Given the amount of awkwardly snappy dialogue found in “Baby Driver” (2017), I shall feel no shame in turning this review into a gearhead punfest for a film whose plot stalls out just before the checkered flag. The backstory (good kid collides head-on with bad dude) is finely tuned and the setup (one last job, girlfriend waiting for a fast getaway) is a high-octane classic, but the leaky climax is all over the road, loose in, tight out and full of knocks, pings and run-on. Not even the music, which flows like pure diesel, can jump-start this poor-handling caper flick.
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I’m not that interested in animated stepmothers and wizards and whatever, so I haven’t seen much Angelina Jolie lately. Thus, it was nice to have her back in a movie for grownups, even if one of the main characters is a kid. In fact, Finn Little admirably performs a lot of heavy lifting as the teen target of government-enabled hitmen in “Those Who Wish Me Dead” (2021). The action mashup of gunfighters and firefighters has Jolie as a smokejumper suffering from PTSD when the aforementioned teen parachutes into her fire tower, so to speak. Huge plot holes, but fun action.
“Sicario” (2015) is a cross between “Syriana” and “Man on Fire,” except “Syriana” had the idea first and “Man on Fire” is more poetic. The idea? America’s amorality in wielding its power is the reason all these poor, unwashed countries are such a pain in the ass to deal with. This one focuses on the drug trade in general and Mexico in particular. It really pisses me off when filmmakers act like America invented imperialism. Note to Denis Villenueve: History didn’t begin when you slid out of the womb. Still, those are two pretty good movies to be compared to.
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