2024, James Madigan (a couple of TV episodes) -- download
In our continued series of violent movies for violent minds is what I thought was going to be a rote actioner in the vein of Bullet Train but instead of a train full of killers, we get a plane, and in some ways it is that, but I wasn't expecting a painfully indie/low-budget elevator pitch, but... with heart?
I am struggling to understand what I saw. No, not the plot. That is typical, but I guess this is the world we live in now, where films can get green lit, from the black list, with minimal Purple Suit intervention, which is both for the better, and for the worse? There is a mashup of terrible budget related issues, like lighting (even when the cabin lights are dimmed, everything is brightly, flatly lit) and ADR (Hartnett at times sounds terribly high pitched, like no one understood sound levels) and the "twist" the plot is a bug-eyed, "what if we ...." silly (and yet, somehow still appropriate) idea. But the fight choreography is top notch and creative, and Hartnett & cast really truly play their little hearts out. And its not z-grade Scott Adkins level actioner, to be relegated to the bottom row of "if you liked X, watch Y" list on Amazon -- but no doubts, it will end up on Amazon. But it is most definitely not an A or B level Hollywood flick, which is frankly what I was expecting.
Yeah we see the struggle.
So, it opens with some sort of espionage agency op gone wrong. To chase down escaped criminal "The Ghost", agency head Brunt (Katee Sackhoff, Longmire) activates her ex-BF Lucas Reyes (Josh Hartnett, Trap) in a bar in Bangkok. He will follow said Ghost to a flight out of the country. If he does this one job for her, despite their history, she will wipe his slate clean. He reluctantly agrees.
The Ghost, some sort of terrorist hacker super villain that nobody knows what they look like, has boarded a plane bound for San Francisco, but someone has leaked a bounty on The Ghost, which has filled the plane up with assassins. You know where this is leading.
But almost from the get-go, things go... weird. The strange, colourful Spanish pop singer in First Class (what do we call that these days?) turns out to be one of the "plane full of hitmen" and also happens to have Reyes information. After Reyes dispatches the guy, he unsuccessfully hides the body from the cabin crew, and then has to engage them in what is going on. Huh, was not expecting that. Instead of turning the plane around, Reyes allies with the cabin crew to capture The Ghost. But yeah, expectedly, shit hits fans pretty quickly with killers coming out of the wood work pretty quickly, and ... well, the movie's first "twist" happens -- one of the cabin crew is The Ghost (Charithra Chandran, Bridgerton). Yes, international flight attendant and hacker/terrorist. Somehow she makes that work.
Things get silly almost immediately, but that is the vibe of the movie. And bloody and very very violent. The indie nature of the movie (i.e. not everything is well thought through) has scenes flipping from "their are passengers who are collateral damage!" to "so, the cabin is empty but for Reyes and Bad Guys?" but we forgive it.
Oh, and the conscience I mentioned is because Reyes is on the outs with the Secret Service because he assaulted the diplomat he was supposed to protect, someone who liked to beat on underage prostitutes. And The Ghost is a Good Guy, not a terrorist at all. Sure, she blows shit up, but to do Noble Things like free enslaved children from greedy corporate sweat shops. While Reyes does want his life back, he also feels beholden to her agenda.
And the end of movie twist? The ridiculous thing that ... maybe kind of sorta works? The shadowy "espionage agency" led by Brunt turns out to be Facebook. Not literally but the idea of a big blue-coloured corporation that has more power than it should.
Its a fun movie, if a little unintentionally sloppy and truly the only thing annoying about it was how it wore its influence on its sleeve (insert reference to John Wick) instead of leaning all the way into the wacky nature. Sure, we get a chainsaw scene (who has a chainsaw on a plane ?!?!?) and Reyes is played like a sort of drunken master, but I would have upped the mayhem into almost farce levels.
Reading these out of order... I asked in the Heads of State comment about the kind of terrorist those were, but here you state explicitly that she's basically a sjw (so, you know "terrorist" in the right wing vernacular).
ReplyDeleteThe days of "protecting my country at any cost" type action hero are running on short supply, addressing that there are repercussions of state actions and how the hero reacts to their involvement in it I think is going to be much more the norm.
Weird. The term SJW has dropped out of fashion, likely because it was coopted as a pejorative (coworkers literally called me that as an insult) which is weird unto itself considering you basically calling out someone for fighting for Social Justice, which is supposed to be .... good thing? But since its demise, we have devolved directly into thinking any sort of social reform is a Bad Thing because it compromises the individual.
ReplyDeleteGah, I often say it to others, but I have to apply it to myself. When your entire world viewpoint is built from the readily accessible media and that is corrupted, its not hard to think Social Justice has died entirely and the world is completely going to shit. But I know, if you look ELSEWHERE the Good Fight is still being fought -- its just harder, and we don't hear about it as much.