BEFORE: Alicia Vikander carries over again from "The Green Knight" - that's 5 in a row for her, and it brings me to another century mark, signifying that Movie Year 15 is now 2/3 over. Two more months of regulation play, then the horror chain, then maybe 18 or 20 films to get me to something for the holidays, and that'll be another one for the books.
I got to the dentist today, and this is after jury duty last week and the podiatrist a couple weeks before that. Tomorrow I've got an appointment to get my hearing aid serviced, and after that I may try to go to the movies again, catch "Asteroid City" before it disappears from NYC theaters. I think that "Indiana Jones" will probably be around another week or two.
It's great that I'm getting to these things during my time off, but I've still got 30 days before the theater opens up again for the fall semester, unless something changes. Financially I think I'm doing OK, but mentally I feel too homebound, that's why I've been looking for things to do on my days off. It's kind of too late to get a summer job now and work it for only a month, especially if any kind of training is involved. The fact that I've applied for about 6 or 7 jobs and heard nothing seems to indicate that I may have missed my chance, anyway.
THE PLOT: JR busts out of prison with Brendan Lynch, Australia's most notorious criminal, and joins Lynch's gang for a gold heist that soon pits the two men against one another.
AFTER: I like to at least try and program big, important films on the century marks, but sometimes it's just impossible. Neither "Blue Bayou" or "The Green Knight" felt important enough, and anyway I would have needed to find another Alicia Vikander film to make one of those Big Movie #4,500. So I guess I'm going to settle for "Son of a Gun", which is a movie I never heard of before it started appearing on HBO and HBO Max. Well, hell, if it's got Ewan McGregor in it, then I should at least consider it, right?
Well, it's a prison break film AND a heist film, all in one, so that's double the value. But if it tries to be both of those things, is it going to be the BEST representation of either of those genres? Hmm, I'm not so sure. So let's see, prison break, check - heist, check - and then of course it resorts to the classic sort of "Treasure of the Sierra Madre" denouement where the criminals don't trust each other with the loot so it just comes down to who double-crosses the other one first, or I guess last.
This is also something of an indictment of the Australia prison system, or perhaps all prisons everywhere. JR is imprisoned for six months (probably out in three) for a minor crime, but just being in prison puts him in the orbit of the most notorious Australian bank robber, who for some reason is Scottish. JR notices that his cellmate is being sexually abused by "Dave" and his gang, and finds himself starting fights to distract the gang and keep his cellmate safe. But then when his cellmate tries to commit suicide, the gang turns their attention to JR.
Armed robber Brendan Lynch steps in with his gang and keeps JR safe, but in return they enlist his help in getting out of prison - after JR gets released, it's a simple matter of hijacking a helicopter and landing it in the prison yard. Sure, what could possibly go wrong? After Lynch and his men get to their safe house, the smart thing to do would be to lay low for months, but instead a job comes up from the crime lord that Lynch has been playing long-distance chess with, and JR gets a spot on the gang to replace Merv, who lied about why he was in prison in the first place. (He said it was for assault & battery, but he really raped a school girl, and apparently that's too far over the line, even criminals have their standards, it seems.)
The heist is at a gold quarry in Kalgoorlie, as the low man on the totem pole (and one assumes, the skinniest) JR is tasked with crawling through the ducts in order to drop into the foundry and hold everyone at gunpoint while he unlocks the door for the other gang members, plus the screw-up nephew of the crimelord, who's sure to screw everything up. The foundry gets surrounded by police, but the gang plans to dress like the mine workers and walk out among the hostages, so the cops can't tell who's who, then start shooting until the getaway driver can pull up. It's a solid plan, but it doesn't exactly go completely smoothly.
The getaway driver (a race car driver at his day job) manages to pull a "Baby Driver" and loses the pursuing vehicles, then the car pulls into a truck (similar to in "The Place Beyond the Pines") in order to disappear. Finally once the gold is unloaded the car is set on fire AND pushed off a cliff into the lake for good measure. Well, at least these guys are thorough.
Oh, yeah, Alicia Vikander. JR had the dumb idea to fall for Tasha, the crime lord's girlfriend, or at least she's his eye candy, she swears it's not a sexual relationship - but maybe that's just what she WOULD say to a young interested criminal. (Where have I SEEN this actor before? Oh, right, he plays Nightwing on WB's "Titans" show. I've only seen seasons 1 and 2, which they aired on cable, I suppose I could watch season 3 on HBO Max, I do have the time now. Maybe.). Anyway, JR naively thinks that the crime lord's eye candy is going to run off with him after the heist is over, and Lynch keeps saying he's nuts, and JR needs to focus on the heist and not getting any other kind of action.
Well, then the race is on for everyone who worked together to plan and implement the heist can't wait to betray each other, like, sure, what did you expect, these people are CRIMINALS, did you think there would be "honor among thieves"? That's probably just a saying. The crimelord betrays everyone, forcing JR and Lynch to go back to Melbourne, where the fence is, disguised as priests, and steal back the gold that should have been part of their cut. So hey, maybe JR will end up with Tasha after all. Lynch offers JR less than half of their cut to disappear, but JR seems to have a different plan. So in the end it just came down to which one of them was the better planner, or chess player, and of course this was established earlier on in the film.
Sure, it's a bit by-the-numbers, but it hits all the expected elements of a heist film with a few double- and triple-crosses later on. Some of these elements might be a bit clichéd, but writers keep using them because they do work.
Also starring Ewan McGregor (last heard in "Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio"), Brenton Thwaites (last seen in "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales"), Matt Nable (last seen in "Hacksaw Ridge"), Eddie Baroo (last seen in "Australia"), Kazimir Sas, Sam Hutchin, Jacek Koman (last seen in "Defiance"), Tom Budge (last seen in "Larry Crowne"), Marko Jovanovic, Ivan Lightbody, Soa Palelei, Lucas Brown, Damon Herriman (last seen in "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood..."), Nash Edgerton (last seen in "The Invisible Man" (2020)), Russell Kiefel, John Boxer, Mick Innes.
RATING: 6 out of 10 dumplings that are hard to pick up with chopsticks
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