No one will ever say that Shia LaBeouf isn’t committed to his art. He left behind a big-time career in blockbuster movies to concentrate on making smaller, more interesting films. For his latest role, a sociopath who says things like, “Do I have to kill anyone today? I have my nice shoes on,” he got a giant torso tattoo to help him find the character’s authenticity. That’s commitment. It’s a shame “The Tax Collector,” now on VOD, doesn’t make good use of LaBeouf or the tat.
Set in South Los Angeles, the movie follows David (Bobby Soto) and sidekick Creeper (LaBeouf), violent men who collect payments, or “taxes,” from 43 different street gangs for Wizard, an enigmatic crime boss currently residing as a guest of the state. They are feared and respected in equal measure but when Wizard’s old rival Conejo (Jose Martin) shows up after a ten-year absence, life on the street changes. Conejo and his deadly girlfriend (Cheyenne Rae Hernandez)—“She’s like the female you,” David says to Creeper.—plan on taking over, edging Wizard out. David can either sign on or face the grim repercussions for his loyalty to the old regime. When he refuses to kiss the ring and join the new family things get bloody. “Everything you love is going to die real fast.”
“The Tax Collector” is rich with details of gang life and atmosphere. Unfortunately, it’s also ripe with hackneyed depictions of the same. Director and screenwriter David “Training Day” Ayer replays themes of love, honor, loyalty and family that have been played to death (literally) in almost every gangster film ever made. It’s stylishly made but no amount of tricky camera angles will erase that sense of déjà vu.
It’s propped up somewhat by solid performances from Soto and LaBeouf, who, contrary to internet chatter is not playing a Hispanic character. Soto, as the family man with a dark side, shares good chemistry with LaBeouf in their chattier moments. Ayer perfected the riding-around-in-cars dialogue schtick in “Training Day” and uses they make the most of it here.
The movie’s biggest surprise is the casting of comedian George Lopez as David’s Uncle Louis, a garage mechanic with a violent past. He’s gutsy and gritty and in his limited time on screen makes an impression as opposed to Martin who plays Conejo with all the finesse of a pantomime villain.
“The Tax Collector” is a violent, gore soaked portrait of gang life with nothing new to say.
Imagine Noah’s Ark, but with killer CGI animals and a wise-cracking serial killer, and you get the general idea of “Primal,” the latest Nic Cage movie to go straight to VOD.
Frank Walsh (Cage) is a poacher in the jungles of Brazil; a loner who traps exotic animals for export to collectors and zoos in the US. His latest capture, El Fantasma Gato, is beyond rare. Worth maybe $1 million. “It’s a white jaguar,“ he says. “Maybe 350 to 400 pounds. Doesn’t like people.“ “Just like you Frank,“ says his kid sidekick (Jeremy Nazario) in the only comment that passes for character work in the “Primal’s” stripped-down b-movie world.
The action begins with Frank transports the animal on the large cargo ship. Trouble is, the US government is using the same ship to transport a psychopathic killer to justice. Held Hannibal Lecter-style in a cage below deck by Navy doctor Ellen Taylor (Famke Janssen) and Government lawyer Freed (Michael Imperioli), Richard Loffler (Kevin Durand) is a former military man turned international terrorist.
This is a B-movie, so no amount of security, chains or wild animals can stop Loffler from causing havoc on the high seas. Only one man, with a special set of skills and a rare white jaguar, can stop Loffler’s rampage. It’s nature gone wild on the high seas as Walsh snorts, “I’m going hunting.”
“Primal” is the kind of movie Nicolas Cage bangs out between visits to his tax lawyer. It’s a film so far beneath has talent you have to wonder why he signed on. Did he always want to work with a talking parrot? Does he get paid by the cliché these days? Hard to know. What is for sure is that “Primal” is one of those movies where the sheer stupidity of the story supplies the only entertainment value. The thrills fall short and the action is almost nonexistent but it’s almost worth the price of a rental to see Cage try and take down Loffler with a poison blow dart gun or argue with his parrot.
“Primal” will make you yearn for the days when Nic Cage movies like “Con Air,” “Gone in 60 Seconds” and “The Rock” promised and delivered offbeat delights. Cage brings his patented oddball performance style along for the ride but even that isn’t enough to give “Primal’s” bland storytelling and lazy action some zip.
The idea of stalling for time in a bad situation makes perfect sense in real life. In “Survive the Night,” a new home invasion film now on VOD, a disgraced doctor tries to buy time to protect his family as some very bad men hold them hostage. Trouble is, it’s a movie, and his stalling techniques bring the action in this plodding thriller to a dead stop.
“One Tree Hill” star Chad Michael Murray is Rich, a doctor whose once-promising career was cut short by a malpractice suit. “I cut when I should have stitched or stitched when I should have cut,” he says. “I don’t even know!” Disgraced, he now lives on a remote farm with his parents, (Bruce Willis and Jessica Abrams), his wife (Lydia Hull) and their teenage daughter (Riley Wolfe Rach) and works at a small clinic, patching up injured farmers.
It’s there that Jamie (Shea Buckner), a low-level crook with impulse control, first sees the doc and hatches the plan to invade Rich’s home and get some much-needed medical treatment for his brother Mathias (Tyler Jon Olson). If Rich doesn’t operate, Jamie promises to fill the family with lead. Rich fears that if he operates and Matthias dies, chaos will ensue.
Cue the stall tactics.
The suspense free plot of “Survive the Night”—which should really have been titled “Survive the Night and Most of the Next Morning”—relies on characters doing unrealistic and just plain stupid things in almost every scene. If you took a drink every time Rich did something that only made his situation worse, you’d be hammered by the second act. Or, if you’re not a drinker, take a sip every time Bruce Willis looks like he’s happy to be part of this movie. You’ll be stone cold sober as the end credits run.
“Survive the Night” is the rare “thriller” where you don’t root for anyone, the heroes or villains. Even a car chase goes nowhere… literally and figuratively. It’s like a thriller made by people who have never actually seen a thriller and who based this one on stuff their friends told them about “Panic Room” and “Funny Games.”
If action movies are the heavy-metal of the film world then “Angel Has Fallen,” starring Gerard Butler in his third turn as Secret Service Agent Mike Banning, is the Ywengie Malsteen of the genre. It’s too loud, too frenetic with too many notes.
After years on the job Banning is starting to feel the wear and tear of protecting the president. Concussions have given him with migraines and insomnia. Getting knocked around by bad guys has left him with painful compressed discs, and his doctor is not hopeful. “You’re a disaster waiting to happen.”
Things aren’t much better at work. According to President Trumbull (Morgan Freeman) the White House is, “leakier than a submarine with a screen door,” with top level info somehow making its way into the hands of nosy reporters. “I don’t know who to trust anymore,” says Trumbull. Of course, he trusts Banning, so much so he chooses him to head the massive security team accompanying him on a fishing trip. Out on the water it’s chilly, but idyllic until the hundreds of drones swoop in, wiping out the entire POTUS security detail except for Banning.
Later, in the hospital Banning is grilled by an FBI agent. “The president is in a coma and your whole team is dead. Tell me how that happened.”
Trouble is, he doesn’t remember and the FBI, who have discovered his DNA on launch controls, encrypted folders and a $10 million in an offshore bank, look at him as the sole suspect. “President Trumbull’s top guardian angel has fallen tonight,” screams a news report.
Banning has saved cities, rescued presidents but can he save himself? Cue the explosions and a rather memorable cameo from Nick Nolte as, what else, a grizzled old man.
“Angel Has Fallen” plays its hand at every turn, telegraphing the obvious, making sure the audience, who likely aren’t paying attention to the dialogue in anticipation of more explosions, get every detail. That means no suspense, just loud noises. Lots of them. Former stuntman-turned-director Ric Roman Waugh loves to blow things up, filling the screen with flames and your ears with booms. It’s the stuff of action movies, but when coupled with dialogue that sounds like it was run through the Cliché-O-Matic—”I’m not going to stop until I prove you really did this!”—the action is more of a distraction from the story than a compliment to it.
The film has under currents of social commentary. A bad guy bets on “making America strong again” and Danny Houston’s character, a war dog named Wade Jennings, ushers in a conversation on private soldiers, but neither are explored in any depth.
“Angel Has Fallen” has its pleasures. Nolte is a gas and fans of pyrotechnics will be satisfied but it feels more like a direct to steaming actioner than a big screen experience.
Don’t let the word ‘hotel’ in the title of Dev Patel‘s new film trick you into thinking it’s another entry in his lighthearted “Best Exotic Marigold Hotel” series. “Hotel Mumbai” is a harrowing retelling of the terrorist attacks on the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel in November 2008.
The film begins with 10 members of Lashkar-e-Taiba, an Islamic terrorist organisation based in Pakistan arriving in Mumbai. They split into small groups and soon reports of armed gunman rampaging through the city hit the news. They shoot up Mumbai’s main rail terminal, a café and other hotspots, guided by an ideologue who has convinced these young jihadists that paradise awaits if they do the job by spreading terror.
Director Anthony Maras builds tension by cutting between the chaos in the streets and the measured, elegance, of Taj Mahal Palace Hotel where Arjun (Patel) and Chef Hemant Oberoi (Anupam Kher) work among the 500 staffers who keep the place running like a fine tuned watch. It’s the kind of place where the bathwater is always exactly 48° and, as the staff says, “the Guest is God.”
Soon a small group of the terrorists invade the “otherworld luxury” of the Taj, indiscriminately slaughtering guests and staff alike. Inside the strong willed Chef and Arjun help the guests survive the siege, which lasted almost three days. With the closest Special Forces army 800 miles away in New Delhi the understaffed and unprepared local police must take action. “If we stay in here and wait,” says one cop (Nagesh Bhonsle) looking at the carnage from the street, “there will be no one left.“
There are many moving parts in “Hotel Mumbai.” We follow the sprawling cast—including Armie Hammer and Nazanin Boniadi as an upscale couple staying at the hotel—in various parts of the hotel as they fight for their lives. Despite some boiler-plate flourishes—cell phones that run out of juice at the worst possible time etc— Maras crafts an edge-of-your-seat thriller that puts you in the middle of the action. With so many characters it can be hard to stay invested in them all but the horror of the situation becomes more visceral with every loud gunshot on the soundtrack.
“Hotel Mumbai” is a nicely executed thriller that looks beyond the terror to focus on the resilience of the human spirit in the face of surreal adversity.
“Triple Frontier,” a new thriller starring Oscar Isaac and Ben Affleck, is a ‘let’s get the band back together for one last gig” movie given extra heft by its examination of the treatment of veterans.
Santiago Garcia (Isaac) has his sights set on reclusive South American drug lord Gabriel Lorea (Reynaldo Gallegos). After a failed attempt to infiltrate Lorea’s circle he turns to his former comrades, a group of American Special Forces operatives, now retired. Dangling a huge pay cheque—$17,000 a week and 25% of the $75 million in cash they seize—he lures MMA fighter Ironhead Miller (Charlie Hunnam), Ironhead’s brother and gunslinger Ben (Garrett Hedlund), pilot ‘Catfish’ Morales (Pedro Pascal) and logistics genius turned failed real estate salesman Tom Davies (Affleck).
Each were hotshot Special Forces who have floundered in civilian life. “You’ve been shot five times for your country and you can barely afford to live,” Garcia says to Davies. “That’s the crime.” Once recruited they become a gritty A-Team, who, with the help of an informant (Adria Arjona), plan on raiding Lorea’s heavily fortified house—“The house is the safe.“—killing the drug lord and pocketing millions in cash. “We finally get to use our skills for our own benefit and actually change something,” says Garcia.
The carefully planned mission, however, turns into, some “full on cowboy s**t” when some of their intel proves incorrect. Hundreds of bullets later they make a hasty retreat with only their guns, their wits and hundreds of millions of dollars in duffle bags. Question is, will they complete the mission or will greed het the best of them?
“Triple Frontier” is half heist, half get-away, each section filled with equal parts tension and clichés. Director J.C. Chandor knows how to let anxiety hang in the air, creating a sense of danger that permeates the heist section. The get-a-way is more contemplative, or at least as contemplative as a movie with this kind of body count can offer. A heavy mist of testosterone hangs over both sections making this tale of men, their guns and world weariness feel like something we’ve seen before. Clichéd dialogue—“We’re dancing with the devil here!”—comes hard and fast and by the time the soundtrack blares “Masters of War” it feels as though Chandor is hitting the viewer with a metaphorical billy cub to get his message across.
Once the testosterone settles Chandor’s message of how veterans are treated once they slip out of their uniforms becomes crystal clear. As each of these war scarred men question the way the choices they’ve made with their lives, they also realize it’s the only way they know. They’ve been conditioned to behave a certain way and yet, when they retire they are left without the resources, personally or professionally, to deal with civilian life. It’s a timely and heartfelt message deftly delivered.
