BEFORE: Liam Neeson carries over from "The Ice Road". I was all set to watch "Gun Shy" next, but then I realized that if I switched a couple things around, a second actor besides Mr. Neeson would also carry over. See below.
I got in late last night - or should I say, early this morning. There was a Video Game Awards show at the theater, and they had the space until midnight. I didn't get out of there until 1 am, and I didn't get home until 2 am. I was pretty tired, but I still stayed up and watched a movie, because my January schedule is PACKED solid, I don't think I can skip a day without dropping something, and I don't want to drop anything. OK, maybe "Gun Shy".
THE PLOT: A rancher on the Arizona border becomes the unlikely defender of a young Mexican boy desperately fleeing the cartel assassins who've pursued him into the U.S.
AFTER: We usually use the word "holistic" with regards to medicine, that would be medicine that takes treats the whole person, taking mental and social factors into account, rather than just the symptoms of one illness. But the word really refers to the belief that the different parts of something are interconnected, and can only be understood by referencing the whole, and not just the parts. That's as good as a description of the way I watch movies as any, holistically. I'm always hoping that some deeper insight will come from watching THAT one right before THIS one - it rarely happens, but sometimes...
So after switching the order and placing this one right after "The Ice Road", I've determined that this is really the same damn movie, essentially. They share a lead actor, obviously, but not the same director or the same writers. "The Marksman" was released first, but that hardly matters, because it's clearly following a formula, just as a lot of those Bruce Willis movies followed the same formula last year. Liam Neeson drives a truck in both films, it's just a tractor-trailer in one film and a pick-up truck tonight. In one film he has to drive from Winnipeg to northern Manitoba to deliver drilling supplies, and in this one he has to drive from Arizona to Chicago delivering a young boy. See? Same film, only different. While you're at it, just replace "mining company goons" with "Mexican drug cartel" and "disabled brother" with "dead wife", and this thing practically writes itself, like a game of Action Movie Mad Libs.
My point is that the Hollywood system's just going to keep making the same movie over and over again, with different details, if we let them. The best thing you can do is be aware of the formulas, so you'll know them when you see them. Well, at least when he's driving on Route 66, there's very little chance of Liam Neeson's character's truck falling through the ice tonight - especially because it's summer in Arizona and also he's driving on a road, like God intended, and not on a frozen river. Who DOES that?
Jim is a rancher who's behind on his mortgage, and then he's somehow surprised when the bank forecloses. Sure, maybe he had some tough times with his cattle herd, but come on, when people are behind on their mortgage, they KNOW they are. If they get behind and they don't have a plan for catching up, then they're in denial or delusional - but hey, mortgage foreclosures happen every day. There's time to right the ship if you take the proper steps, if he didn't then that's on him. So later in the film, when he's got a hold of some of the money that belongs to the cartel, naturally he burns it. OK, I get that it's dirty money, but nobody who's THAT behind on the mortgage and in their right mind would burn up the money if they could catch up on their debts and not lose the farm. Er, ranch. Gotta call a NITPICK POINT here.
Another N.P. is that it takes Jim far too long for him to figure out that the cartel is tracking him through his credit card purchases. As an ex-military man, I would expect Jim to be more cautious when he was on the run, and also to expect that he could be tracked. I sincerely doubt that the cartel has the tech to tap into the credit card system, but what do I know? I didn't even know the cartel would send so many people into the U.S. just to track down ONE kid. How could that be worth it, 4 guys sneaking across the border and driving halfway across the country just for one kid? What a waste of resources, and why, exactly? Something the kid's uncle did? I'm not even sure. Either way, the kid's on his way to live in Chicago, isn't that punishment enough?
I missed the part where they explained that the border agent that Jim is frequently calling to was his step-daughter. Earlier in the film, when he went over to her place to crash I thought she was an old girlfriend, or maybe a on-again, off-again one. My bad.
Also starring Katheryn Winnick (last seen in "The Dark Tower"), Juan Pablo Raba (last seen in "Peppermint"), Sean A. Rosales (ditto), Teresa Ruiz, Jacob Perez, Dylan Kenin (last seen in "The Harder They Fall"), Luce Rains (last seen in "Running with the Devil"), Alfredo Quiroz (Last seen in "Sicario: Day of the Soldado"), Amber Midthunder (also carrying over from "The Ice Road"), Jose Vasquez, Antonio Leyba, Yediel Quiles, Christian Hicks (last seen in "Tesla"), Grayson Berry, Jose Mijangos, Roger Jerome, Charies David Richards (last seen in "Fathers & Daughters"), Vic Browder, Kellen Boyle. Tommy Lafitte, Jeremy Evitts, Fady Naguib (also carrying over from "The Ice Road", so I guess that makes THREE) with archive footage of Clint Eastwood (last seen in "The Kid Stays in the Picture").
RATING: 5 out of 10 bullet holes in the truck
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