Tagline: It was supposed to be a simple heist.
(Action, Crime, Bayhem) [R]
No, not the flamingos!
In this one, Will Sharp is having a hard time getting enough money to cover surgery for his wife. He asks for help from his brother Danny who doesn’t have the money but is planning a bank heist that will cover what they need. It doesn’t take long before the elaborate heist goes terribly wrong and Danny and Will must improvise taking an Ambulance medic named Cam and a cop that has been shot on a high-speed adventure being chased by cops across the barren wasteland that is Los Angeles.
First off, when BAD BOYS came out, I was all about Michael Bay’s swinging the camera around the actors in a circle 80 times filmmaking style, but it happens so often at the beginning of this movie that it’s almost dizzyingly annoying. Outside of that, this is a super fast-paced thrill ride that is just non-stop tension the entire way.
Acting wise I don’t like a LOT of what Jake Gyllenhaal is in, but he crushes this role as Danny Sharp. He has just the right charismatic temperament to play the character and you can imagine this dude pulling something like this. You would think that bank robberies would be a thing of the past, but apparently, although they are on the decline, they do happen and are still a “real” thing. Eiza González plays “Cam” in this and is outstanding. I really didn’t like her character or acting in GODZILLA VS KONG, but she definitely knocked this one out of the park. Yahya Abdul-Mateen II (AQUAMAN) is always solid and this movie is no exception. He plays Will Sharp in this and provides a lot of the grounding this movie really needed emotionally. Even the secondary cast members like Garret Dillahunt who played Captain Monroe were all outstanding.
Story-wise there is a lot more to this than I was expecting. With Michael Bay’s “Bayhem” style shooting and explosions and non-stop action, they still managed to cram a lot of heart into this and I even felt myself tearing up a bit. That is pretty freakin rare for me watching any action movie. Where this movie succeeded was in really giving us a reason to watch an ambulance drive around for nearly 2 hours. The camera work added depth and we also got a lot of really cool camera work using drones etc.
If there is one thing I might have considered for this thing it would have been shooting it somewhere that wasn’t Los Angeles. That place (and I have driven through there many times in the past few years) looks like a big junkyard that had a giant spray paint factory monster throw up all over it. I mean it’s janky as hell which is really sad. Outside of that the rest of the film is just really well done. I wasn’t even interested in this movie enough to see it in theaters and now I kind of regret that I didn’t.
I have seen some complaints about the dialog, but I thought it was great and if you are paying attention there is just enough humor in this to keep it from ever getting dull or feeling stiff. If you actually walked into this movie and saw the premise and expected every single little detail to be perfect, you failed at movie going. The good news is now when the next Michael Bay movie comes out, at least you will know the dude has zero interest in not just going full blown all out nonsense level fun.
Overall this is a 6 out of 7 for me. Some things were a bit off, but nothing even remotely worth knocking it down to a 5 out of 7. I would watch this again because it’s that good, but it’s such an adrenaline-driven movie that it’s probably a once-a-year thing.
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