BEFORE: Good news, I found the path to July 4th - well, it's A path to a July 4th film. OK, it's a path to a film that has "American" in the title, but that's going to have to do - the film really isn't about American history or anything like that - but I didn't have a lot of great choices like "Birth of a Nation" or "The Patriot" left on the list, and I tend to save war movies for Memorial Day or Veterans' Day, so it is what it is. I had to decide whether to go thematically or just by title - I suppose I could TRY to get more "American" with my choice, or that documentary about the founder of Nathan's hot dogs would fit the bill, but if I can't get there, I'm OK with my current choice. No spoilers, we'll get there soon enough. Now I've got a little bit of time before I need to start figuring out my October specialty horror chain, because wherever that starts is where my August/September chain needs to finish. Right?
Jude Law carries over again from "Dom Hemingway".
FOLLOW-UP TO: "Domino" (Movie #4,331)
THE PLOT: A woman seeks revenge against those who orchestrated a plane crash that killed her family.
AFTER: Oh, man, I feel like I really got tricked into watching this film, not cool. The synopsis says it's about a woman who gets her revenge on the people who killed her family in a plane crash, but is that REALLY what's happening here? No, really, I'm asking if that's what happened in this film, because I watched it and I sure couldn't tell what was happening, most of the time.
It's misleading because nobody set out to kill her family by blowing up that plane, somebody was trying to kill someone else on the plane, and her family was collateral damage. The bomber was trying to kill (as far as I can tell) a Muslim reformer who happened to be on the same plane. And losing her family sent Stephanie Patrick into a tail-spin, causing her to become a drug-addicted prostitute who doesn't do much but stare into the camera and think about her dead family members. Umm, sure, that could happen?
But one day a client turns out to really be a newspaper journalist, looking for her because he's an expert on this plane crash somehow, and he wants to tell her what he's learned about it. And after Stephanie's pimps rough him up and throw him down a flight of stairs, she decides to quit being a drug-addicted prostitute and go live with the reporter while she gets herself clean. Umm, sure, that could happen?
She learns from the reporter the likely identity of the engineering student who built the bomb, and she sneaks out to find him in the college cafeteria, she has a gun but she can't bring herself to shoot him under the table. Instead he walks out with her bag of evidence, which leads him back to the reporter, who then winds up dead. Stephanie realizes from this that she's suddenly lost her place to crash, and also that she's very very bad at the whole revenge thing. So, she flies to Scotland (?) and tracks down a discgraced former MI6 agent, who turns her into a super-agent by way of an extensive training montage. Umm, sure, that could happen?
Before long, she's adopted the identity of "Petra", the MI6 agent's old partner, who he also had to kill for some reason, and within a month or two, she's got weapons training, martial arts skills, explosives expertise, and she's a master of disguise. Do I even need to ask it again at this point?
Stephanie/Petra gets a new contact, a former CIA agent, who puts her in touch with that dead Muslim reformer's father, who finances her operation to kill anyone and everyone associated with the bombing. And she finally gets to kill that bombmaker she pulled a gun on in the cafeteria, only this time she knows how to do it, and she's much much better at killing. This is all quite stupid, and we haven't even gotten to the big double-cross yet. The cardinal sin here is to follow that old adage about keeping your enemies closer, which never really made much sense, and then Stephanie treating all of her partners like casual relationships, with the goal of breaking up with them all before they can break up with her. I don't think espionage and counter-terrorism work like this, otherwise nothing would ever get done, it would just be every spy in the business killing each other and before long everybody at every agency would be dead, faster than they could train new agents.
And what is the obsession with turning normal women into deadly assassins by way of a standard "Rocky Balboa"-like montage? Don't people go to special training centers to become field agents and doesn't that take like YEARS instead of just a few weeks? Why does she get some special accelerated course that makes her a killing machine practically overnight? And why are there so many movies about this, like "Domino" and "Hanna" and "Ava" and "Columbiana" and "Atomic Blonde"? And two more on my list coming up in July, now I'm really not looking forward to them, now that I realize it's a formula that just relies on casting hot actresses as would-be assassins...give me a freakin' break.
Also starring Blake Lively (last seen in "The Private Lives of Pippa Lee"), Sterling K. Brown (last heard in "Frozen II"), Max Casella (last seen in "Narrowsburg"), Geoff Bell (last seen in "RocknRolla"), Richard Brake (last seen in "Doom"), Raza Jaffrey (last seen in "Sweet Girl"), Tawfeek Barhom (last seen in "Mary Magdalene"), Nasser Memarzia (last seen in "Kingdom of Heaven"), Amira Ghazalla (last seen in "Star Wars: Episode VIII - The Last Jedi"), Elly Curtis, David Duggan, Matilda Ziegler, Bill O'Connell, Robert Mullins, Ivana Basic, Irma Mali, Jade Anouka (last seen in "Last Christmas"), Sarah Gallagher, Hafsia Herzi, Nuala Kelly, Hugh Scully, Shane Whisker, with a cameo from Daniel Mays (last seen in "Mr. Nobody")
RATING: 3 out of 10 hotel bodyguards
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