"CATCH YOU FUCKERS AT A BAD TIME?"

Posts Tagged ‘Christopher Backus’

Dirty Angels

Monday, March 17th, 2025

DIRTY ANGELS is not the newest Martin Campbell joint – that’s CLEANER starring Daisy Ridley – but the one from 2024, now on DVD in Canada. I don’t exactly know the events that shifted Mr. Campbell from A-lister who kicked off the last two eras of 007 and did the motherfuckin MASK OF ZORRO to journeyman in the trenches making barely released, mostly generic but pretty cool female-driven action movies, but I’m not gonna knock it. There are many worse trajectories to take in life.

This one is Afghanistan War Movie #562 (set as the war is ending, like most of them now), but the female stars and commando nature of the conflict do make it stand out a little. You have your vicious terrorist leader (George Iskandar), local contacts and lack of trust, but there are no raids on houses, it’s low on desert, and it’s about rescuing hostages ISIS abducted from an all girls school in Pakistan. Can’t object to that cause. (read the rest of this shit…)

Rogue Hostage

Tuesday, September 7th, 2021

Like many people of an older persuasion, my first impression of Tyrese Gibson was twenty years ago when he starred in John Singleton’s BABY BOY. At the time it had a mixed reception, but I thought it was a good companion piece/followup to BOYZ N THE HOOD, and this R&B singer or whatever he was, he was good in it. (For a long time I thought he had started as a model, but now I’m thinking I had him mixed up with Tyson Beckford?) It has some laughs in it, but it’s a dramatic role. He goes through quite a bit.

To Gibson’s great fortune, it was Singleton who was directing the first sequel to THE FAST AND THE FURIOUS when Vin Diesel decided he didn’t want to do it and a new co-lead was needed. So he swooped in to play Roman Pearce, childhood friend of Brian O’Connor (Paul Walker) who blames him for his prison bid for car theft but reluctantly accepts an undercover job with him to gain his freedom (an obvious rewrite of where Dominic Toretto would’ve ended up if he’d been in the movie). The two characters do some bickering, but at that time Roman was a serious action guy, a type Gibson would also play in WAIST DEEP, some TRANSFORMERSes, DEATH RACE and LEGION. He collaborated with Singleton again on FOUR BROTHERS and with pre-TOKYO DRIFT Justin Lin on ANNAPOLIS but was not one of the FAST crew invited back for part 4.

Eight years after 2 FAST 2 FURIOUS, when Roman finally returned in FAST FIVE, Diesel was back in the central role, so Tyrese got to riff and be silly. Other than saying grace in FURIOUS 6 and monologuing about sacrifice (while flying a space hooptie) in F9, he has mainly remained comic relief for four subsequent FASTs. (read the rest of this shit…)