Stuff I Watched In September

I should probably repeat my rant back in August; it seems like there was some backsliding last month.  Maybe people think they're clever but it's pretty obvious some of you just scrolled to the end because those were the only ones mentioned.  It really defeats the purpose of all my work. 

Anyway...

7500:  This Amazon movie from 2019 was on Tubi and for no real reason I watched it.  Joseph Gordon-Leavitt is Tobias, a co-pilot on a plane that's going from Berlin to Paris.  One of the stewardesses is his girlfriend and they have a son together.  

Once the flight is airborne, some terrorists break into the cockpit with glass shivs.  Tobias and the captain manage to push them out of the cockpit except for one knocked unconscious.  But Tobias is cut on the arm and the captain is killed.  Tobias calls the tower who recommend going to Hanover.  On the way, the terrorists start threatening to kill hostages--including his girlfriend.

The problem with the movie is its claustrophobic setting.  It's the kind of movie that could basically have been a  play.  It takes place only in the cockpit while we only catch glimpses of the rest of the airplane through a tiny, black-and-white screen.  So when hostages die and the passengers fight back at Tobias' encouragement, we barely see anything at all.  That stuff might have been good to see to know what's going on with the rest of the plane. 

Still, Gordon-Leavitt does a good job in a role that basically calls for him to be on screen the whole time and to mix English with German.  There aren't any other recognizable names to me but there's a young guy playing one of the terrorists who also gets a lot of screen time and does pretty well.  If you don't have Amazon Prime now might be a good time to catch up on this and other titles Tubi has like All the Old Knives and The Tender Bar. (3/5) (Fun Fact:  7500 is the radio code for a hijacking.)

Bent:  This 2018 movie stars Karl Urban of Star Trek and The Boys as a cop named Dan Gallagher who along with his partner is making a drug deal to catch some bad guys.  At least that's how he thinks it's supposed to work.  But somehow the bad guys have gotten wind of it and kill Gallagher's partner while he's shot.  He's arrested and put in prison for corruption, finding out that his partner had been keeping money, some earmarked for him.

Three years later he's let out of prison and starts looking into things.  He uncovers a shadowy government organization with Sofia Vergara in it and they join forces--outside and in the bedroom.  Ultimately he has to get to the root of things with some gunplay and car chases and all that.  Besides Urban and Vergara, there's also Andy Garcia as a bookie who's a father figure to Gallagher.  Overall it was OK but could have used more of a budget for some better supporting actors and effects and stuff. (2.5/5) (Fun Fact:  One of those low budget things:  the prison Gallagher is put into is called only "State Prison.")

Kill the Irishman:  This 2011 movie is a "true story" set from 1960 to the late 70s about Danny Greene (Ray Stevenson) who starts as a low-level employee shoveling grain out of freighters on Cleveland's waterfront.  When one of his coworkers passes out from the heat, Greene takes on the Mafia-backed president of the union and eventually wins.  For the next few years, things are great for Greene as he expands his business and makes friends with local Mafia boss John Nardi (Vincent D'Onfrio) and even gets married and has kids.  But then the Feds bust him and he loses it all. He does a little jail time but not much by volunteering to be a snitch for the Feds.

When he gets out, he calls Nardi, who gets him a job as a debt collector for a Jewish loan shark played by Christopher Walken.  Of course this is the kind of debt collector who doesn't call you on the phone;  this is the kind that breaks your thumbs or kneecaps.  Along the way, Danny makes friends with a garbageman and he and Nardi come up with a plan to create a union for the garbagemen, which puts them at odds with the other Mafia in town and his garbageman friend.

But things really go sour when he asks Walken for some money to build an Irish-themed restaurant.  Walken sends a courier to New York to get the money only for the courier to use it on drugs instead.  Greene and Walken have a falling out, with a $25,000 price tag put on Greene's head.

There's more to it, a lot more.  The movie is almost 2 hours and drags a little here and there.  Besides the names I mentioned, there's Val Kilmer as a cop who grew up in the same neighborhood as Greene and...really doesn't do a lot.  You also have some other recognizable names/faces in Robert Davi, Vinnie Jones, and Paul Sorvino.  While Stevenson is better known for action roles like Punisher War Zone, Accident Man, and Ahsoka, he does a good job in a more dramatic role as a guy who wants to help his neighbors but probably goes about it the wrong way. (3/5)

Cash:  This was one of those weird things where I put this on my Tubi queue a long time ago and forgot about it.  So it disappeared for a while and then eventually I saw it again on Tubi and decided to watch it this time before it could get away.

This movie is from 2010, just before the careers of the two main stars (Sean Bean & Chris Hemsworth) exploded a year later with Game of Thrones & Thor.  Bean is a criminal with a twin brother (also Sean Bean) in a prison outside Chicago.  For some reason I didn't really pay attention to, he has a suitcase of cash totaling about $630,000.  Maybe he was going to use it to get his brother out?  Whatever.  Anyway, some cops chase his car and he throws the suitcase out, where it hits Hemsworth's old station wagon to bounce off to the side of the road.  Hemsworth gets curious and looks inside to see money.

When he gets home, he and his wife decide to do what most of us would do--shut up virtue signalers--and buy a new Range Rover, a new TV, and basically a houseful of new furniture.  About a third of it they give to one of their moms to hold onto, though I'm not sure they actually told her about it.  They quit their jobs and plan to buy into a chicken franchise.

Meanwhile, Bean has escaped the cops and goes to the DMV to look up cars recently bought with cash, figuring anyone who found the money would buy a new car.  It's a little too lucky of a guess; I mean for all he knew, whoever found it could have gone and bought tons of lottery tickets, gambled it at the track, or just spent it all at the nearest crack house.  But whatever.  He starts tracking the names down and on the third try--that they show anyway--he finds Hemsworth.

From there, Bean takes Hemsworth and his wife hostage to get his money back.  There's a surprising amount of math involved in this as he keeps adding up how much money there is and subtracting how much they're still short.  Basically he's not going to leave them until he has every cent back.  They trade the car back for much less than it cost, take out a refinancing loan at the bank, and get the money back from the mother.  Then Bean kicks it up a notch by having them rob convenience stores, gas stations, and even a bank.

Overall it's a decent movie, though not a great one.  Besides the two big names there's not a lot of depth to the cast, though the actress playing the wife was good at providing some spunk against Bean's bullying.  I didn't see much point to the twin thing, though I guess from a sort of cookie scene it could have set up a sequel, though it was pretty obvious a year later that wasn't going to happen.  It could have been about 20 minutes shorter to be a little tighter  But whatever. (3/5) (Fun Fact:  One of the car buyers Bean talks to is played by veteran character actor Mike Starr.  He was also a Mafia guy in Kill the Irishman.  His brother Beau was in Due South and Halloween 4.)

The Stepfather:  Another blog mentioned this thriller from 1987 and what intrigued me was when he mentioned it was co-written by Donald E Westlake, one of my favorite authors over the last few years, who wrote the Parker series under a pseudonym, the Dortmunder series, and dozens of other books.  Since it was "free" on Peacock, why not check it out?

The gist is that a man (Terry O'Quinn of Lost, The Cutting Edge, and Resident Alien) goes around suburban Seattle, marrying women and becoming part of the family until someone gets too close to the truth or just pisses him off.  Then he murders them and moves on.  This time his new family is a mom (Shelly Hack) and a 16-year-old daughter named Stephanie.  Stephanie doesn't really like him and is having trouble with the death of her real father, to the point she's been expelled from school for fighting.

Everything seems fine enough until Stephanie sees the guy raging in the basement during a party.  Then she starts to get worried about him, but she of course has no proof.  Meanwhile, some other guy is looking into Terry O'Quinn and getting closer and closer to finding him.

Overall it's taut and the main characters are drawn pretty well.  For something that could have been just cheap schlock, it's actually made pretty well.  Coming in at under 90 minutes, it would have been nice if they'd had the chance to stretch it a little to give a little more background to Terry O'Quinn's character.  Still, it works. (3.5/5) (Fun Facts:  The movie was directed by Nick Castle, who played the original "Shape," aka Michael Myers in Halloween.  Blu Mankuma of Transformers Beast Wars and Robocop the Series has a small role as a police lieutenant.)

One Last Heist:  Based (loosely, I'd assume) on a true story, this is about a heist in London's Hatton Gardens neighborhood that houses a bunch of jewelry stores.  A thief (Matthew Goode of Watchmen) gets out of prison and is recruited by a Hungarian mobster (Joely Richardson) to rob the vault under the jewelry stores.  She'll give him all the codes to get into the building; he basically has to figure out how to get into the vault.

Instead of recruiting young guys, he recruits some old geezers to do it "old school."  From there it's a fun little heist story as the thief has to not only figure out how to knock over the vault and carry it out, but also deal with the problems of the old people, like one has emphysema and another has other problems and one is just cranky.

Like I said, it's fun, sort of a low budget version of The Bank Job starring Jason Statham.  And it's not very long, so you don't have to sacrifice a whole afternoon or anything. (3.5/5) (Fun Fact:  This is one of those movies where the main character's name is never used, so in the credits they refer to him as XXX which is funny since there was that Vin Diesel series by that name.)

The Con is On:  I've mentioned before movies that have a good--or at least well-known--cast that for some reason go under the radar.  This one could have stayed under my radar.  

A couple in England (Uma Thurman and Tim Roth) are in trouble after stealing money from a "Russian" gangster Irina played by Asian actress Maggie Q (which is maybe supposed to be funny?) and using it all on poker and drugs.  They get enough money to fly to LA, where Thurman plans to steal a valuable ring from an actress (Alice Eve) whose husband (Crispin Glover) is a director up for an Oscar but secretly in love with his star (Sofia Vergara already mentioned in Bent).  Meanwhile Parker Posey is in love with Crispin Glover but he doesn't seem to notice or care no matter how many scenes she makes.  There's also Stephen Fry as a pervy priest with a pet Asian boy and a drug business on the side.

The whole thing becomes this sort of soap opera with some action as Irina and her goons show up.  Thurman gamely tries to make it work while Roth stumbles around most of the time. Fry does a good job being gross.  Eve, Parker, and Vergara act like they're in a Mexican telenovella for the most part.  Glover is strangely the most normal one of the bunch.  And Maggie Q doesn't even get to kick anyone.  It all becomes pretty tiresome and as far as "cons" go it is pretty lame. (2/5)

Mob Town:  In 1957 the small town of Appalacia, New York was briefly home to about 60 mobsters.  This inspired-by-a-true-story movie is about how a state trooper named Ed (David Arquette) manages to bust them.

The basic setup is that a gangster (Robert Davi already mentioned in Kill the Irishman as a gangster) has returned from exile in Italy and now wants to return to the seat of power.  He wants a meeting of all the big gangsters in some quiet, out-of-the-way place.  One of his lieutenants suggests Appalacia, where there's a small-time gangster named Joe Barbera running things.  Sergeant Ed has tried to get Barbera a few times but of course the gangster always finds a way to get out of it.

Ed starts to notice strange things as Barbera is buying up all the steak, fish, and pork chops for the big to-do.  Ed is also making time with a widow who has two kids.  The day finally comes, and Ed has a plan to trap all the gangsters.

It's not a bad movie but it's the type that needs a bigger budget for more and better actors, sets, and a slightly longer run time.  That would have made it feel a little closer to A-list than C-list. (3/5) (Spoiler:  The end has a card to say what happened after.  Of course none of the gangsters went to jail and most weren't even arrested.  But the long-term impact was it forced Hoover and the FBI to acknowledge the Mafia did exist and led to new laws like the RICO Act.  Ed went on to be on various committees in Washington trying to fix the organized crime problem while his son became a New York state trooper.)

Our Kind of Traitor:  Even if you didn't watch the opening credits, you could probably figure out this is based on a John le Carre novel.  It's a story of espionage but it's a lot slower than a James Bond movie.

In Morocco, an English professor named Perry (Ewan McGregor) and his wife Gail, a barrister (Naomie Harris), are on vacation.  One night they're in a bar when they meet a bunch of loud Russians.  Dima, the head of these (Stellan Sarsgaard), invites the couple back to his compound.  From there Perry and Dima form a friendship, largely built on straight-arrow Perry being impressed with Dima's war stories, gang tattoos, and so on while his wife is less impressed.  Dima has some valuable information that British Intelligence wants, but getting it out of the country and to Britain could be dangerous--to everyone.

Like I said, this is much more of a slow burn than a Bond movie.  There's a lot more focus on the characters.  McGregor and Sarsgaard have decent chemistry and everyone else is up to the task.  If you like the more realistic type of spy thriller, then this is a good pick. (3/5) (Fun Fact:  McGregor and Sarsgaard were both recently in Star Wars series on Disney+, though not together.)

Rain Fall:  It would have been nice if someone had mentioned that about 75% of this would be in Japanese with subtitles.  Basically this is like a Japanese version of a Bourne movie.  Only instead of Jason Bourne, there's John Rain, who has about as much charisma as a rice cake.  He has possession of some memory stick that's important--I guess.

Like a Bourne movie there's a CIA command center with lots of screens to try to bring up CCTV footage and junk like that.  Instead of Chris Cooper, Brian Cox, etc you have Gary Oldman, who mostly screams at people to find Rain.  As Rain rampages through Tokyo, he meets some woman who the CIA is also after and tries to get her to safety.

I wasn't really into most of the Bourne movies or reading a lot of subtitles so this didn't do a lot for me.  There's a twist at the end that's kind of clever, so that's something at least.  Besides the subtitles, a more charismatic lead would really have helped. (2.5/5)

Johnny Skidmarks:  This is another movie that really wants to be a Coen Brothers movie.  But it doesn't quite rise to that level.  Still, it's not too far off the mark.

The eponymous Johnny Scardelli Skidmarks (Peter Gallagher) is a crime scene photographer who also moonlights by taking blackmail photos of his hooker girlfriend's johns.  He gives these photos to some other guys who shake down people. 

But then one day he goes to a crime scene only to find one of his blackmail crew is the victim.  And then his hooker girlfriend.  And then another guy.  It seems pretty obvious that Johnny is next.  Meanwhile he meets a woman named Alice (Coen Brothers favorite Frances McDormand) at the fast food restaurant run by his former brother-in-law Jerry (Jack Black).  Can he find who's after him before he needs a crime scene photographer to take pictures of him?

It's not really a bad movie and there's a decent cast that also includes John Lithgow as a cop.  It could have used a little more zaniness to match something like Fargo, but it's not bad.  There is some gross stuff so if you have a weak stomach you might need to turn away. (3/5)

Black Butterfly:  This is the kind of movie that's ruined by too many twists.  At the beginning, the story is about Paul (Antonio Banderas) who is a struggling, reclusive writer in Colorado.  Things are getting desperate enough that he's trying to sell his house out in the mountains via a rookie realtor (Piper Peekabo) but things aren't going well.

One day Paul is going into town when a truck is driving like a jerk, driving slow and not letting him pass.  He finally gets around the guy to go to a local diner.  The truck driver shows up there to pick a fight.  A drifter named Jack (John Rhys Myers) jumps in to defend Paul before leaving.  On his way home, Paul sees Jack walking and gives him a ride to his house.  

From there it becomes sort of like Misery as Jack takes over the house and basically takes Paul captive.  Jack claims to be trying to help Paul get his writing on track, but it soon spirals out of control.

Then there's the first twist that wasn't really bad.  It turns everything on its head.  If it had ended there it wouldn't have been too bad.

But then there's twist #2, which is the worst kind of twist.  SPOILER!  It's all a dream!  Paul dreamed the whole thing with Jack because his subconscious was telling him what to write or something.  Look, I've been writing for a while and I've NEVER had long, complicated, lucid dreams that tell me stories to write.  I rarely get any story ideas from my dreams; it usually happened when I was wide awake.  So to me the whole idea this could all have been a dream to solve his writer's block is just completely asinine.  Like I said, this is the worst kind of twist because it really just negates the whole story so why did I bother watching it?  It makes me feel like a chump. (2/5)

Adverse:  This was one of those annoying bait-and-switch deals.  The description calls it a "taut urban thriller" where a rideshare driver a short time out of prison finds out a gangster (Mickey Rourke) is leaning on the rideshare guy's sister.

Then the reality sets in.  It's a dull slog as the rideshare guy tries to get his sister off drugs and hanging out with bad people, loses his gig job, and does some driving for Rourke's goons.  By the time there's some gunplay and violence, I was too bored to care.  I guess when they said "taut urban thriller" I was thinking more car chases, gunplay, and fighting instead of a mopey PSA against drugs and peer pressure and shit. (1/5) (Fun Fact:  Sean Astin has a small part as the head of the local branch of the rideshare; he's in like two scenes so that definitely qualifies as cashing a paycheck.)

Rumble Through the Dark:  It's kind of like if Billy Bob Thornton in Sling Blade were a bare knuckle boxer.  Jack Boucher (Aaron Eckhart) is trying to get money to pay off the local gangster "Big Mama" and buy back his adopted mom's house from the bank.  He does some bare knuckle fights and then goes to a casino where he actually makes some money.  But some dude who works for Big Mama sees the money and so they go after him.

And mayhem ensues.  It's almost 2 hours long and I stopped really paying attention much after the first hour or so.  In the end he's got to fight some big dude for the money he needs.  Guess what happens?  Eckhart gives it his all but there's really no other talent that's comparable.  I wouldn't really recommend it. (2/5)

Hunting Ground:  This is a Tubi Original, which I suspect was just a cheap action movie that had trouble with distribution or had been sitting on the shelf and they just bought it for "original" content.  In the beginning there's some bad guy who steals money from a plane and jumps out, landing somewhere in Washington state before dying.

Nearby, it's the opening of hunting season and some guy finds the money and then some other guy with some goons starts chasing him.  The only actors you might have heard of are Danny Trejo as the sheriff who barely seems to do anything and Bruce Dern, the bad guy leader who only appears a couple of times through a tablet screen that was probably filmed in his house.  So it's a lot of unknowns and cheap effects and so on.  It didn't really hold my interest long after I finished my dinner.  The good guy should have had a kid--especially good if it's a sick kid--so we'd care more about him getting the money.  Just wanting not to be a lumberjack in a small town isn't really a great reason, especially when we don't know what else he might do. I'm just saying. (2/5)

Accelerate:  Pretty standard cheapo action movie.  A woman's son is kidnapped and apparently she's some kind of assassin or whatever and to get her son back, the kidnapper (Dolph Lundgren) wants her to drive around LA getting stuff.

It's basically a video game-style plot where she goes from one level to the next, fighting henchmen and bosses like former UFC fighter Chuck Liddell and Danny Trejo.  It gets pretty boring but I suppose it makes OK background noise. (1/5)

MI5: Greater Good:  I think the listing said this was based on a TV show.  If this were a TV show I wouldn't stream more episodes.  It's just a bland spy "Thriller" about a rogue agent and someone else who gets framed for it.

Basically MI5 fucks up the transfer of a terrorist named Qasim to the the CIA.  Qasim gets away and someone needs blamed so the blame is ready to fell on a higher-up in the agency, who disappears before anyone can arrest him.  An old protoge of his (Kit Harrington) is recruited to go after him.  Meanwhile Qasim is launching attacks on London.

There are some OK twists and turns, but it's not especially interesting. (2.5/5)

Confidence:  This 2003 movie stars Ed Burns (who's like the less charismatic Ben Affleck) as leader of a crew of con artists.  His right-hand man is Paul Giamatti and there's another guy who drives and stuff.  Their last job they stole some money from "the King," who's a big shot crime boss played by Dustin Hoffman.  To get the king off their backs, they have to take on another job trying to double-cash business checks in Belize.

Of course everything gets complicated because one of the King's guys named Lupus joins the team to watch them and also a woman (Rachel Weisz) joins too and and Ed Burns get a thing going.  It's pretty good for this sort of movie with some good twists that make you wonder if they'll get away with it.  It's just a little annoying how it gets skipping ahead to the supposed end that wants you think Ed Burns is dead. (3/5)

We Still Steal the Old Way:  This is about 3 old British guys who stage a bank robbery.  Only it's not "one last job" for them because they get caught.  But that's actually the real job so they can break someone out of the prison as his wife is dying.

The potential breakout gets harder when an old rival gets himself transferred to the prison.  He starts recruiting an army and lays the ground with the warden (or governor as they say there) to start making and selling drugs.  The bad guy pretty much has everyone on his side but the good guys have a plan of their own.  It's decent overall even if it doesn't have any familiar faces.  Not a heist movie so much as a prison movie. (3/5)

6 Ways to Die:  "John Doe" (Vinnie Jones) manipulates a bunch of other people to help destroy drug kingpin Sunny Garcia.  He offers them a lot of money in order to slowly destroy the drug lord.  This includes his wife betraying him.  There are a number of interesting twists as we wait to see how everything connects.  I think there's a twist at the end that was pretty silly but otherwise it's good if you like an action drama with a twisty plot.  I'd say more but it's kind of hard to avoid spoiling things. (3/5)

The Assignment:  The first problem is that this movie decides to be broken up nonlinearly.  The second is that the plot makes no sense.  Basically there's a hitman named Frank who kills a doctor's brother.  So the doctor (Sigourney Weaver) uses her skills to make the hitman a woman.

Now maybe you'd think with all the Eric Filler books I'd be down with that but it's pretty stupid.  I mean to do a full, flawless sex change would take a while.  So it's pretty implausible.  

Anyway the hit woman (Michelle Rodriguez) escapes and starts doing stuff while the doctor has been committed to a mental hospital, where she's telling the story to her doctor (Tony Shaloub).  And, you know, mayhem ensues or whatever.  I just wonder how much Tubi offered up to get Weaver, Shalhoub, and Rodriguez to do this crap.) (1/5)

Prom Night (1980):  I watched this for story research and no other reason.  It's not a very good movie.  They rope Jamie Lee Curtis into this but it's obvious she doesn't want to be there.  The rest of the characters are as thin as the paper the script was printed on.  The story itself is boring and predictable. 

In 1974, some young kids are in an old school and one girl dies.  Her twin brother doesn't.  So, hmmm, who's the killer years later?  Yeah, really hard to guess.  

Meanwhile there's a prom featuring a bunch of disco.  Actual disco.  Ugh.  Then the killer, wearing all black with a sparkly black ski mask, starts offing random losers.  I don't think Jamie Lee really gets naked or anything but there is a little sex.  Not enough to make it interesting.  No clever twists.  Just nothing really. (1/5)

Prom Night (2008):  This was about the time where the only big horror franchises running were Saw and Hostel movies.  Rob Zombie's Halloween had done pretty well so of course studios started trying to reinvigorate other old franchises like Nightmare on Elm Street and Friday the 13th.  Someone decided to pick up more obscure ones from the early 80s like April Fool's Day and Prom Night.

Saying this is better isn't hard.  It's basically a McDonald's cheeseburger vs something you find on the pavement.  It's bland and basic but it is edible.  It's not really that different than a late 90s horror movie, without the style of Scream.  The killer ends up pretty predictable too.  Years ago a girl's family was attacked by a stalkery teacher.  Years later her and her friends (mostly just a bunch of CW archetypes) are going to prom at a hotel.  And, hmm, the teacher escapes prison a couple days earlier.  Hmm.

But the plot is a bit more fun with more kills, more gore, and a little more sex.  The killer does a couple of clever things to escape the cop (Idris Elba) who was involved with the previous killings.  And no disco music!  That's always welcome.  If you want a metaphor for this movie, it's the kind of movie that uses a second-tier 2000s band like Rock Kills Kid for the end theme than a more popular band like Coldplay, Death Cab for Cutie, or the Shins. (3/5)

Ready or Not:  I think this was on Hulu for a while but I never got around to it.  And it was about to expire on Tubi.  So what the hell.  

A newlywed woman (Samara Weaving, NOT Margot Robbie as you'd think) and her husband are at the estate of his rich family.  The family has this weird tradition where a new member of the family has to play a sadistic game and be sacrificed by sunup or the family will all die.  Rich people, right?

The family includes a bunch of snobs, losers, and a creepy old lady.  They're probably not creepy and nutty enough to compete with The Addams Family or Knives Out or something.  They include Henry Czerny (Mission: Impossible 1, ?, and 7), Andie McDowell (Groundhog Day), and Adam Brody (Shazam).  At first the bride thinks it's all a joke but is soon disabused of that notion.

From there she has to avoid the family and shifting allegiances.  And also no one but maybe the butler is much good at using weapons.  Of course everything comes down to the last second.  It's fun but maybe not as much fun as it could be.  There's plenty of gore and gross stuff.  A little sex.  A few twists.  I'd say to watch it in Spooky Season if you can. (3/5)

Taffin:  This late 80s Irish movie stars Pierce Brosnan as the titular character.  Around his small Irish town he's kind of a fixer, collecting for people and helping a band get a van after they were sold a lemon the first time.  But then there's that favorite 80s plotline of a bunch of big city developers showing up to build a chemical plant.

The townspeople recruit Taffin to stop them.  There are dirty tricks by both sides before it's all over.  By then Taffin is a pariah.  Meanwhile the developers make a final attack on Taffin.  Strangely they never think to kidnap his girlfriend.

It's a decent movie considering there are no stars after Brosnan.  It's more fun at the start when he's using his skills to help people around town.  Once it gets to the main plot it becomes a little slow.  I guess this is what Brosnan had to do since he couldn't do the rebooted Bond movie that went to Timothy Dalton instead. (3/5)

Employee of the Month:  This isn't that comedy with Dane Cook, though it came out around the same time.  Anyway, Matt Dillon is David, a guy who has it all:  a fiancee (Christina Applegate), a house, a car, and a decent job.  But then his shithead boss fires him.  And his fiancee finds a stripper's underwear in his jacket pocket.  So he's out on his ass.  He buys a gun, some beer, and ice and heads up to a motel to commiserate with his friend (Steve Zahn).

That's basically the first 2/3 of the movie somehow.  I mean it just keeps creeping towards some kind of point.  We started the movie showing him riding the bus looking downtrodden and seemingly going to shoot up the bank.  To actually get there takes a frustratingly long time.  And then he finally does go to the bank but just beats up his boss.  Outside is a bank robbery!  Coincidence?

From there you have twists and twists on twists.  The problem is like with that other one I mentioned is it goes too far, until the twists make no sense.  The idea that he was using this thing at work so he could stage a robbery is a good twist but then having his fiancee and friend and a bunch of other people in on it too was a bit ridiculous.  I mean how did his flaky friend keep that secret for like two years?  And if David is such a stone cold killer why was he having a relationship with his fiancee and so devastated when she dumped him?  (Especially since she's a lesbian.)  And really, no one should need two years for what amounted to a pretty simple robbery.  One twist or maybe two is probably all you need most of the time.

All of the twists really bring things down; it definitely needed to end a little bit sooner.  (2.5/5) (Fun Facts:  All the loose ends--by which I mean the characters--are wrapped up in the end credit scenes--by which I mean they die one-by-one.  Dave Foley has a small role as a dentist who was someone involved with the plot.)

The Heavy:  Mitchell "Boots" Mason is freed from prison and tries to resume his old life of beating up people for money and so forth.  Then he's given an assignment to find some girl while his politician brother reveals he's dying.  There's also a cop (Vinnie Jones) with an old score to settle with Boots.

It has some twists but it's mostly pretty bland.  Boots, played by Gary Stretch, has no real charisma while Vinnie Jones and Christopher Lee are mostly wasted.  It's basically a "good enough" movie and not anything more. (2.5/5)

Blood and Wine:  I didn't pick this to watch; I had fallen asleep and Tubi just started it.  Seeing Jack Nicholson and Michael Caine, though, I decided to watch the rest.  From what I gather, Jack and his wife (Judith Davis of The Ref) had a wine shop that went under--in large part because of Jack's mistresses.  But he and Caine have a stolen necklace that should put Jack in the black.  

Except when Jack is packing, his wife tumbles onto the plane tickets indicating he's taking along his latest mistress--a young Cuban girl played by J-Lo.  They have a fight and it seems she kills Jack, so she grabs a bunch of stuff--including the necklace hidden in the suitcase--and takes off to find her son--Stephen Dorff.  They hit the road to go down to Key Largo while of course Jack isn't dead.  He and Michael Caine go off in pursuit of the necklace.

From there it's a series of successes and reversals for Jack as he and his son tangle over the necklace.  In the end, only one can survive.  In the oeuvre of Jack Nicholson it's probably pretty far down the list, but this is still a decent neo-noir thriller that's like a Carl Hiaasen novel without the charm.  But still pretty fun and a great cast for the mid-90s. (3/5) (Fun Fact:  When I watched Rescue Me (1991) on Rifftrax one time I said Stephen Dorff would have made a good Peter Parker and five years later with this movie that's still true.  But this was only a year or so from when he starred in Blade and some would say, started the MCU.)