Posts Tagged ‘Frank Grillo’

COPSHOP: 3 ½ STARS. “energy, suspense and a dark sense of humour.”

Director Joe Carnahan’s films are usually high octane, ultraviolent affairs that don’t spare the blood or the bullets. His latest, “Copshop,” now playing in theatres, walks a similar path but doesn’t forget to bring the fun along for the journey.

Set in Nevada, much of the action takes place at the sleepy Gun Creek Police Department. Earlier in the evening con artist Teddy Murretto (Frank Grillo) was arrested after he sucker punched Officer Valerie Young (Alexis Louder) outside a casino. He’s a bad guy who should be avoiding the police but circumstances forced his hand because an even worse guy, hitman Bob Viddick (Gerard Butler), had tracked him down.

The quick-thinking con man figures Viddick won’t go near him if he’s in jail.

He figured wrong.

Turning the tables on Murretto, Viddick manages to get himself brought in on a bogus drunk driving charge. The hunter and the hunter are now just one cell apart. Young knows something nefarious is going on, and is determined to get to the bottom of it, even if Murretto warns her to keep her nose of his business.

“This is way beyond anything you want to get involved in lady,” he says. “You don’t understand.”

“No,” she replies, “you don’t understand how incredibly bored I am.”

“Copshop” has echoes of “Assault on Precinct 13.” Like the 1976 drama, most of the action happens inside the station and the cops and baddies must work together to find safety. The barebones storytelling builds quiet tension before Toby Huss shows up as sadistic killer Anthony Lamb. He’s quick with a bullet and a one-liner. Eyeing Teddy’s tight manbun he jokes, “You look just like Tom Cruise in that samurai movie nobody watched.”

Huss chews the scenery, breathing life into a man who brings death. He’s a hoot, simultaneously menacing and just a bit ridiculous.

Grillo and Butler are perfectly matched adversaries. They are the source of the cat-and-mouse plot; character actors laying the groundwork for the events that are the movie’s engine. Just as impressive is Louder as the no-nonsense Young. She’s at the center of the movie, the one character everyone will root for.

“Copshop” is a simple b-action movie that feels like a holdover from the 1970s. There are some generic elements, like side characters who seem to have walked straight out of Central Casting, but Carnahan makes up for that with energy, suspense and a dark sense of humour.

THE HITMAN’S WIFE’S BODYGUARD: 2 STARS. “this should be more fun.”

“The Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard,” the odd couple buddy flick starring Ryan Reynolds and Samuel L. Jackson and now playing in theatres, is a story about finding your logical, not biological family, disguised as violent shoot ‘em up comedy.

As the movie begins Michael Bryce (Reynolds) is “like a belly dancer without a torso.” He’s lost his bodyguard license and is in therapy. Tormented by bad dreams, he’s fixated on a customer who was killed by hitman Darius Kincaid (Jackson) while on his watch. On sabbatical in Capri (“like the pants”) Italy, he imagines a world without bodyguards or guns.

But his newfound inner peace doesn’t last long. Just as he is shaking off his old life he is drawn back into the game, hunted down by Sonia Kincaid (Salma Hayek), who uses fire power and moxy to lure him out of semi-retirement to rescue her husband, Darius. That’s right, the guy who has been haunting Michael’s dreams.

As the bodies pile up in the wake of their rescue attempt, it turns out Darius actually said, “Get me anyone BUT Michael Bryce!” Nonetheless, this mismatched trio work together to prevent a madman (Antonio Banderas) from destroying Europe and throwing the world into chaos.

“The Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard” is a sequel to the equally noisy 2017 film “The Hitman’s Bodyguard” but despite the appealing leads and the addition of Hayek, Banderas and Morgan Freeman, doesn’t have the same silly charm. The first movie was an over-the-top mish mash of exotic locations, violence, jokes and romance. The sequel contains all those elements, but is somehow less than the sum of its parts.

Given the talent involved, this should be more fun.

Reynolds works his way with a line like a master tradesman, recalling the kind of goofy smart aleck characters he played early in his career. Jackson makes use of his expertise with swearwords and is only upstaged by Hayek, whose entertaining use of salty language would make a sailor blush. But, take away those sweary flourishes, and you’re left with is a few quick laughs, casual video game violence, a body count that rivals the “Lord of the Rings” franchise and an unconvincing attempt at sentimentality.

Between the gun battles is a thinly sketched subplot about finding family wherever you can, but it is played for laughs and gets lost in the ballet of bullets and explosions.

“The Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard” is pure escapism, a loud, brash movie that mixes well with popcorn, but leaves a funny aftertaste in your mouth.

JIU JITSU: 1½ STARS. “a bland movie that feels like warmed-over ‘Predator.’”

That Donald J. Trump handed out pardons like candy at Halloween on his last days in office but neglected to pardon “Jiu Jitsu,” the new Nicolas Cage sci fi fantasy film, now on VOD, for its crimes against cinema is astounding. This movie is equally as bad as anything Roger Stone could have done and yet Stone gets a pass and “Jiu Jitsu” doesn’t. Incredible.

The bland yet still confounding plot sees an ancient band of jiu-jitsu warriors come together every six years to save the planet from a vicious alien with world domination on their mind. When their leader, the muscle-bound uber-soldier Jake (Alain Moussi) loses his memory and is captured by army intelligence, the mysterious Kueng (Tony Jaa) comes to the rescue and begins the process of helping him rediscover who he was before the amnesia.

Jake’s old team, ace fighters Harrigan (Frank Grillo), Carmen (JuJu Chan) Forbes (Marrese Crump) among them, and mentor (and paper hat maker) Wylie (Cage), must get Jake back to form to fight off the extraterrestrial and existential threat.

Nicolas Cage can usually be counted on to spice up even the dowdiest of b-movies but here, even his gonzo stylings add little to this leaden and dreary undertaking. You don’t expect much from a movie like “Jiu Jitsu,” just some fun action, some cheesy dialogue and a cool alien. Instead, we’re given loads of long, unremarkable fight scenes with obvious body doubles, kitschy dialogue that positively drips with queso and an ET in an ill-fitting Halloween costume.

“Jiu Jitsu” feels like warmed-over “Predator” with high kicks, samurai swords and a botched video game style.

THE GREY: 4 STARS

“The Grey,” the new Liam Neeson film, is an art house action movie. The bravado that colors most action flicks is gone, replaced by equal parts despair and intestinal fortitude.

Neeson plays John Ottway, a sharpshooter and Wolf Whisperer hired to keep predatory wolves out of an oil station in the remotest part of Alaska.  He becomes the leader of a ragtag group of survivors when the plane transporting them to their oil job crashes in the wilderness. Hunted by wolves and exposed to the elements Ottway’s know-how is the only thing between freezing to death, or worse, becoming the big bad wolf’s dinner.

The thing that separates “The Grey” from other man versus nature movies is the characters. At first glance they are the usual assortment of rough and ready characters, the edgy chatterbox, the ex con, but soon nuances appear.

The point of the whole thing is survival, but along the way the cast (Dermot Mulroney, Frank Grillo, Dallas Roberts, Joe Anderson, Nonso Anozie, and James Badge Dale) discuss the intricacies of life, shed tears, question faith and even recite poetry when not fighting off steely-eyed wolves. You won’t find this kind of behavior in other action movies because those films are about setting up the action and the payoff. “The Grey” isn’t, it wants you to get to know the men so when something awful happens to them, you care.

Mostly it works. (MILD SPOILER) The climax of Frank Grillos’ Diaz character is particularly effective as it gets to the very heart of why—or why not—this man will survive.

As good as the ensemble ism, this is Neeson’s movie. He plays a broken man who has recently lost his wife and the memory of her haunts him. He’s suicidal and lost, but learns a new lust for life in this adverse situation. Whether the tragic loss of his wife in real life informed this role, I wouldn’t presume to day, but there is a haunted quality to his performance that seems deeply felt.

Be warned, however, as intelligent as “The Grey” is, it’s also borders on horror, playing on fear of barren spaces—bring an extra scarf, the howling wind effect alone will chill you to the bone—and well, corpse eating wolves. But even though it is sometimes graphic, it still resonates emotionally.