3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): Den of Thieves 2: Pantera

2025, Christian Gudegast (Den of Thieves) -- download

Wow, I am mostly caught up.

The first movie was a heist movie about Bad Cops chasing down Bad Guys trying to rob the Federal Reserve. In my write-up on the first, I avoided saying what the twist was, a twist that turned one kind of movie into another, and setup movies to come. I will now spoil that because the knowledge is essential to the setup for this movie.

In Den of Thieves, Ray Merrimen (Pablo Shreiber, Halo) is leading a gang of thieves robbing the Federal Reserve, but they are stopped by Detective Nick O'Brien (Gerard Butler, Plane) and his major case squad. Exceeeept, one of Ray's crew, one Donnie Wilson (O'Shea Jackson Jr, Cocaine Bear) turned out to have his own heist in mind, having not robbed the primary reserve money as the police expected, but the out of circulation money being sent there to be shredded. This movie presents Donnie as a pawn, a minor player, up until the final scenes when it is shown he betrayed Merrimen's crew, swapping out their bags of money for paper, absconding with the real untraceable millions. The last scenes reveals, to us, Donnie in London, observing a diamond exchange, setting up another heist.

Exceeept, that's not the  movie we get. We get the heist after the London job. Even more so, we are getting the heist after the heist after the London job. Like all sequels, the movie has to start with a successful heist, to show us how good these guys are. That one is in Antwerp, and involves pretending to be a tactical squad, who in turn raid a plane and steal diamonds. The diamond theft is a means to another end --a planned heist of a diamond exchange in Nice, France. So, when it comes right down to it, London was ... nothing?

So, the new Donnie Plan is to have the fence for his Antwerp job loot store it in the exchange in Nice, which will give Donnie and crew access and reasons to poke around the place. Exceeeept, Nick, who is not only newly-divorced, but also newly-fired from his job in Major Crimes, has a major bug up his ass for Donnie. He strong-arms a guy he knows in the State Attorneys office to have Nick sent to Europe to find Donnie and crew, cuz he just knows Donnie did the Antwerp job. He meets up with the local French taskforce assigned to Donnie's investigation (under the guise of a known crew called "Pantera"), gets some confirmation of Donnie's whereabouts but sets about on his own agenda. And that is to convince Donnie to let him join the crew and help which.... well, unconvincingly happens all too easily. The movie has an agenda, but doesn't back it up with believable plot. And of course, once again because "sequel" we know to expect another finale twist.

I won't go through the heist details. Its fun, its slick, it has rough & sexy Bad Guys (which includes a single woman), some additional complications with the mobster Donnie accidentally robbed in Antwerp, and Nick's ever growing disillusionment with being a cop. Remember, in the first movie, Nick was as much a Bad Guy as those he was hunting. Except (not the longer version) now he's being presented as if he is Best Buds with Donnie. Its almost a Buddy Cop movie.

But what frustrated me the most about the movie was that while it captured the rough multicultural aspects of European criminal organization movies, it all too quickly dispensed with the cops. They were barely background characters. Yes, they end up being part of "the twist" but part of me started creating a head-canon sequel to this movie where it was entirely from the perspective of the taskforce assigned to hunt down Pantera. 

Despite my misgivings, its more than a passable crime thriller that feels more like a European movie with American guest actors, but it is a true American backed movie, just doing its thing in Europe for the tax credits, local incentives and a much better use of the "exotic nature", but with Tenerife standing in for France.

3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): Becky

2020, Jonathan Milott, Cary Murnion (Bushwick) -- Netflix

This one has been on my radar for a while, a small, violent, indie movie about a teenage girl fighting back against home invaders. Its not an innovative plot or something done with grandeur and style, but simply a director exploring a trope in their own way. And its pretty successful in just that.

Becky (Lulu Wilson, The Haunting of Hill House) is your typically surly teen, a bit more heightened by her grief for her mother and Dad's (Joel McHale, Community) seemingly quick moving-on only a year or so later. They make a trip to the family lakehouse, where she is delighted they are not selling it, but made even more angry that he has chosen this trip to forcibly connect Becky to his new girlfriend, and her son.

Meanwhile, a neo-nazi at a nearby prison has engineered his violent escape bringing him and his crew to the lakehouse. While Becky hides out in her woodsy treehouse with one of the family dogs, the criminals take control of the house. The situation is exacerbated by the fact that Dad's new GF is black; we the viewer expect the worst of a terrible situation. 

There are not great revelations in the movie, no plot twists or incredible character turn-abouts. What you have is a MacGuffin, a key, that Dominick (Kevin James, Paul Blart: Mall Cop), the neo-nazi leader, left behind in the house before Jeff, Becky's father, bought it (I guess? Its never explained.) that Becky keeps from the Bad Guys, and you have Becky's shocking propensity for violence. In all home invader movies, the Survivor has to use violence to ... survive. But the driver for this movie is how easily Becky adapts to violently, horribly, so very very angrily killing each of the mooks that work for Dominick. The movie wants you to question who is the real "monster" in the movie.

Final Girl syndrome begs you to cheer on Becky, to hoot and holler as she kills each aggressor, but I didn't feel that way. Sure, each of them deserve it, but does Becky? Not only does she lose her remaining parent, and one of the family dogs, but she also loses any hint of innocence left to her. She is not going to have a good life hereafter. Her anger will only sustain her so long. I guess that's why there had to be a sequel.

Tangent. Movies like this, horror and thrillers, often create iconic props, totems you might say. Often they are held by the monster: Jason's goalie mask, Michael's William Shatner mask, etc. But in this movie, Becky, the "heroine", wears a knitted fox cap that she pulls on in the "gearing up" scene. It became iconic enough to get a thousand Etsy stores.

The Dark Year: The Cloverfield Paradox

2018, Julius Onah (Captain America: Brave New World) -- Netflix

I have been fascinated with the idea of multiple dimensions and a "multi-verse" for a very very long time; it likely emerged from how comic books handled it, but started with that Mirror Universe episode of Star Trek: The Original Series. I even started up my own story idea (90% in head, 10% on paper) back in 2010ish (and every year after) with inspiration from that year's version of Gamma World, in which the Large Hadron Collider causes realities to smash together, and it was all supposed to happen on Dec 21, 2012, which was supposed to be an apocalyptic date predicted by the Mayans and Nostradamus. IRL nothing happened. 

Are you sure? Have you looked at the news lately? 

The multiverse is probably irrevocably tainted by the arguably failed implementation of the idea in the Marvel movies. It is, at least in the general pop culture eyes, which is fine by me, as this allows it to revert back to the nerds' realm. We will continue to write our stories and explore the idea of multiple realities and crossing over. I might even eventually write mine, set more than a decade after our world (and logically many others) is changed, left post-apocalyptic in theme.

Anywayz, long rambling preamble to say that this movie is both exploring alternate realities and the impact upon such by particle colliders. It even smashes cinematic realities together by taking a previously unrelated script and mashing it with the Cloverfield not-franchise, more or less explaining the first movie.

In this movie, set "20 minutes into the future", the world is on the brink of war and collapse due to the lack of power, fuel-based power, not political power of which there is plenty of. Despite the failing infrastructure and fraying political landscape, a coalition of nations builds a particle accelerator in a space station, hoping to provide "free unlimited energy" for the planet. After a few years of failure (many many days in space), they finally turn the thing on, but suffer an overload. When they all stand back up again, they look out the window and the Earth is not there anymore. That is the elevator pitch for the movie.

And now begins the scifi - horror mashup movie as the crew of the space station: a) have to figure out what happened and whether they can find the Earth again, and b) start to experience all kinds of weird shit generally left to horror movies in space where people are suffering Space Madness. At least in this movie, there is very little madness, beyond a guy not dealing well with his eye going all wonky on him.

Some of the experiences are classic "two realities smooshed together" kind of stuff, like finding a stranger jammed into the wall, behind a plate, wires and pipes running through her. She claims she is one of the crew, but not this crew. And details in their logs state things other than they remember. But the rest of the strange shit is just wonky random shit, such as the worms (their protein source, I guess?) disappearing and then reappearing inside one of the crew, reappearing in a vomit fountain of worms. The best random occurrence is when the wall tries to eat one of the crew's arm, and succeeds on detaching it, sans any blood or trauma (beyond psychological), and when it returns, still separated, crawling about, with some sort of ... independence, like it was this universe's version of Thing from The Addams Family. Its fun, but it makes no sense at all.

Meanwhile back on Earth, the husband of one of the crew is experiencing his own extraneous plot -- something is causing destructive havoc on the planet.

I recall not being very impressed with the movie, especially the shoe-horning in of the Cloverfield plot, which was also done with 10 Cloverfield Lane but at least that was a good movie on its own. This time I just enjoyed the classic Stuff in Space going on with a familiar, capable cast consisting of Gugu Mbatha-Raw, David Oyelowo, Daniel Brühl, Chris O'Dowd, Ziyi Zhang, and Elizabeth Debicki, and a few others. I just wished the plot had tried to make more sense, instead of falling back on the idea that paradox means "anything can happen". Its an excuse to be random, to do "looks cool" stupid shit but doesn't serve a plot very well.

So, the Cloverfield tie-in's? Well, the idea is that this happening, in the future, affects multiple realities, in multiple times. Not only do two Earths and two space stations exploring particle accelerator based power get smushed together, blended or whatnot, but also some other reality, one with kaiju, is leaked into other Earths, in other time periods. That means the monster from the original appeared because of this experiment gone wrong.

Kent's write up way back then.

I should also do a proper rewatch post for Cloverfield.

3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): A Breath Away

2018, Daniel Roby (Louis Cyr) -- download

Also,  Dans la brume.

This is a movie I recall seeing the trailer of around the time it was coming out, and then... entirely forgot about it. Something about the "standard horror experience" but in another culture appeals to me. This movie is The Mist except there's nothing in the mist but ... mist. The mist itself kills people, leaving us with an almost epidemic/infection movie as people shelter in place, hoping to wait it out, or for the government to come and save them. Also kind of explains why they didn't go with the straight English translation of the French movie -- "In the Mist".

Its funny, but as you get on writing this, you are going to comment that it wasn't actually horror.

Mathieu (Romain Duris, Eiffel) and Anna (Olga Kurylenko, Quantum of Solace) are raising their daughter Sarah in central Paris. Sarah is a "girl in a bubble", as she has an auto-immune syndrome and has to be kept in an atmosphere controlled chamber. Soon after introducing the characters, there is a mild earthquake, something unheard of in Paris. Mathieu is out when it occurs and is witness to clouds of brown smoke billowing forth from the ground. While it is not strictly seen, the idea of running from a massive gaseous substance that appears out of nowhere is not abnormal; nor is reacting as others are -- screaming, fleeing crowds instill the same instinct on Mathieu.

He makes it to his quaint apartment building, grabs his wife and they both flee upstairs to the top floor owned by an elderly couple. The mist only climbs so high, not into the apartment. From a rooftop vantage point Mathieu confirms the mist only reaches to a certain height, and he can even see people collecting at the distant Montmartre. They are safe, for now. But their daughter, who is also safe in her bubble, has only so much time before the batteries fail.

Not a horror movie, just a survival one, which I am sure I would normally label as a sub-genre. Survival Thriller maybe? The only thing against Mathieu and his family is time, and the mist. First, secure replacement batteries. Mathieu can hold his breath long enough to reach the apartment of a neighbour who used an oxygen bottle. That allows him to venture outside long enough to run into a crowd of people being led by the military to Monmartre. He is given a couple of oxygen masks & tanks but not pressured to join. But eventually even extra batteries will run out, and eventually they notice the mist is creeping higher, centimetre by centimetre, very very slowly. They need to collect a "bubble suit" from a research facility they were working with, on Sarah's condition. Unfortunately that does not go as planned, the couple get separated, and Anna returns with barely enough time to switch out Sarah's last battery.... but not to climb back to the top floor. 

There is also a subplot about Sarah wanting her father to check-in on another boy in another bubble in a nearby apartment complex. She has a few friends all with her condition connected only by a now non-existent internet. And then the crux of the movie, the revelation that moves it entirely out of the realm of horror or even survival. Mathieu is desperate to find something to get Sarah out of the bubble and somewhere to safety. His wife is gone, the apartment will soon be flooded by the mist and his daughter is all he cares about. But as he is riding a scooter to claim her last chance, he is distracted and falls. Distracted by a boy walking freely in the mist. It is Noé, the boy his daughter was friends with. And as the batteries were dying on her bubble, she got herself out and joins them, for her father's last breath, but for her first free of any confines.

The movie ends with children running free in fields of flowers. The cynic in me, the guy who usually writes in italics, but whom I share a great affinity with, would usually consider all so very very trite. But I liked it, as it transformed a disaster movie, an End of the World scenario, into something allegorical. With death comes life. Like Melanie lighting up the tower of spore pods at the end of The Girl with all the Gifts, effectively freeing the "hungry virus" to all remaining humans, bitten or not, the world is no longer for us who have ruined it, but for those who come next.

Peripherally related, both that movie, more precisely its originating short story "Iphigenia in Aulis" and the game "The Last of Us" came out around 2012, two stories where the "zombie plague" is caused by cordyceps fungus, and both deal with the idea of sacrificing a child to save the world. I recently rewatched the TV series (maybe the rewatch will warrant a break from my 'not write about TV' hiatus, as I also didn't write about it originally in 2023) and was inspired to watch aforementioned movie.