Watch the whole thing HERE! (Starts at 14:30)
Listen to the whole thing HERE! (Starts at 27:45)
Watch the whole thing HERE!
Listen to the whole thing HERE!
Listen to the whole thing HERE!
Watch the whole thing HERE!
CAST: Brad Pitt, J.K. Simmons, Anna Lambe, Uber. Directed by David Ayer.
REVIEW: Brad Pitt stars as Special Forces officer James Belmont, a thirty-year combat veteran haunted by decades of battlefield action. To quiet his troubled mind Belmont and Odin, a three-legged German Shepard combat scouting dog who suffers from PTSD, who is also Belmont’s “greatest love and friend left on this earth,” take a trip to the Alaskan wilderness to experience the healing power of nature.
When their plane crash lands in the middle of nowhere, they are forced to rely on their combat skills to survive in the face of vicious cold, the unforgiving landscape, injury and threats from a variety of predators. The hurdles are huge, but, as Belmont says, “It’s not the size of the dog in the fight that matters,” says Belmont. “It’s the size of the fight in the dog.”
Like “The Littlest Hobo” with a taste of “The Revenant’ thrown in for seasoning, “Heart of the Beast” is a simple survival story anchored by a great performance.
But I’m not talking about Brad Pitt. He’s fine, doing a good job with a thinly written character, a resourceful soldier haunted by his past. His work is understated, far more subtle than you might expect from a movie like this.
No, the star here is Uber, the canine actor who plays Odin. He manages to do something George Clooney, Leonardo DiCaprio and Matt Damon have not been able to do, and that’s steal every scene they perform together.
Their relationship—they’re alone on screen for 90% of the movie—is the film’s emotional core. Belmont treats the dog as an equal, a fellow soldier who, like him, has been to hell and back. They have a bond, and that unbreakable connection is the film’s main draw.
Perhaps that’s why a number of flashbacks to their early military service left me with the feeling that director David Ayer, working from a script by Cameron Alexander, missed the chance to tell the more interesting story of the beginning of Belmont and Odin’s bond and battlefield experiences.
Set against the rugged beauty of New Zealand (standing in for Alaska), “Heart of the Beast’s” action is episodic, predictable and only occasionally pulse-racing. It’s a raw portrait of endurance, with a few grim moments and nice cameos from J.K. Simmons as a fellow traveler and “North of North’s” Anna Lambe, but it is the connection between man and dog that carries the movie and may have you reach for a Kleenex in its final twenty minutes.
A grade-A Jason Statham B-movie, “The Beekeeper” is a back-to-basics effort from the action star that adds a new variation to his standard character assortment. We’ve seen Statham Character #1, in which he is a “loner with a past who must protect a loved one.” Then there’s Statham Character #2 which is the “loner with a past who must protect a youthful innocent.” And now we have Statham Character #3, a “loner with a past who avenges the death of ‘the only person who ever took care of me.’”
When we first meet Adam Clay (Statham), his neighbor, the kindly Mrs. Parker (Phylicia Rashad), invites him over for dinner. Later in the evening, he returns with a jar of the liquid gold produced by the bees he keeps on his property, to find a terrible scene. Turns out, while he tended his bee hives, she was the victim of a sophisticated phishing scam that siphoned out all the cash from her personal accounts, and from the children’s charity she controlled.
He arrives to find dinner burning unattended, and Mrs. Parker dead from a self-inflicted gun-shot wound. After a tussle with Mrs. Parker’s F.B.I. agent daughter Verona (Emmy Raver-Lampman), he sets off to get to get even with the people who caused the death of, “the only person who ever took care of me.”
“Taking from an elderly person is as bad as stealing from a child,” he says, buzzin’ around the bad guy’s hive.
Turns out he’s a retired operative for a clandestine organization called “Beekeepers.” The deadliest of the deadly, they make John Wick look tame, and are sworn to protect the hive at all costs.
As the bodies pile up, all roads lead to Derek Danforth (Josh Hutcherson), the human grease stain at the head of Danforth Industries, a sleazy operation that makes millions by separating the vulnerable from their cash.
“Just tell me who this guy is,” Danforth demands from his head-of-security Wallace Westwyld (Jeremy Irons).
“He’s probably the last pair of eyes you’re going to stare at,” he replies.
“The Beekeeper” is Primal Statham. It’s exactly the Jason Statham movie you expect it will be.
A man of few words, Clay is someone who lets his fists do the talking, and they speak multitudes. An exercise in overkill, this is a violent movie that delights in punching the bad guys in the face. Or tying them to a runaway truck. Or nailing them repeatedly with a stapler. It’s pure good vs. evil, no more or less.
It’s also a little silly. Statham actually asks, “To bee, or not to bee?” at one point, but the laughs are part of the experience. Verona delivers one of the film’s biggest, possibly unintended, laughs when she says, to the cockney-accented Clay, “There’s some British Isles hiding in your accent.” That line makes as much sense as anything in this movie, but that’s cool because “The Beekeeper” is an old-school, over-the-top actioner, laced with one-liners, that doesn’t take itself too seriously.
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.
