Drama

Righteous Kill

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: Righteous Kill
  • IMDB: link

“This thing is a clusterfuck to end all clusterfucks.”

Turk (Robert De Niro) and Rooster (Al Pacino) are two warhorse detectives for the NYPD.  We learn early on that they’re good cops who take the job seriously, but aren’t above taking shortcuts for justice when the courts let them down.

Things get sticky for Turk, who presents the tale from a taped video through a serious of flashbacks, when a recent string of deaths begin to lead back to him.  His Lieutenant (Brian Dennehy) and the cops working the case (John Leguizamo, Donnie Wahlberg) believe they have a cop serial killer on their hands, with Turk being the most likely suspect.

The film centers on De Niro’s character, his job, and his unhealthy relationship with a crime scene investigator (Carla Gugino).  There are also subplots involving the cops trying to take down a local drug dealer (50 Cent) with the help of a lawyer (Trilby Glover), and a woman (Melissa Leo) whose daughter was brutally killed by her boyfriend.

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Son of Rambow

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: Son of Rambow
  • IMDB: link

““I am the son of Rambo!””

Son of Rambow is a nice little independent film, quirky and with a good heart.  It’s main problem is it’s not sure just who its audience is.  My main problem is I’m not sure either.  Still, indie film fans should check out the local art houses to see if it’s playing in a theater near you.

The film is built around the meeting and unlikely friendship between the school’s trouble child Lee Carter (Will Poulter) and outsider Will Proudfoot (Bill Milner), a member of the strict religous sect, the Plymouth Brethren.

Although an unlikely pair, the two are brought together by the Lee Carter’s bootleg tape of First Blood which inspires the two to create an entry in a local filmmaking contest for Screen Test featuring the adventures of the son of the famous Rambo.

The story, and the friendship of the pair, is complicated by their vastly different lives and the arrival of a instantly popular foreign exchange student (Jules Sitruk) who brings his own ideas, and his large following, onto the project.

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Mamet + MMA = Good Times

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: Redbelt
  • IMDB: link

redbelt-poster

Okay, I love David Mamet, but at first glance the mixture of Mamet and mixed martial arts sounds like a formula for disaster.  With memories of many horrific MMA themed films running through my head (including Hollywood’s latest blunder) I sat down to see what one of the best writers working today had to say on the subject.  I walked out a very happy man.

Our story centers around Mike Terry (Chiwetel Ejiofor), a guru and owner of a martial arts dojo struggling to get by.

A series of events disrupt Mike’s world and force him to make hard choices about his core beliefs about martial arts, training, and his disdain for competing in staged MMA tournaments.

This is a David Mamet script and, as you would expect, things don’t go from A to B here, and if they do it’s never in a straight line.  There are surprises, twists, and an elaborate con which leaves our hero out of options and at odds with the world and himself.

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Smart People Can Be Dumb Too

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: Smart People
  • IMDB: link

“You told me my paper was sophomoric.  I was a freshman.”
“That’s not what sophomoric means.”

smart-people-poster

The basic premise of the film is that smart people can be dumb too.  As premises go, it’s not exactly insightful.

Lawrence Wetherhold (Dennis Quaid) is a grumpy professor of English literature who finds himself in need of assistance after an accident involving his car, the campus impound lot, and a fence.  His children are both as miserable as he is (although the film is less sure why) including his Young Republican daughter Vanessa (Ellen Page) and his son (Ashton Holmes) who wants to be a poet.  Enter Lawrence’s brother, by adoption, Chuck (Thomas Hayden Church) the free spirit and a former student, now doctor (Sarah Jessica Parker), to further stir the pot.

I know these characters; you know these characters.  We’ve seen them in countless films.  We’ve got the grump who learns to care.  The uptight kid.  The misunderstood kid.  The smart and attractive woman entering their screwed-up world.  And the dummy with more simple wisdom then all of them combined.

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Stop-Loss

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: Stop-Loss
  • IMDB: link

stop-loss-poster

Stop-loss – the involuntary extension of a service member’s enlistment contract in order to retain them beyond the normal end of service.  The film tells us more than 650,000 troops have been sent to Iraq and roughly one-eighth of that number have been stop-lossed, or forced to return to duty past the time of their enlistment.

We begin in Iraq with the unit under the command of Sgt. Brandon King (Ryan Phillippe) which includes his boyhood best friend Steve (Channing Tatum) and the somewhat unstable Tommy (Joseph Gordon-Levitt).

Just before shipping home the unit is caught in an ambush which takes the lives of their friends.  On returning home the threesome are regarded as heroes, but Tommy and and Steve struggle with the readjustment.  Brandon is just happy to be home and free of the army, that is until his C.O. (Timothy Olyphant) informs him he has been stop-lossed and will be returning to Iraq for another tour.

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