BEFORE: OK, I'm definitely going to be posting THIS one late. I had to work late on both Monday AND Tuesday nights - Monday was my own fault because I was supposed to lock up the theater at midnight, however the tent build outside continued until 2 am and I just figured I was supposed to supervise the whole build. However, there was a note on the calendar listing that told me when I should close the theater, and I didn't think to check that. In my defense, usually when I'm told to work until "closing" that means I'm there until the event or activity is declared over, like the guests are gone and the host is gone and the cleaners have finished cleaning. The building of a tent was the activity, so I just figured I was supposed to stay until that was completed. My bad. So I didn't get in last night until after 3:30 am, because the trains just run less often then, I got on a train and had to wait about 30 min. for it to move.
Tonight was the bigger event, the reason the tent was being built, it was the premiere of a new Netflix series called "Black Rabbit", which I can't endorse or disavow, I didn't see it, I was working outside all night on pedestrian duty, crowd control and watching celebrities get out of the SUVs delivering them to the black carpet. I happen to know one actress from this show personally, but I didn't see her attend. Then I had to stick around after the screening to make sure the tent was taken down, first to allow the guests to exit the theater safely, and then because the tent needs to go away, it's not a regular feature at the theater, they just build one to hold the press line for premiere events. But I've seen workers dismantle these tents much faster, so I suspect tonight's workers were being paid by the hour. I got home a bit earlier this time, at 1:30 am. So today's film was watched on Tuesday morning, but I'm probably posting early early on Wednesday, like a couple hours after midnight. I'm still not going to use my free day, because there's another premiere event next week, too.
Mark Wahlberg carries over from "Mile 22".
THE PLOT: Construction worker Mike is thrust into the world of espionage when his high school sweetheart, Roxanne, recruits him for a high-stakes intelligence mission.
AFTER: Wow, what a difference a day makes! This film and "Mile 22" have a lot in common, like they're both about these U.S. "shadow" agencies that are even more secret than the CIA, and in both films Mark Wahlberg is on that team. They both have the old veteran "man in the computer room" character, just played by Malkovich in one film and by J.K. Simmons in the other. Then the second lead in both is a female agent with a complicated relationship history, but who has ultimately chosen the intelligence career over family. So how come one film sucked so bad and the other one was quite entertaining? Story, story, story, and last night's film had almost none, it was five minutes of story with a bunch of shoot-outs in between. Also, character development, today's film actually remembered to include some.
Here Wahlberg plays Mike McKenna, a man who's still drifting through life and working a menial labor job, but one day his high-school girlfriend walks back into his Jersey hometown bar and recruits him for that shadow organization, she's desperate since the agency just lost a bunch of members in a botched operation and she remembers how Mike was a star athlete, also pretty smart and well, she loved him at one point. But she tranquilizes him and brings him to London, where he's given the chance to join what they call "The Union", an agency made up of the people you'd least expect, blue-collar workers who are then trained in martial arts, weapons, and whatever else might be needed for espionage work these days.
The Union needs a new agent, someone nobody has seen before in the field, to take place in an auction for intelligence that turns out to be the names and home addresses of all U.S. spies and field agents around the world. Well, sure, who wouldn't want that, especially if they wanted to create a mailing list and send all those agent promotional religious literature or offers for new rain gutters, but probably what bidders have in mind is something a lot more harmful. But if the Union can get someone in that auction, they can either buy back the intel, or, better plan, trace the phone signal back to its source and force the seller to give the hard drive back, that way nobody evil gets it and also the U.S. saves money on the auction, that's a win-win. Only, the country's already a few trillion in debt, what's a few million more?
Mike gets the two-week crash course in espionage, stunt driving and hand-to-hand combat, where usually they would train a new agent over six months. We can only hope it's enough, when combined with his high-school athletic background and his, umm, wait, what were his other skills again? Right, he doesn't have any, because he's supposed to be the "nobody" that the bad guys didn't see coming. So his lack of skills is actually a bonus skill, if you look at things that way.
If you figured out that Mike and his old flame Roxanne are going to re-connect and have feelings for each other, DING, you get a gold star, also you've probably seen a movie or two before, it's not that hard to predict where this one is going. But before that, they've got to drop off the money to get a special phone to participate in the auction, then when the phone gets dropped in a sink during an ambush by another interested party, so they have to steal a phone from one of the other parties interested in bidding on the drive with the intel. The Union succeeds in getting another country's bidding phone, however their communications operative is compromised (maybe don't always put the surveillance team in a box truck or van, just saying) and then their London skyscraper headquarters is blown up, so they figure there must be a double agent or a leak on the team.
Finally the auction arrives and the Union is allowed to bid with the CIA's money - however if they should have the highest bid when the auction ends, well, let's just say there goes America's GDP, of course the country's not likely to go bankrupt (not again, anyway) but things will be tighter. Like, who needs the Department of Education, anyway? Whatever they've been doing for the last 50 years isn't exactly working, now, is it? Really, though, they only need to keep the auction alive so that their computer expert can trace the call, and Mike and Roxanne are on a motorcycle ready to speed to the location of the call - it's not like somebody can reroute their phone signal through other cities or other countries, right? RIGHT?
Of course there's a twist, I figured out what it would be during that initial botched operation in Trieste. Predicting who really wants all those agent's names and addresses is quite easy if you don't assume too much from what we're shown in that operation that went South. But can Mike and Roxanne take control of that drive and get it where it needs to be? Can they also figure out who the mole is in the organization before Mike needs to get back to New Jersey for his friend's wedding? Yeah, probably.
OK, but can they clear their "man in the chair" when he's being framed for being the double-agent, and can they deal with Roxanne's past when her ex, also an agent, turns up? And do these two crazy kids have a future together, and probably at least one sequel film? I guess we'll all have to wait to find out. But it's a VAST improvement over yesterday's film, or else it just looks really great by comparison.
Directed by Julian Farino
Also starring Halle Berry (last seen in "Boomerang"), J.K. Simmons (last seen in "Saturday Night"), Mike Colter (last seen in "Plane"), Alice Lee (last seen in "Sierra Burgess Is a Loser"), Jessica De Gouw, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje (last seen in "Marlowe"), Jackie Earle Haley (last seen in "The Dark Tower"), Lorraine Bracco (last seen in "Stevie Van Zandt: Disciple"), Dana Delany (last seen in "Freelancers"), Lucy Cork, Patch Darragh (last seen in "The Apprentice"), James McMenamin, Juan Carlos Hernandez (last seen in "In America"), Stephen Campbell Moore (last seen in "Man Up"), Adam Collins (last seen in "The Old Guard"), Julianna Kurokawa, Kai Martin, Alex Merry, Steven Mullins, MJ Lee, Ben Bishop, Liz Ewing, Riley Neldam, Alex Brightman (last seen in "Here Today"), David Brooks (last heard in "Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget"), Andrei Claude, Christopher Brand, Ninette Finch (last seen in "Juliet, Naked"), Borna Miljavac Purgar, Anthony Goes, Jen Jacob (last seen in "Begin Again"), Christian Yeung.
RATING: 7 out of 10 Lost Boys in a production of "Peter Pan"
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