I remember – i don’t know if I’m right or not which is probably true about a lot but I remember when this came out that I don’t think a lot of people liked it. Note: I don’t really look at IMDB any more so I got this good or bad intel from some of the blogs I read – all of which are much better writers than I am – but they usually tend to cover things I would rather harm myself than ever watch. Like Noah Baumbach or Richard Linklater or even modern David Fincher movies. Or that horrible fucking western where Benedict Cumberbatch punched a horse. But anyway I don’t think this got much love or made much moolah but what can I say? Hey I liked it and it’s not just because I watch a lot of low grade movies but one of my pillars of this place is that you have to watch them all to have any appreciation of things. One of the other pillars of my life in general is “don’t bother anyone” so I don’t know if I keep up that part of our bargain but I try not to be a pest. But i thought this was pretty good. Hey hey not bad. I mean it’s always hard to believe that a dude that’s never fired a gun can learn how in a couple of months and shoot twenty kill shots while spinning around in a car but *shrugs – go watch The Grotto and tell me which one’s better.

And I like Joel Kinnaman and I like John Woo. True story: Face/Off was my favorite movie there for a while. I mean not up there like my favorite favorites with The Professional or Rocky but I really liked it. I remember I went on a date with this girl at a very difficult time in my life and we saw it and it was fun and it gave me a little hope so yeah – but I watched it recently and…. yeah yeah well we’ll always have good memories. Anyway, I thought this was all right. Some good action scenes and some good shooting and the gimmicky ‘no dialogue’ thing didn’t bother me and I thought it was nice Woo threw in a duster flapping around in the wind shot and I have to admit, because I’m honest and frankly don’t know shit about anything but when I saw the name “Kid Cudi come across in the opening credits I thought it was this guy who goes by Machine Gun Kelly who I feel is a terrible screen presence so I was feeling out on this one but Cudi did a good job and was believable and he was not Machine Gun Kelly who I think kind of sucks. Author’s note: I’ve only seen Kelly in one thing and it was this movie called The Last Son which I didn’t like at all so it could have just been the whole affair there.

So here, this starts off with Kinnaman angrily chasing a balloon. In pure existential style, he must be following the path his life has taken and the choices he’s made, the decisions he’s missed out on, those things which may have eluded him despite trying to work hard and be a good family man; maybe his dream of inventing a revolutionary new type of high rise window wiper or some sort of gadgety machine that hangs from your ceiling and scratches your itchy back when you get up in the morning. Maybe! Maybe it’s a rendering of man trying to escape the Earth and make his way into the vastness of space, exploring other worlds and surely other types of life, yet technology of this lifetime eludes him and he’ll never reach the Pleiades and the source of The Seven Lamps. Or maybe that’s a bunch of shit that I just wrote and he just saw his son get drive by shot in his front yard and he’s trying to run down the motherfuckers who pulled the trigger and the balloon just happens to be along for exposition. Who knows these days, Woo is always an amazing storyteller.

Assuming its probably something to do with the latter – he runs these guys down on foot and does some smashing and then one of them shoots him in the neck – probably to kill him good but he survives and never says another word. And now he’s really pissed.

Or maybe, as an executive Producer, he’s just pissed at that terrible poster I made up top. I need to work on that, maybe I’ll try and use Steve Loggins (my AI picture bot) to see if we can come up with something better before this goes out. Maybe! we’ll see just how fucking lazy I can try not to be. Here’s the latest header I / we made for my blog here before we get back to the program we came to talk about:

I think that’s my favorite one but let’s get back to business.

Now Kinnaman’s character is holy pissed and he’s using some sort of money he must have stashed up or some sort of huge insurance payout to plan his revenge by buying all sorts of weaponry and a car and getting it souped up Dirty Harry (The Enforcer?) (I’m overdue on watching those again sigh cry) style and he’s got important dates marked off on his calendar and he’s getting jacked by doing one handed pull-ups and punching dummies and shooting at the range and none of this really bothered me at all. What can I say? I like shit like this and I liked Last Blood and I’m not sorry about it. “Now you know what it feels like to have your heart ripped out…” Amen and preach. (That’s from Last Blood not this one).

Here’s what Steve Loggins and I were able to put together but I haven’t put any text on it (yet).

We’ll see if I get time to mess with that any. I like the large Christmas bulby things in the background. So where was I? Where am I? Right now I’m sitting in a waiting room to go let someone take my blood and let me piss in a cup. Never fuck with strep.

Old boy got shot in the throat trying to avenge his son but lived to tell about it. The do nothing sucker ass cops won’t do nothing so he’s gonna take them out one by fucking one. “I’m gonna hurt you real bad” grumbles a threatening Rambo. Oops wrong movie but same concept I guess.

I cant really think of anything that makes this that much different from very similar other shit really. Except for the whole ‘no talking’ thing. Meh shrug scratch what can I say, it was all right. I watched this around the same time as I saw Monkey Man and they were both good but I’d probably go with Monkey Man as the better one with the big ass note that it was hard for me to understand a lot of what those folks were saying and it’s getting harder for me to read subtitles and pay attention to what’s going on onscreen so the whole no dialogue thing was nice. God damn I’m old.

FILED UNDER: BALLOONS AND FACE TATS AND VINDICTUS SANCTUM AND RIPPIN OUT HEARTS AND DUSTERS AND SAD SAD GRAVE VISITS AND DID I MENTION SHOOTIN EVERYONE TO SMITHEREENS

*YIKES!