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Slobberknocker00
Reviews
Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw (2019)
An almost unbelievably arduous slog.
The lack of anything approaching a decent storyline, anti-rapport between Statham and Johnson and a lack of coherent action made this an almost unbelievably arduous slog. The runtime suggests they thought they had some kind of masterpiece of action on their hands but the end result is one of the worst action films it's been my misfortune to see in the cinema. There's also appalling music and dull cgi action scenes, ridiculous location-hopping and a truly awful finale that's completely devoid of any emotion or excitement.I'm a fan of the franchise and of Johnson and Statham but this is an insult to the intelligence of viewers. It's a complete disaster for anyone but the most undemanding action fan.
Rubber (2010)
Absolute garbage
Absolute garbage for people who think they're smarter than they actually are. A pointless, unfunny waste of time.
The Big Bang (2010)
Absolutely horrible film
I'm amazed that anyone liked this. It starts out quite promisingly and descends into a boring and quite embarrassing physics lecture, with nudity.
Antonio Banderas is a tough P.I., who ends up over his head in a conspiracy that will drain your will to live. If you like people talking non-stop about neutrons (even during sex), you may enjoy it.
A great cast is squandered, Banderas tries hard, but the whole film is just a total and absolute waste of everyone's time, especially the viewer's. How the director got these actors together is beyond me. To be fair, it is very well made, and looks great, but the script is so smug and self-satisfied, you'll wince at pretty much every line.
Thinking about it makes my head hurt, don't be sucked in by the cast, you'll regret it. The good reviews here must be from friends of the director...
Pistol Whipped (2008)
A victory over the indignities of an expanding waistline
Actually, he is slimming down as we speak, and Steven Seagal is back on top form is this electrifying thriller from writer JD Zeik, the man who penned Frankenheimer's suspenseful DeNiro classic Ronin.
I won't bother going into plot details, but this is, in all seriousness, a very enjoyable film, and a nice step up from Seagal's recent career, a million miles away from duds like Flight of Fury and the God-awful Attack Force, in which he sounded, for half the film, like he'd been dubbed by someone who usually voices tough, gruff martial arts masters in eastern releases. For once he's not the whiter-than-white superhero with a background in black ops/special forces/law enforcement/environmentalism/being a chef; this time he actually plays a flawed character(!), which is a huge improvement over every other film he's ever appeared in where he's the honourable and unbeatable master-operator. As the drink-sodden ex-crooked cop, Seagal is not exactly revelatory, but this is the first film where he's actually bothered attempting to do anything different from his standard formula which sometimes works (The Glimmer Man, Submerged, Into The Sun) and often doesn't (Attack Force, really, absolutely rotten to the core), so i do commend him on that, and also the fact that he has slimmed down considerably from the behemoth who was only filmed from the chest up in his more recent movies. Oh, and he even attempts a few kicks in this one, something we haven't seen since....hmmmm.....
Seagal is supported by two people i never expected to see in one of his films, Paul Calderon, who'll be familiar to fans of King of New York and Pulp Fiction, and Mr Lance Henriksen, who sadly only appears in a few scenes. Both add an air of respectability to the proceedings. But this is a Seagal film, not Merchant Ivory, and it delivers well on the fighting/shooting/killing front. An enjoyable load of nonsense, but a bit of a comeback for Steven Seagal, hopefully it'll end the cycle of appearing is tatty East European-set trash. Also, please bear in mind that this rates an 8 out of 10 purely as compared against other Seagal vehicles, not The Godfather, for instance.