Posts tagged chase
“The Town” Not Pretty, but Good and Exciting
Sep 22nd
“Not Pretty, but Good and Exciting”
THE TOWN is the second film that Ben Affleck has directed, and he also stars in it along with Jon Hamm, Jeremy Renner, Blake Lively, Pete Postlethwaite, and Chris Cooper.
The story takes place in modern-day Charlestown, a square-mile rough neighborhood near Boston known for its criminals and unsolved murders, and sometimes the actors’ accents are so thick that it is difficult to understand what they are saying.
The film opens with a bank robbery, the four robbers all wearing skull masks, and they take the pretty bank manager hostage with them in their escape.
When they release Claire, the robbers take her driver’s license and tell her that if she talks to the FBI, they know where she lives and they will come to her home, rape her, and kill her.
Naturally, Claire has to talk to FBI Special Agent Adam Frawley, and while she is being questioned, she asks, “Should I have a lawyer here?”
Frawley tells Claire that anyone who lawyers up during questioning is usually guilty, and because Claire doesn’t want to be involved any more than she already is, she doesn’t tell Frawley one piece of information about the robbers that she observed.
Meanwhile, the leader of the robbers, Doug MacRay, follows Claire, meets her “accidentally,” they start talking, and he takes her out for a drink. She doesn’t know who Doug really is, they start dating, and at one point Claire tells Doug the information that she withheld from the FBI.
Claire tells Doug that on really sunny days, she always thinks of someone dying, because her younger brother died on such a day, which will play an important part in a later scene in the film.
Doug is planning another big robbery, but he tells his partner and childhood friend, Jim, and the rest of the team that it will be their last job, after which they will just hit bars.
This time the team all wear nun’s masks, and the getaway chase through the streets of Boston is exciting, especially when a bridge shows up.
Of course, whenever crime is involved, nothing ever goes on as planned.
THE TOWN is not pretty, but it sure is good, exciting entertainment, it’s dedicated to the good people of Charlestown, but made about the “bad” people, and I sure am glad it was.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”
“Date Night” Date Night from Hell
Apr 14th
Date Night from Hell
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
DATE NIGHT is the perfect movie for married couples who have such rituals, but it should come with the following warning: “We’re professionals. Don’t try this when you leave home on your date night.”
Steve Carell and Tina Fey play Phil and Claire Foster, who live in New Jersey and who have the obligatory two young children. Phil is a tax accountant, Claire is a real-estate agent, and at the beginning of the movie we see what they do on a typical date night and their typical bedtime routine for discussing whether or not to have sex, both of which should be familiar and funny to couples in the audience.
Then when they learn that two friends of theirs who are married to each other are going to break up, Phil and Claire decide to change their usual date night of dinner at a local restaurant and instead go to a fancy restaurant in New York City, even though they don’t have reservations, which normally have to be made a month in advance.
So, while they are waiting in the bar for a table to open up, Phil hears the hostess calling “Tripplehorn, party of two” more than once, decides that the Tripplehorns are a no-show, says to Claire, “I want this night to be different,” and announces to the hostess, “We are the Tripplehorns.”
Once they are seated, they toast “Here’s to a great night” with empty wine glasses, and then all hell breaks loose.
Two men show up at their table and want to talk to Phil and Claire outside in private. The Fosters assume that they have been “busted” for taking the Tripplehorns’ reservation, but, no, the two men believe that they ARE the Tripplehorns and demand that they turn over a flash drive to them, a small, portable drive for a computer.
And thus begins a “great night” of laughs for the audience and certainly a “different” night for Phil and Claire.
There is at least a double case of mistaken identity, blackmail involving a mob boss, a crooked politician, crooked policemen, a building break-in, a slow chase across the lake in Central Park, and one of the funniest car chases you will ever see.
DATE NIGHT is a date night from hell for the Fosters, but a great night for the audience.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”
“Green Zone” Simple Story with Complex Overtones
Mar 18th
Simple Story with Complex Overtones
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
GREEN ZONE is the third collaboration of director Paul Greengrass and actor Matt Damon, the first two being the 2004 THE BOURNE SUPREMACY and the 2007 THE BOURNE ULTIMATUM, and as TIME magazine put it, this movie essentially parachutes “their franchise’s hero, Jason Bourne, into the toxic reality of Iraq.”
This time, however, Damon plays U.S. Army Chief Warrant Officer Roy Miller, and his assignment right after the war in Iraq began is to lead his team of soldiers to find the weapons of mass destruction that were the cause of the war in the first place.
So, we see Chief Miller and his team roll up to a site in Baghdad that is a disaster, full of Iraqi looters and even an Iraqi sniper in the area.
Miller finds the U.S. officer in charge and tells him, “Intel says we’ve got live chemical agents in this site!”
After they take out the sniper, they go into the building and find . . . nothing. No chemical agents, no weapons of mass destruction, nothing, nada, zip, zilch!
This is not the first time, either. Chief Miller and his team hit another site the week before that was supposedly based on good intelligence, but the site turned out to be nothing more than a toilet factory.
Then we meet Clark Poundstone, played by Greg Kinnear. Poundstone is from Pentagon Special Intelligence, and he swears by the intelligence they have been receiving from an Iraqi source with the code name “Magellan.”
In the meantime, Miller encounters an Iraqi civilian who tells him about a private meeting taking place with high-value Iraqis. They call the man “Freddy,” and he leads them to the house where, sure enough, one of Saddam Hussein’s high-level generals, named Al-Rawi, is at the meeting, but he escapes after a firefight.
At this point other American troops come onto the scene, and a fight breaks out between them and Miller’s team over a black book that was obtained at the house.
There is the suspicion that General Al-Rawi is actually Magellan and was intentionally feeding the Americans false information, which Poundstone might even have known was false.
At this point, the movie turns into one long complicated chase that is awfully confusing about who is who and what is going on.
GREEN ZONE is a simple story with complex overtones.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”