The Ace Black Movie Blog

Showing posts with label Terrence Howard. Show all posts

Sunday, 12 October 2025

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 Bobby (audacious and two-fisted), Angel (more cerebral), Jerry (business-oriented), and Jack (withdrawn and most traumatized but likely the smartest) are a lively set, and together they unleash unconstrained mayhem, as much on each other as on their enemies.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.

All Ace Black Movie Blog reviews are here.

Saturday, 12 December 2020

Movie Review: Sabotage (2014)

An action thriller, Sabotage is crammed full of repetitive scenes and bloody carnage, all to little effect.

In Atlanta, John "Breacher" Wharton (Arnold Schwarzenegger) leads his elite Drug Enforcement Agency special ops team as they raid a fortified cartel headquarters. The bad guys are eliminated, and Breacher's crew also steal $10 million in cash to keep for themselves, but the stolen money quickly goes missing.

An internal investigation yields no outcome and months later Breacher reunites with his group, now wracked by guilt and suspicion. Soon the team members are getting murdered in gory ways, attracting the attention of Detective Caroline Brentwood (Olivia Williams). Breacher has to keep Caroline out of the way as he tries to identify the vicious enemies intent on eliminating his unit.

Primarily obsessed with puddles of blood and a surplus of gore, Sabotage trips up on repetitive scenes, an utter absence of charisma, and uniformly unlikable characters. Director and co-writer David Ayer scrapes the bottom of the dialogue barrel, everyone's vocabulary limited to predictable profanities and hurled insults.

Arnold Schwarzenegger at 67 years old is several decades too old for the role, and he is surrounded by the likes of Sam Worthington and Terrence Howard far from their best work. The conspiracy plot wades into ever more absurd territory with every murder, and the introduction of a personal vendetta angle for Breacher arrives too late and further strains credibility. Action scenes are supposed to somewhat rescue movies like this, but here Ayer rinses and repeats the same tactical unit building invasion shots every 10 minutes.

Neither smart nor fun, Sabotage self-destructs.

All Ace Black Blog Movie Reviews are here.

Wednesday, 4 December 2019

Movie Review: The Hunting Party (2007)

A journalists-in-peril adventure, The Hunting Party has a potentially good story to tell but features an imbalance between danger and levity.

War zone journalist Simon Hunt (Richard Gere) and his cameraman and close friend Duck (Terrence Howard) enjoy an adrenaline-fuelled life covering the world's most dangerous conflicts. But in 1994, Simon suffers an on-air meltdown while covering the brutal war and ethnic cleansing atrocities in Bosnia. He is fired and his career goes into a downward spiral. Duck eventually loses track of his friend and secures a cushy job as the chief cameraman for the network's main anchor Franklin Harris (James Brolin).

In 2000, Duck and Franklin along with rookie reporter and nepotism beneficiary Benjamin Strauss (Jesse Eisenberg) arrive in Bosnia to cover the 5 year anniversary of the war-ending peace treaty. Simon re-enters Duck's life, claiming to know the whereabouts of wanted fugitive Dragoslav "The Fox" Bogdanović (Ljubomir Kerekeš), one of the main purveyors of ethnic cleansing. Duck and Benjamin join Hunt on a dangerous journey deep into Serb-controlled territory, where suspicious locals and UN peacekeepers immediately mistake the journalists as a CIA hit-squad, leading to surreal encounters.

Filmed in Croatia and loosely inspired by real events recounted in an Esquire magazine article, The Hunting Party attempts a difficult balancing act. The Bosnian conflict resulted in over 100,000 deaths and horrific acts of massacre and ethnic cleansing in the heart of Europe. While levity can be an antidote for brutality, here writer and director Richard Shepard tries to have it both ways by exposing his trio of intrepid journalists to genuine horror and danger then angling for laughs. The mix rarely works and more often leaves an unsatisfactory taste in the mouth.

In 2007 this story was a condemnation of inaction. By chronicling the misadventures of a group of bickering journalists as they get close to The Fox within a couple of days of amateurish searching, the film rightly exposes foot-dragging by an international community seemingly unwilling to seriously go after the architects of war. Since then the wheels of justice have turned, leaving The Hunting Party in mid-narrative territory.

Idea fragments, some more promising than others, are introduced on the periphery of the main plot. Simon Hunt's emotional collapse and career disintegration after repeated exposure to violence is a welcome acknowledgement of post traumatic stress disorder creeping up on the seemingly immune, but deserved more exposition. Much less successful is the hurried injection of a barely-baked romance to personalize his tragedy and turn the quest to find The Fox into a personal vendetta.

Richard Gere, Terrence Howard and Jesse Eisenberg are functional without ever departing from stock characterizations. Diane Kruger gets one scene as a mysterious informant demanding money from the CIA (as she is convinced the journalists are all undercover agents) to reveal The Fox's hideout.

Despite exposing snippets from a tragic and cinematically underexposed conflict, The Hunting Party misses its prey.

All Ace Black Blog Movie Reviews are here.

Wednesday, 11 October 2017

Movie Review: Dead Man Down (2013)

A revenge crime thriller, Dead Man Down benefits from a focus on characters and a suitably grim mood.

In New York City, Victor (Colin Farrell) and his partner Darcy (Dominic Cooper) are violent gang members, part of the crew run by crime boss Alphonse (Terrence Howard). However, while pretending to be a loyal foot soldier, Victor is also on a secret and personal revenge mission, seeking retribution against Alphonse for the murder of his wife and child two years earlier.

Victor meets his neighbour Beatrice (Noomi Rapace), who lives with her mother (Isabelle Huppert). Beatrice was the victim of an accident caused by a drunk driver that left her with permanent facial scars. Having witnessed Victor commit a murder in his apartment, she demands that he kill the drunk driver, who got away with a light sentence. With Darcy investigating who is behind the threats against Alphonse, Victor has to quickly advance his complex retribution and satisfy Beatrice before his cover is blown.

Directed by Niels Arden Oplev, Dead Man Down is better than it needed to be. Oplev restricts the action set pieces to just a few punchy moments at the start, middle, and end, and keeps them short if a bit muddled in execution. Plenty of room is therefore created for a complex double revenge plot to unfurl from the middle outwards, and the characters of Victor and Beatrice occupy centre stage.

The story of Victor plotting an elaborate payback contains a compelling backstory and a patient build-up, while Beatrice is an intriguing woman, scarred physically but more deeply damaged emotionally. The two combine to create an unusually provocative duo with overlapping objectives. When the inevitable relationship evolves between them, their rage is also cast in a new light.

None of which is to say that Dead Man Down doesn't contain glaring faults. Gangster stereotypes and narrative shortcuts litter the screen, plot holes waltz through the film, and New York City is somehow suddenly devoid of law enforcement. Early in the story a gangland massacre takes place, with an exchange of gunfire worthy of a war zone, and yet none of the perpetrators are ever remotely bothered by any sort of investigation.

Oplev skips past the shortcomings with an appealing dark aesthetic, many of the scenes taking place at dusk or later, with dark blues and artificial lighting complementing the underworld milieu. And the quality of the cast also helps to ride out the weaker moments. Colin Farrell's generally expressionless persona is well suited to the secretive and scheming Victor, while Noomi Rapace matches Farrell with her sense of determined despondency. Isabelle Huppert as Beatrice's mostly deaf mother adds depth to Beatrice's domesticity. Veterans Armand Assante and F. Murray Abraham have small supporting roles.

A reasonably potent mix of action and layered plot, Dead Man Down enjoys more ups than downs.

All Ace Black Movie Blog reviews are here.

Sunday, 2 July 2017

Movie Review: Iron Man (2008)

A superhero origins story, Iron Man modernizes the comic book hero with a savvy narrative inspired by raging cynicism and a world addicted to weapons.

Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) is a genius inventor and weapons builder, and the head of Stark Industries, the world's leading armament manufacturing company. On a trip to war-torn Afghanistan with his main US military liaison James Rhodes (Terrence Howard) Tony is caught up in a firefight, wounded and captured by militants. He is kept alive by fellow prisoner and doctor Yinsen (Shaun Toub). Militia leader Raza (Faran Tahir) demands that Tony build him a sophisticated rocket system, but instead Tony and Yinsen secretly develop a small arc reactor to power a protective weaponized suit of mighty armor.

Tony uses his new invention to escape his captors and return to the United States, and having witnessed the ravages of war he is determined to stop manufacturing tools of death. His mentor and business partner Obadiah Stane (Jeff Bridges) is horrified that Tony could jeopardize the company's profits. Trusting only his personal assistant Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow), Tony retreats to his workshop to design and build a second version of the power suit, determined to develop the capability to put a stop to war.

Directed by Jon Favreau, Iron Man is a sharp action film benefitting greatly from a coiled Robert Downey Jr. performance enjoying the transformative journey of Tony Stark. The origin of Stark as a callous merchant of death gives the character plenty of distance to travel on his way to superhero status, and Downey makes the ride well worth joining.

Refreshingly the film derives most of its joy from personality rather than mayhem, and a large part of Iron Man is about people rather than machinery. Stark's uninhibited and outspoken sarcasm is a deep-seated character trait. This is a man confident in his own abilities and not afraid to speak his mind whether peddling the latest tool of destruction or announcing his intentions to change the course of his corporation. And this being a more-intelligent-than-most origins story, Favreau has the luxury to measure and space out the action scenes, avoiding the sensory overload that commonly plagues the superhero genre.

When it does come to combat and explosions there is no shortage of villains to dispense with, including heartless Afghan militants and more dangerous foes back home. And with the powered suit still in the development stage, Favreau injects plenty of dry humour as things don't quite work as intended and Stark manoeuvres his new invention into the trouble of unintended consequences.

The supporting cast is talent-rich but relatively static. Jeff Bridges, Gwyneth Paltrow and Terrence Howard are game but not provided with enough material to stretch beyond the obvious limitations of their roles.

Fast paced, fun and barbed, Iron Man is an enjoyable blast.

All Ace Black Blog Movie Reviews are here.

Saturday, 6 February 2016

Movie Review: Prisoners (2013)

A harrowing and intense child abduction drama, Prisoners ratchets up the tension early and never lets up. A magnificent cast and an atmosphere of quiet yet unpredictable dread creates a superlative experience.

In a suburban Pennsylvania community, Keller and Grace Dover (Hugh Jackman and Maria Bello) and their young daughter Anna head over to Thanksgiving dinner at the house of their friends Franklin and Nancy Birch (Terrence Howard and Viola Davis) and their young daughter Joy. Keller is a carpenter and a survivalist, a proudly self-sufficient man. Later in the evening Anna and Joy head back to the Dover's house to play, and go missing. Suspicion immediately surrounds an old-model RV earlier seen parked in the neighbourhood.

Missing persons detective Loki (Jake Gyllenhaal) is immediately on the case, the RV is located, and its driver Alex Jones (Paul Dano) arrested and interrogated. Loki is unable to get anything out of Jones, who has a child's IQ and is barely able to construct sentences. Regardless, a search of the RV reveals no suspicious evidence, and neither does a search of Jones' room at the house of his Aunt Holly (Melissa Leo). Loki is forced to release Jones, which enrages Keller. Loki sets off to track down and question known former child molesters living in the area, a process which uncovers another shocking crime in the community. Meanwhile, Keller takes matters into his own hands, seizing Jones and embarking on his own quest for critical information to find his daughter

Directed by Denis Villeneuve, with stunning Roger Deakins cinematography and a moody music score by Jóhann Jóhannsson, Prisoners is an expertly crafted piece of mature cinema. The story gets to its central drama quickly, with Anna and Joy disappearing inside the first 20 minutes, creating a challenge for Villeneuve to sustain a 153 minute film. Not only does he succeed, he excels beyond any expectations. Prisoners sets off in unpredictable directions that are at once deeply satisfying and insanely disturbing, as Keller Dover's devastation is exploited to sharply veer the film off the well-travelled path of abduction movies and into a morass of complex emotions and moral ambiguities.

Much of the credit goes to Aaron Guzikowski's smart script, which studiously avoids every opportunity to take an easy out. Loki is far from perfect, his dialogue exchanges with Dover lacking in empathy and helping to inflame the grieving father. The character of Alex Jones remains stubbornly opaque, there are no easy revelations, and mental blockages padlocked by years of damage remain infuriatingly stubborn. Tormented parents behave like human beings, torn between incomprehensible grief and a lust for vengeance, all while surrendering to escapes offered by alcohol and pills.

Prisoners is not for the faint of heart. There are scenes of blunt torture, badly deformed faces, decayed human and animal corpses, bloodied children's clothes, and, for an extra kick of ickiness, slithering snakes. Dank, dangerous basements and holes in the ground are explored, all with a matter of factness that strips away cheap horror tactics in favour of a more insidious sense of evil-lives-next-door, and maybe also behind the door after that one. This is a film that tackles the horror that lives within without being a horror film, and as a result is acutely disconcerting.

Hugh Jackman and Jake Gyllenhaal take on the two central roles and create unforgettable characters. Jackman in particular excels as Keller Dover, humanizing a traumatized father and finding the justification for unjustifiable actions in the face of personal anguish. Gyllenhaal moves Loki away from stock heroism towards belief in process and old-fashioned investigative police work, but with the pressure mounting with every passing hour even his relatively dispassionate approach will be tested.

Paul Dano is quite phenomenal in his few scenes, creating a broken, exasperatingly non-functioning man-child who may or may not hold all, some, or no answers. Viola Davis, Maria Bello, Terrence Howard and Melissa Leo round out the impressive cast, and despite sharing screen time they all create in-depth individuals.

Prisoners stares at the demons that live in the community and inside the soul, waiting to be unleashed to serve causes great and small, just and deranged, and causing immense societal suffering.