Stuber: Stoo-pid

Stuber (2019) • View trailer 
Two stars. Rated R, for relentless violence and profanity, sexual candor, and fleeting nudity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 7.12.19

Good grief.

I haven’t seen this much contrived, gratuitous and pointless destruction of property since the inane Disney comedies of the 1960s, when a bear would “accidentally” stumble into somebody’s garage and wreak havoc with scores of spilled paint cans.

Stu (Kumail Nanjiani, right) objects strongly when Vic (Dave Bautista) insists on giving a
ride to a dog they've just rescued. Stu should be more tolerant; this pooch is far more
entertaining than most of the rest of the film.

The bear in this case is Dave Bautista’s Vic Manning, a rogue cop with serious anger issues, thanks to a violent, over-the-top prologue dominated by his protracted, dog-nuts fight with gleefully sadistic bad guy Oka Tedjo (Iko Uwais). Alas, the villain gets away, fueling Vic’s rage during six subsequent months of frustrating, futile investigations.

Director Michael Dowse’s Stuber is one of the most uneven action flicks ever unleashed by Hollywood: at times genuinely funny — mostly when Bautista’s hulking Vic trades verbal barbs with Kumail Nanjiani’s meek and mild Stu — and then atrociously violent and/or needlessly vulgar. 

Dowse doesn’t have the faintest idea what sort of movie he’s making, which is no surprise; Tripper Clancy’s clumsy excuse for a script doesn’t give anybody much to work with. Absent Bautista and Nanjiani’s inherent timing and camera presence, this flick would be a total bomb.

Which is a shame. Bautista and Nanjiani aside, Dowse’s lame effort also wastes the time and talent of solid co-stars Natalie Morales, Karen Gillan and Mira Sorvino. This is an abysmally stupid movie, and Clancy’s script is strictly from hunger.

The result is the sort of tasteless, mean-spirited mess that delights in introducing innocent civilians who hang around long enough to make an impression, before being needlessly snuffed.

On top of which, the publicity campaign is quite misleading. The lovably slobbering dog featured so prominently on the poster art has two fleeting scenes, and plays no part in the action.

Mile 22: Breaks down

Mile 22 (2018) • View trailer 
Two stars. Rated R, for strong violence and relentless profanity
By Derrick Bang

This flick certainly doesn’t lack ambition.

That’s no compliment. Director Peter Berg’s newest collaboration with star Mark Wahlberg isn’t anywhere near as successful as their other efforts — Patriots Day, Deepwater Horizon and Lone Survivor — because they’re stuck with a script that is both overwrought and ludicrously over-plotted. Writers Lea Carpenter and Graham Roland obviously wanted to concoct a devious, twist-laden, politically hued action thriller, but they tried much, much too hard.

Having arranged to drive Noor (Iko Uwais, right) to a transport plane that'll fly him to the
safety of the United States, Silva (Mark Wahlberg) has no idea how dangerous the
22-mile trip is about to become.

The result is a mess, in terms of both narrative structure and execution. 

I’ve learned, over time, to be wary of films that begin in one of two ways: during a patient conference in a psychiatrist’s office; or during any sort of after-the-fact de-briefing. It’s a clumsy plot device that ruins suspense, often deceives viewers, and becomes increasingly frustrating — as in this case — when the director keeps interrupting the as-it’s-happening action, to cut back to the post-mortem.

No doubt Carpenter and Roland expected this gimmick to pique our curiosity: What is Wahlberg’s James Silva going on about? Doesn’t work that way. It’s just annoying.

Actually, Silva himself is annoying. Very annoying. Wahlberg apparently wanted a role with more than the stable, true-blue, baseball-and-apple-pie, real-life heroes he tackled in his earlier projects with Berg; James Silva is the result. He’s a capable assassin and senior field officer assigned to a CIA tactical command group known as Overwatch: the guy you definitely want handling a sensitive and/or dangerous operation.

He’s also an insufferable pain in the ass: a hyper-focused “spectrum baby” just this side of being bi-polar. He’s impatient, imperious, insubordinate, oblivious to social cues, and unwilling to suffer anybody gladly, whether fools or long-time colleagues. Wahlberg throws far too much twitch into the performance; five minutes into the film, it’s impossible to believe that Silva wouldn’t have been dismissed, decommissioned (with prejudice), jailed or flat-out terminated years ago.

But no: We’re expected to believe that Silva’s team — and his superiors — tolerate the rudeness, gruffness, nasty sarcasm and unpredictability because, y’know, he always gets results. Uh-huh.

We see an early example of this during a tense prologue, as Silva and his comrades infiltrate an American-based Russian safe house. The off-the-books goals: break up the operation, capture and identify the participants, and seize the intel. Things go violently awry, and Overwatch head Bishop (John Malkovich) — monitoring the operation via computer surveillance, from a distant command center — orders all the Russians killed.

“You’re making a mistake,” warns the final victim, as Silva coldly executes him.

The Raid 2: Upping the ante

The Raid 2 (2014) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rated R, for strong, bloody violence, gore, profanity and occasional nudity
By Derrick Bang

With 2011’s The Raid, writer/director Gareth Evans was just flexing his muscles.

Anticipation is everything: Our hero, Rama (Iko Uwais, left) endures considerable
punishment before his climactic confrontation with an opponent known only as
The Assassin (Cecep Arif Rahman), but the wait is justified. Director Gareth Evans
unleashes a battle royale that must be seen to be believed.

Having now released a sequel, Evans’ master plan has become clear: He’s going for an underworld crime epic that’s the martial arts equivalent of Sergio Leone’s 1984 masterpiece, Once Upon a Time in America.

Evans is nothing if not ambitious, and he delivers. The Raid 2 is a bravura display of action mayhem, delivered with superbly choreographed panache and layered with enough simmering sub-plots to keep this narrative percolating not only through this sequel’s 150 minutes, but well into the already planned next installment.

Evans has the additional benefit of the ideal acting collaborator in Iko Uwais, who wears his tortured nobility like a shield. Uwais’ Rama is the superlative hero: Jakarta’s last and best honest cop, whose trial by repeated fire pushes him to horrific extremes not merely to save his life, but — far more importantly — also his soul.

We’re dealing here with crime fiction’s ultimate moral imperative: Is it possible for a good man to remain pure, while doing the dirty work required to combat evil?

Tormented angst is well and good; it’s always nice to identify with our protagonist. But Evans also knows how to please the martial arts fans who’ve hungered for an audacious, densely layered follow-up to Quentin Tarantino’s two-part Kill Bill epic. Rest assured, The Raid 2 satisfies that itch, and then some.

This new film’s narrative kicks off seconds after the events in the previous film, which left Rama’s rookie cop the lone survivor of a special-forces assault on a 15-story slum building laden with thugs taking orders from their brutal boss on the top floor.

Unfortunately, bad as that guy was, he was merely a mid-sized predator in a much larger food chain. If Rama is hailed as a hero, he and his family will be executed as a warning to other potentially honest cops with virtuous notions. Instead, Rama’s boss — clandestinely doing his best to root out departmental corruption — concocts a dangerous plan that begins with the very public announcement that the aforementioned raid left no survivors.

Rama is given a new identity as a low-level thug named Yuda, who establishes his rep by beating up a local politician’s son and getting tossed into prison. Once incarcerated, our hero must figure out a way to cozy up to Uco (Arifin Putra), son of Bangun (Tio Pakusodewo), one of the two Jakarta criminal kingpins who’ve ruled the city via a mutual truce that has lasted for years.

The Raid: Redemption — Leaves you breathless!

The Raid: Redemption (2011) • View trailer
Four stars. Rating: R, for profanity and relentless strong, brutal violence 
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 4.20.12


This sucker hits the ground running — literally — and never lets up.

Cinema has a grand tradition of stylish few-versus-many action thrillers, with notable highlights including Zulu, Rio Bravo and John Carpenter’s career-making remake of the latter, Assault on Precinct 13.

Having battled his way into the lab where a local crime lord processes drugs,
rookie cop Rama (Iko Uwais, left) discovers that the chemists — rather
vexingly! — also happen to be dangerous martial arts experts. The resulting
skirmish is merely one of many stylish interludes on route to Rama's climactic
confrontation with this story's Big Bad.

The Raid: Redemption is just as likely to make a star of writer/director Gareth Evans. This is the third feature helmed by the Welsh filmmaker, and the second set in Indonesia, amid the nastier elements of Jakarta’s underworld.

It’s also Evans’ second collaboration with Indonesian martial arts star Iko Uwais; the two met at the latter’s pencak silat martial arts school, when Evans was scouting Indonesian locations in 2007, while making a documentary. To say that Evans was impressed would be an understatement; he and Uwais have been a filmmaker/actor team ever since.

Plenty of martial arts champions have embraced acting, but success in that realm involves more than smooth moves; one must possess camera presence ... not to mention the ability to credibly deliver a line. It’s also a collaborative art; a good director is necessary, in order to frame the performer in a manner that makes him — or her — look iconic.

No surprise, then, that many answer the call, but few achieve the fame of, say, Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan, Michelle Yeoh, Jet Li or Tony Jaa. Uwais reminds me of Jaa; both are grimly ferocious fighters, well able to tailor their jaw-dropping moves within the confines of a camera frame.

Not that Uwais needs to worry much about confines. Evans and cinematographer Matt Flannery move the camera as inventively and aggressively as a given scene demands, traveling through windows — and doors, walls and floors — to keep pace with the action. But — and this is important— without the irritating “shaky-cam” jiggle that has become so ubiquitous these days.

Evans also handles the editing, and he knows when to temper the frantic pursuit of a chase with fixed camera placement, so we can better appreciate the explosive physical mayhem. Most importantly, he doesn’t “build” fight scenes in the editing bay, with sharp cuts; as with Fred Astaire’s best dance scenes, the pandemonium here unfolds during extended takes, so we can better appreciate the physical talent on display.