Every film I watch that’s set in the 1980s feels like a TV movie. Maybe the ’80s never happened. Maybe I just watched it on TV. Josh Duhamel reeks of TV movie – in a good way – making him perfect for the maddeningly cocky, charismatic namesake of “Bandit” (2022). Based on an actual series of 1980s bank heists in Canada, the plot construction is as simple as the robberies are elaborate, making it small yet fun. Mel Gibson plays a loan shark with rock-hard fists – and even he’s Canada nice. Elisha Cuthbert is a composite character of every 1980s sitcom girlfriend.
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If you like rom-coms, how about a rom-dram? Broken people are brought to a Texas farm to search for their missing pieces in “The Lost Husband” (2020). While the b-list, TV-ish stars (Leslie Bibb, Josh Duhamel) and a key plotline (widowed, suburban mom is thrown together with hunky, divorced farmhand) would seem ripe for the standard hijinks, the laughs are muffled by layers of mourning, secrets, dysfunction and mournful secrets about secret dysfunction. Ready to cry yet? Don’t worry, you’ll have plenty of opportunities. Pleasant surprise: ex-SNLer Nora Dunn holds the story together in a controlled performance as Bibb’s aunt.
Between Alice Eve’s flatliner performance and Al Pacino’s worst accent ever (Jesus Christ! Would all these Yankee thespian geezers stop trying to do Southern accents once and for all!?! I’m looking at you, too, De Niro!) I have almost nothing good to say about “Misconduct” (2016). (Malin Akerman occasionally sticks out as the crazy ex-girlfriend – that’s it.) Josh Duhamel is a lawyer in over his head. Eve is his wife. Pacino, his boss. There’s some sorta film noiry, sorta Fatal Attractiony, sorta Grishamy plot twisty stuff, but it’s mostly a mess. Evil CEO type Anthony Hopkins patiently endures it all.
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