BEFORE: Well, I don't know if there could be a clearer sign that the pandemic is essentially over - beyond me not needing to wear a mask the whole time I was down South last month. I was on the subway today at about 3:30 pm, and it was PACKED, and this was a train going into Manhattan, not coming out. So people aren't just back to work, they're working afternoon or evening shifts, or late night events - this was on a Thursday, so who knows, maybe Thursday's back to being a night where people want to go out and have fun again. (Remember FUN?). Or maybe there's another reason why everyone was going into the city, I don't know - but six months ago on a Thursday in the afternoon, I would have almost had the train to myself. Plus, the theater where I worked just dropped the vaccine checks for external events, but they're going to keep it in place for school events, and the mask mandate is still in effect, but change is definitely in the air. Let's just hope that six new COVID variants aren't.
Da'Vine Joy Randolph carries over from "Kajillionaire".
THE PLOT: A demoted police officer assigned to a call dispatch is conflicted when he receives an ermergency
AFTER: This is the kind of film that I expected to see a lot of, made during the pandemic, in that a lot of this film features just one actor in one room, who needs to be on the phone a lot. Look, the pandemic was rough on Hollywood, I get it, and there are SAG members who need to WORK just to keep their memberships active, and thus films still need to be made, people still need to be hired, or else they could lose their spot in the union, and then good luck getting back in. Once you're out, if you can't get hired for jobs, because you're no longer in the union, then how are you going to get your required jobs to get back in? The film industry might be a lot like the construction industry in some ways, there are probably people on the payroll for every movie who didn't DO anything, but they're on the roster and the payroll and then they get to keep their union membership, provided they're current on their dues. It's a weird system, for sure.
There's a famous actor who rented out the theater I work at, just to show his friends a film he directed during the pandemic, and it was along these same lines, it's about a helpline volunteer who fields calls from people who are depressed and lonely - I won't mention the name of the film or the actor, because the film may not get released or go anywhere, but it's the same kind of project, something that could be filmed in one location with most of the actors LITERALLY phoning in their performances. If you don't have the cast list handy, you can play "Name That Voice" or some kind of identification game similar to "The Masked Singer" or the game I play where I try to identify the actor doing the voice-over in every commercial, usually it's Jon Hamm or Donald Sutherland, but sometimes it's Jeff Bridges or John Goodman.
Anyway, this film follows a night in the life of a police officer who's had some kind of incident a few months prior, and it's the day before his court appearance in that case. He's working at a 911 call center, which I guess is some form of punishment or rehab or work-your-way-back kind of position, which only seems weird because don't they HAVE 911 operators already, and don't THEY have some kind of union? Or shouldn't there be some kind of special training involved in becoming a 911 operator? That seems like it might take an entirely different skill set than the one needed to be a police officer - I mean, a 911 officer very rarely needs to shoot a gun or disarm an assailant, but they do need to be attentive and compassionate and be able to think quickly and respond by asking the right questions. Cops also need to be attentive and responsive, but in a different way, know what I mean? I'm just saying that I'd like to see the paperwork that proves that some research was done here, that a police officer might be put to work as a 911 operator, like maybe if they were short-staffed or something? Otherwise I'm not really buying it.
What the film wants us to believe is that one incoming emergency call, and the way that the (former?) police officer responds to it somehow transforms him, he really focuses on this one call from a woman who seems to have been taken hostage, and sets out to "solve" the crime, which really isn't something that a 911 operator usually does. Most of the time the operator will get the caller in touch with the fire department, or arrange for an ambulance or cop car to be sent to their location, and that's it. Most 911 operators aren't trained to "solve" or stop crimes, they're just the go-between. Usually, unless somebody needs to make a film about a person in one location who needs to make a lot of phone calls to solve a problem. But then isn't this like cheating, in a way? People used to make this kind of film to save money on production costs, now they make this kind of film to get around pandemic filming hindrances.
Well, hey, at least the case turns out to be much, much more complicated than it first appears, so there's that, and the police officer gets a new outlook on life out of the deal, even though that may come at great cost in the end. But I'm still not sure that I'm buying into any of this.
Also starring Jake Gyllenhaal (last seen in "End of Watch"), Christina Vidal (last seen in "I Think I Love My Wife"), Eli Goree (last seen in "One Night in Miami...", Adrian Martinez (last seen in "Once Upon a Time in Venice"), Oscar Balderrama, Becky Wu, Bret Eric Porter, Maurice Webster, and the voices of Riley Keough (last seen in "The Runaways"), Peter Sarsgaard (last seen in "The Lost Daughter"), Ethan Hawke (last seen in "The Purge"), Christiana Montoya, David Castañeda (also last seen in "End of Watch"), Beau Knapp (last seen in "Death Wish"), Edi Patterson (last seen in "Between Two Ferns: The Movie"), Paul Dano (last seen in "The Batman"), Gillian Zinser (last seen in "Savages"), Terence J. Rotolo, Bill Burr (last seen in "George Carlin's American Dream"), Dillon Lane (last seen in "Charlie Says"), Marlene Forte (last seen in "The Way Back"), Jaime FitzSimons (also last seen in "End of Watch"), Aileen Burdock (last seen in "Bright"), Jonathan Hunt.
RATING: 4 out of 10 recurring headaches
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