Hotshots Movie Reviews
Hotshots Movie Reviews by Dan Culberson
“Elysium” a Big Disappointment
Aug 17th
“Big Disappointment”
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
Elysium is a big movie with big ideas that takes place in 2154 and stars Matt Damon as Max, a man stuck on Earth when all the rich and powerful live on an orbiting space station called Elysium.
It is as if the Occupy Wall Street movement became so successful that it spread into Occupy Earth and all the banksters moved out and way up.
In other words, as the inscription for the Statue of Liberty says, “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to be free,” that idea, too, has become so successful that now the whole planet is diseased, polluted, and vastly overpopulated.
Not only that, but the people up on Elysium have technology that can cure whatever disease or affliction ails you, but only people who are classified as “citizens” can arrive safely on the space station, which means that there are also attempts by the people on earth to use illegal space shuttles to sneak across space and get onto Elysium.
Anyway, Max is a factory worker who accidentally gets exposed to radiation and will die in five days unless he can do something about it.
So, Max has the contacts to get himself outfitted with a metallic exoskeleton that makes him as strong as the police robots he will have to fight, his brain gets implanted with data that is very important to the government on Elysium, and he plans to take an illegal space shuttle up to the space station and solve all the problems for the huddled masses on earth and himself, as well.
However, Jodie Foster stars as the director of Homeland Security up on Elysium, and she will have none of it.
Unfortunately for the audience, Foster speaks with an annoying and distinctive accent that makes her and her character a joke.
Well, you can imagine that there are big problems, big fights, and big explosions involved in Max’s attempt to save the world and himself, not to mention the lives of his former girlfriend and her daughter, who is suffering from leukemia.
Oh, I didn’t mention that, did I?
Elysium is one big disappointment, starting with the story, continuing with Jodie Foster, and concluding especially with the ending itself, which I guess means that it is at least three big disappointments, if not even more.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”
“2 Guns” Has More Than 2 Laughs
Aug 10th
“More Than 2 Laughs”
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
2 Guns stars Denzel Washington and Mark Wahlberg as 2 guys who appear to be partners, but both of them have a deep undercover secret from the other one.
In fact, for the first half of the movie even the audience doesn’t know if they are cops, crooks, or both.
Washington plays Bobby Trench, sometimes known as Bobby Beans, and Wahlberg plays Michael Stigman, sometimes known as just “Stig.”
When the movie opens they rob a bank in Tres Cruces, Texas, even though Bobby has told Stig the advice of “Never rob a bank across from a diner that has the best doughnuts in three counties.”
And Bobby tells Stig that advice while they are sitting in the diner across from the bank before they rob it.
But then something happens that they didn’t expect, and we get a flashback to one week earlier in Mexico when a drug deal they were involved in didn’t turn out the way they expected, either.
The drug deal gone bad is their motivation for the bank robbery, but whereas they were expecting to steal $3 million of the drug lord’s money, they discover $43 million in the bank, and they don’t know whose money it is. Of course, they don’t really care.
Well, that much money can make you do crazy things, and Bobby and Stig do, which are also unexpected.
Also, the people whose money they stole want the money back, and they will do anything to get it back.
Anything.
And then we get double crosses, murders, shoot-outs, car chases, kidnapings, more murders, and more double crosses.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch in Mexico, Bobby and Stig even get caught in a cattle stampede, and they are given a deadline of 24 hours to turn over the money.
Only problem is, they don’t know exactly where the money is.
However, Stig tells Bobby, “I got a plan,” but when it appears that the plan didn’t work, Stig says that it was a brilliant plan if nobody expected it.
This excellent movie even has a Mexican standoff in it.
2 Guns ends with 2 good laughs, and a sequel might even already be in the works, which would be called 2 GUNS 2 or maybe 3 Guns if Bobby and Stig can find another partner that they don’t trust, either.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”