‘Sicario’ (2015) Review

Sicario (2015) Review: Cops And Cartels Television will often portray officers and detectives as the ideal of law enforcement. Aside from more recent shows like 'The Wire' and 'Chicago P.D', cops for decades were presented as good-natured men and women in trench-coats, intimately involved with the cases that come to their desk that get solved at the end of each episode. But whereas the corrupt cop is the exception in the land of tv, film takes the opposite approach.Dirty Harry looks for the excuse to pull his gun, Alonzo Harris runs drugs in L.A, and most recently, the feds in 'Black Mass' were actively involved in the goings on of a criminal organization! It's safe to say that when it comes to law enforcement in film, you can expect a few morally questionable individuals to be in the mix. Of course, that's what makes them so good. You take what is supposed to be an institution for the protection of the people and you perverse it. The trouble is if every representation of a thing is similarly contrary, how the hell do you stand out? 'Sicario' delves into the same idea of ethical boundaries, with a pragmatic touch. The film follows the story of Emily Blunt's, 'Kate Macer'. Kate is a field operative working with SWAT to bring down drug houses owned by Mexican cartels but located in the United States. Kate is operating under the insanity doctrine of policing, doing the same thing over and over without a varied result. When…

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‘Black Mass’ (2015) Review

Black Mass (2015) Review: Strictly Criminal Crime films are quite possibly the most conflicted genre of cinema. Here you have films that depict the most gratuitous acts of violence, moral depravity and disregard for the rules that society has agreed to align themselves by. Their characters use foul language and more or less depict psychopathic tendencies. This is a genre that takes it's cues from the villains perspective. Yet, for every misjudged act of hyperbolic violence, the audience never seems unnerved.The reason is, mob movies, like the western before it, present these heinous personalities within the context of something that makes all the things that are inherently wrong right. A code. Characters in mob films live by a sense of honour, and presenting that as a central theme in the film makes the story you're watching feel as if it exists in a state of ordered chaos. After all, in the words of the immortal philosopher Omar Little, a man must have a code. Black Mass has everything that makes a good mob film and more. It follows the story of F.B.I agent John Connolly, played by Joel Edgerton. Connolly is a Southie native, and when he discovers a new federal agenda to take down organized crime, he gets it in his head to work with childhood friend turned gangster Jimmy "Whitey" Bulger, as a means of providing the Bureau with information, in exchange for protecting Whitey from any harassment from law enforcement.Technically,…

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‘The Perfect Guy’ (2015) Review

The Perfect Guy (2015) Review: Evil Ealy Stalker movies are a special breed of horror. While most horror films take a supernatural element and then go from there, stalkers tend to be less fantastic. Sure you have slashers like Halloween and Friday the 13th, but those always end up morphing into supernatural horror anyway. Strictly speaking, a stalker is the scariest thing you could put in a film that relies solely on the horrors of the known world. The idea of a crazed obsession that escalates into homicidal rage is not only scary but somewhat relatable. We've all been witness to a show of affection that rests on the thin line between intensely charming and massively unsettling. Stalker films that focus on that thin line have the potential to be a commentary on how a solitary act is socially acceptable in one context but deplorable in another.'The Perfect Guy' kind of does that, but is mostly a loud thriller. As the title suggests, 'The Perfect Guy' focuses on that old cliché of the man that fits virtually every heterosexual woman's checklist, otherwise known as 'Prince Charming'. The woman in this story is 'Leah Vaughn' played by Sanaa Lathan. After breaking up with her boyfriend Dave, played by Morris Chestnut, Leah finds herself involved with the infinitely charming Carter Duncan, played by Michael Ealy. Carter seems to be a flawless fellow, until about a third way through the film when Leah realizes, Carter is not who she thinks he is. Essentially,…

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‘Transporter: Refueled’ (2015) Review

Transporter: Refueled (2015) Review: Running On Empty This summer saw quite a few fourth and fifth franchise iterations. There was 'Jurassic World', the spiritual sequel to the original 1993 epic, but still the fourth film in the series. 'Mad Max: Fury Road' saw the return of a franchise long thought dead, and even 'Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation' brought back a Tom Cruise that most believed to be past his prime, for the second time in a row.Typically a franchise tends to lose steam after the third film, but in the age where the seventh 'Fast & Furious' film was the #3 movie at the worldwide box office, that doesn't seem to be the case anymore. They're also doing well critically. Both 'Rogue Nation', and 'Fury Road' have received great praise so far this year standing at 93 and 97 percent respectively on Rotten Tomatoes. No longer is it easy to write off a franchise that goes beyond the standard trilogy, as the viewer might just be walking into something marvelous that they didn't expect to.Immensely, 'Transporter: Refueled' is not that. In fact, the only thing unexpected about the film is just how bad it can get. After 3 films starring Jason Statham, a critical and commercial failure of a television series, the Transporter returns with Ed Skrein at the helm. He plays the same character as Statham, Frank Martin, and his role is the exact same. I never much got into the…

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