Friday, December 16, 2011

Catch .44

IMDb Link


Let's play a game. Tell me what director this reminds you of...

Open on Bruce Willis spewing out a 'bon mot.'
Cut to blaring 'cool' music.

Cut to women in a diner, exchanging dialogue that has nothing to do with the plot, then they rob the place.

More loud music. Flashback.

At this point, I hope this has made you think of Tarantino. If not, then you should see more films. But you know what's worse than a Tarantino movie? A copycat Tarantino movie.

Anyway, after all this, it's even more downhill... The dialogue is stilted, trying to be hip, full of pop culture references for no purpose whatsoever, except maybe give Tarantino a big hard on. And 'be cool' 'be calm' 'I am calm' 'calm down' is repeated so many times, it made me a little bit nauseous. Then they say 'fuck' a lot. Then they spew more bullshit like a 'joke,' to alleviate the 'tension.' Or long drawn-out 'parable.'

The scenes are all predictable, but they're trying to be hip. The directing is full of clichés and it's really trying to be hip. And of course it's full of Grindhouse bullshit. And, oh no: there's a three-way Mexican stand-off. Which lasts for about 30 minutes, I shit you not.
And on top of all that shit, you get more flashbacks more pointless dialogue.
And then some more dialogue that serves no purpose.

This film is so 1995, it's not even funny.

Thing is, we don't give a shit about any of the characters and my only wish was that they'd all get shot to death. I'm really starting to lose faith in Forest. He's again playing the same kinda role he's been playing lately:
'Bad ass' guy, with a smile, pretending to be all goofy and friendly, but he's actually lethal and relentless and all. And he's even got a little catch phrase: 'Cuidado.' That's so cool, coz it's in Spanish, so it's totally new. Although I was only thinking about the Month Pythons: 'Cuidado el Llama!!' And he uses different names and they're goofy-sounding and he always explains those names and it's supposed to be 'bad ass' and fun. But it's not, the scenes just drag on and on and on... By the way, how did he get the blood out of the uniform? Or if not the blood, than the engine grease, since the cop died on the engine, with a bullet in the head.

Oh, wait, no... Point-blank shot, back of the head and he's not dead. Why not? Because the director really wanted a shot of a guy shooting another guy in the trunk of a car. At least that's my guess.

And in the flashback, Forest all of a sudden has a bad Tony Montana accent. He even acts like Montana all of a sudden, with the downward mouth/disgusted look. Sure.
And right after the flashback, he speaks with the Montana accent. Then it becomes a Ricky Ricardo accent. Sure, why not. Then it goes away again. Uh huh.

Oh, God. We even have surf music. Then Bruce Willis acting like he's Christopher Walken, all psycho and shit. And he talks about pecans and baseball, that's so awesome. Right?

Anyway, yes... all the actors, who are usually good, all act as if they're in a film. Let me explain that... They don't feel natural, it's like they're all thinking: 'Okay, I'm gonna be a cool cat character and I'm gonna go out of my way to show you how cool I am.' The end result is that the acting is, dare I say it, bad. But that's probably because of the director who was too busy thinking about blowing Tarantino.

Here's the story: 3 women rob a diner to take drugs. Things go wrong.
That's it.

That's why we see the diner shoot-out over and over again, because THERE IS NO FUCKING STORY. There are only badly-written actors and flashback after flashback to show us how they all met. They try to make us believe there is a story, and a twist. But there isn't. They try to make it cool by blaring music that's not half-bad. But it fails. It fails so much that any music featured in here, no matter how good, becomes by default shitty.

So, hey, I'm gonna quote Al Pacino in 'Heat' now and it's to the attention of the director: 'Stop wasting my motherfuckin' time!'

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