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ahzoov
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Obliterated (2023)
Probably the worst action series I've ever seen
Parts were hysterical, especially when our heroes were referred to as the "best of the best."
Sorry, they were clowns. I have worked with the best of the best and these clowns were supposedly on a mission in which timing was critical, yet they spent that critical time standing around chatting.
There were more plot holes than in my colander.
First off, flying over Vegas, our pilot, Paul doesn't keep his head on a swivel, stares at this phone, and even puts the chopper on autopilot. There are literally hundreds of choppers filled with tourists in the sky over Vegas all the time.
Nothing in their actions or words communicated any urgency. Paul gets Haggerty on the phone, but doesn't tell him immediately there's another nuke? Haggerty is in the rest room behind the door that Paul is right next to. Haggerty's voice is loud enough to be heard through the door, but isn't.
Sure, having them just a few feet apart is great irony, just not at all believable.
And Hagerty's little game in which he clips the right wire with 1 second left is both cliché and ridiculous. I know more about defusing a bomb than he does. It has nothing to do with the color of the wire.
These people do not act at all like professionals. One last example: Their goal is to get the nuke. Lana has it and she's behind her brother. Her brother pulls out a gun and is about to shoot our heroes. Instead, our heroes take him out. And that's that. They're done. Getting the nuke is no longer their goal. Instead of taking out Lana immediately and getting the nuke, they allow Lana to shoot at them and take off.
This is the worst series I've ever seen. I had to watch it. It was like a train wreck. I could not believe my eyes. It just got worse and worse.
The Last Duel (2021)
Rashômon it ain't
The different viewpoints weren't all that different, hardly worth sitting through three times. We both fell asleep. Yes, the action was realistic, but the repetition just too redundant. Were it cut to one third its size, you'd have a pretty good movie. As it is, it's a sleeper.
Loved the sets, the dreary mood, the dreary weather. The debauchery of royalty was portrayed accurately. And the costumes fit the period.
Just too darn long, repetitive, and off-putting.
The Following (2013)
Formulaic and Predictable
Dear The Following:
I realize our relationship is still quite new and I've seen you on just seven or eight occasions, but I think it's time for me to start seeing other programming.
After I learned that anyone at any time can turn out to be a bad guy following Joe Carroll, you've just become formulaic and predictable.
Sure, your characters make a lot of mistakes. I understand this. They're human and humans make mistakes, and let's face it, plots go nowhere if everyone does everything right, but to repeat the same mistakes over and over and over just makes me wonder how in hell these people ever got hired in the first place.
The magic has gone completely out of this relationship. You are just too predictable.
1. Bad guys easily slip away and can't be located.
2. Victims and good guys who've been captured or tied up, break loose, and slip way only to get recaptured.
3. When a cop meets a bad guy, all his training suddenly goes out the window and the bad guy wins.
4. In fact, everyone has to forget their training, let the bad guys get the drop on them, take their weapons, and when asked to drop their weapons, they immediately do as they are told even though every officer is trained NEVER to give up his/her weapon.
5. The enemy is constantly being engaged by just one or two good guys with no chance of victory while their backup is always late in arriving, though just in time to save our hero.
Oh, I could go on, but what's the use beating this dead horse?
Just one more tiny thing, though. Keven Bacon can't grow a full beard, but that fuzz on the bottom of his chin is just disgusting.
Good luck in the future. With America being slowly dumbed down, your viewership is sure to grow.
The Recruit (2003)
I liked it up until the final 10 minutes
I'm going to jump right to the chase in this review, so SPOILER ALERT! The ending left me with nagging questions. Supposedly, James Clayton was born to be a spook (it's in his blood), so how come he can't tell a gun loaded with blanks from one loaded with real bullets. He even checked the magazine. We have to assume he knows what real bullets look like, or what the kick from real bullets feels like when he pulls the trigger. And if his instinct is so utterly perfect, why wouldn't have have known that the gun was empty by the final scene and thwarted Burke's attempt to commit suicide by "cop?" We all know that the keener spooks, cops, and detectives count the shots. They've been doing it for years (at least in Hollywood).
But the overall hole in the plot was: why was Clayton even given the assignment by Burke in the first place if all Burke wanted was the "Ice Nine" program code? He'd convinced Layla and Zack to pull off the theft of the code so why on earth would he need to have Clayton stop them? Every reason I've come up to explain this "intrigue" ends in the conclusion that he'd have to kill everyone involved anyway to get away with the caper in the end.
As far as those who've said that the plot was too convoluted with too many twists and turns, well, this is the world of espionage and as the movie stated, nothing is what it seems. However, as a person with critical thinking ability, I discerned that too much was either overlooked or ignored, or the producers just went with the script hoping viewers would buy a "just OK" movie.
I had been planning on giving it an 8 up until the last 10 minutes and then everything just went south for me. The Jason Borne series puts this type of project to shame.
Man About Town (2006)
Can Hollywood Get Anymore Infantile?
Sure, every man's life is suddenly ameliorated when a supermodel lands in his lap. And even though he's admittedly spent more time on his abs than on his marriage, after she runs off on a fling with another man, she'll spend the rest of the script trying to get back into his arms. Hollywood still loves a good fairytale.
The movie revolves around Jack's "journal." He's nearly killed over it, but the cops are not called in. He knows who attacked him, but the cops are not called in. He finds out who initiated the attack, but the cops are not called in. The most telling of all: the journal will make Barbi Ling's career skyrocket; it holds Jack's secrets, holds information that contradicts his testimony in court, holds information that can destroy Jack, her ultimate goal.
So, does she copy the pages? Store it away in a vault? Keep it in a safe place?
No, she travels all over the city with it and loses it twice back to Jack.
Finally, in the end, Jack gets his journal back, threatens to call the cops (duh), takes back the wife who's cuckolded him, and quits his business so he can now live life again (something that would have been forced upon him had Ling published her story).
As a comedy, it hardly works. As a drama it doesn't work. As a juvenile exercise in how not to write a script, it excels.
True Crime (1999)
Cliché Ridden
This was the most hackneyed piece of trash I've ever sat down to watch. Everything was predictable, from the car crash in the beginning to the supposedly exciting finish.
The opening of the movie was the best part. The viewer hasn't a clue why this man is being examined or why they are taking down all this trivial information. But then we move into a bar where an aging Clint Eastwood is sharing a cocktail with a twenty-something colleague of the opposite sex. She's very attractive, and I'm not sure how much they paid her for her short part, but being forced to swap spit with someone old enough to be her great grandfather should have made her eligible for hazardous duty pay. I'm sure there are a few aging baby boomers who still find Clint sexy, but that scene was done better in Scary Movie 4, and much more appropriate in a comedy.
Now who didn't see the car crash coming? A young lady has a few drinks, leaves the bar, the scene outside was heavy with fog and foreshadowing. Then we see her fiddling with the radio in pouring rain. We all know what's going to happen and thus the crash is absolutely gratuitous. Gratuitous and over the top: what could have taken less than a second seems to go on forever and ever as the tires screech and car spins again and again and again. Later we learn that she died on "Dead Man's Curve." Can you say "cliché?"
The clichés don't end there. In fact, they just don't end. Eastwood plays a recovering drunk, on the way out, hoping to reclaim his lost reputation. Everywhere he turns, he finds brick walls. The district attorney is a cliché: convinced that the person about to be executed is guilty. Eastwood's boss is a cliché: on his case, wants him gone, sure he's back on the bottle. Eastwood is the only one convinced that the convict is innocent and he's got just a few hours to save him. The stuff exciting endings are made of.
But then we see a flashback of the actual murder. The accused, played by Isaiah Washington, is in the store's bathroom, when the victim is shot. He runs out, drops to his knees, and panics. He calls for help and tries to give the girl mouth to mouth resuscitation, when in walks a customer wanting to make a phone call. He stands up and then suddenly remembers he's a cliché of a black man. We can almost hear his thoughts: "Oh geesus, I's be black. Dat white man gonna think I done killed dis white girl. Feet don't fail me now!" and he runs from the scene of the crime.
Good lord. Nobody, I repeat, NOBODY in the middle of a life or death crisis who is trying to save the life of another human being breaks out of that mode of thought to think about his own petty personal world. This was the bullcrap upon which this whole story turns? Well, at this point, they lost me entirely.
I jumped ahead to the exciting final moments with Eastwood driving his beater recklessly to the Governor's house with his "witness" in the car with him.
Just in the nick of time.
Finally, to fulfill the cliché ridden beginning and middle, we end with a Christmas cliché. Eastwood is out shopping, he exits the store, looks up, and sees the convict whose life he saved out shopping with his family. Yes, two perfect strangers brought together by coincidence, with one alive only because of the hard work and determination of the other, will always meet later during the season of joy. Believe me, I did not get the warm and fuzzies.
If I ever see this title listed in my television's guide, I will immediately say to myself: I'd rather be waterboarded.