This Is Decidedly Not It
Good God. If you’ve Never, Ever seen another movie, this movie might have a shot at impressing you. That’s about all the hope this dog of a film has got going for it because this thing is terrible. I grumble about films like ‘Revolutionary Road’ and ‘The Hurt Locker’ but this thing is a travesty.
What’s Good About It
Uuh… Not much. It has Don Cheadle and Wesley Snipes in it. Which already makes it a kind of a parody rather than anything tangibly held to ‘realism’. None of the cast ever look like they inhabit the world they’re portraying. Ethan Hawke was rehashing his ‘Training Day’ looks and Richard Gere was sort of re-running his pained look from ‘The Flock’. God knows what the rest of them thought they were doing.
At one point as we were watching and anti-cineaste Rob Morgan said, “oh look, the background in that shot is beautiful.” – If a film making novice is noticing stuff like that, you get the idea how disengaging this film is.
So what is good about it? You don’t know what’s going on so it makes you keep watching in the hope that you find out. Then you’re bitterly disappointed.
What’s Bad About It
Where do you start with a pile of dog shit this high?
The whole film is like 17 cliche setups in search of a story. We’ve seen ALL of these elements before – some, in the case of Richard Gere, he only did it last year when he played another dude days from retirement, rescuing people from abuse. Ethan Hawke’s cop struggling with money, playing poker with his cop buddies is like a bad re-make of Stallone’s ‘Copland’, and Don Cheadle’s undercover storyline is like a bad rendition of ‘Donnie Brasco’ except in a black neighbourhood, drug gang setting. By the time Ellen Barkin graces the screen, you’re grimacing going, “what? this is Basher and the Cougar from “Ocean’s 13!”
So many good actors cast so badly to play such boring, ordinary roles. It’s a travesty this thing got made. Really, it’s that bad.
Whatever they were aiming for, it wasn’t working because everybody in it was carrying too much luggage from their previous body of work, none of them were particularly likeable and there’s no real unifying story. It’s like ‘Babel’-In-Brooklyn. Or just more plain babble. It has nothing to say about human nature or existence or love or hate or ambition or betrayal or any of that, even though it talks about it and around it. It’s pathetic. You’d think the writer decided to do the “full retard”.
What’s Interesting About It
I rarely say this, but this has nothing interesting about it. Avoid it like the plague. It’s not even “so-bad-it’s-funny-good”. There is nothing redeeming about this picture and it’s all the director’s fault. This is the worst film I’ve seen in a very long time.
Okay, Wesley Snipes with cornrows kinda looked ‘interesting’, but he’s still Wesley Snipes.
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