Conan the Barbarian (2011)

Year 16, Day 89 - 3/29/24 - Movie #4,689

BEFORE: I'm determined to catch up this holiday weekend, because the whole point in splitting the Brendan Gleeson movies was to put "Calvary" on Easter Sunday.  I'm working Saturday so that doesn't help, but then I've got all day on Sunday, I can post twice if I need to. 

Jason Momoa carries over from "Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom". 

FOLLOW-UP TO: "Conan the Barbarian" (1982) (Movie #1,623)

THE PLOT: A vengeful barbarian warrior sets off to get his revenge on the evil warlord who attacked his village and murdered his father when he was a boy. 

AFTER: This is, of course, a reboot/remake of the Arnold Schwarzenegger franchise, and honestly at first I didn't realize that Jason Momoa had been on the scene prior to playing Aquaman, but he did have some credits to his name before playing superheroes, I mean, sure, nobody just comes out of nowhere and gets into a DC movie.  He was on that same career path as Dwayne Johnson, playing chiseled mythical warriors with superhuman strength, and that's a quick path to success, right?  Except it took him a decade or so to get there, but it tracks. 

God damn, but I've watched a lot of movies - so many that just finding out when I watched the original film from 1982 is a CHORE.  My blog is no longer searchable, that's how many movies I've watched - if I search on "Conan" I'm more likely to get that documentary about Conan O'Brien, that's how many entries I've logged.  Sure, there's a way, without scrolling through a document on my phone that's over 4,000 movies long, hoping to catch a glimpse of the correct film, but it's a matter of going back through the archives now, it's like trying to find a book that's hidden in a library.  Can I possibly remember what year I really decided to focus on Arnold Schwarzenegger movies?  No, of course not, I don't have that kind of brainspace, which of course is why I keep such copious notes.  A search on "Conan the Barbarian" from my blog's main entry page (not the search function) does narrow the possibilities down to about 10, and OK, now I know it was in January of 2014, but should it really be that difficult to find?  Either way, I was late to the Conan party, that's for sure, and now I'm done with the character. 

Or am I?  Marvel Comics must still have the rights, because they revived the character about three years ago in a comic book called "Savage Avengers", they made Conan comic books WAY back in the day and decided to pick it up again in 2019.  Really, I think it was a case of some writer putting his dream team together, with Conan, Wolverine, Punisher, Elektra and Venom working together, just for shits and giggles, I guess.  But this means that Conan is now an official part of the Marvel Universe, and an Avenger (of sorts) at that.  Who can keep track of all the Avengers, since there have been several hundred by now, what with the New Avengers, the Mighty Avengers, the West Coast Avengers, the Great Lakes Avengers, and the Savage ones.  (Marvel, please hire me, I can keep track for you...). I'd seen Conan's enemy Kulan Gath used as a Spider-Man villain before, but Conan wasn't really part of the M.U. until just five years ago. 

(In volume 2, Conan teamed up with Black Knight, Cloak and Dagger, Deathlok, Elektra/Daredevil and Weapon H, and they all went into the future, to the year 2099, before Conan ended up back in the Hyborian Age, where he belonged.  It all got rather silly there before the comic got cancelled.)

But that's neither here nor there, I'm here to talk about the film, which is so very by-the-numbers, from the training of Conan as a young boy to watching his father get killed by Khalar Zym, who went around to all the barbarian tribes to collect the pieces of the ancient Mask of Acheron that would grant him ultimate power over life and death.  Why?  So he can bring back his dead wife Maliva, who was an evil sorceress and thus conquer Hyboria.  But this takes an awful long time, because Khalar Zym and his daughter Marique, have to find a "pureblood" woman to serve as a vessel for Maliva's returning soul, and also to use her blood to bind the mask pieces together. 

It's a good thing that this took so long, because Conan was allowed to grow up big and strong, and he was fairly content to just ride around the country side, freeing slaves and topless women from their oppressors, but then he saw the man with no nose, and was reminded of his mission, to find the evil warlord who killed his father and get his revenge.  To do this, he allows himself to be captured and taken to prison, where the man with no nose is the Captain of the Guard.  Oh, you guys are so asking for it, because Conan's in your prison now, and he's got you right where he wants you.  A couple fights with the guards, your standard prison riot, and soon Conan is torturing the man with no nose to find out everything he needs to know about Khalar Zym. 

Conan finds the pureblood woman, Tamara, who escaped from the monastery just in time, and then he starts working his way up the chain by capturing Zym's right-hand man, Remo.  The first attempt to take down Zym fails, but fortunately Conan's band of pirates arrive just in time to whisk him and Tamara away, so they can try again. Here's where Conan could just escape with Tamara and go far away, which would be a way to defeat the villain, but no, it's just not that kind of movie.  Tamara gets captured by Zym's forces, and they use her blood to fix the mask and then start the process of transferring Zym's dead wife's soul into her body, of course. 

The last half hour, honestly I had no idea what was going on.  Maybe I dozed off a few times, but that's not a good sign for an action movie.  Anyway I rewound back to the start of the final battle and I tried again, concentrated very hard, and nope, I still have no idea what was happening. The finer details of that whole final sequence escaped me, even when I was paying close attention.  Oh well, I can always read about it on Wikipedia to see what went down.  The good guy won and defeated the evil power, right?  Yeah, I thought so - and somehow there were a lot of tentacles involved, and people falling into chasms, as they tend to do. OK, moving on.

This film did poorly at the box office, so there was no interest in making a sequel to the reboot.  There was talk of bringing back Schwarzenegger to the franchise at some point, and showing Conan's adventures when he was older, but those plans fell through in 2017, apparently. 

Also starring Stephen Lang (last seen in "Avatar: The Way of Water"), Rachel Nichols (last seen in "The Amityville Horror"), Ron Perlman (last seen in "Nightmare Alley"), Rose McGowan (last seen in "Scream"), Bob Sapp (last seen in "The Longest Yard"), Leo Howard (last seen in "Shorts"), Steven O'Donnell (last seen in "Breathe"), Nonso Anozie (last seen in "Artemis Fowl"), Raad Rawi (last seen in "The Devil's Double"), Laila Rouass (last seen in "The Four Feathers"), Said Taghmaoui (last seen in "Wonder Woman 1984"), Milton Welsh (last seen in "Aeon Flux"), Nathan Jones (last seen in "Mad Max: Fury Road"), Diana Lyubenova, Ioan Karamfilov, Ivana Staneva, Anton Trendafilov (last seen in "The Way Back"), Gisella Marengo (last seen in "Third Person"), Yoana Petrova, Vladimir Vladimirov, Katarzyna Wolejnio, Mark Amos (last seen in "Django Unchained"), Raw Leiba and the voice of Morgan Freeman (last seen in "Just Getting Started"). 

RATING: 5 out of 10 razor-sharp finger-claws

Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom

Year 16, Day 88 - 3/28/24 - Movie #4,688

BEFORE: Amber Heard carries over from "3 Days to Kill" and Jason Momoa is going to get me super close to my Easter movie.  I realized too late that I had scheduled this film for Thursday, one day before Good Friday, and it maybe would be more fitting there, because that's the day that all the good Catholics eat fish, right? 

I really need to spend Easter Sunday working on my April and May movie schedule, because it's hard to know for sure what to schedule if I don't know what path is going to take me to a good Mother's Day movie.  I was planning on watching "Oppenheimer" right after my April 1 movie, but then I saw that Robert Downey Jr.'s birthday is April 4, so maybe I need to delay it by a couple days, and that works great with my plan because I'll be working all day April 2.

But then if I delay "Oppenheimer" a couple of days, I might as well see if I could stick a few films in-between, plus then there's "Barbie" to consider - not that I have any interest in putting the two films together and watching "Barbenheimer" which was the fad last year allegedly. But those are two films with enormous casts, there are some giant linking opportunities I might be missing out on, and I could link just about ANYWHERE from either film, and that should make things a lot easier, but it doesn't, it makes it harder to decide from all of the possible options.  (And no, the two films do not share any actors, but I know of at least one film that shares actors with both of them, and could serve as a link...but do I want to DO that?)

But then I got to thinking, Oppenheimer's birthday is April 22, so now I don't know what to do, maybe find some more films to cram into the chain and delay that Oscar-winning film even further?  I've just got to block out the path to Mother's Day and figure out what will work best. 

FOLLOW-UP TO: "Aquaman" (Movie #3,174)

THE PLOT: Black Manta seeks revenge on Aquaman for his father's death. Wieldning the Black Trident's power, he becomes a formidable foe.  To defend Atlantis, Aquaman forges an alliance with his imprisoned brother to protect the kingdom. 

AFTER: Well, that first "Aquaman" movie made over a billion dollars, so naturally the studio, Warner/DC/Time/AOL/Discovery/Max/Taco Bell hoped to capitalize on its success by making a sequel, and then of course not veering very far from the storyline of that first film - give the people what they appear to want, right?  And that's how we all get "Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom", which takes all the same characters and elements from that first film and just mixes them up a little - instead of fighting with his half-brother, Ocean Master, Aquaman frees him from prison and they fight on the same side.  Mera, who went all over the world with Aquaman in the last film looking for the macguffin, the Trident of Atlan, is absent for much of this movie because her character gets injured, but really there was some controversy during her recent trial where it was revealed that studio brass didn't think she had good chemistry with Jason Momoa, or something.  So that's why they stepped up with the Ocean Master character, this time he's the one who travels through the desert with Aquaman, and then helps him find Black Manta. 

But really, come on, isn't this the same story, just more of it?  I mean, I'm there for it, but aren't they closing down the DC Extended Universe next year, just to reboot it?  Or was "The Flash" meant to be the closing film, and that film's release date got switched with this one's?  Who releases a superhero film near Christmas, anyway?  Well, I guess there are a few scenes set in the Antarctic and in a frozen underwater kingdom, it's not exactly Christmas-ey but it sure does look awful cold.  

I'll give them points for amping up the environmental messaging, I mean it makes sense for the King of Atlantis to speak about ecological concerns, considering how much plastic and garbage we humans keep dumping in the ocean.  And the Earth is like 75% ocean, right?  You'd think we'd take better care of it, but we don't.  So there's a very strong climate change message here, as Black Manta keeps stealing something called orichalcum from Atlantis, and burning it - not for the energy it produces, but he's actually TRYING to bring about climate change faster.  Well, yeah, he's got to be stopped for sure!  The world's not supposed to be a total fiery hellpit for at least another 75 years, and he's trying to cut that down to FIVE!  

It turns out that Black Manta has been given the Black Trident, which he carries around in two pieces and has to quickly assemble it whenever he wants to fight with it, which seems very unnecessary and inconvenient.  But it also means he's been possessed by Kordax, the brother of King Atlan, who was seen in the flashbacks of the previous film.  Kordax used black magic turn the mermen and merladies of his kingdom, Necrus, into zombie mermaids, and it's a little unclear why he did that, but Wiki says he was trying to usurp the throne of Atlantis.  Ah, so the Black Trident was used to power an insurrection, so just think of January 6, only everyone storming the capital is a zombie mermaid.  As punishment, Trump - wait, I mean Kordax - was frozen in place for hundreds of years, underneath Antarctica, and I guess he's still alive, or at least undead, and he's angry.  I guess with the icecaps melting he figured he could eventually be back on top, and thus the plan to accelerate global warming?

But he needs the blood of King Atlan to break the curse and end his imprisonment, and King Atlan is very dead, but his descendants are still around, and that means Aquaman's mother, Atlanna, is a potential source for his blood, and so is Aquaman, Ocean Master and also Aquaman's baby son, Arthur Jr.  No - he wouldn't, would he?  Yah, he would!

Well, look, at least something exciting is happening, because it seems like Arthur Curry was pretty bored being King of Atlantis, it turns out the job isn't as exciting as he was promised, there's a lot of ceremonial stuff, briefings and meetings and also there's a ruling council that shoots down just about any legislation the King proposes.  Congratulations, that's called government, it's the same all around, sorry the job isn't COOL enough for you, Aquaman.  This probably explains why he leaves to go fight bad guys with the Justice League at every possible opportunity.  Things don't get any better when Atlantis joins the United Nations, I'm sorry to say.  But maybe a giant brine shrimp can address the U.N. Security Council, and that's pretty cool.

They also added a new character, Kingfish, who rules the Sunken Citadel, which is an underwater pirate hang-out, but really, it's impossible to see this character as anything but a Jabba the Hutt rip-off, only he's a fish. Damn, but there are still like six or seven more underwater kingdoms to explore, only there just won't be enough time to get to them all, not with the DC Universe closing down for rebooting.  Aw, that's such a shame...

Also starring Jason Momoa (last seen in "The Flash"), Patrick Wilson (last seen in "Moonfall"), Yahya Abdul-Mateen II (last seen in "The Matrix Resurrections"), Nicole Kidman (last seen in "Val"), Randall Park (last seen in "The People We Hate at the Wedding"), Temuera Morrison (also last seen in "The Flash"), Dolph Lundgren (last heard in "Minions: The Rise of Gru"), Jani Zhao, Pilou Asbaek (last seen in "Overlord"), Indya Moore (last seen in "Escape Room: Tournament of Champions"), Vincent Regan (last seen in "Snow White and the Huntsman"), Natalia Safran (last seen in "Over Her Dead Body"), the voices of Martin Short (last seen in "Windfall") and John Rhys-Davies (last heard in "Sinbad: Beyond the Veil of Mists") and archive footage of Michael Beach (last seen in "Waiting to Exhale")

RATING: 6 out of 10 cans of Guinness (I'll allow it...)

3 Days to Kill

Year 16, Day 87 - 3/27/24 - Movie #4,687

BEFORE: Sometimes I look back at the schedule over the last few days and I just think, "Well nobody else EVER would watch "Lying and Stealing", "Mr. Malcolm's List" and "The Marvels" in that order..." because, well, why would they?  Those movies have nothing in common other than sharing the actors that link them.  This is how I've chosen to live my life, though, and I feel like I'm unique, if nothing else.  At least I'm wasting my time in a constructive way, if that makes any sense. I want it all to add up to some grander purpose, but I'm just not sure if it does. 

Hailee Steinfeld carries over from "The Marvels". 

THE PLOT: A dying CIA agent trying to reconnect with his estranged daughter is offered an experimental drug that could save his life - in exchange for one last assignment. 

AFTER: In 2014, Kevin Costner became the latest actor to play one of those secret agents (or assassins/hit-men) who can "read the room", meaning that they can walk into a room full of enemies and kill them all, using whatever is handy, even if that's just, say, a meat slicer and a panini press.  Hey, sometimes you've just got to make it work, if your gun is jammed and you don't have a knife (or grenade, or garotte, or baseball bat...) on you.  This was a big trend in movies for a few years, like they did it with the Ben Affleck Batman and John Wick and quite a few others.  

But they didn't want this Ethan Renner character to come off like a superhero, so they gave him a disabiliity, he's got brain cancer, which always seems to affect him at the worst possible times, like when he's got the bad guy cornered and it's an easy kill shot, only then his illness takes over and he's down for the count.  So, the level boss gets away, and the princess is in ANOTHER castle, and the game continues until the two hours is almost up.  

Along comes a mysterious woman who gives him a literal lifeline, an experimental drug that MAY cure him, but of course there's a catch, he's got to track down the baddies who got away from the failed CIA operation, and kill them.  Vivi Delay (aka "Ms. Plot Complication") was watching from afar as the sting mission went south, the bomb went off and the Albino got away, despite Renner's attempt to follow him.  It's great that her interests dovetail neatly with those of the Agency, but now he's got to do undercover work, find out the schedule of the Albino AND the Wolf, while trying to re-connect with his estranged wife and teen daughter, who haven't seen him in five years.  Well, come on, the guy's been busy (presumably) saving the world, or maybe just killing a bunch of people who were all bad people, really for sure. 

Of course there are side effects, he can't get too tired, or his body will shut down.  He can't get too excited, either, with a high heart rate or the experimental drug will make him hallucinate.  No worries, a couple shots of vodka will clear his head straighten him out, but now he's got to worry about getting drunk, so it's a delicate balance.  Plus his wife knows what he does for a living, and his daughter does NOT, so he's got to keep hiding things from her, and this would only be a problem if his wife gets a gig in another city and he becomes the primary caregiver for the next few days.  Also if his daughter was secretly going out to clubs and lying to her parents, yeah that would be a big problem, also.

In addition, there's a family of squatters living in his Paris safe house, and the complicated French laws actually prevent him from evicting them - they have more rights than he does to live in his own property, which seems a bit weird.  I'm not sure if this was added to the plot as a social commentary, an attempt to humanize the main character, or just another complication in a long, long list of them.  Well, I guess we really don't want to see a conflict that's TOO easy for the hero, but this is all just a bit ridiculous, as is Renner's obsession with forcing his daughter to ride a bicycle.  He's clearly pining for some father-daughter connection that he missed out on years ago, but COME ON.

And it wasn't just me, that scene where Renner carries his daughter out of the nightclub was a clear visual reference to Kevin Costner rescuing Whitney Houston's character in "The Bodyguard".  They just couldn't resist... apparently there are a few "JFK" easter eggs in here, too.  And Renner learns about the Wolf's whereabouts by capturing his accountant, which is how Eliot Ness got a line on Al Capone in "The Untouchables".  Now I'm surprised that there wasn't a baby carriage bouncing down the steps to the Paris Metro in the subway scene...

Also starring Kevin Costner (last seen in "De Palma"), Amber Heard (last seen in "I Do... Until I Don't"), Connie Nielsen (last seen in "Nobody"), Tomas Lemarquis (last seen in "Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga"), Richard Sammel (last seen in "Spencer"), Marc Andreoni (last seen in "Cheech & Chong's The Corsican Brothers"), Bruno Ricci (last seen in "Captain America: The First Avenger"), Jonas Bloquet (last seen in "The Family"), Marie Guillard (ditto), Eriq Ebouaney (last seen in "Kingdom of Heaven"), Joakhim Sigue, Alison Valence, Jonathan "Big John" Barbezieux, , Michael Vander-Meiren (last seen in "Taken 2"), Eric Naggar (last seen in "Mr. Bean's Holiday"), Patty Hannock, Alizee Delaruelle, Ilyana Delaruelle, Romane Ferreira, Rupert Wynne-James (last seen in "The 15:17 to Paris"), Shane Woodward, Mai Anh Le, Omid Zader (last seen in "Vice" (2018)), Raymond J. Barry (last seen in "The Purge: Election Year"), Rob Roy Fitzgerald (last seen in "Can't Hardly Wait"), Scott Burn, 

RATING: 6 out of 10 rolls of duct tape (it really can be used for anything...)

The Marvels

Year 16, Day 86 - 3/26/24 - Movie #4,686

BEFORE: Here we go, finally back to the MCU, I haven't watched a Marvel movie since last August, when I watched "Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3".  This one was released in November of last year, but I was too busy then wrapping up the year and stressing out over my job situation.  (Didn't even really celebrate much at Christmas.). But that was then and this is now, it's good just to watch some superhero stuff again.  I tried to watch some Marvel miniseries over the break, but I only was able to get to "What If?" Vol. 1.  If I'd had more time, I would have watched the "Ms. Marvel" series, which would have been a great lead-in to this movie, I'm sure.  I can still get to that, also "Echo", but I need more time. 

The important thing is that I got here, and I've managed to cut my response time down, in some cases, to months rather than years.  Some real success stories this year, like getting to "Maestro" before the Oscars, and "Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget" before it got too old, "Tar", "Babylon" and "The Whale" in just over a year, and last week I watched "Saltburn", "Heart of Stone" and "Gran Turismo" just about two months (or so) after they started streaming.  Two months is really good for me, and "The Marvels" made it to Disney+ on February 7, so really, that was just about six weeks ago.  That's about as fast as I could get to it, considering that February is all about romance films and not superhero ones.  Now I have to watch a DC Comics movie this week to balance things out, right?  

Zawe Ashton carries over from "Mr. Malcolm's List". 

FOLLOW-UP TO: "Captain Marvel" (Movie #3,175)

THE PLOT: Carol Danvers gets her powers entangled with those of Kamala Khan and Monica Rambeau, forcing them to work together to save the universe. 

AFTER: Man, this one gets off to a rough start.  Part of the problem maybe was the fact that I haven't watched the "Ms. Marvel" show - but I read enough Marvel Comics to know who Kamala Khan is, she's worked her way up through the ranks in the comic books, became a very popular character when Marvel was trying (for, like, the 2,800th time) to get more girls to read comics and maybe also teens of Arabic descent, and before she even had the TV show she was hanging out with Spider-Man (in a riff on an old comic called "Marvel Team-Up", they made a 3-issue limited series called "Ms. Marvel Team-Up") and then she became so popular that they had to kill off her character.  I know, I know, that seems counter-productive but the geniuses at Marvel kill off only their most popular characters, just to give them a new #1 issue when the next writer figures out a way to make them alive again.  Somehow that sells more comic books, I remember they killed off Phoenix when I was a kid and that was a BIG deal, but what do Phoenixes do besides rise up from the ashes?  Since then I've seen every member of the Fantastic Four die twice, Iron Man several times, and Captain America even - but they always come back.  About five years ago they killed off Wolverine and I think he stayed dead for about a year, our time, but remember he's got a healing power so he'll always come back, it just takes time.  Spider-Man's died a couple times, too, and I'm not even counting anybody who got "blipped" during the Infinity Gauntlet series, because just like in "Avengers: Endgame", they all came back.  

So it's a sign of how popular Ms. Marvel became that she had to die, and then brought back about a month later, resurrected by the X-Men and revealed to be part Inhuman, part mutant.  What did that accomplish?  It made the news and it sold comic books, isn't that enough?  Also, maybe it pissed off a few of her fans who didn't get the memo that they needed to start reading X-Men books if they wanted to see their favorite character again.  Who can keep track of all this stuff?  But it seems that death in the Marvel Cinematic Universe may be a bit more permanent, because so far they haven't called Iron Man or Black Widow back into service.  I"m told now that this is somehow the Hulk's fault, because he was the one who thought back all the people that Thanos killed with the snap of his fingers, and he forgot to think about Black Widow as one of them.  Yes, the fate of some fictional people hinges on very specific technicalities. 

But let's look on the positive side of things, OK?  For every actor or actress who's tired of playing their Marvel hero characters and wants out of their contract, there are plenty more willing to take their place, and Marvel has thousands of characters who haven't been in movies yet. Are they planning a "Thunderbolts" style team (U.S. Agent, White Widow, Winter Soldier, Ghost, Taskmaster and Red Guardian) or a "Young Avengers" team (Kate Bishop, Ms. Marvel, Ironheart, America Chavez, Ant-Man's daughter and Scarlet Witch's missing kids).  Maybe both, but it's clear that the "Black Widow" movie and the "WandaVision" TV show could turn out to be the most important recent MCU titles. 

Anyway, one reason I didn't rush out and see "The Marvels" in the movie theater was because Marvel fans seemed to have mixed reviews, a very lukewarm reception for this movie.  Some people said, "Well, I don't know about this new direction the movies are going in...." and I can't tell you how many times I've heard people at the comic book store saying that about the comic books.  A new writer takes over "Spider-Man" or "The Hulk" and people are bound to say exactly that, "I don't know about this new direction..." so congratulations, if you've said that about either the comics or the movies, then you're a Marvel veteran.  Next you just have to learn to say, "Well, it's not like the comics/movies they made when I was a kid..." and you're well on your way to becoming a disgruntled former/current fan. (See also: "Star Wars: Episodes 7 to 9")

The big problem here is forcing three characters to team up who are not familiar with working together, and two of them have never been part of a superhero team before.  But since their powers are similar and they've all touched this alien bracelet device thingie, two out of the three teleport and switch places when they use their powers at the same time.  It takes WAY too long for these three heroes to figure out what's going on, and if they're confused, then I'm confused.  This was a terrible idea, all this jumping around, it prevents them AND us from getting a handle on the story because all we're concerned about is trying to figure out what happened to the hero that was JUST THERE, now she's gone again, and another superhero took her place, and one who can't fly is now falling toward the earth.  Very inconvenient, very unsettling and very panic-inducing, the first half-hour of this movie will STRESS YOU OUT, and come on, we all go to the movies to relax, right?  This isn't helping.  

The only way for these characters to figure out what's going on is to talk to each other, only they can't do that because this weird powers entanglement keeps teleporting one of them away.  Super annoying.  To stop this, they need to STOP using their powers, and then, really, what good are they?  Will they then just throw things at the aliens?  That's not going to work.  Finally one of them has to fly or travel in a space-ship to find the other two, and then they can talk about what's happening, and once they're in the same room, who cares if they teleport because they're all still going to be in the same room after.  But please, let's get coordinated, OK?  We need our heroes to focus and work together to defeat the evil power. 

The evil power here is Den-Barr, the new leader of the Kree - which I know were revealed as a villainous race in the "Captain Marvel" movie, but I'm still trying to wrap my head around it, because it's not like the comics they made when I was a kid (Oh, God, here I go) where there were two alien races, the Kree and the Skrulls, who were always at war with each other, and the Skrulls were evil, shape-shifting monster aliens who couldn't be trusted and the Kree were the humanoid (but often blue-skinned) race controlled by the Supreme Intelligence, so they at least sounded really smart, and if the heroes had to pick a dog to back in that fight, at that time it would have been the Kree.  But then came the "Secret Invasion" Marvel show, which had Skrulls invading Earth just like in the comics, but in the recent show they were only doing this to survive, as the Kree destroyed their homeworld.  So wait, now the Kree are the BAD GUYS?  Well, that's maybe an oversimplification, but yes.  Here the Kree have almost totally wiped out the Skrulls, except for a few refugees on a couple planets here and there.  

It really helped me to see the Skrulls acting all nasty and devious again in "Secret Invasion", but that kind of seems in conflict with their depiction in "The Marvels", where there are just a few left and they're dying out and they don't seem like they even want to be bothered changing shape, not even to save themselves.  Umm, hello, your world is being destroyed, do you think maybe you might want to fight to save it?  No?  Just going to let a couple of women from Earth do everything for you?  Sorry you couldn't be bothered, maybe your race just isn't worth saving?  Then of course you also had to watch the TV show "WandaVision" in addition to "Ms. Marvel" to learn who the other two heroes are, and how they got their powers.  OK, so now if you're complaining about how watching ONE movie means you now have to watch THREE other movies and TWO TV series to really understand the whole story, congratulations, that's another sign that you are now a Marvel veteran fan.  Because in the comic books there are similar cross-overs - if I buy the X-Men Annual, the Amazing Spider-Man Annual, the Avengers Annual and the Iron Man Annual, which are titles I read monthly, then the story will also continue in the Spider-Gwen Annual, which is not a title that I regularly buy, only they're trying to trick me to buy something I don't want just to see the end of the story I've been reading. 

But really, things have been a bit downhill ever since "Endgame", and by that I mean that the last Marvel movie I watched, "Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3" was a bit of a waste, too hung up on Rocket's sad origin story as a lab test animal, not what I came from at all - plus, who was Adam Warlock, what were his powers and what was he all about?  See, you've already forgotten him, haven't you, because he was so poorly developed.  This means that the best "Guardians" movie in the last few years was actually "Thor: Love & Thunder" or maybe it was the GotG Christmas Special, your call.  It's all mixed up and things are topsy-turvy, and it almost feels like there are a dozen writers and directors each doing their own thing, and none of them are talking to each other.  Who's in charge here?  And yeah, I can say the same thing about the comic books, which all have different writers and editors, and except for the crossover events, they're NOT talking to each other, and one comic will kill off Black Widow and then another writer will bring her back to life in a different comic about three weeks later.  The books used to CARE about continuity, and now that there's a multiverse, reality doesn't mean anything any more, it can be changed as needed. 

The Marvel Cinematic Universe has survived all this time without the X-Men and the Fantastic Four, because the rights to those characters were licensed to other film companies, which eventually all got bought up by Disney, as everything will be someday.  So now they're going to combine the universes somehow like DC did in "The Flash", and how do you just jam two universes together and then continue on like nothing just happened?  I guess we're all going to find out...

Oh, yeah, the three Marvel heroines figure out the teleportation thing, yada yada yada, they learn to function together as a team in order to get the bangles away from the bad person and defeat the evil power. But you knew that, right?  But the battle creates a hole in time-space that only Monica Rambeau can energy-stitch back together, but for some reason she can only do it from the other side.  NITPICK POINT: Her name is Photon, was that so hard to work into the damn movie?  Sure, she also went by Captain Marvel for a while, like who didn't?  Carol Danvers was calling herself Binary at the time, so the name was available.  Then she was "Warbird", but that's another story.  But Monica Rambeau is now Photon, which is a great name.  Well, it's good.  Maybe it's just OK.  Maybe this whole movie is just that, OK.  But not great.  Wait, I think maybe she's called Spectrum now in the comics - another just-OK code name. 

NITPICK POINT: I've got issues with the teleportation switching in the early part of the film.  Later in the movie, when the three Marvels are training, they learn to switch places while walking, juggling, jumping rope, and in these instances, they jump into the other person's place and still are doing the act they were doing before the jump, in other words, they teleport and maintain the same direction and inertia that they had before the switch.  But this means that if someone teleports while they are flying, or say, falling towards the ground, they would still have this flying motion or falling motion to complete after they teleport.  Nightcrawler has this problem when he teleports, if he's falling at terminal velocity, he might need to jump several times to dispel the momentum that he picked up during a long fall from a great height.  But here someone who CAN'T fly is falling toward the ground, which means they would be in motion at a great speed, and if they teleport JUST before hitting the ground, they wouldn't die from the impact, but they would carry that motion direction and inertia with them to the new location when they teleport, so wherever they end up, they're still likely to crash into something with great force, or else they will continue falling at the new location, if space permits.  But teleporting will not STOP them from crashing, as they've still got potential energy from inertia resulting from gravity.  The new person teleporting into their location, two feet above the ground, might be OK, because now they have very little potential energy - but that person who was falling will continue falling somewhere else, or will suffer an impact, regardless. 

Also starring Brie Larson (last seen in "Unicorn Store"), Samuel L. Jackson (ditto), Teyonah Paris (last seen in "Candyman" (2021)), Iman Vellani, Gary Lewis (last seen in "Filth"), Park Seo-Joon (last seen in "Parasite"), Zenobia Shroff (last heard in "Soul"), Mohan Kapur (last seen in "Spider-Man: No Way Home"), Saagar Shaikh, Leila Farzad, Abraham Popoola (last seen in "Morbius"), Lashana Lynch (last seen in "No Time to Die"), Tessa Thompson (last seen in "Creed III"), Daniel Ings (last seen in "Eddie the Eagle"), Kenedy McCallam-Martin, with cameos from Hailee Steinfeld (last seen in "Begin Again"), and the voice of (REDACTED) (last seen in "I Don't Know How She Does It")

RATING: 6 out of 10 escape pods

Mr. Malcolm's List

Year 16, Day 85 - 3/25/24 - Movie #4,685

BEFORE: Theo James carries over from "Lying and Stealing", and that kind of makes we want to drop the whole "Divergent" series in here before continuing on, but I'm sorry, I just don't have the space for it. Some other time, maybe.  Same goes for "The Benefactor" and "How it Ends" - two days ago I didn't even know who Theo James was, and now I see that I could have planned a whole week around this guy, so I'm going to have to circle back somehow.

Yes, I know this appears to be a romance film, and those belong in February, generally speaking - unless, of course, one doesn't seem to connect very well with the others on my list and also I need to use it as mortar to connect the bricks together.  Tomorrow's film takes me back to the MCU for the first time in a long while, so that's what justifies the placement here. 

THE PLOT: A young woman courts a mysterious wealthy suitor in 19th century England. 

AFTER: If not for the blind casting, one might think that perhaps someone found and adapted a lost Jane Austen manuscript perhaps.  But no, it turns out that the book this was adapted from was released in 2009, still at the time probably meant as an homage to Austen's works.  I bet the author was very upset that the title "Pride and Prejudice" was already taken, it could have been even more applicable here.  ("Pride and Racial Prejudice"?  Nah, too many words.)

But it's weird that nobody makes an issue out of race in this film, which pushes it into the realm of fantasy for me, because we all just KNOW that England didn't work this way in the early 1800's, right?  There was obviously a racial hierarchy, with Caucasians on top, and you can cast as many people of color in your movie as you want, but it won't change that fact.  It might make you feel good about yourself, that you formed an ethnically diverse cast and thus you followed the current guidelines and the studio made its quota, but still, people back then were very very racist, and there's no getting around that.  It was a different time - so the world depicted here, where nobody gives a damn about the color of anybody's skin, I'm pretty sure it was never that way.  The U.K. had colonized India and parts of Africa, and were shipping as much of the tea and other resources as they could back home, when they weren't fighting wars. 

Come on, look me straight in the eye and tell me that a man of African descent had a chance of becoming in "honourable" in 1820's England. Can't do it, can you?  Explain to me how it makes sense to have a Japanese actress cast as the mother of an actress whose real mother was from Uganda.  It's madness - and that's where blind casting fails me, because I can't unsee it, the fact that these characters look nothing alike and are supposed to be related to each other.  This is not a Christmas commercial designed to appeal to bi-racial couples, this is an aristocratic family and we need to see the relationships reflected in the characters on the screen.  OK, whatever, rant over, you can cast your movie however you like but I just think it doesn't make any sense.

Anyway, the problems start when the most eligible bachelor, Mr. Jeremy Malcolm, takes the beautiful Julia Thistlewaite out to the opera, and then he ghosts her.  She might have been OK with it, but then a caricature of him not calling on her again (or not being impressed by her, which is really hard to portray in a drawing...) is printed up and sold all over town.  This is a thinly-veiled jab at social media, which is another thing that just didn't exist back then, but hey, we're looking at the 1800's through a modern lens, so whatever, I guess. Julia is thoroughly embarasssed, and sends her cousin Cassidy to investigate what she might have done to offend Mr. Malcolm, and he learns that there is a written checklist concerning the qualities that Mr. Malcolm is looking for in a mate, and Julia just didn't check any of the boxes.  She didn't even know the list existed, so how could she be expected to fulfill the requirements?  Well, yeah, but that was kind of the point - everyone's got at least a mental checklist regarding what we're looking for, he shouldn't be held accountable for this.  

Julia should have just let it go, but she's not capable of that.  Instead she decides to enlist her friend Selina to date Mr. Malcolm, they make sure that Selina ticks all the boxes and fulfills all the parameters, and the plan is to then, once Mr. Malcolm professes his love for her, produce another list of the qualities that Selina is looking for in a husband, and game the system with a list of qualities that Mr. Malcolm does NOT possess, so that he will feel the same inadequacy that Julia experienced.  Yeah, it's a little immature and high-schoolish, but hey, that's Julia.  

The plan goes awry after Selina, visiting from Sussex, meets Mr. Malcolm and finds nothing wrong with him, they are quite compatible naturally, without her needing to pretend to meet the checklist qualities (although some fakery is still involved, like Selina pretending to play the pianoforte when it's really Cassidy's hands on the keys).  Selina suggests that Julia was perhaps wrong about Mr. Malcolm, and though the plan proceeds, she appears to be really falling in love and not just pretending.

Just then, Captain Henry Ossery appears in the picture, he knows both parts of this couple, friends with Mr. Malcolm and also Selina, who took care of his elderly aunt in Bath for several years.  Ossery also begins going for promenades with Selina, and requests a dance at the upcoming ball.  This sets up the love triangle which will ultimately become the quadrangle, trust me on this one, I've seen it happen so many times...

Julia's plan is almost ruined by the appearance of vulgar Cousin Gertie (who's Korean-American somehow) as "the list" dictates that Mr. Malcolm's perfect woman must have genteel and pleasing family members.  Julia covers by claiming that Gertie is HER cousin, 7 times removed, but Selina now sees Mr. Malcolm in a different light, how judgmental he's become - would he still be interested in Selina if he knew that Gertie was her cousin?  The whole scheme (and the budding relationship) is nearly subverted when Mr. Malcolm learns the truth, but still, they soldier on.  He invites everyone over to his large estate for a masquerade ball, as one does.

There's really only one reason for a masked ball in a movie, and that's for someone to wear a mask and pretend to be someone else.  Since Selina no longer wants to be part of the plan, Julia locks her in a room, assumes her identity and completes her plan to deliver a list of her own to Mr. Malcolm, pointing out the ways in which he's not suitable.  No doubt the first one is the fact that he keeps listing other people's qualities.  Number two is the fact that he's way too organized about this and number three is that he needs to learn to relax and accept people the way they are, I bet.  This new scheme is immediately exposed, and Mr. Malcolm rejects both Julia AND Selina, and swears he's over women.  And lists. 

There's a last-ditch effort to reunite Mr. Malcolm and Selina by sending them both invitations to a tour of the rose garden at 3:00 pm.  Selina's disappointed because she thought it would be a group tour, and Mr. Malcolm's disappointed because he just saw it as one more manipulation to "entrap" him into marriage.  Dude, you've got to learn to lighten up and let things go.  Even if she did trick you into meeting in the rose garden, which she didn't, would that even be so bad?  She's into you, let it freakin' happen already!  Have fun with your lists and being alone.

Well, the takeaway is that Caucasian people don't have a monopoly on being stuck-up and anal-retentive and also having OCD.  So umm, congratulations, I guess? 

Also starring Freida Pinto (last seen in "Love Wedding Repeat"), Sope Dirisu (last seen in "The Huntsman: Winter's War"), Zawe Ashton (last seen in "Velvet Buzzsaw"), Oliver Jackson-Cohen (last not-seen in "The Invisible Man"), Ashley Park, Divian Ladwa (last seen in "The Personal History of David Copperfield"), Naoko Mori (last seen in "Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again"), Sophie Vavasseur (last seen in "Becoming Jane"), Sianad Gregory, Doña Croll (last seen in "I Could Never Be Your Woman"), Paul Tylak (last heard in "The Secret of Kells"), Dawn Bradfield (last seen in "King Arthur" (2004)), Gerry O'Brien (ditto), Aisling Doyle, Tia Ann Jain, Emma Willis, Danielle Ryan, Derek Carroll, Tom Lawlor

 

RATING: 4 out of 10 bird-hunting dogs

Lying and Stealing

Year 16, Day 84 - 3/24/24 - Movie #4,684

BEFORE: Posting late AGAIN because I pulled another Sunday night shift at the theater - I didn't lock up until close to midnight, and my subway line was shut down in Manhattan, so I couldn't come straight home.  Instead I had to take a different train further into Queens, and transfer at an outdoor station for an L train heading back towards Manhattan, which would only have been a problem if it were freezing cold outside, which it was.  I didn't get home until 1:30 am, which meant feeding the cats late, starting my Sunday movie late, and staying up much too late to have any chance of getting up on time Monday morning.  Well, these are the tough shifts, for sure, but I need the management to know they can count on me to work the long hours and also properly lock up the theater, no matter how late the event runs. I'm assuming this will all be helpful to my career someday, even if I'm not exactly sure how. 

Fred Melamed carries over from "Dragged Across Concrete". 

THE PLOT: Ivan steals art for the Greek. He wants to get out but can he? He meets an actress at two of his "jobs" and she has her own problems but helps him. 

AFTER: Well, this was a cute little film about art theft, and also finding love in a hopeless place, namely Los Angeles.  Elyse is an up-and-coming actress who's managed to catch the eye of some influential people in Hollywood who all want to take advantage of her, and this includes a producer that she stole some jewelry from, only to find that it was borrowed for an awards event, and when it wasn't returned, he charged her for the item's value, so she's been working off her debt one bad Russian film at a time.  She keeps bumping into Ivan at parties, and eventually she figures out that he's not there for the drinks or the conversation, because every time she sees him, a piece of valuable art gets stolen from the venue. 

Ivan's in a similar situation, except he's stealing art to work off his late father's gambling debts, by working for The Greek, a real-estate dealer who's really into procuring art for his clients, and Ivan's the best at it, when he's not distracted by the shenanigans of his brother, who's been dealing drugs at a halfway house and has been asked to leave the premises because he's a bad influence.  So Ivan lets Ray live with him for a while, until he can get a place of his own or can get clean, and neither one seems very likely. 

Ivan wants to know how many more jobs he has to pull for the Greek, because he figures that he should have made a dent in that debt by now, only the Greek keeps refusing to tally things up, however he knows he can only string Ivan along for so long, so he offers him a deal, if he can steal the only known self-portrait of Hitler known to exist, and then do one more small job, he can square the debt and walk away.  Only come on, why would the Greek let his most productive thief off the hook?  So Ivan figures that sooner or later, he'll have to kill the Greek, that's really the only way he'll ever be free again.  

Meanwhile, a low-level FBI agent keeps hearing about these major art thefts, and starts to put two and two together, realizing they were all pulled off by the same guy, even though the M.O. was different every time.  But he realizes that he can either flip Ivan to catch the Greek, or better yet, get a piece of the action for himself, because the art theft market is very profitable.  It's possible that some of these people could help each other out of their desperate situations, like Ivan pretends to be Elyse's boyfriend to keep a sleazy ex away from her, and Elyse pretends to be Ivan's girlfriend so he can case an art dealer's home in Costa Mesa that's for sale, pretending to be in the market for a house, umm, I think.  But then it seems just as likely that everyone is using everyone else to get ahead, which means that really, it's every man (and woman) for themselves.  

It's very slick to make the art thief the victim here, that way we don't feel guilty when we enjoy watching him steal the art in innovative ways.  The opening sequence where he steals a Koons silver rabbit statue (designed to resemble a balloon) by replacing it with an ACTUAL silver balloon in the same shape, is quite ingenious.  Really, if you think about it, it's a similar opening sequence to "Raiders of the Lost Ark", where Indy replaces that golden idol with a bag of sand with the similar weight.  You just have to imagine that this Hollywood party is the secret, trap-laden underground temple and the silver rabbit statue is the golden idol, and then I guess Belloq is a large, Greek art dealer.  But really, same idea, the old switcheroo, and if you're going to steal some plot points, you might as well steal from the best.  Anyway, maybe this whole film is stolen from "The Thomas Crown Affair", who's to say? 

Once again, it's a movie that absolutely nobody saw, it grossed just $600,000 in theaters, and that was in 2019, pre-pandemic so there's no excuse, really. Nobody saw "Dragged Across Concrete" either, it also took in around $600,000 the year before, 2018.  So much fail, really, but I enjoyed both movies, yesterday's a bit more than today's. Maybe I'm being too nice. 

Also starring Theo James (last seen in "You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger"), Emily Ratajkowski (last seen in "Fyre"), Ebon Moss-Bachrach (last seen in "Tesla"), Isiah Whitlock Jr. (last seen in "Pieces of April"), Evan Handler (last seen in "Too Big to Fail"), Paul Jurewicz (last seen in "A Simple Favor"), Keith Powell, John Gatins (last seen in "The Nines"), Joe Bucaro III (last seen in "The Replacement Killers"), Julia Haart, Fernanda Andrade, Orion McCabe (last seen in "The Bling Ring"), Mia Cheung, Eileen O'Connell, Eddie Martinez (last seen in "The Gambler"), Sean Patrick Thomas, Robert Peters (last seen in "Stillwater"), Ivo Nandi (last seen in "A Cure for Wellness"), Adam Nagata, Taji Coleman, Bob Stephenson (last seen in "Top Gun: Maverick"), Beka Sikharulidze, Davie-Blue (last seen in "Manson Family Vacation"), Frank Clem, Ray Stoney, Lex Medlin, Sam Kazanski, Rod Chaouqi.

RATING: 6 out of 10 poker chips with chewing gum on them

Dragged Across Concrete

Year 16, Day 83 - 3/23/24 - Movie #4,683

BEFORE: Still trying to catch up - it's Saturday and I'm working on Sunday so I have to strike while the iron is hot, today's film is a rather LONG one and so therefore let me get to it, I may end up posting on Sunday but the film really needs to be watched on Saturday.  

Another super-rainy day, the first of many this spring perhaps, but so far our backyard drains have been clear and/or our sandbags are holding, because we haven't had any water in the basement in a while, not in late fall and now not in early spring, which is a relief.  I'm glad we put the sandbags in place when we did, it's a load off of my mind.  Now if it rains hard when we're out of town and the drain clogs, we might still be OK. 

Thomas Kretschmann carries over from "Gran Turismo".  

THE PLOT: When two overzealous cops get suspended from the force, they must delve into the criminal underworld to get their proper compensation. 

AFTER: My first thought is that this film did NOT need to be over two and a half hours long, naturally I'm going to feel that unless the film is "Titanic" or "The Lord of the Rings" important, probably some kind of editing needed to be applied to tighten things up a bit.  Certainly I felt I needed an extra jolt of caffeine tonight to make sure I didn't fall asleep at the two-hour mark.  This has been a problem lately, even with relatively shorter films like "Song of the Sea". 

Then I realized this film is kind of a slow burn, it starts out sort of tame and then keeps building and building in intensity, and maybe it just needed a lot of room to DO that, who am I to judge?  Certainly the last couple of Tarantino films were extra long because they needed to be - like "The Hateful Eight" and "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood" were both well over two and a half hours, and nobody was really complaining, were they?  "Babylon" was over three hours, though, they had a few decades of Hollywood history to cover, and I bet more people were sitting in the theater for that one, desperately hoping it would end soon.  I mean, come on, a Tarantino film is a rare treat, you might as well make it as long as you can and squeeze every bit of entertainment you can get out of the ticket price.  That's a bargain no matter how you look at it. 

But then I started thinking about Tarantino and "Dragged Across Concrete" started to feel a bit like a Tarantino film - not like "Pulp Fiction" quality necessarily, because nothing's really "Pulp Fiction" except "Pulp Fiction".  Or is it?  I think if you look real hard, you might find some similarities here to Tarantino's masterpiece, or at least the spirit of it. If you changed John Travolta and Samuel L. Jackson's characters from hit-men to cops, and then just re-cast them with Mel Gibson and Vince Vaughn, I think you'd be close, both films have a team that works together begrudgingly, has their own way of doing things and their own little language shortcuts, though I still don't know why one character here said "anchovies" so often.  

There are also three intersecting plotlines, and we don't know the connections between the plotlines at first because, well, they haven't happened yet. This also kind of calls "Pulp Fiction" to mind, because we didn't know Butchs story intersected with Jules and Vincent's story until it did, and then when it did, WOW, what a doozy. And then Pumpkin and Honey Bunny, where do they fit into the story?  Oh, right, then we find out in the last segment.  There's no similar manipulation of time in "Dragged Across Concrete", everything here seems to occur in the proper order, but the film starts with a man named Henry, visiting his mother's apartment shortly after getting out of prison, before it jumps over to the two main characters, and it's a LONG time before we find out how Henry's story intersects with theirs.  Then midway through the film there's a new mother leaving her apartment for her first day back to work, and this feels straight out of left field, like how does this fit in with the main story?  She just wants to go back and spend time with her new baby and NOT go to work, helping rich people move around their money while trading the hours of her life for a paycheck, but that's the job.  It seems very normal, if out of place, until her story collides with the other one.  Sure, we all have days where we wish we could just stay home and not go to the office, but baby needs diapers and gourmet baby food and is going to need school supplies and college tuition someday. That's life. 

The main storyline is these two cops who get suspended for six weeks because one got caught on camera roughing up a suspect and using a racial slur, and damn if everyone doesn't have a camera on their phones these days, so it looks bad for the Bulwark (?) PD if they don't take some disciplinary action.  While on suspension, the senior officer, Ridgeman, realizes that his neighborhood is no longer safe, his daughter got a soda dumped on her by some other teens (and I think the severity of this is right on point, like you can call this an "assault" but it's not like they hit her or raped her, which would have demanded a larger response) so he and his ex-cop wife (who has a disability) decide it's finally time to move out of the city.  Which they need money to do, but he's just been suspended.  So Ridgeman gets the bright idea to call in a favor and find a new drug dealer in town, someone who might not know their way around, and hit that guy up for some protection money, or just rob him outright.  (What could POSSIBLY go wrong?)

Well, a lot could go wrong, because the guy they find out about is new in town, works out of a building that's technically abandoned in a room that doesn't even exist, so naturally he must be up to something.  Ridgeman and his partner (who's there reluctantly) decide to stake the guy's place out, and it's several days before anything really happens - hey, maybe this is why the movie is so long overall, because they really want the audience to FEEL the boredom associated with a police stake-out.  The many cups of coffee, the naps in the back-seat, your partner's bad breath and the fact that he won't stop saying the word "anchovies" or giving you the likeliness of things happening in percentages.  The stake-out goes on so long you might just wonder if it wouldn't be easier to just pick up a part-time job somewhere or maybe volunteer somewhere for a couple weeks, could be very fulfilling.  

But eventually something happens, the dealer from out of town meets up with his associates, who were seen in little plotlines of their own earlier in the film, in bits that you might also have reason to wonder, about what exactly these little asides mean, and when are they going to be important to the movie, if at all?  They've got a van customized to be bullet-proof, and disguised as a security company van - Ridgeman and Lurasetti just think that they're making a drop-off or exchange somewhere, and they follow along to intercept it and disrupt the dealer's business at the same time.  But then they get more than they bargained for when they learn what the dealer is really up to, it's a full-fledged heist that they've stumbled on to, and accidentally followed from the beginning.  It's important to remember that they're not cops at this point, still they probably could have or should have called it in, but then that would interfere with their plan to make some money by robbing the robbers, wouldn't it? 

At some point, their police training kind of kicks in, and they end up trailing the van across the county lines and through some rural territory, figuring that at some point the crew is going to either stash the van or switch vehicles, and there may be an opportunity to ambush them, and then either keep the stolen property, or do the right thing and turn it in.  I suppose that depends on how the confrontation goes, and which of the interested parties is left standing in the end. 

Also starring Mel Gibson (last seen in "Blood Father"), Vince Vaughn (last seen in "Term Life"), Tory Kittles (last seen in "Harriet"), Vanessa Bell Calloway (ditto), Michael Jai White (last seen in "2 Days in the Valley"), Jennifer Carpenter, Laurie Holden (last seen in "Dumb and Dumber To"), Don Johnson (last seen in "Book Club: The Next Chapter"), Udo Kier (last seen in "For Love or Money"), Fred Melamed (last seen in "Together Together"), Justine Warrington (last seen in "The Professor"), Matthew MacCaull (last seen in "Midway"), Primo Allon (last seen in "Frankie & Alice"), Jordyn Ashley Olson (last seen in "The Shack"), Myles Truitt, Tattiawna Jones (last seen in "Tully"), Richard Newman, Vivian Ng, Andrew Dunbar, Noel G. (last seen in "Street Kings"), Andres Soto, Tristan Jensen, Eric Bernpong, Liannet Borrego, Adam Tsekhman, Dalias Blake, Giacomo Baessato (last seen in "Dreamcatcher"), Jenn Griffin, Cardi Wong, Cameron Grierson.

RATING: 7 out of 10 egg salad sandwiches