(This review is riddled with spoilers. Not that you’re likely to see this film. It spent only three weeks at the box office in spring 2019.) It does a great job of scene-setting an alien takeover of Earth from the vantage point of one neighborhood in Chicago. (As usual, the weather is sucky in the future and everyone’s clothes are dirty.) And John Goodman pulls the best going-out-with-a-bang move since Clint Eastwood in “Gran Torino.” Unfortunately, “Captive State” comes off as less a movie than a pilot for a Syfy Original Series. You know, “this is only the beginning.” Whatever.
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The thing about spy movies is that the willing suspension of disbelief is often abused (She’s a double-agent! No, wait! A triple-agent! In a double cross! No, wait! A triple cross!). The thing about movies based on a comic book is that they’re more worried about setting up a franchise than telling a cohesive story. The confluence of these two dilemmas is “Atomic Blonde” (2017), a delicious piece of eye candy that turns out to be empty cinematic calories. Not that it isn’t interesting. It’s like a Charlize Theron action-hero highlight reel. But it’s not a real movie. Too bad.
My cynical take on “Patriots Day” (2016) is movie producer Mark Wahlberg gave movie director Peter Berg money to do what Peter Berg does best, which is to make movie star Mark Wahlberg look like some kind of everyman hero. However, Berg is such a masterful storyteller he makes Wahlberg practically superfluous despite making him ridiculously ubiquitous. Seriously. You could have cut much of Wahlberg’s screen time, reduced the film by 20 minutes and ended up with an indy-style Boston Marathon bombing film instead of an emotionally exploitative, big-budget cliche. Sorry if that makes me a bad American, but it’s true.
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