Going in Style (2017)

21 Friday Apr 2017

Tags

Alan Arkin, Ann-Margret, Bank robbery, Comedy, Eviction, Kidney transplant, Matt Dillon, Michael Caine, Morgan Freeman, Remake, Review, Zach Braff

D: Zach Braff / 96m

Cast: Morgan Freeman, Michael Caine, Alan Arkin, Ann-Margret, Matt Dillon, John Ortiz, Peter Serafinowicz, Joey King, Maria Dizzia, Josh Pais, Christopher Lloyd

Three old friends – Willie (Freeman), Joe (Caine), and Albert (Arkin) – have worked for the same steel company for over thirty years. But when the company decides to transfer all of its manufacturing abroad, all three find their jobs are gone and that their pensions are being used to facilitate the overseas set up. For Joe it’s even worse: without his pension he won’t be able to keep up the mortgage repayments on his home, and in a month will be evicted, along with his daughter, Rachel (Dizzia), and granddaughter Brooklyn (King). But Joe has the germ of an idea. Why not rob the bank that’s overseeing the liquidation of the pension funds, take only what they need personally, and give any money left over to charity?

Joe has gotten the idea because he was there when the bank was robbed only a few days before. Three masked bank robbers got away with over a million dollars, and the police, led by FBI Agent Hamer (Dillon), haven’t got any leads at all. Figuring that if the bank robbers can do it, then they can do it, Joe voices his idea to his friends. Willie, who desperately needs a kidney transplant, agrees to it more readily than Albert, who takes some convincing, but soon all three are on board. They put their stealing skills to the test at a local store, but are easily caught. This embarrassing failure at least tells them they need “professional” help. Through Joe’s ne’er-do-well ex-son-in-law, Murphy (Serafinowicz), they’re put in touch with a criminal-cum-pet store owner named Jesus (Ortiz). He agrees to help them, and soon they’re putting a plan into action that involves robbing the bank using their lodge’s carnival day as cover. But during the robbery, Willie’s identity is compromised, and though they get away with enough money to help clear their debts, FBI Agent Hamer is hot on their trail…

Another month, another remake, another reason to wonder if Hollywood has any idea why certain movies work and the majority of their remakes don’t. On paper, Going in Style has a lot going for it. It has a top-notch cast, its director has a brash, indie sensibility that could add an edge to proceedings, it has a screenplay from the co-writer/director of Hidden Figures (2016), and is a reworking of a movie that many regard with fondness even if it didn’t exactly set the box office alight. In short, and in baseball parlance, it should have been a home run. However, what we do have is a movie that settles for being bland and innocuous, and which wants its audience to have a fairly okay time with it, and not really an uproarious one. It keeps its ambitions quiet, plays things squarely by the book, and not once attempts anything that might upset the status quo. It’s as close to moviemaking by committee as you’re likely to get.

The script, by Theodore Melfi, trades on various forms of humour, but adopts a lightweight, unassuming tone that ensures the trio’s attempts to steal from their local store – this is how bright they are! – is the movie’s comedy highpoint. After that, the bank robbery itself is an exercise in gentle whimsy, with Willie ending up reassuring a little girl and potentially putting the trio in danger of being apprehended later. There are chuckles to be had, and plenty to smile good-naturedly about, but nothing else to make the viewer laugh out loud. For a comedy, Going in Style is a pretty good heist caper, but even then it refuses to do anything to make events feel fresh or remarkable. If you want belly laughs, or a long succession of jokes and one-liners, then this isn’t the movie you’re looking for.

With the movie suffering from more than just a hint of creative ennui, it plods through its various plot contrivances and unconvincing character development with all the energy of a narcolepsy sufferer on their fifth nap of the day. Counting heavily on its cast to signpost the laughs (and then act accordingly), the movie skips lightly from one scene to another, and rarely stops long enough to add any appreciable depth or additional layers to its bare bones storyline. Thankfully, the movie’s cast have been around for a while, and know how to elevate thin material, though there are still moments that defeat them (e.g. anytime Caine has to play doting grandfather to King’s annoyingly chirpy granddaughter). Arkin is the movie’s lucky charm though, making the grumpy, defeatist Albert its MVP, and making the viewer wish he had more screen time.

Overseeing it all is actor turned director Braff, making his third feature and showing a limited amount of enthusiasm for a project that he hasn’t written himself. Perhaps the characters just aren’t quirky enough, or have enough issues to be dealing with, for Braff to be interested, but there are long stretches where his indie style of moviemaking is absent, and is replaced by a director-for-hire vibe that fits in well with the movie’s corporate, take-no-risks attitude. Maybe it was the chance to work with such a great cast that persuaded him, but judged on the final result, this won’t add much lustre to Braff’s burgeoning career as a director (unless he’s offered similar projects).

But when all is said and done, and despite the movie being as ludicrous as you’d expect, it’s entirely necessary for movies like Going in Style to be seen on our screens. While they may offer stress-free paydays for their casts and crews, and while they may also offer an amount of generic material that could only be beaten by a low-budget horror movie, movies such as this one are the cinematic equivalent of comfort food. You know what to expect, and watching the movie will be an easy, minor pleasure, one you may even want to repeat at some point. Its lightweight, undemanding nature will attract viewers just as its cast will, and anyone looking for an hour and a half where they can kick back and leave their brain behind, will find this a pleasing experience that won’t tax them in the slightest.

For its target demographic (and it’s safe to assume it’s fans of the cast rather than fans of the original), Going in Style will be warmly received and, in all likelihood, it’ll gain more fans through word of mouth. Over time, some movies gain a reputation that they didn’t have when the movie was first released. This may be one of them, even though it’s too early to tell. What is certain is that right now, it’s a movie that lacks enough imagination to make it stand out from all the other remakes out there, and while it has heart and a degree of charm that’s entirely down to the efforts of its leading men, it’s not quite memorable enough to woo audiences in the long term.

Rating: 5/10 – good-natured and sweet it may be, but these are attributes that could have benefitted from being “roughed up” a little bit, and in doing so, made Going in Style more appealing; as it is, the movie moves along at a steady (though not quite geriatric) pace and manages to tick all the boxes on the path of least resistance to its eventual, and entirely predictable, denouement.

Pound of Flesh (2015)

21 Thursday May 2015

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Tags

Action, Aki Aleong, Charlotte Peters, Darren Shahlevi, Drama, Ernie Barbarash, Jean-Claude Van Damme, John Ralston, Kidney transplant, Manila, Philippines, Review, Stolen kidney, Thriller

D: Ernie Barbarash / 105m

Cast: Jean-Claude Van Damme, John Ralston, Aki Aleong (as Leonard Gonzales), Charlotte Peters, Darren Shahlevi, David P. Booth, Adele Baughan

While visiting Manila, kidnap and rescue expert Deacon Lyle (Van Damme) wakes up in his hotel room in a bath full of ice water and his right kidney missing. From hazy memories of the night before, Deacon remembers rescuing a woman (Peters) from her abusive boyfriend (Shahlevi) and her coming back to his room. He calls an old friend, Kung (Aleong) for help, and though Kung brings morphine, he also brings a warning: for Deacon to let it go. But he can’t, and the reason is made clear with the arrival of his brother, George (Ralston); George’s daughter needs a kidney transplant and in two days Deacon was going to be the donor.

Deacon goes to the bar where he and the woman went for a drink. A barmaid there reveals that the woman’s name is Ana Riley and the man who was abusing her is called Drake, and that they can be found at Gratis, an underground fight club. Using his contacts, Kung finds out where the club is being held that night. There Deacon finds Ana. She tells him that Drake paid her to be with Deacon and that it was a one time deal. Drake arrives and there is a shootout, but Drake gets away. Regrouping, Deacon, George, Ana and Kung go to George’s summer home. There it’s revealed that Deacon is really the father of George’s daughter; they also work out that whoever wants Deacon’s kidney must be on the donor register.

With the help of one of George’s ex-students, they discover the intended recipient is an Englishman, Simon Rants (Booth), with ties to an organisation that provides security via contracted mercenaries. Deacon decides to launch a one-man assault on Rants’s home. When his plan begins to backfire, George goes in as well, but what they eventually find changes all their preconceptions.

As a member of that illustrious group, the Lesser-Spotted Eighties Action Stars, Jean-Claude Van Damme is still busy churning out low-budget action flicks that bypass cinemas and head straight for DVD. Devised to be filmed in far-flung corners of the globe, and with minimal attempts at providing either a decent plot or characterisation, these movies focus on the requisite number of action or fight scenes and build to a predictable showdown between the hero and the villain. In some ways they’re the action movie equivalent of comfort food.

But sometimes comfort food isn’t enough by itself, and so it proves with Pound of Flesh, an action movie that tries to include concepts of fatalism, guilt, and religious ambivalence in an attempt to beef up the rather pedestrian plot. As an attempt at adding depth to an otherwise solidly underwhelming script it’s not such a bad idea, it’s just that it’s all handled so badly. You know these concepts are only there to fill in the downtime between fight scenes when one of the characters abandons his up-til-then deeply held beliefs, as George does here, going from guilt-ridden pacifist to gun-toting vigilante at the drop of a hat. (It doesn’t help that Ralston can’t quite carry it off.)

The script, by Joshua James, lets itself down in other ways. The most obvious is in the way it asks the viewer to suspend all disbelief as Deacon takes part in fight after fight so soon after losing his kidney. Deacon gets punched, kicked, thrown about, flash-bombed, stabbed, and aside from the odd look of discomfort, shrugs it off with the pithy comment, “I crossed the Afghan desert on two broken legs. So, this is nothing.” It’s the kind of witless macho posturing that should be ironic now, but instead it’s laughable, and the high point of the movie’s few attempts at humour (though it probably wasn’t meant that way). The script also asks us to accept that Drake (and we have to assume this) would go to all the trouble of going to George’s summer home and rigging the fridge with a grenade, so that whoever opens it next gets blown up. As that could be anyone, at any time, it’s an incredibly stupid “surprise” moment, and reinforces the idea that scripts for low budget action movies rarely reach a second draft.

Doing his best to make it work, Van Damme plays it straight but it all requires too much work, even for him, to bring it up to par. It’s a shame that his career seems to have stalled again in the direct-to-DVD arena after his “breakout” turn as himself in JCVD (2008). That movie showed a multi-faceted Van Damme, and a level of acting ability we hadn’t seen before, but he doesn’t seem to have capitalised on that at all. So now we still have him making the same moves he always makes: the high kicks, the splits, etc. And he looks so tired. He’ll be fifty-five this year, but he looks much older, much more worn down, and while this fits the character quite well given that he’s had a kidney removed, it does give rise to the possibility that Van Damme is tired himself of always being the action hero (maybe).

The rest of the cast provide varying turns, with Ralston overdoing the whole “God is good” angle, while Peters – who from certain angles resembles a thinner Rachel Weisz – makes her feature debut and seems to keep herself at a distance, as if she’s realised early on that this isn’t going to be the springboard for her career she was hoping for. Aleong is underused, and when he is on screen, is either asking for money, or bemoaning his character’s lack of influence, but always as the wise Oriental who meditates on the vagaries of life. As the main villain of the piece, Shahlavi – who sadly passed away in January this year – is as memorable as any other of Van Damme’s adversaries over the years, but does look fetching in mercenary black.

Barbarash is an old hand at this, having worked with Van Damme twice before, but he doesn’t bring anything new to the table, and several of the fight scenes suffer from having the camera in the wrong place, as well as being poorly cut together. China stands in for Manila (obvious from all the street signs), and overall, the whole thing has the air of a contractual obligation.

Rating: 3/10 – another depressing entry in Van Damme’s filmography, Pound of Flesh has all the hallmarks of a leftover script dusted off to meet its star’s requirements; with only a minimum of effort all round, it could almost be the cinematic description of “lacklustre”.

Dumb and Dumber To (2014)

08 Thursday Jan 2015

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Adopted daughter, Comedy, Harry Dunne, Jeff Daniels, Jim Carrey, KEN conference, Kidney transplant, Lloyd Christmas, Review, Rob Riggle, Sequel, The Farrelly Brothers

D: Bobby Farrelly, Peter Farrelly / 109m

Cast: Jim Carrey, Jeff Daniels, Rob Riggle, Laurie Holden, Rachel Melvin, Kathleen Turner, Steve Tom, Don Lake, Patricia French, Brady Bluhm, Tembi Locke

Ever since his failed romance with “Mary Samsonite”, Lloyd Christmas (Carrey) has been in a mental institution where he appears to be in a persistent vegetative state. Visited two or three times every week by his best friend, Harry Dunne (Daniels), Lloyd eventually reveals he’s okay and that he’s been playing an elaborate prank on Harry the whole time. Back at their old apartment, Harry tells Lloyd he needs a kidney transplant soon or he’ll die. They visit Harry’s parents in the hope one of them will be a donor, but Harry learns he was adopted. As they leave, Harry is given all the mail that’s been piling up since he moved out; amongst it all is a twenty-two year old postcard from Fraida Felcher (Turner) telling Harry she’s pregnant and to call her.

The duo track Fraida down and she reveals she had a daughter she named Fanny (Melvin) who she gave up for adoption. She also tells them she’s written to her but the letter was returned with a request not to try and contact Penny (her adopted name) ever again. Undeterred by this, Lloyd and Harry determine to find Penny and save Harry’s life. They travel to Maryland where Penny lives with her adoptive parents, famed scientist Bernard Pinchelow (Tom) and his wife Adele (Holden). Unfortunately, they just miss her, as Penny has gone to El Paso to represent her father at a KEN conference, but she’s forgotten to take a special gift for the conference’s organiser that Pinchelow says will be of major benefit to everyone worldwide.

Lloyd and Harry – accompanied by Travis (Riggle), the Pinchelow’s housekeeper – take the gift and head to El Paso. What they don’t know is that Travis is having an affair with Adele, and that they’re plotting to kill Pinchelow; they’re also looking to steal the gift and make millions from it. Along the way, Travis attempts to kill Lloyd and Harry but is thwarted by a freight train and killed. Harry and Lloyd continue on to El Paso, while Adele learns of Travis’s demise from his twin brother (Riggle); he agrees to help her with her plan.

At the conference, Harry is mistaken for Pinchelow and gains admittance, telling the organisers that Lloyd is a colleague. But when Lloyd lets slip that he’s attracted to Penny, Lloyd has him thrown out. Lloyd arranges a meeting with Penny and she reads the letter Fraida sent her; from it, Lloyd deduces that he is Penny’s father and not Lloyd. Penny leaves to get back to the convention, but Adele and Travis’s brother are there as well, and so is Fraida. It all leads to a showdown in a bathroom that sees Lloyd reappear having made the most generous gesture of his life.

How do you follow a cult favourite twenty years on? Do you keep to the same formula that made the first movie so successful, or do you try another approach with the same characters and hope it’s not too jarring for fans? Well, if you’re the Farrelly Brothers and you’ve got Jim Carrey and Jeff Daniels back on board, the weight of expectations can only lead to one answer: give ’em more of the same.

Dumb and Dumber To was always going to be a sequel that critics would have little time for, but the Farrellys, aided by their committed stars, have come up with a movie that honours the first one without entirely sullying its reputation. True, the plot is unsophisticated (not that the first movie’s was any more original or complex), and the humour is broad, puerile and often farcical, but this is a concept that lives or dies not by its content but its willingness to be as relentlessly silly as possible. And silly it is – unremittingly, gloriously, stupidly silly.

Leaving restraint at the door, the tone is set by Harry’s attempt to remove Lloyd’s catheter, an uncomfortably wrong moment that encapsulates the Farrellys approach to both Lloyd and Harry, and the movie as a whole – nothing is too out there. After almost twenty-five years of cinematic gross-out humour it’s got to be difficult to push that particular envelope but there are moments of inspiration that more than make up for the banality of the plot and the supporting cast’s perfunctory acting. The catheter joke gives way to a series of sight gags and one liners that are effortlessly sold by Carrey and Daniels, and it’s clear that the two actors are having a whale of a time, their efforts at raising laughs proving infectious. Carrey, an actor whose facial gurning was overplayed during the Nineties, brings that particular skill back to the big screen and reminds us just how talented he is when “silly” is a movie’s prime objective. But it’s Daniels who steals the show, his big rubbery face the perfect foil for Carrey’s sharp-edged contortions. Daniels is lovable in a way that Carrey can’t be because of the way the characters are written, and he takes full advantage, making Harry not only funnier to watch, but more endearing as well.

There are, inevitably, problems with the script – Lloyd’s selfless gesture involves a trip to Mexico he couldn’t possibly have made, references to the first movie are crammed in for no other reason than to have them there, the conference scenes are not as sharp as they could have been – but it’s the laughs that count, and the Farrellys deliver when it matters, including (for this reviewer) a brilliant moment when Lloyd and Harry think they’ve reached Penny’s home in Maryland (and if you ever end up in a situation where Lloyd is offering you goji berries, just don’t, okay?). The movie also runs around ten minutes too long and some scenes could have done with some more judicious editing, but on the whole, this is much better than you might expect.

Rating: 7/10 – not the travesty some critics would have you believe, Dumb and Dumber To ends with an advert for Dumb and Dumber For (in 2034); if we do get to spend some more time with Lloyd and Harry, and it’s up to the standard of this outing, then 2034 can’t come round soon enough.