Scream 5, Scream 6 - My Take (Spoilers)

 

Another late set of reviews but because of the new one I figured I could get away with it. I reviewed the first four in a previous post and this gets us current with the 2022 and 2023 releases.

I chose to separate them into two posts not for length but because they're different types of movies. Let me explain.

The first four are a contiguous set. They tie back into each other, the stories interweave, they're tight. The next two are the attempt to hand off the franchise to new characters. Notice that word "attempt". I won't say it's a bad thing to do because it can get really stale to have the same things happening with the same characters over and over and over, even if the ghostface killer(s) are never the same people with the same motivations. The victim group is what needs refreshing, especially once they've been thinned out.

Unfortunately this didn't work out well, in my opinion. I have nothing against the characters they created and the main one has a pretty interesting backstory. But it was missing the spark.

In the 5th movie they still had all three of the main characters from the beginning. The directors made a deliberate choice to kill one of them and do it as a perma-kill. This falls back to the "no one is safe" concept but it is still a divisive topic in the fandom today. I was even sad that it happened. I liked that character.

These movies start getting into overkill and sloppiness, which are kind of endemic for the time. The kills weren't just several stabs - they were dozens of stabs. That much stabbity-stabbity all but ensured that the prop knives were more obvious and the ability for people to linger and survive such things was kind of an eye roll time. The sloppiness came when they departed from canon.

They strayed from canon in a couple of ways. One - the ghostface killers didn't always have that direct personal connection to the people they killed. Two - the ghostface killer did things that they hadn't done unmasked in the past. Those may seem like small issues but when you're dealing with an established franchise with fervid fans and you're taking over from a beloved director you gotta walk a fine line. You want to make it yours, you want to pay credit to the original director/creator, and you want to make a good enough movie they let you make more.

Of course this isn't always true *cough cough Batman Forever cough* but in this case I think they did. There's a crapton of Easter Eggs in them that reference Wes Craven, enough that it's kind of overkill in my opinion. I think they would have been better off sticking closer to his core themes than putting in bird pictures on the set because he liked birds.

Again, I get it. Rebooting the franchise with new characters to take the lead and using the legacy ones for continuity and nostalgia. Plus using the legacy characters adds a patina of legitimacy to the newer movies. There were big boots to fill and this is one way to add some padding. Of course killing off one of the legacy characters may seem like it was the wrong thing to do but it was absolutely the right thing to do.

Back to the overkill and sloppiness thing. The kills were much gorier and I think part of that is changing opinions in movie rating boards. It's also part of the meta where the reboot has to be MORE. The sloppiness has to do with things like the ghostface killer getting whapped upside the face with a frying pan and shaking it off, etc. There was a lot of stuff where the violence level was upped but the effects were minimized. It's again a systemic thing but it also makes the restraint of the first four movies more obvious.

The new movie is out. It's why I made myself watch all of these in a short period of time. From the trailers and from what I've heard it seems like they're going to pretend these two movies never happened and go back to the original premises. The trailers promise more of the thriller aspect and I expect there to be some overkill because it's expected. I'll do a review on that one, of course.

As with the first movies I won't be watching these again. It's not that I don't think they're not good because they're still good enough to be entertaining and keep you wondering who the ghostface killers are and why they're doing it. It's for the same reason as the first - when you know the ending to movies like this you need a reason to watch them again. You know the ending so all the tension is gone.

Scream, Scream 2, Scream 3, Scream 4 - My Take (Spoilers)

 

Yeah. I shouldn't have to explicitly state that there's spoilers, given that the movies were released in 1996, 1997, 2000, and 2011. I did because I hadn't seen them until this week and neither had my friend who was over for the (short) marathon. I've said before that I'm woefully behind on my pop culture movie viewing.

This isn't going to be a standard review of each movie. I don't want to type that much and it's not what this particular post is about. This is about the franchise and an overall review.

Note that this is the first four movies of the franchise. That's important. These are the ones that are the franchise. There will be more of that in the next review. These, even with the long gap between 3 and 4, are a cohesive whole. They're also the ones directed by Wes Craven so that has a lot to do with it.

First and foremost I found these not just entertaining but good. I'm not even saying "good for a slasher movie". I'm saying good without qualifications.

The entire series builds on itself and draws you in with all kinds of continuing meta references. There's a movie within a movie (the in-movie "Stab" movies) and those really start getting meta when they're doing recursive references. That's a very interesting take on the whole concept of life vs movies, within a movie. It's confusing, it's a little head-tilt at times, and it works for these movies.

I watched the first three with a friend and we were both trying to figure out who the killer was, and then who the killers were once we figured out that it's two people doing the killing. Just like in the movies we would go back and forth on it. We had a pretty good average of getting it right eventually.

The concept of the ghostface killer being a role and not a person I believe was unique or very new when these started. In later movies it's referenced as meta, where there's not a singular killer to stitch the movies together. I think it was a good choice because it makes every movie a new thriller and mystery to be solved. They did tie together motives so there's continuity there beyond the three surviving characters.

One thing you need to get past, fast, is how characters who have been very well stabbed and slashed continue to function. They're also given rather minimal medical assistance about half the time. This has to be done to keep the action going. When the story calls for it the same wounds will disable one character but let a different one keep on truckin'. Once you can accept that and not keep saying "Oh come on!" to the screen you'll be happier.

Watching them as a marathon is darn amusing because Dewey's moustache gets fuller with each movie. That had to be a deliberate choice, given how it started. And it's darn amusing without being referenced in the movies in any way.

This set of movies is well constructed, well structured, has strong callbacks to previous ones without being held back, and has legacy characters that keep on going in each one. They all get injured, they all heal, they all come back again. It's pretty cool since at least two of them are or became pretty well known actors during this time.

It seems like doing opening cameos in the movies within movies became a thing because there's some big names involved. The first movie had Drew Barrymore on the poster when she was A Big Thing and then she was the first kill. This was done intentionally to show that no one is off limits and frees up the movies to bring in and then take out anyone they deem necessary, or amusing.

I chose these four to "review" together because this is the core of it and the new Scream 7 goes back to these roots. The ending of Scream 4 sets things up for what's going to be discussed in the next post about Scream 5 and Scream 6. Overall they didn't do a bad job on the setup and it didn't feel like they were throwing in the towel.

Good writing, good acting, and consistency are what I would say make these movies good for this long. Of course people will disagree because, well, they like to disagree. Let 'em. The movies specifically didn't do much with topical subjects so they don't feel dated. The technology is older but that makes it more fun to yell at the screen and then see the technology evolve over time as newer movies were made. Even then newer technology didn't solve problems. It was used to replace the technology that was used previously. Landlines to cell phones is a big one, even though landlines seem to be one of the consistent things in all of them.

I don't know that I would watch them again. Now that I know what's gone on and read the IMDB trivia there's no mystery or surprises. Even the jump scares won't hit as hard. That's the problem with mysteries and thrillers - once you know the ending there's not much to draw it into rewatching. Unless you get into the fandom, which is also addressed within the meta of these.

My one big beef is that ghostsface uses unlimited shiny stainless steel knives. First, the unlimited thing. Second, the stainless steel thing. Everyone rightly rags on movies where there's shootouts with unlimited ammo and the same holds for when a character has an unbelievable number of the same kind of knife. The shiny stainless steel is just me being annoyed because those crap knives don't hold an edge. But they shine on camera and that's more important here. I can still gripe to myself about it.

What The Hell Kind of Blog Is This, Rastl?

 

So yeah. There's a whole lotta movie review and a whole not a lot of hobby stuff going on. I'm not exactly apologizing.

I've got the AMc A-List movie subscription, I'm retired, and I live literally two minutes from the theater. I get to see up to 4 movies per week and darnitall if I'm not going to get my money's worth. I don't see everything and there's going to be a slowdown for a while due to what's being released. But I like giving my reviews so I put them on my blog.

Here's where I get a bit real. I've been keeping personal stuff off of here but decided to start putting a curated part of my life back online. Why not? If people aren't interested, they can skip the post.

I didn't get to ease into retirement. One day I was working, the next I was retired. That happened ten years ahead of schedule. I'm not complaining, don't get me wrong. I highly recommend being retired if you can manage it. I can manage it from the practical side but I've had problems doing it from the mental side. When there's no pressure to do anything then things don't get done. It's simple, at least for me. That's why my hobby blog is missing hobby stuff.

I will also say that I'm at a point now where I will be talking to my doctor about adjusting my meds. I think I'm high on the anti-anxiety side since so many of the things that I was anxious about no longer exist and I have enough of a social network I feel less uncomfortable messing around with my medications. I'm thinking that the overbalance of anti-anxiety is pushing the depression. And depression means I want to do things but I don't.

So that's why there's not that much on the hobby side. It's not that I don't want to do them. It's that I'm not set up to do them. I haven't had my 3D printers running since I moved and I'm just getting that back. The house is so not unpacked. My painting area is in enough of a state I can use it but it's not nearly what I want it to be. I can't use the gaming table I got because there's stuff on it that I haven't dealt with. I've had some help but it hasn't been enough to finish anything. That's why I'm saying it's the depression.

I do want to finish painting the tanks, especially since the next pieces are coming out. That means really dealing with at least part of the office so I have a place to process resin prints. I have projects stacked up after those are done and I'm looking forward to them. But I'm also going to keep chipping away at the paint area so that it's finally in a usable state and can stay that way.

The next thing will be testing some skin tones for orks. Not my ork army, mind you. For a Combat Patrol box I was given and that doesn't fit into my ork army so I can paint it different. After that is assembling the box set. After that is painting the box set. I'm not sure what happens then but that's plenty to keep me busy going forward.

There will still be movie reviews. I like doing that. I need to push myself and do more hobby stuff. I think I'm just going to schedule it like I would any other thing so that I have to make the decision to do it or not rather than a nebulous idea of what to do. I'd say it would help if I painted at the game stores but I do not like to paint anywhere but my own area and that's that.

Anyway. Expect more tank pictures since they're getting closer to getting color on them. Then the post showing all the ork skin tone tests. There should be some interesting stuff in there. At least I hope so. Then the box set. And while I'm doing all that I get to think about the next project in line. I have enough of the freaking things.

GOAT - My Take (Spoilers)

 

I've wanted to see this since I saw the trailers. I like a good animated movie. I like simple entertainment. I did not ask my movie buddy if he wanted to join me. I know better.

I liked how they kept a lot of the animal traits for the characters without losing the anthropomorphic aspects. They were animals first and had the humanoid traits second. They also took the time to develop not only the primary but the secondary characters.

At heart this is yet another underdog sports movie. It just happens to involve animals instead of people. But those animals are so darn likeable (mostly) that you accept them for who they are.

My favorite is still Jett the cat. Having her sitting on the bench lapping out of a bowl of water instead of using a sports bottle was perfect. Using water spritzers to correct her behavior was also a chef's kiss.

There's the standard crew of characters you would expect - the low esteem coach, the greedy owner, the anxious player, the low self-esteem player, the insecure player, the weird player. And as you would expect the intent is to forge them into a team using the publicity stunt character of the goat.

I will say, thankfully, they did not overuse the goat "bahhh" and well they could have. It was done correctly and with restraint. Everything seemed to be fine-tuned to use to maximum advantage and stay just on this side of the line for not making it annoying.

All the sports tropes are here plus the whole big vs little thing. There's the down to earth goat who dreamed of playing but the game was never meant for anyone but the big animals. He still practices and finds what he can do well. He also finds out what the weaknesses are of playing against the big animals. It takes some help from the team for him to figure out the way to use what he does best.

Jett is the aging superstar who desperately wants to win the trophy. She's been the one taking charge, leaving the coach out in the cold. She, along with the rest, figure out how to be a team.

There's a single protagonist and that helps keep everyone focused on the goal. There's plenty of other animals on other teams but this one is the only one that has a personal beef with the team so it keeps the story tightly focused on that. He's a star player, of course, so it's important for them to beat him.

Like so many of these movies the main character - the goat - lost his family. Father was never in the picture, mother died when he was younger. I kind of dislike how often that card gets played. He's got a found family in the diner where he did delivery but still, it feels cheap to do that. They bring it up at appropriate times how she wanted him to play and dream big. It's his inspiration and he writes it on his shoes.

The various themed arenas are interesting and the games are fun to watch. The team owner is quite literally a pig so calling her that when she sells off the team just when they're going to the finals isn't out of line. That one has a "Major League" feel to the story aspect. It makes sense from a financial perspective to take a losing team that's doing well and sell it tho. The piggy part is that she sold the franchise and none of the players are going with. She tells this to Jett (captain) and Goat hears it. They disagree on whether or not to tell the team repeatedly. She says no, he says yes.

The final game involves the player they all hate. He plays dirty and injures Jett. At that point they tell the team what's happening and they decide to go all out to win anyway. Jett has a knee injury and is out of the game but shows up to play more as a distraction. The other team puts more players on her, letting the rest of the underdog team play to their best advantage. It goes down to the wire and of course, the underdog team wins.

They're still being sold so their press conference isn't really happy. Until the weird player shows he bought the team, well, actually won it from the other owner playing some odd card game with cards from all kinds of different games. So everyone is happy. Redemption happens where it needs to happen and where it doesn't they stay the way they are.

It's got enough going where kids will be entertained by the animals and parents can enjoy the rather good story. I recommend it.

How To Make A Killing - My Take (Spoilers)

 

This was a Screen Unseen and it was one I wanted to see based on the trailers. It looked interesting. It also took me looking up the actor after I saw the movie to realize that the main character was the main character in "The Running Man". That doesn't matter unless you have opinions about him.

This starts with him in a prison cell, sentenced to death in a few hours, talking to a priest and laying out what happened.

The premise is simple. He's the heir to a fortune but his mother was disavowed, but not disinherited. Not really. She made a life for herself and when she got sick none of the family did anything for her, which set the path for her son's plan to make it right. She told him to have the life he deserved and it was a theme as he grew up. She didn't get buried in the family tomb either.

When he was a kid he had a crush on a girl and after his mother died and he went into the foster system they didn't see each other again. It was more of a fade away but that was the end result. He went on to get a job he liked doing deliveries for a custom tailor shop.

When he was told he was being moved to a warehouse job so the owner's son could have his job he got to thinking about what his life should have been, and what was in the way.

The bulk of the movie is him finding each relative and offing them in some way that looks accidental. Then showing up at the funeral to see the coffin being put into the tomb. He never gloats or lets them know who he is. The FBI check on him after the second relative is gone, more as a procedure than an investigation. He says he doesn't know that he's an heir, which is quite the lie.

At this point the old crush shows up again and she's getting married. She dangles herself in front of him and keeps him on the hook.

He meets his uncle and the guy has genuine remorse for what happened and how his mother was treated. He gives him the job his recently deceased nephew had and suddenly he's on track to have a nice life. He knows he's a nepo hire but so was the nephew. At this point he also meets someone and starts having a nice life with her. Well. She was the girlfriend of the second one he killed but she wasn't right for him and was going to leave him anyway. But it works.

He takes out another one while he's working his way at his real job and the old crush shows up again, keeping him on the hook.

The uncle passes away naturally and this one is the only time he's upset. It also means that there's only one person left to deal with and that's the patriarch who kicked out his pregnant mother. But at this point he doesn't seem that interested. The FBI show up again and he now knows he's in the much shorter line of heirs but there's nothing to pin on him.

The crush now puts his nuts in a vice. She got a hunch that he was behind all the killings and had him followed. She had pictures. Her price was money since her husband didn't have as much as she wanted. If he didn't get it to her, she'd give the pictures to the police.

This is the same day as his engagement party. He also gets an invitation to dinner with the patriarch. So much going on! The soon-to-be fiancé expects him at the party. The crush wants the money. He wants his chance to talk to the man who didn't help his mother.

He embezzles the money to pay the crush and brings it to her husband's office. He says he doesn't care about the money because she's just going to use it to divorce him. There's a bit of a scuffle because our guy is upset about the whole evening.

He goes to the patriarch in the huge mansion and what happens is that they guy knows what he's been doing and plans on killing him first. So there's some indoor hunting going on and using the archery his mother taught him he takes out the patriarch in self-defense.

He's got the money. He's got his girlfriend. At his big party the FBI arrest him for the murder of the crush's husband, which he actually didn't do. But his fingerprints were on the letter opener that he'd shoved out of the way. Funny how life works.

The crush shows up while he's in jail and says she's got a suicide note but she's got a price and that's everything he has. He signs it over and has to hope she'll come through. She does at pretty close to the last minute and he's cleared.

His fiancé is waiting for him in the parking lot. She's there to give him the locket with the lock of his mother's hair, which she gives to him with a decent amount of velocity before she drives away. The crush is there in a very nice car now suiting her station to pick him up. He gets in the car. It ends with them driving through the gates of his family's estate and her smiling at him. He got the life he deserved.

This was a comedy with a healthy dose of nihilism. It needed both to work. It started with comedy then gradually introduced the nihilism until that's where it ended. There's a ton of moral lessons in there that weren't put out in the forefront so it was a more subtle movie than it could have been and I applaud the restraint. If you like that kind of mix then you'll enjoy this.

Cold Storage - My Take (Spoilers)

 

I went into this one expecting to be entertained. It's not a genre that lends itself to high art.

I was entertained. It's a good mix of horror and comedy. That's a difficult balance and they achieved it. I think a big part was that the main characters all acted intelligently in the situations. That let them continue the story and add humor without it being at their expense.

It starts with a part of Skylab being left in the Australian outback after it broke up. Turns out someone found it, put it in front of their store, and charged admission to look at it. Sounds about right. But then there's a phone call made to an army call center that there's a problem. That sets up the situation.

The army calls in specialists who take a look. Time and cleaning have scratched up the damaged tank enough to create microfissures. The tank contained something nasty they wanted to study in space and it brought it back. The stuff got through the microfissures, infected everyone in the town, and they all exploded as it tried to spread.

Everything goes to heck when some of the goo gets into the boot tread of the scientist who got a sample and then into her system. They're in the proper protective gear otherwise. She gets infected and does what she knows she needs to do, with a 9mm. They blow up the tank and get the heck out of there.

The sample is put into a government storage facility with all the necessary safeguards - underground, pressurized, temperature controlled, etc. and then forgotten. The facility is abandoned then sold to become a storage unit facility. Cut to present day.

I might get out of sequence here but it all works either way.

The manager is, of course, a jerk. He's into fencing stolen goods and being obnoxious to the employees. He tells the overnight guy coming on shift that there's some noise to look into and that there's a new girl starting and he's got her on walk and lock check duty. Of course he makes sexist remarks about her.

A customer comes in and heads to her storage unit. She's an old lady and once she's in her unit she pulls the door shut and gets out a gun. She's talking to a picture of what turns out to be her husband and it's their anniversary. She puts up the gun and then decides to take a nap before doing more. Remember her.

The guy hears the noise but doesn't pay much attention since it's an intermittent ping. She and he get to talking, they hear it, they locate it behind drywall, and decide to check it out. She's more eager for it than he is but he goes along with it.

The noise is an alert that there's a problem with one of the government storage units, of course the one with the ick. That alerts the army call center who then contacts the guy who found it the last time. He's retired now but has been keeping an eye on things and writing up reports and contingencies that no one bothers with. The girl who takes the call decides to help out more than the officer on duty wants to do (there's a beef between him and the guy who found the stuff) and reads his last report. She's willing to get him what he needs to fix it. All they talk about is item numbers on the list, not what they correspond to. Item Seven is noted a few times.

Back at the storage facility they break through the wall to find the control display and the alarm that's going off. It's in a sublevel they didn't know existed and the way there is down a two story ladder down a tunnel. After more coaxing they decide to head down. They find the unit without a problem, read the label with the army department acronym that they have no idea what it is, and go inside. There's ick growing on the walls and they find a bunch of rats in a pile infected with the ick. They intelligently get out and close the door again, taking note of the acronym.

Now for the not so smart secondary character. Her ex and the father of her daughter shows up and is sitting in his car, upset. The reason for his upset is in the trunk and he's waving a gun around. There's a thump from the trunk and we find it to be a dead cat. Except that it's not dead even with half its head gone (not a pretty thing if you like animals) and it runs up the building to impale itself on the top of a light post, and explode. It got the ick while the car was in the parking lot we find out later. He's infected as are some nearby deer.

The two of them go back upstairs and call the department. They get patched through to the same person who has been helping the original guy. Now it's all tied together. They know not to touch the stuff, like they needed to be told, and that someone would be coming out to deal with it. A nice change of pace from how these normally go.

The infected deer walks into the facility, wanders around, then explodes in the lobby. No one gets infected. The baby daddy is wandering around looking for the girl. The ick has gotten smarter about how to infect humans and he's trying direct contact. The two of them hide in a storage unit while he zombie walks around looking for them.

The official guy finds out he's the only one who's going to fix this and his partner gets him what he needs but doesn't go with. The army is sending him more as a placate thing than taking it seriously. But he gets what he asked for and is on the ground to help. A problem is that it spreads faster in water and a storm is approaching so now there's a time element. Not a bad thing.

Wow. I'm doing the whole screenplay here. I'll try to shorten things up.

The manager comes back with his friends to take a bunch of TVs out of a unit to fence. They get infected by baby daddy and the overnight guy is smart enough to slide the lock so they're trapped in the storage unit. The manager lets them out and now it's two of them and three infected. Well. And one who saw what was going on and wisely decided to bug out. The manager moves the infected ones out at gunpoint and the other uninfected one ends up slipping into the exploded deer.

The army guy is there now and getting the two of them to help him out. They get protective gear and they also get the job of planting the small nuclear weapon to deal with the problem. The reason for that is the guy got a back injury in the original situation and can't do it himself. He'll keep everyone inside while they do their thing and get out. He makes a very good point about the need to kill people in cold blood just on the suspicion that they might be infected. They choose to plant the bomb instead.

There's another time element in that the bomb has a timer, of course. And it's on the fritz so it isn't exact. But they have enough time to plant it and get out. At least that's what their led to believe. The army guy takes out the tires on all the vehicles in the parking lot except his own and waits to do the same with anyone but those two coming out of the facility.

One of the infected people breaks away and the old lady has come out of her storage unit after hearing noise. She wisely shoots the infected one when she sees the ick. Then she gets out of there, giving the gun to the guy. The manager and all the rest end up dead. The army guy hurt his back so he's on the ground. The two of them get the bomb placed and find out the army guy started the timer back when he gave it to them so now they're moving fast to get out.

The army guy's partner shows up and helps him into the vehicle just as the two of them run out of the storage facility. They don't get shot. The four of them drive off and drive just ahead of the nuclear explosion that's taking out the underground stuff. They're not too worried about using a nuke because it's deep enough underground that it will be mostly contained on the surface with the bad stuff being underground. Sure.

The army girl who's been helping shows up in the army guy's hospital room to introduce herself and they have a little chat about what happened and why she went against orders. The commanding officer who didn't take it seriously is on the news trying to explain why there was a nuclear explosion in the middle of nowhere and it wasn't going well. The guy and girl are sitting in the park playing with her daughter.

Everyone was smart and got their happy ending. Then they show some deer grazing and you remember that several deer were in the explosion radius but only one was in the facility. They went a little gratuitous by having the deer throw up at the camera but hey, they had to have their fun too. There could be a sequel if this does well enough. The only expensive talent is Liam Nielson so they could make it happen.

It was fun. Having everyone be smart was a refreshing change so that it made me more invested in seeing who got through to the end. The obnoxious manager was an obvious "not gonna make it" and it was more a matter of how and when, which is fine. Mixing up the ick with the comedy parts was well done and I actually liked all the characters, even the old lady you see so briefly.

I want to say this is a movie you can point to and show that just because it's a horror type movie it can be more than people getting infected and things blowing up. There can be tension, humor, and strong characters. A pleasant surprise indeed.

Crime 101 - My Take (Spoilers)

 

I saw this one in IMAX and I'm glad I did. My movie buddy has been going to more of them with me and we have different tastes, which makes for fun after movie conversation.

This is your basic car chase jewelry heist movie. There's not much more to say about it. There's times when it drags through angst, scenery shots, too long situation setups, etc. but it's still a car chase jewelry heist movie.

I have to say that of the characters/actors there was uneven character development and uneven usage of actors. Let me explain.

Halle Barry's character is the most developed. She works at a high end insurance company and finds out that she's never getting the promised partner spot because she's too old. They use pretty young women to get contracts. She finds this out after admittedly screwing up while trying to get a billionaire to sign on for insuring his stuff and his wedding. It shows her spiraling down into making a bad decision because she's upset and rightly so.

Mark Ruffalo's character is the police detective who's gotten the robbery pattern and no one believes him. His boss is trying to get him to go along with the department line, both on that and on covering up dirty cops. He figures out he's at a decision point in his life.

Chris Helmsworth does as well as he can as a socially awkward thief with a conscience. He does his research, he avoids violence, he only takes what's insured. The awkwardness is really overdone and tied back to his time in the foster system. This comes out when he finds a girlfriend, literally by accident. She forces him to open up.

Barry Keoghan gets the short end of the character development stick. He doesn't have much to work with and while he tries, there's just nothing there.

Nick Nolte is all but unrecognizable and unintelligible. Luckily he's barely in the mix.

Chris does the research to steal jewelry, does the crime, and Nick fences the goods. He's nominally in charge so when Chris gets to the point of wanting to be done with it he's the one who brings in Barry to do a job that Chris won't. Somehow all the research he did is available to the other guy. Dunno.

The whole thing goes through Mark's detective working diligently to find Chris and gets a hit from a tiny bit of blood that was left - the first thing ever left at one of the scenes. They do show how careful Chris is not to leave evidence by having him exfoliating skin and rubbing out stray hair plus wearing colored contacts since his eyes are all that's visible in the ski mask he wears, but then he's not wearing gloves when he's touching things so there's that.

Barry is shown as far less controlled and willing to use violence when he does the job that Chris wouldn't do. It sets him up for being kinda not the kind of person you want working on high risk jobs that require control and precision. But there you go.

Mark's closing in, Chris's girlfriend is getting pushy, Halle decides to take Chris up on his offer to split the heist from her company then gets cold feet and brings in Mark. Barry is also going to go for the same stuff so that's the big showdown.

The ending isn't exactly what I expected. Mark takes the place of the courier with the diamonds that will be paid for in cash, by the billionaire as wedding favors. He uses fake diamonds from a previous case that he gets illicitly because he's suspended from duty for a previous thing that wasn't anything he did. Chris takes the place of the driver so the two of them talk, with Mark knowing who Chris is but Chris not knowing who and what Mark is. Barry sets himself up to get into the room to take the jewels and money.

The guns come out. Barry shoots the billionaire when he's making a fuss then aims at Mark who has a gun now. Chris also has a gun and is pointing it at Mark. Chris ends up shooting Barry because he was going to shoot Mark, the detective. Chris is very upset about this since it's violence.

Mark cleans everything up. He takes the diamonds, tells everyone that he shot Barry, Chris wasn't there, and that nothing happened when the police get there. The billionaire is fussy but his fiancé is surprisingly practical about following instructions and putting him in his place. 

Chris drives out of town but goes back for his girlfriend. Mark gives diamonds to Halle, who had quit in a most satisfying manner. Chris left his classic car for Mark who had said he'd wanted one like it during their conversation. I think Chris also gives the detective the information to bust Nick so there's that end tied off. So everyone gets their happy ending, so to speak.

Of course they don't say anything about how Halle is going to fence these huge diamonds to get money. They don't say how the suspended detective gets through with a fatal shooting. I'm guessing he also kept some diamonds and is now going to retire since he's disillusioned with the police force. The ending is kind of sloppy for those reasons.

I will say that Mark Ruffalo has some of the most incredible bedhead I've seen in a long time.

Watching Chris Helmsworth not be swaggeringly arrogant and confident was interesting. It got a little old because his physical traits were fidgeting and not making eye contact. They were overdone to make sure everyone noticed them.

Halle got punched in the face by Barry as part of her giving up information and honestly that was the absolute worst black eye makeup I've seen in a movie. It started out with some dark coloring and within a couple of days it was barely there. No swelling, nothing. Just some smeary smokey eye makeup so that she could take off her sunglasses to show she had a "black eye". Terrible.

Then again this isn't the kind of movie you go to for deep meaning. There's some beautiful shots of the 101 highway snaking through the city with the cars. There's the classic staggered traffic for when there's car chases and motorcycle stuff. There's not a lot else to do but sit back and watch the pretty people in the pretty city doing .. stuff.