Bad Country (2014)

Bad Country is filled with small pleasures. Like Willem Dafoe’s opening and closing narration (few sounds are as soothing as his gravelly baritone). Or Dafoe’s and Matt Dillon’s badass horseshoe mustaches. Or a cameo by the imposing Bill Duke. Or Tom Berenger’s over-the-top villain (a rosy-cheeked dandy with a Cajun accent who walks with a...

Hit Man (2023)

Hit Man is a sobering reminder that even Homer nods. Or, in this case, writer/director Richard Linklater. Prior to this, there was no such thing as Linklater’s ‘worst movie.’ You had to use an awkward turn of phrase, something like, ‘School of Rock is Richard Linklater’s least good movie.’  That's over now. I can’t let Hit Man...

The Tax Collector (2020)

The Tax Collector is the third-best David Ayer-directed film (the top two would be End of Watch and The Beekeeper), but it's far from the best David Ayers-penned movie — though to be fair, that includes Training Day and Dark Blue, as well as the aforementioned End of Watch. This one may not reach the heights...

Three Day Millionaire (2022)

Three Day Millionaire is, for want of a better term, clickbait filmmaking. The opening scenes are dominated by an aesthetic that goes out of its way to misrepresent the movie as a Guy Ritchie work. And the title sounds suspiciously like Danny Boyle’s Slumdog Millionaire. Thus, director Jack Spring appoints himself a member of an exclusive club...

Final Heist (2024)

Why do characters in heist movies always talk about ‘one last job’ but never mean it? Although I guess Final Heist is true to its word, since the film is not about a heist so much as a, well, there’s no single word for it, so let’s just call it a partial prison breakout.  The...

You Should Have Killed Me (2023)

I’ve never been a fan of either Payback or Kill Bill, and You Should Have Killed Me has given me another reason to dislike them. Whether it's a reason to dislike them more or a reason to dislike them less, though, I have yet to decide. On the one hand, You Should Have Killed Me...

Lift (2024)

Lift is a trifecta of bullshit. It's as lame as you’d expect a movie that features “the world's first heist of an NFT” to be, as underhanded and morally deficient as you’d expect a modern-day heist movie to be, and as unamusing as you’d expect a movie starring Kevin Hart to be. Additionally, it parades around such...

The Betrayal (2021)

The end credits tell you all you need to know about low-budget, ‘urban’ crime drama The Betrayal. The cast are identified, not by their given names, but by their social media handles. Thus, Blu was played by @tytdastoner, and Yasmine by @sheprettidope_, to mention but two examples (there are also writing and directing credits, and...

The Killer (2023)

All things being equal, narration is invariably flaccid, sloppy writing. The Killer, however, is an avid underachiever that gives The Virtuoso a run for its (blood) money in the ‘Most Stultifying Interminable Inner Monologue in a Hitman Movie’ category. No further than the opening scene, the titular professional assassin (Michael Fassbender) quotes both Popeye and...