I often refer to movies such as “War on Everyone” (2017) as an “odd duck.” It’s a modern, buddy-cop action flick with a corrupt-cop twist. Simple enough. But it’s strewn with so many unexplained 1970s callbacks (cars, hair, underwear, interior decorating), I was waiting for Starsky to jump out of the hutch. And then there’s all the superfluous philosophical references and surprisingly sharp dialogue that’s around 50 IQ points above the characters speaking those lines. And the over-the-top violence is so stylized, I was sure the script was based on a graphic novel. Yet it all works, somehow. Odd duck.
Archives for posts with tag: Paul Reiser
“Concussion” (2015) has the feel of a corporate espionage flick, what with all the liars in suits, suspicious suicides and a lonely hero raging against the machine. Except the machine is the NFL and we know how the story ends. Actually, the story hasn’t ended. For the next 40 years (think about that) retired athletes are going to be going mad and then dropping dead due to repeated blows to the head on the football field. Worse, for them, it’s already too late (think about that, too). It makes the film somewhat anticlimactic, despite a solid performance by Will Smith.
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