BEFORE: I just want one last quiet day at home before the madness starts, and I have to report in at the Tribeca Festival tomorrow. Working at the WNBA game last night was a bit weird because everybody in town really just wanted to watch the Knicks game, it was being screened in Central Park and I walked past places in Brooklyn that were projecting the game on the sides of buildings, for everyone to watch. Bars were full and I suspect that many people at the Liberty game were also watching the Knicks game on their phones at the same time, and wondering why they didn't just put it up on the big screen in the stadium so everyone could watch two games at the same time. Things are only going to get crazier - I'll be working the next five days so I'll be at home very little in the week to come. And on top of everything else, I need to find a way to watch the "Mandalorian" movie before it disappears from theaters, if I don't it's going to throw my whole July Doc Block into jeopardy. Good news, the Discount Tuesday program at AMC seems to have been extended to cover Wednesdays too, so I might be able to sneak out next Wednesday and watch a movie on a big screen in an actual theater, which would be a rare occurrence for me. I'll keep you updated.
Kyle Chandler carries over from "Back in Action".
THE PLOT: A group of Miami cops discovers a stash of millions in cash, leading to distrust as outsiders learn about the huge seizure, making them question who to rely on.
AFTER: At first I just thought this was going to be another reverse-heist film, you know, like "A Working Man" was - something that focuses on the people trying to STOP crime, instead of the ones doing it. But then I realize that like "A Working Man", the whole thing was a lot more complicated, because sometimes there are dirty cops (or security guards) and sometimes working around a lot of money turns good people into bad people. Then I realized that this was also a play on "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre", which is what that situation tends to remind me of - you take good people and you give them access to treasure or a lot of money, and then you watch them try to outwit each other to get the money, or start acting paranoid or crazy because of the money.
So that's what we're dealing with here, essentially, but there are a lot more layers to it, and a lot more players involved. The main characters are Miami cops who are trying to solve the murder of one of their fellow cops, in the midst of a series of raids on criminal stash houses, with rumors flying around about dirty cops who might be behind all that, which is what the deceased police tactical team member just happened to be investigating. Before she died, Capt. Jackie Velez managed to text an address to her second-in-command, Dane, which leads him to assemble the team and conduct a search of that address. Now they don't have a warrant, so they do a little trickery and coercion to gain access to the property, the woman who owns the house says it belonged to her late grandmother, and the cops discover a stash in the attic, where the homeowner swears she has never even been. Umm, sure, I guess some previous tenant left millions of dollars lying around in plastic buckets and then forgot about it?
Dane goes a little overboard when he realizes that the amount of money stashed in the attic far exceeds what he expecting, his earlier tip said there might be $150K there, perhaps up to $300K, but a few million is a whole different ball game. Suddenly Dane shuts the operation down, demands the cell phones of all of his team members and insists that they count the money there before bringing it in, following certain protocols that would theoretically prevent any of his squad members from taking the cash. He also insists on manual counting, which could take all night - which would only be a problem if the drug dealers or whatever were watching from afar and threatening to attack and kill everyone in 30 minutes.
The homeowner suggests that the cops just take whatever amount of money they want, and keep it without reporting it - she apparently has some kind of deal with the criminals, whose only instructions to her were to stay out of the attic and to clear out of the house for a few hours when instructed to do so, so they could move cash in and out without being seen, and then she would get paid for her silence. Seems like not too bad of a deal, sure, just let criminals store their money in your attic, what could possibly go wrong there?
The psychological game then kicks in, because Dane does not know if any of his team members have some kind of similar deal with criminals, if they're also getting paid for their silence, or worse, taking money from the stashes they find without reporting them. For that matter, Dane's team does not know if HE is on the take, which I suppose is just as likely, and therefore all of his odd decisions and sudden demand for secrecy does seem a little suspect. There are other possibilities of course, the DEA tactical squad could be behind the recent raids, then the FBI agents have been on the case as well, and team member J.D Byrne's brother is on the FBI squad, and they appear to have a very contentious rivalry.
Things get weirder when the house takes heavy gunfire, one officer is wounded and then Byrne finds a cartel lookout in a neighboring house, however that lookout's boss swears that the cartel did NOT attack the house, and did NOT kill Capt. Velez, and he also suggests that the cops should just take the money and go, it would be the easiest thing for all parties involved in this thing. Hey, it's not every day that you here the drug cartel ask you to take their money and call it a wash, that's for sure.
Tensions run high, the team members start accusing each other and a fight breaks out, accidentally setting the house on fire. Great, as if things weren't already bad enough - a couple officers are instructed to stay behind and report the fire, while the DEA shows up with their armored vehicle and offers to help deliver the money bags to a secure police lock-up. That's when things get really weird, with three TNT members and one DEA agent in the tank/truck with the money, all the secrets and lies get exposed. Perhaps nothing has been what it seemed all night long, and perhaps Dane only pretended to be willing to pack up the cash and leave. Perhaps nobody really called headquarters about the situation, for whatever reason, and has been waiting for the right moment to seize an opportunity and a few bags of cash.
Everything turns out to be somewhat important, so you kind of have to pay close attention, and it's really a different play on the "whodunnit"-type detective story, and you're never really sure if the situation is what it claims to be, or if it's all some pretense as part of a larger trap, of sorts. Pretty clever in the end. And it's based on a true story of Miami-Dade County police whose narcotics squad did conduct a raid on a private residence that turned up $20 million - surely that amount of money would have an effect on anyone, even police officers. There are probably a lot of people in this world who would immediately kill everyone in the room if they thought it would lead to possessing that amount of money.
And to think I used to get nervous about walking across the San Diego Comic-Con floor to get to the main office with maybe $1,500 in cash in my pocket, just to put the deposit down on the booth for the following year...
Directed by Joe Carnahan (director of "Boss Level" and "Smokin' Aces")
Also starring Matt Damon (last heard in "Inside Job"), Ben Affleck (last seen in "The Accountant 2"), Steven Yeun (last seen in "Mickey 17"), Teyana Taylor (last seen in "One Battle After Another"), Catalina Sandino Moreno (last seen in "The Twilight Saga: Eclipse"), Sasha Calle (last seen in "The Flash"), Scott Adkins (last seen in "John Wick: Chapter 4"), Daisuke Tsuji, Nestor Carbonell (last seen in "Bandit"), Lina Esco (last seen in "LOL"), Alex Hernandez (last seen in "Bloodshot"), Cliff Chamberlain, Jose Pablo Cantillo (last seen in "Crank: High Voltage"), Sal Lopez (last seen in "Black Panther: Wakanda Forever"), Angel Rosario Jr., Isabella Aparicio (last seen in "Blue Beetle"), Chris Casiano, Lourdes Hernandez, Jovan Perez, Jesse Valdivia, Joel Perez (last seen in "tick, tick...BOOM!"), with the voice of Joe Carnahan (last seen in "The A-Team").
RATING: 7 out of 10 bullet-proof vests (you'd think they keep people safer, but don't they just cause your enemy to aim at your head?)
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