"Accomplishments"In theaters: When we came out of How to Blow Up a Pipeline, a kid who worked at the theater asked us if it indeed showed us how, and I had to answer "No more than Ocean's Eleven shows you how to rob a casino", but it's certainly more procedural than THAT, even if it is built like a heist movie (they had me at hello), albeit one that includes scenes of eco-radicalization. Entertaining activism cinema that knows just what to keep secret from the audience so that the reveals are pleasant, and when to cut away to character-driven flashbacks to ramp up the tension. Like a heist picture, the plan is ingenious and well thought-out, and then things start to go wrong and it's all about adaptation and forethought. Very well done on that score. And speaking of score, a shout-out to the sound design, which had those doomsday synths my brain associates with the first couple Terminator movies. Big thumbs up to Ariela Barer who stars, writes and produces.
At home: The third season of The Mandalorian has every right to make its title plural (or go symphonic with its score as it actually did), seeing as it's really about the Mandalorians coming together and trying to reclaim their old planet. For a hot second there, I thought the show had learned lessons from Andor as the action expanded to more socio-political stuff on Coruscant for a couple of episodes, but it soon returned to its regular slam-bang action. Din Djaren and Groku are still central, but we get to know more Mandalorians, enough so we care what happens to them in the final battles, and if the series were to end here, it would be a good ending, wrapping up many loose ends and feeling like a full trilogy has been achieved. There will be more, so long as the show is a success, but for now we can sit content that this corner of the Star Wars universe has known a resolution. A fourth season hasn't been announced, but if you told me they decided to do a movie instead, I wouldn't be surprised at all. We're practically there in terms of character, plot and effects.
For Guy Ritchie, Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre is a trifle. Either he had Man from UNCLE script ideas on his desk, or decided to do his own version of Mission: Impossible, or as he's frequently done, the movie is a pilot for a series of movies. Jason Statham heads a crack team of spies for hire here sent after a secret weapon that a rival team is also desperate to get their hands on. It's never over-stylish, and the action is mid-range compared to the bigger, better-financed franchises in the genre, but it is pretty fun. Much of that fun comes from Aubrey Plaza - her performance is a little all-over-the-place, but she gets all the best dialog and her character is as cool as the boys' (which include Bugzy Malone and Cary Elwes). The comic subplot involves Josh Hartnett as a movie star out of his depth, romancing the always entertaining Hugh Grant. If had seen it in theaters, my review would have been the same, but I'd add a note of disappointment. Streaming on a lazy afternoon, one can find their joy in what feels like a franchise instalment from a parallel universe.
There's very little director S. Craig Zahler does in terms of compromise in Brawl in Cell Block 99. Though we know where it's headed from the title - though not the how nor the what it means exactly - he takes his time. He introduces and explores the characters. We know them by the time the shit hits the fan. There are long silences, mood and a sense of place are established. The level of violence, both on screen and suggested is intense to the point of being unbearable (well, this IS the guy who made Bone Tomahawk). And the sense of pervading tragedy is about as anti-Hollywood as it gets, despite the genre play (unless we believe there are such torture prisons still active in the U.S. - I'd rather not know if there are, frankly). I'm liking a lot of Vince Vaughn's latter-day projects, and Brawl has him as a no-nonsense criminal-then-convict with slightly superhuman strength who will do anything to keep his family safe, even from inside a jail cell. It's a memorable, if simple, characterization in a movie that figuratively takes no prisoners.
Zahler perhaps over-complicated things in Dragged Across Concrete, setting up a lot of characters so that their fates matter, but at the cost of extending the run time to unwarranted lengths. Many of the Cell Block 99 cast return, including Vince Vaughn as a suspended cop partnered with Mel Gibson who goes along with a plan to rob some robbers,with tragic results. Cell Block 99's theme of "how far would you go for your family" is present an accounted for, if less focused. Some have compared Zahler to Tarantino, and there is some truth to it - the tapestry of characters, the idiosyncratic language, the stylized violence... but in this case, there's also how he riffs on blaxploitation films with funky songs written for the movie. He wrote them himself, and while I wouldn't switch careers if I were him, songs like Jungle Safari would fit very well in an early 70s exploitation movie. As to whether the whole lion motif works, I'm still puzzling it out. Similarly, though Zahler has called himself apolitical, his three films together are like right-wing fever dreams and I can't decide if he's playing to that demographic or mocking it.
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