BEFORE: John Travolta carries over again from "Gotti", and there are a lot of Samuel L. Jackson movies coming up - one now, and the rest to follow shortly. But my reason for separating this one from the herd will make more sense tomorrow, a chance to work in a VERY big movie from late last year.
This one looked like it was on AmazonPrime, and so that was the plan for last night, but I signed on only to find out that it was only available there for an extra fee, and that's no bueno, I'm not giving Amazon any more money than they get from my wife's Prime subscription. OK, it's not airing on cable either, so it's back upstairs to find out if it's streaming anywhere, which it apparently is not. So I could rent it from YouTube, but I don't really want to give that corporation any more money, either - AND my fave pirate site is down, maybe the copyright police finally caught up with them. OK, let me give iTunes another try, it didn't connect last time I tried, and I got the feeling maybe Apple shut down movie rentals on iTunes, probably because I was the last person using that service. Well, it worked, and I think I'd rather give my $4 to Apple than to YouTube/Google or Amazon. I really have to think about which mega-corporation I fund, because that should make a difference in the long run, what with the looming recession and all. I guess iTunes is my safety net once again, if all else fails and I can't find a specific movie anywhere else, there's always iTunes, as long as my outdated computer will connect with it.
Oh, and there's an accidental Birthday SHOUT-out today, going out to actress Roselyn Sanchez, born April 2, 1973, she plays a soldier named Nuñez in today's film.
THE PLOT: D.E.A. Agent Tom Hardy investigates the disappearance of Army Ranger drill sergeant Nathan West and several of his cadets during a training exercise gone severely awry at Fort Clayton.
AFTER: It's a bit of a "Pulp Fiction" reunion tonight, with John Travolta and Samuel L. Jackson working together again. Just last night on TMZ, I saw the recent footage of Travolta eating at a fancy steakhouse that serves their wagyu steak in a briefcase with a glowing light emanating from it, just like the mystery case in the film. So you know somebody worked very hard to set up that photo op with Mr. Travolta - I guess "Pulp Fiction" will just always be in vogue.
I had a lot of trouble staying awake for this one - never a good sign. And I was at my desk upstairs, watching it on iTunes - it SHOULD be harder for me to fall asleep sitting at a desk than it is while laying on a couch or on a bed. But this is where we find ourselves, maybe because I worked in the same office for 31 years, I developed a tendency to fall asleep at a desk? That sounds bad. But perhaps I'm only partly to blame this time, this film was VERY hard to follow, because as the movie went on, there were several different re-enactments of the events being investigated, and the actions and perpetrators changed slightly each time. Look, I get it, somebody loves "Rashomon", but still, we're re-hashing the same thing over and over again here, sure it's a little different each time, based on who's telling the story, but still, this is how boredom creeps in.
I can't even really get into the details here, because that would give too much away, plus as I just stated, the details keep changing every time, so it's kind of like "A Few Good Men" crossed with "The Usual Suspects", and we're just not going to find out what REALLY went down until the very end. So, umm, why are we wasting everyone's time with five different versions of things, why can't we just skip right to the end? Please?
The best number of twist endings to have in a movie is probably ONE, provided it's a good one. To keep having twists throughout the film, or letting five of them build up close to the end, that's not a good idea because the audience is then going to feel tricked, or perhaps that nothing is real after all once every little element of the story they were told before then turns out to not be true by the end. So there's very little chance to find footing here, and then after the biggest reveal at all, if you go back and think about some of the smaller plot points made in the beginning, well they don't really make sense at all, considering what got revealed at the end. And then the plot is at crossed purposes with itself, and what the hell is reality, anyway, is ANYTHING really real?
All we really know at first is that there was a military training exercise in the Panama jungle, a team of future army rangers led by master sergeant Nathan West, and somehow nearly everyone on the mission died or disappeared, except for Sgt. Dunbar, who came back to the base carrying the wounded Lt. Kendall. A third man, Sgt. Mueller, follows them out of the jungle, but Dunbar kills him in self-defense.
Military police investigator Capt. Julia Osborne interviews Dunbar, but he refuses to reveal anything about what happened, and will only talk to a fellow Army Ranger from outside the base. So the post commander calls in a DEA agent, Tom Hardy, who used to be an Army Ranger, and also trained under the missing Sergeant West. Together Hardy and Osborne interview both the un-talkative Sgt. Dunbar and also the very talkative injured Lt. Kendall. From these men's stories, they start to piece together a chain of events that might explain why the men in these units might have killed their Master Sergeant (who was a tough bastard, sure, but aren't all military drill instructors?) or killed each other. However, things just don't have a tendency to line up, and the story keeps changing every time someone tells or re-tells it.
What does it all have to do with shipments of cocaine out of Panama, drug cocktails being given to soldiers who are exhausted from training exercises, and how far up the chain of command does the conspiracy go? No spoilers here, but be prepared for a bunch of twists and turns in this story, and don't believe anything you see at first, especially in the flashbacks, which could turn out to contain false information, intentional or not. Me, I don't really like being "tricked" by a movie, so I have to factor that in to my scoring system.
Directed by John McTiernan (director of "Medicine Man" and "Rollerball" (2002))
Also starring Connie Nielsen (last seen in "3 Days to Kill"), Samuel L. Jackson (last seen in "The Marvels"), Tim Daly (last seen in "The Object of My Affection"), Giovanni Ribisi (last seen in "Avatar: The Way of Water"), Brian Van Holt (last seen in "Den of Thieves"), Taye Diggs (last seen in "Idina Menzel: Which Way to the Stage?"), Dash Mihok (last seen in "A Million Little Pieces"), Cristian de la Fuente, Roselyn Sanchez, Harry Connick Jr. (last seen in "Remembering Gene Wilder"), Georgia Hausserman, Margaret Travolta (last seen in "Mercury Rising"), Nick Loren (also carrying over from "Gotti"), Cliff Fleming (last seen in "Jupiter Ascending"), Tait Ruppert, Timothy S. Wester.
RATING: 4 out of 10 bullet holes in the roof
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