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I Saw the Light: Mini-review

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Tom Hiddleston

Tom Hiddleston is the main reason I Saw the Light

C+Watching the new Hank Williams biography, I Saw the Light, is like listening to an album of Williams’ greatest hits. In part, that’s because Tom Hiddleston, who plays Williams, performs many of Williams’ best known tunes in a voice remarkably similar to the country singer’s.  But when Hiddleston isn’t singing, many of the remaining scenes in I Saw the Light depict the troubled Williams’ drinking, drug problems, and womanizing with no more depth than what’s contained in a typical melancholy country lyric.

The movie follows Williams’ career from his marriage to his first wife Audrey (Elizabeth Olsen) in 1944 to his death at age 29 on New Year’s Day in 1953. As he graduates from club dates and a morning radio show to big time recording contracts, Williams’ drinking escalates and he becomes increasingly difficult to work with. Eventually, Audrey divorces him and he carries on affairs with two different women, fathering a child by one and marrying the other. By the time of his death, the Grand Ole Opry had dropped him because of his erratic behavior, and he was again reduced to secondary bookings. 

Even though he’s onscreen for almost every scene in I Saw the Light and often acts like a complete jerk to those closest to him, the character of Hank Williams remains elusively beyond the reach of the somewhat inexperienced writer/director Marc Abraham. The audience sees Williams’ often bizarre behavior, but the only explanation, beyond the obvious alcohol and pain killers he took to excess due to a painful spinal condition, comes in an interview he gives to a New York newspaper writer (David Krumholtz). There, he opines “Everybody has a little darkness in them.”  Although the audience won’t get any answers about the inner Williams, they will understand how he became so popular. Hiddleston captures not just the voice but the mannerisms and performing style that made audiences love Williams and women very willing to go to bed with him. Olsen is also quite good as Audrey, sometimes supportive and sometimes quite vindictive. Ironically, I Saw the Light does a better job of explaining Audrey’s motivations (she was a mediocre singer who wanted his help to boost her career) than Hank’s. I Saw the Light is worth seeing for the performances and the music, but the movie fails to shed any real light on the troubled life or career of Hank Williams.
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My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2: Mini-review

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Nia Vardalos

Nia Vardalos isn’t the one getting married this time

C- My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2, the sequel to Nia Vardalos‘ charming romantic comedy smash hit of 2002, doesn’t feel like a sequel so much as the finale of a long running television series like M*A*S*H or Lost.  Those with fond memories of the original movie, however, may recall that it actually was adapted into a 2003 TV series that lasted all of seven episodes. Unfortunately, My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2 demonstrates over and over why all the charm wore off after seven episodes.

Nia Vardalos returns as Toula, the bride at the first wedding, who has now been married 17 years. Her extended Greek family is as close-knit as ever and are shocked to learn that Toula’s mom Maria (Lainie Kazan) and dad Gus (Michael Constantine) have never been legally married due to a clerical error on the marriage certificate. The solution is to hold another big fat Greek wedding, but first, Maria has to decide if Gus is worth marrying a second time.

The original Big Fat Greek Wedding was based on a highly personal screenplay by Vardalos that reflected her deep ethnic pride and family identity, along with the angst of a single woman approaching that age and some zany anecdotes based on her own relatives. My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2 reduces all of that to a barrage of sitcom humor, heavy on the booze, PG-13 sex, and addled elderly relative jokes. Some of it is funny, the first time, but the punchlines from the first movie (such as Gus’s omnipresent Windex bottle) are repeated endlessly. Further, it seems as if every single member of the gigantic ensemble cast has to appear and be given something to do in every scene. Toula, her husband Ian (John Corbett) and teenage daughter Paris (Elena Kampouris) struggle to find screen time, even though Paris’ storylines are the freshest in the movie. The movie still manages some sweet moments (Kazan and Constantine have great chemistry together), but they tend to get drowned out in all the bustle and noise. All too often, My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2 isn’t an event you’d like to attend, but, rather, your next door neighbor’s blaring party that keeps you awake all night.
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Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice: Mini-review

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Ben Affleck

Ben Affleck without his mask

C Batman has always been a somber, brooding character, especially in recent comics and movies, but director Zack Snyder‘s version of the Dark Knight (played by Ben Affleck) makes most of the others incarnations seem like Adam West in comparison. Throw in an equally depressing version of Superman (Henry Cavill), and their eagerly awaited encounter, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice is perhaps the most gloomy, slow-moving, and downright unenjoyable superhero movies ever made. 

The centerpiece of Batman v Superman is the showdown between the two heroes, orchestrated by an insane Lex Luthor (Jesse Eisenberg), who manipulates Batman and Superman into hating each other. When they both survive their epic showdown, Luthor unleashes an even more powerful threat on the world, Doomsday, a giant superpowered monster he created from Kryptonian DNA.

Admittedly, saving the world from diabolical business tycoons and mutant behemoths is serious work, but never before had I seen a superhero movie in which nobody, with the exception of the manically hysterical Luthor, had a single bit of fun. Snyder apparently set out to make sure that the audience wouldn’t have any fun either. Most of the set pieces in Batman v Superman take place at night, often in pouring rain in rundown decrepit buildings. The film moves at a near glacial pace, taking nearly two hours of draggy exposition to lay the groundwork for the heroes’ battle royal and to invent a mechanism whereby the all-too-human Batman can credibly take on the seemingly invulnerable Superman. But the filmmakers aren’t content with their already overstuffed central storyline. Instead, they introduce Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot), who helps fight Doomsday, and drop hints about other members of the Justice League (DC Comics’ version of Marvel’s Avengers), all for the purpose of laying the groundwork for future sequels and spinoffs. What gets lost in all the gloom and doom are solid performances by Affleck and Cavill and some genuinely exciting set pieces, especially those featuring Batman in action. These sequences reveal the movie that Batman v Superman could easily have been with a bit more of an upbeat tone and faster pace. Instead of epic excitement, however, Snyder and the producers seemingly went for epic tragedy, and the result for audiences will be an epic disappointment.   
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Hello My Name Is Doris: Mini-review

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Sally FIeld

Hello, my name is Sally Field

B+ It’s hard to believe, but it’s been almost a quarter of a century since either film or TV audiences have caught a glimpse of that bright Sally Field smile. Finally, after years of acclaimed but somber roles, the vivacious Field of old re-emerges in Hello My Name Is Doris. All it took was a romance with a man three decades her junior. 

In Hello My Name Is Doris, Field plays the title character, a 60ish woman whose entire life was devoted to caring for her now deceased mother. But a chance kind word and a smile from John (Max Greenfield), her company’s new art director, leads to Doris developing a huge crush on the younger man. Soon, an actual friendship develops between the two, and Doris comes out of her lifelong shell, to the dismay of her friend Roz (Tyne Daly), who sees where Doris’ infatuation is heading.

In the wrong hands, Hello My Name Is Doris could easily have become either a more extreme version of The Graduate or a pathetic tragedy. However, director Michael Showalter, who also co-wrote the screenplay, takes care to balance dramatic scenes with those showing the originally neurotic, withdrawn Doris gaining confidence. Early in the movie, Showalter uses the device of having Doris attend a self-improvement seminar whose instructor (Peter Gallagher) gives her the boost she needs to pursue John, but what the director really uses are the considerable talents, both comic and dramatic, of Sally Field. Hello My Name Is Doris has a few hilarious scenes, including Doris’ stint as an album cover girl for a group called Baby Goya and the Nuclear Winters, but it’s mostly a matter of Field turning on her long dormant, infectious charm to credibly become a part of John’s equally younger circle of friends. Showalter stumbles occasionally, especially at the finish line, but frankly, any writer or director would have had trouble crafting an ending of this film that worked dramatically and maintained any semblance of credibility. But Hello My Name Is Doris is an extreme rarity nowadays, a charmingly enjoyable coming-of-age movie for a character—and an actress—whose time had seemingly come and gone.
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The Divergent Series: Allegiant: Mini-review

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Shailene Woodley

Shailene Woodley is back for a third go-around in Allegiant

D+ Watching The Divergent Series: Allegiant brings to mind George Santayana’s endlessly paraphrased epigram, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” That advice applies perfectly to both the characters in Allegiant, who have not learned any lessons from the first two movies in the series, and the filmmakers, who seemingly haven’t learned any lessons from similar YA series such as The Hunger Games. 

As Allegiant begins, rebels have overthrown the old order in what used to be Chicago and installed a new ruler, Evelyn (Naomi Watts), who’s pretty much as ruthless as her predecessors and prohibits people from leaving the city. Tris (Shailene Woodley), who led the insurgency, Evelyn’s son Four (Theo James), and a few friends scale the giant wall surrounding Chicago and escape into a desolate wasteland. They eventually find their way to the headquarters of the Bureau of Genetic Research, an agency that’s been monitoring events in Chicago. The Bureau’s leader David (Jeff Daniels) tells Tris that the problems in Chicago were caused by damaged genes, and that Tris, the only person in the world with perfect genes, is the key to rebuilding society.

The first two movies in this series, Divergent and Insurgent, weren’t great but at least had some decent action scenes and a somewhat intriguing vision of a particular dystopian future resulting from a master plan gone wrong. Allegiant, on the other hand, seems to have crafted its vision of the future straight from Josef Mengele’s lab notes, complete with blather about pure and damaged genes. Yes, the outside world blundered in setting up the faction system that ruled Chicago, but now they do it all over again. At least, Shailene Woodley gets to display some genuine emotion occasionally, and Miles Teller has fun as the duplicitous Peter, whose loyalties change from scene to scene. Otherwise, a talented cast is pretty much given little to do other than wait for things to come. And things definitely will come, since Allegiant covers merely the first half of the concluding novel in author Veronica Roth’s original YA trilogy. Once again, filmmakers try to milk a franchise by dividing one book into two movies with predictably bad results: a boring, talky, padded, unoriginal film. The Divergent series ran out of ideas in the last movie and is reduced to recycling them in Allegiant, and, except for one exciting sequence in which Tris and her group scale the wall to escape her former home, there’s very little action either. The series might redeem itself in the upcoming final movie, but Allegiant was doomed from the start.
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The Brothers Grimsby: Mini-review

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Sacha Baron Cohen

Sacha Baron Cohen in his pre-Grimsby days

C-The only thing worse than unfunny, tasteless fat jokes, gay jokes, and bodily fluid jokes is hearing those same jokes repeated over and over in the same movie. Sadly, audiences watching The Brothers Grimsby undoubtedly won’t remember its sometimes clever social satire and sharp action scenes. But they will remember a sequence involving Sacha Baron Cohen, Mark Strong, and a female elephant that makes Tom Green‘s Freddy Got Fingered seem like Jane Austen in comparison.

Cohen stars in The Brothers Grimsby as Nobby, an idiotic, beer-swilling, soccer-loving lower class British slacker who was separated as an orphaned child from his younger brother Sebastian (played as adult by Strong). Now, Sebastian is MI6’s top agent, but their reunion goes awry when Nobby inadvertently sabotages Sebastian’s current mission. With Sebastian on the run but still trying to foil an upcoming biological warfare attack, Nobby again tries to provide assistance to his younger brother.

In addition to his starring role, Cohen co-wrote the screenplay and was the driving creative force behind The Brothers Grimsby. He’s willing to play the complete idiot here, a chav version of Inspector Clouseau, but he uses the characterization to make some clever satirical points. For example, Nobby has one of his children (appropriately named Luke, short for “leukemia”) feign cancer to get extra welfare payments. Strong is very good as the straight man here, trying to mask acute discomfort and maintain his distance from his own roots. However, for every genuinely clever joke in The Brothers Grimsby, Cohen includes two or three that even Adam Sandler would reject. The creaky juvenile chestnut about sucking the poison out of a wound in Sebastian’s groin becomes the basis of a stupefying, five-minute routine. Even worse is the aforementioned elephant joke, which goes on far too long as well. Veteran action director Louis Leterrier ably crafts some quite impressive chase scenes in Grimsby, but he’s completely at a loss to keep Cohen in check, allowing bad scenes and worse jokes to drag on. As a result, the film’s 83-minute running time seems far longer. The Brothers Grimsby could have been a lower class counterpoint to the Austin Powers films; instead, it’s an Anglicized version of The Hangover with Sacha Baron Cohen playing all three idiots at once.
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10 Cloverfield Lane: Mini-review

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John Goodman

John Goodman in a jovial mood

B+In a world in which every major new movie is picked apart by social media vultures months before it arrives in theaters, J.J. Abrams, producer of 10 Cloverfield Lane, surprised fans and critics alike when most in the industry learned of the movie’s existence a mere six weeks before its release. Even more surprising, the film manages to live up to its non-hype. 

For most of its running time, 10 Cloverfield Lane is a taut, claustrophobic suspense thriller featuring three people in a subterranean bunker designed as a survival shelter. Michelle (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) finds herself chained to a wall in the bunker when she wakes up after being injured in an auto accident. Howard (John Goodman) tells her he rescued her and that the outside world is uninhabitable as a result of a cataclysmic disaster. However, Howard is clearly disturbed, leading an increasingly desperate Michelle to plan an escape, with the help of Emmett (John Gallagher Jr.), who sayst that he helped Howard build the shelter and is now its third resident.

Like its pre-release marketing campaign, 10 Cloverfield Lane does an excellent job of keeping the audience guessing as a result of its selective presentation of information to both Michelle and the audience. At times, it seems that Howard is right and that something terrible has happened (especially when Michelle briefly glimpses a woman outside the shelter’s only window, pleading to be let in). At other times, however, Howard appears to be exactly the type of guy who would keep an attractive young woman locked up in an underground room with him for months. Abrams magnifies this uncertainty (and the pre-release buzz) by using the word “Cloverfield” in the film’s title, a reference to his 2008 monster thriller to which 10 Cloverfield Lane may—or may not—be related. The key to the current film’s success is Goodman’s tantalizingly ambiguous performance as Howard, a man whose nature repeatedly seems to change before Michelle’s eyes. When 10 Cloverfield Lane does get physical, first-time director Dan Trachtenberg takes full advantage of the cramped quarters to ramp up the suspense as Michelle, in her efforts to escape, tries to maneuver herself into spaces where the considerably larger Howard cannot go. Eventually, Michelle and the audience learn the truth in a finale that, although well made, can’t help being somewhat of a letdown. 10 Cloverfield Lane is not a letdown or a gimmick, despite its title and unusual marketing campaign. Instead, it’s one of the better thrillers that audiences are likely to see this year.
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Whiskey Tango Foxtrot: Mini-review

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Tina Fey

Tina Fey plays it somewhat serious in Whiskey Tango Foxtrot

C+Imagine that Liz Lemon, Tina Fey‘s character in the TV comedy series 30 Rock, had been sent to Afghanistan a decade ago to cover the war there. The results would probably look like Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, a movie that has a number of entertaining scenes but never quite coalesces as a dramatic whole.

Fey plays Kim Baker, a cable news journalist who tries to jumpstart a stalled career by taking an assignment in Afghanistan. She soon grows to love the mix of danger, sex, and partying that forms the lifestyle of foreign journalists. Eventually, she becomes more serious about a news photographer (Martin Freeman), a relationship that may end when her assignment eventually does.

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot is based on a memoir by Chicago Tribune journalist Kim Barker about her own experiences in Afghanistan. The film consists primarily of various anecdotal scenes featuring Kim with a variety of colorful characters, including an experienced Australian journalist (Margot Robbie) who shows her the ropes, a Marine general (Billy Bob Thornton) with a dim view of journalists in general, and a lecherous local politician (Alfred Molina). Many of these scenes, taken directly from the book, work quite well, especially the relationship between Kim and the general, who grudgingly comes to accept her. Whiskey Tango Foxtrot also paints a bizarre but fascinating picture of journalists partying like there’s no tomorrow in buildings that are oases of booze, rock music, and sex in the midst of a highly dangerous war zone lying just outside the exit door. Despite this often compelling imagery and a solid dramatic performance by Fey, however, Kim never feels like a real character. Instead, she’s a plot device whose character development is shown by montages of her partying in night clubs as the months go by. Whiskey Tango Foxtrot aims for emotional depth in a closing stateside encounter between Kim and a now crippled soldier she interviewed in Afghanistan, but the scene feels curiously flat. As a black comic depiction of the outlandish realities of modern warfare, Whiskey Tango Foxtrot succeeds, but as the story of an actual journalist, it ultimately misses the target. 
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London Has Fallen: Mini-review

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Gerard Butler

Two mediocre movies in two weeks for Gerard Butler

C-Gerard Butler‘s once-familiar face had surprisingly been absent from movie screens for three years up until the last two weeks, when first Gods of Egypt and now London Has Fallen show up in rapid succession. Judging by the thoroughly mediocre quality of both films, it may be another three years before audiences want to see Butler again. 

London Has Fallen is a sequel to the unexpectedly successful 2013 action film Olympus Has Fallen, Butler’s most recent live action film. Once again, he plays Secret Service agent Mike Banning, responsible for the safety of U.S. President Benjamin Asher (Aaron Eckhart), who is in London for the funeral of the British Prime Minister. Terrorists suddenly launch a massive attack, blowing up various London landmarks and assassinating several other world leaders. Their ultimate goal is to publicly execute Asher for “war crimes,” unless Banning can keep him safe.

As with many action sequels, London Has Fallen represents a distinct step back in terms of personnel and budget from its predecessor. Director Babak Najafi, whose previous American experience consisted of a couple of episodes of the cable TV series Banshee, steps in for Antoine Fuqua. Najafi acquits himself well in the nearly non-stop action scenes in London Has Fallen. Unfortunately, he can’t completely cover up the cheesy special effects that often rival those found in a Syfy Channel movie. Nor can he make his Eastern European location shots look like authentic London locales, no matter how many CGI-generated landmarks like Big Ben and the Tower of London get destroyed. Najafi is also saddled with a screenplay that is filled with mostly bad one-line retorts delivered by Butler and that, even by modern-day thriller standards, defies belief. The audience is asked to believe that hundreds of heavily armed Arab terrorists have infiltrated the police and army and can launch a dozen perfectly coördinated attacks. Despite its shortcomings, however, London Has Fallen can be fun to watch at times for those who don’t take it too seriously or mind considerable gore. Also, Butler is fun to watch; he doesn’t chew as much scenery here as he did in Gods of Egypt, but his character is just as gonzo, with a penchant for inflicting pain on his enemies that makes Arnold Schwarzenegger look like a pacifist. Plus, no movie with Morgan Freeman appearing (in this case, vice-) presidential can be all bad. London Has Fallen doesn’t quite rise to the level of guilty pleasure, but, unlike the film’s version of London, it’s not a total disaster either.   
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Zootopia: Mini-review

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Ginnifer Goodwin

Ginnifer Goodwin does the Bunny Hop in Zootopia

B+Walt Disney Studios was seemingly built on the back of a cheerful yet plucky animated mouse named Mickey. Some 90 years later, Disney has another major success on its hands in Zootopia, courtesy of another animated herbivore, a bunny with the appropriate name of Judy Hopps (voiced by Ginnifer Goodwin), and a seemingly inappropriate occupation as a police detective.

Actually, Judy’s occupation is the entire point of Zootopia, which is set in a world populated solely by anthropomorphic mammals of all shapes and sizes. Judy becomes the first rabbit member of a police force dominated by larger animals, but her boss, Chief Bogo (Idris Elba) makes her a meter maid. She eventually gets her big chance to investigate a missing person (or, in this instance, missing otter) case, and recruits a streetwise fox, Nick Wilde (Jason Bateman) to help her.

While today’s better animated films work both as juvenile slapstick and inside humor aimed at adults, Zootopia goes even one step further. There’s plenty of visual humor in the movie, featuring a major city that’s been designed for use by creatures ranging from mice to elephants, and it’s a delight to see the architectural and stylistic contortions needed for this to happen. Further, the “missing otter” case winds up involving a massive conspiracy with noirish undertones that would, minus the animation, make a good adult thriller. Zootopia doesn’t neglect the in-jokes in this regard either, with takeoffs on The Godfather (with a bizarre Mr. Big) and Chinatown.  But Zootopia also uses its animal characters to make some very important human points aimed at both young and old, raising issues of stereotyping characters, in this case based on the species, not the individual. Judy fights the cuddly bunny stereotype, while Nick has become a con artist because that’s what everyone expects of a fox. Zootopia makes its points in a generally subtle, albeit inconsistent manner (it’s okay to make jokes about slow-moving sloths working at the DMV) that never gets in the way of the film’s lively visuals, clever humor, and a catchy song by Shakira (who fittingly plays a rock star named Gazelle in the movie). Zootopia lacks the emotional impact of the best Disney films, but it’s definitely one of the brighter spots in a so-far underwhelming 2016 in theaters.
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Gods of Egypt: Mini-review

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Gerard Butler

A less than godly Gerard Butler

C-No one has ever considered Cecil B. DeMille a restrained director or The Ten Commandments an example of storytelling moderation. But DeMille, Charlton Heston, Yul Brynner, and the rest of the Commandments cast seem like a Masterpiece Theater production of Jane Austen compared to Alex Proyas‘ completely goofy, CGI-laden Gods of Egypt. 

In Proyas’ version of Egyptian mythology, the 8–10 foot tall gods of Egypt had magical powers and actually ruled the country. The evil Set (Gerard Butler) kills his brother Osiris (Bryan Brown), blinds his nephew, the rightful heir Horus (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau), and seizes power. Horus teams up with a human thief Bek (Brenton Thwaites), who recovered one of the god’s missing eyes (don’t ask), to try to regain his other eye and his throne.

Gods of Egypt is a completely nonsensical hodgepodge of myths from around the ancient world, including a Hades-like underworld whose entrance is guarded by the Sphinx. The film plays like a 21st century version of the Italian Sons of Hercules films, minus the cheesy dubbing but with copious amounts of even cheesier CGI effects. None of the actors look the least bit Egyptian (Butler doesn’t even try to disguise his Scottish accent) or show the least bit of restraint. The campiest and most enjoyable performances are by Chadwick Boseman as a fey Thoth, god of wisdom (who requires several do-overs to solve the riddle of the Sphinx), and Geoffrey Rush as a wizened Ra, the sun-god father of Set and Osiris. Gods of Egypt is harmed somewhat by the limitations the PG-13 rating imposed on the amount of blood (the gods actually bleed gold when wounded) and female flesh (courtesy of outfits displaying substantial amounts of cleavage) that could be shown. Still, the film is campy, goofy fun for the first hour. But the CGI effects lack real imagination or quality, and the endless procession of mediocre futuristic sets and giant monsters becomes boring. The Ten Commandments is still an enjoyable four-hour bad movie because it had a simple plot, well-defined characters, and a judiciously sparing use of special effects. The two-hour Gods of Egypt, on the other hand, seems the longer movie because it features a silly yet confusing plot, too many characters, and an increasingly ridiculous over reliance on special effects. As a result, while DeMille’s epic will be with us forever on network TV, Gods of Egypt will soon be entombed with all the other mediocre action films of today. 
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Triple 9: Mini-review

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Woody Harrleson

Woody Harrelson is one of many wasting their time and talent in Triple 9

C-In police lingo, a Code 999 means “Officer down – urgent help needed.” The makers of the new action thriller Triple 9 might well have sent out a Code 999 of their own. For, despite an excellent cast and two dazzling set pieces, Triple 9‘s script needed some urgent rewriting help that never arrived.

The movie starts with a bang as a highly trained crew of crooked cops and ex-military criminals led by Michael Atwood (Chiwetel Ejiofor) pull off an elaborate daylight bank robbery. As cover for an even more dangerous second robbery, the team decide to kill Chris Allen (Casey Affleck), the new partner of Marcus Belmont (Anthony Mackie), one of the crooked cops in the crew. However, Chris’s uncle, Jeffrey (Woody Harrelson) just happens to be the detective investigating the first robbery.

Director John Hillcoat has a cornucopia of acting talent at his disposal in Triple 9, including Kate Winslet as a Russian mobster’s wife calling the shots for the robbers and Aaron Paul and Norman Reedus as two more crew members. In addition, Hillcoat brilliantly stages both the bank robbery and a shootout at an apartment complex (shown in the clip below). These sequences bring to mind the bank robbery scene in Michael Mann‘s Heat, a film that Triple 9 screenwriter Matt Cook undoubtedly tried to emulate. However, Cook’s script is hopelessly muddled as he tries and repeatedly fails to depict the morally ambiguous nature of almost every character in the movie. Triple 9 simply has too many characters competing for too little screen time. Chiewetel Ejiofor is top billed, but in two hours, virtually the only thing the audience learns about him is that he has a son that the Russians are keeping away from him. The plot has the expected twists and double crosses, but the audience will probably be too weary from trying to keep up with the characters to pay much attention. With a script this lackluster and confusing, it’s no surprise that Woody Harrelson comes off best here, livening up nearly every scene with zingers and one-liners. When Harrelson is onscreen or the action is going down, Triple 9 comes alive, but otherwise, it’s a cinematic Code 10—off duty.
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