the Fate of the Furious

First Hit:  With improbable situations, circumstances and action, it was funny enough to make me stay till the end. There is very little about this film that is remotely believable. I won’t mention them here but when you watch it, you’ll know what I mean.

Somehow in the saga of these Furious films, Dom (Vin Diesel) grew close to someone which created a situation where the result has him go against his "family." Anyone who’s seen these series of films, Dom makes “family” the main thing that no one goes against. So, for Dom to go against his family, the situation must be a big deal.

Introducing him to this situation is Cipher (Charlize Theron) whose role is to be the smartest person on the planet, wants to control the world by living on a plane using high tech tools and have the ability to take control of any computer on the planet. By doing so she plans to use Dom to carry out some of her physical missions and she has just the motivation to make him turn away from family.

The government intelligence agency headed by Mr. Nobody (Kurt Russell) and his new underling Little Nobody (Scott Eastwood) want to find out why Dom stole a concussion device. To do this they pull the rest of the family together and add Hobbs (Dwayne Johnson) and Deckard (Jason Statham) to the mix and spare no expense in wrecking expensive cars, tanks, and guns to find Dom, and why he betrayed “family”.

One of the funniest themes through the film was why Tej (Chris “Ludicris” Bridges) was only ranked 11^th on the most wanted list. He throws a fit about this throughout the film.

With no expense held back on making a film that blows up a whole bunch of stuff, wrecking a fleet full of cars, has a submarine chasing cars, and kills a pile of people, F. Gary Gray took Chris Morgan’s script and made it fun.

Diesel was good. I’m not much of a fan of his character because it is always the same one no matter the film. Theron makes a very good bad girl. She pulled this off and was believable (or as believable as one could make this part) enough to not have me cringe. Russell is great. I loved his popping in and out of the film bringing lightheartedness and smarts. Eastwood is fun as the new agent learning the ropes. Johnson is, well, Johnson. His brutishness and size, especially when he’s walking through the prison in the orange jumpsuit, says it all. He can be intimidating. Statham, although not the size of either Diesel or Johnson, has a look and swagger that makes him an equal of the other two in perceived strength. Bridges is really fun and whether he’s unhappy at being 11^th or in the cold weather, he makes everyone smile. Michelle Rodriguez as Letty is carrying on the role she created in the earlier films. She does tough/soft well. Tyrese Gibson as Roman does a great job of being the guy who thinks things through for the team. Nathalie Emmanuel as Ramsey is a perfect complement to Gibson’s "Roman" as part of the team’s brain trust. Morgan’s script was haphazard, had holes in it, and didn’t tie together well but it was fun. Gray must have had fun directing this crew given the script he had.

Overall:  Do not expect this film to make much sense, but it is funny enough, and has enough fun chases to keep you in your seat.

Life

First Hit:  This film tried to be a horror thriller in the science fiction genre, but ended up being lifeless.

The film starts a little confusingly but with some interest. For some reason there wasn’t enough clear back fill as to how a space probe left Mars, heading for Earth and a space station had to catch it or…. Once I got past this unsolved puzzle, watching the team’s pilot Rory Adams (Ryan Reynolds) move a space arm to catch this thing in space was cool. However, any probe coming from Mars would be traveling much faster than it shows here, another puzzle to solve.

After bringing the soil samples into a sealed (not really because there were vents) bio-testing chamber, British biologist Hugh Derry (Arilyon Bakare) starts fiddling with the samples and finds a living one cell protoplasmic entity. Adjusting the mixture of oxygen and stuff, it grows. As Dr. Miranda North (Rebecca Ferguson), Quarantine Officer states; “…all muscle, all brain, and all eye.” It is named “Calvin” by some school children. I liked the reference in some ways because “Calvin and Hobbs” was one of my favorite comic strips and the character Calvin was a handful.

Hugh is like a child with this discovery and Rory states “there’s going to be a huge custody battle over this”, mostly because the space station has multi-national people working on board and it is the “International Space Station” (ISS).

To give some character to the team, Sho’s (Hiroyuki Sanada) wife gives birth while he watches it on a personal video device. Commander Katerina Golovkina (Olga Dihovichnaya) is Russian and is ultimately responsible for the safety of the crew. Dr. David Jordan (Jake Gyllenhaal) is the medical officer and has been in space longer than anyone 400+ days. He likes it there because being on the ISS it is a controllable environment for him.

So what happens? Calvin gets loose and attacks people because humans are filled with the type of liquid nutrients it needs to survive. As Hugh states at one point, it is just trying to survive. All havoc breaks loose, Earth loses communication contact with ISS and decides to send a Soyuz capsule up to push the ISS into deep space forever, killing everyone and everything on the ship. However, when this plan fails, the last two living humans make a decision to try to save Earth from Calvin.

Part of the problem, is that Calvin wasn’t interesting, I didn’t care about the characters, and it seemed like a fight in futility from the get go. Then there were the logistics issues that I pointed out above.

Reynolds had little screen time and maybe the film would have done better with his presence extended. Bakare was OK, but a bit too inquisitive in trying to make Calvin respond to stimuli, which wasn't scientifically stringent enough if this were real. Ferguson was bland and didn’t really add much to the film. Dihovichnaya was OK, but didn’t seem to be controlling her team much, which caused part of the problem. Gyllenhaal was good and one of the better parts of the film because you can tell he pours himself into each part. Sanada was OK and didn’t add much to the overall picture. Writers Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick were both probably aiming for an “Alien” type film but ended up alienating this audience – some actually walked out during my viewing. Daniel Espinosa had some great photography, and visual effects, but the weak script and story deflated the overall presentation.

Overall:  This film will not get reviewed well and just didn’t work

John Wick: Chapter 2

First Hit:  This movie had a very weak story, uninspired acting, and lots of shooting.

If you want to see someone shoot a lot of people, change a lot of clips in his guns, and act as if he doesn’t care if he’s in the film, watch Keanu Reeves as John Wick.

There were times in this film that I laughed out loud when it wasn’t supposed to be funny, it was just that stupid. I’m sure we’ll see a Chapter 3, because the ending scene has him running off with an hour time limit before the world of assassins are authorized to kill him.

In this film, he is goaded out of retirement because he is obligated to fulfill a marker held by Santino D’Antonio (Riccardo Scamarcio). Santino wants his sister Gianna (Claudia Gerini) killed so that he can take her “seat at the table”. What table this is we’re not given much information about but I guess must be important for Reeves to go ahead in fulfilling the marker.

Wick being an assassin has the skills for the job and this is mostly what we see in this film. Lots of killing. Wick runs through lots of tunnels, alley ways, streets, and buildings shooting nearly a hundred people in this 2-hour 2-minute escapade.

There are lots of other assassins in this film including: Ares (Ruby Rose), Cassian (Common), and Bowery King (Laurence Fishburne) to name a few. The person who keeps track of the assassins’ jobs and markers is Winston (Ian McShane) who runs the “International” hotel which is holy ground and no one kills anyone on holy ground.

Reeves was like a zombie walking through his scenes. Although he moves well, shoots well, and his ability to kick people in the legs so that he can make his assailants lose their balance was impressive, his scenes with dialogue seemed lifeless. Scamarcio was OK as the marker holder, however, he could not meet the image of a big time heavy. Common was probably the best of the lot. His clarity and intensity were strong. Fishburne was mediocre as a pigeon attending assassin controlling a part of NCY using street bums as his eyes and ears. McShane was probably the second best character in the film as the Manager of the International. Derek Kolstad wrote a very week script. The storyline was just filled with fluff between gun fights. Chad Stahelski did an OK job of directing the fight scenes but the story film was too long and had no real point, except to set up the next film where Wick will “kill them all.”

Overall:  Without a real strong point and with minimal acting, especially by Reeves, this film fails on most counts.

Gold

First Hit:  Hard to engage with a film when you don’t like the main character.

There is very little about Kenny Wells (Matthew McConaughey) that is likeable. He’s smarmy in the way he looks, how he acts, and his intentions. Granted the film lets the audience believe he might have changed in the ending scene, however, there’s enough to believe differently.

Supposedly this is based on a true story, however after reading about the real story; “loosely” is probably the best possible description. However, that isn’t the point of this review, therefore I will not spend time on the differences between the real story and this story.

In this film, Wells is drinking and smoking so much of the time I could almost smell the smoke and alcohol laden odor coming through the screen. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing; however, for the main character to be so unappealing made it hard to get into the film. I’m not sure why McConaughey had to gain so much weight and have such thin hair on top of his head, but these things didn’t help his unshaven, scraggly tooth looking character. It was almost as if he wanted to make himself as unappealing as possible.

The way he treated his longtime girlfriend Kay (Bryce Dallas Howard) was horrendous. She loved him and supported him through his destruction of his Dad (Craig T. Nelson) and grandfather’s company Washoe Mining. It gets so bad they work out of a bar.

Kenny gets the idea from a dream to hook up with Michael Acosta (Edgar Ramirez) and find gold in Indonesia. Unbeknown to Wells, Acosta has salted the drilling core findings and because Wells believes they’ve found gold, he revives Washoe Mining and sell millions of shares as they go public.

This film also involves the family of the Monarch in Indonesia. When the monarchy and other investors discover that this has been a hoax, everything falls apart.

The scenes of the jungle and drilling operation were well done. The boardroom scenes were, at times, powerful, and the use of the bar as Washoe’s office was very telling of the whole film and Wells’ personality. The one thing the film did do very well was show just how fleeting wealth can be.

McConaughey was OK as Wells. He had great handle on the maniac part of a gold prospector, but everything else felt very overdone and took away from the film instead of adding to it. Howard was strong as Wells longtime girlfriend. She was appropriately supportive and loving. The scene in the hotel after the company went public on the stock trading floor, was very well done. Ramirez was great as the geologist and Wells gold prospecting partner. His engagement and support, with a slight questionable edge was wonderful. Patrick Massett and John Zinman wrote a wonderful script. I loved some of the lines, however it was McConaughey and director Stephen Gaghan's misguidance for the main character that hurt this film. I liked the sequence of the scenes and many of the sets were very well done, but being put off by the main character who is in virtually every scene can and did hurt this film.

Overall:  I liked the story of greed, gold and how it played out, but without someone or something to care or think about, it felt lifeless.

Patriots Day

First Hit:  This was an interesting perspective of a very tragic event in Boston and America’s history.

This dramatization of a horrific event was both; interesting from a historical perspective and not very engaging from a character standpoint. The film took a very broad perspective of the people to be included as characters. It included the various law enforcement agencies including; the Boston Police Department, the FBI, Watertown Police Department, MIT Police Department and a couple of other US Government agencies. From a citizen perspective, there were both students and citizens from various neighborhoods.

The filmmakers made attempts to provide backstories, or history per se, of certain characters, however despite being helpful at a small level it was difficult to engage with anyone at an emotional level. For example; Police Officer Sergeant Tommy Saunders (Mark Wahlberg) was the lead character and we learn early on he’s got a history with the department and is on probation. Why? We never really find out but there are multiple references to alcohol and there are a couple scenes where he drinks when it might have been better if he didn’t.

But this isn’t the story, but it nagged at me that we didn’t have this history. The story is about how Boston and others captured the brothers, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and Tamerlan Tsarnaev (Alex Wolff and Themo Melikidze respectively), who become radicalized Muslim bombers and exploded two bombs at the finish line of the Boston Marathon.

The film tries to track a lot of people including: the Tsarnaev brothers, Tamerlan’s wife Katherine Russell (Melissa Benoist), Officer Saunders, bomb injured married couple Patrick Downes (Christopher O’Shea) and Jessica Kensky (Rachel Brosnahan), MIT Officer Sean Collier (Jake Picking), car jacked Dun Meng (Jimmy O. Yang), Boston Commissioner Ed Davis (John Goodman), Boston Mayor Thomas Menino (Vincent Curatola), FBI Special Agent Richard DesLauriers (Kevin Bacon), Watertown Police Sergeant Jeffery Pugliese (J. K. Simmons), Carol Saunders (Michelle Monaghan), Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick (Michael Beach), and a host of others. It begins the evening before the bombing and goes to when they were captured (Dzhokhar) and killed (Tamerlan). One thing that was interesting was that this film had one of the largest credited and uncredited casts for any film in recent memory.

The filmmakers used some archival footage as well as re-enacted scenes in following the brothers, law enforcement, and citizens over subsequent week as the brothers tried to escape, go to New York to place another bomb, and how they were captured through the use of technology, law enforcement officers, and the bravery of citizens.

Wahlberg was very good as the film’s key focal point. I wanted to know more of why he was being punished, but from a character point of view he was very strong. Wolff and Melikidze were both very solid as the brothers who brought this havoc to Boston. I think they did a great job of emoting the attitude as affected Muslim radicals. Bacon was wonderful as the FBI agent trying to get the bombers identified and captured quickly. O’Shea and Brosnahan were wonderful as the married couple that lost limbs, survived, and made it back to a subsequent race. Yang was really good as the young man whose car was hijacked by the brothers during their escape. Simmons was OK as the Watertown Sergeant. Goodman was strong as the Commissioner. Picking was wonderful as the caring officer that was shot by the brothers. Monaghan was engaging as Officer Saunders’ wife. Peter Berg, Matt Cook, and Joshua Zetumer wrote a very ambitious screenplay that attempted to cover numerous stories around this very tragic event. In this ambitious effort, it lost a little heart and focus. Peter Berg did his best to cover this expansive story.

Overall:  This is an amazing story to tell and it does honor the affected people.