BEFORE: Out working last night, an animation event and thanks to my previous life, I'm pretty good at identifying animation VIP's, who tend to show up late for events and often they can't find their QR codes, which are on their tickets, which are somewhere in their e-mail, only they can't find the e-mail or the paper ticket their assistant printed out. Yes, I know the type, I spent 30 years working for somebody just like that. At some point it's easier if they just tell me their name, because I've watched SO many animated films and read SO many credits that I'm probably going to know exactly who they are, or I may have dealt with them at some point via e-mail in that previous life. So yeah, this guy told me his name, I knew who he was, and I let him in the event, 99% sure he was probably on the VIP list, which I didn't have access to at that point, because the screening had begun. After the event, I told the host who I let in without a ticket, and he told me that I made the right call. Yep, I figured that. I had Googled the guy, essentially confirming he was who he said he was, and his producing credits let me know he belonged there. The event host was once my counterpart at the animation studio across the street (literally) and so we had a lot to talk about, for two people who had never met before.
Kevin Costner carries over from "The Upside of Anger".
THE PLOT: A retired sheriff and his wife, grieving over the death of their son, set out to find their only grandson.
AFTER: Well, we've really got a running theme this week, and it's got a lot to do with kidnapping - I mean, that's kind of a no-brainer for a Jason Statham film, but I thought the theme would kind of end there. In "Homefront" his character's daughter was held by drug dealers, and then in "A Working Man" he rescued his boss' daughter who had been kidnapped by the Russian mob to become a sex slave. Then in "Killer Elite" his mentor, played by De Niro, was being held hostage by an Omani sheik. In "Death Race" he went to prison, that's not exactly the same thing, and "The Upside of Anger" had a husband who disappeared, that's sort of its own thing too. But now we're back on kidnapping of an actual kid - OK, again sort of. But you see how the whole week has been about people vanishing or being made to vanish, right?
The situation with this one is that the Blackledge family is going well, their son James has married Lorna and they have an infant son, Jimmy. Maybe Margaret is just a bit too into the grandmothering thing, we see her push Lorna out of the way so she can give Jimmy a proper bath in the kitchen sink. Not long after that, James apparently falls off his horse while out doing chores on the Montana ranch, and breaks his neck. When his horse returns to the stable without him, George has to ride out and bring his son's body home. Well, as a former sheriff he's probably seen his share of dead people, but still, the loss is devastating to the family.
The film fast-forwards a couple years, and Lorna marries Donnie Weboy, but the Blackledges are still looking forward to being doting grandparents to little Jimmy - but Margaret sees Lorna out walking with Jimmy and her husband, and when Jimmy drops his ice cream cone, Donnie grabs the kid to make him stop crying, then he hits Lorna. (NOTE: this part of the film is set in 1963, and it was a different time, but this behavior is NOT OK by modern standards, nor was it OK to Margaret back then.) Margaret decides to drop in and talk to them, only to find they've left town with no forwarding address.
But since it's 1963, there's no way to look somebody up on the internet or call directory assistance even, and phone books were only published like once a year so there really was no quick way to track somebody down, it's easy to forget that we live in the information age now and back then, things didn't get updated often, except at a snail's pace. Margaret wants to pack her bags, load up the truck and drive around until she learns where her grandson is, whether George joins her on her quest is really up to him. But as a former sheriff, he's got some contacts in law enforcement, so the police station is their first stop, not a terrible way to go because maybe Donnie Weboy has some outstanding warrants or something, they can also maybe issue an APB or something. But again, no computers to trace his credit cards, no street cameras to tie into, no nationwide database of traffic tickets or anything like that. They spend the night in an empty jail cell (umm, how is that better than a hotel room?) and the sheriff gets them a lead on a shop in Forsyth that might be owned by the Weboy family.
The Weboy cousin in the Forsyth shop tells them the family is mostly based in Gladstone, North Dakota, so that's where they head next. Along the way they meet Peter, a young Native American who lives out in the middle of nowhere, away from society for some reason. It's noted that much like the times it's set in, the film also tends to move at a snail's pace. You can really feel the time that it probably takes to drive across the big state of Montana... Peter does know the name Weboy, at least, and suggests they look for Bill Weboy when they reach town.
Bill Weboy seems helpful, but also a little shady at the same time. He'll drive them out to the main Weboy farm, but only if they come back at 4 pm and they agree to stay out there for dinner. Also he wants one of the Blackledges to ride in his truck, why exactly is a bit unclear - but it seems he doesn't trust the Blackledges, and if he can't trust them, how can they trust him? Donnie's mother does make pork chops for dinner, but she's also rather forward and rude and when Lorna, Donnie and little Jimmy arrive, something still seems a bit off, and the Blackledges don't really care for how they talk to little Jimmy and send him to bed without dinner just because he wouldn't eat a hamburger with mustard for lunch.
The next day, the Blackledges visit Lorna at work and ask her to return to Montana with their grandson, she agrees to do so, but she's also concerned what this family will do to her if she leaves, probably track her down. So instead of Lorna showing up at their hotel, the Blackledges are visited by Blanche, Donnie and Bill, plus a couple other tough-looking family members, and things don't go well. George pulls his gun, but come on, he's getting on in years, so he ends up in the hospital, and the local sheriff who investigates the incident sides with the Weboys, pointing out that these out-of-towners came to Gladstone to try to get their grandson back, then they pulled a gun on the Weboys while in their hotel room, but the good news is that the Weboys have agreed to not press charges, provided George and Margaret leave town and forget about their grandson.
Well, that probably would be the smart thing to do, only Margaret can't seem to give up. George sneaks out to return to the Weboy ranch with a shotgun, and he tries to either take the boy or go all one-man-army on the Weboys. Well, he's not exactly Jason Statham so there are some disastrous consquences, to say the least. I guess at some point you have to cut your losses and accept that even family members are going to come and go. At that point, even if they could get little Jimmy back, would it be worth the cost?
Sure, the Jason Statham films are mindless, feel-good action films where the moral arc of the universe bends toward justice, and the good guy with a gun usually beats a biker gang with guns because he's got the moral high ground, also he exercises and knows MMA stuff. But if a normal person went up against a whole family full of tough guys, this film's result is at least a bit more believable, even if it's not exactly the outcome the audience wants. Even when Margaret gets more help from Peter, by the time she arrives at the Weboy house, well, no spoilers here.
But these actors played Superman's earth parents in the previous round of DC superhero films, maybe that's why it feels like they're the moral people with justice on their side. Why couldn't they have tried to go about things the legal way, instead of playing vigilante, maybe file some lawsuit to get visitation rights so they could see their grandson? That might have taken a bit longer, especially if they didn't know where he was, but ultimately that could have been more successful. Just saying.
Directed by Thomas Bezucha (director of "The Family Stone")
Also starring Diane Lane (last heard in "Inside Out 2"), Kayli Carter (last seen in "A Complete Unknown"), Ryan Bruce, Lesley Manville (last seen in "Ordinary Love"), Will Brittain (last seen in "The Forever Purge"), Jeffrey Donovan (last seen in "Wrath of Man"), Connor Mackay, Adam Stafford, Booboo Stewart (last seen in "The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 2"), Greg Lawson, Bradley Stryker (last seen in "Cold Pursuit"), Will Hochman, John Treleaven, Heather Lea MacCallum, Ryan Northcott, Otto Hornung, Bram Hornung, Ravonna Dow, Judith Buchan, Marilyn Potts, Vanessa Holmes, Bryn Roy, Finn Lee-Epp
RATING: 6 out of 10 slices of coffee cake
No comments:
Post a Comment