BEFORE: Arturo Castro carries over from "The Menu", and I'm back on track. This is where I was planning to end up after "No Time to Die", linking via Ana de Armas - so I'm in the same place, just one slot later. I've got to maintain this pace if I'm going to finish January on time - there were 31 films, then I added two, but then I moved one to March, so let's close out January with 32 films, I'm fine with that.
Oh, yeah, today was Oscar nomination day - let's see how I did. Speaking of Ana de Armas, she got a nomination for "Blonde", which is ON my schedule for this week, whaddaya know. Michelle Yeoh is also nominated for Best Actress for "Everything Everywhere All at Once", which I watched 10 days ago. That's TWO in the same category. "Everything Everywhere" got 11 nominations, so whatever else happens, I've got something to root for. But that's only ONE of the 10 films nominated for Best Picture, and that's not a great percentage. I've got some more work to do, I guess.
Best Actor? I've seen 0 out of 5, and who the hell is Paul Mescal? Best Supporting Actor, I've only seen Ke Huy Quan's performance, but hey, maybe he'll win. Best Supporting Actress, I covered TWO nominees with one film because both Jamie Lee Curtis and Stephanie Hsu got noms. Hong Chau got nominated, but it was for "The Whale" and not for "The Menu". Oops. And Best Director, also the Daniels from "Everything Everywhere", but don't forget that one of them played a guy who had sex with a horse, that could make it hard to win an Oscar.
Best Original screenplay - again, only "Everything Everywhere" and Best Adapted Screenplay, I've crossed off only "Glass Onion". Best Editing and Best Costume and both Best Song and Best Score, I've only got that same dog in the fight, "Everything Everywhere", Best Visual Effects and Best Make-up, I've only seen "The Batman". Best Animated Feature, I've only seen "Turning Red". Best Cinematography and Best Production Design, I've got squattola.
OK, so I'm not out of it, but my January schedule is set and February is dedicated to romance, so I can't really right this ship until mid-March. Some nominated movies I already have on my DVR or have burned to DVD - that's "The Banshees of Inisherin", "Elvis", "Top Gun: Maverick", and I want to see "Black Panther: Wakanda Forever", but not enough to spend money at a movie theater, so as SOON as it's on Disney+ I can program it. "The Sea Beast" and "Guillermo Del Toro's Pinocchio" are on Netflix, but I haven't been able to link to them yet. I'm afraid that for the moment, that's the best I can do. "Avatar: The Way of Water" is also in theaters, but I've been avoiding it.
THE PLOT: An ex-convict working undercover intentionally gets himself incarcerated again in order to infiltrate the mob at a maximum security prison.
AFTER: This is a serviceable, very informative action/prison movie in which an ex-con goes undercover with the Polish mafia, and then undercover AGAIN in prison to break that organizations hold on the fentanyl market for the FBI. So we all learn a couple of important things, first that there IS a Polish mafia, and second that you should NEVER trust the FBI - they'll use you to get the information they need and then leave you in the prison where they put you, where you'll either serve out your fake time, or more likely get shanked for being a snitch. Good to know.
Earlier, he had been released from prison early, provided that he work as an informer - probably sounded like a good deal at the time, he could get back to his wife and daughter. But the way the Polish mafia works, apparently, is they keep an eye on your house, and if they see your family packing up luggage or taking off on a long car trip, they drop by with a bunch of Polish food, and then once your family is full of kielbasa, pierogis and stuffed cabbage, trust me, they're not running anywhere. It's fiendishly clever - I grew up with a Polish grandfather so I know this to be true.
Meanwhile, our "hero", Peter Koslow, is wearing a wire and trying to get the evidence for the FBI about the 6-key shipment of fentanyl - but his partner insists on selling some of the drugs to a buyer, and the deal goes south when the customer seems shady, then things get worse when he reveals himself as an undercover cop and gets shot. Now the FBI has a sting operation that's tangentially responsible for a dead cop, and that won't look good in the press. Meanwhile the Polish crime boss, the General, wants Koslow's expertise to deal the fentanyl inside the prison where he did his time. The FBI thinks this is a great opportunity, they can use Koslow on the inside to figure out the whole network, and then once they have the list of names, they can shut down the Polish mafia and pull their informant. OR, and this is another way to go, they can get the list of names, and keep the only witness to the shooting in the prison, where his life expectancy after turning in the evidence will be about 10 minutes. Problems solved, right?
Koslow, for some reason, doesn't want to go along with the FBI's plan - thankfully he also gets contacted by the dead cop's commanding officer, who offers to pull him from the prison, all he's got to do is find the guy nicknamed "Vermin" and he'll relay the SOS message. Dude, it's a lifeline, all you have to do is grab that rope, I wonder why he didn't take this deal, I guess it wasn't "cinematic" enough or something. Instead Koslow opts for stabbing one of the hacks and a very complicated plan that involves tricking the NYPD snipers that have eyes on him. But whatever, brother, you do you.
Part of this film was shot in New York, and part in Gloucester, UK. I guess you can't find an abandoned prison just anywhere - I'm not sure how they got NYPD and NYFD vehicles to England, but maybe they never appeared in the same shot as the prison, I'm not sure. That sure looked like the Verrazano-Narrows bridge, which runs between Brooklyn and Staten Island, but it couldn't have been, there's no prison anywhere near that bridge. Aha, I figured it out, and this took a LOT of digging around on the internet, but that WAS the Verrazano bridge, and the camera panned down to Fort Wadsworth on Staten Island, which is near the bridge. BUT some visual effects were used to replace the abandoned military fort with what looks like a modern prison. I probably could have done something more constructive with my afternoon, but this is where we find ourselves. I found photos online where the front wall and entrance to Fort Wadsworth match what was seen in the movie, it's the same angle and everything, but the building exteriors were (apparently) special effects. It makes some sense, a fort and a prison would have the same type of wall all the way around. Curse all you damn fakey web-sites out there for just repeating the same old half-true information over and over, I'll do my own damn research if it suits me.
But since this film with a $60 million budget only took in $3 million worldwide, it seems that maybe nobody else cares. Nobody else watched this, other than me, so how could they care?
Also starring Joel Kinnaman (last seen in "Child 44"), Rosamund Pike (last seen in "An Education"), Common (last seen in "Ava"), Clive Owen, Ana de Armas (last seen in "No Time to Die"), Eugene Lipinski (last seen in "Warcraft"), Joanna Kaczynska, Edwin de la Renta, Ruth Bradley (last seen in "Flyboys"), Sam Spruell (also last seen in "Child 44"), Aylam Orian (last seen in "Ford v Ferrari"), Karma Meyer, Mateusz Kosciukiewicz, Abdul-Ahad Patel, Martin McCann (last seen in "Lost in London"), Srbo Markovic, Ignacy Rybarczyk, Alma Di Stefano, Preston Sadleir, John D. Hickman (last seen in "The Vault"), Jenna Willis, Valeria Vereau, Miroslaw Haniszewski, Matthew Marsh (last seen in "The Contractor"), Charles Mnene, Nick Preston, Scott Anderson (last seen in "Hostiles"), Alphonso Austin (last seen in "The Hustle"), Daniel Duru, Peter Parker Mensah,
RATING: 6 out of 10 misspelled tattoos
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