BEFORE: Ryan Reynolds carries over from "Free Guy" - and I realize I'm creating a couple "roads not taken" by cutting to this one. First off, I realized too late that Chris Evans had a cameo in "Don't Look Up", I could have squeezed another Oscar-nominated film in there, that's a missed opportunity. BUT, it's not a mistake, especially if it turns out later on that I need that film to make an important connection - that film has a big cast with prominent actors, and I've learned by doing to keep those good opportunities open, sometimes.
Also, with "The Rock" making an appearance (voice only) in "Free Guy" there was another way of doing this where I could have crammed several other films with Dwayne Johnson here, and ending with "Red Notice", then continuing as planned - but that won't work either, because there are only so many days until Easter, and I'm on a tight schedule already. So now I have to re-schedule "Jungle Cruise", "Walking Tall", "Switch" and "Empire State", but I think I already see a way to do that, right after Mother's Day. That could help bridge that 41-day gap between Mother's Day and Father's Day, but JEEZ, I forgot about Memorial Day, so maybe I should think of that as two 20-day gaps instead of one 40-day gap. That could be easier to fill - so maybe I should check to see if there are any war-based films left on the list.
Today was the World War II-based day on TCM's "31 Days of Oscar" line-up, but tomorrow, March 23, they're back on the 1950's:
8:30 am "Les Girls" (1957)
10:30 am "The Solid Gold Cadillac" (1956)
12:30 pm "Designing Woman" (1957)
2:30 pm "Tom Thumb" (1958)
4:30 pm "Lili" (1953)
6:00 pm "Cyrano de Bergerac" (1950)
8:00 pm "Harvey" (1950)
10:00 pm "Lust for Life" (1956)
12:15 am "On the Waterfront" (1954)
2:15 am "A Streetcar Named Desire" (1951)
4:30 am "The Old Man and the Sea" (1958)
Ah, they're back in a decade where I've seen more films - I believe I've seen five of these: "Harvey", "Lust for Life", "On the Waterfront", "A Streetcar Named Desire" and "The Old Man and the Sea" - so another 5 out of 11 brings me to 102 seen out of 257, or 39.6%, up just a bit. Tomorrow might be my redemption day, though.
THE PLOT: An Interpol agent tracks the world's most wanted art thief.
AFTER: Well, if "Free Guy" was a little bit of "Boss Level", part "Deadpool", mixed with "Jumanji: The Next Level", with bits of "Inception" and "The Matrix" thrown in for good measure, then this one's something of a mash-up of "National Treasure", "Raiders of the Lost Ark", "Ocean's Eleven", James Bond films, a little "Mission: Impossible" and of course hints of "Deadpool" and "Wonder Woman" - but those are all good things, great movies to borrow from, so then the hope just becomes that putting all those little pieces together creates something bigger than the sum of its parts.
I think this one is just that, because like "Free Guy", it's so much damn fun. The stunts are great, and there are a lot of them, all that's missing there is the "Deadpool" costume, but I know that somebody, somewhere, is working all that out, and we should have another "Deadpool" movie before TOO long. I hope there's another "Red Notice" film in the works, too, I'd watch that, more than likely, I'm all about the sequels if they're good enough. Man, it's just Netflix's world now, isn't it, and we all just scroll through it? Since this was never in theaters, they don't HAVE to reveal the budget for this movie, but IMDB puts it at $160 million, but Wiki says it was more like $200 million - that's like the GDP of a small country, right? You could maybe cure a disease for that kind of money, that's the only drawback, that we can enjoy this film, but people are still going to be suffering from Crohn's Disease or that one that makes your eyeballs all bulgy. But it's not up to me where the money goes, and it's too late to stop that Netflix train or reroute the money that was spent here for another purpose. Maybe I'm in the wrong line of work.
They really did film all over - Rome, Sardinia, Paris, Bali, Spain, Egypt, Thailand and the Cayman Islands - well, there's the reason for the high budget, I guess, plus the salaries of the three big stars. Or maybe they stayed in a studio in Atlanta, Georgia and they green-screened everything, how would I know? Somebody got to travel all over the world filming beautiful locations, maybe it was just a camera crew getting B-roll. But again, I'm getting off the point - I just love figuring out how movies are made, though.
The plot here concerns three relics, Cleopatra's jeweled eggs, supposedly a wedding gift from Marc Anthony to the Egyptian queen, one's in a museum, the other's owned by a shady Italian collector, and the third has never been found. Some Egyptian billionaire wants them for his daughter's wedding (she's also named Cleopatra) but will only pay a fortune for all three together, because reasons. This sets in motion a chain of events where an expert art thief sets out to steal the first one, and an American FBI criminal profiler arrives to stop him, only he's JUST a bit late. The art dealer's competition, a woman nicknamed "The Bishop" is also in the mix, and the three are eternally at odds with each other, alternately working against each other (and occasionally together) to see who can come out on top. Then there's an Interpol agent who's out to get one or all of them, she comes to believe that the FBI agent has gone rogue because he works with the art thief to clear his name, after the OTHER art thief frames him for one of the thefts. Damn, but I love me a good double-cross movie that turns into a triple-cross or maybe even a quadruple-cross.
Then, of course, the main question is who's zooming who, and by working together do these enemies turn into friends, or frenemies, or whether everybody's just using everybody else to get ahead. Well, it's not going to be settled during this movie if there are sequels planned, that's for sure - but at least there are constantly shifting sands in these relationships that are forged in the fire of art heists and prison escapes. The roller coaster ride doesn't end until the clock runs out, then we'll see who's in handcuffs, and also if that's in a good way or a bad way.
If I've got a NITPICK POINT tonight, with all these plans-within-plans and shifting alliances, none of it would have been possible if the FBI profiler hadn't been placed in the same cell with the art thief, because they work together to escape. But who put them in the same cell? Neither one had that kind of pull, and why would the Interpol agent arrange that? It's a dumb idea, especially if she thought they might be in cahoots - or did she think they hated each other so much that sharing a cell together would be a form of torture? Still, it seems that character made a terrible mistake, unless there's some other explanation for this.
Also starring Dwayne Johnson (also carrying over from "Free Guy"), Gal Gadot (last seen in "Wonder Woman 1984"), Chris Diamantopoulos (last seen in "The Art of the Steal"), Ritu Arya, Ivan Mbakop, Vincenzo Amato (last seen in "Unbroken"), Rafael Petardi, Daniel Bernhardt (last seen in "Escape Plan: The Extractors"), Guy Nardulli, Ethan Herschenfeld, Brenna Marie Narayan, Ed Sheeran (last seen in "Yesterday"), with archive footage of Paul Hollywood, Adolf Hitler (last seen in "The Eagle Has Landed")
RATING: 8 out of 10 useless museum security guards
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