Netflix And Chill: Red Notice (2021)

Dwayne Johnson is a tough and tenacious Interpol agent named John Hartley, Ryan Reynolds is a quick-talking art thief named Nolan Booth, and the two of them are about to be manipulated into working for the elusive and intelligent master criminal known as The Bishop (Gal Gadot). The prize that everyone is after is a lost bejewelled egg that was gifted to Cleopatra centuries ago. There were three eggs in total, but nobody seems to know the location of the third. Well . . . maybe Nolan Booth does. If he finds it, it can make up the complete set, which would lead to the biggest payday for whoever got them into the hands of the right buyer. Set-ups, pair-ups, and balls-ups ensue.

A lot of people weren't impressed by Red Notice. Despite the obvious big budget, the ridiculous set-pieces, and the attractive stars, many were left cold by the way they felt it was just like the objects at the heart of the plot. I can't deny that this is pretty and hollow, it also has a twist or two that can be spotted a mile away, but I also can't deny that I had fun for most of the 2-hour runtime. I like Johnson, Reynolds, and Gadot, even when they're just doing something that they've done at least a dozen times before.

The feeling of everybody working very much in their comfort zone also extends to behind the camera, with the writing and direction from Rawson Marshall Thurber. This is his third movie with Johnson, to date, and it almost feels like a bridge between the exuberant fun of Central Intelligence and the mishandled straight action of Skyscraper. The script obviously gets the characters from A to B to C, and so on, but there's a strong feeling that most of the non-exposition dialogue came from the cast just improvising. Which is fine when the results are funny, and some of the results are funny, but not so fine when the stars feel like they're just trying too hard with every line.

Johnson does what he does well. He's the muscle, and he pairs up well with Reynolds, although I prefer his comedic pairings with Kevin Hart (the absolute ineptitude and fear of the characters played by Hart allow the coolness and strength of Johnson to play funnier). Reynolds is playing a version of the character that he's generally been playing for the past decade or so. He's a man who, no matter what the situation, will insist on delivering a quip that he thinks will either make for a fine insult, a fine compliment, or some fine last words. I like Reynolds, but I can always see why those who aren't really that big a fan of him will hate most of his performances. Gadot is always in control when onscreen, depicted as always being the smartest person in the room (as well as being able to handle herself physically), and she's good in her role, although her limited work in the field of comedy shows that it's not exactly her forte. 

Most of the criticisms that you will have already seen are totally valid. The plot is very predictable, very simplistic, and a bit tiresome. None of the stars are at their best. The set-pieces are middling, at best. Things could have been greatly improved by polishing the script and tightening everything up. The soundtrack and score even feel a bit half-assed.

I still enjoyed myself though. Not enough to mark this as some kind of new favourite, and I probably won't ever revisit it, but I can see why the numbers were big when this first dropped on Netflix. It was a shiny blockbuster delivered straight into our homes, for better or worse, and I wasn't majorly disappointed when I opted for this as a centrepiece of my weekend viewings. I'll probably even watch a sequel, but I hope they do a better job with it.

6/10

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Skyscraper (2018)

Part disaster movie, part action movie, Skyscraper is probably best described as simply a Dwayne Johnson movie. It's dumb fun. Yet it's another mis-step for Johnson, with a bit too much of the dumb and not enough of the fun parts, hopefully serving as a reminder to the hulking star that he shouldn't rely on these vehicles to keep him ranked as high as he currently is (in terms of box office and all-round likability).

Johnson plays a security expert named Will Sawyer. He has a family that he loves, a new job that places him in the biggest skyscraper in the world, and an injury that has left him with one leg (the other being a prosthetic). He's also about to have a major headache when the skyscraper is taken over by some rent-a-villains, the top section is set ablaze, and he can only look on from afar as he realises learns that his family are trapped inside and he has no easy way to get back to them. But this is Dwayne Johnson, dammit, so you know he's going to find a way.

Written and directed by Rawson Marshall Thurber, who has a background steeped in comedy and used Johnson so well in Central Intelligence, Skyscraper is riffing on a few very famous action thrillers that take place in very tall buildings. I'm not going to namecheck them, simply because I feel petty enough to refuse to place their names in any context alongside this film. It's the epitome of a hollow blockbuster, with very few things to care about in between the explosions and fights.

Neve Campbell plays Sarah Sawyer, and she gets a couple of decent moments, but she's the only other adult character worth a damn. Oh sure, nobody wants to see the kids in too much peril, but you could say that about most kids. The two here are perfectly fine in roles that could have been played by any one of thousands of eligibile contenders. At least I remember them more than ANY of the other people who are going about onscreen not being Johnson. Chin Han, Roland Moller, Noah Taylor (okay, I always like seeing him in movies), Byron Mann, Pablo Schreiber, Hannah Quinlivan (so close to being good if she was given some better material), Adrian Holmes, and Elfina Luk are the main people that you're unlikely to remember when you see them in other movie roles.

It's not really the fault of the cast. I lay the blame squarely at the feet of Thurber. His script is weak, even for something that aims to be simple and bombastic. You hear some of the dialogue in the first few scenes and know who is going to turn out to be a villain, you are shown some tech in the building and know it's just going to come into play later on in the movie, you get something cold and stale at every step of the way, which is majorly disappointing. There are better ways to play with this kind of material, dumb fun doesn't have to be so lazy and obvious, but Thurber somehow thinks that he's done a good enough job for the intended audience. He hasn't.

And here's my almost inevitable grace note on which I end things. There's still just enough to make this an average time-waster, as opposed to a painfully bad experience. The charisma of Johnson alone adds a point or two, and there are a few excellent moments that have him trying to stay alive without succumbing to the constant pull of gravity. But who would have thought that this would be the weakest action film starring Johnson in a year that also saw him headline Rampage? Anybody? Yeah, me neither.

5/10

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Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story (2004)

This review is going here because, well, I wanted to start off the new year with a smile on my face.

As simple as it is gut-bustingly funny, Dodgeball is a near-perfect mix of great one-liners and physical comedy, populated by a cast all playing to their strengths and directed with sharp focus on moving from one comedy beat to the next.

Vince Vaughn plays Peter La Fleur, owner of Average Joe's gym. La Fleur is a nice guy, but a terrible businessman. When he's given a very short time in which to come up with a very large sum of money it looks like Average Joe's is about to close. Which is good news for White Goodman (Ben Stiller), the narcissistic, dense, mean owner of Globo-Gym (slogan: "We're better than you, and we know it").
There may, however, be a way to raise the money and save Average Joe's. Yep, you guessed it. Dodgeball. There's a big tournament about to happen, and the prize money is just the exact amount that La Fleur needs to save the gym.

Written and directed by Rawson Marshall Thurber, who would score another big comedy hit almost ten years later with We're The Millers, this is very much a love or hate movie, and I love it. In fact, it's one of those movies that I love so much that I just hope many of my friends also love it, otherwise I start to question their taste, and then question the basis of our friendship, and then question by questioning manner, and then just collapse into a heap of paranoia and low self-esteem.

Vaughn is a fast-talking average Joe (almost literally, in this case), Stiller is the angry idiot, Justin Long is a good-hearted klutz, Stephen Root is someone who builds and builds up his anger until he explodes, Joel David Moore is a socially awkward bundle of nerves and, well, I guess you get the picture. What I'm emphasising here with my description of each character is that this is not a film to watch if you do not like any of these actors doing their usual stuff. Christine Taylor is very good as the attractive young woman who La Fleur takes a shine to, Rip Torn is hilarious as a violent dodgeball coach, and there are great cameos from the likes of David Hasslehoff, William Shatner, Hank Azaria, Lance Armstrong (although his cameo isn't as funny now as it once was) and even Chuck Norris. Gary Cole and Jason Bateman are to commentators with distinctly different styles, and Missi Pyle is the most dangerous woman in the world with a dodgeball.

Is it a modern comedy classic? Most people would probably say that it isn't, but Dodgeball has a better laugh-per-minute ratio than almost any other comedy I can think of since the turn of the 21st century. It's the perfect blend of clever and dumb, with an extra sprinkling of . . . . . . . . even more dumb, and I certainly rank it up there with many other comedy greats. It might not be perfect, but it comes close.

And the sequence that pops up during the end credits may not be big or clever, but it's yet another moment that makes me burst out laughing, ensuring that the smile stays on my face for some time after the movie has finished.

9/10

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