The Upside of Anger

Year 18, Day 86 - 3/27/26 - Movie #5,285

BEFORE: Joan Allen carries over from "Death Race", to a film that I'm not quite sure how to handle, because it seems rather relationshippy, if not outright romance-y. That usually would reserve a film for February, however I tried other outros from the Jason Statham block, and this was really the only one that worked, in that it gets me to Easter in the proper time frame. If I read the signals correctly, this film does NOT connect to anything else on the romance list, so it's OK to split this one off from the herd, otherwise it's just going to sit on the watchlist for a few more years maybe, or never get watched at all. 

I've also just realized it's a prime candidate for a Mother's Day film, perhaps similar to "Because I Said So" or "Lovely and Amazing", which were both about families with several teen/twenty-something females and their relationships to their mother. So this film is arriving either two weeks too late for the romance chain or two months early for Mother's Day, I can't really tell before I watch it, but I really need it for the linking so I'm going to just watch it and hope the chain knows what it's doing. 

THE PLOT: When her husband unexpectedly disappears, a sharp-witted suburban wife and her daughters juggle their mom's romantic dilemmas and family dynamics. 

AFTER: Yeah, it's kind of what I figured, I don't know what to do with this film, like forget putting it in the right category, I want to know where the heck this story came from, like is this based on a book or a true story, did all of this really happen to a Detroit family with four teen daughters, or is it all just a made-up story meant to make some kind of point about life, and if so, what is that? Apparently this all comes from the mind of writer/director Mike Binder, but Kevin Costner's ex-baseball player is believed to be based on retired Detroit Tigers pitcher Denny McLain, who had a radio talk show but maybe didn't like to talk about his baseball career all that much. Think of that as maybe an early example of a podcast, then, one where the host can talk about whatever he wants, because it's not like the audience has any say in the matter. Any way you slice it, though, this definitely feels like a mortar-type film, there's no way this is a brick, even if I'd scheduled it on Mother's Day, that might have made it a little more relevant and topical, but I'm guessing still it's more valuable to me as a film that links other films together and keeps the chain going. 

The poster finishes the title "The Upside of Anger" with "is the person you can become." And I have no idea what that is supposed to mean. Anger is a good thing because it turns you into a different person? Certainly not a happier person, but I guess an angrier person is technically the same person, just angrier. Right? Like I can have a lot of emotions, angry or sad or ecstatic or regretful, but I'm STILL ME. The upside of anger is the person you can become - it feels like one of those phrases that you might overhear and it will bounce around your brain for a couple hours before you scream, "No, it's fucking NOT, that doesn't make any sense." Lewis Black once said this after overhearing someone say, "If it weren't for my horse, I wouldn't have spent that year in college..." and you can probably go crazy thinking about what that sentence might mean. 

The movie starts off with a funeral, but it fails to mention who is being buried - we can eliminate a couple of the characters because they're seen AT the funeral, but the identity of the corpse is going to remain secret for most of the movie. Then the movie flashes back three years to Terry Wolfmeyer telling her four daughters that their father has left the family, most likely to live with his younger secretary in Sweden. Terry starts to drink heavily to cope with her anger and pain, and when she confides in her husband's friend and their neighbor Denny, they start to drink together. Spending time together, though, even if they're mismatched, well, we all know where this can lead - but Terry is still going through the stages of grief. 

The meat of the film is about Terry's relationship with her four daughters - Hadley, Emily, Andy and Popeye - and how that relationship is affected by their father's absence, their mother dealing with that absence, and also her budding relationship with Denny. Denny's never been a father figure before, but is willing to take a stab at it - as a former baseball player maybe he's dated a bunch of MLB groupies and might finally be ready for a real relationship, later in life. Stranger things have happened. 

Hadley graduates from college and then introduces her mother to her boyfriend of three years, only to reveal that she is pregnant, and they are engaged. Terry reacts with anger because all of this is being sprung on her kind of after the fact, and she embarrasses herself at a luncheon with her future in-laws because she is having trouble dealing with the influx of all this news and change. Emily, the second daughter, wants to pursue a career as a ballet dancer, only her mother makes her go to U. Michigan in Ann Arbor and pursue something more traditional. But when she is hospitalized for some kind of eating disorder, caused by stress, she comes home to recover and (eventually) Terry accepts her decision to pursue dance as a career. She had to get there the hard way, though, nearly everything in the film seems to move in that direction. 

Andy, another daughter, accepts a job from Denny at the radio station where he has his talk show, his producer, Shep, is reluctant to hire her at first, but then is attracted to her, so he has her producing radio shows while he's also sleeping with her, that's probably an H.R. violation, even back in 2005, but people became more aware about such things later on. Meanwhile, Popeye pursues a relationship with her high-school classmate while she makes documentary films, but after she kisses him, he tells her that he's gay, and she doesn't want to believe it. It happens, sure, and what high-school girl couldn't use a gay male best friend? Gorden's dad likes bungee jumping and he claims to like it too, but I think this was just a big fad back in 2005, anyway I don't think anybody LIKES it, so I really don't understand why this was ever a thing. 

Also meanwhile, Terry and Denny have kind of an on-again, off-again thing going on, they have sex but then they don't know where to take things next, like marriage is probably off the table, but why not just try to enjoy it for whatever it is?  Terry wants to micro-manage the relationship just like she does with her daughter's lives, and that's probably very annoying. Terry gets mad at him over the whole thing with her daughter dating his older radio producer, but then when she and Denny separate for a while, she finds that she misses him, and they get back together. Denny just likes being some part of this big family, coming over for very delicious dinners, and giving advice to the daughters when he can. Sure this life's not perfect, but then nothing is. 

There's a final twist to the story, and it's got a lot to do with that funeral from the opening, but I'm not going to spoil it here. Whether the twist is believable or not, well I suppose that's up to you. I guess maybe this is all about how our anger and frustration over things not happening the way we would like them to is probably the simplest reaction we could have, but is being angry really the best way to spend our time, or is it a lot of misplaced and sometimes unnecessary emotion? Sorry, that's really all I have tonight, the film doesn't even connect the dots that well in trying to have some meaningful words of advice for all the folks at home. Would that really be so much to ask for here?

Directed by Mike Binder (director of "Reign Over Me")

Also starring Kevin Costner (last seen in "3 Days to Kill"), Erika Christensen (last seen in "Swimfan"), Keri Russell (last seen in "Austenland"), Alicia Witt (last seen in "Citizen Ruth"), Evan Rachel Wood (last seen in "The Life Before Her Eyes"), Mike Binder (last seen in "Robert Klein Still Can't Stop His Leg"), Tom Harper, Dane Christensen, Danny Webb (last seen in "The Dig"), Magdalena Manville (last seen in "Monster' (2003)), Suzanne Bertish (last seen in "The Wife"), David Firth, Rod Woodruff, Stephen Greif (last seen in "Boogie Woogie"), Arthur Penhallow, Richard Mylan, Robert Perkins, William Tapley (last heard in "V for Vendetta"), Owen Oakeshott, Bella Sabbagh, Gavin Munn

RATING: 5 out of 10 wedding band songs 

Death Race

 Year 18, Day 85 - 3/26/26 - Movie #5,284

BEFORE: Back to work tonight, I've had a few days off to catch up on TV, and I pulled out the DVDs that will get me to Easter - now on my next break I'm going to have to figure out the path to Mother's Day, which will be a little over a month long, that's a bit tougher to do. Why does Easter have to move around so much? It's coming really early this year, April 5, which is why I really have to hustle right now.

Jason Statham carries over from "Killer Elite" and this is going to bring my third (?) annual Statham-Fest to a close. I sort of thought by now that I'd be left with the scraps, that these leftover Statham action films would have decreased in quality, but some of these were pretty darn good - of course, I'm kind of grading on a curve when it comes to action movies. I mean, three of them had almost the exact same plot, where he had to come out of retirement and go all one-man-army on a criminal organization because somebody close to him had been kidnapped. A couple films stood out, though, by being so over-the-top, that's not always a good thing though.  

THE PLOT: Ex-con Jensen Ames is forced by the warden of a notorious prison to compete in our post-industrial world's most popular sport: a car race in which inmates must brutalize and kill one another on the road to victory.  

AFTER: Well, it's something a bit different tonight, the last THREE Statham films all involved some form of kidnapping, and this one, well, HE's the one essentially kidnapped, he's framed for murder and then sent to prison, which feels a bit like a form of kidnapping. Since he's got racing experience, his special skills are needed on the inside - not justifying it, just explaining it. Nothing like a life sentence to clear the mind when your wife has been killed and your infant daughter is being raised by foster parents. 

Ames is about the same build as Frankenstein, or at least a racer that goes by that name who's survived a few racetrack accidents and wears a mask as a result, which is pretty convenient if you're a warden trying to replace him after he finally couldn't be put back together again. Darn, and he was just ONE win away from gaining his freedom, too... This is the kind of race that's being simulcast via pay-per-view all over the world, so crossing the finish line with your car upside-down and on fire, it's kind of encouraged, but not a great method for keeping your drivers healthy. 

So this film lands somewhere between "The Shawshank Redemption" and "The Running Man", with a little bit of "Rollerball" and a lot of "Mad Max" thrown in for good measure. I'm trying to record the new version of "Running Man", but other films on cable are due to expire sooner, so I'm trying to prioritize - can't add everything at once. But I'll try to circle back to Glen Powell in that remake as soon as I can. 

Tonight's film is also a remake, I never watched the film "Death Race 2000" which came out in 1975, but it also had a character named "Frankenstein" (I almost put this film in the horror chain because of that...) and some say this film could work as a prequel OR a sequel to that film, but I'm thinking loose sequel because David Carradine played that character then and also supplied the voice of the same (?) character here. I worked on an animated film that David Carradine recorded a voice for, that was back in 2004 and I think we all got the feeling he wasn't going to be alive for much longer, but he lived until 2009.

There are also three SEQUELS to this film, all of which went to video stores and not theaters, and the only actor who carries over is Frederick Koehler, who plays Lists, the guy on the racing team who, umm, knows stuff. Damn, if I'd known there was connective tissue I could have scheduled all four films in a row, but I don't know, that might have left me in a place too far from home, and I wouldn't then get back in time for Easter. So perhaps I should just stick with the one film and not worry about the others. 

Things get worse for Ames when he figures out that not only did the warden recruit him by having his wife killed, but the killer was also an inmate at Terminal Island, released to do the hit, and wouldn't you know, he's also one of the other racecar drivers. You can practically hear Ames making that mental note to kill this guy at the earliest opportunity, and no, it doesn't take that long - like Day 1 of the race. 

The racers don't get to use their car's weapons until the second lap on each day, and then they have to drive over sword icons to activate the weapons and shield icons to activate the defense systems (smoke, oil, napalm). It's an interesting conundrum because if the cars only had weapons, then it would make no sense to be the car in the lead, because one solid way to win the race would be to drive in last place, and just blow up all the other cars ahead of yours. Ah hah, strategy - but with the defense systems then there is more motivation to be in the lead, and use the oil slick or the spike strips to neutralize the car shooting at you from behind. 

Then there's the secret weapon that the warden has built for this race, which is the Dreadnaught, a giant truck with guns, missiles and flamethrowers. However, this leads me to a NITPICK POINT: First they say that the warden is trying to make this "sport" more popular, to do what she needs to do to have drivers with fan followings, ones that might get four wins (but never five) and have loyal followers who sign up for the PPV events. But then she authorizes the release of the super-dangerous Dreadnaught truck, which is actively trying to kill ALL of the players. Aren't these actions in contradiction with each other? How can the drivers develop fan bases if they're all dead? 

Anyway, this would seem to be a vision of the future made in 2008 that was set in 2020 and, well, OK maybe things didn't really turn out the way this film predicted - we've got plenty of terrible things, but we aren't streaming prisoners killing each other, not just yet. We've got bodycam cop videos, and we've had videos of cops killing people in the streets, just not specifically murderers racing cars and simultaneously shooting at each other. So, umm, yay? This movie is just a big loud explode-y ball of nonsense and/or fun, so also, umm, yay?

Directed by Paul W.S. Anderson (director of "Monster Hunter" and "Pompeii")

Joan Allen (last seen in "Room"), Ian McShane (last seen in "Deep Cover"), Tyrese Gibson (last seen in "Ride Along 2"), Natalie Martinez (last heard in "Wendell & Wild"), Max Ryan, Jason Clarke (last seen in "A House of Dynamite"), Frederick Koehler (last seen in "Babylon"), Jacob Vargas (last seen in "Devil"), Justin Mader (also last seen in "Room"), Robert LaSardo (last seen in "The Mule"), Robin Shou, Benz Antoine (last seen in "Heist"), Danny Blanco Hall (last seen in "The Last Kiss"), Christian Paul (last seen in "Warm Bodies"), Janaya Stephens (last seen in "The Lookout"), John Fallon, Bruce McFee (last seen in "The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio"), Cory Fantie, Russell Ferrier, AnnaMarie Lea, Dan Jeannotte (last seen in "RED 2"), Abdul Ayoola (last seen in "Arrival"), Ruth Chiang (ditto), Melantha Blackthorne (last seen in "The Hummingbird Project"), Shane Cardwell, Pilar Cazares, Carolyn Day, Jim Dunn, Nathalie Girard, Sharlene Royer and the voices of David Carradine (last seen in "Crank: High Voltage"), Dick Ervasti, 

RATING: 6 out of 10 members of the Aryan Brotherhood

Killer Elite

Year 18, Day 84 - 3/25/26 - Movie #5,283

BEFORE: Jason Statham carries over from "A Working Man" and is now tied for first, with five films watched this year - you know what comes after that...

And the fill-in nouns for tonight's "Merc Madness" mad-libs are former special ops agent, old/new girlfriend, mentor, and British SAS paratroopers. Just insert those into last night's plotline blanks and we'll all be on the same page. 

THE PLOT: A special-ops agent returns from self-imposed exile to rescue his kidnapped mentor. 

AFTER: I hadn't heard of this film at all, not until it started streaming and it turned up on one of my monthly add-in sessions. But it seemed like maybe a minor Jason Statham film if I hadn't ever heard of it before, so it made some sense to wait until I had like 5 or 6 Statham films lined up, you know, just in case I needed to bury it in between two good ones and burn it off. The advantage of having six Statham films connected in a block is that, in addition to filling nearly a week on the calendar and getting me closer to the next holiday, I can move them around in almost any order, as long as I can find a proper entry into the block, I've then got at least a dozen good exits, everyone from James Franco to Winona Ryder to, well, now Clive Owen and/or Robert De Niro. I do have a couple De Niro films on the list in a much smaller block - just "The Comeback Trail" and "The Alto Knights" and a couple documentaries, but I'm going to follow a different link out of this mini-chain because that gets me to Easter on time. Knowing that De Niro links to docs could be helpful, but I'm not ready to cut to the Doc Block just yet, it's more of a summer thing. 

The danger in putting De Niro AND Clive Owen in a Jason Statham film is that it's then something less, and also more, than a Jason Statham film. It's not uncommon for him to get most of the screen time in an action film these days, they probably build the whole film around what stunts he wants to do or what vehicles they want him to blow up. But I think that just like Franco and Ryder in "Homefront", they worked the other two mega-stars in pretty well here. De Niro plays the lead character's ex-partner and mentor, while Clive Owen plays the enforcer for the Feather Men, a secret society of former U.K. military operatives who look out for each other, just in case somebody tries to track them down and gain revenge for what they did during wartime in the Middle East. Funny you should mention that, because...

Danny Bryce is an ex-mercenary who retired after a job where he had to kill a man right in front of that man's child. He moved to Australia and lives a quiet life, camping mostly. But one day he gets a package with photos of Hunter, his mentor, who is being held captive in Oman, so he returns to meet with "The Agent" who tells him that Hunter was unable to complete a merc job and is now being held by a sheik who won't release him until someone completes the mission for him. For the sake of Hunter's kids, Danny travels to Oman and agrees to complete the job. Well, first he tries to break Hunter out, but when that doesn't work, he takes the gig. The job is to kill three U.K. SAS troopers who killed three of the sheik's sons during the Dhofar Rebellion.  The sheik is getting older and his health is going, he feels he needs to get vengeance for his sons before he dies, otherwise he won't have a great afterlife - no virgins waiting for him there.

Danny not only has to figure out who and where these men are, but also get them to confess on videotape to war crimes, and then make their deaths look like accidents, and also return to Oman with proof that the job was done right. Danny hooks up with two of his merc buddies, Davies and Meier, promising them each half of the $6 million cut, leaving nothing for himself. Well, at least his heart's in the right place. The first guy goes down pretty easy, after they record his confession the plan was to make it look like he slipped on a loose tile and struck his head in the bathroom - which might have worked if the police just ignored the big bullet hole in his brain. 

When the team starts asking questions in a pub frequented by SAS veterans, somebody tips off the Feather Men, who (eventually) become aware that somebody is killing off these retired soldiers, but they're not sure who's doing this and why. Meanwhile Danny learns that their second target is going to participate in a veteran's march on a mountain range - you know, just for fun. So he slips in and puts drugs in the guy's coffee thermos which put him into shock and hypothermia during the march. (There's another guy that the team tries to kill here, named Martin and played by Ben Mendelsohn - I'll admit I was very confused by this part, because he's not on the list, and also he gets away, and I wasn't sure if this was a flashback scene, or if not, how it fit into the larger story...it takes place in the desert, and I don't think there are many deserts in the U.K.)

The team tries to take out the third guy with a job scam, they phone him and tell him about a job interview, to lure him from his house, so they can figure out how he's going to drive there and get him in a head-on collision with a remote-controlled truck, er, lorry. This part of the plan works, but a suspicious member of the Feather Men witnessed the crash, and spotted Danny's men while they were trying to confirm the kill. Now the Feather Men know for sure that someone is targeting ex-soldiers and taking them out, meanwhile Danny thinks his job is done, however some soldier has written an expose about the military operation and it comes to light that there is a FOURTH soldier who needs to be killed - those damn sheiks, always moving the goalposts...

(It's a bit clunky here, but the fourth man they need to kill is Ranulph Fiennes, whose expose on the military operation is apparently also the book titled "The Feather Men", which is the book this film is based on. This was a little bit too meta, even for me, it reminds me too much of the film "Adaptation", which was adapted from a book of the same name, which isn't possible, it just goes around and around like a chicken-egg thing. You can't have a film based on a book and then within the film's universe, there is also that same book.)

By now the Feather Men realize they have to protect the fourth soldier - if he doesn't finish his book, then they can't make a movie out of it, and all of them will then cease to exist. So they put him in a safe house and protect him with like 100 undercover guards, but Danny just sends in someone else dressed like him, only wearing a motorcycle helmet, and while everyone is trying to catch that guy, he sneaks in the back way and shoots the soldier. Only he doesn't kill him, he only incapitates him so he can take photos of his body lying on the ground, to fool the sheik.  NITPICK POINT: If he could take a photo of his target pretending to be dead, basically create a fake photo and deliver that to the sheik without killing anyone, why didn't he just do that in the first place? The sheik was pretty old school, if you show him a fake photo and a phony newspaper, he'd probably believe that the job was done. 

Anyway, after making sure that his girlfriend is safe in Paris, where Hunter's been keeping an eye on her, Danny and Hunter head back to Oman with the fake pictures, not just to get the money, but to have the job declared done so they can live out their lives without looking over their shoulders. But Logan, the enforcer for the Feather Men, gets there first and has other ideas about how to end things. The three men then part ways and they're all unofficially retired, unless somebody decides to make a sequel to this, which wouldn't be the worst idea. 

Directed by Gary McKendry

Also starring Clive Owen (last seen in "Ophelia"), Robert De Niro (last seen in "Outstanding: A Comedy Revolution"), Dominic Purcell (last seen in "Equilibrium"), Aden Young, Yvonne Strahovski (last seen in "Manhattan Night"), Ben Mendelsohn (last seen in "Cyrano"), Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje (last seen in "The Union"), David Whiteley (last seen in "Knowing"), Tony Porter (ditto), Matt Nable (last seen in "Son of a Gun"), Lachy Hulme (last seen in "Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga"), Firass Dirani (last seen in "Hacksaw Ridge"), Nick Tate (last seen in "Cry Freedom"), Bille Brown (last seen in "The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader"), Stewart Morritt, Grant Bowler, Michael Dorman (last seen in "The Invisible Man"), Daniel Roberts (last seen in "Mission: Impossible II"), Rodney Afif (last seen in "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales"), Jamie McDowell, Dion Mills, Andrew Stehlin (last seen in "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon: Sword of Destiny"), Simon Armstrong, Richard Elfyn (last seen in "Six Minutes to Midnight"), Chris Anderson, Brendan Charleson, Sandy Greenwood, Boris Brkic (last seen in "The Proposition"), Riley Evans, Sofia Nikitina, Tim Hughes (last seen in "Quigley Down Under"), Michael Carman, Salim Fayad, Kristy Barnes-Cullen, Kate Neilson, Zane Dirani, Mohamed Dirani, Michael Dirani, Emily Jordan (last seen in "The Master")

RATING: 5 out of 10 sideburns (well, it WAS set in the early 1980's)

A Working Man

Year 18, Day 83 - 3/24/26 - Movie #5,282

BEFORE: I'm so mad at myself for not coming up with some kind of "Merc Madness" tournament, what with the college basketball thing going on and all. CBS shows are pre-empted this week, and on a few other channels too because of college sports, which I never really understand. Like who is a fan of NCAA hoops AND "Law & Order", like at the same time? Anyone? No, I didn't think so. And Colbert doesn't have too many weeks left in his show, and you're just going to run repeats? Not cool. 

Jason Statham carries over again and can I do two more with him? Yeah, I probably can but the last one might be the most ridiculous of all, from what I've heard. 

THE PLOT: Levon Cade left his profession behind to work construction and be a good dad to his daughter. But when a local girl vanishes, he's asked to return to the skills that made him a mythic figure in the shadowy world of counter-terrorism. 

AFTER: OK, we're going to fill in the Jason Statham plot Mad-Libs tonight, as you know, the framework is: "A man with a shadowy past as a _______ has retired to raise his _______ in seclusion, but when __________ is kidnapped, he's forced to take down _________ in order to bring them back."  Yesterday's answers, of course, were DEA agent, daughter, her cat and the local drug-lord, but today's answers are Marine Commando, daughter (again), the daughter of his construction boss and the Russian mob. Gee, I can't help but think these films are following some kind of formula.  I'd be really surprised if tomorrow's answers were circus clown, llama farm, Jack Black and ISIS, but it could happen.

As a bonus, Levon has to take down a biker gang, in addition to the entire Russian mob - that takes a lot of time, so that's why this one is almost two hours long. Thankfully the mob never gets around to killing Jenny, his boss's daughter, like they want to use her as a sex slave but she defends herself and nearly bites this guy's face off. Since she's so much trouble, they want to just kill her and dump her body, but then comic (?) circumstances keep arising so they kind of never really get around to it. Two of the mob's main operatives drive her away from the farmhouse and they're about to shoot her and dump her body in a swamp, but since she knows karate she manages to get away from them and escape. She gets rescued by a police car, only the police are ALSO in the pocket of the Russian mob, so instead of a police station, they drop her off back at the remote "farmhouse". Then a few hours later they try to kill her again, but then they get a call from their "client" who wants her delivered alive to him, so he can kill her. You know it only takes a few minutes to kill someone, here it takes a few days, which seems very hard to believe. 

But that does give Levon time to visit his old war buddy, get his permission (for some reason) to go look for the missing girl, and then start working his way up the crime family chain, starting with the bartender at the nightclub where she was made to disappear.  He ends up killing the bartender and his two buddies, so that would seem to be a dead end, except that he then follows home the Russian gangster who shows up to clean up the dead bodies. THAT guy he holds over a pool in a poorly balanced chair, but then the gangster won't stop screaming so he has to kill him too. I think if Levon could only have waited until he got a name or something from these gangsters before killing them, the process could have gone a lot faster. Just saying. 

That drowned gangster's brother finds him dead, and sends his own two sons to track down Levon, who is in the middle of trying another way in, looking for the son of the drowned guy, who is named Dimi. Dimi runs the human trafficking part of the Russian mob, and also has a biker gang making some kind of blue club drug. Levon uses a fake ID to masquerade as a drug buyer, somebody who wants to distribute the blue drug to the Chicago club scene, and both times he buys the drugs he just throws them in the river, which is probably bad news for the fish. But then the dumb and dumber sons of the drowned guy catch up with him (with the help of those corrupt cops) and throw him in a van, only cue the fight scene inside the van where Levon frees himself, shoots the driver in the head and crashes the van into a river, giving him the upper hand, and two more dead gangsters. 

Meanwhile, the upper members of the Russian mob wonder who this "devil" is that's killing all their enforcers, so they figure out his identity and send a crew to set fire to his father-in-law's house, which is where Levon's daughter lives. For safety's sake he brings his daughter to stay with his blind war buddy, then he's free to do whatever, which means finally getting close to Dimi and shooting him in the hand, so he'll reveal where this secret farmhouse/whorehouse is. Levon, the one-man army, then heads there for the final showdown against all of the biker gang, followed by the weirdest members of the Russian mob. Well, kill 'em all and let God sort 'em out, then moving on to that client who got his face bit off, and then Viper and Artemis, who are the enforcers who were too stupid to kill Jenny, time after time. 

I really don't know how seriously to take this one, because it's SO over-the-top and flat-out ridiculous, like I'm used to seeing Statham being the one-man army, and using the enemies as his shield, then getting into close hand-to-hand combat and killing people with his opponent's gun, that sort of thing. Then you know there's usually a moment in these Statham films where he's tied-up, or seemingly unconscious, or otherwise down for the count, and really, he's not even waiting for his second wind, he's just waiting for his opponents to let their guard down. Then those ten or fifty guys are in some SERIOUS trouble. They're also further hampered by those "villain bullets" that never hit the hero no matter how many they fire at him, while the hero's got perfect aim and all his shots land because his intentions are good. 

Of course, he's going to prevail, and if he says he's going to rescue the girl, he's going to rescue the girl, no matter how many bikers he has to kill or how long that takes. In most cases when someone's missing more than three days, that usually means they're dead - but of course there are going to be exceptions to that rule every once in a while, or if it's a movie. 

Directed by David Ayer (director of "The Beekeeper" and "Street Kings")

Also starring Jason Flemyng (last seen in "Transporter 2"), Merab Ninidze (last seen in "Conclave"), Maximilian Osinski (last seen in "People Like Us"), Cokey Falkow (last seen in "The Expendables 4"), Michael Peña (last seen in "The United States of Leland"), David Harbour (last seen in "Violent Night"), Noemi Gonzalez, Arianna Rivas, Isla Gie, Emmett J. Scanlan, Eve Mauro (last seen in "Land of the Lost"), Kristina Poli, Andrej Kaminsky (last seen in "John Wick: Chapter 4"), Greg Kolpakchi (last seen in "Kraven the Hunter"), Neil Bishop (ditto), Piotr Witkowski, Chidi Ajufo (last seen in "Get a Job"), Ricky Champ (last seen in "A Royal Night Out"), Max Croes, Kenneth Collard (last seen in "6 Days"), Richard Heap, Joanna DeLane, Muki Zubis, Alexander Bracq, David Witts (last seen in "The Beekeeper"), Wayne Gordon, Daniel Lundh (last seen in "Midnight in Paris"), Jose Conejo Martin, Eddie J. Fernandez (last seen in "The Mechanic"), Jade Coatsworth, Alana Boden, Leah Walker, Priyasasha Kumari, Jonathan Nyati, Kya Brame, C.C. DeNeira, Sophie Craig, Tom Vaughan, Andrea Vasiliou, Benjamin Schnau (last seen in "The Current War"). 

RATING: 6 out of 10 bags of cement

Homefront

Year 18, Day 82 - 3/23/26 - Movie #5,281

BEFORE: Jason Statham carries over from "Wrath of Man", and if all goes well, and his films stay available on streaming this week, I should have a new name on top of the leader board very soon. Take that, Celia Imrie. 

I moved a few things around here as I figured with four more Statham movies to work with, I needed to hit at least ONE birthday, so the SHOUT-out goes out today to Ritchie Montgomery, born March 23 in, um, some year gone by. If you don't know Mr. Montgomery, he's a character (background?) actor who's shown up over 30 times here at the Movie Year, first in "Deja Vu" where he killed it as "Agent #1", and then "Young Doctor" in "Catch Me If You Can", and who can forget him as "Bus Driver" in "The Help"? He's versatile enough to have played doctors, pharmacists, policemen AND security guards, then went on to played characters with actual names in "Cleaner", "Contraband", "The Whole Truth" and "Geostorm". Happy Birthday, Mr. Montgomery, please shine on, you crazy diamond. 

Joe Chrest has a birthday later this week, March 26, but I'm sorry, I can only celebrate one character actor at a time. Today is also the 1-year anniversary of me watching "Crank: High Voltage", for whatever's that worth.

THE PLOT: A former DEA agent moves his family to a quiet town, where he soon tangles with a local meth druglord. 

AFTER: There's a very disturbing moment in the early (flashback) sequences of this film, where Jason Statham's character is an undercover operative in the drug world, and he's got long, black hair. That's it, Jason Statham with hair, and once you see it, you can't un-see it, plus he's wearing guy-liner and therefore looks like Criss Angel after a rough night. Don't say I didn't warn you. But the operation ends with the drug lab blowed up and the son of the drug kingpin killed by cops, so yeah, that's probably going to have some implications. 

This movie's kind of filled with character actors, not just Joe Chrest, but look, there's Pruitt Taylor Vince, and Lance E. Nichols, and that's Chuck Zito as the first drug lord, who ends up in jail but swears vengeance on the DEA agent he blames for the death of his son. And then Frank Grillo shows up in the second half, he's kind of become the new king of B-level actioners after his work in the MCU.  But also some big-name actors show up here, I think somehow this represents a point in Statham's career when everyone in Hollywood suddenly wanted to work with him, how else can we explain the presence of both James Franco and Winona Ryder as the head villains here? 

It's a pretty simple film, what else can you expect from a screenplay written by Sylvester Stallone? So this is also an example of a film that Stallone was planning to star in, but then he made the mistake of getting too old. Tomorrow's film, I think, is another example - but if you're living off of Stallone's leftovers, those are potentially still some very nice leftovers. Still, we can kind of see the same Statham formula at work here - a man with a shady past in the military or feds, dead wife but a young daughter, gets pulled back into service when his family is threatened, and he has to work his way up the chain to take out the big bads. Only then can he be free and clear...

It all starts with a bullying incident, though, and over the first 30 minutes we see how that can spiral out of control, as people in Louisiana (?) can't seem to let things go. Broker's daughter gets bullied at school but defends herself and gives the bully a bloody nose, then Broker is threatened by the bully's mother, then the father attacks him physically, and well, that doesn't end well for the father. The mother calls her husband a "pussy", so you can see how personal pride just escalates the whole thing to ridiculous levels. Broker makes his peace with the father (who doesn't want his ass kicked again), but the mother calls in her brother, who happens to be the local drug-lord, Gator Bodine. Gator breaks into Broker's house and figures out he used to be a narc, and well, then it's on - the drug-lord can't have a narc living so close to his drug lab. 

We get a bunch of those scenes where Statham takes down like four or five goons, who never quite figure out that they should attack him at the same time, no, they go in turns, and they get broken and battered individually. Which makes no sense, like if you're the FIRST goon to attack him, you don't know what to expect, and if you're the SECOND goon, well you probably just think he got lucky with the first goon, but if you're the FOURTH goon, why the hell attack, you just saw him take down your three buddies, who are all lying on the ground outside the gas station - if you're the fourth goon, you should just surrender, or run away. The third goon was like twice your size, and how his head's been put through a pick-up truck window and he's bleeding, just give up!

Gator also kidnaps Broker's daughter's cat, and well, if you've seen "John Wick" you know that's one step too far. We don't go after kids and pets, now Broker's got to kill everyone in your organization AND blow up your drug lab. He's really good at that last thing, just spread some chemicals around and tamper with the breakers, so the second you turn the lights on, BLAMMO. Gator's girlfriend flees the scene with Broker's daughter, but she brings Maddie back to the drug lab, which is one of the all-time dumbest movies in crime history. All that the retired DEA agent wanted was to live a quiet life in your territory, and he never would have had to take down your entire criminal organization, but you just had to go and mess with his daughter and her cat. You brought this on yourselves. 

Come on, the bully apologized, and Broker's daughter invited him to her birthday party! None of this violence had to happen! What kind of example are we setting for our kids, they're just trying to make peace and share the schoolyard together, and then the adults have to protect their drug territories and kidnap cats and deal with angry biker gangs, what kind of example are we setting here? 

Directed by Gary Fleder (director of "Runaway Jury" and "Don't Say a Word")

Also starring James Franco (last seen in "The Show"), Izabela Vidovic (last seen in "Wonder"), Kate Bosworth (last seen in "Force of Nature"), Marcus Hester (last seen in "Just My Luck"), Clancy Brown (last seen in "A Nightmare on Elm Street" (2010)), Winona Ryder (last seen in "Haunted Mansion"), Omar Benson Miller (last seen in "Sinners"), Rachelle Lefevre (last seen in "The Twilight Saga: New Moon"), Chuck Zito (last seen in "13"), Frank Grillo (last seen in "Superman"), Pruitt Taylor Vince (ditto), Linds Edwards, Austin Craig, Owen Harn (last seen in "The Piano Lesson"), Stuart Greer (last seen in "Runaway Jury"), Lance E. Nichols (ditto), Christa Campbell (last seen in "The Mechanic"), Amin Joseph (last seen in "Dope"), Michael Traynor, Joe Chrest (last seen in "The Secret Life of Bees"), Billy Slaughter (last seen in "Big George Foreman"), Christopher Alan Weaver, Craig Stark (last seen in "Licorice Pizza"), Ritchie Montgomery (last seen in "Hit Man"), Karen Kaia Livers (last seen in "Queen & Slim"), Raeden Greer (last seen in "Freelancers"), Eddie Matthews, Michael Papajohn (last seen in "The Iron Claw"), Carlos Navarro (last seen in "Identity Thief"), Nicole Andrews (last seen in "The Expendables 4"), Robert Fortner.

RATING: 5 out of 10 regrettable tattoos

Wrath of Man

Year 18, Day 81 - 3/22/26 - Movie #5,280

BEFORE: I've had a couple long sleeps now, so I've recovered from the beer festival in Jersey City - what's weird is that I was up EARLY on Sunday, I've noticed that as soon as the beer is gone, I tend to be wide awake and I can't get back to sleep, so I just start my day and go on with life, but it would be very wrong to think that if I had to get up early and work, I should drink a lot the night before. That would be a very dangerous mental path to go down, I think. Anyway it's probably an illusory feeling, just because I feel awake the next day and have no hangover, that doesn't mean that I'm fine and dandy, that afternoon I'll probably crash or sleep for 14 hours in the next cycle - I'm just kicking the problem can down the road a bit. I just take it as a signal that my body is "clear" of the alcohol, and sure, I can function and converse and we can go out for a proper breakfast, but the lack of sleep is bound to catch up with me soon. I've got a couple days off now, so it's time to double-up on action movies and do some list maintenance, clear a few shows off the DVR and take out the next round of DVDs for the upcoming two weeks. 

Josh Hartnett carries over from "Fight or Flight", and I'm back on Jason Statham films for a while. So I have to watch this one next, because of the linking and because it's about to disappear from Netflix on March 24. It may go to the MGM-centric channel on cable after that, who knows, but I have to work it in before it leaves streaming - the next three films I can watch in any order, I just need to end with the right Statham film that gives me a proper outro that gets me to Easter on time. And not too early, either, like Holt McCallany is in tonight's film, and I could go from here RIGHT to "Mission: Impossible - the Final Reckoning", but that gets me to my Easter film about 13 days too early. Last year in late March we took a vacation and if I were taking 8 days off this year, that path would have been great, but since I'm sticking around I'll take the longer road. The same goes for Josh Hartnett, if I linked to "Wicker Park" now it would similarly get me there too quickly. 

THE PLOT: A mysteriously stoic character is hired as a security guard for an armored truck company responsible for transporting a lot of money around Los Angeles each week. 

AFTER: I have to say, I think Guy Ritchie has really made something of himself, I can't believe this is the same guy who directed the nightmare suck-fest that was "Swept Away" and also the mess that was "King Arthur: Legend of the Sword", after pissing on the "Sherlock Holmes" franchise a few times. I kind of wish now that I could watch his films in the order they were released, just to watch his skill develop - I know he started out with Cockney crime films and now he's kind of circled back to them, and the more recent work, like "The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare" and "The Gentlemen" has been super solid. Now I've watched two recent films this week, both with Statham, who started out in "Snatch" and "Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels", so it kind of feels like homecoming week. 

"Wrath of Man" is one of those twisty films that jumps around in time quite liberally, which I'm usually very much against, except for films made by Tarantino or Scorsese, and now I think I'll have to make allowances for Ritchie as well. Not everyone knows the right way to do this, like it shouldn't be done just to start with the most shocking bit and then flash back to show how we got there, like "Fight or Flight" did - that just gives too much away, like we knew that the flight was going to turn to absolute chaos before it even took off. No, the RIGHT way to do this is to withhold valuable information, to start in the most mysterious spot possible, and then flashback to reveal important information, but only WHEN it needs to be revealed, so that it changes simply everything. "The Hateful Eight" is one of the best examples, like if the film was edited completely chronologically, the first scene would be people arriving at the cabin to hide inside, and, well, that would just give everything away, wouldn't it? Sorry, spoiler alert for "The Hateful Eight". But when those people reveal themselves, it's a great time to flash back and show us how they got there in the first place, just PLEASE put up one of those supers that says, "8 hours ago" or "two weeks later", because I'm going to have to put all this in order later on. 

In "Wrath of Man", that means starting with the armored car heist, and after that movie five months into the future, then another three months forward, then eight months backwards, back to the heist. Then three weeks forward, then backwards again (seven months?) to see the planning of the heist, and the heist again. Then five months forward AGAIN to another planning session, and finally two months forward to Black Friday, and the second (third?) heist. It's a lot of jumping around, and we see the heist itself from a number of different POV's, "Rashomon" style, but each time we learn MORE about it, so yeah, it's kind of justified. Doing things this way takes twice as long and also makes everything about three times more complicated than it needs to be, but clearly somebody looked at the story, broke it down, and realized that it didn't work if you just did start-to-finish. 

What makes things a bit more confusing is the fact that there are TWO different gangs of thieves in L.A. that are working the armored car heist circuit. I guess this makes sense, I mean it is a big city and there are a lot of bad people (half of whom have British accents, like who knew?) but this is what the armored car security guards are up against, I agree they have to be on edge like 100% of the time, because if it's not one gang shooting paint pellets and smoke grenades and cutting through their armored car's armor with a giant chain-saw, it's probably the other guys. And it helps that every time we see the heist, it's from a different character's perspective, so we see it once from the inside of the truck, we see it again when Statham's character was a bystander (of sorts) and then the third time, it's from the perspective of the gang doing the heist. By the third time, we know every beat and it's a lot easier to follow along, at least. 

I have a feeling that I missed a lot of the connections, like maybe this is the "Pulp Fiction" of armored car heists and after you watch it seven or eight times maybe you can see all of the connections, all the stuff below the surface that you missed the first time - like I think I know how H at the end knows where that guy from the Black Friday heist lives, but I don't want to say it and be wrong. I kind of wish I had time to watch this one again, Chapter One probably hits a lot different after you gain the knowledge from Chapters Two and Three, but I just don't have time, I probably won't ever have time to circle back to this one, and that's a bit of a shame. I stand by the reasoning, however, that this is probably the most somebody COULD do with an armored car-heist plot. 

However, there's always room for improvement - the title, for example, tells me absolutely nothing, it feels too philosophical for a heist film, we need something more like "The Bank Job" or "The Italian Job", I know those are taken but come on, we can do better. This is a remake of a French film called "Le Convoyeur", or "Cash Truck", and even that's a better title than what they landed on. Secondly, that poster - it's boring as hell, just putting Statham in a suit with bloody knuckles, is that the BEST you could do? It tells me NOTHING about the film, like a lot about Jason Statham, but where's the armored car, the bullets, the action, the pile of bodies?  A photo of Statham running toward the camera and screaming would have been a hundred times more dynamic. Even a posed montage like the posters for "Operation Fortune" or "Black Bag" would have been better, but come ON, this is an action movie, the poster needs some action in it. 

I realize that Statham seems to have two speeds - full-on action hero and dead-stop quiet guy trying to figure out the plan of attack. But we came here for the FIRST one and we tolerate the quiet guy during the down time - but only because we know he's going to be in Beast Mode before long. It's a bit like Los Angeles, which has two modes, too, one is the flashy, fast, celebrity beach-themed party mode, and the other is the dirty, gritty, industrial janky side of town, which is mostly what is on display here. And just like "Operation Fortune", there's a nod to "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre" that suggests that thieves can't even trust each other, so if you just leave them alone perhaps they'll just kill each other - hey, do the police know about this? Because it sure seems like that would make their jobs a lot easier. 

Directed by Guy Ritchie (director of "Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre")

Also starring Jason Statham (last seen in "Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre"), Eddie Marsan (ditto), Holt McCallany (last seen in "Monster Trucks"), Rocci Boy Williams (last seen in "The Beekeeper"), Jeffrey Donovan (last seen in "Honest Thief"), Scott Eastwood (last seen in "Pacific Rim: Uprising"), Andy Garcia (last seen in "Pain Hustlers"), Deobia Oparei (last seen in "The Four Feathers"), Laz Alonso (last seen in "Jarhead"), Raul Castillo (last seen in "Smile 2"), Chris Reilly (last seen in "Official Secrets"), Niamh Algar (last seen in "The Wonder"), Tadhg Murphy (last seen in "The Northman"), Alessandro Babalola (last seen in "The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare"), Babs Olusanmokun (ditto), Mark Arnold (last seen in "Angel Has Fallen"), Gerald Tyler, Alex Ferns (last seen in "Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire"), Josh Cowdery (last seen in "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them"), Jason Wong (last seen in "Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves"), Rob Delaney (last seen in "Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One"), Eli Brown (last seen in "A Complete Unknown"), Kerry Shale (last heard in "Rock Hudson: All That Heaven Allowed"), Cameron Jack (last seen in "The Last Vermeer"), Darrell D'Silva (last seen in "Marlowe"), Thomas Dominique, Lyne Renee (last seen in "The Gentlemen"), Rebecca Calder (last seen in "Memory"), Matthew Illesley (last seen in "Rocketman"), Phoebe Farnham, Eve Macklin (last seen in "Brooklyn"), Fernando Martinez (last seen in "Term Life"), Post Malone (Austin Post) (last seen in "Dear Santa"), Sam Shoubber, Anthony Elfonzia, Mark Cotone, Bestemsu Ozdemir (also last seen in "Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre").

RATING: 7 out of 10 paintball guns

Fight or Flight

Year 18, Day 81 - 3/22/26 - Movie #5,279

BEFORE: I had a very busy Saturday where we got our taxes done in the morning, and then I had a ticket for a beer tasting event in Jersey City, so I had to leave early because I'd never taken the PATH train before, after 40 years of living in NYC. I just don't go to New Jersey much, really everything I've needed has been on this side of the Hudson River - but there were many breweries scheduled to attend that I had never heard of before, and really, I've tried all the beers from companies that do the tastings in Manhattan and Brooklyn, so it was time to extend the reach. Everything's legal in New Jersey, including filling up those tasting glass and NOT stopping at the 2 oz. fill line. So I got a bit bogged down, even after stopping for a sausage sandwich, I only got to try 40 samples, which for me is pretty low. In my defense a crowd eventually showed up and there were long lines after the first hour, and then numerous bathroom breaks so I really couldn't get any momentum going, since I had to stop every 10 minutes and make a long walk to the men's room. Maybe I need to stay local and keep going to the festivals with the smaller pours, I'm older now and it just took too long for me to get home. Anyway, I filled up a few more pages in the beer journal and I got to explain to a whole new bunch of people why I have the beer journal, and I made it home safely, I somehow always do. 

This was supposed to be a Jason Statham chain, sure, but since two of those films also have Josh Hartnett in them, I can squeeze this one in here before proceeding, because it doesn't currently link to anything else, so it would be stranded if I don't get to it tonight. Then it could spend YEARS on the list, as I've seen, so let me just take advantage of the linking and get this one crossed off the list, OK? Josh Hartnett carries over from "Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre". 

THE PLOT: A mercenary takes on the job of tracking down a target on a plane but then must protect that target when they're surrounded by people trying to kill both of them. 

AFTER: The two-word review should probably just be "Bullet Plane", because it's been about two years since Brad Pitt was in "Bullet Train", and that's about how long it takes to rip something off and change it JUST enough to technically be a different story, even though it's a very very similar story, just on a different form of transportation. It could just as easily be a nod back to "Con Air", or "Passenger 57", but I'm sticking with "Bullet Plane". We should have somebody make "Snakes on a Train" any day now, except that would be a terrible idea. 

Also, this is maybe what happens when you don't properly fund the TSA, and suddenly you've got people bringing guns, knives and even a chainsaw on board somehow. Now the filmmakers probably never saw the government shutdown coming, and as far as I know the TSA has gone with the super-long scanning lines for now, but mark my words, if they don't figure out how to pay the real security agents, this scenario could be in our future. If there's a hijacking or another 9/11-type incident in the next few weeks we can totally trace it back to the perfect storm of not paying the TSA agents combined with a war in the Middle East. Yeah, that seems like a recipe for disaster, all right. The latest stopgap suggestion seems to be a plan to use ICE agents to scan people at the airport - but how would that work? They make you take off your shoes and belt, they put you through the x-ray and then you end up in detention in Central America, when you were just trying to go to Seattle?

I think we've also seen an uptick in films about mercenaries after the "Deadpool" movies took off, and the typical tough-guy assassin was replaced by a more colorful, outrageous, impossible-to-kill wisecracking sort of guy, somebody who might be trying to do "the right thing" but in the most extravagantly violently way possible. Does such a merc exist in real life? It's doubtful, but then how would any of us normies even know? Kids used to want to grow up to become doctors or firemen, but now things have shifted and at least some of them want to be rogue spies or mercenaries for hire, I'd wager, now that Hollywood has made them marketable. 

Anyway, this film involves a former secret service agent who was disgraced (I guess we'll find out more in the prequel) but called back into service because he was nearby (Bangkok) and available. His handler-slash-former partner-slash-exgirlfriend offers him a chance to clear his name if he will track down a hacker called the Ghost, who is flying to San Francisco, and is believed to have suffered a bullet wound. Seems simple enough, board the plane and look for someone who's bleeding, that's probably them, what could possibly go wrong? Well, reductio ad absurdium, of course, and we know from the flash-forward that this is somehow going to end with a giant hole in the plane and a lot of other mayhem as well. 

There may be one or two other cutthroats, murderers, bounty hunters, desperadoes, vipers, snipers, bandits, muggers, buggerers, bushwhackers and hornswogglers on that plane, hell it's a whole assassin's convention worth, and how exactly did they all get clearance?  There's an air marshall, too, but he bites it pretty early and I'm betting Lucas wishes he could take that one back. And he does find the Ghost, and it's a bit like in the comic books when two heroes meet, after a brief fight they kind of realize they're on the team side and they would benefit from doing a team-up. So yeah, it's a bit by-the-numbers here, and we've seen most of this before in different other movies, just not exactly in this order. 

And much like yesterday's film, there's a device which is a super-computer of sorts, the ultimate hacker's tool because it can get through any firewall or past any encrypted coding, this is like everyone's secret most unspoken fear right now, that some twenty-something's going to build the key to everything on a drive and then we all get spammed for the rest of our lives, the unsubscribe button simply won't work anymore. I know they meant to make things sound even worse than that, but none of these movies can specifically describe what these super-computers can do, they just all say, "Well, it's going to be really BAD" and leave it at that. HOW BAD?

The plane does not land in San Francisco as planned, because I guess the computer is flying the plane and we all live in the Matrix simulation now. Lucas and the Ghost end up in some other war-torn nation, and the work is just beginning. (I guess we'll find out more in the sequel...)

Directed by James Madigan (assistant director of "Insurgent" and "Allegiant")

Also starring Charithra Chandran (last seen in "Eternals"), Katee Sackhoff (last seen in "Tell"), Julian Kostov (last seen in "Ben-Hur"), Marko Zaror (last seen in "John Wick: Chapter 4"), JuJu Chan Szeto (last seen in "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon: Sword of Destiny"), Danny Ashok, Hughie O'Donnell, Jyuddah Jaymes (last seen in "The Boys in the Boat"), Willem Van der Vegt, Sanjeev Kohli (last seen in "Filth"), Declan Baxter, Sarah Lam, Iren Bordan (last seen in "The Debt"), Attila Arpa (last seen in "Colette") Nora Trokan (last seen in "R.I.P.D. 2: Rise of the Damned"), Balint Adorjani (last seen in "Red Sparrow"), Katrina Anne Ward, Melissa Bale, Rebecka Johnston (last seen in "Midsommar"), William Mychael Lee, Brian Alanchis, Zalan Takacs, Bela Stubnya, Yu Debin, Anabelle Daisy Grundberg, Andras Seregi, Istvan Zambo, Heather Choo, Agota Dunai, Claudia Heinz, Peter Jankovics, Sanjay Prabhakar, Zsolt Szentirmai, Narantsogt Tsogtsaikhan. 

RATING: 5 out of 10 neck pillows