BEFORE: Well, OK, maybe this one doesn't really fit in, but I need this one to connect to the films for Father's Day weekend. Maybe there was another way to get here, but I sure couldn't find it. I already cut two films this week for not fitting in, one was too romance-y and the other was determined to be a horror movie, but I guess I can squeeze in another crime film if it gets me to where I need to be for the weekend's movies.
Spent all day yesterday at the movie theater, a 12-hour shift, and I've got another one just as long tomorrow, but then after the Tribeca Festival is over, I've got two months off from that job, the place is shutting down until late August. Well, it is run by a college so naturally things might be expected to be slower during summer, but I was JUST starting to build up my bank account again, and now I've got to watch my expenses again for the next eight weeks.
Forest Whitaker carries over again from "Dope".
THE PLOT: An undercover cop, disillusioned by the death of his wife, is implicated in the murder of an officer and must struggle to clear himself.
AFTER: This film really wanted to be "Training Day" or "American Gangster", but it feels like it just couldn't get there. I'm not sure Keanu Reeves had the gravitas to play an undercover cop who's grieving the loss of his wife while at the same time trying to uncover corruption in the L.A.P.D.
I also found the plot very hard to follow - I think the point of the film is that 90% of L.A. cops are corrupt in some ways, but they can't all seem to agree on what form the corruption should take, and that's when they end up fighting each other. Real life just can't be like this, right? I think at one point Keanu's character and the guy he was teaming up with (played by Chris Evans) were undercover and they managed to get into a shoot-out with two guys who were also undercover detectives? That's not supposed to happen - don't they have a code word or a secret color that they wear to let the other cops know that they're U.C.'s?
It opens with Ludlow (Keanu's character) selling weapons to a couple Korean gangsters, and they beat him up and take the guns without paying him, they even drive off in his car - but that's what he wanted, he had a tracking device in the car, followed them to their hideout, and then came in shooting to rescue two girls that the gangsters had kidnapped. This opening is probably the high point of the whole film, and the part that makes the most sense, it's all downhill from there. Ludlow re-arranges the scene to make his shooting of the gangsters look justified, and then he's praised as a hero by some cops, but he's accused of being corrupt by others. Well, which is it, or can both things be true?
Ludlow's ex-partner has turned against him, and is most likely feeding information about him to Internal Affairs, and the I.A. guy befriends Ludlow in the hospital, claiming to be an insurance agent. But that's just a cover to get close to Ludlow, only this is not how Internal Affairs officers work - from what I've seen on "Law & Order", they're much more direct, they'll call an officer to their office and make them fill out a report or just question them directly, they don't have to pretend to be insurance agents or some other weird thing.
Not long after, Ludlow goes to confront his ex-partner and follows him to a convenience store, just as two gunmen come in and start shooting up the place - which was weird because they shot dozens of bullets at Ludlow's ex-partner, but somehow the security camera only showed Ludlow accidentally shooting him once. This must have been some kind of set-up, obviously, but who benefited from it? And did we ever find out who the gunmen were, or who they were working for? I watched until the end of the movie but I still don't understand this shooting.
Somehow Ludlow still manages to follow the evidence up the chain to determine who's in charge. Probably it's a high-ranking officer, right? Isn't that how these things usually work? Still, it was very hard for me to piece together what was happening, and who was framing who for what. I feel like I want to just take another mulligan on this one, as I'll probably forget all about this film in a couple of weeks.
Also starring Keanu Reeves (last seen in "Sweet November"), Hugh Laurie (last seen in "The Personal History of David Copperfield"), Chris Evans (last seen in "The Gray Man"), Cedric the Entertainer (last seen in "Code Name: The Cleaner"), Jay Mohr (last seen in "Air"), Terry Crews (last seen in "Gamer"), Naomie Harris (last seen in "No Time to Die"), Common (last seen in "Venus and Serena"), Cle Sloan (last seen in "The Replacement Killers"), Martha Higareda (last seen in "Smokin' Aces 2: Assassins' Ball"), John Corbett (last seen in "My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2"), Amaury Nolasco (last seen in "The Rum Diary"), The Game, Noel Gugliemi (last sen in "The Purge: Anarchy"), Michael Monks (last seen in "End of Watch"), Daryl Gates, Clifton Powell (last seen in "Ray"), Angela Sun, Kenneth Choi (last seen in "Hotel Artemis"), Wally Rudolph, Garret Sato (last seen in "Bulletproof"), Emilio Rivera (last seen in "Cinema Verite"), Michael D. Roberts (last seen in "A Star Is Born"), Jernard Burks (last seen in "Dolemite Is My Name"), Kevin Benton (last seen in "Blue Chips"), Amy Dudgeon, Kirstin Pierce, Kate Clarke (last seen in "Poseidon"), Emiliano Torres.
RATING: 4 out of 10 tiny bottles of vodka
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