One Hour Movie Reviews Presents Review #002: American Made

One Hour Movie Reviews Presents:

Review #002 – American Made

Released: September 29^th, 2017

Viewed: September 29^th, 2017 – 7:40 PM

Writing start time: September 29^th, 2017 – 9:54 PM

Tom Cruise has another vehicle but, spoilers, he doesn't run in this one.

Tom Cruise stars in American Made, a movie in which Cruise plays American pilot Barry Seal who is asked by the CIA to begin serving the USA by using his piloting skills to spy on Those Dirty Commies in 80's Central America. Cruise gets plenty of face time in the camera as he narrates to the audience in a framing device to make sure the audience doesn't fall too far behind, especially those who can watch R-rated movies but are too young to remember the Cold War. Even though the film is “tell” heavy with the narration there is plenty to show here and what is never shown is a good guy.

Like any good spy movie all of the players are shady or just looking out for number one and Cruise gets to bounce between them all in an upwards trajectory that takes him from an ordinary airline pilot to a fabulously wealthy smuggler. Instead of the cloak and dagger spyworks and heightened martial arts found in the recent also Cold War era Atomic Blonde we get a zoomed in focus of a profiteer in a whole different kind of battlefield. The movie is a period piece with many trappings of the late 70's and early 80's brought to life but this film exists primarily so Cruise can tell a story and it's a good one to hear.

Surrounding Cruise's character is his expanding family including his wife Lucy, played by Sarah Wright, and her brother JB, played by Caleb Landry Jones. Wright does a great job standing alongside Cruise and avoiding getting caught in his shadow. JB is effective as a Southern punk that presents some real complications for Cruise's character and raises the stakes of the plot considerably. Nobody is a hero here but the relationship between Cruise's and Wright's characters manages to give the audience a touchstone and gives us characters to root for among all of the scum and villainy.

The other standout note of this feature is the cinematography. Filming aerial scenes can't be easy but what little flight choreography and drama needs to exist the movie delivers with aplomb. Several takeoff and landing sequences also manage to deliver some genuine tension. I've seen enough planes dip below frame only to zoom at the camera with all of the important characters on board safely more times than I can count but we get some originality with the framing and you can really hear and feel planes getting pushed to their limits for our viewing pleasure. Great job.

This movie isn't one for this history books even though it is a history lesson. The pacing, acting, viewing and listening are all great and, hey, in these times seeing more jabs at our government is always an additional bonus. Three stars for American Made; it's a good story told well and I'll recommend it to you.

One Hour Movie Reviews Presents Review #001: Kingsman: The Golden Circle

One Hour Movie Reviews Presents:

Review #001 – Kingsman: The Golden Circle

Released: September 22, 2017

Viewed: September 23, 2017 7:10 PM

Writing start time: 10:30 PM

Kingsman: The Golden Circle is the sequel to 2014's Kingsman: The Secret Service, an action movie which surprised me with its originality and fun. I was excited to see that the universe of the Kingsmen would get revisited, and more importantly to me, expanded upon in its sequel.

The original movie featured the Kingsmen, a super spy organization that both winked at and embraced the absurdities of the Tuxedo and Martini spy flicks of old, not the least of which the James Bond franchise, which itself is acknowledged in-universe several times. It featured Taron Egerton as Eggsy, a lower class street tough with lots of potential, who is plucked from his situation by Galahad, played by Colin Firth, who owes a debt to Eggsy's family. The movie had a good theme of potential trumping social class with a scathing rebuke of the complacency of governments towards violence as a means to an end. It also has a scene where a multitude of heads explode in cadence to Pomp and Circumstance. No, really.

The marketing for the sequel promised a movie that carried the same beats as the first but expanded on its universe. In some ways this movie succeeds in fulfilling that promise but it does so with less confidence and finesse than the first. The Golden Circle introduces the Statesmen, an American counterpart spy agency that uses a laid back cowboy aesthetic as a foil to the stuffy British upper class motif of the Kingsmen. This gives us a new set of characters to explore but very little is done with them. It's nice to see Jeff Bridges, Halle Berry and even Channing Tatum as core members of this new group but none of their characters get a chance to exceed two dimensions.

Even the Kingsmen have a hard time achieving much depth. Eggsy himself completed his character arc in the first movie and is left to float along here. Galahad is back and he is given little to do except to provide callbacks to the first film. Mark Strong's character, Merlin, the tech wizard/drill sergeant of the Kingsmen, has character beats that fall flat and are completely unearned. The saving graces are the villain, Poppy, played by Julianne Moore, a drug cartel kingpin that wants to use capitalism to legalize her stake in the drug trade and an extended celebrity cameo that saying too much would give away the game.

Poppy's ambitions make a pretty big political statement, especially in the face of a certain government's response to it and, honestly, if this theme was properly explored it might have made for a more engaging conflict and a more interesting, but completely different, movie in its own right. Unfortunately, said evil plan imperils millions of lives so the heroes must step in to save the day and any potential there is lost.

Saving the day in a big way through awesome and sometimes hilarious set pieces was the major reason the first movie stood apart from its peers and happily some of that fun and ingenuity stays intact to its sequel. Deliberate attempts are made at recreating the magic of some of the original's big moments. Instead of inventing new ideas whole cloth, some twists to the original's are introduced and exploited but the feeling of deja vu can't be shaken. The big fights themselves are often inferior due to an increased use of confusing camera movements, shaky cam and less-than-perfect framing.

One non-action scene in particular is very troublesome. To inject some drama into Eggsy's relationship, he gets involved in a seduction scene that very much gives a counter argument to the “show, don't tell” adage. This is going to be the one scene of the movie that will make repeat viewings pretty tough and more should be written about it in a spoiler-filled article. From my understanding much is already being said.

Overall I got a movie that is a mixed bag. There is some fun to be had but there is also quite a bit of wasted potential and more and more questions and doubts are creeping into my head as I write this review. As it is, I am nearly at the end of my one hour writing allowance. More should be said about this movie, I think, as comparing the two Kingsman films would lead to excellent exercises in analyzing what does and does not work in writing screenplays.

Two and a half stars. Action fans ought to get a kick out of this but for more casual viewers I'll recommend the first movie any day of the week.