Unhinged

2020 Solstice Studios

Rated: R

Length: 1 hr 30min

Action ~ Thriller

Starring: Russell Crowe, Caren Pistorius, Gabriel Bateman, Jimmi Simpson, and Austin P. McKenzie.

“Here’s your courtesy tap!”

Russell Crowe stars as Tom Cooper, a guy who is having a really bad day. He has just left his ex-wife’s house where he has broken in, killed his ex and her boyfriend, and set the house on fire. He is constantly chewing Hydrocodone to kill pain and driving his pick-up truck around contemplating his next move. While sitting at a red light that has turned green, and not moving initially, he is honked at by…….

Rachel Flynn (Caren Pistorius) a single mother and hair stylist. She woke up late and is rushing to get her son to school so she can make her first appointment of the day. But before she can get her son to school her appointment calls and promptly fires her for consistently being late. Extremely frustrated and still rushing to get her son to school she encounters Tom Cooper in his pick up truck who just sits through the green light. She snaps in a fit of road rage and lays on the horn. As the light turns red she whips around Tom Cooper’s truck and runs the red light.

Tom catches up to her and apologizes and demands that she apologize too. She refuses and tells Tom she has nothing to apologize for. Tom insists that she should have given him a “Courtesy Tap” instead of laying on the horn like she did and should apologize so they can “re-set”. She defiantly refuses and Tom completely snaps telling her he’s going to teach her “what a bad day” is. She takes off leaving Tom behind but not for long. What follows is a cat and mouse game full of terror and completely unhinged human aggression of the worst kind.

Russell Crowe is absolutely terrifying as the unhinged Tom Cooper. Caren Pistorius delivers a completely believable performance as the terrified single mother trying desperately to escape from the unhinged mad man full of road rage. It leaves you on the edge of your seat as it twists and turns, and gets deeper and darker. There are absolutely no limits to Tom Cooper’s rage as he stalks Rachel and everyone she knows vowing unbelievable vengeance.

We’ve all experienced road rage and this is everyone’s worst nightmare come to life. I’ve seen it three times and still like it. Remember this….it starts with what should have been a courtesy tap, and ends with a courtesy tap. Jus’ sayin’…………..

Highly Recommended!

Two Thumbs Up!

Bad Boys: Ride Or Die

2024 Sony pictures

Rated: R

Length: 1 hr 55min

Action ~ Comedy

Directed by: Adil & Bilall

Starring: Will Smith, Martin Lawrence, Joe Pantoliano, Vanessa Hudgens, Alexander Ludwig, Paola Núñez, Jacob Scipio, John Salley, and DJ Khaled.

“I don’t know how high up this shit goes, but don’t trust anybody.”

Will Smith and Martin Lawrence return in the fourth installment of the Bad Boys franchise which is comprised of:

BAD BOYS 1995
BAD BOYS II 2003
BAD BOYS FOR LIFE 2020
BAD BOYS: RIDE OR DIE 2024

Mike Lowrey (Will Smith) and Marcus Burnett (Martin Lawrence) are Miami Police Detectives and longtime partners. In this episode of the franchise Mike is marrying his therapist of four years and Marcus suffers a heart attack during the wedding reception. During his out of body experience he encounters his dead ex police Captain boss Captain Howard. Captain Howard tells Mike it’s not his time and Mike comes to back in the hospital where Mike is holding vigil over him.

They discover through the news that their ex boss Captain Howard is being accused of being corrupt and tied with the drug cartels. Mike and Marcus refuse to believe the news and set out to uncover the truth and prove his innocence. What follows is a hilarious action-packed thrill ride through the underworld of Miami with tons of action and shootout scenes. I mean SHOOTOUT scenes! In some scenes there is so much firepower going on you can’t even tell who is shooting at who.

I don’t really remember Bad Boys or Bad Boys II. It seems familiar to me but that was a long time ago and I don’t really recall the specific stories. I haven’t seen bad Boys For Life. So I went into this judging it on it’s own merits. I did go into it with a slightly jaded view of Will Smith. After the infamous slap heard around the world, I made it a point to silently boycott him and not watch anything he was in. And it took me awhile as I watched to not judge him in that light.

From the beginning it felt like another nostalgic revamp of a movie that was popular decades ago. Like……Beverly Hills Cop comes to mind. It just felt rehashed and like it was trying to capitalize on the past because apparently good fresh ideas are in short supply. You know, otherwise why did we wait decades to put out a sequel. Eddie Murphy was too busy for thirty years? The plot started to remind me of Spenser Confidential, Mark Wahlberg and his partners set out to prove their Police Captain’s innocence after he is accused of being in cohorts with the drug cartels after his death. It’s a familiar storyline.

But the comedic banter started to grow on me pretty quick. And the pace of the story and the action doesn’t leave you with much time to think. Buckle up and pay attention. In the end I liked Will Smith in this, and Martin Lawrence is hilarious. I liked Armando (Jacob Scipio) the escaped convict who turns into a good guy hero at the end. The rest of the actors were all familiar faces and I liked them in their roles. The action is top notch in this movie. Non stop car chases, fires, explosions and shootouts.

So that’s a yes for me, BAD BOYS:LIVE OR DIE stands on it’s own merits, Will Smith slapped Chris Rock but…eh, that’s between them…..unless he does something stupid again…..Alright…let it go. I do love I ROBOT.

CHITTY CHITTY BANG BANG!

Two Thumbs Up

Army Of The Dead

2021 Netflix

Rated: R

Length: 2 hr 28min

Action ~ Crime ~ Horror ~ Thriller

Directed by: Zack Snyder

Starring: Dave Bautista, Ella Purnell, Omari Hardwick, Ana de la Reguera, Theo Rossi, Matthias Schweighöfer, Nora Arnezeder, Hiroyuki Sanada, Tig Notaro, Raúl Castillo, Huma Qureshi, and Garret Dillahunt.

“There’s two hundred million dollars sitting in a vault in the basement of my Casino in the quarantine zone of Las Vegas. Assemble a team and extract it and 50 million of it is yours. What do you say?”

A zombie outbreak in Las Vegas, Nevada has prompted the US Military to surround the City with three layers of shipping containers, effectively containing (Pun Intended) the Zombie outbreak from temporarily spreading. Bly Tanaka (Hiroyuki Sanada) owns a casino on The Strip inside the containment (Again…Pun intended) zone and is asking Scott Ward (Dave Bautista) to assemble a team of mercenaries to extract the money in exchange for 50 million of it. They just have to kill their way through all the zombies in the quarantine zone, make their way to the casino, crack the Götterdämmerung safe, extract the money, revive and repair the dilapidated helicopter on the roof of the casino, and fly away to safety before the military nukes the quarantine zone in 96 hours. Let’s get cracking(Pun Intended).

Scott agrees and assembles a team to execute the mission. The last man they recruit for the team is none other than our good friend Sebastian (Matthias Schweighöfer) from ARMY OF THIEVES. The scene where Scott finds him in the locksmith shop is the very last scene in ARMY OF THIEVES. And Sebastian is ecstatic about getting a chance to crack the Götterdämmerung safe, after having cracked the Rheingold, The Valkyrie and The Siegfried safes in the other movie. So Scott and his team gather and enter the Zombie zone of Los Angeles to extract two million dollars in what looks like a horrific suicide mission. Scott must also contend with his daughter who has forced herself onto the mission against his wishes.

It is everything you would expect from a zombie movie based in Las Vegas. There are lots of Zombies…..Elvis impersonators, waitresses, circus performers, dancers, police officers….even Siegfried and Roy’s Tiger has become a zombie tiger. Anyone and anything in the quarantine zone is now a zombie. There is lots of blood and gore as they eat the flesh of the living and even more as the team slaughters there way through the Las Vegas Strip. It is very realistically shot, you feel like you are in Las Vegas with them as they fight off the horde. There is intrigue, horror, double crossing and the very real fear of getting eaten alive and escaping before a nuclear bomb incinerates the crew.

Matthias reprising his role as Sebastian is just as good and hilarious as in ARMY OF THIEVES. Dave Buatista is good as Scott Ward and the rest of the crew did a good job. I liked Omari Hardwick’s role and the scene in the end with him I thought was really good. Theo Rossi is really despicable as the sexist Burt Cummings. This was the sequel to Army of Thieves even though this movie came out six months before it. It was supposed to be the beginning of a franchise, possibly a trilogy or more, but at the time of this writing Netflix has apparently pulled the plug on any more movies to follow, reportedly due to the disappointing performance of Zack Snyder’s REBEL MOON movies. ARMY OF THE DEAD was a successor to Zack Snyder’s 2004 film Dawn of the Dead, which was a remake of George Romero’s Dawn of the Dead (filmed in Pittsburgh and released in 1978).

I thought that ARMY of THIEVES was the better movie. This one was good but just not as good. A long one too, coming in at 2 and a half hours. If you like Zombie movies it’s a good one, well filmed and directed. And if you’re going to watch this one I suggest watching ARMY of THIEVES first, it will give you a better background for this movie. Unless you just want to watch a Zombie movie….but there are zombies in the first one, just not as many.

So that’s a, “Yeah, it was alright. But I wouldn’t watch it again.”, for me…..

No thumbs up, just a wave of the hand as in…So~So

Army Of Thieves

2021 Netflix

Rated: TV-MA

Length: 2 hr 7min

Action ~ Comedy ~ Crime ~ Thriller

Directed by: Matthias Schweighöfer

Starring: Matthias Schweighöfer, Nathalie Emmanuel, Ruby O. Fee, Stuart Martin, Guz Khan, and Jonathan Cohen.

“Want to put your skills to the test? The house at the end of Leipziger Str. Berlin. 8pm. Back door. Password: Götterdämmerung.”

Matthias Schweighöfer stars as Sebastian Schlencht-Wöhnert, a would be safe-cracker with an extensive knowledge of Hans Wagner’s work, currently working as a bank teller in Potsdam, Germany. Hans Wagner was a legendary German locksmith who, in his twilight years, crafted four of the world’s most famous safes based on the four operas of Richard Wagner’s The Ring Cycle, with each safe named after one of the operas: The Rheingold, The Valkyrie, The Siegfried, and The Götterdämmerung. After posting a safe-cracking video on Youtube, he receives a comment on his video asking him to go to an address in Berlin and test his safe-cracking skills. He does and is entered into an underground safe cracking competition where he emerges as the winner. The next day on his way to work, as he makes his usual stop at the corner coffee shop, he is approached by……

Gwendoline Starr (Nathalie Emmanuel) who wants to recruit his safe-cracking talents and extensive knowledge of Wagner’s infamous four safes. The fourth safe’s whereabouts remain a mystery but she and her team have located the first three and plan to rob them all before they are decommissioned in four days with his help. The temptation of being the guy who crack’s Wagner’s safes is too much for Sebastian and he agrees to join “The Crew” consisting of Gwendoline, Korina Dominguez (Ruby O. Fee), Rolph (Guz Khan), and Brad Cage (Stuart Martin). They head to Paris France where the first safe “Rheingold” is the least guarded and the easiest of the jobs.

Unbeknownst to them, they are being hunted by The Interpol Agent Delacroix (Jonathan Cohen) who has been hunting the crew ever since they got away after shooting him three years ago. He is aware of the three safes and surmises that they may be after them and is close on their tail. The ensuing chase, as they hunt the three safes and avoid Delacroix, is a comical thriller full of action, deceit and intrigue against the backdrop of a growing Zombie Apocalypse in The United States. Matthias Schweighöfer stars and directed this movie which is a prequel to ARMY OF THE DEAD, both written by Zack Snyder. Matthias also starred in ARMY OF THE DEAD. They were both written as part of a trilogy with further movies in planning.

ARMY OF THIEVES starts out like a German fairy tale as Sebastian explains the history of Wagner and the four safes. I really like Matthias as the nerdy, straight-laced but very likeable Sebastian. Nathalie Emmanuel is awesome as Gwendoline, the very smart runaway thief with kick-ass street skills. I really like the nerdy but cool swagger of Ruby O. Fee as Korina, the tech wiz kid who writes and records her own music. Guz Khan’s very unique, very British, sandwich eating, getaway driver extraordinaire character is really cool. And Stuart Martin as the very conceited, arrogant and self-centered Brad Cage is well…likeable and hateable.

I love this movie. I love the story and the characters, and the actors that played them. I really think Matthias did an excellent job in directing and acting in this safe-cracking thriller. I had watched this earlier in the year not knowing about THE ARMY OF THE DEAD movie, and after watching that and finding out ARMY OF THIEVES was a prequel I had to watch it again. I have a better appreciation of ARMY OF THIEVES, especially how the story carries over into the ARMY OF THE DEAD. I would suggest that if you were to watch either of them I would watch this one first. That is the timeline order of the story and it leads to better understanding of ARMY OF THE DEAD.

So that’s a yes for me.

Two Thumbs Up!

Day Shift

2022 Netflix

Rated: R

Length: 1 hr 53min

Action ~ Comedy ~ Horror ~ Thriller

Directed by: J. J. Perry

Starring: Jamie Foxx, Dave Franco, Snoop Dogg, Natasha Liu Bordizzo, Meagan Good, Karla Souza, Steve Howey, and Scott Adkins.

“That’s what I love about L.A……all the damn vampires.”

Jamie Foxx stars as Bud Jablonski, a former paratrooper now earning a living cleaning pools in Los Angeles. He is divorced and has a young daughter who lives with his ex-wife Jocelyn (Meagan Good). Bud is struggling to make ends meet and support his ex and his daughter. Jocelyn has just informed him that unless he comes up with the ten thousand dollars she needs in the next week, she is selling the house and moving to Florida with his daughter. Bud, not happy with the news, tells her that he will do whatever he needs to do in the next week to make that happen.

Bud is also a Vampire Hunter, using the pool cleaning job as a cover for his real source of income, hunting and killing vampires. He extracts the fangs from his victims and exchanges them for cold hard cash. Unfortunately, since he’s been kicked out of The Vampire Hunters Union, he has to rely on a black market pawn shop owner to sell the fangs to. There is a lot less money to be had compared to what he used to get being in the union and getting union prices. Union wages for the fangs are the only way he can come up with the ten thousand in a week he needs to keep his ex from taking away his daughter.

He reaches out to his mentor Big John Elliot (Snoop Dogg), his former colleague in the military and fellow Vampire Hunter, to convince him to help get him back in the Vampire Hunters Union. Big John agrees to put in a good word for him under the condition he swears he will play by the rules and not jeopardize being in the Union. Bud agrees and Big John meets him in front of The Chinese Laundry that is a front for the union. Reluctantly, the union boss allows Bud back on a trial basis. But he must be accompanied by Union Steward Seth (Dave Franco), who will accompany him at all times to make sure he doesn’t break protocol.

Bud and Seth set out to hunt not realizing that Bud has killed the daughter of the very influential vampire Aubrey San Fernando (Karla Souza) and she is hunting him down. As Bud is stalking vampires, Aubrey is stalking Bud, his family and anyone associated with Bud. The ensuing hunts are a thrilling journey through Los Angeles and the vampire underworld, where we learn many things about the modern vampire. Such as the new suncream that allows them to exist in the daylight. And that there is a hierarchy in the vampire world with different castes and classes of vampires.

It is a funny, horrifying, action packed thriller with a different take on the classic Vampire horror movie. Jamie Foxx does a great job as Bud. Snoop Dogg is as big a legend on screen as Big John as he is off screen as Snoop Dogg. Gotta love him. Dave Franco is great as the nerdy office Union guy forced into the killing field with Bud. I thought he reminded me of someone and it turns out he is James Franco’s brother. I am not familiar with Dave’s work but I liked him in this. Karla Souza is wickedly good as the very powerful vampire with a grudge.

There is talk of a sequel with the title Night Shift. Jamie Foxx is interested in reprising his role as Bud and the director is reportedly waiting on the writer to be finished with another project so they can begin the process of writing the script. I’m up for that, let’s go!

That’s a yes for me Dogg (Pun Intended)!

Two Thumbs Up!