"The Union" 4K Review

 Another week, another star-studded Netflix Original that will be consumed and forgotten almost immediately. This week's movie snack is The Union, a blandly-titled spy caper action film packed with more talent than in deserves slumming for a check & being able to shoot in nice places.

After an opening sequence in Trieste, Italy where an unnamed squad of military gear-clad operatives led by Nick (Mike Colter, Luke Cage) and supervised by Roxanne (Oscar-winner Halle Berry, ) are all killed by unknown snipers along with the guy they'd grabbed who had a McGuffin briefcase containing the identities of every spy for every agency in the world; the case which was spirited away by someone after the squad wipe.

 We then meet Mike (two-time Oscar nominee Mark Wahlberg, Ted 2), a New Jersey working schmo who is banging his 7th-grade English teacher (Dana Delany) who kicks him out in the morning, so he passes her husband having breakfast in the kitchen in the morning (wait, what?!?), on his way home to where he lives with his mother (Lorraine Bracco, looking hefty). After a quick montage showing him doing his blue collar job, he and the boys adjourn to the bar for brewskis.

Into this dive arrives Roxanne, who turns out to be an old high school flame of Mike's. After some drinking and flirting, she takes him to their old makeout spot where she then injects him with something. He wakes up in London to find out she works for the Union (roll credits!), a secret spy agency that's less blue bloods and more blue collar in their recruiting. The London office is led by Tom (Oscar-winner J.K. Simmons, Portal 2) and staffed by a colorful assortment of caricatures including Foreman (Oscar-nominee Jackie Earle Haley, Breaking Away) and some other red shirts. (Spoiler alert!)

 Ted wants Mike to lead an attempt to recover the McGuffin so after a montage showing how Marky Mark, er, Mike packs six months of training into a couple of weeks, off they go for a bunch of capering, action, double crosses and a bunch of stuff that I can't even remember as I write this review two weeks later and frankly don't feel like tabbing over to the Wikipedia page to look up.

 The Union tries to be a comedy, a spy thriller, an action flick, with some romantic tension mixed in because of course while trotting around Europe's nicer areas in bright 4K Dolby Vision. I kind of want to compare it to the Kevin Hart Netflix caper flick Lift which aired last January before disappearing from everyone's memory, but I can't remember much about that and don't feel like reading my review again.

After her appearance in John Wick: Chapter Three -Parabellum I thought Berry deserved a shot at more action roles, but should've specified "in good movies" like the John Wick series. She's looking great at 56 (at time of filming in 2022), but whoever thought the blonde "Karen" hairstyle with these long hanks falling over one eye half the time was a good look must've harbored deep resentment toward her. Bad hair, BAD!

Everyone else seems to be having fun collecting a paycheck to make believe in luxurious places, so who cares about the performances or anything else in this forgettable piece of content?

If you've got a bright 4K TV, you'll get your money's worth from the colorful cinematography, but you can find plenty of great demo videos on YouTube with better plots than The Union.

Score: 4/10. Skip it.

"The Instigators" 4K Review

What is Doug Liman's problem with movie titles? After a nearly two-decade run of major bangers like Singers, Go, The Bourne Identity, and Mr. & Mrs. Smith, he got jinxed by studio interference which turned his 2014 Tom Cruise-Emily Blunt sci-fi action classic based on the manga entitled All You Need Is Kill into Edge of Tomorrow which sounded like a soap opera sponsored by a feminine hygiene product manufacturer whose clientele was too sensitive to handle the Twilight movies. The freaking tagline for the movie - Live Die Repeat - was a better title and they've somewhat tried to undo the damage by having it listed on digital retailers as Live Die Repeat: Edge of Tomorrow which was too little, too late.

Since then he's had a mix of box office disappointments (American Made with Tom Cruise), disastrous flops (Chaos Walking) and direct to streaming dreck like Locked Down, a blah Wuhan-lockdown set romcom-heist flick. His last effort was the Amazon Prime Original remake (heh, original remake) of Road House which got most of its press for Liman's very loud and public whining about its distribution and his payment and Conor MacGregor's weird performance. It was modestly entertaining, but disposable.

Now he's already back with another more-or-less direct-to-streaming movie for Apple TV+, The Instigators, which having seen the movie makes no sense whatsoever and doesn't even hit at what this surprisingly entertaining and energetic heist dramedy has to offer. The marketing for this was so poor that I didn't even see a trailer for it and only happened to catch it because we'd just resubscribed to ATV+ to watch some series and it had just dropped. Other than starring Matt Damon and being directed by Liman, I really had no idea what this was going to be.

Matt Damon (say it!) stars as Rory, a divorced former-Marine who is hinting to his therapist, Dr. Rivera (Hong Chau), that he may be suicidal. Seeking to make some quick cash to pay off back child support and be able to see his son again, he joins up with heist crew masterminded by crime boss Besegai (Michael Stuhlbarg) with Scalvo (rapper Jack Harlow) and Cobby (Casey Affleck, who also co-wrote the screenplay with Chuck Maclean).

The plan is simple: The Boston Mayoral runoff between incumbent Mayor Miccelli (Ron Perlman) and young reformer Choi (Ronny Cho) is happening and Miccelli is expected to win and thus will be receiving massive amounts of cash bribes at the victory party which will stored in a safe for pickup the morning after. The trio of robbers are to slip into the wharfside venue before dawn when only a skeleton crew of workers would be there, get someone to open the safe before the armored truck arrives, and take the rowboat of cash out of there. Easy peasy and a good split of a good take in the cards. However, Rory just wants the $32,480 he needs - if there's more, he doesn't want it, if there's less, Besegai will have to pay him the difference. 

However, the plan goes disastrously wrong as the boat develops a leak and can't be used as an escape and the venue's kitchen is packed with workers. Apparently the election is undecided, but appears Choi may upset, and Miccelli is refusing to concede so the party is dragging on until the dawn. Complicating matters is the fact that so much bribe money had come in there had already been two drops to armored cars made and there is very little cash in the safe. REALLY complicating matters is when trying to find their way out of the building they wander into the area where Miccelli, his lawyer, Flynn (Toby Jones), and others are waiting. Scalvo decides to rob them as well, taking a bracelet from Miccelli, before the police chief and Scalvo end up killing each other in a gunfight draw. Rory and Cobby escape in the anticipated armored car.

With their clean caper now a massive clusterfark with a dead cop, everyone is very interested in catching our dunderhead duo especially Special Operations Unit Detective Toomey (Ving Rhames), dispatched by Miccelli to retrieve the bracelet and Booch (Paul Walter Hauser), sent by Besegai to retrieve the money and tie up the loose ends Rory and Cobby represent and by tie up I mean murder them.

To try and recap what happens next would spoil the surprises, but for once in a very long time I had no idea where the story was going to go next and end up. Sure, it's a safe presumption that the two Big Stars' characters probably are wearing plot armor that prevents death, but the twists, turns and double-backs kept the mystery of how the heck they were going to get out of this mess alive.

Affleck and Maclean's script keeps things moving with the emphasis on entertainment rather than trying to make lots of Acting Showcase Moments focusing more on character details like how Cobby needs to have a child blow into his motorcycle's Breathalyzer interlock to get it started (a gag which pays off at the end) or how everyone in town seems to understand Det. Toomey operates on the Dirty Harry side of the law and allow him to do what he wants as Alfred Molina's baker associate of Besagai experiences. 

Liman seems in far better form than Road House or Locked Down exhibited with the few chase scenes cleanly executed while balancing the dramedic elements of the story. The performances are all good though Damon's passive Rory may be too laid back for some tastes.

With such a stacked cast, it's odd that Apple took such a low-key approach to The Instigators release beginning with the title. An instigator is someone who provokes conflict and neither Rory nor Cobby set out to stir the pots and are more concerned with escaping the blowback. I don't have a better title than The Instigators in mind at the moment, but it doesn't change that it's a weak title.

While other critics and the herds at IMDB seem more immune to The Instigators' charms, it's a tidy 101-minute long romp which will keep you guessing and not bore you with self-importance. If you have ATV+, give it a watch, you're paying for it.

Score: 8.5/10. Catch it on Apple TV+.

"MaXXXine" 4K Review

 After the sleeper success of A24's slasher horror movie X and the surprise prequel Pearl (both reviewed here) it was announced Ti West's trilogy would conclude with MaXXXine with the sole survivor of X (spoiler alert!), Maxine Minx, trying to move beyond porn into "legitimate" movies in 1985 Hollywood. How did she do? Let's find out.

 Mia Goth returns as Maxine. It's six years after the Texas Porn Massacre and at age 33 her porn career is nearing its end. She auditions for a horror sequel, The Puritan II, directed by statuesque female director Elizabeth Bender (Elizabeth Debicki), and gets the part. She's being tailed by a shadowy figure who watches her when she does her shift in a peep show and there's a creepy private investigator, Labat (Kevin Bacon, having a ball), menacing her on the shadows behalf.

And lurking farther around the edges is the Night Stalker, the infamous serial killer who murdered at least 14 people between 1984-85, and may be responsible for Maxine's sex worker friends turning up dead with Satanic symbols branded into them. A pair of police detectives (Bobby Cannavale & Michelle Monaghan) think she's somehow connected to the crimes and are harassing her leading to a preposterous finale.

 While X and Pearl had their gimmicky charms, I was bored by MaXXXine. Not even the Gen X-baiting Eighties throwback vibe could make an empty story interesting. Ignoring that there were extremely few female horror directors (or even female directors in general) at the time, Bender doesn't really add much to the plot than digressions about being driven to succeed and creative vision. Perhaps this aspect could've been fleshed out more, but West doesn't try.

The ultimate reveal of the villain was only a surprise to those who weren't paying attention to the very end of X or the opening scene of MaXXXine. Western Union couldn't have telegraphed the "surprise" harder. Every character is basically a cutout stereotype which even good actors like Giancarlo Esposito, who plays Maxine's agent/lawyer like an ambulance chaser, can do much with. And the ending where people are suddenly armed when they would've had no reason to be and what Maxine does yet walks free were disbelief suspensions too far.

Goth is an odd actress. With her odd invisible eyebrows, she's not a standard beauty - she'd be great as Hazel O'Connor in a biopic that exactly seven people would probably see - and she's most worked in the left-of-the-dial art film scene in movies like Infinity Pool, Nymphomaniac, and the Suspira remake. But in her second swing as Maxine, the character seems thinner & more mannered, drifting at times towards Elizabeth Berkeley's Nomi from Showgirls in 'tude. Goth co-wrote Pearl with West, so why not team up again?

If you saw the first two movies of West's trilogy it's understandable that you'd want to see how it finishes up. Perhaps if you lower your expectation sufficiently, the disappointment may not be too bad, but it's overall a skip.

With a period look gritty film look, the 4K presentation doesn't really offer much visual ooompf as far as highlights and shadow detail. I didn't really feel 4K and the audio mix was nothing special.

Score: 3/10. Skip it.

"A Quiet Place: Day One" 4K Review

One of the most unique premises in sci-fi/horror in recent years has been that of the A Quiet Place series which told of a world where humanity has been nearly made extinct by alien monsters which hunt by sound, forcing humans to live in silence or die. The 2018 original A Quiet Place, co-written and directed by John Krasinski, was a brilliant exploration of the premise due to one child being deaf (and thus unable to know if she's making noise) and another is an infant who can't control when it cries.

2021's A Quiet Place Part Two was less successful as it was bogged down by the premise that at the end of the world there will still be selfish bandits preying on others as if they have any way to use the loot. But its opening sequence showing the alien invasion from the family's point of view in their rural town was harrowing and provides the impetus for what's depicted in A Quiet Place: Day One, which shows what happened in Manhattan.

 Lupita Nyong'o stars as Sam, a terminal cancer patient at a hospice outside NYC. She's a bit of a misanthrope, trashing her fellow residents in a poem she reads in group therapy. She reluctantly agrees to go on a day trip to the city in hopes of getting some pizza and annoyed that it turns out to be a marionette show. She ducks out to get a snack at a bodega and when she returns she learns the group is heading back to the hospice due to some unspecified emergency which we rapidly learn is an alien invasion as meteors carrying the monsters pummel Manhattan.

 Trapped in the island due to all the bridges being blown up by the military - considering they landed everywhere as shown in the other films, what's the point - Sam decides to not head for the seaport where evacuations are being conducted, but to head north for Harlem to get pizza from a specific place.

Along the way she's joined by Eric (Joseph Quinn, Eddie Munson from the 4th season of Stranger Things), an English law student who's shellshocked by what's going on. She doesn't want the company, but lets him tag along with her and her cat Frodo as they dodge aliens in various harrowing encounters.

 A Quiet Place: Day One is a larger scale rendition of the events depicted in the 2nd film, but isn't overly bloated with action sequences, portraying the mayhem more impressionisticly as aliens attack at the edges of the frame, out of focus. Writer-director Michael Samoski - whose last film was the terrific rediscovery that Nicolas Cage could still act, Pig - who collaborated with Krasinski on the story ably manages the scares and pathos of the story, staging some nail-biting close calls as well as charming moments of caring in a world at its end.

But undercutting the story is the same flaw that harmed Kate, the forgotten 2021 Netflix Original starring Mary Elizabeth Winstead as an assassin dying of radiation poisoning, in that what are the stakes for a character who is a dead woman walking? The original movie was about a father trying to protect his family, Day One is about a surly dying woman with no apparently family or friends living for what exactly? Same with Eric, what's he about? Since conversation is lethal, there is little time for Basil Exposition chit-chat and thus who are we rooting for other than Frodo, the chillest cat in the world who doesn't ever hiss or freak out as monsters are inches away. (This is due to the makers not wanting to use CGI or frighten the two cats, Nico and Schnitzel, to get a reaction because they couldn't be trained to do those actions.)

That we're not actively rooting for Sam's death is a testament to Nyong'o's performance as she gradually paints Sam as a woman resigned to her fate, but not rushing towards it, if only to protect Frodo. The ending is predictable, but how else could it have wrapped up. Quinn is good, but has little to play. Also making a brief, but impactful cameo is Djimon Hounsou who I forgot until prepping this review was in the 2nd film, so he's playing the same role.

I'm not sure how many more Quiet Place movies they can or should make despite their being a profitable series thanks to keeping the budgets low because how many ways can you do "Shhhhh, don't make a sound" tension. It's a unique premise, but sometimes you can only take them so far.

The 4K Dolby Vision presentation is good, if muted due to the gray, post-9/11 inspired color palette. Colors, where they appear, are rich. Where the party really starts is with the Dolby Atmos audio. The series has always had really smart sound design, using height channels to great effect as in the first film's scene where a racoon is on the roof and you hear it scurrying around. Here helicopters whir overhead, aliens gallop with meaty thuds and even though you will have to turn up the volume to hear the whispered dialog, when the booms occur, they don't rattle your eardrums.

Score: 6.5/10. Catch it on cable.