An average movie

Like many other viewers, I was really impressed by ‘Narc’, a criminally underrated and underseen cop flick, and I was really eager to watch Joe Carnahan’s following directing effort. At first, it was supposed to be ‘Mission Impossible III’ but it seems that he and Tom Cruise didn’t get along very well so he left the project. Eventually, he made this flick which had some pretty good buzz before its release. Eventually, I thought it was not bad and quite entertaining but, honestly, still fairly disappointing. On the positive side, I thought the directing was really solid, they were was a really cool massive cast (Ryan Reynolds, Ray Liotta, Jeremy Piven, Ben Affleck, Peter Berg, Martin Henderson, Common, Andy Garcia, Alicia Keys, Taraji P. Henson, Chris Pine, Kevin Durand, Joel Edgerton, Jason Bateman, Matthew Fox) and the whole thing was rather fun to watch. Unfortunately, I thought the plot was pretty weak and it felt really shallow. I couldn’t help thinking while watching this that the writer(s) seriously watched too much ‘Pulp Fiction’ and/or ‘Snatch’ and obviously tried to emulate the kinetic style of those classics. The point is that even though these movies seemed to be messy, they were actually the opposite as they were carefully crafted and, at the end, they completely made sense. This movie, on the other hand, was just style with no substance whatsoever and I didn’t care for the story or any of the characters involved. Still, even though I thought the whole thing was rather disappointing, it still remains a fun flick and I think it is worth a look, especially if you like the genre.

6/10