Movie Review: A Working Man (2025)

Genre: Action  

Director: David Ayer  

Starring: Jason Statham, Michael Pena, David Harbour  

Running Time: 116 minutes  

Synopsis: In Chicago, ex-Royal Marine Commando Levon Cade (Jason Statham) is a site foreman working for the family construction business owned by Joe Garcia (Michael Pena). When Joe's college student daughter Jenny (Arianna Rivas) is kidnapped, Levon reluctantly agrees to find her. He discovers a powerful underworld Russian gang, with Dimi (Maximilian Osinski) as the unhinged scion dabbling in the human sex trade. Jenny fights for her freedom against her captors as Levon works his way through numerous thugs to mount a rescue.

What Works Well: The co-writing team of director David Ayer and Sylvester Stallone deliver as-promised-on-the-label action. Jason Statham injects just enough engagement in the familiar role of the quiet ex-special forces soldier nudged back into action, and the rest flows to familiar beats of unrealistic but well-staged action, sardonic humour, and oily baddies hissing threats and meeting their demise to a soundtrack of quips. Jenny as the victim is provided with spunk, and Dimi makes for an effectively despicable but well-dressed villain.  

What Does Not Work As Well: From opening to closing credits, this is nothing if not predictable, complete with Levon's oh-so-familiar broken marriage and attempts to be a good dad to his young daughter, and the ex-army buddy (David Harbour) with a stash of weaponry that could equip a robust militia. The more serious dialogue exchanges are often painfully inept.

Key Quote:

Levon: Let's play.



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Movie Review: Lions For Lambs (2007)

Genre: Drama  

Director: Robert Redford  

Starring: Meryl Streep, Robert Redford, Tom Cruise, Michael Pena, Andrew Garfield  

Running Time: 92 minutes  

Synopsis: Three separate events take place concurrently. In Washington DC, veteran reporter Janine Roth (Meryl Streep) is granted an interview with up-and-coming Senator Jasper Irving (Tom Cruise), who outlines a new military strategy for US troops in Afghanistan. In that country, soldiers Arian (Derek Luke) and Ernest (Michael Pena) are caught on a snowy ridge and have to defend themselves against enemy forces. At a California college, political science Professor Malley (Robert Redford) discusses the responsibility of citizen involvement in politics with his student Todd (Andrew Garfield).

What Works Well: Written by Matthew Michael Carnahan, this is an honest and balanced debate about the United States simultaneously waging two disastrous wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Lions For Lambs (the reference is to brave soldiers serving the whims of incompetent leaders) covers the political and intellectual angles on either side of troops dealing with on-the-ground reality. Potent themes include the media's role in a corporate world, failing to learn the Vietnam War lessons, and the rapid erosion of trust in government among young people. The stellar cast ensures engagement throughout the dialogue-heavy scenes, Tom Cruise particularly effective as the charmingly brash Senator not yet scarred by failure. 

What Does Not Work As Well: Although various viewpoints from across the political and generational spectrums are presented, the glare of the obvious regularly defeats subtle messaging.

Conclusion: While soldiers do the actual fighting, the influence battle is waged through verbal sparring.



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Movie Review: Collateral Beauty (2016)

A drama with touches of humour addressing the consequences of personal loss and profound grief, Collateral Beauty is well meaning but excessively sententious.

In New York City, marketing executive Howard (Will Smith) is still in a deep depression two years after the death of his daughter. To try and cope with his grief he writes angry letters to the abstract concepts of Death, Love and Time. His business partners Whit (Edward Norton), Clare (Kate Winslet) and Simon (Michael Peña) are facing a deadline to sell the company, but cannot seal the deal without Howard, the majority shareholder.

In desperation the partners decide to hire struggling theatre actors to engage with Howard, either to snap him out of his funk or prove he is incapable of functioning. Brigitte (Helen Mirren), Amy (Keira Knightley) and Raffi (Jacob Latimore) agree to impersonate Death, Love and Time respectively. Howard does take the initiative to join a support group managed by Madeleine (Naomie Harris), while the hired actors learn that Whit, Clare and Simon are facing personal issues of their own.

Death is part of life, love persists despite everything, and time is precious and should not be wasted are universal themes straight from the bottom shelf of simplistic self-help pop-psychology. Collateral Beauty wears these concepts with utmost reverence, and weaves around them a saccharin story befitting the excessively maudlin mood.

The clunky plot is an excuse to construct the rickety device of actors impersonating abstract concepts and ambushing Howard in street-level interventions. And it's no surprise whatsoever when backstories are introduced for Whit, Clare and Simon to double down on the sappiness of Howard's ordeal and give the hired actors more people to fix, Hollywood style.

But it's not all totally bad. Director David Frankel, working from a spec script by Allan Loeb, has an embarrassment of acting riches at his disposal, and makes reasonably good use of the talented cast given the emotional immaturity of the material. The shortish running-time of 97 minutes is shared equally among the many of stars on display, and most of them get at least a couple of scenes to shine. Helen Mirren appears to have the most fun as a never-will-be actress romping through the role of Death.

The perfectly sparkling locations featuring New York City decked out for Christmas fit perfectly within the film's simplistically magical ethos, but Loeb's dialogue exchanges needed at least one more thorough polish to scrub away the many awkward artificialities.

Collateral Beauty tries to achieve a whimsical fairytale vibe, but lands firmly on the wrong side of cloying.

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Movie Review: The Mule (2018)

A drama and character study, The Mule is a simple yet elegant story of an elderly man looking for renewed purpose.

In Illinois, Earl Stone (Clint Eastwood) ran a successful horticulture business, but was a neglectful husband to his now former wife Mary (Dianne Wiest) and an inattentive father to his bitter daughter Iris (Alison Eastwood). Now in his eighties, Earl did not keep up with online commerce and goes bankrupt. Granddaughter Ginny (Taissa Farmiga) maintains a good relationship, and one of her friends connects Earl with a drug cartel in need of reliable transport across state borders.

Earl starts making long drives to deliver bagfuls of narcotics, and establishes a reputation as a dependable and trustworthy mule, attracting the admiration of Mexican cartel boss Laton (Andy Garcia). Earl uses his substantial earnings to help good causes in his community, and to mend fences with his family. But Drug Enforcement Agency agents Bates (Bradley Cooper) and Trevino (Michael Peña) start to close in, with their boss (Laurence Fishburne) desperate for a big bust.

Directed by Eastwood and written by Nick Schenk, The Mule is inspired by a true story. The film is a warts-and-all exploration of a life full of joy and regret, and a remarkable second wind carrying Earl into an ocean of criminal activity. An old man at peace with himself and long past caring about niceties and political correctness, Earl makes for an ideal and nearly undetectable criminal.

Eastwood never judges his protagonist, instead allowing Earl to arrive at his own conclusions. With the curtain about to fall on his life, this is a man who learns almost too late that career success at the expense of a family life in tatters may not have been the best trade off. The same oblivious attitude that led Earl down the wrong path the first time around remains in evidence as he never seems to question the devastating social ills his mule activities are helping unleash.

But at least this time Earl uses his windfall Robin Hood style to rebuild community and recreational centres and help his family members, gradually earning his way back into the life of Mary and Iris. He will again confront a work-versus-family decision point, this time with the threat of a brutal death for defying vicious criminals. But having been around the block once before, Earl is better equipped to recognize the landmarks.   

The film is not without weaknesses. Plot holes abound in the intelligence battle between the cartel and the DEA, and The Mule is another film where the criminals are highly resourceful except when it suits the script. Overall the investigative elements featuring the high profile trio of Bradley Cooper, Michael Peña and Laurence Fishburne are underwritten for the available talent. A couple of key characters, including a Filipino informer and a chief cartel lieutenant, are given prominence then ignored.

Eastwood's directing is an example of eloquent efficiency, the character conflicts created with sharp and short strokes, allowing plenty of time for road trip interludes showcasing Earl's comfort with ruling his domain behind the wheel of his pickup on the open highway. When the time comes for serious conversations, Schenk conjures up memorable exchanges between Earl and Bates at a diner, and then between Earl and Mary, reflecting on second chances.

The Mule is about seizing life's next opportunity at any age, as discovered by the old man absentee. 

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Movie Review: Battle: Los Angeles (2011)

A science fiction military action film, Battle: Los Angeles is overwhelmed by bad battleground CGI and rarely achieves a respectable level of action-driven entertainment.

At the Camp Pendleton military base near Los Angeles, Staff Sergeant Michael Nantz (Aaron Eckhart) is about to retire from the Marines, still emotionally scarred by losing some of his men in a recent deployment. His plans are interrupted when hostile aliens stage a massive invasion of Earth, with the heavily armed aggressors arriving on meteor-like vessels and landing off the coast of dozens of cities around the world.

Nantz is pressed back into service as part of a platoon under the command of Lieutenant Martinez (Ramon Rodriguez), tasked with saving civilians trapped at a Santa Monica police station. The civilians include veterinarian Michele (Bridget Moynahan) and local man Joe (Michael Peña), who is with his young son. However, the aliens prove much more powerful than initially thought. Nantz and Martinez are joined by air force Technical Sergeant  Santos (Michelle Rodriguez) and together they have to find a way to save the civilians and uncover a weakness in their enemy.

Directed by Jonathan Liebesman, Battle: Los Angeles is a noisy, often frantic affair. While the premise is about a global invasion and humans fighting for the very survival of the species, the film zooms in to the squadron level, and focuses on a few men engaged in running street battles through mostly destroyed Los Angeles area neighbourhoods.

Battle: Los Angeles most resembles the much better Black Hawk Down, with the Somalis replaced by aliens. And just as Black Hawk Down had limited interest in defining who the enemy was, Battle: Los Angeles doubles down on the concept of the enemy as just an abstract thing to be destroyed. Here the aliens are blurry CGI creations, mostly seen from a distance. The lack of any narrative content explaining the other side of the conflict frequently reduces the film to the level of a dumb first person shooter video game.

Liebesman demonstrates no control over battlefield visuals, often overwhelming the screen with CGI-created projectiles flying in all directions, giving the impression that a bunch of pimple-faced excitable teenagers were given the task of adding noise and fury to the screen and kept on adding more because more must be better. The jerky camera work does not help. Similarly, the attempts to humanize the squad members all fail. The Marines surrounding Nantz remain interchangeable grunts drawn from the basic repertoire of World War Two movies from the 1940s.

The film is not a total loss: as the action moves into the final 30 minutes acts of heroism, comradeship and sacrifice finally begin to cut through the clutter, and Battle: Los Angeles picks up some emotional steam, helped by a committed and fully square-jawed Aaron Eckhart performance. His grim determination may be enough to save the planet, but not quite the movie.

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Movie Review: World Trade Center (2006)

A survival story set beneath the collapsed towers and based on real events, World Trade Center salutes the human spirit but struggles in its second half to build a cinematic experience out of a mostly static personal tragedy.

On the morning of September 11, 2001 in New York City, Port Authority Police officers John McLoughlin (Nicolas Cage) and Will Jimeno (Michael Peña) are among a large group of emergency responders dispatched to the World Trade Center after planes piloted by terrorists strike the twin towers. In the plaza level, McLoughlin is preparing his men to help in the rescue efforts when the South Tower collapses. In an instant McLoughlin orders his men to take refuge near the elevator shaft. He survives along with Jimeno, although both are trapped by the rubble and rendered immobile.

Officer Dominick Pezzulo (Jay Hernandez) also survives and is able to extricate himself, but is unable to free Jimeno and is then killed when the North Tower collapses. Both badly hurt, McLoughlin and Jimeno have to keep themselves alive by raising each others' spirits, while their wives Donna McLoughlin (Maria Bello) and Allison Jimeno (Maggie Gyllenhaal) and families are consumed by worry and the lack of information.

World Trade Center is a respectful film, director Oliver Stone steering well clear of his tendencies for controversies and conspiracies, and creating an ultimately simple story of courage and rescue. The film also avoids, to a large degree, any spectacular images of airplanes striking buildings, limiting the terrorism acts to small television screens as witnessed by most of the world at the time. The performances match the tone, Cage and Peña creating distinct personalities and teasing out the men's human side as they reveal more personal details of their lives to each other as their ordeal drags on. Bello and Gyllenhaal do all that is asked of them, police wives struck with the panic of the worst possible fears coming true.

The limitations of the film's experience are set by the inherent nature of the story. Once the buildings fall, there is little forward momentum, and World Trade Center is essentially caught in the same rubble as the two officers. There is only so much drama that can be generated from men fighting to stay awake and alive while their families anxiously await any news. Stone has to drag out this phase for close to an hour, and the film suffers from it. In contrast, once the rescue starts, it feels rushed and muddled, Stone and cinematographer Seamus McGarvey unable to coherently reconstruct the arduous work of freeing and pulling out the two men from the tightest of confines.

What the film does do well is present the unfathomably disastrous attacks from the perspective of two men doing their job, getting caught up in the chaos, uncertainty and confusion of events that no one was prepared for, and finding themselves trapped under the rubble of two collapsed buildings and in excruciating pain. A claustrophobic sense of desperation becomes the enemy, the men's only link to the outside world a shaft of light above Jimeno.

They keep each other alive through sheer companionship, clinging to precious life when all around them spells death. Silently, the film forces the question about how many others faced the same fate and were not saved. The impromptu actions of Marines Dave Karnes and Jason Thomas led to the fortuitous rescue of McLoughlin and Jimeno; many others, equally trapped, likely waited in vain before perishing. The impact of the film comes from the realization that for 2,977 families other than the relatives of McLoughlin and Jimeno, the days after September 11 ended very differently, the frantic search for answers met with nothing but silence and ultimately, the most grim of confirmations.

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Movie Review: Tower Heist (2011)

A rather bland revenge caper comedy thriller, Tower Heist assembles a large cast and then wastes it on an underdeveloped story. There are moments of fun to be had thanks to the star power on display, but the overall package is a disappointment.

In downtown Manhattan, Josh Kovaks (Ben Stiller) is the manager of The Tower, the most prestigious high rise residential address in the city. His crew includes veteran doorman Lester (Stephen Henderson), the tentative desk clerk Charlie (Casey Affleck), housemaid Odessa (Gabourey Sidibe) and rookie elevator operator Enrique (Michael Peña). They all work for General Manager Mr. Simon (Judd Hirsch), looking after every need of the very rich tenants.

The most famous and wealthiest resident is billionaire Arthur Shaw (Alan Alda), an investment fund manager who occupies the lavish penthouse, complete with Steve McQueen's bright red Ferrari as a centrepiece decoration. Without warning, Shaw is arrested for stealing $2 billion. Kovaks and his team had all their pension money invested with Shaw, and they lose everything. With FBI agent Claire Denham (Téa Leoni) leading the investigation into Shaw's business dealings, Kovaks assembles his colleagues as well as bankrupt Wall Street investor Mr. Fitzhugh (Matthew Broderick) and common criminal Slide (Eddie Murphy) to plan a daring theft of Shaw's secret safe, located in a wall enclosure within the penthouse.

Tower Heist has shiny outside packaging, but a listless core. The film looks slick and sounds great, the bass-and-horns theme courtesy of Christophe Beck packing plenty of promise. The talented array of stars do their part to help make the experience half-way watchable. Stiller throws himself into the role and manufactures a decent level of conviction, while Broderick hits the better comic tones with a brooding turn as an investor chewed up and spit out by Wall Street's merciless carousel.

Murphy is in good crude form, recalling the edgy, urban and profane Murphy of old as the one true thief among wannabe crooks, although his scrappy street-level experience is ill-suited to a high-rise heist. Alda (finding his inner Bernie Madoff), Affleck, Peña, Leoni, Sidibe and Hirsch ensure that every corner of the tower is occupied by familiar faces.

With most of the budget invested in the cast and the needlessly complicated backdrop of the Thanksgiving parade, little is left for a decent script, and Tower Heist quickly falls apart. The break-in plan is half-baked to the point of emerging from the oven as a sloppy mess, and the attempts at generating some heat between Josh and Claire misfire, although Leoni sparkles in one scene where the FBI agent disappears behind the fog of alcohol and the woman comes to the fore.

Once director Brett Ratner moves the action to the execution phase, all the tension gets caught up in that red Ferrari, and the film devolves into a single silly gag, over the top, outside the building and beyond the bounds of reason. Tower Heist gets stuck in the elevator, with great company but going nowhere.

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Movie Review: Fury (2014)

The most impressive World War Two film since Saving Private Ryan, Fury borrows heavily from Spielberg's classic but also defines its own overwhelming intensity. Director and writer David Ayer delivers a stunningly gritty look at men in cramped surroundings fighting through a prolonged and ugly war that simply refuses to end quietly.

It's April, 1945, World War Two in Europe is in its final days and the Allies are pushing deep into Germany. Hitler has ordered every man, woman and child to defend the fatherland. The end result is not in doubt, and yet the fighting grinds on. On the front lines veteran Staff Sergeant Don "Wardaddy" Collier (Brad Pitt) commands a US Army Sherman tank nicknamed Fury, with an experienced and tight crew consisting of gunner Swan (Shia LaBeouf), loader Travis (Jon Bernthal), and driver Garcia (Michael Peña). The fifth crew member and assistant driver has just been killed, his guts splattered all over the tank. In the prevailing chaos army typist Norman Ellison (Logan Lerman) is assigned to Fury as the replacement crew member.

Norman has never seen the inside of a tank before, and never killed anyone, and he is initially a poor fit within Fury's battle hardened crew. With vicious fighting continuing against ever more desperate German defenders, Wardaddy takes it upon himself to teach Norman the ways of war, forcing him to kill and badgering him into shape. When Fury participates in seizing a German town, Norman starts to understand the merciless brutality required of him. Wardaddy rewards him by arranging private time in the company of an attractive local German woman (Alicia von Rittberg), but this causes resentment among the other crew members. Still ahead for Fury is a bruising encounter with an imposing Tiger tank, and an attempt to seize and hold a strategic crossroads.

The parallels with Saving Private Ryan are obvious: a tight-knit fighting unit with every member sure of his task, a respected veteran leading the group, the new, untrained guy who struggles to integrate, and the final mission within the confused front lines against overwhelming numbers, resulting in heroism and sacrifice. Ayer gives Wardaddy a sharper edge as a commander who has long since adopted a kill-on-sight philosophy, unafraid to terminate captured prisoners, particularly hated members of the Waffen-SS. And Fury benefits from the focus on a single tank and its claustrophobic interior, a world which offers the promise of a protective shell and the threat of an instant casket.

The episodes of battle are fierce, loud and gory. There is a charge against defensive fortifications to rescue stranded infantry troops, the assault on the small town, a furious tactical battle against the imposing Tiger, and then the defence of the crossroads. Ayer delivers these scenes with unblinking violence, death greeting men, tanks and civilians in loud, frequent and unforgiving bursts, who lives and who dies determined by courage, fortitude and the incessant twists of fate.

And as Fury trundles across the terrain between battles, there are shots of corpses flattened into the mud, splattered faces of explosion victims, and dead civilian victims of the SS hanging from posts, as warning to those who refuse to partake in the defence of their country in the war's final convulsion. Rarely has the hellish aspect of war been so nonchalantly conveyed through the hardened eyes of the soldiers who make it so.

Fury offers plenty of opportunities to build the crew into real people. Ayer finds the men inside the tank hardened into soldiers resigned to a reality of violence, hoping for but not anticipating an ending, and evolved into a working family that now enjoys the job of war. There are anxieties in the buildups, adrenaline pumping thrills when the shooting starts, and euphoria when the battle ends and lives are intact. Swan emerges as Wardaddy's closest friend and advisor, but still a subordinate, while Norman is the young innocent who must adapt or die before his ineptitude costs too many more lives.

The pivotal character scene takes place in the apartment of the German woman Irma and her niece Emma, Wardaddy finding a place of relative refuge to clean-up, eat and maybe offer Norman a respite from the shock of battle. The scene has an unusual tautness. The Americans are not anymore liberators or rescuers; they are now invaders, taking over the territory and homes of their enemy, free to have their way with defenceless women. Wardaddy seems to be deciding on his next step in real time, measuring just how much victor justice to impose. Ayer patiently allows the drama to unfold, the conflict evolving from potential violence against women to the dangerous fracturing of trust among men who need to depend on each other to live.

Fury's final battle is as over the top as the crossroads are a surreal depiction of the intersection of hell and sacrifice. Nothing about the last stand should make sense, but in the context of a world gone insane with bloodlust, it the perfect ending to a war twitching towards an agonizing denouement, dragging as many victims as possible along with it.

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