41/28
And it fails on all fronts
Plot
After a robbery goes wrong, a thief and a troubled orphan must save his kidnapped partner from a ruthless drug lord and his charming hitman. This movie tries so hard to be elegant and charming, in the manner of the first Smokin’ Aces movie. Lou Diamond Phillips plays him better than anyone else, even though he’s almost unrecognizable for the most part. The rest are such over-the-top caricatures that they’re just two-dimensional and annoying.
The action is actually boring for the most part
Screaming and wide-eyed eyes don’t turn this into anything funny or intelligent. The movie seems to think it needs an action scene every five minutes to keep you glued to the screen, and it’s partly right. The plot is so boring and confusing that it’s hard to follow. Or rather, it’s hard to care enough to bother following it.
The CGI ruins most of the stunts
There’s a guy who stole some money or something. And at least two other groups of people want to steal them, for reasons that just went unnoticed by me. It’s extremely hard to care about any of the characters when none of them are real in any way. The undoubtedly skilled stuntmen working on them lose credibility when you realize how much of it is green screen.
Why did this all happen?
The main character can’t even ride a motorcycle down a straight road without having to phone it in. I made it to the end, even though I wanted to give up several times. With the gunshot wounds proving irrelevant more often than not, the stakes were generally zero. When people actually died, it was hard to believe they actually did, when they had shrugged off worse before.
Why would anyone care?
Did anyone win in the end? I don’t know and I watched the whole thing.
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