Movie Review Argylle

Argylle (2024) 

Directed by Matthew Vaughn 

Written by Jason Fuchs 

Starring Bryce Dallas Howard, Sam Rockwell, Henry Cavill, Bryan Cranston, John Cena, Ariana Debose, Dua Lipa, Samuel L. Jackson, Catherine O'Hara

Release Date February 2nd, 2024

Published February 1st, 2024

The high concept premise of Argylle is relatively simple: what would happen if the spy novels written by an unassuming, shut-in, bestselling author, became a reality that forces the writer into the real life world of espionage, violence, and betrayal. Bryce Dallas Howard stars as the hapless best selling author Elly Conway. Elly's high flying spy adventure Argylle has become a worldwide phenomenon all while Elly lives a peaceful, slightly lonely, existence at a lakeside home far from the crowds of admiring readers. Elly's idyllic life of writing and spending time with her beloved cat, Alfie, is upended when she can't think of a final chapter for her fifth book in the Argylle series. 

Suffering from severe writer's block, Elly boards an Amtrak train headed to see her mother, Ruth (Catherine O'Hara) who she hopes will help her snap back into writing mode. Unfortunately, Elly is not going to make it home to mom. On her train ride, Elly finds herself in the company of Aiden (Sam Rockwell), a real life spy who saves Elly's life from a series of attempted assassinations aboard this moving train. Bodies pile up fast as Aiden whipsaws about the train snapping necks and shooting baddies right in the heart while he saves Elly and Alfie from assassination. 

As Aiden will eventually explain, Elly's books are somehow mirroring real world, geo-political situations in which a rogue spy agency is trying outwit a group of good guy spies working to protect the world. Caught in the middle, Elly doesn't know who to trust, Aiden and his CIA pal, played  by Samuel L. Jackson, or the head of a rival group of spies who Elly may or may not already be familiar with. It's a terrific premise and it's all building to a pretty nifty twist until director Matthew Vaughn twists us one too many times leading to a flat finish for an otherwise fleet footed action flick. 

Click here for my review 

Movie Review Freelance

Freelance (2023)

Directed by Pierre Morel 

Written by Jacob Lentz

Starring John Cena, Alison Brie, Martin Csokas, Christian Slater, Juan Pablo Rana

Release Date October 27th, 2023 

Published October 30th, 2023

Freelance stars John Cena as an ex-special forces military man turned suburban-lawyer-dad. Miserable, and on the verge of divorce from his wife, played by Alice Eve, Cena's Mason Pettits' decides to re-enter the world of military security. With the help of his friend, played by Christian Slater, who Wikipedia credits as 'Mason's Boss,' Cena gets a 5 figure paycheck for what should be a cakewalk of a security job. Mason will accompany a disgraced journalist, Claire Wellington (Alison Brie), to some made up South American dictatorship and keep her safe while she interviews the legendary dictator Juan Venegas (Juan Pablo Rana). 

Venegas hasn't given an interview in 10 years and he hopes that this interview will allow him to show how his country is changing. Meanwhile, Mason is no stranger to this country. He was here some 10 years earlier when he and a few fellow soldiers were nearly killed doing a mission. Naturally, Mason assumes it was the dictator who killed several of his fellow soldiers so his role here is a little tense. He has a grudge against Venegas and now he will be in close proximity to him. And hilariousness ensues. 

Oh how I wish hilariousness would ensue. Freelance is a witless action comedy of a very stale variety. If you cannot predict every beat of this deeply derivative movie you have either never seen a movie before or you are just not paying attention. There is nothing remotely original or interesting in Freelance. Bad guys try to overthrow the government, Cena ends up protecting not only the journalist but also the dictator he hates. But surprise, the dictator isn't a bad guy. Indeed, it wasn't even him who ordered Cena's helicopter to be shot down 10 years ago. 

You might be thinking that here is where Christian Slater's character comes back but no. Instead, the movie employs Martin Csokas as the bad guy. Csokas is all sneering malevolence and zero fun as the leader of a rival mercenary gang. Freelance has some grand ambition of being about South American resources being stolen by corporate interests via private armies but it lacks conviction on the issue. The filmmakers simultaneously want credit for mentioning corrupt corporations while also defending the idea of private military contractors as being nothing but heroes picking up paychecks that may or may not be covered in the blood of the oppressed. 

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media

Movie Review Fast X

Fast X (2023) 

Directed by Louis Letterier 

Written by Dan Mazeau, Justin Lin 

Starring Vin Diesel, Jason Mamoa, Tyrese, Charlize Theron, Paget Brewster, John Cena, Michelle Rodriguez, Ludacris, Sung Kang, Jason Statham, Helen Mirren

Release Date May 19th, 2023 

Published May 19th, 2023 

What is there to say about Fast X? If you aren't fully onboard with the utter nonsense that is the Fast and Furious franchise at this point, why are you bothering? I happen to be fully on board for this nonsense. I fell in love with the silly, testosterone fueled nonsense in 2001 and have remained in love with this nonsense as it morphed from being about street racers pulling small scale criminal heists -they literally stole DVD players and VCRs out of semis in the original- to today when everyone is basically an immortal superhero. 

You have to accept a lot of B.S when you accept the Fast franchise. Take, for instance, where we begin in Fast X. Dom (Vin Diesel) and Letty (Michelle Rodriguez) begin the film back in L.A, back in what may be their old neighborhood. These are people who still live with a deep, paranoid fear that people are trying to kill them and they are living exactly where anyone trying to find them will find them, very easily, with little to no effort. 

The movie openly admits this as the plot kicks off with the person who has hunted them for the past two films, Cypher (Charlize Theron), finds their house and knocks on the door. Cypher is battered and bruised. She's bleeding from some sort of wound to her abdomen. She tells Dom and Letty that she sought them out because the person who did this is even more evil than herself. He's so evil that she wants to join their side to fight him. 

That man is Dante Reyes (Jason Mamoa) whose father, Herman Reyes (Joachim De Almeida) was killed during Fast crew's heist of a vault full of cash in Rio De Janeiro, as seen in flashback here and in full in Fast Five. Dante doesn't want to kill Dom, he wants to make him suffer. That means targeting Dom's family and trying to kill anyone who has ever help the Toretto family. Why he doesn't just roll into the L.A suburbs and do his business, I have no idea. 

Instead, Dante, being all kinds of extra, decides to blow up the Vatican and frame Dom's crew for the crime. It's as brazen and silly as that sounds. A portion of Vatican City is destroyed but exposition newscaster, one of the unsung heroes of this franchise, tells us that no one was killed. A giant bomb took out a portion of a massive tourist destination and no one was killed. Everyone in the Fast universe is a superhero. I don't know if this 'no one was killed' nonsense extends to the cops chasing Dom and his crew through the streets of Rome but if they didn't die, there is no death in this universe. 

This sequence is utterly bonkers and I loved it. I did. I loved it. It's total, non-stop, nonsense but it's so much fun. The bomb is a giant ball that rolls out of the back of a semi-truck and will not stop rolling as if Rome were nothing but a tilted table. At one point, the bomb rolls over a gas pump and the pumps explode. Dom uses his car to shield people on the street from the explosion. The bomb continues to roll but is now on fire as Dom chases it in his super-car. It's gloriously stupid and I love it. 

If Fast X lacks, it's due to director Louis Letterier who leans too far into the dour, sourpuss, self-seriousness of Dominic Toretto. Where Justin Lin and F. Gary Gray got how silly this series is and embraced the giddy stupidity, Letterier takes things in the direction that Diesel wants to go, treating the nonsense seriously and threatening to upend the strength of this franchise, how it is embraces its own nuttiness and leans into the criticism of it being the loudest, brainless franchise in Hollywood. 

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media 

Movie Review: Bumblebee

Bumblebee (2018) 

Directed by Travis Knight 

Written by Christina Hodson

Starring Hailee Steinfeld, John Cena, Pamela Adlon, John Ortiz 

Release Date December 21st. 2018 

December 20th, 2018 

Michael Bay did Transformers fans the best possible favor he could do for them by not directing Bumblebee. Bay, who has directed each of the Transformers movies thus far and delivered some of the ugliest and most unwatchable, bad blockbusters of recent memory, stepped aside in favor of director Travis Knight in a move that has single handedly turned this franchise around. Bumblebee is terrific and is the first indication we’ve had that the Transformers could work as a big screen blockbuster. 

(FYI, I don’t care how much money the Transformers movies made, they are all terrible and I hate them, a lot.)

Bumblebee stars Hailee Steinfeld as Charlie, a teenager dealing with the loss of her father and a strained relationship with her mother, Pamela Adlon, who has remarried. Charlie’s love of cars came from her dad and when she fails to fix up a car she and her dad had been working on, she sets her sight upon a broken VW bug at a local junkyard. What she doesn’t know is that her new car is actually the alien robot, Bee-127, a warrior sent to guard the Earth against the evil Decepticons. 

In a prologue, we meet Bee-127 in the midst of a war on his home planet of Cybertron. When the battle appears lost, Bee-127 is sent to Earth to establish a safe landing zone for his fellow Autobots and to keep Earth safe from the Decepticons. Arriving on Earth, Bee is immediately thrust into trouble with members of the military, led by Agent Burns (John Cena). Bee landed in the midst of Burns’ war games in a California forest and was immediately pursued by the military. 

Unfortunately, Bee is also pursued by one of the Decepticons leading to a destructive battle. Bee is eventually left immobilized and taking the shape of the last thing he sees before losing consciousness, an ancient Volkswagen Beetle. That brings us up to date, Bumblebee is set in the 1980’s and well before the action of the Transformers films that precede it. That distance really helps the story and creates a mystery as to Charlie’s fate that lingers throughout the movie. 

One of the many significant failures of Michael Bay’s Transformers movies was the editing which shredded the robot on robot fight scenes into painfully unwatchable catastrophes. The fight scenes in each of the Transformers movies are clattering cacophonies of chaos where you can barely make out what robot is on which side and which one is hitting the other. And then you add the sound which was a punishingly loud mix of awful scoring and metal on metal screeching. 

No such trouble in Bumblebee. By keeping the camera static, for the most part, and keeping the editing at a readable pace, Travis Knight delivers robot on robot fighting that we can see and enjoy as if the robots were remotely real. That’s not to say that Knight reinvented anything, he and his team just appears to have taken more care to craft fight scenes in a fashion that is not offensive to the eyes and ears of the audience. 

Then there are the wonderful characters of Bumblebee. Knight, who broke into the mainstream with the tremendous animated feature Kubo and the Two Strings, takes great pains to give us characters we believe in, sympathize with and care about. Unlike the cartoon figures of the Bay movies who shout and preen and are nearly as unendurable as the fight scenes, Knight’s characters are warm and funny, fully formed human beings with backstories and inner lives we are interested in. 

Hailee Steinfeld is a wonderful young actress who infuses Charlie with a spiky puckishness that is a delight to watch. She’s not saccharine or mopey, she’s a believable teenage girl with agency and strength. You can sense her strength and character from her dialogue and her manner, her care and compassion when Bumblebee is revealed is a lovely character moment. Bay’s Transformers movies have not one single character with the kind of depth or humanity that Charlie exhibits in any one scene in Bumblebee. 

The supporting cast is slightly more broad but not nearly the ugly caricatures that Mr Bay traded on. John Cena brings a forceful energy to his tweener character. Agent Burns is no paper baddie, he has depths to be unveiled. He’s a loyal dedicated and talented soldier and a believable foe for our hero and our heroes true villains, The Decepticons. Cena is also effortlessly funny and charismatic in this role. And, Mr Cena gets the film’s biggest laugh with a reference to the name ‘Decepticons.’ 

Bumblebee isn’t perfect, the opening few minutes on Cybertron rush by a little and have a slightly awkward vibe. But, once Steinfeld’s Charlie is introduced the film improves immeasurably. The character of Bumblebee becomes whole in interacting with Charlie. Acting like a giant alien robot puppy, Bumblebee exhibits vulnerability and strength in equal measure. Where Mr Bay reduced Bumblebee many times to a gag delivery machine, Knight makes Bumblebee a character and quite a good one. 

The biggest difference in Bumblebee and the Transformers of Michael Bay is Travis Knight’s attention to detail. This attention to detail emerges in small, seemingly unimportant moments that take on meaning once you consider how those moments are lacking from the other Transformers movies. The ending is especially rich with attention to detail with a rearview mirror shot that is surprisingly emotional. 

I adore Bumblebee. This movie ranks behind only Black Panther as my favorite blockbuster of the year. This movie is fun, it’s hilarious and it is exciting. Most importantly, it’s the first time I have been able to enjoy the Transformers on the big screen. I was never deeply offended, I didn’t feel like the movie was actively hateful toward the audience and, when I walked out, my eyes and ears didn’t hurt. That alone could have made me admire Bumblebee, but Travis Knight made me genuinely enjoy Bumblebee.

Movie Review 12 Rounds

12 Rounds (2009) 

Directed by Renny Harlin

Written by Daniel Kunka 

Starring John Cena, Aiden Gillen, Ashley Scott, Steve Harris, Brian J. White 

Release Date March 27th, 2009 

Published March 27th, 2009 

There is something to say about a movie as energetic and confident as 12 Rounds. Sure, the movie is by few standards a good movie. The plotting is laughable, the performances are wooden, and the screenplay may have been assembled by monkey's with blenders, but the action is kinetic and attention grabbing. Most interestingly, the star is professional wrestling star John Cena, arguably one of the biggest stars on television at the moment. 

WWE superstar John Cena is the star of 12 Rounds as Danny Fischer, a New Orleans police officer about to stumble on a career making bust. He happens to be in the right place at the right moment to bust an international arms dealer, and all around dirt bag named Miles Jackson (Aiden Gillen). Unfortunately, during the bust Jackson's beloved gal Friday is accidentally killed and the baddie vows revenge on Danny.

One year later, Danny and his partner Hank (Brian White) have made detectives thanks to their big bust but they aren't prepared when Miles escapes from federal custody. Soon after his escape, Mile has kidnapped Danny's beloved girlfriend, Molly (Ashley Scott), and has crafted an elaborate series of challenges for Danny to overcome in order to win her safe return. You could say he has 12 Rounds in this fight in order to save his beloved from a cackling mad man bent on revenge. 

12 Rounds of challenges, in fact, that will have Danny racing about like a maniac fighting fires, stealing cars, and rescuing innocent civilians caught unaware that an international arms dealer has made them pawns in an overly complicated revenge scheme. To say that 12 Rounds is derivative of Die Hard and about a dozen other similar trope heavy action flicks would be an understatement. Aside from John Cena's confidently amateurish performance, 12 Rounds would have nothing going for it that wasn't based on nostalgia for the movies that director Renny Harlin is blatantly ripping off. 

If all of this sounds pretty goofball, well it is. It is goofy and that's ok. That really is what 12 Rounds should be. To attempt to take seriously a movie starring a former WWE champion, whose name isn't Dwayne Johnson, and is directed by schlockmeister Renny Harlin, is a fool's errand. 12 Rounds is silly and perhaps not even silly enough. The film is a little up its own backside in the notion of what we are asked to buy into, but with a bar set so low it's more dimwitted than it is egregious or wholly unwatchable. 

The makers of 12 Rounds know they are not making Shakespeare here, they are barely recreating the glory years of Sly Stallone. Renny Harlin and John Cena fully accept their place in the filmmaking world and that gives 12 Rounds a freewheeling air that is almost cheesy enough to be fun. ALMOST. Sadly, the film overstays its welcome by a good 20 minutes or so and by the time that the big helicopter set finale arrives, the cheese has gone cold. 12 Rounds is a bad movie that sadly fails to transcend into full camp potential. Minus that, it's just merely bad and therefore not something I can fully endorse.

Can John Cena act? By the evidence of his first starring role, no, not really, he's got a lot to learn. That said, Cena appears very confident. Cena radiates confidence, not arrogance, genuine confidence. Cena has self-assurance even as he's trapped in a derivative idiot plot. He's giving this role his all and he has an energy to match the intended spirit of 12 Rounds, if not the actual, dreary, final product of 12 Rounds.

Movie Review: The Marine

The Marine (2006) 

Directed by John Bonito 

Written by Michelle Gallagher, Alan B McElroy 

Starring John Cena, Kelly Carlson, Robert Patrick 

Release Date October 13th, 2006 

Published October 12th, 2006 

WWE films has been in business for just about a year with two features under their belt. The model seems to be Lionsgate or the former Miramax genre arm Dimension. Cheap genre pictures that succeed or fail by the popularity of the WWE superstar assigned the starring role. The first WWE feature See No Evil starring Glen 'Kane' Jacobs cost a mere 15 million dollars to make and is headed for DVD soon already having made returns on its small budget.

The latest WWE feaure, The Marine, is a bigger deal for the WWE because this one stars the standard bearer of the company, World Champion John Cena. Once again the film is a cheaply made genre picture whose key is turning out WWE fans, regardless of whether the film is yet another Ed Wood quality sub-drive in movie.

In Iraq 2006 three marines have been taken hostage and Sgt. John Triton (John Cena) has discovered where they are being held. Though he is ordered to await backup, Triton takes it upon himself to rescue the hostages. Returning safely to base, Triton is a hero but his violation of a direct order has forced commanders to give him a dishonorable discharge.

Returning to his civilian life, with his beautiful wife Kate (Kelly Carlson), Triton finds the life of a regular joe just doesn't agree with him. After John gets fired from his first job, on his first day, his wife suggests they  take a road trip. This fateful decision finds John and Kate at an out of the way gas station in South Carolina just as a group of diamond thieves, lead by Rome (Robert Patrick), have arrived with the cops on their tail. When the thieves engage the cops and kill three people they go on to take Kate hostage. Now John Triton must use his marine training to track down and kill the bad guys and rescue his wife.

The Marine is an old school, 80's style action picture that fires copious amounts of bullets and blows up anything in its path. However, because the film is hemmed in by a PG-13 rating; much of the fun of this level of carnage is left on the cutting room floor. What is left on the screen is a goofy faux action picture that leaves star John Cena dangling in the wind employing his wrestling skills to provide the films only jolts of fun.

Cena, the current WWE champion, is not a great actor. That could probably be taken for granted but his limitations become clear by the fact that though he is the star of the picture, Cena has fewer lines than top bad guy Robert Patrick and even Patrick's goofball henchmen played by Jerome Ehlers and Anthony Ray Parker. It's clear that the edit of The Marine was engineered to hide Cena's shortcomings as an actor and that meant cutting as much of his dialogue as possible. 

There is so little that Cena can do onscreen, aside from run and fight, that the minor henchman played by Anthony Ray Parker is given as much screen time and even a bizarre monologue. Parker is given a scene all to himself, early in the picture, the subject of which is his love of racial conspiracy and his hatred of rock candy. How awful must Cena have truly been that director John Bonito felt Parker's scenes should be left in and much of Cena's dialogue was cut.

There is little appeal to The Marine beyond kitsch and a touch of nostalgia. There is a distinct Ed Wood or even early Russ Meyer quality to The Marine that is entertaining in a so bad it's good kind of way. Had the filmmakers had the guts to give the film a slightly bigger body count and some naked female flesh we could be talking about a camp classic. There is a nostalgia for the old school 80's action flick, ala Commando or Rambo 2 & 3, that some might find charming in an ironic way.

Robert Patrick does goose the film a bit with a performance reminiscent of Christopher Walken at his most loopy but without the self awareness. Patrick is actually committed to this goofball performance where Walken always has the slightest wink to let the audience know that he's in on the joke. Patrick is not in on the joke that is The Marine and thus, though he is at times bizarrely entertaining, he looks as foolish as the rest of the cast and crew of The Marine.

A hint of self awareness; a slight level of intended kink, and maybe there could be some hope for The Marine. Unfortunately, the film is played straight as if it were a semi-serious attempt to thrill action audiences. That does give the film a slight kitsch appeal but the film is not smarmy enough to take advantage of the kitsch. That leaves just a bunch of explosions and the WWE champion who is not unappealing but should probably limit his acting to faking punches in the ring.