Netflix And Chill: The Carrier (2014)

There may be some people out there who like the sound of The Carrier AKA The Bag Man, a neo-noir crime flick that features a cast of familiar names - John Cusack, Robert De Niro, Crispin Glover, Dominic Purcell, Rebecca Da Costa, Martin Klebba, and Sticky Fingaz. I advise you now to push that positivity aside. This is a horrible mess of a film, and it's clear that most of the people in front of the camera turned up for a paycheck that they knew wouldn't require them to break a sweat.

As much as it pains me to do so, I'll give a very brief plot summary here. Cusack plays Jack, the carrier of the title. He's transporting and taking care of something on behalf of Dragna (De Niro). The only rule is that he cannot look to see what's inside the package. Hiding out at a remote motel, manned by a curious man named Ned (Glover), Jack soon gets himself mixed up with some trouble swirling around Rivka (Da Costa).

Apparently written by James Russo, and then worked on by Paul Conway and director David Grovic, this is about as painfully lazy and irrelevant as it's possible for a movie to be. It feels as if it would have been easier to slightly enjoy back in the mid-1990s, but this was released two decades later. None of the cast are on top form, with one or two acting as if they're trying to give a career-worst performance, the dialogue could have been written by someone who was handed a variety of soundbites snipped from a variety of much better crime movies, and the 108-minute runtime is at least 20 minutes too long.

Few people have squandered their talent in the latter part of their career more than Cusack, who has given many performances by now that convey his complete disdain for his main career. This performance belongs in that category, although I don't blame him for being unable to work up any enthusiasm for the material. Da Costa has to look lovely, and occasionally be in danger, which she does. I'm not any big fan of her, but she does okay with what she's given. The best person, and someone who brings some fun to the proceedings, is Glover though, and the film is good whenever he's around. Purcell also does pretty good, it's a shame that he's not in the movie more, and both Klebba and Mr. Fingaz are perfectly fine. De Niro, sadly, is not. He doesn't seem to loathe the thing as much as Cusack, but he certainly doesn't do more than the bare minimum. 

It's odd to think of how much work had to be done here to make this as bad as it is. The screenplay is dire, but it could have been saved by a charismatic lead performance. The charisma isn't here. Cusack actually inverts any charisma he once had, creating some kind of monochromatic negative photo version of himself. And I'll eat my own hair if I encounter anyone who feels invested in this long enough to care about how the third act plays out.

The only good thing I have to say about this is that I at least hope to never have to rewatch it. 

2/10

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Freerunner (2011)

Horrible, just horrible. Freerunner is, annoyingly, a half-decent premise surrounded by a complete turd of a movie. One or two decent stunts save it from being the worst of the worst but it's such a lazy, poorly executed film that I actually felt angry while watching it.

I don't know what's more unbelievable. The fact that I have continued to try to convince myself that one day the likes of Danny Dyer and Tamer Hassan will one day appear in another decent film or the fact that it took THREE writers to cobble together this nonsense.

Mind you, while the writing is bad it's almost par for the course for this kind of film - the emphasis is, at least, on the action. I'm not letting Matthew Chadwick, Jeremy Sklar and Raimond Huber completely off the hook but most of the blame should be passed on to director Lawrence Silverstein, who took a movie all about freerunning (a smooth and entertaining pursuit) and decided to let all of the action scenes look as if they had been filmed by a pack of dogs who just happened to be in the vicinity.

Tamer Hassan plays yet another onscreen hard man, Danny Dyer is a cocky arsehole and there are a bunch of freerunners who run about the city, snatching flags while people bet on the results. Sean Faris plays Ryan, a freerunner who wants out and decides that he will get someone to bet a LOT of money on his final race, allowing him to retire a rich man. For some reason, he sees happiness in his future with his girlfriend Chelsea (played, HORRIBLY, by Rebecca De Costa - I mean, seriously, I am tempted to start a Kickstarter campaign to just pay her off so that she never acts again). Unfortunately, that all goes to pot when the runners are all gassed and wake up to find that they have exploding necklaces on and must now race for something much more important than money. That's the plot, in a nutshell.

Taking a number of elements from a number of superior movies (off the top of my head I'll namecheck Wedlock, Battle Royale, The Tournament and District 13) and then draining them of all fun before throwing them to the bottom of a barrel that is then filled to the brim with excrement, Freerunner is a waste of time and it's more frustrating because it's not a complete waste of time. The core idea is sound, it's just developed so poorly.

It doesn't help that nobody onscreen appears to have gone to any actual acting classes. Hassan is in the movie for a very short amount of time so almost escapes unscathed . . . . until we get to his awful last scene. Dyer just gets worse and worse in every movie recently and I'm starting to get embarrassed for him. No doubt he would be a geezer about it and tell me not to shed any tears while he was quids in and having a good laugh but I spent more time than most people fighting his corner (based on his fun turns in Severance, Human Traffic, The Football Factory and even Mean Machine) and this is the last straw. I'll still end up watching his movies, to review them, but I'll always brace myself for the worst rather than hope for something better. Sean Faris is pretty bland, I already mentioned that Rebecca De Costa was awful and Casey Durkin is stuck with providing all of the exposition for those who weren't able to keep up with the complex plot. Oh, she also bares her breasts for a second to keep male viewers happy - it feels very much like a halfway "restore point" compared to how tough going the movie is. Ryan Doyle is a tough, win-at-all-costs, freerunner but he's just as bland as Faris. In fact, only Joe Zamora and Tony Vo stand amongst their fellow runners and gamblers while the much older Seymour Cassel shows everyone how acting SHOULD be in his short amount of screentime.

In case I haven't made myself clear enough, Freerunner is an awful film with awful camerawork, an awful script and awful acting. Could I do something better with a group of freerunners and my own camera? Get me the freerunners and the equipment and I'll show you. Hell, if the people involved in this movie can keep getting work then I don't see why I can't break in to the industry and easily make something better than this.

3/10

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Freerunner-Blu-ray-Sean-Faris/dp/B007JI9B74/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1351007627&sr=8-2