Movie Review: Four Brothers (2005)

Genre: Revenge Crime Action  
Director: John Singleton  
Starring: Mark Wahlberg, Tyrese Gibson, Andre Benjamin, Garrett Hedlund, Terrence Howard, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Sofia Vergara  
Running Time: 109 minutes  

Synopsis: In Detroit, well-loved Evelyn Mercer is killed during a violent convenience story robbery. Her four adopted sons Bobby (Mark Wahlberg), Angel (Tyrese Gibson), Jerry (Andre Benjamin), and Jack (Garrett Hedlund), all of them rescued by Evelyn from foster homes, convene to grieve. The brothers soon spot inconsistencies in the official police narrative about Evelyn's killing. Their probing uncovers evidence of police and political corruption and involvement by gang boss Victor Sweet (Chiwetel Ejiofor).

What Works Well: This is a rough-and-tumble story of brotherhood, director John Singleton looking for the ties that bind misfit siblings shaped by Detroit's tough streets. Bobby (audacious and two-fisted), Angel (more cerebral), Jerry (business-oriented), and Jack (withdrawn and most traumatized but likely the smartest) are a lively set, and together they unleash unconstrained mayhem, as much on each other as on their enemies. A strong cast is augmented by Sofia Vergara as Angel's girlfriend (and imagine the toughness required to co-exist with his brothers), Terrence Howard as police detective Green, and Chiwetel Ejiofor as the cold-blooded villain.

What Does Not Work As Well: The tone and balance are never quite right. Banter, hijinks, and voluminous shouting threaten to overwhelm the convoluted plot and routinely over-the-top action scenes. The final double-headed showdown is both logically muddled and lackluster in execution.

Key Quote:

Green (to Bobby): You keep knocking on the devil's door long enough and sooner or later someone's gonna answer you.

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Movie Review: Spenser Confidential (2020)

Genre: Crime Comedy Action  

Director: Peter Berg  

Starring: Mark Wahlberg, Alan Arkin, Winston Duke, Iliza Shlesinger  
Running Time: 111 minutes  

Synopsis: In Boston, former cop Spenser (Mark Wahlberg) serves 5 years in prison for striking his superior Captain Boylan, who was ignoring evidence in a murder case. As soon as Spenser is released, Boylan is murdered, and a junior officer is falsely implicated. Spenser joins forces with fellow ex-convict and wannabe mixed martial arts fighter Hawk (Winston Duke) and his landlord Henry (Alan Arkin) to delve into the case, exposing a widespread web of corruption.

What Works Well: The adaptation of Ace Atkins' book Wonderland is a light-hearted yet still edgy crime romp through the streets of Boston, riding the bounce of Mark Wahlberg's charisma and off-kilter buddy dynamics with Winston Duke. Spenser's inability to walk away from trouble underpins the plot's energy, as corrupt cops, machete-wielding gangsters, white supremacists, and the mafia all blunder their way into a grand conspiracy. Spenser's charged relationship with maybe girlfriend Cissy (Iliza Shlesinger) adds a dash of aggressive eroticism.

What Does Not Work As Well: This is as enjoyable as it is forgettable. The characters and events all carry the formulaic depth of flimsy tracing paper blowing in the wind.

Key Quote:

Henry (meeting Spenser upon his release from prison): Try to stay on this side for a while.

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Movie Review: Father Stu (2022)

Genre: Biographical Drama  

Director: Rosalind Ross  

Starring: Mark Wahlberg, Mel Gibson, Jackie Weaver, Malcolm McDowell  

Running Time: 124 minutes  

Synopsis: In Montana of the 1980s, Stuart Long (Mark Wahlberg) is drifting through life as an amateur boxer. His mother Kathleen (Jacki Weaver) lives nearby, but his frequently drunk father Bill (Mel Gibson) is in California, the family having never recovered from the childhood death of Stu's brother. When the boxing injuries add up, Stu relocates to Los Angeles to pursue an acting career. He falls in love with Carmen (Teresa Ruiz), a devout Catholic. She introduces him to her church community before an accident changes his outlook.

What Works Well: Director and writer Rosalind Ross sprinkles humour into a search-for-purpose biographical drama, and allows Stu to remain true to himself as his life takes unexpected twists. The spiritual tones are prominent but well controlled by healthy skepticism, and the romance between Stu and Carmen is an effective catalyst. In a commanding central performance full of zest, Mark Wahlberg undergoes a couple a startling physical transformations from unkempt boxer to a man of religion. He is ably supported by Mel Gibson's angry-at-the-world father and Jacki Weaver's still-hopeful mother.

What Does Not Work As Well: The aesthetics, sets, and sense of time and place rarely rise above monotonous blandness, while the title's revelation of Stu's ultimate destination ensures his journey is amiable but also predictable.

Conclusion: A feel-good story about finding passion while confronting adversity.



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Movie Review: Pain & Gain (2013)

Genre: Crime Comedy Drama

Director: Michael Bay

Starring: Mark Wahlberg, Dwayne Johnson, Anthony Mackie, Tony Shalhoub, Ed Harris, Rebel Wilson

Running Time: 129 minutes

Synopsis: The setting is Miami in 1993. Body builder and fitness club personal trainer Daniel Lugo (Mark Wahlberg) is inspired by charlatan self-help gurus and obsessed with achieving wealth. He recruits fellow body builders Paul (Dwayne Johnson) and Noel (Anthony Mackie) to kidnap gym club client and shady businessman Victor Kershaw (Tony Shalhoub) and have him sign over all his assets. Kershaw turns out to be a tough nut to crack, leading to the involvement of private detective Ed Du Bois (Ed Harris).

What Works Well: Based on real events, Michael Bay creates an enjoyably over-blown and vivid story of dim-witted criminals overreaching in pursuit of the crass yachts-and-sportscars lifestyle sold on television. The action is drenched in sweat and complemented by thumping music, allowing the animated cast to play it straight and revel in the stupidity of men mistaking muscles for brains. The kidnappers are provided distinct personalities: Lugo is the scrappy leader, Noel is the easily impressed follower, and Paul is caught in a fragile attempt at reformation. The acidic humour adds crackles of energy, and Tony Shalhoub has the most fun as the indestructible Kershaw spitting venemous fury at his assailants.

What Does Not Work As Well: Criminal acts and victims are treated with marginally off-putting disdain, and the running time is as artificially bloated as the bulging biceps.

Conclusion: The dark side of the American dream in bright, brash colours.



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Movie Review: 2 Guns (2013)

A buddy movie with plenty of action and a streak of humour, 2 Guns offers oodles of star charisma but a nonsensical plot involving a drug cartel, bank heist, and numerous far-fetched hidden agendas.

Bobby Beans (Denzel Washington) and Michael "Stig" Stigman (Mark Wahlberg) have partnered to infiltrate and profit from the Mexican drug cartel of Papi Greco (Edward James Olmos). Maintaining a thorny friendship, they keep their identities hidden from each other and both pretend to be easy-going underworld types, but Beans is actually with the DEA and Stig is with Navy Intelligence.

Beans is romantically involved with the DEA's Agent Deb Rees (Paula Patton), and arranges for Stig to be arrested after they rob a small bank holding $3 million in cartel money. But to everyone's surprise the bank heist yields a mammoth $43 million in cash. Beans and Stig start to suspect each other, and then have to evade killers from the cartel as well as rogue Navy assassins and an angry CIA dark ops unit.

An adaptation of a comic book series by Steven Grant, 2 Guns is a stylish exercise in wild action riding a ridiculous story. The film demands compliant brain disengagement and simple vibe enjoyment. Director Baltasar Kormákur tries for a while to maintain control of the narrative, but then the logic gaps expand into yawning canyons, brain-twisting double crosses multiply, and various groups of barely defined shady operatives show up with big guns intent on killing other groups of less defined shady operatives with bigger guns. 

As a good complement to the uncontrolled energy, the film's visuals pop off the screen. The vivid colour palette draws inspiration from the Mexican and southern US locales, the incessant sunshine and stark desert offering bright yellows and browns as backdrops for the frequent fire fights, car chases and macho posturing. Kormákur keeps the action moving at a breakneck pace, a good strategy to avoid coherence probes, and wraps up the adventure in 109 minutes.

Stars Denzel Washington and Mark Wahlberg are in fine form and immediately click as a pair, zipping through banter and biting quips with pleasing buoyancy. Washington is more serious and circumspect and often provides a cool anchor amidst the mayhem. Wahlberg is restlessly jovial, his best plans consisting of antagonism mixed with straight-ahead bulldozing. Bill Paxton enjoys himself as the CIA's Earl, but the rest of the cast members are given little to work with and probably never quite knew which side they were on in any given scene.

2 Guns contains a lot more than just the two guns, but it's the two stars who carry the day.



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Movie Review: Mile 22 (2018)

An action thriller, Mile 22 is a non-stop cacophony of slick urban battle scenes, admittedly impressive sound and fury subjugating substance.

James Silva (Mark Wahlberg) is an operative in the secretive Overwatch group led by James Bishop (John Malkovich), sanctioned by the US government to execute covert counter-espionage missions with deadly force. With the help of agents Alice (Lauren Cohan), Sam (former professional wrestler Ronda Rousey) and Douglas (Carlo Alban), the team takes down a Russian FSB safehouse in the United States, killing all the occupants including an 18 year old.

16 months later, Silva and his team are in Indocarr (modeled on Indonesia) seeking missing shipments of the chemical element cesium, which can be used to create radioactive bombs. Local informant Li Noor (Iko Uwais) provides a locked disk with crucial information, but will only reveal the password in return for asylum in the US. Silva is tasked with driving Noor the 22 miles from the embassy to an airfield, a mission complicated by Indocarr's intelligence chief Axel (Sam Medina) and his army of goons, eager to prevent Noor's defection. Meanwhile, a Russian surveillance team takes to the skies to monitor - and perhaps interfere - in the unfolding events.

It's impossible not to admire Mile 22. Director Peter Berg teams up with star Mark Wahlberg for the fourth time, and in just 94 minutes they deliver a sparkling non-stop action movie built on the foundations of a complex story crackling with energy. Based on an original script from Lea Carpenter, this is unpretentious combat entertainment with a maximum body count, a minimum of CGI, plenty of gore, bullets and martial arts sharing screen time, augmented by a veneer of whizz-bang technology and delivered with commendable proficiency.

But the weaknesses are also apparent, mostly in the form of a structure that settles into a series of video-game level set-pieces, and a dizzying editing job often intercutting manic action at multiple locations into barely cohesive snippets. And while the triumphant final twist is well-earned, it does leave behind plenty of retrospective logic holes, some of which were undoubtedly intended to be filled by sequels.

The action is juiced by providing Wahlberg with a slightly different screen persona to chew on. Instead of his typical heroic guy-next-door, here James Silva has a whirring mind operating too quickly for his mouth, and he snaps a rubberband on his wrist to just marginally stay on the sane side of the line. He berates friends and foes alike for not thinking and acting as quickly as he does, but they tolerate him due to his in-field superiority.

The supporting performances and character definitions are as would be expected, superficial and barely existent respectively. Lauren Cohan suffers the most from an inept attempt to introduce a turbulent long-distance family life.

With a singular focus on expending the most ammunition in the least amount of time, Mile 22 covers the distance.



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Movie Review: Patriots Day (2016)

A crime drama recreating the 2013 Boston Marathon terrorist bombings, Patriots Day is a taut and precisely crafted fact-based thriller.

It's April 2013 in Boston, and Sergeant Tommy Saunders (Mark Wahlberg) is working his way out of the police doghouse for kicking a fellow officer. Police Commissioner Ed Davis (John Goodman) assigns Saunders to menial crowd control duties at the marathon finish line, where terrorist brothers Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev detonate two pressure cooker bombs. The bombings narrowly miss Tommy's wife Carol (Michelle Monaghan), but three innocent people are killed and hundreds injured, many suffering lower body injuries and amputations.

The FBI's Richard DesLauriers (Kevin Bacon) takes charge of the investigation, and through a review of CCTV and cell phone video the Tsarnaevs are flagged as primary suspects. The brothers attempt to flee by car to New York, victimizing MIT security guard Sean Collier and carjacking college student Dun Meng. Enforcement authorities catch up with them in the suburb of Walkerton, where Sergeant Jeffrey Pugliese (J.K. Simmons) leads a small police detachment.

Although Tommy and Carol Saunders are fictional, most of the rest of the characters populating Patriots Day are real. Director and co-writer Peter Berg, again teaming with regular collaborator Wahlberg, effectively wraps his film around the terrorism attack and the tense days that followed. Given the time and geographic sprawl of events, the film is surprisingly spry, Berg displaying a welcome nimbleness to capture diverse perspectives and a drama unfolding in discrete but connected chapters.

While one objective is to celebrate the Boston Strong spirit that emerged after the attack, Patriots Day does not sterilize the often imperfect actions of investigators and enforcement agencies. The FBI's DesLauriers and Boston Police's Davis lock horns in a debate around whether to publicly release the photos of the presumed suspects, as hours pass by and their identities remain a mystery. Later, police actions are often chaotic and uncoordinated as multiple agencies run into each other, poor discipline and miscommunication allowing the bombers to remain on the loose longer than necessary.

A decision to essentially lock down the city and ask residents to shelter in place while SWAT teams conduct door to door searches is portrayed as an adhoc martial law declaration, and interrogators are also challenged in attempting to crack the silence of Tamerlan's arrested devout wife Katherine Russell (Melissa Benoist, in a small but chilling role).

With plenty of ground to cover Berg avoids dawdling in one place for too long, and mastefully introduces enough background to provide depth to most of the key characters. The bombing scene is haunting in its random cruelty, and the Watertown shootout is recreated as a study of violent chaos, unsuspecting police officers tangling with determined terrorists at close quarters.

Wahlberg cruises through the surreal events in the role of guide and representative of Boston as a proud if temperamental society, tough and caring in equal measures. Trent Reznor contributes a suitably eerie music score, often stripped down to a forceful continuous sound effect conveying exasperated tension as a community holds its breath in the grip of unknown assailants.

The worst atrocities spawn remarkable resiliency, and Patriots Day captures both extremes of an exceptional chapter in the life of a city.

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Movie Review: Instant Family (2018)

A comedy with dramatic elements, Instant Family explores the complexities of foster parenting through the story of one couple taking on all they can handle.

Married couple Pete and Ellie Wagner (Mark Wahlberg and Rose Byrne) flip houses for a living, and have delayed having children. They decide to become foster parents and go through the required screening courses, where they meet social workers Karen (Octavia Spencer) and Sharon (Tig Notaro). Although initially hopeful of fostering one young child, Pete and Ellie eventually take in 15 year old Lizzy Viara (Isabela Moner) and her two younger siblings Juan and Lita.

The three kids were raised in harrowing conditions with a drug addicted mother, now in prison. Isabela is surly and cold, unsure why a middle class white couple would take on the hassle of caring for three Hispanic kids. Juan is accident prone and Lita resorts to shrieking to get whatever she wants. Pete and Ellie do their best, but the road to learning instant parenting is bumpy. And once the children's mother finishes her sentence and cleans up, their challenges multiply.

Inspired by director and co-writer Sean Ander's real-life story of adopting three siblings, Instant Family is a sweet family-friendly comedy. The mix of laughs and serious incidents is well calibrated, and although the march towards a happy ending is assured, enough ups and downs happen along the way to maintain interest.

Moments of doubts, setbacks and accidents mix easily with cute silliness involving bathroom use, finding new routines and public temper tantrums. Pete and Ellie have to learn on the job what it means to support each other through the parenting obstacle course, all while under the judgmental gaze of the deeply sceptical Lizzy. She is mostly passing time until her mom is released and recovered enough to regain custody of the kids, and has no interest in establishing emotional connections with yet another set of temporary caregivers.

In addition to extending the film to close to two hours, Anders does overcook a few scenes in search of cheaper laughs. In the most egregious, Lizzy gets involved in a sexting debacle with a sleazy school janitor, leading Pete and Ellie to perpetrate two assaults within five minutes while abandoning Juan and Lita in the car, in a fine example of how not to parent.

In the middle of the learn-on-the-fly turmoil Mark Wahlberg and Rose Byrne make for an appealing pair, both quickly comfortable as a couple and leaning on their understated comic timing to project less-is-more humour. Isabela Moner excels as Lizzy and steals every scene she is in with a sassy performance of passive-aggressive teen angst justified by deep insecurities.

In support Tig Notaro and Octavia Spencer provide a social worker twist on good cop / bad cop, here Notaro's properly by-the-book version of fostering bounced off against Spencer's warts-and-all colour commentary about how it really works. Surviving an Instant Family requires deep-seated belief in the ideal, and imperfect navigation of the real.

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Movie Review: The Other Guys (2010)

A buddy cop comedy, The Other Guys combines sharp wit, good character dynamics and wild action.

In New York City, rock star police detectives Highsmith (Samuel L. Jackson) and Danson (Dwayne Johnson) grab all the headlines with spectacular arrests of multiple bad guys. Meanwhile detective Allen Gamble (Will Ferrell) is known as a paper-pushing dimwit, and his partner Terry Hoitz (Mark Wahlberg) will never live down mistakenly shooting baseball superstar Derek Jeter. Their harried boss Captain Gene Mauch (Michael Keaton) does not believe they will ever amount to much.

When Highsmith and Danson are suddenly rendered inoperable, Allen and Terry agree to stop bickering and start doing field work. Allen's dogged investigation of construction scaffolding permit violations leads them to arrest corrupt billionaire Sir David Ershon (Steve Coogan), unknowingly triggering a massive pursuit as Ershon is at the centre of an illegal money transfer scheme involving international criminals. Meanwhile Terry is stunned to meet Allen's knock-out wife Dr. Sheila Ramos Gamble (Eva Mendes) and learns more about his partner's chequered college history.

The oil-and-water buddy cop movie genre is long in the tooth, but director and co-writer Adam McKay injects a large dose of revitalizing energy. By yanking background officers to the forefront and allocating good focus on their backstories, The Other Guys combines familiar bickering with unusual character-driven touches, always accompanied by a steady current of irascible humour.

Much joy is derived from Allen Gamble's unexpected story. From a stunning surgeon wife to a shady college business passing through hidden magnetism, there is more than initially meets the eye with the always happy brown nosed paper pusher. Through the eyes of his tightly would partner Terry, McKay sequentially teases out the always funny surprises. Will Ferrell is in his sweet spot, finding laughs by playing Allen straight, smart, but definitely different.

When it comes to jolts of wild action, McKay delivers with over-the-top panache. The car chases, crashes, and shoot-outs are perfectly paced, never over-used, and always played for exaggerated laughs. Other than some dubious editing, the carnage fits perfectly within the film's ambition.

The Other Guys will never be accused of startling originality or a cohesive plot. Despite Steve Coogan's best efforts to provide villain David Ershon with sophisticated smarm, the bad guys are generic and the money transfer deception barely sketched in. But the film happily skips past its weaknesses, riding a wave of fun with the unlikely partners experiencing the spotlight.

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Movie Review: Fear (1996)

A thriller with romance, psychological tension and some straight-out horror, Fear struggles to click in any capacity.

In the Seattle area, 16 year old Nicole (Reese Witherspoon) lives with her dad Steven (William Petersen), step mom Laura (Amy Brenneman) and younger brother. One day Nicole and her best friend Margo (Alyssa Milano) skip school and go looking for adventure at the rough local bar, and find new friends in the form of David (Mark Wahlberg) and his buddy Logan (Tracy Fraim).

Nicole and David quickly get serious, and although he is not in school he seems like the ideal sensitive and caring boyfriend. But after they get sexually intimate, David displays tendencies for uncontrolled violence. Steven suspects David is bad news and warns Nicole to stay away from him, but Nicole believes she may be in love, and the potentially unstable and manipulative boyfriend burrows deeper into the family's life.

A derivation of Fatal Attraction reoriented towards teenagers, Fear has neither the quality nor the polish to deliver effective entertainment. It remains best known as an early career outing for both Reese Witherspoon and Mark Wahlberg.

The film suffers from severe tonal shifts and jarring character transitions. While an undercurrent of typical father-daughter tension between pouty teenager Nicole and guilt-ridden dad Steven dominates the early proceedings, David as the main antagonist spends most of the first half of the film acting like the world's best boyfriend. His subsequent oscillation between raving maniac and apologetic nice guy fools no one, while his promising backstory involving a tough upbringing and hanging out with a group of thugs is severely underwritten.

Director James Foley, working from a Christopher Crowe script, jerks his film along with the characters. Fear spends far too long nurturing an idyllic young romance with a sensitive sexual awakening before jolting into violence and rushing into a horror climax featuring home invasions, shootings and animal cruelty imported from a whole other movie.

The acting is wooden, William Petersen a particularly plastic culprit, and most of the dialogue is at the sophomoric level. Witherspoon and Wahlberg are learning their trade, and their performances do not rise much above the material.

Ironically Fear works best during the romance scenes, with David doing everything right to ensure Nicole falls under his spell. Young love can be two-faced, but here it's a neck-snapper.

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Movie Review: Shooter (2007)

A high-energy action thriller, Shooter is full of ridiculous plot holes but nevertheless delivers slick entertainment.

On an unsanctioned mission in Ethiopia, expert sniper Gunnery Sergeant Bob Lee Swagger (Mark Wahlberg) provides cover for a covert US forces mission. The assignment ends in disarray and Swagger's spotter Donnie is killed. Disillusioned, Swagger leaves the military and goes into seclusion in rural Wyoming. Three years later, Colonel Isaac Johnson (Danny Glover) manages to recruit Swagger for a special assignment to counter a threat to assassinate the President.

But Swagger was really lured in to be the patsy, and on the day of the would-be assassination in Philadelphia he is framed, shot, and barely escapes with his life. A nationwide manhunt is launched. Rookie FBI Special Agent Nick Memphis (Michael Peña) is one of the few to suspect Swagger was framed. Meanwhile, Swagger seeks refuge with Donnie's widow Sarah (Kate Mara), and starts to uncover a conspiracy deep within the government centred on Senator Meachum (Ned Beatty).

Directed by Antoine Fuqua, Shooter delivers enough quality to allow mindless enjoyment of an almost laughable story. A stellar cast, a flashy visual style, and a stoic, indestructible and patriotic hero brought to life by Mark Wahlberg all help. The action scenes are sustained and generally coherent, and the bad guys lining up against Swagger are worthy: treacherous, powerful and deeply entrenched in modern-day pragmatic geopolitical meddling. The sniper jargon also sounds legitimate to the untrained ear.

Which is all good, because on the negative side Swagger had to be a particular kind of momentarily stupid not to notice the jaws of a Kennedyesque assassination conspiracy plot snapping tight around his ankles. And once he goes on the run, the film becomes a blur of overlapping groan-inducing developments, characters traveling around the country with dizzying speed and no respect for a national manhunt. When a late climax arrives and Swagger has to explain his actions to a room full of men-in-suits, the lack of any due process or discipline around the proceedings is chuckle worthy.

But of course Swagger gets the upper hand in every skirmish (and the skirmishes arrive at the rate of one every few minutes), and his cool-under-pressure, one-step-ahead-of-the-bad-guys persona is comfortingly familiar. Most of the dialogue is basic, macho-infused actionspeak, and rarely gets in the way.

Fuqua's expertise is constructing few-against-many and mostly silent action set-pieces, and Shooter is at its best when Swagger infiltrates his enemies' hideouts and strongholds and dishes out the special brand of revenge reserved for action heroes seeking personal justice. American evildoers can plot the destruction of entire third world villages and suffer no consequences, but beware landing on the wrong side of one brooding sharpshooter.

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Movie Review: Contraband (2012)

An complicated crime thriller, Contraband is murky, muddled and mindless.

In New Orleans, Chris Farraday (Mark Wahlberg) is a retired smuggler, now happily married to Kate (Kate Beckinsale) and the father of two kids. Kate's younger brother Andy (Caleb Landry Jones) is caught up in a customs raid and has to ditch a cargo of drugs overboard, infuriating gangster Tim Briggs (Giovanni Ribisi), who paid $700,000 for the shipment. Chris and his friend Danny (Lukas Haas) go back into business for one final run to make enough money to pay off Briggs, leaving Kate and the kids in the care of Chris' good friend and former partner-in-crime Sebastian (Ben Foster).

Chris, Danny and Andy board the cargo ship of Captain Redmond Camp (J.K. Simmons) and arrange to pick up high quality counterfeit bills during a stop in Panama City. Once there, they tangle with the heavily armed gang of local criminal Gonzalo (Diego Luna), who is planning his own heist of expensive artwork. Nothing goes according to plan, as Captain Camp becomes suspicious and Briggs sets his sights on terrorizing Kate.

Directed by Baltasar Kormákur and an adaptation of an Icelandic film, Contraband is overstuffed with secondary characters, jumps around to numerous side-quests, and stretches credibility well past the snapping point. The tried and tested "one more job" cliche is fine if deployed correctly, but here the job becomes a convoluted make-it-up-on-the-fly mess of shifting objectives and multiple double-crosses among a bunch of crooks, none of them likeable enough to matter.

The action scenes are shoehorned into the film for the sake of injecting gratuitous energy boosts. A bloody hold-up of an armoured truck in Panama City leaves multiple fatalities strewn across the road but seemingly no ill-effects or consequences for Chris and his buddies. Earlier, Captain Camp's massive cargo ship slams into the docks, with several containers toppling to shore, all as part of an engine sabotage plot to gain Chris some on-shore time. The investigation of the crash starts and ends with one customs official waving her arms about.

Meanwhile the film's entire premise is undermined and suspect: Chris appears easily capable of physically and emotionally intimidating bad guy Briggs whenever he chooses to, calling into question the entire reason why Chris re-enters the life of crime to save Andy's hide.

Despite some shadings of style and no shortage of talent in the cast, Contraband is overplotted and underwhelming.

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Movie Review: All The Money In The World (2017)

A kidnapping drama inspired by real events, All The Money In The World is a cerebral thriller set in the surreal world of the very rich.

Rome, 1973. Teenager Paul Getty (Charlie Plummer), an heir to one of the world's largest fortunes, is kidnapped by a gang of thugs, including Cinquanta (Romain Duris). The abductors hold Paul at a countryside farmhouse and demand a $17 million ransom. Paul's father (Andrew Buchan) is a good for nothing drug addict, and his mother Gail Harris (Michelle Williams) is broke and has no access to any of the family's money. Paul's grandfather is John Paul Getty (Christopher Plummer), the richest man on earth, but he has no interest in paying for his grandson's release.

With an international media circus erupting around the kidnapping case and Gail determined to rescue her son, Getty dispatches fixer and ex-CIA agent Fletcher Chase (Mark Wahlberg) to resolve the crisis. Chase and Gail form an uneasy working relationship, while Cinquanta and the captive Paul develop a mutual empathy. Soon a break in the case allows the Italian police to make their move, only for young Paul's ordeal to get much more complicated.

Written by David Scarpa and directed by Ridley Scott, All The Money In The World is a smart and character-rich crime thriller. More remarkable for being based on a true story, All The Money In The World combines the story of a physical kidnapping with the drama of multiple emotional confinements, and emerges with a layered and complex narrative. Bouncing between San Francisco, the Italian countryside, Getty's English estate and with brief sojourns to Middle East locations, Scott maintains an energetic pace and a firm grip on a story involving just a few people but carrying global implications.

All The Money In The World ventures into the warped psyche of John Paul Getty, a man obsessed with wealth creation but also mentally trapped by the title of the world's richest man - ever. John Paul views everything through the singular prism of negotiated dealmaking for the purpose of asset collection, and his essential need to emerge as the winner in every transaction. Parting with $17 million to rescue one grandson while placing all his other grandchildren at potential risk of copycat kidnappings simply does not begin to compute. John Paul is not only not interested in the deal, he is not interested in spending any mental effort on what is clearly a losing transaction.

The grandfather's intransigence leaves the mother in dire straits, and Gail Harris becomes the sole advocate and agitator to save her son's life. Caught between brutal and faceless kidnappers on one side and Getty's aloofness on the other, Gail fights a lonely battle against seemingly impossible odds. Neither rich nor greedy, Gail is the most normal person in the story and Scott places her in the middle of the film, forced to make increasingly desperate appeals for Getty's intervention as she negotiates for her son's life but possessing nothing of value to bargain with, other than her wits.

Scott further enriches All The Money In The World by spending time with young Paul in captivity, and sketching in the character of Cinquanta. The two men are essentially occupants of the same prison, and Scarpa's script gives the kidnappers a human face if not too much definition. Fletcher Chase as John Paul's go-to fixer becomes Gail's one ally. His role is the film's most uneven thread, as Scott never settles on a convincing tone for the bond between mother and troubleshooter.

Christopher Plummer was a late casting replacement brought into the film as John Paul Getty, and he delivers a dark and brooding performance as a man already transformed into a haunting presence while still alive. Michelle Williams is forceful, conveying a mother trading emotional anguish for pragmatism to deal with a crisis that no one else cares about.

All The Money In The World is a fascinating examination of confinement in all its forms, permanent and temporary, imposed and self-inflicted, behind bars and within walls adorned with masterpieces.

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Movie Review: Lone Survivor (2013)

A war endurance story, Lone Survivor is a harrowing recreation of a mission-gone-wrong in the mountains of Afghanistan.

The setting is June, 2005, in Afghanistan. Four Navy SEALs are deployed on a remote mountaintop near an isolated village on a reconnaissance mission to identify and track a Taliban leader. The team consists of sniper Marcus Luttrell (Mark Wahlberg), Lieutenant Michael Murphy (Taylor Kitsch), Communications Specialist Danny Dietz (Emile Hirsch) and sniper Matthew Axelson (Ben Foster). Lieutenant Commander Erik S. Kristensen (Eric Bana) tracks their progress from a forward operations base, but communications are patchy due to the difficult terrain.

The mission is compromised when three local goat herders stumble onto the SEAL's observation point. Murphy and his men decide to retreat from the area, but local anti-American militias are alerted to their presence and the four men are caught in a vicious firefight, vastly outnumbered and cut off from any support.

Directed by Peter Berg and based on the book of the same name by Luttrell, Lone Survivor stays close to the facts and pays respectful attention to the events of the ill-fated Operation Red Wings. Similar in tone to Black Hawk Down, Lone Survivor looks for the acts of valour and unshakeable brotherhood emerging in the midst of a ruinous military misadventure.

Berg steers clear of any politicizing or examination of why the US troops are in Afghanistan in the first place. This is a story zoomed-in on four highly-trained warriors attempting to execute a mission, and forced to innovate their way out of trouble while under fire. The ordeal is agonizing, the casualties are high, and Berg's cameras do not flinch in the face of bullet strikes, physical and mental suffering, and death.

Berg's script relied on actual mission reports and autopsies to capture the details of individual wounds, and Lone Survivor is a testimony to the eternal horrors of war, up-close and personal. More than once the SEALs tumbled down steep rocky embankments to try and escape their pursuers, and the images of human bodies hurtling out of control and bouncing repeatedly off hard objects are painful to watch.

Once the combat starts at around the 45 minute mark, Lone Survivor unleashes and sustains unrelenting intensity, the bonding between the men rising as their casualties mount and the inevitable arrives. Berg achieves a memorable combat and heroism climax when Murphy, under intense fire, insists on reaching a rocky but exposed high point to try and establish communications and call for help.

Given the film's focus on just the four men, Lone Survivor could have invested more time in their backstories. Berg provides a few perfunctory and abstract references to wives and girlfriends, and leaves it at that. The film also unfortunately falls into the tired Hollywood trap of over-juicing the final drama, placing Luttrell in perils that he never actually faced, when his actual ordeal should have been sufficient.

But these are relatively minor quibbles. Lone Survivor is a superior and forceful war film, capturing soldiers at their best under the worst possible conditions.

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Movie Review: Deepwater Horizon (2016)

A disaster film based on real events, Deepwater Horizon is the story of the workers on board the vessel involved in one of the world's worst environmental disasters. The film tries to create characters worth caring about, but instead surrenders to excellent pyrotechnics.

It's 2010, and electronics technician Mike Williams (Mark Wahlberg) leaves his wife Felicia (Kate Hudson) at home for another 21 day stint on board the Deepwater Horizon oil rig about 40 miles off the Louisiana coast. Deepwater Horizon is owned and operated by Transocean, and contracted to global energy giant BP. Also on the vessel is crusty rig manager "Mr. Jimmy" Harrell (Kurt Russell), Andrea Fleytas (Gina Rodriguez), a member of the bridge navigation crew, and a clutch of BP executives including Donald Vidrine (John Malkovich).

Williams and Mr. Jimmy know that the vessel is underfunded, with many basic systems inoperable, including phone lines and some computers. The crew is under pressure from BP to accelerate their schedule, and shortcuts are taken despite worrisome pressure test results. A blowout followed by multiple mammoth explosions cripple the vessel and set it on fire, causing multiple fatalities and injuries, and forcing the survivors to try and abandon ship to save their lives.

The Deepwater Horizon explosion resulted in an estimated 4.9 million barrels of oil spilling into the Gulf of Mexico over 87 days, one of the world's all-time worst environmental disasters. But this film's intention is to remember the men victimized by the explosion and fire, and to pay tribute to the eleven workers (about 10 percent of the workforce) who lost their lives in the horror.

The first half of Deepwater Horizon sets the context, and the trouble with the film is apparent early on. Director Peter Berg has the opportunity to humanize the men (and with one exception, they are men) who will face disaster, but he comes up empty. Williams and Mr. Jimmy are sketched in as principled heroes-in-waiting, otherwise the first 60 minutes are a blur of gruff men and impressive equipment going about their work, and little that matters is revealed about any of them. Just before everything blows up the BP executives as exemplified by Vidrine are installed as the perfunctory cartoon villains of the piece, and then the special effects folks take over.

The second half is all jerky camera work, jarringly loud explosions, impressive fires and stroboscopic lights. There are acts of heroism amidst the chaotic horror, but the superb recreation of a floating hell casts a shadow on everything else. The special effects team does a masterful job of avoiding the cheesiness of CGI, and Deepwater Horizon does look and sound superb. But as a drama about people, it fundamentally lacks substance.

Wahlberg and Russell dutiful fulfill their roles as the men who connected the dots leading to tragedy, and then responded as best as they could to save lives. Malkovich makes for an effective corporate scoundrel. Kate Hudson is reasonably refreshing in a role away from awful romantic comedies. But the film ultimately sinks under the weight of good intentions consumed by raging fires.

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Movie Review: The Departed (2006)

The film that finally delivered the Best Director Academy Award to Martin Scorsese, The Departed is a slick police drama centred on an epic battle to wrest control of Boston's underworld away from an entrenched mobster lord. A stellar cast helps to balance the film's more overwrought elements.

Frank Costello (Jack Nicholson) is the head of Boston's largest criminal syndicate, brutally engaged in grand scale extortion, trafficking and wanton violence. Police Captain Queenan (Martin Sheen) and his deputy Staff Sergeant Dignam (Mark Wahlberg) spot an opportunity to infiltrate Costello's empire by inserting new police graduate Billy Costigan (Leonardo DiCaprio) as an undercover mole. Billy is from the wrong side of town, and a manufactured criminal record as well as his chequered family history eventually gain him entry into Frank's inner circle.

Costello: I don't want to be a product of my environment. I want my environment to be a product of me.

But Frank has his own agent working inside the police department. Staff Sergeant Colin Sullivan (Matt Damon) is considered by his boss Captain Ellerbyone (Alec Baldwin) to be of the brightest officers on the force, but Sullivan is on the criminal payroll and ensures that Frank stays one step ahead of enforcement efforts to nab him. First Sullivan and then Costigan get romantically involved with psychologist Dr. Madolyn Madden (Vera Farmiga). With Costigan beginning to buckle under the tension of his double life, both Costello and Queenan come to the realization that there are moles within their organizations, leading to a ferocious settling of the scores.

FBI Agent Lazio: Do you have anyone in with Costello presently?
Dignam: Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe fuck yourself. My theory on Feds is, they're like mushrooms: feed them shit and keep them in the dark.

Written by William Monahan as an adaptation of the 2002 Hong Kong film Internal Affairs, The Departed is hard-hitting, loud and drenched in testosterone. At 151 minutes the film is probably a good half hour too long, and the second half bogs down in a seemingly endless find-the-mole pursuit driven by justified paranoia. But The Departed overcomes its weaker points thanks to a grim attitude of survival at all costs, with the characters of Costello, Costigan and Sullivan playing dangerous games of deception to further their careers in an uncaring world.

Costello: One of us had to die. With me, it tends to be the other guy.

Scorsese creates a world where men rule with incessant shouting, intimidation and cursing, and proceed to create spectacular messes. The police department is a cesspool of competing agendas and mistrust, and Frank Costello's criminal empire is barely held together by the iron will of one man who sees enemies everywhere. The agencies on both sides of the law appear equally dysfunctional and distasteful. Dr. Madden is the only woman of relevance in the cast, and she seems off-centre and out of place, getting in the way of the men's ruinous agendas.

The script is a treasure of caustic one liners. Before the guns are drawn (and eventually they are, in large numbers), the characters of The Departed fire ballistic words at each other. No calm sentence will do when it can be replaced by a fine-tuned verbal barrage, and Monahan excels at creating enduring quotable exchanges. In the hands of an exceptional cast, The Departed becomes an intellectual sparring match, a multi-pronged battle of wits where the acts are always violent, but not anymore so that the fierce thoughts that precede them.

(a police surveillance operation is not going well; there are blind spots, and officers are losing their sight lines and losing their cool).
Dignam: This is incredible. Who put the fucking cameras in this place?
Surveillance Guy: Who the fuck are you?
Dignam: I'm the guy who does his job. You must be the other guy.

The Departed basks in the glow of the current generation of superstar actors in the form of DiCaprio, Damon and Wahlberg rubbing shoulders with elder statesmen Nicholson, Sheen and Baldwin. DiCaprio and Damon deliver the requisite intensity as the men taking the highest risks to prove themselves and alter the outcome of the battle for street control. In terms of balance among the stars, the film probably has too much of Nicholson and too little of Wahlberg, Sheen and Baldwin.

The Departed reaches a climax of brutal bloodletting that delivers the requisite shock and gore, but also undermines a lot of the build up. When killing suddenly becomes too easy and everyone is a target, the careful game of cat-and-mouse that unfolded over several years is inevitably diminished.

There is no question that Scorsese has crafted better gems. Taxi Driver, Raging Bull and Goodfellas, among others, are greater artistic achievements and more deserving of Academy Award recognition. The Departed proved to be the opportunity to correct past oversights in recognizing one of Hollywood's greatest ever directors; fortunately, it is also a provocative story of conflicted men pushing their fate into dangerous territory, where Scorsese happens to be most comfortable.

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Movie Review: Broken City (2013)

An attempt to recreate the magic of Chinatown in modern day New York, Broken City serves up some tasty deviousness among the power elite, but the simplistic story of corruption sags under the weight of its own ambition.

New York City cop Billy Taggart (Mark Wahlberg) is acquitted of murdering an accused rapist, but is nevertheless asked to resign from the police force by Mayor Nicholas Hostetler (Russell Crowe). Seven years later, the Mayor is running for re-election and facing a serious challenge from charismatic Councillor Jack Valliant (Barry Pepper). Hostetler hires Taggart, now a private investigator, to confirm that the Mayor's wife Cathleen (Catherine Zeta-Jones) is having an affair. Meanwhile, Hostetler signs a high profile real estate deal for the City to sell a large social housing site to a private development company. The sale will save the City from a mountain of debt, but also places low-income families at risk.

Taggart's home life with girlfriend Natalie (Natalie Martinez) starts to fall apart when he can't handle her burgeoning career as an actress. But with help from his assistant Katy (Alona Tal), Taggart gathers evidence that Cathleen is indeed seeing a man called Paul Andrews (Kyle Chandler), who is closely connected to Valliant's campaign team. But there is lot more going on than a simple affair. Soon there are bodies in the street, serious allegations of corruption, and just when Taggart thinks that he has collected all the pieces of an ugly puzzle, his past comes back to haunt him.

The secret at the heart of Broken City is lame, a signature on a paper that must be a matter of public record, and that would never require any secretive skulking around to uncover. The Brian Tucker script also suffers from a tough to believe amount of violence unleashed by politicians in the immediate run-up to an election, the streets of New York suddenly turning into killing grounds as guns-for-hire do the dirty work for the corrupt men in suits.

These are unfortunate weaknesses at the film's core, because otherwise Broken City offers decent entertainment, delivered at a brisk pace by director Allen Hughes (working this time without his brother Albert). Stylishly filmed and benefiting from a strong cast, Broken City explores the familiar territory of corrupt land deals and a private investigator stumbling onto secrets much darker than what he was hired for. But the film also stays away from some tempting, often overused Chinatown derivatives. That Broken City avoids the topics of incest, rape and old men manipulating events from distant mansions is a welcome sign of self-control.

Russell Crowe and Mark Wahlberg are always engaging, and here they do not disappoint, although equally they do not set the screen on fire. Wahlberg, who also co-produced, has the larger role, and gives Taggart the sad energy of a man knocked out of the orbit of his natural life despite ridding the City of an acknowledged if unconvicted menace. Crowe is edgier and flashier, but also more predictable, his take on Mayor Nicholas Hostetler filled with the smugness of politicians who believe that laws apply only to other people. Catherine Zeta-Jones gets third billing, but relatively very few minutes on the screen.

Broken City promises more than the story can deliver, and although the film is not broken, it is regrettably bent a bit.

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Movie Review: Ted (2012)

An edgy romantic comedy with a strong streak of bromedy vulgarity, Ted is often hilarious, but also frequently wallows in the smelly mud of low-brow humour.

A lonely eight year old in Boston, John Bennett receives a teddy bear as a Christmas gift from his parents. John wishes for the teddy bear to actually talk to him and become a real friend. By the next morning his wish has come true: Ted is a walking, talking bear. John and Ted make a pact to remain friends forever. After an initial media frenzy, Ted becomes a socially accepted part of the landscape.

Years later, the adult John (Mark Wahlberg) is drifting through an aimless life, a lowly clerk at a car rental outlet. Ted (voice of Seth MacFarlane) is still his roommate and loyal friend, and they spend most of their time getting high by smoking weed, and watching notoriously bad movies, with the cheesy Flash Gordon (1980) a particular favourite. But John has also somehow landed a hot girlfriend, Lori (Mila Kunis), and her patience with the juvenile Ted is wearing thin. Lori pressures John to kick Ted out of his life or risk losing her. Ted also has other problems: the creepy Donny (Giovanni Ribisi) and his dimwitted son Robert want to get their hands on the talking bear, one way or another.

Directed, co-produced and co-written by MacFarlane, Ted unleashes a flurry of R-rated jokes, many squarely hitting the target, but just as many falling flat. MacFarlane is not capable of moving much past sex, drugs, alcohol, and basic bodily functions, leaving the movie swinging from the low branches of the common denominator.

The plot never tries to explain what the smart, professional and gorgeous Lori is doing wasting time with an obvious loser like John, and so the romantic elements never gel, and Lori becomes a boring source of tension between buddies-for-life John and Ted. Meanwhile, a guy and a bear hanging on the couch, smoking pot and pretending to be fascinated by Sam J. Jones floating through space on tin foil junk, are only really interesting for about 5 minutes.

MacFarlane fills the holes in intelligence with brisk elbows-out comedy, and delivers a mix ranging from poo-on-the-floor to cheap shots at everything from the limits of life at a car rental outlet to Norah Jones' ethnicity, passing through all the names most commonly imposed on white trash girls. In between, Lori fends off the crude advances of her jerk office manager (Joel McHale), opening up more avenues for humour revolving around surviving a lecherous boss.

Mark Wahlberg glides through the movie with a slightly bewildered look fixed on his face, probably realizing early on that there is no point in competing for attention with a talking teddy bear. Kunis struggles with the thin material and rarely seems convinced that she's in the right role. The special effects team brings Ted to life with full mastery, and MacFarlane's best work is in giving the bear the voice of an outsider to society who is also the essential insider in John's life.

The metaphor of the bear representing John's failure to launch is blatant, but the film fails to translate the obvious into anything other than a sequel set-up. Ted delivers the laughs, but with fairly limited smarts.

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