These B movies about the hoodlum with a heart of gold are beyond stale. “The Locksmith” (2023) is a dopey story that gets boxed in due to bad decisions. It’s about a dopey hoodlum (Ryan Phillippe) whose life is boxed in due to bad decisions. Moronic decisions. Like, slasher-movie-level, let’s-hide-in-a-roomful-of-knives-level moronic. He’s just out of prison but gets coaxed into pulling one more caper (of course) even though he’s trying to make things right with his daughter and his ex, who’s a cop (of course). Dopey hijinks, involving dirty cops, call girls, grudges and a douchey real estate guy, ensue.
Archives for posts with tag: Kate Bosworth
There are some halfway-decent actors doing a good job with interesting characters in “Force of Nature” (2020). Emile Hirsch is a cop with PTSD, Mel Gibson is a salty, retired NYPD cop who knows Hirsch’s backstory, and Kate Bosworth is Gibson’s slightly-less-salty doctor daughter. Unfortunately, the plot is moronically half-baked (crime gang going after Nazi plunder during a Puerto Rican hurricane, with narration from some idiot weatherman or DJ or something). Ultimately, it becomes a trying-to-escape-the-bad-guys story. I wish someone would have helped Bosworth, Gibson and Hirsch’s characters escape to a different movie so I could have watched that instead.
When I remember “Remember the Titans” (2000), I remember it as being a lot better than it actually is. I gloss over the “based on a true story” bending of actual events into outright falsehoods, the Disneyfied melodrama, the insertion of musical scenes to help the Original Motion Picture Soundtrack sell better, and the general sports movie, big-game, big-speech schmaltziness. Yet the story of a Virginia high school overcoming an integration controversy to win a state football championship with a black head coach is still interesting enough to overcome the Hollywood treatment. Plus, it’s just fun watching Denzel be Denzel.
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