I had my doubts when I saw it was a Guy Ritchie movie but I was willing to give it the benefit of the doubt and two hours of my time. I'm glad I did. It has an "Ocean's Eleven" pacing at the start, right down to the on screen captions as they describe what they've done for planning. Steal from what works, right?
The woman is a lawyer who specializes in recovering large unrecoverable debts for an equity-type company. She uses not-quite-legal tactics when all other avenues have been exhausted. She's got Henry and Jake as her team (I'm not going to bother with character names), who then do all the wet work. She handles the courtroom and such.
Where does the money come from to set all this up? A very large up front payment from the equity-type company in return for her taking the job. The woman who is hiring her is slimy, as expected from an equity-type executive working her way up the building to higher ranking jobs. Needless to say the two women don't like each other.
Henry does intelligence, Jake does hands-on. The two of them have built up a strong partnership and are completely devoted to the woman lawyer. It's revealed later she got them out of a Chinese prison and they've worked for her ever since.
Between the two of them they set it up so the woman lawyer can go to the evil billionaires island to get the money, and get out. Unlike the last person who tried. They set up three different extraction scenarios and have their own team to do all the work. Of course the evil billionaire controls the island, the police, etc. plus his own private security wet work team.
As the billionaire refuses to pay, she goes after him in court and gradually starts impounding and otherwise getting injunctions against his businesses. She goes after his toys first - the private jet and yacht. Both needed to get on and off the island and meant to piss him off. It works. There's also a scene after the initial meeting where he sends a lot of goons out to kill her but they all get mowed down by her guys/team.
One interesting part here is that it's left ambiguous as to whether or not Henry and Jake are a couple. They dip into it but not enough to say for certain. They may just have worked together long enough that they have that kind of banter. I liked how they left that .. in the grey.
There's an escalation of meetings and court stuff until the evil billionaire gives in and agrees in exchange for her returning all his stuff. She agrees. They part ways. She lets the woman at the equity-type firm know the deal is done and to give him back his stuff.
Smash cut to three months(?) later and the woman lawyer is now in the desert somewhere. Exposition wise she's on the phone trying to get her payment. Both of her companions end up dead and the evil billionaire's head of security bundles her into the SUV. Before they do that she activates the tracker in her watch that she's still wearing.
This was an unexpected twist. The job was done. Normally the movie ends here. But nope. Now there's the issue of the woman lawyer at the equity-type company screwing both of them over. The evil billionaire plans on using the woman lawyer as leverage, only for her to say she also didn't get paid so she's useless for that reason. He leaves her in prison, not happy with not having her for leverage.
Now it's a prison breakout. Henry and Jake scouted the prison for the original job. All the unused equipment is still scattered around the island. They use the plans from earlier in the movie to make it happen. The bad guys are a teeny bit smart in this movie but still rely on cannon fodder for the big shootouts.
Henry and Jake don't accompany the woman when she leaves the island. They kidnap the evil billionaire, put him in a shipping container, and send him to the US.
Henry and Jake try to explain to the woman at the equity-type firm that it's in her best interests to keep her end of the bargain. Then the woman lawyer comes in and drops the big bomb of the evil billionaire turning state's evidence against the equity-type firm for making knowingly illegal loans, specifically her making them. And how the woman lawyer has talked to the bosses on those higher floors about it. She leaves and the phone rings for the woman at the equity-type firm, implying she's going to get called onto the carpet.
Anyway.
The action was tight and mostly believable until the big explosions started. Henry and Jake work well together and they played it convincingly on the screen. Their absolute devotion, and their team's absolute devotion, to the woman lawyer is a weak spot in the story but it's a small weak spot. There's good banter between Henry and Jake, and I'm a sucker for good banter. They're pretty to look at as well.
As I said I was pleasantly surprised by how much I like this movie. I will probably watch it again at home at some point when I need some mindless entertainment, and eye candy.
No comments:
Post a Comment