Too heavy, already seen, too heavy, too heavy, too heavy, Marmy wants to see, etc. Those are my usual "flicking through the channels" thoughts as I sit in front of the TV on a Saturday afternoon.And some days I am just in the mood for a "generic crime movie". So, I like Pablo Shreiber and Gerard Butler, so why not. And I got exactly what I was looking for; something to turn the brain off and make mental notes on the generic nature of crime movies set in LA.
A bunch of bad guys rob an armoured car, geared up like it was a video game inspired by the famous scene from Heat. Some people get killed including one of the bad guys. Next morning, enter Gerard Butler and his Major Case Squad. First impressions -- tough guy, bad guy, possibly even the actual bad guys or maybe they are even going to be worse than the actual bad guys, and the armoured car robbers will be robbed by them. In watching these kind of movies, there are thousand cliche directions these movies go, even when they are trying to do the unexpected. Alas, this movie went in ways I didn't even expect.
At its core, it's a heist movie. Pablo Shreiber is leading a squad of his own, all ex-cons with military training. They stole the truck, not primarily for its money, but to bolster the real job -- where they will steal from the Federal Reserve. There's a complicated plan involving lots of misdirection. Meanwhile Butler and his squad, all tattooed and grimy and chasing hookers when they should be home with their wives, are on Shreiber, knowing something is up, but not sure what. At the end, the real end of the movie, where bad guys shoot at good guys and key characters are lost, we find there was an entirely different misdirect, one that I both admired and rolled my eyes at rather heavily. Why does everyone have to be trying to setup a franchise?
No comments:
Post a Comment