Bad Boys for Life

First Hit: Funny at the right times, but confusing gun battles took away from the story.

Will Smith as Detective Mike Lowery and Martin Lawrence as Detective Marcus Burnett can be engagingly funny together. And in many scenes, they hit that sweet spot by bringing outright out-loud laughter from the audience.

The background of this story is that these two have worked together for twenty plus years and, during this time, created havoc in the Miami Police Department by being both hasty in their actions and unconventional in their investigative methods. The directors, Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah put this right up front in the opening scenes when they have the detectives drive through Miami at recklessly high speeds in Lowery’s 911 Porsche.

Burnett wants to retire but gets yanked away from fulfilling this dream when Lowery gets riddled with five bullets from Armando (Jacob Scipio), an assassin riding a motorcycle down one of Miami’s boulevards. In another early scene, we see Armando breaking his mother Isabel Aretas (Kate del Castillo) out of prison.

Isabel is intent on revenging an old score which resulted in the death of her husband. She asks Armando to kill all that had to do with her former husband's death. One of the aspects of Isabel that the audience is made aware of early is that she sees herself as a witch of some sort.

Directing the detective’s work over the years was Captain Conrad Howard (Joe Pantoliano). After Lowery’s shooting, he brings on his newly formed AMMO (Advanced Miami Metro Operations) squad to solve the cases of all the current assassinations by using data and more conventional crime resolution techniques. This team is led by Lowery’s ex-girlfriend Rita (Paola Nunez).

Lowery won’t be held back and goes out to find his assassin and finally convinces Burnett to come out of retirement to help him one last time.

The rest of the film is about the slight conflicts between the AMMO squad and Lowery and Burnett’s tactics on finding and dealing with the assassins.

The AMMO team has some hilarious interactions with Lowery and Burnett, which helped set the stage. However, it is Marcu’s comments to Mike that gets the most laughs. One funny scene is when Mike names the color dye Mike uses to cover the gray in his goatee.

However, what didn’t work was the convoluted shootouts, two specifically, one in a warehouse garage and the other in an old hotel that was confusing. Just too much noise and shooting that didn’t make a whole lot of sense.

Smith is his typical smart-alecky competent self. As such, he is perfect for this role. Lawrence is terrific as the sidekick attempting to bring some sanity to his partner’s life. Pantoliano is solid as a police captain. Nunez is good as Lowery’s former girlfriend and leader of AMMO. Castillo is okay as the woman looking for revenge. Vanessa Hudgens, as Burnett’s all-knowing supportive wife, is terrific. Chris Bremner, Peter Craig, and Joe Carnahan wrote the screenplay. Directors Arbi and Fallah did a good job of bringing both action and comedy to bear.

Overall: There was nothing memorable about his film or story, but it was a fun experience.

Death Wish

First Hit: Although not as impactful as the original film, this one was very good.

Charles Bronson was an amazing actor and in the original Death Wish, me, like the rest of the audience, rooted for him.

In this version, we have Bruce Willis playing Dr. Paul Kersey who, as he said himself, did everything right, was a responsible surgeon, happily married, and was raising an amazing daughter. Like the first film, we do root for the main character, but in a different way.

One night while he’s at the hospital, three thugs come to his house to rob it. Finding the wife and daughter home, the thieves kill his wife Lucy (Elisabeth Shue) and injure his daughter Jordan (Camila Morrone). Jordan falls into a coma while Paul slips into a deep depression.

His brother Frank (Vincent D’Onofrio) is supportive of his brother’s angst and helps by reading to Jordan while she’s in a coma. During his mourning, Paul gets the idea, by listening to his father-in-law, that he just might have to find his wife’s killers and kill them himself.

Finding a gun one day, he begins the process of making things right by becoming Chicago’s “Vigilante Killer.” In the television news, he becomes the white dude with a hoodie that is making things right.

We follow Paul as he makes his way through a criminal world to find his wife’s killers and make things right. All the while, the police do what they can to find the killers, but part of the film’s point is that there are so many killings in Chicago that they rarely solve any of the crimes.

Willis is good, and he’s got that typical Willis smirk working for him as well. Because he’s comfortable in his body, the skirmishes he’s in are believable. D’Onofrio is wonderful as his brother. The chemistry between the two was very brotherly like and worked well. Shue in her small role was strong and I enjoyed seeing her again on the big screen. Morrone as the daughter was good. Her openness in this role was perfect. Dean Norris as Detective Kevin Raines, the man in charge of the investigation, was sarcastically enjoyable. Joe Carnahan wrote an appropriate script for the times and I especially enjoyed the banter between Willis and D’Onofrio. Eli Roth was solid in directing this remake.

Overall: Bruce Willis gives his all in each role and he does this again here.

The Grey

First Hit: This film’s scenery was to die for, but the film died a long slow death. 

The scene is a far northern section of Alaska where Anchorage is way south. It is cold and the land beautiful. An oil refinery is where all the workers toil and in a bar is where they play hard at night.

As the opening monologue states, most of the people working here are parolees or are guys who are very hardened by the life they’ve led. Ottway (played by Liam Neeson) is a protector. He protects outside workers from beasts who might see the workers as food. It is mostly wolves he has to shoot.

Ottway has many dreams of his wife who has passed away. He’s lonely and likes to be left alone in his sadness. A group of workers are headed back to Anchorage for an R&R. The scene of them loading the plane shows how intense the storm is. They are deicing the plane until it takes off. There a large bumps as they fly and most everyone is on edge.

The plane crashes and only 7 survive. There is a good scene as Ottway escorts one of the dying to their death. The 7 survivors are tough in their own way and Ottway immediately takes charge. Of course he is challenged.

Wolves surround and start to track the survivors and begin to pick them off one by one. Only Ottway has some intelligent information about how the wolves act. He notes that alpha wolf is in charge.

This is a story about survival, religious beliefs, men, and alpha men.

The animatronic wolves were mediocre at best and the alpha was black in color (so why was it called Grey).

The mixing of religious and non-religious beliefs didn’t work well and the scene where Ottway is speaking to God asking for some direct sign is a copy of Paul Newman in Cool Hand Luke where Luke stands in the church yelling at God for a sign – he got it and so does Ottway.

 Neeson is always a strong character regardless of the lines his character has to say. Here he says them with authority and strength, his character is believable. The rest of the cast was good but nothing outstanding. The problem with this film was the laborious script and the direction. The film needed about 20 – 30 minutes cut out of it to make it work. Joe Carnahan and Ian Mackenzie Jeffers wrote this overly cooked script while Carnahan, as director, didn’t reign in the scope. The cinematography of the area fully captured the cold intensity of the foreboding area of the country.

 Overall: If you’ve got two hours to kill on a Sunday evening watch the DVD version.