Den of Thieves

First Hit:  Although interesting at times, overall it wasn’t a really good heist film.

I love good heist films. The original 1960 “Oceans 11” and the 2001 “Oceans Eleven” films were fun examples of heist films as was “The Thomas Crown Affair” in its own way.

Here we have, what we’re made to believe is, a set of former military men fresh out of prison planning to rob the LA Federal Reserve Bank. Although the general plot line was interesting enough, the twist can be spotted early on, which makes watching this an exercise in waiting for the cat to be out of the bag.

Chasing this gang of thieves is a miss-fit Sheriff's unit lead by Big Nick O’Brian (Gerard Butler). His gang of thuggish deputies determine that Ray Merriman (Pablo Schreiber) and his group of thieves, Enson Levoux (Curtis “50 cent” Jackson), and Bo “Bosco” Ostroman (Evan Jones) have been responsible for all the unsolved bank robberies in LA.

To introduce Donnie Wilson (O'Shea Jackson Jr.), the film has Merriman adding Wilson as a driver to assist his crew in robbing banks.

The interaction between the Sheriff and his deputies and the thieves is ridiculous. Especially when they interrogate Donnie in a motel room and when Big Nick walks into a restaurant where the whole gang is celebrating. The interaction is unrealistic.

We are also treated to the ass like ways of Big Nick when he’s trying to tell his wife to not leave him, sitting at a strip club, and speaking with his FBI counterpart.

Some of the ingenious planning and execution of the robbery was interesting, but in the end it just fell flat and lacked luster of any kind.

Butler played a jerk and there was nothing that would have the audience care about what happens to him. His behavior almost deserved a movie death. Schreiber was good enough to believe he was hardened and didn’t want to go back to jail. 50 cent was good, although I keep sensing he needs to lose who he is so that he can become an actor of merit. I did love the garage scene when he takes his daughter’s date into the garage. Jones was strong and intense in his role. Jackson Jr. was OK, although I’m not sure I bought the premise of his involvement in the overall story. Christian Gudegast wrote and directed this, and it might be some time before he’s loaned money to do another film.

Overall: This film lacked effort, suspense, and a decent plot line.

Ingrid Goes West

First Hit:  A wonderful reflection of the impact of social media on people.

This is an interesting story about how getting caught up in social media, like Instagram, can alter one’s perception of what relationships consist of.

The film begins with Ingrid Thorburn (Aubrey Plaza) getting herself in a tizzy over not being invited to a wedding. She perceives that she is a best friend of the bride. Breaking into the wedding, she squirts pepper spray into the eyes of the bride and escapes. We learn that the bride never met Ingrid before – just through Instagram.

Ingrid’s mom has just died and because Ingrid was her caretaker, this probably contributed to her isolation and use of social media to reach out to the world. After the wedding fiasco, she isolates herself and searching social media, discovers Taylor Sloane (Elizabeth Olsen) on social media.

Taylor makes her living by being an “influencer” on Instagram. She photographs herself in locations and with products and because of the size of her audience, companies pay her. Taylor lives in Southern California with her artist husband Ezra (Wyatt Russell). Ingrid, armed with money her mother left her, heads to CA to find Taylor and to find a new life.

She rents a studio from Dan Pinto (O’Shea Jackson Jr.) who ends up becoming her friend. Her first step after “following” Taylor on Instagram, is to track her down by going to the places she posts on Instagram. One day she runs into Taylor and stealthily follows her to her home. Noting that Taylor and Ezra have a dog, named Rothko, she creates a plan to steal the dog and return the dog to get in good, close graces with Taylor.

This plan works and they end up becoming pals hanging out together. What Ingrid doesn’t know is that Taylor has no teal intention of making Ingrid a real friend. As long as Taylor gets something from the relationship, she lets Ingrid hang out with her and Ezra.

The film evolves to where it gets pretty twisted because Ingrid will do anything to be close to and hang out with Taylor. As Taylor’s brother Nicky (Billy Magnussen) comes into the picture, he brings new audiences for Taylor and so Ingrid slips out of favor and importance to Taylor.

As we see how far Ingrid goes to stay in good graces with Taylor, I started to cringe. Nicky adds additional leverage against Ingrid by stealing her phone and threatening Ingrid with exposing her phone’s negative and intimate posts of Taylor to Taylor.

Spiraling into oblivion, Ingrid finds out that there are people who care, even if they were only known to her through social media. She also learns that she has the possibility of creating a real human relationship.

What I liked was how well Ingrid showed what it is like to be obsessive about pings on her phone. She made the feeling that her life depended on the pings, perfectly real.

Plaza is wonderful in this role. Her eyes and behavior really reflected the desperateness of her trying to connect the only way she knew how. This was a strong performance. Olsen was very good as the influencer who really didn’t care about the people who followed her. Russell was OK as Taylor’s husband. His abdicating to his wife’s preferences was well done. Jackson Jr. was strong as the landlord, friend, and lover with a Batman obsession. The story how he came to this obsession was wonderful. David Branson Smith and Matt Spicer wrote a fun script that came alive with the actors and direction by Spicer.

Overall: I liked how the social media obsession was portrayed as I am aware of people who’ve been hooked.

Straight Outta Compton

First Hit:  Loved watching these young men fight through police repression to make a name for themselves.

I’ll deal with the downsides of this film first:  It needed about 30 minutes trimmed from its running time. And two, I would have liked a little more about what connected Ice Cube (O’Shea Jackson Jr.), Dr. Dre (Cory Hawkins) and Easy-E (Jason Mitchell) to each other.

The film had the relationships at a slight arms distance, and it may have been how they were, but it just seemed to me that there may have been more to the depth of their connection (especially Dre and Cube). The most powerful parts of the film were how situations with Police drove Ice Cube to write amazing powerful lyrics and then, of course, the concert scenes.

The climatic concert scene was the Detroit concert where the cops told them to not sing “Fuck Tha Police”. Of course they did, using their amendment driven rights of free speech to tell their story. This was was followed by a riot and arrest. The sadness of Easy-E and Jerry Heller's (Paul Giamatti)  greed was hard to watch, especially when the others trusted them. They were getting theirs while the rest of the group wasn’t.

Then in comes Suge Knight (R. Marcus Taylor) bullying himself into saving the day, but really only for his benefit. The film also gives glimpses of Snoop Dogg and Tupac. We get to see Ice figure out he needs to leave NWA and go out successfully on his own. Then we see Dre figure out he needs to control his own destiny as well. He leaves Death Row Records and starts Aftermath through Interscope Records and Jimmy Iovine. Anyone who knows anything about music knows that Aftermath has a stable of amazing rappers, including 50 Cent, Kendrick Lamar and Eminem.

This films gives a great lesson and view of the West Coast rap scene.

Jackson Jr. was incredibly strong as Ice and playing his dad must have been interesting and amazing. Hawkins was wonderful as Dre. My favorite scene was when his blew up at Death Row Records office which was followed by his telling Suge, “I’m out”. Mitchell was sublime as the wheeler-dealer E. His first scene of him learning to rap was fantastic, along his finding out that he had AIDs were spot on. Giamatti was very good as NWA’s first manager. My favorite scene was when he was pleading with E to not leave – but always stating that he took care of his end. Taylor was incredibly sublime as Suge. He had the cigar smoking attitude down pat. Jonathan Herman and Andrea Berloff wrote a very strong, intelligent, and pointed script. Outside that I think the film was too long, F. Gary Gray’s direction was very good.

Overall:  This was a very strong film about West Coast rap scene and I liked it.