Posts Tagged ‘Boston’
Thursday, March 2nd, 2023
It’s weird that there’s a studio action-thriller starring Jeff Bridges (THUNDERBOLT AND LIGHTFOOT) and Tommy Lee Jones (ROLLING THUNDER) from the prime year of 1994, and I never bothered to see it before. I think I heard it was bad at the time, but when did that ever stop me? I think more recently I’ve seen people writing fondly about it, and I realized it was directed by Stephen Hopkins (following DANGEROUS GAME, A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET 5: THE DREAM CHILD, PREDATOR 2 and JUDGMENT NIGHT), so I got myself excited to see it.
I’m afraid the early rumors weren’t wrong, though – this is a laughable movie, and not entirely in the way that I enjoy. On the positive side, it will be fun to write about, and seeing this type of studio thriller craftsmanship did give me some of that particular warm nostalgia I was looking for. You know, you’ve got all this production value, on location shooting, glorious crane shots (cinematographer: Peter Levy, CUTTHROAT ISLAND, BROKEN ARROW, TORQUE), and composer Alan Silvestri (THE DELTA FORCE, PREDATOR, THE ABYSS) admirably does his thing without giving in to the temptation to just do a bunch of Celtic cliches. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Alan Silvestri, bomb squad, Boston, Forest Whitaker, Jay Roach, Jeff Bridges, Joe Batteer, John Rice, Lloyd Bridges, Stephen Hopkins, Stephi Lineburg, Suzy Amis, Tommy Lee Jones
Posted in Reviews, Action, Thriller | 26 Comments »
Monday, September 29th, 2014
All things being equal, THE EQUALIZER is Denzel Washington’s TAKEN. It’s the one where they figure out people like to watch a really commanding older actor be smarter than everybody and kill a bunch of criminals. It has some gestures of seriousness and takes a bit to get to the killing, but once it does it’s pretty straight up about being a violent, lowbrow action movie. It even has the Academy Award winner doing the ol’ slo-mo-walking-away-from-a-fiery-explosion shot. I guess he did that in MAN ON FIRE too, and shot more beautifully from what I remember. But this one is more my speed because it’s not trying to rub my nose in the shit, it’s just trying to be stupid fun.
And by the way I apologize for awkwardly shoe-horning “all things being equal” in there at the beginning. It just seemed like something you do. But let’s try to get past it.
Written by Richard Wenk (VAMP, 16 BLOCKS, THE MECHANIC REMAKE, THE EXPENDABLES 2) and sort of based on the ’80s TV show of the same name, this has Denzel (RICOCHET) playing Edward Woodward’s character Bob McCall, now a book-reading, OCD widower square who works at “Home Mart,” wears polo shirts tucked into dad jeans and cleans his New Balance sneakers with a toothbrush every morning. Then one day when an acquaintance from the diner where he hangs out (Chloe Grace Moretz, TODAY YOU DIE) gets badly beaten by her Russian pimp (David Meunier, a.k.a. Cousin Johnny from Justified) Bob decides to try to help her. And it turns out his previous job was at the CIA or something (the agency is not specified) and that he’s real good at massacring a whole bunch of armed criminals using found objects and guns he takes out of their hands. Gino Fellino would be proud. He even sticks a corkscrew in a guy’s chin and we see it poke up into his mouth. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Antoine Fuqua, Bill Pullman, Boston, Chloe Grace Moretz, David Meunier, Denzel Washington, Martin Csokas, Melissa Leo, Richard Wenk, TV movies, vigilante
Posted in Action, Reviews | 53 Comments »
Monday, September 27th, 2010
THE TOWN is a real well done, more-realistic-than-most crime drama. Not exactly a heist movie, because although it’s leading up to an elaborate caper it’s not as much about the planning and executing of the thing as it is about the people who do it. It’s also one of these movies people from Boston make where they’re real anxious to show off every last detail about the Boston neighborhoods and culture. I haven’t been there much so I got no clue how accurate it is, but it seems believable enough. There’s a part where they have coffee at Dunk’n Donuts, that part was real I know. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Ben Affleck, Boston, heists, Jeremy Renner, John Hamm
Posted in Crime, Reviews | 74 Comments »
Thursday, November 1st, 2007
So there I was minding my own business, listening to an interview with Elmore Leonard. Suddenly out of the blue Elmore mentions this book I didn’t know about, The Friends of Eddie Coyle by George V. Higgins. He says it was a revelation to him, showed him that you could use profanity in a book and that you didn’t have to tell a straight forward story. And he calls it the best crime novel ever written.
So, through the miracle of opening another window, I ordered a used copy of the book before the interview was even over. Much later it arrived, then I read it, then I loaned it to somebody and his car was stolen with it inside and later they found his car and the car thieves didn’t take the book with them. Their loss, my gain, because Elmore Leonard was right, it’s a hell of a book. Pretty much the first half of the book is all conversations, almost no description. Later some robberies start happening and it turns more into a traditional book. But it doesn’t have your normal type of a story here. It’s more a portrait of these characters and it kind of shows the complexity of a network of criminals, snitches and cops. And it has a great ear for the dialogue. Higgins I guess was a lawyer before he became a writer, maybe he was around some of these guys. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Boston, George V. Higgins, Peter Boyle, Peter Yates, Robert Mitchum
Posted in Crime, Drama, Reviews, Thriller | 10 Comments »
Thursday, February 22nd, 2007
If you saw INFERNAL AFFAIRS you know the storyline. Undercover cop vs. undercover gangster. There’s alot of stories about cops going undercover in gangs, but this one also has a member of the crime family who entered the police academy and moved up the ranks as a mole for his gang. So now both traitors are well situated and it starts to get obvious to both sides that they have a mole in their midst. And the moles are given the job of finding out who the mole is. It could be called LOS TOPOS.
Mr. Scorsese took that premise and moved it to Boston and told his own story about contemporary Boston criminals. Scorsese’s young associate Leonardo Del Caprio (looking more like Benicio Del Toro every year) plays the cop who pretends to get kicked out of the force, does some time and then joins Jack Nicholson’s gang. Matt Damon plays the cop who’s really working for the gang. We first see him as a little kid getting money from Nicholson in a diner. And the kid they chose is a dead ringer. They even taught him how to cock his eyebrow like Damon. Somebody’s gonna have to find a young Ben Affleck doppelganger and these two can go on the road. Or they could do THE YOUNG JASON BOURNE MYSTERIES where the camera shakes around while he’s fighting some kid in a treehouse. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Alec Baldwin, Boston, Jack Nicholson, James Badge Dale, Leonardo DiCaprio, Martin Sheen, Matt Damon, Ray Winstone, Scorsese, Vera Farmiga, William Monahan
Posted in Action, Crime, Reviews, Thriller | 10 Comments »
