the already forgotten ENDLESS LOVE remake) and Jonas (Thomas Dekker), two homeless Pacific Palisades teenagers who spend their days dumpster diving, shoplifting, and scoring drugs. While rooting around inside a parked car in a lot, Jonas overhears wealthy Evelyn Silverman (Lolita Davidovich), who's standing a few cars down, telling her Mexican cleaning lady "We'll be going on vacation to Greece, and remember, the alarm code is the address backwards," as Evelyn and the cleaning lady get in separate cars. Now, let's pause here for a moment. Evelyn appears to be picking up her dry-cleaning. Why is the cleaning lady meeting her there in her own car? If Evelyn is picking up the dry-cleaning herself, why does the cleaning lady even have to be there? Couldn't Evelyn have given her that information over the phone? Did they really have to drive in two cars to a parking lot just to talk about an alarm code so Jonas could happen to overhear it? Anyway, Jonas steals a bike, follows Evelyn and gets a look at the house, and then with Evelyn and her wealthy businessman husband David (a slumming Richard Dreyfuss, whose presence is either a nod to DOWN AND OUT IN BEVERLY HILLS or a sad realization that DOWN AND OUT IN BEVERLY HILLS was a long time ago) away, Jonas and a reluctant Kelly crash there, where Jonas spends two, perhaps three seconds rifling through a few random scattered papers on David's desk and, based on that thorough research, manages to crack David's safe combo after three attempts, because yeah, that's how it works. Jonas tries to broker a deal with obnoxious, fey British crime lord Ronald (Andrew Howard as Jason Statham as Vinnie Jones) to fence all of the Silvermans' belongings, including cars, jewels, and a gun, while the more sensitive Kelly spends time watching the Silverman's home movies and getting the sense of family she never had. Of course, the Silvermans return from Greece early and find they've been burglarized, and after a chance meet-cute with the Silvermans' son Michael (Luke Grimes) at a screening of Chaplin's THE KID, Kelly ends up back at the house as Michael's love interest as Jonas tries to contend with the "Fookin' 'ell, mate!" histrionics of Ronald, a character who seems to have gotten lost on his way back to a bad late 1990s Guy Ritchie knockoff.
Written by Justin Shilton (grandson of F TROOP's Larry Storch and a co-writer on Chris Messina's upcoming directorial debut ALEX OF VENICE) and directed by Martin Weisz (the repulsive GRIMM LOVE and the 2007 THE HILLS HAVE EYES II), SQUATTERS is about as dumb as it gets. It's hard to tell exactly what audience the filmmakers are pursuing, considering it has all the depth of a bad YA novel but has enough violence and F-bombs to warrant an R rating. There's an interesting film to be made about situations where homeowners find themselves forced to contend with squatters, and it certainly would've been more interesting than the cookie-cutter blandness that develops in this one. Shilton's writing is just lazy and amateurish, whether he's piling on the improbable coincidences, magically pulling contrivances out of his ass or clumsily trying to work in Chaplin references to establish critical cred. He's matched by Weisz's bumbling direction, which includes perhaps the worst sex scene of 2014, composed entirely in pretentious, zooming still-life freeze frames, much like the climactic shootout at Ronald's, a CGI splatter-filled fiasco that inexplicably looks like the Slo-Mo tripping scenes in DREDD. And it all ends not with "The End" but with the cutesy "And THIS is where our STORY ends," followed by on-set photos during the closing credits showing how much fun everyone had. Everyone, that is, except the audience. Come on, Mr. Dreyfuss...you've gotta have better things to do than this. (R, 106 mins)
It took four countries, location work in a fifth, and 25 credited producers to shit out this borderline-unwatchable car crash porno that leaves no stale cliché unutilized while wasting some death-defying work by an apparently insane Bulgarian stunt crew. Director Courtney Solomon (DUNGEONS & DRAGONS, AN AMERICAN HAUNTING) hyped the film's "real" car chases and crashes and the absence of CGI. I'm calling bullshit on the "no CGI," but yeah, most of the crash stuff is real. The problem is that it's shot and edited in the most anti-entertaining, headache-inducing way imaginable, using multiple cameras with varying image quality (don't worry, that's written into the plot), and it's such a garbled, noisy blur that it's impossible to get a feel for any of it. Solomon wanted the crash and stunt work to be real, but I suggest he take a look at John Frankenheimer's RONIN. I've seen John Frankenheimer films. I've studied John Frankenheimer films. Courtney Solomon--you're no John Frankenheimer.
Acting as if he arrived on set and never shook the jetlag, Ethan Hawke is the improbably-named Brent Magna, a former racing wunderkind who bombed out on the circuit and fled to Europe to become a wheelman-for-hire. He's looking to settle down with his Bulgarian wife Leanne (Rebecca Budig), but he arrives home to find she's been...taken. Faster than you can say "Liam Neeson," Magna is being harangued on his cell phone by a mystery man (a mostly-unseen but heard-too-much Jon Voight, who sounds like he's doing an Armin Mueller-Stahl impression), who orders him to steal a tricked-out Shelby Super Snake and go around Sofia following his instructions (leading cops on chases, driving the car through crowded parks, etc) or Leanne will be killed, all the while taunting Magna and boring the audience with such hackneyed bad-guy zingers as "We're just getting started, my boy," and "You're running out of time...tick tock, tick tock." Magna is soon joined by The Kid (Selena Gomez), who actually owns the car and is the key to the mystery man's plot: Magna and The Kid are pawns in his plan to steal computer files from an investment bank whose CEO is The Kid's dad. With a dozen cameras in and out of the Shelby, the mystery man is constantly watching them, but The Kid manages to hack into the mystery man's server through her tablet and fool him with the old "same footage looped" trick, crossing her fingers and hoping he's never seen SPEED. In a truly magical happenstance, The Kid is whatever the story needs her to be at any given moment: whiny rich kid, gearhead, ace hacker, and expert in international investment law. Bravo, screenwriters! I guess if you like crashes, shattering glass, screeching tires, a complete void of logic and suspense, and zoom-ins to Ethan Hawke making constipated faces as he pretends to drive a car, GETAWAY might be entertaining. But for everyone else, it's an incoherent jumble with a dumb twist ending, and for all the work that went into the car chases, you can't make heads or tails of what's going on. Also with Paul Freeman and PASSENGER 57 villain Bruce Payne in tiny roles, GETAWAY opened Labor Day Weekend and tanked in ninth place. Offering nothing worthwhile and looking cheaper than any Bulgaria-shot DTV NuImage production, it's amazing that this actually made it to theaters at all. (PG-13, 90 mins)
PARANOIA (US/France - 2013)
Can we just admit that no one gives a shit about the Hemsworth brothers despite Hollywood doing its damnedest to make them happen? Sure, Chris is a decent-enough actor who lucked into THOR and THE AVENGERS and got to co-star in THE CABIN IN THE WOODS (made long before THOR, but released after), but elsewhere, audiences haven't really warmed up to him: no one cared about the RED DAWN remake and Ron Howard's racing drama RUSH flopped. But Chris is a mega-star next to little brother Liam, who's in the HUNGER GAMES franchise, co-starred in a Miley Cyrus vehicle, and got killed early in THE EXPENDABLES 2--all films that don't depend on him--but has been met with crickets and tumbleweed everywhere else: LOVE AND HONOR and EMPIRE STATE barely got released, and his big summer headlining splash with PARANOIA fizzled badly, opening in 13th place to become one of the biggest DOA duds of the summer. The franchise gigs are good for them now, but does anybody really care otherwise? When's the last time you heard anyone say "Man, I gotta see that new Chris Hemsworth flick!"? PARANOIA is bad, but it's not all Liam's fault. Sure, he's got no presence as a leading man and is really out of his league sharing scenes with three legends in the "just pay me and I'll ham" phase of their careers, but it's just a dumb, predictable, clichéd thriller that's so bored with itself that it never really tries to be anything more than a time-killer. If ever a movie was made to fold laundry and balance your checkbook by, it's PARANOIA, and as such, it fits right in with auteur Robert "Still coasting on LEGALLY BLONDE" Luketic's other triumphs, like 21 and two Katherine Heigl rom-coms (THE UGLY TRUTH and KILLERS).
Hemsworth is Adam Cassidy, an ambitious cubicle drone at tech giant WyattCorp. Driven for success and saddled with medical bills that insurance won't cover for his sick father (Richard Dreyfuss), Adam is convinced he's designed the next big thing in social networking. When he bombs the presentation to sneering CEO Nicholas Wyatt (Gary Oldman) and he and his team lose their jobs, Adam treats them all to a $16,000 night at the club on his still-active corporate credit card. An irate Wyatt then threatens to press charges unless Adam agrees to partake in some corporate espionage and infiltrate Eikon, another tech megapower owned by Wyatt's rival and former mentor Jock Goddard (Harrison Ford), to steal trade secrets so Wyatt can run Goddard out of business for good. You know you're in for some cutting insight when Adam and Wyatt are shown playing chess (SYMBOLISM!) and Wyatt snottily declares "Checkmate!" (See! Adam's a pawn! Get it?). Of course, Adam becomes pupil to the master Goddard and falls for his top marketing exec Emma (Amber Heard), and they have no idea he's Wyatt's plant. Or do they? Hemsworth is bland enough on his own, but he and Heard are one of the most chemistry-impaired screen couples you'll ever see. The film only really comes alive in the two instances where Oldman and Ford are onscreen together, but it's hardly the highlight of either actor's career. If anything, it may well prompt you to watch AIR FORCE ONE again. Oldman plays the pompous ass to the hilt in a performance that sounds like a tribute to Vinnie Jones ("Yaw ay-out when oy sigh yaw ay-out! Oy eewn you!"), while Ford is indifferent and seems vaguely annoyed that he was talked into being in this. For all the shit Robert De Niro takes about phoning in his performances and coasting on his past accomplishments, it seems we've let Ford off the hook. There's a younger generation of moviegoers who see Ford as the guy who used to play Han Solo and Indiana Jones but is now just a grumpy old fart with an earring on talk shows. Ford hasn't challenged himself in years (and this is his second bad tech flick, after 2006's absurd FIREWALL), though he does seem to relish the moment when he tells Hemsworth's Adam "Shut up...you're nothing but a convenient tool, an empty vessel." Scripted line or Ford ad-lib? Discuss. (PG-13, 106 mins)
