American Made

First Hit:  It’s a Tom Cruise film and therefore you will always get everything he can give; full tilt entertainment.

I’ve said it before and I’ll continue to say it. Tom Cruise will probably never be in a film and be someone other than Tom Cruise. This isn’t a bad thing because he gives everything to each film he’s in. The issue is that you always know and see ‘Tom Cruise’, not the character he’s playing.

Here he uses the role and true story of Barry Seal, a TWA pilot that ended up working for the CIA and even the White House, to give the audience his, boyish charm, intensity, and action. Seal was a bored airline pilot who, on occasion, would turn off the auto-pilot and make the plane turn and twist in the sky just to wake up his co-pilot and passengers.

One day he’s approached by Monty ‘Schafer’ (Domhnall Gleeson) a CIA operative to fly spy camera photo missions in Central America. For this he will get a cool plane to fly, have lots of excitement, and make a little money. Without telling his wife he quits TWA and takes this new mission on, full tilt. Soon afterward, he gets a deal to smuggle drugs from South America on his way back from taking spy photos. This becomes very lucrative for him and he begins making a lot of money.

However, the DEA finds out and wants to bust him in his Louisiana home. The CIA is willing to turn a blind eye to the drug smuggling because of his excellent spy photographs and therefore move him and his family to Mena, AK. Here they give him more than 2,000 acres of land, an airport, hanger, home and a new plane.

He does so well for the drug cartel and the CIA that he buys more planes and men to fly them. He’s got hundreds of millions of dollars in banks, all over town, in his house, in his hanger, and buried in the ground around his home.

All the while he gets into scrapes that he gets bailed out from. Finally, he has to turn witness against the drug cartel and when he does, he’s in trouble. His punishment for all the drug smuggling was 1,000 hours of community service with the Salvation Army, which he does. However, the cartel isn't so lenient.

As I said the film is fun, and the action scenes are good with Tom making it all good fun.

Cruise knows how to make a film fun with his personality and ability to make the audience feel good. Sarah Wright as his wife Lucy was good. I loved her line about having to go back to work at Kentucky Fried Chicken. Gleeson was good as the CIA agent who recruited Seal. Jayma Mays was strong as the AK State DA who wanted to prosecute Seal. Gary Spinelli wrote an event filled script. Doug Liman let Cruise be himself and bring engagement and excitement to the screen. Just don’t think you’re going to see a meaningful story about Barry Seal.

Overall:  It was an excellent vehicle for Cruise to be, well; Tom Cruise.

The Kingsman: The Golden Circle

First Hit:  Terrible story with few bright spots.

What a waste of talent. How do Julianne Moore (Poppy), Taron Egerton (Eggsy), Colin Firth (Harry Hart – whose character died in previous film), Channing Tatum (Tequila), Halle Berry (Ginger), Jeff Bridges (Champ) and Elton John (as himself) all sign up for a story that has disaster written all over it? I don’t know. Maybe the Jane Goldman and Matthew Vaughn script read better than it worked out to be. Maybe it was Vaughn’s issue because he couldn't deliver what he envisioned in his mind.

I just don’t know, how this happened. Besides a couple reasonable fight scenes and a couple slightly amusing tongue-in-cheek scenes, the premise that Poppy was going to blackmail the President of the United States so that she could freely sell her drugs all over the world, was preposterous.

Maybe the film needed to be WAY over the top in the tongue-in-cheek category to work.

Hart died in the previous film, and to make-up a story that he miraculously survived the shooting by some someone using a FEDEX  or UPS looking plastic bubble wrap around his head and followed by an emotional shock to make him be the same person as before is ludicrous.

Anyway, the Kingsman, who have a limited crew, with Merlin (Mark Strong), Eggsy and the partially defective Hart, are trying to find and destroy Charlie (Edward Holcroft) who makes an attempt to kill Eggsy. Charlie blows-up the country mansion and the tailor shop in London and now want Eggsy. Charlie being a shunned former Kingsman, unbeknownst to Eggsy, is really working for Poppy. Poppy is running her drug trade in a lost city in a jungle. She’s turned it into a 1950’s style base of operations. Really? This is the setup. Really, I kid you not.

Then the writers add this: For help, The Kingsman team up with the Statesman, which is run by Champ. The Statesman is the US version of the Kingsman; an independent spy security agency. It is run out of a distillery, hence the names of their agents, Tequila and Whiskey (Pedro Pascal). Now this is exciting! But wait, there's more...

Not only does Poppy build robotic dogs to protect herself, she likes being entertained, so she has hired Elton John to play songs for her in an empty theater anytime she likes. Elton does have a couple other key momentary appearances, but he’s not an actor and it shows.

Egerton is, at times, fun to watch but the script is so disjointed and unfounded that it lets him and the role down. Moore’s role is hopeless. She attempts to be part tongue-in-cheek and part serious, but because the role is ill defined in an ill-defined movie, it falls flat. Firth seems so out of place in this role it just made me cringe. He needed to stay dead. Strong was one bright spot in the film and his centered acting made his role work. Berry was driven to be so much less than what she is by the role. She's made to be a girl Friday and I disliked her scenes completely. Bridges' role was insipid. That he chose to act in this film is disheartening. Holcroft was good as the maniac bionic armed villain. He made it work. Pascal didn’t fit in this film at all. He seemed out of place and it was clear from the beginning, he wasn’t on the side he said he was on. Tatum was fun at times and it seemed as though he was used in this film as eye candy for a female audience. He added little to the story. John can stay away from acting, even as himself. Goldman and Vaughn script was a mess from the beginning to the end. Vaughn had no vision as a director to deliver a story that would engage the audience. The film was thrown at the audience.

Overall:  Don’t waste your time for this insipid film.

American Assassin

First Hit:  Mildly entertaining.

The story begins with Mitch Rapp (Dylan O’Brien) and Katrina (Charlotte Vega) frolicking in the water in an undisclosed foreign location. They are in love and, with his phone, he’s videotaping their time together which concludes with him asking her for her hand in marriage. She accepts and he goes to the beach bar to get them drinks to celebrate when a group of terrorists start shooting everyone on the beach. Mitch gets hit with two slugs and Katrina is shot dead.

The film moves forward eighteen months and Mitch has recovered and he’s clearly aiming for revenge because he’s taking mixed martial arts lessons, shooting lessons and has mastered Arabic because he’s communicating with ISIS operatives. He’s trying to get close to the people who killed his fiancé so that he can kill them, specifically Adnan Al-Mansur (Shahid Ahmed). He plans to infiltrate their organization by pretending to be a new western recruit, get close and kill him and everyone in that cell.

His plan gets foiled because he’s being watched by the CIA who find him fascinating and possibly someone they want on their team. Deputy Director Irene Kennedy (Sanaa Lathan) recruits him to be taught by a black ops trainer Stan Hurley (Michael Keaton).

Typical issues arise as the young guy with guts and a clear personal mission tries to learn and be better than the grizzled veteran. Some of these scenes are rather good. As Hurley gets Rapp ready to become an operative, Kennedy learns that an old CIA operative, who goes by the name Ghost (Taylor Kitsch), has a stolen a small atomic device. This part of the story is not very well done, because the story wants the audience to believe that it is radical Iranian’s who are going to get the bomb, but there are too many hints to the contrary.

Because Ghost felt that Hurley left him to die, he wants to get back at Hurley by blowing up the sixth fleet.

Some of the bomb effects were interesting, as were some of the close fighting action that the agents get into. However, the film was predictable.

O’Brien was strong enough to make his character work. He used his intensity well. Lathan was very good as the CIA Deputy Director. Keaton was both strong and mediocre. I think the mediocre part was more of a scripting issue than Keaton’s fault. Keaton can be an excellent antagonist and more could have been done with this role. Shiva Negar as the in-country Iranian CIA agent Annika, was excellent. Kitsch was solid as the vengeful rogue agent. Stephen Schiff, Michael Finch, Edward Zwick and Marshall Herskovitz all participated in creating the screenplay. This might have been the problem, too many cooks. Michael Cuesta directed this and the strengths were the fight scenes, which were well choreographed along with the interaction between Annika and Rapp were great.

Overall:  This could have been more exciting with more clarity in the story and it wasn’t.

Birth of the Dragon

First Hit:  Although this is a poorly done film, I liked knowing more about what it took for Bruce Lee to create his empire.

The sad part of about this film is that it didn’t make the real story the main subject of the film. What came on to the screen was a love story between one of Lee’s students and women who was enslaved by the owner of a Chinese restaurant. However, there was enough in the film about how Lee learned there was more to Kung Fu than just the physicality, to make me sit through the rest of the drama.

Bruce Lee (Philip Ng) was a self-promoting wizard who wanted his Kung Fu school to grow and do well. He is driven by money and fame and will try anything to achieve this, even trying to create a homemade film. Because he teaches both white and Asian students, his school and method are frowned upon by the traditional Chinese martial arts based community.

One school that frowns upon his technique is the Chinese Shaolin Temple and order of priests who use Kung Fu. Wong Jack Man (Yu Xia) is a priest from this Shaolin Temple. He comes to America because he’s serving penance for almost killing someone during a demonstration match. He decides to do this by working in a restaurant as a dishwasher.

One of Lee’s students, a white man named Steve McKee (Billy Magnussen), wants to meet Man and heads to the dock to meet him as he arrives in the US by boat. Lee learns of this and leverages this connection to send a message to Man. He tells McKee to tell Man that Lee wants to challenge him to a fight. Lee knows that if he wins this sort of challenge, it'l raise his popularity and create more fame and money. Man refuses to fight him.

Here is where the film fails to be true to the real story, McKee asks Man to fight Lee to free a woman, Xiulan Quan (Jingjing Qu), from the clutches Janet Wei (Lillian Lim) owner of a famous Chinese restaurant and the person for whom McKee has fallen in love with. That Man fights Lee for this reason, denigrates the story, but supposedly makes it palatable to a wider audience.

In the end Lee does learn something about fighting from his heart. Man learns that Kung Fu can be spread beyond China. McKee gets the girl.

The choreography of the major fight scene was splendid at times and other times seemed a bit forced.

Ng was OK, outside of a few Bruce Lee type squeals while fighting, I didn’t get a "Bruce Lee" from his performance. I got someone who wanted to imitate Lee. Xia was strong and I liked what he brought to the part. McKee was a OK for a character that wasn’t really part of the real story being portrayed here. Qu was sweet in her role as enslaved love interest. Lim was good as the woman in-charge of the restaurant and the Tong she commanded. Stephen J. Rivele and Christopher Wilkinson wrote a very altered screenplay from the real story. George Nolfi did a good job directing most of the fight scenes, but the story and screenplay, lacked a level of authenticity that took away from the real story.

Overall:  I liked the film conceptually more than its reality.

The Hitman's Bodyguard

First Hit:  This movie was, at times, very funny and the action scenes were very well-choreographed.

Michael Bryce (Ryan Reynolds) is considered a “AAA” Bodyguard for high paying clients. He’s at the top of his game, making a lot of money and has his stuff together. He lives with his live-in girlfriend Amelia (Edolie Yung) who is an agent with Interpol security.

The film opens with him finishing a job for Mr. Kurosawa (Tsuwayuki Saotome), a wealthy client. While putting him on a plane, Mr. Kurosawa gets shot through the small window of his private jet. Bryce is dumbfounded, he did everything and now his client is dead. This completely changes his life, his attitude and he wrongfully thinks Amelia inadvertently leaked the news about his client's whereabouts thereby letting someone assassinate  Kurosawa.

Vladislav Dukhovich (Gary Oldman) is a ruthless dictator and is on trial in the International Court at The Hague. He's been accused of killing a village full of people in his country. There was a witness to all this and it was a professional hitman named Darius Kincaid (Samuel L. Jackson). However, he’s been jailed and must make a deal to get to the court to testify. The deal is that they will let his wife out of prison but he must stay incarcerated. He takes the deal.

As he’s being transferred from his English jail cell to The Hague, Russian operatives under the control of Dukhovich try to assassinate him. Because Amelia help set up the deal and is traveling with Kincaid, she almost dies in the assassination attempt as well. Kincaid gets free after the assassination attempt and Amelia desperately calls Michael to find and protect Darius from the Russians and get him to The Hague.

This is where the two, the hitman and the bodyguard, get together and the audience gets to go on a wild ride of adventure, protection, fun and extremely well-choreographed action scenes, gunfights and car chases.

Reynolds is fantastic as the bodyguard and his interaction with Jackson is wonderful. Jackson is outrageous, intense and exquisitely funny. Together these two are very entertaining and their back and forth dialogue was quite, laugh out-loud, amusing. Oldman is great as the evil Russian leader who despises that he's on trial. Yung is good as Reynolds love interest. Salma Hayek as Sonia Kincaid, Jackson’s wife, was over the top fun. With gusto she chewed up this role. Tom O’Connor wrote a funny and entertaining script. He conceived, and the director delivered on, each chase scene being interesting and wonderfully different. Patrick Hughes did an amazing job of making the scenes come alive.

Overall:  Although not Oscar worthy, this film was well worth the price of admission.