Reggie Robinson

The only reason I finished this movie is that I’m a completist. Also, I kept hoping against hope that I would find SOMETHING to like about this addled mess, some redeeming aspect in at least Nic Cage’s performance. Nope. What I found was every tired cliche in the book, a bewildering script, and frustratingly uneven performances by the supposed lead characters. When Clint Howard’s role is the one that stands out in a film. You know you’re in trouble. I’m angry with myself for blowing 90 precious minutes of my life on this dreck. Please skip it, for your own sake and rewatch Unforgiven. Or anything other than this.

I had hopes for this movie to pull it together, but it never coalesced into a logical whole. There were some mildly interesting writing choices and some of the cinematography was beautiful, but it couldn’t save this mishmash. Tonally it was all over the place, with a script that felt like the pages were thrown up into the air and reassembled out of order. Would have worked better as a straight up dark comedy, a la Smokin Aces.

If you're looking for the trademark blood-soaked, hyperkinetic Tarantino experience, this is a decided departure and may not be your cup of tea. But taken on its own merits, this piece makes for an enjoyable watch. The plot is serviceable, but the main attractions here are the characters and the atmosphere carefully cultivated by this director. Pam Grier’s outsized presence here makes one wonder why she has been so criminally underused by Hollywood, and Robert Forster’s sad-eyed turn as her smitten bail bondsmen accomplice is heartbreakingly sincere. Throw in a DeNiro performance as a spectacularly clueless henchman and Samuel L. Jackson’s chilling turn as a small-time gun smuggler with big dreams, and there is is a lot to like, though the pace lags in a couple of places.

If I could have given it half a star, I would have. This flick sinks a fairly promising premise pretty quickly with second-rate production values and a murky script. Unfortunately, I’m a stickler for completing a film once I start watching, so I winced my way through this one until the fin-ish. If you are excited by the notion of a couple of entirely predictable jump scares and CGI of wildly inconsistent but uniformly under par quality, you might be mildly diverted by this one. That is, if the stupid script choices don’t leave you walleyed (see what I did there?) Throw this one back.

For the love of all that’s holy, can someone PLEASE stop Mark Wahlberg from making movies? But even he is not the worst thing about this horribly written and executed, ham fisted effort from normally solid director Peter Berg, who should be ashamed his name is attached to it. Nothing about this makes sense, from the wild tonal shifts to the preposterous threadbare plot. Alan Arkin may have been the only redeeming quality of this misfire. Winston Duke could have been so much better had he been given something to work with. As for Wahlberg’s patented cardboard cutout style of acting, there have been movies where it almost worked, but this is not one of them. Why did I keep watching, you may ask? I’m a completist. And I kept hoping it would find a footing and get better. It didn’t. It looks like they are setting it up for a sequel. Gee, I guess there ARE worse things than being quarantined.