Tag: thriller

Movies

The Contractor (2022)

Not A Walking Tree

The entire time I was watching this I was waiting for the shoe to drop. The reason why it would have a lower rating than usual action thrillers, and near the end, the plot reveals why. In this day and age, with all the fears around biological warfare, it is perfectly suited. Our hero, played by Chris Pine, is hired to do off the books wet work in the name of national security aka assassins for hire. His flaw comes in the form of a bum knee sustained in active service to his country. After being chewed out by the system, and thrown out with no benefits, he joins the aforementioned wet work mission where things go awry.

In typical fashion, there are twists to be had, and seeing Ben Foster’s name ruined any twists. If the man ain’t in the leading role as the good guy, then he will be playing the character designed to mess with your mind as to his moral code. The drama was good, and raised points and messages about the abysmal treatment of veterans. The action was solid, and carried weight. Soundtrack equally enjoyable.

Overall, I recommend it. It’s a fun watch, has an easy to follow plot, and always a joy to see Chris Pine in the lead role.

Spoilers/Thoughts on the Plot

I really liked the fact that the evil bad guys were stealing a vaccine that would counteract their evil plan of releasing a virus onto the population to make billions off of the untold suffering. Totally not far-fetched. Ben Foster’s character needlessly sacrificed himself which I felt was undeserving of such a fate.

TV Shows

Alex Rider Season Two

Not A Walking Tree

I’ll keep this review short. It was a fun background noise while I worked on other writing. The action scenes were meh, the plot was sort of interesting – mainly trying to figure out the nefarious purpose behind the video game. Sorry, getting ahead of myself. Story is there’s something shady about a billionaire named Damian Cray and his upcoming sequel launch to his bestselling game, Feathered Serpent. Alex Rider falls into the plot by sheer accident because a journalist winds up hospitalized, and the daughter happens to be someone Alex has taking a liking to during vacation. He takes matters into his own hands, and ends up saving the world, no thanks to his former spy employers.

It was fun to see all the characters back together, getting up to their usual shenanigans, while learning just a tiny bit more about the backstory of Alex Rider. The ending of the show seems to hint that the next season will explore that facet of his history.

Overall, it was a quaint watch, reminiscent of spy shows of old. I recommend it if you’re a fan of the books or character.

Movies

The Guilty

Not A Walking Tree

I went into this blind with no knowledge of the movie’s origin until the end credits rolled where upon I learned it’s a remake of a Danish film by the same name. As a result my review is unbiased like so many others that compare it to the original it’s adapted from. Jake Gyllenhaal stars as police dispatcher Joe Baylor as he goes about his night fielding calls until one comes in from an apparent abduction. He takes it upon himself to ensure the woman’s return to her daughter and along the way uncovered truths about the abduction and we learn more about his character. He is a flawed man, angry, emotional and an asshole. You can tell his coworkers have a clear opinion about him, and his relationship with his separated wife is on the brink of no contact. He can’t see his daughter, and he has some court hearing to attend to in the morning.

The movie is directed by Antoine Fuqua, of Training Day fame alongside many others, and he expertly helms the direction, showing us how our own perceptions of a situation may be flawed and this in turn influences what we believe to be the correct course of action. The writing was excellent, and I’ve read that it’s a near word for word adaptation of the original film. The movie is very tense and moves along at a good pace. More and more voices are brought on until there’s just a few main ones which Joe interacts with. This movie is basically a character piece focused on Joe and therefore it is up to the strength of Jake Gyllenhaal to keep us entranced. To which he does with great success.

Overall, I enjoyed it and would recommend it for a watch. I have no knowledge of the original and as such, if you’ve seen that movie, I don’t know if you’d like this one since you would already know what would happen.

Movies

SAS: Rise of the Black Swan

Not A Walking Tree

Or SAS: Red Notice, as it is called elsewhere, is your run of the mill British action thriller with a few strong set pieces and a slightly different take on your typical hero. He’s an antihero in the sense that it’s clear from the opening lines, he’s a psychopath and what differentiates him long before we actually meet him, and it’s made clear, is that he’s capable of love. Our hero, Tom, played by Sam Heughan, is on a train headed from England to France when criminals hijack it. Before that sequence happens, there’s a fair bit of character development given to the antagonist, played by Ruby Rose, of John Wick and Batgirl fame, so she’s no stranger to action. Still, given her role, I did not once find her believable as a psychopathic soldier of fortune. The movie tried to be clever in its opening narration and misguide the viewer into thinking it’s talking about her, but clearly that would be a stretch given the opening sequence.

The action itself was fun, gritty, and several scenes during the train part were a clever utilization of our hero’s skill. There were a couple continuation/errors that were obvious but they were a minor derailment. For example, near the start of the movie, Ruby Rose’s character, Grace, gets grazed by a bullet and she reaches up with a cloth to cover it. Except, she already had the cloth in her hand and was moving her hand towards her face before the bullet hit. That’s the kind of error you’d expect a newcomer to the scene to make. Anyways, guns went pew pew and as far as I know, nice sounding. The sense of tactical movement between the actors told me they were well prepared or trained to mimic professionals.

The supporting cast, like Andy Serkis, was enjoyable. It was nice to see Owain Yeoman again, I remember him fondly from his time on The Mentalist. This wasn’t a movie to win home any awards, but to tell a message. And I think that point was driven home repeatedly, on several occasions. That governments around the world will hire private mercenary groups to do their less than savory jobs and if anything goes sideways, they can merely toss aside the blame.

Overall, I recommend this movie if you’re looking for a fun time and to eat some chips while mindlessly gazing. It was cool to see how both the antagonist and protagonist had changes in their eyes when they switched from being kind of normal to “engage killer mode”.

TV Shows

Behind Her Eyes

Not A Walking Tree

This is one of those shows that if they didn’t lie to you off the start, you never would have watched it. By this, I mean that it is withholding a vital piece of information regarding genre. It says on Netflix that it is a mystery, thriller, and drama but it’s missing the most important piece(s). Those are that it is also a supernatural fantasy. Now it if was just a show about a cheater and his involvement with his secretary who happened to also befriend his wife, and kept it realistic, I’d have enjoyed it much more. As it stands, I can’t help but feel cheated. The ending is seen a mile off and you can’t help but think “please don’t have the ending be what I think it is.” Guess what? It’s exactly the nonsense you thought it would be.

Going into it, I knew I was to be worried seeing that the showrunner is one Steve Lightfoot. He made the spectacularly bad and utter misfire The Punisher for Netflix earlier. I just loathe what he did to that character, and given his terrible writing in that, I felt this would suffer the same. And I was right. Behind Her Eyes felt like somebody watched The Skeleton Key (2005) and decided the ending and villains would be better if they were white. Now technically, I haven’t spoiled anything, but if you’ve ever seen that movie then you’ll know exactly what I’m referring to. However, this could merely be a coincidence and the book that which the series was based on, could have had what show ended with as its plot. I never read the book, nor knew of it prior to watching this limited series. I’m just saying, it’s a little too uncanny with the similarities. Though in the Skeleton Key, they use hoodoo magic as the basis and here it’s astral projection.

Spoilers Ahead

Now if we do a deep dive into the ending of the series, and really consider what it means, there’s a lot to unpack here. An oversimplification of events would be that a gay man fell in love with a straight man, but knew that the straight guy would never go for him, so he changed his sex to a female to get with him. If we wanna get technical, it’s rape by deception. Sure, you’re having sex with your wife but inside your wife’s body, there’s a man’s spirit. But then your white husband gets bored of you or scared of you, and falls for a black woman. So now you become the black woman, and resume raping your victim. See what I wrote sounds way worse than what they showed in the series, but it’s what happened. Sounds much more horrible when you actually write it out and think about it. This ending is messed up.

A couple things I wondered were that a) a woman you just recently made acquaintances with, gives you a book that is very clearly someone’s personal journal that should in no way be with her, you just take without question and read it. B) A woman you called psychopathic, sociopathic or god knows what makes essentially a suicide note, and you come running to save her… Literally, all she had to do was not do that and it’d be all happy after. But no, you go to her house, and try and save her by… ASTRAL PROJECTION?! HUH? Honestly, being that dumb, she deserved her fate.

As for the actors themselves, they were pretty good. And pretty good looking, which I mean, they had to be for the erotic thriller aspect of it. Eve Hewson as Adele, the aforementioned psychopath, did really good as a person struggling with mental health issues and Tom Bateman as Dr. David Ferguson did really well at making you feel like he had something sinister going on. Simona Brown as Louise did great as the single mother looking for a connection, and did an excellent job at making me dislike her as a character. Robert Aramayo as Rob was entertaining to say the least, and very insidious. The direction was good, by Erik Richter Strand, but the writing felt off at times. The interactions between Adele and her husband, David, didn’t feel real. It never felt like this is how two people would ever communicate with one another. Like the writing has that specific feel that it was written for this scene and this camerawork. It wasn’t organic or natural. That’s right, Steve Lightfoot once again proving he has no business in TV shows yet somebody keeps giving him money.

Overall, just stay away from this show. It’s not worth the stream, nor is it worth having Netflix look at the viewing numbers and go “Wow, we should give more money to Steve Lightfoot! He sure knows what he’s doing. Boy, what a great showrunner and writer.” Please no, I don’t wanna see another show with his name on it because next time, I’m just gonna skip it. Like you should skip this show.