MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE - FALLOUT (US/China - 2018) Written and directed by Christopher McQuarrie. Cast: Tom Cruise, Henry Cavill, Ving Rhames, Simon Pegg, Rebecca Ferguson, Alec Baldwin, Michelle Monaghan, Sean Harris, Angela Bassett, Wes Bentley, Vanessa Kirby, Frederick Schmidt, Liang Yang, Kristoffer Joner, Caspar Phillipson, Alix Benezech. (PG-13, 147 mins) Big-budget summer blockbusters don't get much more entertaining than MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE - FALLOUT, the sixth film in the durable, 22-year-old franchise. An incredible jolt of adrenaline in cinematic form, FALLOUT is easily the best in the M:I series so far, and it might even be the best movie Tom Cruise has ever made. Setting aside his batshit religion, Cruise may very well be The Last Movie Star and only a fool would count him out after a trio of forgettable underperformers--JACK REACHER: NEVER GO BACK, THE MUMMY, and AMERICAN MADE--that had all of the entertainment industry prognosticators concluding that the now-56-year-old (!) actor was washed-up and his time had passed. While we justifiably question the necessity of a TOP GUN sequel that's due out next year, FALLOUT is Cruise here and now in a series that's been on a roll, reteaming him once more with writer/director Christopher McQuarrie, the Oscar-winning USUAL SUSPECTS screenwriter who emerged from an eight-year sabbatical to become Cruise's most trusted aide-de-camp in either writing (VALKYRIE, EDGE OF TOMORROW, THE MUMMY) or directing (JACK REACHER, MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE - ROGUE NATION) capacities in the ensuing decade. What everyone was saying about MAD MAX: FURY ROAD three years ago holds true here: MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE - FALLOUT is an instant classic in the action genre.
A direct sequel to ROGUE NATION, FALLOUT is as convoluted as you'd expect, with IMF agent Ethan Hunt (Cruise) and his team, Luther Stickell (Ving Rhames) and Benji Dunn (Simon Pegg), botching a mission to intercept three weapons-grade plutonium orbs that end up in the hands of The Apostles, a splinter cell offshoot of The Syndicate, the organization run by international terrorist Solomon Lane (Sean Harris), who was apprehended in the previous film. Assigned to retrieve the plutonium by IMF boss Alan Hunley (Alec Baldwin), the team is overruled by CIA chief Erica Sloane (Angela Bassett), who orders her own operative and attack dog Walker (Henry Cavill) to tag along. The story moves all over the globe, as Hunt ends up posing as a mystery man named John Lark, set to buy the plutonium from the Apostles with a wealthy socialite and arms dealer known as The White Widow (Vanessa Kirby) acting as a go-between. Things get even more complicated when The Apostles refuse to pay for the plutonium, instead insisting that if "Lark"/Hunt wants the plutonium, he has to help Lane escape from a military-fortified prison transport. Throw in MI-6 agent Ilsa Faust (Rebecca Ferguson) and her own assignment to kill Lane, Hunt being framed as a rogue agent once more, and a scheming Walker clearly up to games of his own, and the stage is set for one double-cross and jaw-dropping action set piece after another for a two-and-a-half hour stretch that's over before know it.
MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE - FALLOUT is a movie that just doesn't quit. It's a preposterous delight and a rare instance of an action film that actually merits the comparison to the proverbial standby blurb of a non-stop rollercoaster ride. Though there's some conservatively-deployed CGI and visual effects, the abundance of practical stunt work and action choreography solidifies Cruise's standing as Hollywood's most death-defying madman. McQuarrie's puzzle-like story construction and recurring motif of "Who's really who?" recalls THE USUAL SUSPECTS, but there's also generous helpings of humor and warmth among the IMF characters who, to borrow a term from the FAST AND THE FURIOUS series, have really become family by this point (it's Hunt's unwillingness to sacrifice Luther that causes him to lose the plutonium in the prologue, something that Sloane and Walker never stop reminding him). FAST AND THE FURIOUS fans may want to argue the point, but you'd be hard-pressed to find a big-budget franchise still creatively firing on all cylinders and running better than ever six installments deep. It's impossible to pick a best scene--the HALO jump, the bone-smashing men's room throwdown, the epic boat/car/motorcycle chase through Paris, the greatest "Tom Cruise running" sequence ever, or the nerve-wracking, INCEPTION-like cross-cutting race against time in the climax, when the team tracks Lane to a medical camp in Kashmir where a smallpox outbreak caused by The Apostles has just been contained, which involves a helicopter chase, a brawl that spills over to the side of a mountain, and the defusing of two nuclear devices. MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE - FALLOUT is crowd-pleasing, edge-of-your-seat, popcorn movie perfection, the kind of relentlessly heart-pounding, balls-to-the-wall barnburner that restores your faith in the summer blockbuster.
SHOWDOWN IN MANILA (US/Philippines/Russia - 2016; US release 2018)
Even among those fringe-dwellers who scour the deep cuts of streaming services and deign to examine the merchandise near the bottom of the new release rack at Walmart, Alexander Nevsky remains an enigma. A well-known bodybuilder and media personality in his native Russia, with a towering 6' 6" frame and a passing resemblance to Dwayne Johnson, the 46-year-old Nevsky has been plugging away in DIY fashion for about a decade and a half, overseeing an empire of sorts and trying to establish his action star bona fides the best way he can: by cranking out one movie after another and being wealthy enough that the quality of the films and whether anyone actually likes them are non-factors. After a secondary role as a bad guy in the 2003 Russian-made Roy Scheider/Michael Pare thriller RED SERPENT, Nevsky wrote, produced, and starred in MOSCOW HEAT, which got a straight-to-DVD release in the US in 2005. MOSCOW HEAT set the Nevsky template: he has a genuine affection for cop/buddy movies of the 1980s and 1990s and tries to replicate that whole Joel Silver/Shane Black sort-of vibe. He has enough money that he can lure several past-their-prime big names or career C-listers: MOSCOW HEAT found Nevsky managing to fly Michael York, Joanna Pacula, Richard Tyson, Andrew Divoff, and Adrian Paul over for a Russian vacation. Future Nevsky productions featured recurring BFFs like Tyson, Divoff, and Paul, but also Sherilyn Fenn and David Carradine (2007's NATIONAL TREASURE ripoff TREASURE RAIDERS), Billy Zane, Robert Davi, Bai Ling, and Armand Assante (2010's MAGIC MAN), and Kristanna Loken and Matthias Hues (2014's BLACK ROSE, belatedly released in the US in 2017). For all intents and purposes, Nevsky is to Russian action movies what Uwe Boll was to German tax loopholes in the '00s.
Nevsky's latest film to hit the US is SHOWDOWN IN MANILA, which bombed in Russian theaters way back in 2016. It's partly an homage to the kind of jungle/explosion movies that Antonio Margheriti and Cirio H. Santiago made back in the '80s, crossbred with an '80s/'90s cop buddy movie, but lacking even the basic competence to be a remotely engaging on any level. Nevsky is Nick Peyton, the leader of VCU (Violent Crimes Unit) Strike Force, an elite unit targeting a human trafficking operation run by an international criminal known as "The Wraith" (Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa). After a botched raid on The Wraith's Manila compound results in the death of his entire team, a devastated Peyton quits VCU in disgrace. Two years later, vacationing FBI agent Matthew Wells (Mark Dacascos, who also makes his directing debut) and his wife (Tia Carrere) run into The Wraith and his chief henchman Dorn (Hues) at a Manila resort, resulting in Wells' death and his wife's abduction and eventual escape. When the cops prove useless, Mrs. Wells hires Peyton, now in a private eye partnership with wisecracking, horndog buddy Charlie (Casper Van Dien). Eventually, Peyton and Charlie bring in the big guns to join them in an assault on The Wraith's base of operation: a quartet of badass mercenaries that includes '90s video store legends Don "The Dragon" Wilson (BLOODFIST), Cynthia Rothrock (CHINA O'BRIEN), and Olivier Gruner (NEMESIS) for what amounts to an EXPENDABLES knockoff that might as well be called THE AVAILABLES.
SHOWDOWN IN MANILA boasts the late Cirio H. Santiago's son and longtime assistant Christopher as a co-producer (also among the producers is Andrzej Bartkowiak, who's actually directed real action movies like ROMEO MUST DIE and EXIT WOUNDS), and back-in-the-day Filipino B-movie fixture Don Gordon Bell has a small role, showing that Nevsky's affection for these sorts of things is sincere (Vic Diaz would certainly be in this if he was still with us), but holy shit, comrade. Between his garbled accent, his wooden delivery, and possessing absolutely zero screen presence, Nevsky is pretty close to the worst actor you'll ever see. Checking his social media feed, Nevsky seems to be an all-around nice guy who loves action movies and numerous on-set photos look like everyone's having a blast, but Alexander Nevsky will never headline an action movie not produced and written by Alexander Nevsky. Van Dien tries to liven things up and seems to be having a genuinely good time (there is one big laugh early on when he turns up on surveillance video having sex with the wife of the cuckolded client who hired them to catch her cheating and tries to explain it away with "I thought the camera was off!"), but he's eventually relegated to the background. Dacascos directs with the same sense of style and mise-en-scene usually reserved for Russian dashcam videos, and he and Nevsky stage one haplessly inept action sequence after another. The CGI explosions are laughable and the fight choreography is so badly-handled that even veteran warhorses like Wilson, Rothrock, and Gruner look like inexperienced amateurs. It's hard telling where Nevsky gets the funding for these things--he's already got one more star-studded vanity project on the way with MAXIMUM IMPACT, whose cast includes Danny Trejo, Eric Roberts, William Baldwin, and Tom Arnold--but make no mistake: SHOWDOWN IN MANILA is the worst Russian production to come down the pike since the 2016 Presidential election. (Unrated, 90 mins) CON MAN (US/China - 2018)
There won't be a 2018 film more egregiously disingenuous than CON MAN, a total bullshit biopic of Barry Minkow, a 1980s teenage business phenom whose entrepreneurial skills led him down the slippery slope of Ponzi schemes, securities fraud, insider trading, and other felonies that will keep him in prison until June 2019 at the earliest. As WOLF OF WALL STREET-ish as Minkow's story is, it's not nearly as interesting--or infuriating--as what happened during the making of this movie. If you see the plethora of down-on-their-luck stars getting the most dubious paycheck of their careers and think they look a little younger than they are, that's because CON MAN was filmed in 2009 and is only now being released. Not just because it's terrible, but because it was seized as evidence in a federal case involving Minkow embezzling millions from a church that hired him as a pastor upon his parole after he--wait for it--found God while in prison. Beginning in 1984, young Minkow (Justin Baldoni) works part-time at a gym and borrows money from a roid-raging loan shark (Bill Goldberg) to start ZZZZ Best, a carpet cleaning company that he runs out of his parents' garage. With his ingenuity for cooking the books, "check kiting," and creating fraudulent work orders to the tune of $400 million, ZZZZ Best is worth $100 million on paper by the time Minkow graduates from high school. His mom (Talia Shire) and dad (Mark Hamill) are concerned that he's in over his head, but Minkow is addicted to the rush, and at the urging of his construction magnate uncle (Michael Nouri), he partners with mobster Jack Saxon (Armand Assante), which catches the attention of dogged FBI agent Gamble (James Caan). Minkow's scheme eventually and inevitably collapses due to his hubris and, as his mom cries, "You don't have anything because you don't have God!" In 1988, at just 20 years of age, he's sentenced to 25 years in prison on 57 counts of fraud and ordered to pay restitution in excess of $26 million.
Here's where CON MAN, shot under the title MINKOW, gets interesting. Not in terms of the movie itself, which is a jumbled, badly-edited mess and all-around amateur hour, but in terms of what happened behind-the-scenes. Minkow found religion in prison--thanks to prison protector Peanut (Ving Rhames) but in part because of cellmate Michael Franzese, a mob boss and former B-movie distributor who became a Christian motivational speaker and is a real-life talking head in periodic documentary-style cutaways. Minkow financed much of CON MAN himself, and once he's sentenced to prison, there's a time jump to the early 2000s and a paroled Barry Minkow is now played by...Barry Minkow. In addition to working with the FBI on training agents in spotting financial fraud and being a semi-regular on cable news business shows, he becomes a pastor at a church and dedicates his life to helping others, including an elderly parishioner (Nicolas Coster) who thinks he's been scammed out of his retirement savings in a hedge fund overseen by a known Ponzi schemer (Gianni Russo). Minkow then steps in and risks everything to recover his parishioner's $250,000 retirement fund in one of the most ludicrously self-aggrandizing hero scenarios you'll ever see ("I'm doing the work of God! Protecting the weak!" he shouts at one point). It's ludicrous because it was revealed after the film was completed that Christian man of God Minkow was bilking his own congregation of money to get it funded while embezzling from the church and engaging in all sorts of insider trading and investment fraud. During production, according to a 2012 Fortunearticle, Minkow was even picked up on a hot mic between takes bragging to Caan about how he financed the movie by "clipping" companies. Minkow denied saying anything, even daring someone to produce the tape, forcing director/co-writer Bruce Caulk to do just that and turn the recording over as evidence. He said it. Because of course he did.
Minkow's arrest left the completed film (see original 2010 trailer above) in limbo, since it was intended to be an uplifting--occasionally veering into full-on faithsploitation--look at a criminal's redemption (complete with ridiculous sequences of Minkow, wearing a wire, chasing some bad guys through a hotel like he's an action hero and, in prison yard football game, throwing the game-winning touchdown) and its very existence was due to the crimes he committed to get it made. After the climactic sequence with Minkow looking like a savior by risking his life to save an old man's retirement savings, the film half-assedly addresses his fall from grace faster than THE ITCHY & SCRATCHY SHOW got rid of Poochie. I guess if you're a GODFATHER superfan, you can feel really depressed at seeing Caan, Shire, and Russo back together in the same movie (Caan and Russo do have a scene together near the end, and it would've been nice to see Sonny Corleone and Carlo Rizzi set aside their differences to collaborate on a merciless beatdown of Barry Minkow), but CON MAN is a con job itself, nothing more than Barry Minkow furiously jerking off to Barry Minkow fan fiction concocted by Barry Minkow himself. Fuck Barry Minkow. (Unrated, 100 mins)
MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE - ROGUE NATION (US/China - 2015) Written and directed by Christopher McQuarrie. Cast: Tom Cruise, Jeremy Renner, Simon Pegg, Rebecca Ferguson, Ving Rhames, Alec Baldwin, Sean Harris, Simon McBurney, Xiang Jingchu, Tom Hollander, Jens Hulten, Hermione Corfield, America Olivo, Robert Maaser, Wolfgang Stegemann. (PG-13, 131 mins)
Putting aside the fact that he's a pretty weird guy who believes in a patently crazy religion, there's no denying that Tom Cruise is perhaps The Last Movie Star, the kind of guy who, with occasional missteps (ROCK OF AGES), knows what his fans want and always delivers. The action just gets more frenetic and ambitious with ROGUE NATION, written and directed by Cruise's apparent new BFF Christopher McQuarrie, who won an Oscar for his USUAL SUSPECTS script nearly 20 years ago. McQuarrie disappeared from sight after 2000's THE WAY OF THE GUN and resurfaced with a writing credit on Cruise's 2008 film VALKYRIE. Since then, McQuarrie wrote and directed Cruise in 2012's underrated--with a growing cult--JACK REACHER, and he co-wrote last year's EDGE OF TOMORROW. Fans of McQuarrie the writer will be happy to know that he brings some of his gift for verbiage and Keyser Soze hyperbole to ROGUE NATION, particularly when Alec Baldwin's irritable CIA chief tells one of the bad guys that Cruise's Ethan Hunt is "the living manifestation of destiny...and he's made you his mission!" As a director, McQuarrie throws all of the styles of past M:I franchise helmers into a blender in a way that's tantamount to a greatest hits package. There's a lot of MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE 2's John Woo in the fight choreography and some generous Brad Bird in the elaborately death-defying GHOST PROTOCOL-style set pieces, plus the long Vienna Opera House sequence that's more Brian De Palma than anything De Palma did as the hired gun directing the first M:I installment in 1996. Though there's quite a bit of CGI assistance, ROGUE NATION goes the extra mile in the action sequences to make them as practical as possible. Sure, for every scene of Cruise hanging on to the outside of a plane as it's taking off, or doing most of his own driving in a high-speed motorcycle chase sequence, there's one of him being bounced around like a pinball or a really phony-looking car flip that momentarily takes you out of the movie, but these interruptions are few and far between.
After a spectacular opening sequence with IMF agent Hunt hanging on to the side of a plane as it takes off, the actions starts bouncing around the globe, first in London where Hunt, on the trail of a terrorist organization known as "The Syndicate," is ambushed by its sinister leader Solomon Lane (Sean Harris). Hunt and his IMF team have never been able to produce any concrete evidence of The Syndicate's existence, much to the consternation of CIA chief Hunley (Baldwin), who has IMF disbanded and tells agent Brandt (Jeremy Renner) that he believes Hunt "is both arsonist and fireman, and that the Syndicate is a figment of his imagination, created by Hunt to justify the continued existence of IMF." Hunt, now off-the-grid and considered a global fugitive, enlists the aid of his former cohort, Langley-based CIA flunky Benji Dunn (Simon Pegg), who meets up with Hunt and deeply-embedded British agent Ilsa Faust (a star-making turn by Rebecca Ferguson), who shows ever-shifting loyalties after infiltrating The Syndicate and constantly being put to the test by the nefarious Lane. Eventually, Brandt and Luther Stickell (Ving Rhames, who probably looks forward to the M:I films to rescue him from the world of straight-to-Redbox) join the group in Morocco for an incredible car/motorcycle/SUV chase down a Casablanca highway. The action moves at a furious clip and never stops, whether it's the MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH-style sequence in the opera house or a complex plot to retrieve data from a underwater power server that requires Hunt to hold his breath for several minutes, though watching how it plays out, I'm not sure I buy the hype that Cruise himself held his breath for several minutes.
ROGUE NATION doesn't aspire to be anything more than escapist entertainment and it's one of the most enjoyable movies of the summer. At 53, Cruise seems to have stopped chasing an Oscar and instead settled into a comfort zone where he's found a niche but isn't coasting. At this rate, he won't need to do a geriatric actioner in five or six years because he'll never have stopped doing stuff like this, and that's fine. Cruise is in top form here, and he's matched by a game Ferguson, who needs to return if there's any future M:I outings. Renner, Pegg, and Rhames all have their moments in the spotlight (Luther busting Brandt's balls about handling the 4x4 during the car chase gets a big laugh). Baldwin, with his blustery GLENGARRY GLEN ROSS delivery, benefits the most from McQuarrie's gift of wordsmithing, while Harris makes a decent if one-dimensional bad guy. Like the FAST & FURIOUS franchise, MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE seems to be gaining steam as it goes along, with the last two being particularly strong (I even like the much-maligned second entry by John Woo, which has achieved almost HIGHLANDER 2 levels of loathing by fans in the decade and a half since its release). In short, MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE - ROGUE NATION is the most no-holds-barred actioner to hit screens since MAD MAX: FURY ROAD, and while it isn't the game-changer that George Miller masterpiece was and the second half isn't quite as rousing as the first, it gives you almost everything you could possibly ask for in a big summer movie, with enough real stunt work--one of the highlights of JACK REACHER, by the way--mixed with digital to demonstrate the difference. Strap Cruise to a parked airplane or on a motorcycle in front of a greenscreen and this is as forgettable as any generic action movie. Cruise and McQuarrie know the difference and audiences should, too. This and MAD MAX: FURY ROAD should be case studies in why the studios need to scale back their reliance on cartoonish CGI and start using it to enhance the action rather than being the action.
Several SOPRANOS alumni, including creator David Chase, reunited for this semi-autobiographical period piece about one of countless 1960s rock bands that didn't make it. Chase, who wrote and directed, seems to approach his first feature film as if it's an entire season of an HBO show whittled down to two hours. The story isn't exactly cohesive and it's probably not meant to be. It makes sure to mention all the expected '60s touchstones--opening with JFK's assassination, then the Beatles on Ed Sullivan, Vietnam, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., civil rights, free love, LSD, Bob Dylan, The Byrds, Jimi Hendrix, Bobby Kennedy--as we watch a small-time Jersey band build a following, squabble, and try to audition for a record label all while dealing with life in a tumultuous decade. The focus is on drummer Douglas (John Magaro) who's invited into a local cover band by guitarist/singer Eugene (Jack Huston). Douglas, Eugene, and Wells (Will Brill) form the core of the unnamed band and tensions flare when 4/5 of the band thinks that Douglas is a better singer and Eugene should just play guitar. Eugene is also reluctant to write original songs and would prefer to play covers. Meanwhile, Douglas falls in love with rich girl Grace (Bella Heathcote) and drops out of college, much to the disgust of his bitter, blue collar father (James Gandolfini) who doesn't approve of his shaggy hair and his clothes that make him look like he "just got off the boat." This formula repeats for the entire film: the band plays, squabbles, pulls it together, Douglas and Grace make big plans about music and film projects, Eugene acts like a jealous dick, and Douglas goes home for the holidays and fights with his dad.
Magaro is very good, and Chase does a great job with period detail, but his construction of the film is frustrating. The narrative jumps all over the place, sometimes skipping months and years at a time (indicated by how increasingly big Douglas' hair gets), and established subplots get cast aside with an almost willful disregard. We never really get to know the large cast of characters (I don't even recall hearing the names of the other two guys in the band), and I don't know why we spend so much time dealing with Grace's troubled older sister (Dominique McElligott). And if you hated the last scene of THE SOPRANOS' final episode, then wait until you see what Chase does here. His fondness for the era is undeniable (I got a big laugh out of Grace dragging Douglas to see Antonioni's BLOW-UP, where he complains "What kind of movie is this? Nothing happens!"), but in the end, it misses the mark and has surprisingly little to say. Produced by Steven Van Zandt, who also served as music supervisor. The song selection is probably the film's strongest attribute. (R, 112 mins)
THE DETAILS (US - 2012)
THE DETAILS is one of those twisty nightmare comedies where one single infraction by an everyman protagonist spirals into out-of-control doom. It's the kind of dark comedy that wants to be FARGO-era Coen Bros., but its frequent moments of excellence never really coalesce into anything all that special by the pat, predictable conclusion. Mild-mannered, nice-guy Seattle doctor Tobey Maguire, who's initially so benignly unthreatening that he spells out his curse words, decides to add a room on to his house without obtaining a city permit, and through an individually plausible but collectively absurd set of circumstances, sees his entire life fall to pieces. He and wife Elizabeth Banks haven't had sex in six months, but they generally get along, and he spends his spare time jerking off to internet porn and battling raccoons who keep digging up his lawn in the wee hours. After an argument, his frustrations boil over and he sleeps with his married med school friend Kerry Washington, who confesses the indiscretion to her husband Ray Liotta, who then threatens to tell Banks unless Maguire pays him $100,000. Meanwhile, Maguire has to contend with crazy cat-lady neighbor Laura Linney after her cat dies ingesting some poison left out for the raccoons. Before Maguire realizes what's going on, he and Linney have a fast and frenzied sexual encounter in her living room and she ends up pregnant. The only good thing going on in Maguire's life is his friendship with Dennis Haysbert, an almost-basketball pro who fell on hard times and needs a kidney transplant. But Maguire's chaotic existence even spills over into Haysbert's, who decides to help his new friend in the worst way possible.
Written and directed by Jacob Aaron Estes, who's been MIA since his acclaimed 2004 debut MEAN CREEK, THE DETAILS has a lot of outstanding moments and killer supporting performances, but it turns into a case where the parts are greater than the whole. Shot in 2009, it's a better film than three years on the shelf and a 73-screen release would lead you to believe. Maguire is good, but it's Linney, Haysbert, and Liotta who steal the film. Liotta, in particular, has an amazing scene where he confronts Maguire on a bridge that features some of the best and most profane acting of his career. And his comedic timing and delivery of bizarrely funny dialogue is spot-on ("I taught you how to make pesto and you sleep with my wife?!"). Linney throws herself into her role, turning in a fearless performance as a character that a more vain actress wouldn't even consider portraying (straddling Maguire, she shrieks "I can feel you getting bigger!"). It's an odd little film that never quite finds the tone it's looking for, careening from near-slapstick with the raccoon business to some really dark, bleak turns in the closing act. Flawed and inconsistent and probably hard to market, but worth a look. (R, 101 mins)
PERCENTAGE (US - 2013)
Two weeks after the unwatchable HOUSE OF BODIES, Netflix drops another Queen Latifah-produced bomb as a streaming exclusive...no theatrical release, no trailer, no publicity, nothing. Like BODIES, the gangsta thriller PERCENTAGE was directed by the astonishingly inept Alex Merkin, who's obviously gunning to be the Albert Pyun of his generation. As terrible and as dated as it is (playing a lot like one of those countless DTV, post-I'M 'BOUT IT Master P joints from the late '90s), PERCENTAGE is at least a technical improvement over BODIES and, if nothing else, almost looks like a real movie instead of cobbled-together cell phone footage. But the praise ends there as we follow unscrupulous NYC thug Ant (rapper Cam'ron, who also "co-wrote" the "script") and his buddy Carter (Omar Gooding, Cuba Jr's brother) fleeing a shootout with the Russian mob and heading to Miami to lay low. Instead, they team up with Carter's cousin Flaco (Antwon Tanner) on a half-assed credit card scam that can't possibly be as easy to pull off in real life as the film presents it. They live large, buying expensive watches, lighting blunts with Benjamins and hangin' at the club, all until Miami crime boss Mama Cash (Macy Gray) and her cowboy enforcer Porter (Ving Rhames) want their cut. The eastern European mob also figures, as per the rules of straight-to-DVD dogshit. Merkin actually tries to go for some style here by clumsily ripping off John Woo (birds!) and Steven Soderbergh (when Ant meets Malinda Williams' Cass at the club, their conversation is intercut with footage of them in bed later on, much like George Clooney and Jennifer Lopez in the hotel bar in OUT OF SIGHT), and there's repeat invocations of "The world is yours" from both versions of SCARFACE. But proving he's seen good movies by better directors doesn't give Merkin any credibility, especially in a gaffe-filled montage with Ant's narration ("The terminals was hacked...to place a trace on each card swiped") repeated over two consecutive scenes. Really? Nobody noticed that? Gray is awful and Rhames is phoning it in (though at 66:30, watch what appears to be his impromptu impression of Bela Lugosi in FRANKENSTEIN MEETS THE WOLF MAN), and Queen Latifah really should be using her celebrity and her name on more worthwhile projects. What can you say about a movie that's so bad that it's even beneath Omar Gooding? (Unrated, 83 mins, currently available only on Netflix streaming)
