The Foreigner

First Hit: Entertaining and nice to see Jackie Chan back in action.

This film is in the same bucket as Liam Neeson’s Taken series of films. Here, Quan Ngoc Minh (Chan), runs a restaurant which supports him, his daughter Fan (Katie Leung), and Lam (Tao Liu) who runs the day-to-day of the restaurant.

Quan takes his daughter to select and buy her homecoming dress and while she’s in the store the “Authentic IRA” bombs a department store that kills Fan. Quan, a former special forces operator from Vietnam, is heartbroken and distraught because Fan was his last living relative. After grieving for a short period of time, we know he’s going to make someone pay.

We get a back story of his losing his wife and other daughter when they fled Vietnam and now all he has are a couple pictures and a lot of sadness.

The good part is that at 60+ years old Chan can still fight and he makes it all look good and appropriate for his age and skill set.

His protagonist is the Irish Deputy Minister Liam Hennessy (Pierce Bronson) who led the IRA for years and now curries favor from the British Government for keeping the peace between the IRA operatives and Britain. Holding this peaceful co-existence together means he has compromised his Irish independence values and, per some of his peers, he’s gone soft towards the British Government.

Quan presses Hennessy for the names of the bombers and adds that he will not stop his quest until he has their names. He plans to revenge his daughter’s loss and exercise his demons for the all the losses he’s had.

Hennessy is also trying to find out who bombed the store and then it gets worse when they bomb a bus loaded with people. The peace in Ireland and his cushy job are in jeopardy.

The film becomes a cat and mouse game and Quan holds his own while following through on his objective. Hennessy also follows through on his goal to clean everything up and his ruthlessness comes through. In one of the last scenes in the film he directs his nephew to tie up one last loose end.

Chan is strong in this role and uses his impressive skills appropriately. What didn’t quite work was the use of the same sad face as his primary go-to for dramatic effect. It was a look that was suppose to express his deep sadness for his losses in life and that he was about to explode like a volcano. Bronson was very good in this role. He created a right level of being settled into a bureaucratic job, but still having the fire of being an IRA patriot. Niall McNamee as Hennessy’s nephew Patrick O’Reilly, was excellent. Appropriately responsive to his powerful uncle’s requests. Liu was wonderful as Chan’s restaurant assistant and friend. Her honorable sweetness stood out. Dermot Crowley as former IRA leader Hugh McGrath was very good. I loved how his anger towards the state of the IRA peace pact with Britain was expressed. David Marconi did a great job of writing a script that worked for all the characters. Martin Campbell directed this film with a good eye towards using the skills and strengths of his actors in this story.

Overall: It was an entertaining film.

The Only Living Boy in New York

First Hit:  I liked the idea of the story more than the pithy clichés and lines that filled up the screen.

Thomas Webb (Callum Turner) is a mid-twenty-year-old man who is living on the lower east side of New York City. His parents live on the upper east side and are wealthy as his dad Ethen (Pierce Bronson) owns a publishing house.

He meets W. F. Gerald (Jeff Bridges), a rumpled mess of a man, as he walks into his building one day. W. F. tells him he has moved into Apt 2B. He seems very personable in wanting to know more about Thomas. Thomas succumbs to his inquiries and begins to tell W.F. his story.

Thomas is in love with Mimi (Kiersey Clemons) after one magical night they had together under the influence of molly and alcohol. But she only wants to be friends. He’d like to be a writer but when he showed his dad some of his writings, he said they were “serviceable.”

One day he sees his dad having an intimate lunch with an unknown woman named Johanna (Kate Beckinsale). He’s hurt and is afraid to tell his mom Judith (Cynthia Nixon) because she’s so mentally fragile. At a loss of what to do, he follows Johanna and confronts her.

However, he ends up having an affair with her and falls in love with her.

Sound twisted? Yes, because this is used to crack open the real story of the film, which isn’t about his love for Mimi and Johanna but how he came to exist.

Turner was adequate in this role but we never see him suffer, grow, or even write which he says is his passion. He almost played victim throughout the film. Bridges was good as the writer who held the secret and was writing a story about “The Only Living Boy in New York”. Clemons was good at the beginning but I thought her character to be not honest. She shunned Thomas because of his affair with Johanna when she had an affair with Thomas when she was with another person. Beckinsale was interesting as the desired woman. It was only till the end did I think she cared about something. Bronson was OK but his moments were few and far between. Nixon was OK as the fragile mother. Still didn’t think the story warranted such fragile behavior. Allan Loeb wrote a weak script that was poorly conceived to tell this story. Marc Webb had some nice sets to work within. I thought the lower east side apartments that both W.  F. and Thomas lived in were perfect. The other inside sets were equally good as well. However, this plot needed a reworking before being committed to filmed.

Overall:  This was a long and ineffective way to tell the real story of Thomas, 'The Only Living Boy in New York.'

No Escape

First Hit:  It was an OK story with better than average acting.

The Dwyer family moves to a country bordering Vietnam (could have been Cambodia or Laos). Jack (Owen Wilson) is moving his wife Annie (Lake Bell) and two girls Lucy (Sterling Jerins) and Beeze (Claire Geare) to their new home because it is the only job he can get. The job, he believes, is helping the country’s water purification system and so he believes he's doing good for others.

On the first night, a coup breaks out killing the country’s Prime Minister. The ensuing chaos has the rebel citizens killing foreigners, especially anyone who is associated with the water company Jack works for. The rebels attack the hotel, killing almost everyone and now Jack and his family are in danger of being killed.

The rest of the film has the Dwyer family running for their lives and being assisted by Hammond (Pierce Brosnan) who is an English intelligence agent. The scenes of the streets and alleyways in this unnamed city are perfect. All of them had the right feel. Having spent a lot of time in Asia, I was happy to not see manufactured vistas or an inaccurate beautified view.

I thought the plot needed a little working, by providing a little more background of the coup as well as the Jack’s previous work. I did think the director created the right amount of intensity in this full movie chase. The most insightful scene to mark Jack and Annie’s relationship was when Annie, being sad and unhappy, tells Jack that she cannot help him feel better about their being away from their Austin home.

Wilson was good, although there were a couple of moments, I sensed his laissez faire persona creep through. Bell was superb. I thought she held the film together. Jerins and Geare were really good and realistic in their roles. Brosnan was amusing in his role and it worked. John Erick and Drew Dowdle wrote the script. As previously mentioned, I thought there were strong points and some missing background. John Erick Dowdle directed this films and given the probable limited budget did a great job of creating intensity.

Overall:  The film was entertaining and Bell was the strongest of the characters.

The November Man

First Hit:  Albeit an overly complicated plot, it kept me wondering how it would turn out.

There isn’t much about this film that makes it good.

The complicated plot line: Was it about Devereaux (Pierce Brosnan) and Mason (Luke Bracey)? Was it about how the CIA works? Was it about Devereaux and Alice (Olga Kurylenko)? Maybe it was about what being a CIA hit man deals with his/her life? Or was it about age and experience versus youth?

It could have been about Hanley (Bill Smitrovich) the head CIA operative and Devereaux, or was it about Arkady Federov (Lazar Ristovski) the guy trying to win a Russian Presidential election and Alice the girl he raped? There are a couple more I could have mentioned but the point being I never really understood what this film was about.

It is fine to have sub-plots and stories other than the main story, but the main story must be obvious to all – here it wasn’t. One things is for sure, there is a lot of shooting and a lot of bodies are given up for an unknown plot. What was good was Kurylenko’s Alice – she was engaging and created a believable character amongst the film’s lack of clarity.

Brosnan seemed OK but there were too many times that he looked like he was acting a character versus being the character. There was a separation of acting and being that, at times, seemed visible. Kurylenko was good and was fully engaged with her character. Bracey was pretty good as well as the young agent learning  to make choices about his personal and professional life. Smitrovich was very strong as the CIA person only caring about his agenda and what he thinks the US should be doing. Amila Terzimehic was a great unemotional assassin. Michael Finch and Karl Gajdusek wrote a confusing out of focus script. Roger Donaldson directed this with few highlights and mostly just adequate.

Overall:  This will not be a memorable film and needed clarity of plot to work.

The Greatest

First Hit:  This film is about grief and has some wonderful moments but it is overly melodramatic and manipulative.

I’m not sure why Carey Mulligan strives to play a teenager when she is clearly not one. Once again, just as in “An Education”, her age and maturity level are out of line with the part. That doesn’t make her a bad actress, in fact she’s rather good but she cannot play teenage parts.

Here she plays Rose, a high school senior, who passes the same boy, Bennett (played by Aaron Johnson), every day as they each leave school. For four years they’ve passed each other in the hallway always timing it so that they meet each other but don't speak.

It is the last day of their senior year at school and this time as they pass he speaks to her. As they both suspect, they are immediately attracted to each other and end up going off somewhere to make love. 

While driving back; he stupidly (naive urgency) stops in the middle of the road because he wants to tell her he loves her. Just as the words come out of his mouth, their car is hit by a truck and he dies, almost immediately (this is an important point). She lives and is able to make it to the funeral and there we see the pain of Bennett's family. Susan Sarandon plays Grace his mother and she is clearly devastated.

Pierce Brosnan plays Allen his father who is stoic, holding things together but clearly not processing his grief. And, then there is his younger brother Ryan (played by Johnny Simmons), who is struggling with his loss through mind numbing drugs.

All of this happens before film name credit awkwardly hits the screen on Brosnan's chest. The name comes from what Rose told him about his first time as a lover and what his parents think of him, “he was the greatest”.

This film is set up for boo hooing and tears. There are scenes that really work, like dinner the first night Rose comes to stay with them because she is pregnant with Bennett’s child.

Mulligan, as I said is too old for her part and although she does a fine job, I think it would have been better if she were a college senior and not a high school senior, but then again the story would have had to change as well. Sarandon is not very real to me in her expression of grief. It feels a bit contrived, forced and over manipulative. Brosnan, at times, is extraordinary in his role. I actually felt the pressure cooking within him as he attempted to hold himself and his family together as his grief slowly envelops him. Simmons is rather good as the younger brother who is struggling to deal with his own sadness as well as being the son who wasn’t “The Greatest” but is the only one left.

Overall: The film feels manipulative in the way scenes and dialogue are set up to make you feel something. I’d rather have an honest story be told in a real way and let me find my feelings rather than be manipulated into having a feeling.