Tag: Action movie

Lift (2024) Review

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Quick synopsis: A group of thieves plan to steal $500million a shit load of gold from a dickhead.

Palestine, Ukraine, economic turmoil, in these trying and confusing times it can be nice to have something to ground yourself, something that you can hold onto that you know is real. So thank Netflix for bringing us Lift and providing us with an undeniable truth; some films are utter shit.

F. Gary Gray has a weird history as a director. Sometimes he brings us Friday or Straight Outta Compton, and sometimes he brings us Men In Black: International. Lift belongs more in the second camp. It’s so by the numbers it’s basically a children’s colouring book. When you watch it unfold you’re not surprised or entertained by anything. There are moments where you can guess what’s going to happen, not just in terms of narrative, but also in terms of action scenes and dialogue. Everything has been done before, and done better.

Lift even copies the stupid things from action movies. They do that usual chase scene thing of using the “make go fast” lever/button when it’s dramatically convenient rather than when it would have been best to use it. It feels like the writer took a bunch of modern buzzwords like “NFT” and “hackers”, and then got AI to write the script. It has the “yes they’re thieves, but they’re the good guys” BS that’s prevalent in a lot of similar stories, but they’re not really good. Yeah, they’re stealing art from dickheads, but they’re doing it entirely for selfish reasons. Also, I’m calling BS on the “we’re the best thieves in the world” claim as the police know every single member of the crew. Not just names, but also their roles within the organisation, their addresses, and their contact details.

I’m also not entirely sure WHY it had to be this group of misfits who helped get the MacGuffin back. The movie states “We legally can’t get the gold because the transaction itself is legal”. But Interpol plans on taking the gold once it’s been retrieved. By doing that, they wouldn’t be able to do anything with it EXCEPT return the gold to the first person, who will then just make the deal again.

I don’t know enough about physics to call out the flight scenes as unrealistic, but even I know enough to doubt the scene where one of the planes flies upside down steadily for an extended period of time. I’m guessing there are more instances which will cause people’s heads to explode, but that was the most obvious. I do know enough to know that planes flying over the English Channel don’t tend to need to be wary of mountains. There’s not really an extended mountain range in Folkestone or Margate.

The worst thing for me about those errors is how unnecessary they are. Just don’t mention the mountains, say “high winds”. Make up a different reason for the crew being needed (maybe they used to work for the Big Bad so have inside information etc). Use a heist method which doesn’t involve flying a jet upside down. All of those are easy fixes for unnecessary problems. The fact that these problems are all over the film like Bill Cosby on an unconscious woman raises concerns. Concerns that the scriptwriter either didn’t realise they were problems, didn’t care, or was told to put these problems in by the studio. Neither of these scenarios is good. It just adds up to the feeling that nobody involved in this plane crash of a movie gave a shit about making it the best movie they could. Nobody went in with the intention of bringing 100%, they just did what they were paid to do, and then left. Nobody cared, and that’s evident throughout.

A plane heist is a unique idea, and one that could be interesting to watch unfold. As it is, it’s hard to recommend something as lazy as this. If nobody involved is going to care about a film, then why should the audience? Billy Magnussen is dope as fuck though.

Argylle (2024) Review

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Quick Synopsis: Reclusive writer Elly Conway finds herself in the middle of danger when it turns out her spy novels have started coming true.

Mystery and riddles are always good ways to sell a film. You provide a question, and people will want to answer it. You provide intrigue, and people will want to delve further into it. On the other hand, it can also kill a movie. Jennifers’ Body was marketed to appeal to the type of people the film wasn’t meant for and put off those who would have liked it. Argylle is the latest example of a film completely devalued by its marketing campaign. Firstly, it was built around “Who is Agent Argylle?”. The issue is, the type of people who would be intrigued by that are the kind of people who would use Google (well, duckduckgo as Google is pretty much useless at this point) and social media to work it out. If they did, then they’d have seen that the question was answered in the initial press release for the film back in 2021. The other issue I had with it was the line “From the twisted mind of Matthew Vaughn”, it’s a 12A. That pretty much guarantees you’re not going to get the violence that made him famous. So people go into this knowing that they’re going to get a lesser version of what could possibly be made.

There are definitely a few moments where the rating harms the experience. Some of the fight scenes sag when they should soar, the action not being creative enough to make up for the lack of blood. Intense fight scenes are normally the highlight of a Vaughn movie, but with Argylle they’re arguably the worst. There’s a smoke-filled scene near the end which is laughably bad. Nothing about that particular scene works except for possibly the colours. The choreography is poor, everything looks CGI, and the music choice is the wrong one. Note to directors; if you’re looking for an iconic piece of music to score an action scene, a Leona Lewis cover of a Snow Patrol song is never the right choice.

I mentioned the CGI earlier, I have to reiterate that it’s terrible. If someone told me that none of the actors in the film actually met each other and it was all filmed adhering to social distancing regulations, I wouldn’t be surprised.

There are a few things to like about it though. Some of the music choices are fun. It’s a good ensemble cast, and there are some very funny lines. The moments where she’s struggling to write so Henry Cavill’s character keeps restarting the scene are also fun.

But for everything to like about it, there are three things to dislike. There’s a moment in the middle where there is potential for an incredibly tense “she could be killed at any point in this scene” section, instead it’s over far too quickly. That sums up Argylle, great potential, completely wasted. Ironically, completely wasted would be the ideal way to watch this.

The Beekeeper (2024) Review

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Quick Synopsis: After his friend Eloise kills herself in shame after being the victim of a phishing scam, Adam Clay goes on a roaring rampage of revenge.

If you like Jason Statham films, you’ll enjoy The Beekeeper. Actually, that’s incorrect, if you LOVE Jason Statham films, you’ll enjoy this. If you’re on the fence about him as a performer, this isn’t going to change your mind. It’s standard Statham-ware (Not Stathamwear of course, which is his fashionline). It’s actually got quite good reviews so far and I have to be honest; I don’t get it. I never really saw it get better than average. Nothing about it is memorable, not in a good way anyway. The action scenes really should be better. There are a few exceptions; the destruction of the call centre early on is deliciously cathartic, but those moments are few and far between. On the plus side, the action scenes are comprehensible, which is more than could be said for a lot of recent action films. Comprehensibility does not mean excitement though, I don’t find Humpty Dumpty exciting, even if I can understand it (it’s about breakfast, right?). As anyone who watched the first Suicide Squad movie can attest, as a director, Ayer knows how to create colourful shots. But he doesn’t know necessarily how to make them exciting. He just seems to think that adding purple neon makes a shot dynamic.

Similar accusations of laziness can be directed at the performances. It’s a weirdly talented cast; Minnie Driver, Phylicia Rashad, and Jeremy Irons. Performers like that should elevate the film and bring it up to a higher level. Instead, it feels like the film is dragging them down. For example, Statham does a weird not quite English/not quite American accent.

In their defence, the script doesn’t really give them much to work with. It’s hard to deliver a good performance when you have to give some of the worst dialogue ever committed to film. Some films improve when you think about them, this actually seems like it gets worse the more you think about it. Not in a “plot holes reveal themselves when you think about them” way, but for the events of this film to happen, certain things must have happened or will happen after the film ends. In this universe, “Beekeepers” is the name of an organisation of highly trained assassins who operate and kill with complete impunity from the law. I’m not quite sure how they’re funded, it possibly mentioned it but I stopped caring. But what makes it weird is the idea that their training library includes not only “How To Sneak Past Things” by “S.Tealth”, and “How To Fight” by “That Guy In The Pub Who Doesn’t Have Training But When He’s In The Zone You Totally Better Watch Out, Bro. fka. Keith”, but also “The Naked Apiarist; Elementry Mistakes In Beekeeping”. Statham’s character really commits to the bit, by actually keeping bees after he retires from the service. Weirdly enough, it’s only his beekeeping that alerts people to the organisation in the first place. If he stopped living the gimmick and started an alpaca farm, then the bad guys wouldn’t have had a clue how to identify him, so they wouldn’t have set so many highly trained killers on him.

I’d also like to see more of what happens after this film. It’s been revealed that the president’s son is behind a multinational operation that scams people’s life savings from them. and used that money to fund the election campaign. How would the world react to that? That’s the most interesting part of the story, and it’s not in the film itself.

In summary, an incredibly frustrating watch. If it was more in-depth and intelligent that would have allowed it to say something important about corruption and election funding. Although, in some ways, if it was trashier, that would improve it too. As it is, it’s stuck in this middle ground between shlock and serious, so just ends up shlerious, which isn’t a word. It does have one huge plus for it though; it genuinely is an incredibly effective way of teaching basic cyber security to those who aren’t that computer literate. Okay, all that lesson is is “don’t give your bank details to a stranger”, but you know, baby steps.

Do do do do do do

Red Notice (2021)

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Quick Synopsis: An interpol agent attempts to track down a jewel thief. In reality it’s much much more complicated than that.

Disposable. That is probably the best way to describe this. Don’t get me wrong, at no point while watching this will you be bored, you will be thoroughly entertained throughout, and if a sequel came out you will watch it. But will you NEED to see this film again? Probably not. It’s good at what it does, but you’ve already seen everything it does before, it brings nothing new to the table. Ryan Reynolds does his usual shtick, and gets partnered with a violent stronger person who he initially disagrees with and you wonder if they can trust each other before true friendship wins. Blah blah. I’ve seen it all before. It has the usual twist and turns and they are surprising, but again, they’re not new.

The film can’t even rely on the action scenes to carry it through. They’re too video-gamey. You know how back in the days of Tony Hawk’s games the levels used to be designed in a way to be skateable, so the fences and rails would all be placed in a way that was designed with the video game playability in mind first before realism, that’s how this feels. It’s like the world was designed in such a way for action set pieces, so there’s no sense of realism or weight to the scenes, which robs them of any tension. Although let’s face it, you’re not going to get much tension in a film starring Ryan Reynolds and The Rock anyway as you know that the studio is aiming for a franchise, so they’re going to keep both alive.

It has some good parts. It’s very funny. The story has more twists and turns than a roller coaster, and Gal Gadot is funnier than she’s ever been (outside of her Imagine video obviously).

It’s hard to feel too disappointed, but it’s also hard to feel too pleased. It’s hard to feel anything. It’s popcorn movie. Sometimes that’s all you need, sometimes that’s all you want. It’s going to be a success, but I don’t think it will be anybody’s favourite film.