BEFORE: Chadwick Boseman carries over from "Ma Rainey's Black Bottom", and unfortunately this can only be a three-film tribute to the late actor. That's all the films I have, unless I want to go back and find some obscure movie he was in before his breakout role as Jackie Robinson in "42". Before that he'd made the rounds doing TV work, small roles on "ER" or "Law & Order", but most every actor goes through that. I've already seen him as James Brown in "Get on Up" and as Thurgood Marshall in "Marshall", and he could have made more appearances as Black Panther if his time hadn't been cut so short, so unless I watch "Draft Day" (and why would I?) this is probably the end of the road. Working with Spike Lee and appearing in an August Wilson work were apparently his bucket list items, so it's good that he got to cross those items off. Even after his cancer diagnosis, he was known for doing charity work, for the Boys & Girls Club of Harlem, the Jackie Robinson Foundation, and large donations of PPE to hospitals at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. He's already got the Golden Globe for "Ma Rainey's Black Bottom", now we'll find out in two weeks if he gets a posthumous Oscar, too.
Speaking of Oscars, here are tomorrow's Oscar-nominated films on TCM for Sunday, April 11, which is Day 11 of "31 Days of Oscar":
7:30 am "I Vitelloni" (1953)
9:30 am "I Want to Live!" (1958)
11:45 am "I Want You" (1951)
1:30 pm "Ice Castles" (1978)
3:30 pm "I'll Cry Tomorrow" (1955)
5:45 pm "Imitation of Life" (1959)
8:00 pm "In Cold Blood" (1967) - SEEN IT
10:30 pm "In the Heat of the Night" (1967) - SEEN IT
12:30 pm "Inherit the Wind" (1960) - SEEN IT
2:45 am "Inside Daisy Clover" (1965) - SEEN IT
5:00 am "Interiors" (1978) - SEEN IT
Hmm, it seems somebody at TCM didn't get the memo about the Woody Allen boycott, because they're running "Interiors" - yet "Annie Hall" and "Hannah and Her Sisters" were noticeably absent from the countdown, so who knows. They probably have to put a mix together based on which films they have the rights to, and then figure out how to get the most popular classics on during prime time, and there are probably other factors I'm not aware of. But TCM and I are both programming films on racial topics, I've never seen "Imitation of Life", but I know it's about an African-American widow with a mixed-race daughter. And "In the Heat of the Night" is about a black police detective investigating a murder in a racially hostile town. It's not the film that Sidney Poitier won his Oscar for, but I'm still taking this as a good omen for Boseman.
Anyway, I've got a little late-weekend rally coming, with the last 5 Sunday films seen, but 5 seen out of 11 is basically a push, so with 57 seen out of 124, I'm still holding at 46%.
THE PLOT: An embattled NYPD detective is thrust into a citywide manhunt for a pair of cop killers after uncovering a massive and unexpected conspiracy.
AFTER: There are really two stories being told here, and you might think that two for the price of one is a pretty good deal. But I was more interested in the first story, where two cop-killers are on the loose in New York City, and the NYPD has to authorize a lockdown of the city by closing the 21 bridges (and tunnels...) leading out of Manhattan, and then narrow down the search by neighborhoods until they're found. Oh, and there's a ticking time clock, because those bridges need to be opened again in time for the morning commute. That's an interesting angle for a story - but the precinct-wide corruption that's accidentally exposed here, I found that to be a lot less compelling.
There is probably corruption and definitely some injustice within the police, but this story is kind of asking me to be disappointed in the cops for the wrong reasons. How could an entire precinct be involved in something like this, without anyone else finding out about it? Surely people must have transferred in and out of the department over the years, and word would have spread. Or perhaps if their scheme was working well then nobody would have ever transferred out, but then THAT would have been noticed, by IAB or some other agency. Gee, the 85th precinct had no transfers last year, and every single officer bought a new house and a new car. That probably means something, right?
The lead character here has a track record of catching cop-killers (or is he a cop-killer-killer?) who JUST got out of an IAB investigation into his record. (NP: Would he be back on duty so quickly after this investigation?) So he's called into service when 7 cops are killed after checking out a robbery at a wine store. (NP: Why is he put in charge, when he doesn't outrank the captain of the precinct?) It seems there was a drug theft gone bad, as the two thieves found 10 times the amount of coke they were expecting to steal. (NP: How is this a problem? Sounds like a success to me...)
But too many drugs means too much money, and the thieves then need help turning the drugs into money, and turning the money into something else. Maybe they should have just left town ASAP, and just driven to Montana or something, because sticking around in town to broker a better deal gives the NYPD time to lock down the city. Jeez, I feel like there's something to this story, but it's not quite perfect. It takes years to develop, shoot and edit a movie, during which time we all encountered a real lockdown of NYC (and everywhere else) but for different reasons, and we all became aware of problems within the police ranks, but also for different reasons. Calls to defund the police came because of deep-seated racial intolerance that led to civilian deaths, and not for the reasons depicted here.
A few tweaks here and there, and this film could have been a prescient set of home runs - like if the black detective had to run his investigation but encountered problems from an all-white precinct, or if both thieves here were black, and killed by officers, anything along those lines could have made this feel more relevant, but it is what it is, this is the story we're presented with. So you can probably expect the good guys to win and the bad guys to die, and there are an awful lot more of the latter here. What begins as very complicated finishes up just a bit too simply.
Also starring Sienna Miller (last seen in "The Catcher Was a Spy"), J.K. Simmons (last heard in "Klaus"), Stephan James (last seen in "Selma"), Taylor Kitsch (last seen in "Only the Brave"), Keith David (last seen in "All About Steve"), Alexander Siddig (last seen in "The Fifth Estate"), Louis Cancelmi (last seen in "The Irishman"), Victoria Cartagena, Gary Carr, Morocco Omari, Chris Ghaffari (last seen in "The Report"), Darren Lipari, Adriane Lenox (last seen in "The Blind Side"), Jamie Neumann, Obi Abili, Andy Truschinski, Sarah Ellen Stephens, Dale Pavinski, Christian Isaiah, with a cameo from Pat Kiernan.
RATING: 5 out of 10 traffic cameras
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