Black and Blue

First Hit: An engaging drama made good by powerful scenes and excellent acting by Naomie Harris as Alicia West.

West is still considered a rookie cop on the New Orleans police force after three months of duty. She’s an Army veteran with two completed tours in Afghanistan and is not afraid of conflict. She had recently joined the department because she wants to make a difference in her hometown.

Her partner Kevin Jennings (Reid Scott) drives around and introduces her to areas in New Orleans. As he passes various neighborhoods, he points one out and says, we don’t ever go in there, unless it is to help a cop.

She voluntarily takes an extra shift and heads out with veteran cop Officer Deacon Brown (James Moses Black). He makes it clear that he isn’t wearing a body-cam and not to film him, ever.

Getting a call on his cell phone, Brown and West head to a vast empty manufacturing plant. Brown tells West to “stay put,” while he meets up with an informant. She hears shots, leaves the car, turns on her camera, and goes into the building. Following voices, she witnesses undercover cops killing people, execution-style. One of the undercover men sees her and shoots at her wounding her in the side.

She gets away and soon discovers that both the drug dealers and individual cops are out to get the camera and probably kill her as well.

The rest of the film is about her evading the crooked cops and drug dealers who think she’s the one who shot and killed their team members.

Leading the crooked cops is Terry Malone (Frank Grillo), who has been busting drug dealers, keeping half the captured stash, selling it through other dealers, and then killing them to keep them from talking. His primary enforcer is Smitty (Beau Knapp), who acts like Malone’s mad lap-dog and executioner. If West’s cop camera video gets into the Chief’s hands, Malone and his team will be found out and prosecuted. Malone wants West’s body-cam and would prefer West dead.

The head of the local drug cartel is Darius (Mike Colter), and he’s got a personal interest in who Malone’s team killed as this last killing was his nephew. Malone tells Darius that West killed his nephew.

Because West is on the run, she heads to her old neighborhood and is rejected by her former friends except one, Milo “Mouse” Jackson (Tyrese Gibson). Mouse works at a grocery store, and when West shows up, bleeding, and needing help, he reluctantly gives her assistance because she is an old friend.

There are some wonderful scenes in this film, but the one that stands out to me was when West and Jennings stop at the grocery store to get a coffee. Jennings goes into the store while West gets out of the police car and starts talking to a young twelve-year-old boy. The mother of the boy Missy (Nafessa Williams) yells at West and gets into an argument with her. West, recognizing Missy as an old friend tries to reason with Missy, but Missy disses her and tells her to shut the f*&% up. The layout of the characters, Darius, Missy, Mouse, Jennings, and West are well developed at this moment.

Harris was outstanding as Officer West, who is trying to make a difference in her old neighborhood by seeing people, not color, or anything else. She’s excellent in carrying this message and physically does a great job in this demanding role. Grillo is excellent as the crooked undercover detective. His intensity and attempts to keep everyone in line were perfect. Gibson was absolutely fantastic as the quiet gentle giant who ended up helping West escape all the people after her. Williams was terrific as West’s old high school friend, who had been twisted and hardened by the neighborhood. Colter was sharp as the leading drug dealer in this part of New Orleans. He embodied the intensity and drive of a man protecting what he has. Scott did a great job of feeling caught between two sides as he knew of the crooked stuff going on, but was always the one just looking another way. Black was good as the tough cop turning subservient to Malone when required. Knapp was perfectly unglued as Malone’s killing lapdog. Peter A. Dowling wrote a terrific script that created a high intensity by all the characters. Deon Taylor had everyone on the same page with his direction, and as I previously stated, some of the scenes were indelibly powerful.

Overall: I really enjoyed this film and thought it was well written, acted, and directed.

Zombieland: Double Tap

First Hit: There are some wonderfully funny moments in this zombie spoof.

Ten years after the original Zombieland, the same characters are back, older, wiser, and ready to take on the ever-evolving zombies. To this end, the team talks about the three different types of zombies, but then they learn about the high powered zombies.

Tallahassee (Woody Harrelson), Columbus (Jessie Eisenberg), Wichita (Emma Stone), and Little Rock (Abigail Breslin) are still roaming the eastern part of the United States, taking what they want, living where they want, and killing all the Zombies that come their way.

The women are struggling with the men. Little Rock is feeling out of sorts because she’s running around with adults, and she would like to find people her own age. Wichita is feeling pressured by Columbus to get married. Adding to the women’s misery, Tallahassee thinks he’s the boss of this motley crew and spends most of his time tinkering with The Beast, the Gatling gun protected car.

Deciding to take residence in the White House, things come to a head. Little Rock and Wichita steal The Beast and leave a cryptic note for the men saying “so long.”

Wichita and Little Rock run into a young hippy they call Berkeley (Avan Jogia), who is a pacifist guitar-playing guy looking for Babylon. A place he says, where no guns allowed, and the compound is walled off to protect the residents from the zombies.

Columbus runs into Madison (Zoey Deutch) at a mall that he and Tallahassee are pilfering. She’s a dumb blonde who has been living in a freezer that keeps her safe from the zombies. She goes back to the White House with him and seduces him.

Little Rock leaves her sister Wichita to run off with Berkeley in search of Graceland and then maybe Babylon. Alone, Wichita comes back to the White House to ask Tallahassee and Columbus to help her find her younger sister. But as soon as she gets there, she confronts Columbus for sleeping with Madison so quickly after she had left.

Deciding to stay together, they head out to find Little Rock, fearing she’s making a mistake. The journey has them killing lots of zombies on their way to Graceland, thinking that is where Little Rock was headed. After seeing Graceland empty, they find the church of Elvis and find Nevada (Rosario Dawson) running the joint, alone. Ready to rest before heading out again, The Beast is run over and crushed by a monster truck driven by Albuquerque (Luke Wilson) and Flagstaff (Thomas Middleditch).

With Albuquerque and Flagstaff acting just like Tallahassee and Columbus, respectively, there are moments of great full-throated laughs through the one-ups-man-ship of these four guys. The back and forth is priceless.

The theme of this film is outrageous fun through gags and props. Some of the accessories are; The Beast, the suburban van, the motorhome, Babylon (pronounced by Madison as “Baby lon”), and who killed Bill Murray. Murray is shown in the opening minutes of the ending credits, stay for this. Even Elvis gets his due in this film.

Harrelson is hilarious. He uses sincere looks while going through his mood swings. But the underlying smirk of amusement and self-deprecating humor makes his performance thoroughly enjoyable. Eisenberg was excellent as the semi-cautious list-making member of this crew. Stone is terrific as Eisenberg’s love interest and older sister to Little Rock. Breslin has physically changed more than anyone of the other actors in this crew because she was very young in the original film. She carried her scenes with strength. Deutch was so much fun as the dumb blonde. She made this role work exceptionally well, and I enjoyed her as an addition to this team. Dawson was beautiful as the proprietor of the church of Elvis. Wilson and Middleditch were great as memes of Harrelson and Eisenberg respectively. The swagger of Wilson and the nerdiness of Middleditch were correctly done. Jogla, as Berkeley, the hippie, was OK. I just didn’t think he brought the same level of humor and fun to his role. Murray, in the credits, was excellent. Rhett Reese, Paul Wernick, and Dave Callahan wrote a fun script. They didn’t try to make it too close to the first film and just let the fun be expressed in this one. Ruben Fleischer did an excellent job of directing this film with a loose fun-filled feel while keeping the story logical and moving.

Overall: This film was a great follow-up to the original.

Gemini Man

First Hit: Entertaining story, but it was the special effects of a young Henry Brogan (a young Will Smith) that was the star.

Ang Lee spent time and money using CGI to make Henry (Will Smith) have a Junior, and it worked.

Brogan is the most perfect and lethal sniper the US Government has ever had. To prove the point, we see him in the first scenes preparing to kill a man moving on a train traveling at 248 kilometers per hour (154 mph) while lying on a hillside some 200 meters (~650 ft) away from the tracks. He nails it.

But Brogan is done with killing after he’s shot more than seventy people. He’s tired, 51-years-old and all the deaths are eating away at him. At one point, he says, “I can’t even look at myself in the mirror.”

However, the powers that be, including CIA director Janet Lassiter (Linda Emond), want Brogan dead, and the funny thing is that the reason for this is poorly explained and developed in this story. This was the weakest part of the plot, but if you buy their explanation, it works well enough to enjoy the rest of the film.

Arriving back home after the initial assassination scene, ready to enter retirement, he heads to the harbor where he has a boat. Going to pay for gas, he finds a new person named Danny Zakarweski (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) in the dock shed. She gives him a story that the previous guy retired and that she’s studying marine biology at the nearby University of Georgia.

Taking his boat to meet with a secret contact, he finds a directional bug under the dashboard. Arriving back at the dock, he storms into the shed where Danny is seated and accuses her of being an agent operative for the government. She denies and denies his allegations. Apologizing he asks her out to eat as a way to make up for his rudeness and accusations. When he meets her for dinner, she shows her his research proving she’s an agent.

This scene gives the audience supporting information that Brogan is smart and knows what he’s doing, not only with a rifle, but he’s made it this far because he’s smart. Secondly, being found out implicates Danny in a larger scheme, and now she must support Brogan because she becomes an assassination target as well.

He awakes when assassins come to his home. He takes care of them as only an assassin would and rushes to Danny’s house to tell her she’s surly a target for assassination now and to go with him.

This is the setup. Lassiter is under threat by Clay Verris (Clive Owen), who owns a gun for hire company called Gemini. Verris is holding information that will ruin Lassiter’s career. If Lassiter cannot finish the job by getting rid of Brogan, his team will. Her ego won’t let him take over yet. She wants to prove she can finish the job.

After multiple failures by Lassiter’s team, Verris uses his squad of assassins, including a 23-year-old-clone version of Brogan, to kill Brogan, Zakarweski, and Brogan’s close pilot friend Baron (Benedict Wong).

The rest of the film is about the battle between the clone and Brogan, along with understanding why a clone of Brogan was created.

The action was excellent, although at times it seemed as if the fight scenes were too long. The realism of the younger clone put together by the CGI team was terrific. I loved having Danny as part of the plot because her rationality and the way she added to the story grounded the film.

Smith was strong as Brogan, the supreme assassin and weapon of the United States. He outwardly carried enough of the internal pain of his upbringing to make his character seem real and whole. Winstead was excellent as the agent sent to track Brogan and ends up partnering with him as he gets to the root of the issue at hand. Owen is outstanding and always makes a great evil foil. His voice and attitude are perfect as the antagonist. Emond was good as the CIA director trying to clean up the mess she’s created by losing so many men to Brogan’s skills. Wong was the perfect long-time associate to Brogan. They had great chemistry together. David Benioff and Billy Ray wrote an entertaining screenplay. Lee knows how to create action, and he does here as well. I think they might have gotten more impact by shortened the fighting scenes as they felt long. He didn’t settle for less with the CGI of the Will Smith (Brogan) clone. It was amazingly done it seemed like Brogan was fighting a real person.

Overall: Entertaining enough and at the end with Brogan is telling his clone about his prowess it felt typical good time Will Smith.

Angel Has Fallen

First Hit: Highly implausible, slightly boring at times, but there were a couple of touching scenes.

The film begins with Mike Banning (Gerard Butler) moving through rooms in a building shooting and being shot at. It looks and feels real. Then he gets captured, and we discover it is a training exercise at Wade Jennings’ (Danny Huston) new combat training facility.

Wade and Mike talk, and we learn that they are old combat friends. Their lives’ have diverged with Wade setting up this large facility hoping to obtain government contracts to train people and participate in wars for the USA. Mike is a Secret Service Agent, married, with a young daughter, and in line to become a Director.

Mike is shown taking pills to alleviate headaches and other body pains, a result from his past work. As a long-standing Secret Service Agent, he works closely with President Trumbull (Morgan Freeman), and during a fishing excursion, the President and all the Secret Service Agents are attacked by a fleet of tiny drones.

The drones kill everyone except Mike and The President because they dive into the water. The audience knows who sent the drones, and it takes very little time for the audience to figure out who is behind the perpetrator’s scheme.

The film attempts to make this story interesting by having the FBI determine that Mike set up the presidential assassination, so they are after him. Having been rescued with the President after the attempt, they lock him up, but of course he escapes their custody. However, relying on this worn storyline, and knowing this isn’t true, there is no suspense in this film, and it now must rely solely on the action being good enough to keep the audience engaged.

For me, it didn’t. It was too predictable, not very inventive, and the film felt like it was trying to be good, but it didn’t flow smoothly or interestingly.

The best parts were when Mike found and engaged with his long-lost father, Clay (Nick Nolte). Clay is a very crusty Vietnam veteran living entirely off the grid deep in a forest area of Virginia. When Wade’s agents, who are looking to kill Mike, come to assassinate them on Clay’s land, Clay’s skills as a mercenary are a hoot to watch in action.

Teaming up, Clay and Mike head out from Clay’s cabin and try to find out who’s behind the assassination attempt and to save The President because someone clearly wants him dead.

When Clay shows up at Mike’s home and surprises his wife Leah (Piper Perabo), the scene is both touching and funny.

Everyone knows how the film ends, and although The President spends most of the time in a coma, his last two scenes, one with Mike and one with his Vice President Kirby (Tim Blake Nelson) make up for some of the film’s failings.

Butler was satisfactory in this role as Banning. Given the prognosis from doctors about his physical condition, I sincerely doubt that he would have been able to live through the action he was involved in. But that is movie life, they set up the impossible, but he succeeds. Nolte was a hoot. The Butler remark that he could be mistaken for the Unabomber was perfect. Nolte does a superlative crusty mean. Perabo had a small role, but her sincerity and nature were terrific. The film might be better served if she were more integral to the story. Freeman was his calm intelligent self and always makes a good president, or God. Huston was excellent as the “lion” who wanted to live a life of a lion and fight to the end. Nelson as VP was too easy to see through, from the get-go. Robert Mark Kamen and Matt Cook wrote the screenplay. The issue with it is that it used worn-out ideas in an old concept. There was nothing refreshingly new here except using small drones, in a swarm, to make an assassination attempt. Ric Roman Waugh has a mediocre script to work with, but many scenes seemed to take too long and had little value.

Overall: Just wasn’t exciting enough to keep me engaged.

The Kitchen

First Hit: At the beginning, this film had promise, but this promise fell away to mediocrity in the end.

The idea of three housewives taking over their husband’s gang-related activities because the husbands were jailed had intrigue and promise.

Kathy Brennan (Melissa McCarthy) is married with two children. Her husband, Jimmy (Brian d’Arcy James) is part of the local Hell’s Kitchen crime group that fleeces businesses for protection. He’s probably the least aggressive of the three men.

Ruby O’Carroll (Tiffany Haddish) is married to Kevin (James Badge Dale) who is currently the leader of this local crime group. His mother Helen (Margo Martindale) provides her son with direction about the band of thieves he runs. Her husband started the group, and therefore, she still holds some power over the neighborhood.

Claire Walsh (Elizabeth Moss) is married to Rob (Jeremy Bobb) who is a brutish bully of a man, and he regularly beats Claire and is a primary thug in this Hell’s Kitchen enforcement group.

The three men get caught by the FBI while robbing a local business and are sent away. The new temporary leader of the enforcement group said they will continue to financially provide for the wives while their husbands are doing time. However, the stipend is not enough. So the girls get together and decide they can become an enforcement group, thereby overriding their husbands' protection club.

Upon hearing that Rob, Claire’s husband, is in jail, Gabriel O’Malley (Domhnall Gleeson) comes back to the neighborhood and announces his return by shooting and killing a man who is attempting to rape Claire.

Teaching the three women how to efficiently cut up and get rid of the body, he becomes their primary enforcer. However, Claire wanting to never be bullied again, learns to kill and is exceptionally competent at this and cutting up bodies - she's a natural.

As the three women build their protection business, the old group comes after them. But are stymied because as the women take over another neighborhood, the local mafia head Alfonso Coretti (Bill Camp) calls for a meeting, and a deal is created between his group and the girls. Together they neutralize the original Hell’s Kitchen group and gain support by providing protection and labor jobs for the community.

There’s a side story that is hinted at and finally brought to life that Ruby is having an affair with one of the FBI investigators Gary Silvers (Common). This, to me, creates an unnecessary distraction and side story and is not required to advance, what could have been, a good story.

Ruby slowly tries to take over the group that Melissa, Ruby, and Claire started together, and the writer used this FBI link as a significant part of the reason for the takeover by Ruby.

When the women’s husbands get out of jail early, there is trouble as expected, and the conflict doesn’t end well for the husbands.

This story is about women taking charge and with Ruby’s link to a male FBI agent seemingly having some influence, took away the power and guts of this story.

Additionally, I thought the movie was too long by taking too much time to prove points. Also, I didn’t believe the FBI piece of the story needed to be even part of the film. There easily other ways to create motivation for Ruby.

Another part of the film which didn’t quite work was that the director, Andrea Berloff, didn’t ensure each scene was correctly set in the 1970s. For comparison to this sort of attention to detail watch Quentin Tarantino’s latest film and this one – the aspect isn’t there in this film.

McCarthy is strong as the Irish woman who, loves her children, works at creating a good home life, but when push comes to shove, she is tired of playing second fiddle. Haddish is equally strong in this role; however, the whole FBI relationship back story just wasn’t needed. There were other ways she could claim her race, sex, and power. Moss was outstanding as the pushed around wife who wasn’t going to take it any longer. Having been a punching bag for her husband, she commits to protecting herself and does this in spades. But it was her eyes and facial expressions that sold both sides of her really well. Camp was great as the honorable mafia head that kept his integrity in tack by honoring his agreements. Gleeson was excellent as the guy who finally got to have a relationship with Claire that he always wanted. Martindale was instrumental as the once-powerful wife and mother to her family’s mob protection group. She gets her comeuppance. Berloff wrote and directed this film, and as I’ve previously stated, the story lost its effectiveness by adding the unnecessary Ruby and Gary Silvers relationship. The film also ran out of steam and probably needed pruning.

Overall: This film had potential, showed it at times, but ultimately failed to deliver.