Precious Cargo

Year 16, Day 31 - 1/31/24 - Movie #4,632

BEFORE: Last film for January, so you know what that means, I've got to start compiling some statistics.  Here's the format breakdown for this month's over-packed line-up:

8 Movies watched on cable (saved to DVD): The Song of Names, Clockwatchers, Mafia Mamma, John Wick: Chapter 4, The Whale, The Wolf of Snow Hollow, Senior Moment, Babylon

5 Movies watched on cable (not saved): The Wolfpack, An Imperfect Murder, Far From the Madding Crowd, Under the Silver Lake, Precious Cargo

7 watched on Netflix: The Dirt, Stowaway, Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget, The School for Good and Evil, Maestro, The Machine, Extraction II

3 watched on Amazon Prime: All the Old Knives, Tár, She Said
5 watched on Hulu: The Worst Person in the World, Bergman Island, Quiz Lady, Jesus Henry Christ, Dream Horse

1 watched on Disney+: The LIttle Mermaid (2023)
1 watched on Tubi: Framing John DeLorean

2 watched on a random site: Sinbad: Beyond the Veil of Mists, The Darkest Hour
32 TOTAL

And the actor/actress with the most appearances in January is Toni Collette with five, so she's off to an early lead, though I doubt she'll be in the running after the documentary block comes and goes.  We'll see - but tied for second place with three appearances each are Alec Baldwin, Joe Chrest, Laurence Fishburne, Carey Mulligan and Tim Roth.  Sorry, Brendan Fraser and Jimmy Tatro, I had to cut your third appearances. I'll try to reschedule those movies. 

Daniel Bernhardt carries over from "Extraction II". 

THE PLOT: A crime boss tries to make off with loot that belongs to another thief. 

AFTER: Tonight's film comes to us from E.F.O., or Emmett/Furla Oasis Films, and they basically cornered the market on Bruce Willis action films that you've probably never heard of.  They booked him solid for about 6 months back in 2015 for, let's say, maybe 100 1-day shoots on many action movies, and then somebody had to organize the shoots and plan the locations and costumes so that he didn't have to work more than 1 day on any movie, then they probably took their time shooting the rest of the movies with the cheaper actors.  It turned out to be a smart move, because a couple years later he retired from acting for medical reasons, and their company was sitting on dozens of unreleased action films that were already in the can.  OK, I'm not sure that's how it went down, but I know they maximized his time and two years ago I watched a metric ton of those films, like "Fire With Fire", "First Kill", "Hard Kill", "Acts of Violence", "Reprisal" and "Extraction" (only, not the "Extraction" with Chris Hemsworth, different movie.)

They're all, well, not great.  None of them could ever hold a candle to "Die Hard", but hey, same actor, right?  And they all feel like they were kind of thrown together, or like somebody didn't spend much time working on the script, assuming there WAS a script.  Seriously, go take a look at Bruce Willis' filmography between 2015 and 2022 and you'll see how profilic he was during that period, and you've never heard of any of those films either, unless you specifically focus your attention on the cheap, schloko action genre, like I did for a while.  Tonight's film must have slipped through the cracks, I missed it during my Bruce Willis-thon, but recorded it last fall when it was airing on either HBO or Cinemax.  And it's, well, not great. 

I could spend my time picking apart the storyline, but is there really a point to doing that?  Nobody really cared when they were putting it together, so why should I bother tearing it down?  OK, I can't resist.  It's about Jack, a guy who we meet in the middle of a weapons deal, just before his client tries to rip him off and then also shoot him.  But Jack's got an ace in the hole, a sniper positioned out of visual range who has instructions to shoot the client if the deal goes south.  Well, sure, that's one way to win every business deal, I guess - and of course now Jack gets to keep the money AND the weapons, assuming there were any weapons on the boat to begin with, and does that even matter?  Jeez, I want to like this guy but if he's dead-set on killing off his clients how is he going to get any word-of-mouth recommendations?  Let's call that NITPICK POINT #1, he can't get any repeat business. 

He's still pining over his ex, Karen, who shows up just when he's taking his new relationship with veterinarian Jenna to the next level, if you know what I mean.  Darn those exes, always showing up pregnant at the worst possible times.  But Karen needs his help with a job, a heist, a smash & grab that will help her win big, it's the big score to end all big scores - but the problem is, she stole the idea from the Big Boss, who thought of it but then backed out, and he feels that if Karen goes forward with the heist, he's still entitled to his cut, which is now 100%.  Yeah, that's a tough negotiator, and so Karen has to pull ANOTHER heist to raise enough money to pay off Filosa and still have something for herself.  Or, and I'm just putting this out there, she could just NOT DO THE JOB and then she would owe him nothing.  Let's call that NITPICK POINT #2 - if it's not financially worth it, if you'd lose money doing the job, then, umm, maybe just don't do it.  Well, that would save us all a bunch of time.

But no, they move forward with the armored car heist, which involves making the armored car stop, then dragging it away with a tow truck as if it's an incapacitated vehicle.  Umm, sure, if the police were looking for a missing armored car, they probably wouldn't think to stop that tow truck that's TOWING AN ARMORED CAR.  Yep, that's N.P. #3.  There's still a security guard in the armored car, so they get him out by filling the armored car with water.  Yeah, I don't think that would work - N.P. #4.  But here that somehow works, and the crew gets the diamonds.  Karen goes back, though, because there's something else in the armored car, and it's a little device that looks like an iPad, and it's the key to unlocking a safe.  Right.  I'll let you slide a little here, but I'm watching this closely...

The safe is on board a plane, which is going to land at an army base for refueling, which takes about 15 minutes.  So Jack and his crew have to figure out a way to get ON to a military base, distract all the soldiers who are guarding the plane, get ON the plane, crack the safe, get OFF the plane with the contents, and then somehow get out of the military base unscathed.  So many things that are impossible here, so there are about 6 more N.P.'s piling up, when OH!, they've got a perfect distraction, just drive an ice-cream truck on to the base, it's just that simple, only God knows it has no right to be.  

Against all logical reasoning, this plan seems to work, only there's not enough time to crack the safe open, so they do the next best thing, but some plastic explosives under it so they can blow it out of the army plane in mid-air.  Yeah, even if they could quickly calculate how much Semtex they would need to blow the safe OUT of the plane, without blowing the plane UP completely, there's still a big issue here, namely that the safe lands in the ocean, and although they have a crew member in a boat nearby, they never explain how he got the safe up from the sea floor - that crane's not big enough and there's no sign of a giant magnet or any kind of flotation device, the next time we see the safe, it's on the bed of a truck.  GIANT NITPICK POINT, and I guess the director just thought that nobody watching would even notice this.  Well, I did, so there. 

Bottom line, this is completely ridiculous and simply cannot be taken seriously at all.  I guess it's meant to be fun, though it's not really funny at all - but still, I am an accidental programming genius, because there's relationship stuff mixed in among the heist hijinks - will Karen and Jack get back together again, or will Jack try to patch things up with that cute veterinarian, after they used her medical practice to save the life of his crew member that got shot?  Are you Team Karen or Team Jenna?  Jack knows that Jenna is the more stable choice, but Karen is wild and exciting and gets him into trouble again and again - plus, she's rich now!  Still, she's the dangerous one, maybe stick with the vet, there's less history there. 

The real romance chain starts tomorrow on February 1, but this at least made for a decent thematic lead-in.  Umm, yeah, I meant for that to happen, let's go with that!

Also starring Mark-Paul Gosselaar (last seen in "Heist"), Bruce Willis (last seen in "De Palma"), Claire Forlani (last seen in "Meet Joe Black"), Jenna B. Kelly (last seen in "Acts of Violence"), Nick Loeb (last seen in "Extraction" (2015)), David Gordon (ditto), John Brotherton (last seen in "Guardians of the Galaxy"), Lydia Hull (last seen in "Arsenal"), Tyler Jon Olson (ditto), Christopher Rob Bowen (ditto), Sammi Barber, Torrie Wilson (last seen in "Marauders"), Kirkland Shepherd, Ashley Kirk (last seen in "Vice" (2015)), Mackie Burt, Laura Kaufman, Chris Sileo, Jean-Claude Leuyer (last seen in "Reminiscence"), Sam Situmorang.

RATING: 4 out of 10 spark plugs not used for their intended purpose