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Review by Daniel Lima  Stop me if you’ve heard this before: “A gang of armed terrorists take a high society office party in a skyscraper hostage, but are unaware of a fly in the ointment with a particular set of skills.” Yes, the new Martin Campbell project Cleaner is yet another Die Hard riff. To its credit, it manages to get right parts of that film’s formula many other derivative works do not. Everything else is a spectacular failure. Daisy Ridley is a former British Army soldier who is down on her luck. On the same day that her autistic brother, played by Michael Tuck, is kicked out of his care home, she is forced to take him to her work… as a window cleaner, the same day of the aforementioned hostage situation. Things go south from there. If there’s one thing to commend Cleaner for, it handles the setup surprisingly well. The opening scene is a flashback to the siblings’ childhood, with their abusive father putting hands on the brother as young Ridley climbs(!) around her kitchen and sits out on the window. It’s a laughably direct and obvious way to establish the characters’ relationship, past trauma, and foreshadow her pivotal role as someone who hangs onto things at high altitudes. For a lean action-thriller, however, this is also an effective way to announce what to expect: a not-too-serious bit of fun, nevertheless grounded in human emotion. It helps that Ridley has such an easy rapport with Tuck. She nails the exasperation of someone in her position, trying to get their life together yet forced to look after someone who may always need them. In spite of a role that may on paper dive into popular cliches about autism, Tuck makes his character feel like a human being whose disorder is a part of him without necessarily defining him. The push-pull dynamic between the two is not enumerated on in the script, but their performances tell a shared history, and would have provided a solid foundation for a compelling action yarn. Unfortunately, Cleaner does not capitalize on that.  Any good Die Hard clone knows that one of the most important aspects is the antagonist. With the cast and setting so limited, much of the story’s drive comes from the nature of the foe set against the fettered hero. Here, an attempt is made to craft a villain who actually has some convincing moral arguments: the terrorists are actually environmental activists, who intend to reveal the environmental damages and assassination of other activists perpetrated by those wealthy and powerful individuals.
Why should we care about the lives of these awful people? As if to answer this, the leader of this group is usurped by an even more militant figure, a self-described anti-humanist (a philosophy that does exist, but not in the form portrayed here) who has no qualms about killing. Unfortunately, this just creates a new problem: the people being targeted are, in their own way, anti-humanists with no qualms about killing. The difference is the terrorists are moral absolutist fatalists, and the bourgeois are motivated solely by profit. Say what you will about the tenets of antihumanism, at least it’s an ethos. The film does attempt broaden out the scope of the threat late in the game, but too late to keep the audience from the side of the activists. That said, it’s not like the office workers at Nakatomi Plaza were fleshed out and sympathetic. What made Die Hard work was that its hero had a personal stake in stopping the unfolding events. Not only was his wife being held hostage, he was a police officer, and thus had a vested interest in putting an end to criminal wrongdoing. Beyond that, the film is structured in a way that constantly changes the resources both protagonist and antagonist have at their disposal, shifting momentum and who has the upper hand, as well as delivering solid action set pieces. On paper, Cleaner should be able to manage the same, with Tuck giving Ridley a reason to stop the terrorists, and her military background providing the justification for her ability to run circles around them. The script squanders both of these, leaving Ridley stranded on the side of the building for most of the runtime, unable to affect events in the tower, and never going so far as to actually threaten her brother. Every potential complication is quickly quashed, from an attempt to frame Ridley to trigger-happy police to… well, that’s about it really. An ungodly amount is spent with absolutely nothing changing the stakes, no new developments throwing a monkey wrench into best laid plans. Early on, the villain says to ignore the window cleaner, because she can’t do anything from outside. Incredibly, that turns out to be true. Towards the end, there are a handful of surprisingly decent fight scenes, intensely physical brawls that have a sense of rhythm, purpose, and direction that reminds the audience that the man at the helm had once reinvented James Bond. These only serve to highlight how meager the rest of Cleaner is. Why not get the protagonist involved early, so she can actually impact the drama? Why not spend more time with the brother, have him more directly in harm’s way to make their relationship more central to the conflict? Why not lean into the complication of a villain who the audience can easily sympathize with, instead of trying to create the most extreme strawman possible? Why not make a more interesting movie? Cleaner arrives in theater February 21. Rating: 2.5/5
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Review by Daniel Lima  For as long as the direct-to-video market has existed, the direct-to-video action thriller has provided a springboard for stuntpeople to use their meager means and ample abilities to deliver the simple, kinetic excitement that so eludes bloated Hollywood productions. It would be wonderful if Jade, the new film from stuntman-turned-director Chis Bamford, were another laudable entry into that canon. Sadly, it barely commits to even the low ambition of a stale pastiche of the kind of postmodern genre film that has been old hat for at least a decade. Nominally, the film follows the titular character, a reformed criminal who finds herself thrust into the center of a struggle for a mysterious hard disk. Caught between organized crime, corrupt cops, and covert government agencies, she must use her wits and prodigious combat skills to survive… or something to that effect. Describing the plot in such a coherent way gives the impression that it is cohesive and propulsive. It is not. An animated cutscene kicks things off, explaining its titular character’s backstory while remain frustratingly opaque, nondescript, and cliched. The first proper scene sees her speaking to her brother’s widow, which would be emotionally fraught if the audience had any emotional connection to these characters. Then the film skills ahead twenty-four hours, introducing an entirely new character sitting with lead Shaina West, discussing how crazy the last day has been. It then cuts back to the action. You don’t see that character again for another forty minutes. A nonlinear crime story playing off the audience’s own familiarity with cinematic archetypes and tropes is nothing new. Pulp Fiction, Ghost Dog, The Boondock Saints, these have been around since the 1990s. Jade makes a paltry effort to evoke those films, throwing in some halfhearted references to Asian action cinema via stock sound effects, so trite they border on racist. Those films, however, used that audience familiarity to subvert expectations, to ground distinct creative voices, to explore how we relate to art. At the very least, they were kind of cool.  No surprise that this cannot be as boundary pushing as those earlier films, but there is only the most cursory attempt to even capture a consistent mood. Jade swaps between a lighthearted, self-aware romp where characters reference Bruce Leroy and Wesley Snipes movies, and a dark and gritty underworld tale. In the hands of a filmmaker like Tarantino (though I am loathe to praise him too much), this balancing act is possible.
Here, there is a smug satisfaction underlying all the lame gags, the tame violence, the empty exposition, that makes it even more aggravating. Simply referencing other works isn’t particularly funny, and none of the characters are fleshed out enough to even be likeable, so it fails on that front. Most scenes amount to just characters repeating their goals and desires back at each other ad nauseam, with no time spent building out the world and the familiar DTV lack of a specific visual style, so it never feels particularly grimy or dangerous. Ultimately, the film never does more that gesture towards the vague form of a certain kind of film, and so the attempts at postmodern comedy and brooding crime drama have exactly the same texture. Which is to say, none at all. The one potential saving grace is the action, as Bamford is an experience stunt professional who often casts stunt professionals in his films. Star Shaina West is, to her credit, a good physical presence, and there is a fight scene with Marcus Vinicios Maciel that displays a sense of rhythm and purpose that the rest of the film otherwise lacks. Unfortunately, most of what passes for action in the film is lame, static gunfights where no one gets hit; the amount of time that West spends standing straight up and looking around as Aftereffects bullet impacts fill the frame is truly ludicrous. The fight choreography is decent enough, but undoubtedly budgetary constraints limit the ability to shoot in interesting spaces, and time to craft truly impressive brawls. The climax of the film is an agonizingly long set piece that has West walking down what seems to be the same stretch of barren hallway for an eternity, gunning and cutting down nameless mooks practically sauntering over to be killed. At first, it seems ambitious; within a minute, the scene outstays its welcome. No challenge is presented, no modulating rhythm that creates narrative tension. Things just happen, then it ends. That’s a good encapsulation of Jade itself, as its lack of any sense of direction or conviction proves its own undoing. Towards the end of the film, after that tiresome final set piece, a scorecard appears reading “Jade: 37 | Thugz: 0”. This joins the likes of Bush’s “Mission Accomplished” photoshoot in misguided, undeserving, self-aggrandizing praise for a job not well done. Jade is available on digital February 18. Rating: 1/5 Review by Adam Donato  Paddington in Peru continues the journey that was started over a decade ago. It’s really easy for these live action fantasy family films to flounder both critically and commercially, but Paddington has thrived in both regards over two films. Paddington 2 has been elevated to elite conversations and eight years after that film, we get a third installment. Drop the number in the title and replace it with one that’s less daunting to the uninitiated of the franchise. Unfortunately for Paddington, the first two films were such a success that Paul King has gone on to greener pastures and he took Sally Hawkins with him. He’s still attached to this film, but directorial duties have been passed on to Dougal Wilson, who has no major directing credits to his name. All signs point to a dip in quality, but can Paddington in Peru persevere with its absolute optimism? Like every other Paddington movie, Paddington in Peru is an absolute delight from start to finish. Paddington is such a wholesome and likable protagonist and this third film does a good job wrapping up his overarching story in these three films. The humor is a cut above the cringe fart jokes in most family films of this type. The writing balances all its characters to bring a satisfying conclusion. The music is light and chill like it's always been. There’s nothing glaringly wrong about this third installment, but something does feel like it's missing. Olivia Colman is a powerhouse addition to the cast. She plays a concerned nun at the home for retired bears who reaches out to Paddington about his Aunt Lucy. This role gives her the opportunity to be very silly and it's clear she’s having a good time, which is infectious to the audience. She is given a musical number that feels like an ambitious swing for these Paddington films. It’s nothing you’ll be adding to your playlist, but it’s cute. Where Colman’s character falls short is the blatant mystery of the character being so obvious, but still pretending like there’s a mystery afoot. It feels very reminiscent of Hugh Grant’s character in the previous film in a derivative way. It also doesn’t help that the conflict of her character doesn’t have any personal weight.  Antonio Banderas also feels reminiscent of Hugh Grant’s character. Almost as if they divided up his qualities among Banderas and Colman. There’s an interesting aspect of Banderas’s inner conflict that’s shown in a visually interesting way. This is done very little with and doesn’t maximize the narrative and comedic aspects available. He plays a ship captain who is obsessed with finding this lost gold, but struggles to balance that desire with the love he has for his daughter. This also carries very little personal weight in regards to our heroes and feels like an ancillary problem. His performance is hammy and goofy, but in a fun way.
A lackluster area in this installment is the special effects. While the Paddington films were never the peak of special effects, they were always more than serviceable. This was a lot easier to accomplish when it’s just a computer generated bear in a simple London setting, but now we’re in the jungles of Peru. There’s a much heavier reliance on CGI in this film, which is just now starting to expose flaws. Maybe animating this film would’ve been an ambitious avenue to take the franchise. Do it in the style of the Peanuts movie where it’s computer generated to look like 2D animation, which would take the franchise back to its storybook roots. This would also help mask the director change and recasting in the film. Maybe Sally Hawkins didn’t have time to be on set, but could go to a recording studio when she’s available. Emily Mortimer does a good job filling the role of Mrs. Brown, but especially during flashback scenes it’s a reminder that this installment is missing something. The interesting thing about Paddington’s story in these films is not his past, but how he impacts people in the present. Having this film set in Peru really limits the amount of fun side characters that Paddington gets to interact with. There’s a lot of solo time and his mission is devoid of nuance. The story and general quality of the film is reminiscent of Kung Fu Panda 3. Our panda main character has to discover the mystery of where they came from and reunite with their true people. It’s the classic trilogy dynamic where the first movie is great, then the second is even better, and the third one is certainly the lesser of the three. Hard to put blame on King’s departure or franchise fatigue. Paddington in Peru only feels like a disappointment because the first two movies were so perfect. This film on its own is an absolute delight for all ages. Audiences are so privileged to be disappointed by a movie that is this good. Luckily, fans came in with adjusted expectations and the film does its best to meet those expectations. The franchise fatigue is nothing compared to the Marvel mess Paddington has to compete with at the box office this weekend. While Captain America will succeed more at home, Paddington will continue to see the majority of its success internationally. It’s a good time at the movies. Classic family fun adventure. Be sure to check this one out in theaters. Paddington in Peru is in theaters on February 14. Rating: 4/5 Review by Jonathan Berk  2024 was the first year that there wasn’t a proper MCU film, with just Deadpool & Wolverine being the sole release coming from Marvel Studios. The big question left to answer now was this: could the MCU find its footing once again after many felt the films, post-Avengers: End Game, had dropped off in quality? Director Julius Onah returns audiences to the MCU with his film, Captain America: Brave New World. Captain America makes his cinematic return but with Sam (Anthony Mackie) wielding the iconic shield. After meeting with newly elected U.S. President Thaddeus Ross (Harrison Ford), Sam once again finds himself in the middle of an international incident. He must now discover the reason behind a nefarious global plot before the true mastermind has the entire world seeing red. While Falcon and the Winter Soldier didn’t quite convince everyone that Mackie could fill in as the lead, he won enough people over to get his first solo movie. Mackie is the clear highlight of the film. He is able to uphold the mantle while bringing something new to the iconic character. The new suit also looks very cool, as it preserves his origins as Falcon while effectively melding it with the red, white, and blue of Captain America. That concept plays into the themes of the story through patriotism, being true to oneself, and American values. Also returning from the show is Danny Ramirez. Ramirez is the unexpected joy of the film. The chemistry between him and Mackie is stellar — when the two share scenes where they are working together, those scenes truly pop in a satisfying way.  The big casting change was adding Ford to replace the now-deceased William Hurt, who had played Ross in a few other MCU films. Ford is a tremendous talent and inherently presidential. It's been a while since Air Force One or Clear and Present Danger, but Ford still has it. However, his star power and screen presence aren't enough to save the film from what will have you really seeing red…the script.
There is no better way to describe the story of Captain America: Brave New World than clunky. Unfortunately, there are far too many scenes of exposition. What makes those scenes even worse is that a majority of the exposition is either uninteresting or downright a little dumb. In many ways, this movie feels the most “comic book” in the derogatory sense of the word. It felt silly and over-the-top, which could be a direction the MCU is looking to move to…but it could push away its already waning fanbase. It’s not totally surprising that this film gets saddled with tying up some loose ends in the MCU. For fans of all of the content, they will likely take some pleasure in spotting all the well-placed easter eggs. For people coming to this 35th entry without all of the passion for the obscure pieces left in prior entries — they may find the experience daunting. While there is plenty about this film to complain about, Captain America: Brave New World delivers enough to spark that familiar enjoyment these films tend to bring. In many ways, the MCU seems to be making this a midpoint movie that will lead audiences to the next phase. Will we ever get back to the highest highs of the Marvel Avengers: End Game? It seems less and less likely. However, maybe we can get to the point when the movies stop trying to connect them all and focus on making one good one. Captain America: Brave New World will be in theaters on February 14. Rating: 3/5 Review by Daniel Lima  A couple years ago, I made the mistake of eating a cup of yogurt that had gone bad. For days I was bedridden, soaking my bed sheets in sweat as I rolled around in feverish delirium. The nauseating smell of my own sick filled my bedroom, and it took everything I had to make it to the toilet before adding to that stench. The lack of sleep wore me down, every single moment felt like an eternity, and it seemed like I would never again feel normal. It was the worst physical sensation I have ever experienced. Watching Love Hurts is a solid runner-up. Ke Huy Quan stars as a hitman-turned-realtor who has left his criminal past in order to reinvent himself. When a former flame shows up out of the blue, everything that he’s built for himself is threatened, and so he is forced to call upon his particular set of skills one more time. The “retired killer forced to take up arms” movie is practically a genre unto itself. Though these films all treat their premise with varying degrees of seriousness, they all treat their protagonist’s relationship with the life they’ve left behind with sincerity. Keanu Reeves in John Wick was happy to leave the underworld behind, and wreaks vengeance on those who refuse to leave him in peace. Bob Odenkirk in Nobody had grown to resent his placid suburban life, and craved to unleash his inner beast. Liam Neeson in Taken was a devoted family man, but had no qualms embracing that violent part of himself if it meant preserving what he had. In each case, the use of violence and how it disrupts the former killer’s retirement and sense of self serves as the emotional foundation of everything that follows. Love Hurts pump fakes building that foundation. It establishes that Quan loves his new life, and at first it seems that this will conflict with the romantic attachment he has with Ariana DeBose, who needs the help of his former self. Indeed, love and romance are constantly gestured towards through the movie, from a henchman going through a martial spat, to burgeoning love between Quan’s subordinate and an assassin, to the strained familial love between him and his brother. Hell, the movie takes place on Valentine’s Day. Where a decent film would drive home the aberrant nature of the ensuing violence, however, no time is spent here grounding the narrative in anything real. The first scene is a montage of Quan being cheery and vivacious with his co-workers, and the next is a fight scene with a knife-wielding hitman. With no time given to setting up his current world before launching the character back into his old one, it is impossible to feel any sense of loss; his motivations might make sense on paper, but they don’t read as genuine.  To make matters worse, the film maintains a cartoonish, over-the-top, cloyingly self-aware tone to every scene, whether a bloody brawl, banter between thugs, or straight up torture. People do not talk to each other in natural ways, people do not react to the world around them in natural ways. Why would an employee, upon seeing an unconscious man in her boss’ office, start reading poetry? Why would a man in the middle of a torture session invite regular civilians into the house where he’s conducting the torture? This is a story about a man who wants everything to go back to normal, but with moments like this constantly cropping up, it’s impossible to get a sense of what exactly is “normal” by the movie’s own logic. This irreverence is a common thread through 87North productions such as this, and particularly through the work of producer David Leitch. It is typically incredibly irritating and suffocates all pathos with a story, and given the utter lack of any dramatic runway here, that is even more potently felt. There is a distinct lack of stakes through the entire movie, and it didn’t take long for me to ask myself, “Why should I care about any of this?” It should go without saying that the theme of love is utterly incoherent. Not only are these characters one-note sketches whose personalities could be described in a couple words, the performers all turn in career-worst performances. Thankfully I’ve seen Ke Huy Quan, Ariana DeBose, and Marshawn Lynch do good work, because otherwise I’d assume they are simply incapable of acting (Sean Astin does okay, and Daniel Wu… is as good as ever). No surprise then that there no spark of chemistry between any two people in the movie, least of all Quan and DeBose, the romantic leads whose undying love for each other is supposed to be the catalyst of the plot. To say nothing of the fact that their twenty year age gap begs the question of how long ago did he break away from crime, it is impossible to discern why they even like each other, let alone love. To be fair to the actors, they have little to work with. The film opens with two actions scenes, ends with two action scenes, and treads water for the entire middle section. Characters go from one room to another, constantly spout meaningless exposition and backstory, constantly restate what their supposed goals and desires are. The villains spend most of the film looking for the heroes, until a complete contrivance bring them all together. The main antagonist is only ever shown in two locations, and has no direct effect on the plot. So little happens in this movie, there is so much dead air and repetitive dialogue and so little narrative momentum, I began to suspect that ChatGPT may deserve a co-writing credit. Of course, at the end of the day, this is an action-comedy. All this could possibly be brushed aside if this was a silly, goofy movie that earned some laughs and some cheers. Well.  Comedy can be hard to critique in a meaningful way. All art is subjective, but with a joke, you either think it’s funny or you don’t. To the credit of Love Hurts, there was plenty of laughter at my screening. Plenty of people tittered at the juvenile, asinine, hacky, derivative, lazy, smug, self-satisfied humor that pervades the film, a style common through everything that has David Leitch’s name on it. I imagine that if I had seen this movie fifteen years ago, this movie would have made me laugh uproariously if I caught the edited-for-cable version on SpikeTV. Today, as a grown man, it made me feel genuinely embarrassed for the people whose names were attached to the script. Perhaps they should have given ChatGPT the credit just to save face. That said, if you find things curse words, or a man in a suit drinking boba tea, or a Totally Random Non-Sequitur, this might bring the house down.
The most confounding, aggravating part of the movie, however, is how poor the action is. As low an opinion as I have of Leitch’s output, his stuntman roots are apparent in everything he produces, and a large part of the 87North brand is delivering quality set pieces. This film in particular is the directorial debut of company man Johnathan Eusebio, a seasoned stunt coordinator and action designer whose credits are unimpeachable. In fairness, the actual choreography is decent enough: the fighters use the environment in dynamic and reactive ways, there’s plenty of fun wire-assisted throws and falls to maximize impact, and there’s one interesting shot that is fairly novel. The issues are multifaceted. On the one hand, Eusebio suffers from his own success. The actor-driven style of action design that 87eleven (the team that developed into 87North Productions) pioneered, in which the cinematography is legible and clearly shows to the audience that the actors playing these characters are actually performing a good amount of the choreography, was a welcome antidote to the fast editing and shakycam that pervaded Hollywood through the ‘00s. These days, however, that style can be found in everything from the biggest blockbusters to cheap DTV thrillers, and this film doesn’t introduce anything new in the way the John Wick sequels do. Furthermore, that proliferation has started to expose the flaws of this style, particularly in our contemporary filmmaking climate. Allowing your actors to go through the movements themselves can make for beautiful art… when your stars are Donnie Yen, or Scott Adkins, or Jackie Chan, or Cynthia Rothrock, particularly when they were all in their twenties. Here, the cast includes a lot of older men, and actors who aren’t known as martial artists or stunt performers. Obviously, it’s possible to build something interesting within those limitations, as Martial Club did when designing fight scenes in Everything Everywhere All at Once with Ke Huy Quan himself. It is hard to watch this, however, and not consider that the crew butted up against that ceiling. Or rather, they would have, if the action weren’t compromised in ways that are incredibly disappointing to see from a film directed by a stunt professional. Each fight constantly cuts away from the action, usually for some comedic beat, but sometimes just to establish that yes, someone else is witnessing the action, or is leaving to another room. This breaks up the rhythm of the set piece in a way that is incredibly jarring and serves no larger purpose. I suspect that this is either Eusebio didn’t trust the audience to be patient with not having that information, or that this was a rough edit and we’re seeing the best possible version (a possibility made more likely by all the obvious ADR). There’s also the fact that there is so little action — only at the beginning and end of the film — and it all goes down in drab model homes and offices. Some visual diversity would have been a welcome addition, perhaps create opportunities that would allow the fight scenes to stick out. Love Hurts is a truly abysmal film. It is only eighty-three minutes including credits, yet it feels a thousand times that long. There is next to nothing to commend here, nothing for anyone to take pride in. The kindest thing I can say about it is given the choice between giving this a second viewing, and eating some room temperature dairy product, I would not immediately grab a spoon. I would, however, do just about anything else. Love Hurts escapes into theaters February 7. Rating: 0.5/5 |