Review: Bad Boys For LIfe

Image courtesy of Sony Pictures.

You'd be correct in any suspicions about the quality of "Bad Boys for Life" due to the previous film in the series and this new picture's release date in the dumping grounds of January. Yes, the film often feels like an unnecessary digging up of an old franchise that's past it's due date, and a ridiculous plot twist late in the film doesn't help either. But oddly enough, "Bad Boys for Life" is slightly better than you might expect - it's an average Hollywood buddy movie action-comedy that gets some mileage out of its stars' camaraderie, but it's about on par with the original "Bad Boys" and significantly better than the series' terrible second entry.

Perhaps, the most noticeable difference is the lack of Michael Bay as director, although he pops up briefly in a cameo as a wedding MC. Therefore, mostly gone is the blatant misogyny of the previous film as well as the homophobic humor and nonstop wall-to-wall action - there are plenty of action sequences here, but they're less bombastic than Bay's.

One of the film's saving graces is Mike Lowery (Will Smith) and Marcus Burnett (Martin Lawrence) engaging in some often humorous self critiques as to whether they are over-the-hill or, as cops in these types of films tend to describe it, "too old for this shit." As the film opens, Marcus is retiring, mostly due to having a new grandson, while Mike still lives for the thrill of the job.

Near the picture's beginning, a fierce Latina woman named Isabel (Kate del Castillo) breaks free from a prison with the help of her violent son Armando (Jacob Scipio), and the two appear to have some sort of revenge plot in the works that involves Mike. Meanwhile, Mike and Marcus' captain (Joe Pantoliano) is gently urging the two men to hang up their badges - that is, until Mike is shot and nearly killed on the streets of Miami.

At first, it appears that "Bad Boys for Life" is merely another action movie in which a pair of cops go up against a cartel - that's mostly true, but there's a plot twist late in the film that ranks fairly high on the scales of absurdity. Despite that, directors Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah keep the proceedings fairly fleet and often amusing. There's a lot more humor here than I recall from previous "Bad Boys" films, and enough of it works.

It's also refreshing to see the film's women characters get more in the way of development than in previous entries to the series. Mike and Marcus are forced to work with a new group known as AMMO, which is comprised of several young people whose capabilities behind a computer match Mike's abilities with a weapon. The group is led by Rita (Paola Nunez) and one of its toughest members is a cop played by Vanessa Hudgens. Minus Bay behind the camera, this third "Bad Boys" is a kinder, gentler and more engaging sequel. Yes, it's still a silly action movie with throwaway dialogue and numerous chase sequences, but as far as these types of films go, it's not half bad.

Review: Just Mercy

Image courtesy of Warner Bros.

If Destin Daniel Cretton's latest film, "Just Mercy," feels familiar to you, it's likely because of two reasons - that it incorporates courtroom cliches from decades of Hollywood dramas, but also because the story it tells relays to its audience an indisputable fact: the American justice system is far from just.

But despite its overly familiar setup - the prison and courtroom scenes feel almost exactly like the hundreds of prison and courtroom scenes we've seen in movies through the ages - "Just Mercy" manages to work due to the solid performances of its two leading characters - Michael B. Jordan as Bryan Stephenson, a fresh-out-of-school lawyer who founded the Equal Justice Initiative in Alabama and Jaime Foxx as Walter McMillian, an innocent man wrongly accused in the fatal shooting of a young white woman in the late 1980s.

It also helps that the film doesn't try too hard to make white audience members feel comfortable. Yes, Brie Larson is on board as Eva Ansley, Stephenson's right-hand woman in his crusade to represent death row inmates who couldn't afford legal counsel, and Tim Blake Nelson plays a prisoner who has an about-face late in the film after helping to put the innocent McMillian on death row in exchange for a softer punishment.

But otherwise, the film pulls no punches in depicting Alabama's criminal justice system as one operated by white bigots who treat black men as expendable fall-guys to close cases in which the actual perpetrators haven't been caught. There's a scene late in the film in which a district attorney is pretty much forced to agree that McMillian has taken the fall for someone else's actions, but the film still depicts the state's criminal justice system as the center for mass incarceration and unfair sentencing that it remains today.

McMillian's case isn't the only one taken on by Stephenson and Ansley - they also attempt to save a Vietnam veteran, whose actions led to a woman's death, from the electric chair and another man (portrayed by O'Shea Jackson Jr.) whom we learn was released after 30 years. He, like McMillian, was innocent.

The story is set in Monroeville, where Stephenson is told by multiple people upon entering town was the setting for Harper Lee's iconic "To Kill a Mockingbird." Stephenson is told by the inadequate DA and obviously racist sheriff that just because they incarcerate black men at prodigious rates - often without much evidence - it doesn't make them a racist town. The town associates itself with that novel, which is about justice above most other things, whereas Stephenson is the actual Atticus Finch of this story.

"Just Mercy" may traffic somewhat in Hollywood cliches in its presentation, but its story is an important one, and the filmmakers do a decent job of translating it to the screen. Jordan continues to prove that he's solid leading man material and Foxx gives his best performance in a while as the wronged McMillian. The film has been released in the heart of awards seasons for obvious reasons, but it also draws attention to the great inadequacies of America's criminal justice system. And that's a good thing.

Review: 1917

Image courtesy of Universal Pictures.

After several years of being saddled with the James Bond franchise, director Sam Mendes makes a strong return to dramatic features - the phenomenally shot "1917," marking the director's second film on the war-is-hell concept (the first was "Jarhead").

Much has been made about the film's style, which appears to be all one take, although it's pretty clear where the cuts were made. The style was also adopted by Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu for "Birdman," and in Mendes's film it's particularly notable because despite the fact that it's clear the film isn't all one shot, it's still impressive for the lengths of time it holds on a number of very long shots that feature an incredible amount of coordination and some stunning camera movements.

The film's plot is fairly simplistic - a young man, Lance Corporal Blake (Dean-Charles Chapman) is chosen to take a top secret message across enemy lines during World War I to halt British troops, who are being tricked into pushing forward in battle against the Germans. Blake - who choses a friend, Lance Corporal Schofield (George MacKay), to accompany him - must tell the Brits that the maneuver is a trap set up by the Germans that could lead to a massacre. Also, Blake's brother is among the troops at risk.

In terms of story, this is pretty much it. The rest of the film is one feat after the other of choreography as the two men make their way across a war-ravaged countryside to deliver the message. This includes approaching a burned out farm where a tragedy takes place as well as crossing a destroyed bridge while a sniper fires, meeting a young woman in a house below a city that burns and frantically pushing through troops in a trench to find the general who will make the call to send British soldiers into battle.

As I'd mentioned before, there are some sequences that involve a fair amount of coordination and choreography - especially the sequence involving the traversing of the bridge and another in a fast moving river that turns into a waterfall. This is an incredible looking movie, which can be attributed to the remarkable camera work by the great Roger Deakins, who's sure to collect some awards as a result.

There's also a powerful coda in which one of the men meets up with the man who's the object of the journey, and one of the two leads is spotted in a final shot in the exact same position we see him during the opening scene. There's also a dedication in the beginning of the closing credits that makes the story all the more powerful.

In the late 1990s and early 2000s, Mendes was considered among a group of burgeoning filmmakers who were expected to be the titans of the 21st century. Although some have reevaluated "American Beauty" in the years since its release, it's still an extremely impressive directorial debut, and "Road to Perdition" is woefully underrated - and gorgeously shot.

Mendes's Bond movies were good, but I'm always slightly disappointed to see an up-and-coming filmmaker get wooed into doing blockbusters. With "1917," the director has made his best film in over a decade (2008's "Revolutionary Road" was the last movie by Mendes that landed on one of my top 20s of the year list). This is an impeccably shot film that impresses in terms of both filmmaking technique and emotional resonance.

Review: The Grudge

Image courtesy of Screen Gems.

Nicolas Pesce's new version of "The Grudge" is a reboot of a remake of a foreign film that's based on a short film. Which version is the best, you might ask? "None of the above" is the correct answer.

Pesce likely got the gig for his creepy and grim - but not as good as some contended it was - 2016 film "The Eyes of My Mother" and last year's "Piercing," which graced my top 10 worst list. I'll say this for the director - he's not short on style. He knows how to set a scene visually and creep out an audience through ambience.

That being said, he's taken on a very tired property and tried to breathe fresh air into it with numerous silly jump scares - of which only one actually scared me - and a lot more gore than you might remember if you've seen the two "Grudge" sequels from the aughts starring Sarah Michelle Gellar. The problem is when you're trying to reboot a series that wasn't very good in the first place, well, whaddaya got?

To make matters worse, this latest "Grudge" film jumps back and forth confusingly between various timelines - the present, 2004 and some other period during the past 15 years. Seemingly, the only reason for this is so the film's signature ghosts can terrorize a bunch of people, rather than just one family. It's often difficult to discern the relationships between the various timelines, which is ultimately explained (somewhat) toward the end - just not in a satisfactory manner.

Andrea Riseborough (of "Mandy") plays a detective who has moved to a small town with her young son, who only exists here for the purpose of occasionally providing Riseborough's character with a scare, after her husband dies of cancer. She quickly becomes involved in a case of a woman's decaying body in a car. This, in turn, leads to a creepy house where a bunch of murders took place over the years.

One case involves an older couple (Frankie Faison and Lin Shaye) who are tormented by a ghostly girl in the house, while another has to do with a younger couple (John Cho and Betty Gilpin) who are expecting a baby. Another murder in which a mother killed her husband and young daughter is also thrown into the mix, but it's only trotted out in full toward the end. I'm still not sure what purpose it serves.

I love a good horror movie as much as the next person. But let's be honest, most of the best horror movies of recent years have been independents - "The Cabin in the Woods," "Get Out," "Us" and "The Conjuring" movies are the rare studio horror pictures that succeeded.

This latest version of "The Grudge" is yet another attempt at reviving an existing property that brought in some money at some point. Unfortunately, the series wasn't particularly engaging even in good times and this reboot, despite some stylistic touches from Pesce, just doesn't cut it. I wasn't a huge fan of "The Eyes of My Mother," but it at least bore a stamp of originality. Seek it out instead of watching this film.