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Outtakes

High in the Middle

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Eenie Meanie

by Hope Madden

Remember how great Cleveland looked in Superman? Writer/director Shawn Simmons takes us back to The Land, as well as to Toledo, for his thriller set among Ohio’s low rent criminal underbelly, Eenie Meanie.

It’s not exactly as tourism friendly as Superman.

Samara Weaving is Edie, and when we meet her, she’s really struggling to make something of her life. A day job as a bank clerk, night classes, maxed out credit cards, bleary nights studying. And then her one mistake—she stops by to share some news with her ex, John (Karl Glusman, The Bikeriders, Watcher).

But John’s gotten himself into some trouble. And try as she might to leave him and his trouble behind, the semi-fatherly crime lord she used to work for (Andy Garcia, delightful) will kill John unless Edie saves him. And to do that, she falls back on some old skills as a getaway driver in a big score.

Simmons has crafted a fun, twisty, funny thriller full of sharp turns. Weaving effortlessly carries the film as the tenderhearted badass who knows better. Glusman is infuriatingly excellent as that epic dumbass you want to smack but can’t help but hug. And maybe also smack.

Solid support from Garcia, Steve Zahn, Mike O’Malley, and Randall Park fills every scene with laughs, pathos, violence, and fun. But it’s the sly way Simmons braids together tales of co-dependence, trauma, loyalty, and resilience that gives Eenie Meanie unexpected heft.

Weaving has proven her genre moxie again and again (Ready or Not, Mayhem, The Babysitter, Guns Akimbo, Azrael), so it comes as no surprise that she brings the goods as the lead in an action comedy thriller. What’s impressive is the honesty and the genuine emotional conflict she expresses within this relationship.

She and Glusman revel in the dysfunction, played for exasperated laughs in the early going. But as Simmons tale develops, unveiling more of their relationship and backstory, that same chemistry takes on a relevance and power that allows Eenie Meanie to deliver a climax more powerful than you might expect.

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He Is Wrath

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Wrath of Man

by Hope Madden

I’m not saying Jason Statham is unconvincing with a gun. Nor am I saying that Guy Ritchie is ill-suited to direct a humorless vengeance drama.

I’m just saying that these are not their strong suits.

Wrath of Man shadows a very dour Statham—just call him H, like the bomb—as he begins training for his new gig with a cash truck crew.

Something’s up, obviously, and the only fun to be had in the film is trying to figure out what it is, so do not watch the trailer.

At The Depot, where all the trucks come and go and all the crew mock and belittle one another, we meet the assortment of characters you will not come to know or care about: Boy Sweat Dave (Josh Hartnett – where have you been?), Dana (Niamh Algar), Bullet (Holt McCallany). All of them choking on ludicrously overwritten banter, none of them drawing even a single compelling character.

Which is fine because there are at least 16 more people you won’t get to know, won’t care if they’re killed, won’t be invested in their conflicts.

Ritchie is usually much better than this at scattershot introductions of oddball lowlife clusters, each pod with its own story, each story intersection every other story at one turn or another. Maybe he’s just too out of his element setting the action in LA rather than his beloved London, but the lived-in feel of a reprobate world that’s usually a high point to a Ritchie flick is sorely missing here.

And what is the deal with these accents? By now, we know better than to expect Statham to attempt a yank accent, but what exactly is Eddie Marsan’s nationality supposed to be? Or Andy Garcia’s, for that matter?

Hell if I know. I do know that casting Statham generally guarantees some nifty fisticuffs.

Not today!

He shoots a bunch of people, sure, but there’s no panache to anything. It’s a heist movie without the meticulous execution, a vengeance thriller with no emotional connection to the villain, a Statham movie with no ass kicking, and a Ritchie movie with no humor, no flash, no style.

No thank you.   

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Gray Matters

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Book Club

by George Wolf

Book Club offers up a boatload of veteran Oscar winners and nominees, but limps to its final chapter as a ninety minute catch-22. So many roles for senior stars: good! What this movie makes of those roles: not so much.

Diane Keaton, Jane Fonda, Candice Bergen and Mary Steenburgen are Diane, Vivian, Sharon, and Carol, lifelong friends who began a monthly book club back in the 70s with the scandalous Fear of Flying.

With all four friends now comfortable in their golden years, the randy Vivian chooses Fifty Shades of Grey as the group’s next assignment. The girls are a bit hesitant at first but right on cue, Christian and Anna’s naughty romps reignite some fires down below.

Laughing at older people being sexual is beyond lazy, it’s ignorant. Thankfully director/co-writer Bill Holderman, in his debut feature, does seem actually interested in laughing more with his stars than at them.

But too many of those laughs are leftovers from every episode of Three’s Company, when Mr. Roper overhears Jack and Chrissy in the bedroom saying something like “It’s not big enough!” while we know they were just trying to hang a curtain rod the whole time! Ribaldry!

While the ladies juggle possible boyfriends (Richard Dreyfuss, Andy Garcia, Don Johnson) and a disinterested husband (Craig T. Nelson), contrived antics and double entendres go straight to the unfunny bone.

If you were checking off boxes, all the rich, white characters and romantic fantasies would seem like Nancy Meyers material. But Book Club can’t dig any more than surface deep, and even with all this talent, it never shows the confidence in character that elevates Meyers’s best (It’s Complicated, Something’s Gotta Give).

And then, a surprisingly subtle metaphor built around the comeback of vinyl albums gives you reason to believe Holderman’s heart is in the right place here, he’s just in over his head.