BEFORE: Parker Sawyers carries over again from "Southside with You" - by some minor miracle, the actor who played Obama in yesterday's film also appears in this Jason Statham action film, so linking here next was a total no-brainer. My other options were "Jay Kelly" (pass for now) and "Jules", which is a weird film with Ben Kingsley interacting with an alien. Umm, I really need the action films right now, so the path forward is clear. At almost exactly this time last year, I was on Jason Statham films like "Mechanic: Resurrection" and "Crank: High Voltage", so well, here I go again.
THE PLOT: Elite spy Orson Fortune recruits a movie star to help him stop the sale of a new weapons technology.
AFTER: I can't express how great it feels to be done with romance films and back on action. Big, loud, stupid action movies, right now I'll take them and I'll eat them up, whatever Jason Statham wants to do over the next few days is just fine with me. If Statham becomes the person with the most appearances in 2026 first quarter, that's fine too. It would only take 6 movies to unseat Celia Imrie, who has been in five films so far this year. Assuming all 6 Statham movies stay available and don't diseappear from streaming platforms - I know one is about to scroll off of Netflix so I need to get that one very soon.
Look, I don't care that this film doesn't make very much sense - Statham plays a UK secret agent who heads a team of "footmen" that include a tech whiz, a weapons expert and a Hollywood actor (basically, it's the old "Mission: Impossible" format, the TV show that is) and everybody has to team up to pull a deception heist on a billionaire arms dealer. I also don't care that the MacGuffin they're after is some kind of A.I. drive (A.I. is clearly the biggest evil a Hollywood film can think of, because it's going to put film industry people out of work) and I've seen the evil A.I. drive that can control the world's military systems AND banking systems AND all the other A.I. programs in half a dozen other films, at least. It's a big, dumb, stupid action film where a lot of stuff blows up and Statham gets to take down at least a dozen guys with his MMA ability plus weapons. This is exactly what my brain wants right now, and I'm not going to sweat the details.
Aubrey Plaza clearly doesn't belong in an action film, but then maybe that's why she SHOULD be in an action film. Josh Hartnett is perfectly cast playing a Hollywood actor (umm, a different one, obvi) and then we've got Hugh Grant as an evil billionaire arms dealer, and I honestly can't decide if that's stupid miscasting or just plain brilliant, maybe, you know, a bit of both. There's a whole other team of U.K. operatives who have gone rogue, this is a small insular industry and simply everybody knows everybody, so Orson Fortune's team knows what "Mike" and his guys are capable of, they've all worked with Mike before, on the same side. The bad news is that they know what he's capable of and how ruthless he can be, but the good news is they also know his weaknesses and he'll never succeed because the bad guys simply don't prevail in this fictional spy world.
The team has to go all over the world to get this drive, from the U.K. to Madrid to a charity gala in Cannes, but first L.A. to pick up this movie star that they know the arms dealer likes, then back to Cannes, then Turkey for the rest of the film. Orson and his tech whiz masquerade as Hollywood actor Danny Francesco's manager and girlfriend, respectively. They rightfully guess that the arms dealer not only will be starstruck, but he'll try to get with Danny's girlfriend, due to the "power of no", as soon as there's something this arms dealer can't have, he's going to want it, and they're exactly right. But meanwhile she's going to be hacking into the villa's security system, and figuring out who exactly wants this A.I. drive and where it's going to be headed next.
The team figures out who's going to be handling the drop-off from the arms dealer to the client, also therefore handing the transfer of 10 billion dollars. Orson tracks the guy across town, but his cover is blown and he's forced to kill the guy, but at least he ends up with his phone and his dead body (to unlock the phone, duh) and then decides to impersonate him, because the client has never seen him. Makes some sense. But they're ready for the double-cross because they know that Mike has gone rogue and will probably kill everyone right after the deal is done.
The buyers turn out to be a couple of bio-tech moguls who have been hoarding gold, and once they use the A.I. drive to collapse the world's financial system, the world will revert back to a gold standard and they'll be sitting pretty. Re-enter the arms dealer and the movie star, who do a bit of acting to complain about the dealer not getting his cut, and he threatens to kill the mogul's family and friends if he doesn't get it. Then they get out of there before the moguls and the mercenaries turn on each other, "Treasure of the Sierra Madre"-style.
The team gets a long-deserved vacation, though their handler wants them to jump right into the next job. And the arms dealer decides to make a movie about the whole affair, starring his favorite movie star, Danny Francesco, of course. Really, try not to get bogged down in the unlikelihood of it all, it's not meant to be taken that seriously, we all just needed a break I think and a day to watch everything blow up, plus car chases and evil henchmen getting kicked in the nuts. Well, it's a lot more believable than complicated love triangles, I must say.
This could be the start of a whole new franchise for Guy Ritchie and Jason Statham. Statham already had "Crank" and "The Transporter" and "The Mechanic" and was part of the "Expendables" and "Fast & Furious" movies, but Orson Fortune could be the next James Bond if they play their cards right. I, for one, would support a sequel to this. It's not exactly Shakespeare but then nobody is asking for it to be.
Directed by Guy Ritchie (director of "The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare" and "RocknRolla")
Also starring Jason Statham (last seen in "Transporter 3"), Aubrey Plaza (last seen in "Spin Me Round"), Cary Elwes (last seen in "The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare"), Hugh Grant (last seen in "Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy"), Josh Hartnett (last seen in "Trap"), Bugzy Malone (last seen in "The Gentlemen"), Eddie Marsan (last seen in "A Brilliant Young Mind"), Peter Ferdinando (last seen in "Vita & Virginia"), Nicholas Facey, Lourdes Faberes (last seen in "No Time to Die"), Ian Bartholomew (last seen in "Wonka"), Sam Douglas (last seen in "Cleanskin"), Ergun Kuyucu (last seen in "Taken 2"), Begzat Ergeshov (ditto), Tom Rosenthal (last seen in "Bridget Jones's Baby"), Oliver Maltman (last seen in "Happy-Go-Lucky"), Tim Seyfi, Ayhan Eroglu, Savas Ak, Matthew Hawksley, (last seen in "The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare"), Max Beesley, Aksel Ustun (last seen in "The Take"), Oleksandra Zharikova, Mishel Lazarenko, Bensu Ugur, Ozan Ayhan, Eugenia Kuzmina (last seen in "Strange Darling"), Bestemsu Ozdemir, Kerim Pehlivan, Conor MacNeill (last seen in "In the Land of Saints and Sinners"), Vincent Wang, Kaan Urgancioglu, Antonio Bustorff, Amy Jackson with archive footage of Paul Newman.
RATING: 6 out of 10 Ukrainian henchmen (depicting Ukrainians as bad guys held up the movie's release)
No comments:
Post a Comment